Climate protests in London

[whole diary]

[TonyK]

'It has been polarising': tube protest divides Extinction Rebellion

Disrupting London trains was opposed by 72% of activists in poll, but has boosted coverage

...

More fundamentally, they argued that the targeting of public transport – rather than roads, airports or financial institutions hit earlier in the week – confused their message.

Source, and full article: The Guardian

And so it did. Locally to me, and separately from any ER protest, there has been a small campaign to close a road used as a rat-run to "stop noisy speeding cars using diesel fuel" to race up the road. I pointed out that the proposed solution would also stop quiet electric cars going slowly.

This is a bit of what has happened in London - a protest to stop the fat cats getting rich on fossil fuels to the detriment of humanity has led to some things which have stopped normal environmentally aware people going about their non-polluting business in a carbon-neutral way. When anyone complains, the stock answer of this being less inconvenient than having the whole planet turned into a scorched wilderness looks sanctimonious, simplistic, unsympathetic, and not very well thought through. Being a nuisance and treating anyone whose daily journey to work becomes a nightmare as mere collateral damage will lose support amongst the general public. And get you dragged off the train roof, even if you are surprised to find that not everybody shares your view outside of the echo chamber. The mob has tasted blood - the next protester to hold up a commuter train will be brave indeed. Or stupid.

The principal objective is said to be to cause government to act, and that at least is likely to come to pass. Depending on the make-up of the next government, expect a raft of new legislation, along the lines of the Public Transport (Prohibition of Self-Adhesion) Act, Police Cycle Lock Removal Powers Act, and similar. Existing laws cover quite a bit of the disruption, such as interfering with an aircaft, or not sitting down in one when told to. In Bristol, the proseecutors seemed to prefer simpler charges like obstructing the highway to anything that could end up in a 5-day Crown Court trial. It will be interesting to see what happens this time. The Met Police reckon it may be 6 months before they can get back to concentrating on drugs and knife crime in the capital full time.

[Robin Summerhill]

These people won't stop until they have us all living in caves and eating turnip skins.

Luxury. We used to dream of turnip skins.

[broadgage]

Waiting for someone to try this on a mainline with OHLE.

That would give a new meaning to the trendy phrase "carbon footprint".

I have noticed a lot of "toilet not available" mentions in the train running page. Have ER found a new target?

I suspect that an exploded protester would cause even more disruption than the famous exploded pigeon. And leave larger carbon footprints.

[grahame]

Meanwhile a climate change activist has been forcibly removed from the roof of an underground train, not by TPTB^▸ (The Powers That Be) but by a crowd of enraged commuters.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-50079716

Whilst I have some sympathy with the disrupting of carbon intensive air and road transport, to obstruct electric trains seems simply daft, and I have more sympathy with the underground passengers than with the protesters in this case.

There seems to be a growing view that "climate change activist" is simply the latest re-branding of the numerous protest groups that seem to exist primarily to stop people earning a living.
I expect considerable public anger if those passengers who removed the protesters from the train roof, are subjected to the full force of the law, whilst those who climbed onto the train get away with it.

From talkRaDIO

Three Extinction Rebellion protesters who glued themselves to a Docklands Light Railway train at Canary Wharf station have been spared jail.

Cathy Eastburn, 52, Mark Ovland, 36, and Luke Watson, 30, were each given a 12-month conditional discharge for halting the service in east London.

The stunt was part of a series of protests across the capital this spring demanding immediate government action on climate change.

The trio had denied the charges of obstructing an engine or a carriage using a railway on April 17 this year, claiming the stunt was justified because of environmental threat.

The campaign group said it was the first trial linked to its demonstrations to be dealt with in a Crown Court, which has higher sentencing powers than a Magistrates’ Court where protesters have usually been tried.

[TonyK]

The judge ordered a total of £1766 in costs. Miss Eastburn, who spent a week in prison on remand, must pay £1,166 of that. The conditional discharge means that if they get caught doing anything else wrong in the next year, they will be sentenced for this as well.

[broadgage]

I agree with the verdict of the court. The offences were non-trivial, but also not hugely serious, and the judgement reflects this.
Whilst I have considerable agreement with the concerns and aims of ER, I cant support the disruption of electric public transport, use of which should be encouraged as an alternative to driving a private car.

Does anyone know what happened to the members of the public who removed the protesters from the train roof ? Nothing, I hope.

[TonyK]

I agree with the verdict of the court. The offences were non-trivial, but also not hugely serious, and the judgement reflects this.
Whilst I have considerable agreement with the concerns and aims of ER, I cant support the disruption of electric public transport, use of which should be encouraged as an alternative to driving a private car.

Does anyone know what happened to the members of the public who removed the protesters from the train roof ? Nothing, I hope.

Nothing that I have heard. Any charge would probably be of common assault under s39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, possibly assault occasioning actual bodily harm (ABH) under s47 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 if more than pride was hurt. Common assault is a summary matter which can only be heard in the Magistrates Court. ABH is triable either way, so can be heard in Magistrates or Crown court. I would be surprised if the Crown Prosecution service proceeded with it, with the police probably finding evidence in the form of witness statements hard to come by, even if they tried.

Some 20 years ago, a noisy 16th birthday party of a neighbour's son spilled out into the road. One young man was taking a leak over another neighbour's garden wall, and got very mouthy with said neighbour when he came out to remonstrate. Moments later, the young man suffered a rapid decrease in potential energy after a punch was thrown, and called the police. A few witnesses seemed to recall the youth throwing the first punch, the other onlookers thought he might have tripped. Neither group could be certain. He was alone by this time, the rest of the party having either gone quietly home or back into the house, and started to shout about how it was all wrong and every was lying because they didn't like him, when an officer suggested with less than subtlety that he went home. He walked off, appearing from a side-street on his moped a few minutes later when he figured the coast was clear. He was stopped at the next corner, breathalysed, and taken away in handcuffs. From this, we learn that public opinion can sometimes sway an outcome.

[broadgage]

One of the more sensible policies of Extinction Rebellion and other climate activists, was a call to prohibit the heating of outdoor seating areas of bars and cafes etc.
Excessive indoor heating is bad enough, but trying to heat the outdoors is daft.

Such a ban is now being introduced in France, though not until after this winter.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53552526

Time IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion) to call for a similar prohibition in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

[CyclingSid]

Surely if it was done in Europe there is absolutely no chance of it happening in UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

[broadgage]

Surely if it was done in Europe there is absolutely no chance of it happening in UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

Possibly, but in certain respects at least we are making greater progress than our European neighbours WRT^▸ (with regard to ) to climate change.
We have greatly reduced coal burning for electricity production, and have greatly increased wind power.
So there seems to be some hope of banning outdoor heating in England.

[TonyK]

Possibly, but in certain respects at least we are making greater progress than our European neighbours WRT^▸ (with regard to ) to climate change.
We have greatly reduced coal burning for electricity production, and have greatly increased wind power.
So there seems to be some hope of banning outdoor heating in England.

We could start by banning outdoor heating in summer, I suppose. 

It is a very stupid idea by and large, and seems, at least in part, to be an unintended consequence on the very welcome ban on smoking in pubs, restaurants and workplaces. It is a wasteful use of a finite resources, as well as a source of unnecessary pollution. I would certainly not disagree with any plan to ban it, or make it subject to planning or licencing rules.

Thankfully, we use very little coal in generating electricity - practically none at all since the pandemic forced lockdown. We have greatly increased the capacity to generate electricity from wind and solar, but that doesn't translate into production itself. A quick look at Gridwatch shows that on this averagely breezy and slightly overcast day, we are deriving 8.6% of our electricity from wind and 5.4% from solar, less than we import from the continent. The latter will drop over a cliff at sundown. 52.6% of our electricity is currently coming from combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT^▸ (Combined Cycle Gas Turbine)). It seems the more renewable electricity machines we build, the more we will have to rely on gas as the replacement when it is not producing enough. To produce as much constant electricity a a 100 MW CCGT installation, you need 50 2MW wind turbines, and a 100 MW CCGT installation. Super-duper batteries will be with us soon after fusion power, but at the moment are only there as a means to restart the grid if it goes badly wrong. Using them to store excess renewable power will make sense when no fossil fuel is being burned at all, but otherwise makes as much sense as topping up your ISA by drawing cash with a credit card.

[broadgage]

To add to the points above, utility scale batteries are now a reality. The UK^▸ (United Kingdom) already has about 0.5Gw of battery storage, and another 4Gw is planned. 4.5 Gw is enough to meet about 10% of UK demand.
Grid connected batteries able to meet 10% of national demand were science fiction until very recently.
AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know), the planned use is short term to cover for breakdowns or unexpected peaks, not for calm days, still an interesting start though.

The press release is unclear as to whether they are talking about Giga watts, or Giga watt hours. I suspect the later i.e. the ability to produce 4.5 Gw for some unspecified but short time, probably less than one hour.
Being able to source say 2Gw from batteries for the "high peak" of the worst 20 or 30 minutes would be very useful as it could avoid the need to run gas turbine plant for that time, saving start up losses and wear. The other 2.5Gw being kept in reserve in case something breaks before the earlier capacity has been recharged.

[Bmblbzzz]

Spread your windfarms widely enough and it's bound to be blowing at one of them. The same isn't true of solar, except possibly in Russia. 

[TonyK]

The press release is unclear as to whether they are talking about Giga watts, or Giga watt hours. I suspect the later i.e. the ability to produce 4.5 Gw for some unspecified but short time, probably less than one hour.
Being able to source say 2Gw from batteries for the "high peak" of the worst 20 or 30 minutes would be very useful as it could avoid the need to run gas turbine plant for that time, saving start up losses and wear. The other 2.5Gw being kept in reserve in case something breaks before the earlier capacity has been recharged.

4.5 GWh would run the country on its own for 5 minutes if it were spaced out nicely. As a way of evening out high load, we can use Dinorwig for comparison. The electric mountain can provide 1.7 GW^▸ (Great Western) (in an impressive 16 seconds from starting) for up to 6 hours, giving a total storage of 9.1 GWh. That helps greatly with the surgein demand at the end of every Eastenders episode, or at half-time in a broadcast football or rugby game, and would be invaluable in rebooting the grid. It was actually built to smooth out surges when we had coal and oil supplying most of the nation's electricity.

Spread your windfarms widely enough and it's bound to be blowing at one of them. The same isn't true of solar, except possibly in Russia. 

Alas, no, unless you mean across oceans. This is one of many reports of a wind drought, this one in the summer of 2018. It happened to a smaller extent last week, compensated for by solar to a degree. Sustained periods without wind are not that uncommon in winter, when demand is high and solar low, as high pressure systems stall. Wind turbines then become net users of electricity, with the blades driven to keep ice from forming and maintain lubrication.

[broadgage]

4.5 Gwh would indeed run the country for only a few minutes, and is less than the energy stored in the pumped storage plant at Dinorwic.
Still most useful though for short term peaks in demand, or shortages of supply caused by breakdowns.

I don't think that the batteries would help in re-starting the grid after a national blackout. Most large inverters connected to the grid, rely on the grid connection for operation.
They can feed power into a functioning grid system and perhaps avert a total shutdown, but they can not feed power into a "dead" grid system to re-start.

Re-starting after a complete shutdown is known as a black start.
The traditional way was to black start a couple of large coal burning power plants. Usually a diesel generator (that started from batteries or air bottles) supplied power to Auxiliary plant in order to raise steam and operate at least one main turbine and alternator.

These days, selected gas turbine plants can start without any grid power, and re-energise portions of the grid.

A black start of the entire UK^▸ (United Kingdom) grid has never yet been required.
There WAS a regional black start of the London and southern England area after the great storm of 1987.