English: Map to show current affiliations of European Countries with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Several NATO Member areas not included in the map, such as the United States, Canada, Greenland, and French Guiana. Česky: Mapa zobrazující partnerské smlouvy NATO v Evropě a okolí. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a really interesting article from Nick Butler published in the FT. Check it out!
It is good news that Nato recognize energy as a strategic risk for Europe.
Personally, I believe that the European Commission’s paper in May was inadequate. As well as mitigating the risks, there is an urgent need to leverage the opportunities.
For example, what about helping Cyprus to accelerate the development of offshore gas? Of course, the Cyprus LPG fields are adjacent to those of Israel. There is also an opportunity to secure long-term supply of gas from Israel. At the same time, surely the EU can influence Turkey’s foreign policy, warning Turkey that a gas pipeline would be conditional?
Overall, what worries me is the slow state of decision-making in Europe with few leaders prepared to look to effective strategies for the whole of Europe
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
The answer to Dr Alf’s question is yes with regard to countering weather warfare and military threats to pipelines carrying oil or gas, and the composition of regimes in places like Saudi Arabia and Iraq upon which we depend for oil.
It is also NATO’s responsibility to plan against threats to shipping carrying coal, crude oil and natural gas upon which we depend.
However, individual countries have a duty to maintain sufficient excess generating capacity to deal with demand, growing populations and colder winters.
The UK government has failed in this duty for many years, and has just 3% spare generating capacity which means that a hard winter will see 1970’s style blackouts.
It has bought into the latest IPCC and Stern Report and the gloomy prognostications of the “Club of Rome” whose views are there for all to see on their website.
The IPCC report in its newest iteration says that the climate is warming but that the heat is now being absorbed by the oceans in a process they do not fully understand but which requires more research.
Furthermore, they say that this process will go on for another 20 to 25 years, even though the Met Office gets 80% of its daily weather forecasts wrong to the point where Tesco PLC fired them and replaced them with a more accurate forecasting service.
This explanation is pretty thin but the IPCC thinks that it allows them to say that the earth is warming even though all the other evidence suggests otherwise.
The reality is that the UK Government has had 8 years worth of reports telling them that the earth is cooling as evidenced by the 25% increase in thickness of Antarctic ice and a 25% increase in it’s land area coverage.
They cannot own up to this, having told us the opposite for decades, and having based tax regimes and fuel duty escalators on bogus data because then people would recognize that they were being presented with a bogus problem which was being used to apply new green taxes upon them.
The same applies to the credibility of the BBC which has championed this “green agenda” in order to get more sympathetic treatment on the licence fee settlement.
This is far greater than the corresponding melting of Arctic ice and is part of a natural phenomenon which used to be taught to British schoolchildren which was that every 1500 years the earth whilst in it’s elliptical orbit around the sun would progressively get closer to the sun for a period of about 40 years and then move further away as it has done for millions and millions of years.
During the past 110 years the earth has warmed by 1 degree and then in 1998 this stopped,hence the new explanation by the IPCC which the Russian,Chinese and Indian Governments do not believe,which Professor Richard Lindzen,the world’s top oceanographer does not believe.
What has also happened is that old coal fired power stations in the UK have not been replaced based on EU directives to scrap the old ones and utility bills will double by 2020 when Hinckley Point will not be ready as claimed by the Coalition and when the Chinese start to build a new nuclear power station at Bradwell in Essex.
This because wind farms, tidal power, extra loft insulation and energy saving will not be sufficient to keep the lights on.
Using Chinese built nuclear power stations and getting nuclear power from France makes us vulnerable to future blackmail over supplies and costs so the interim solution is for us to frack and frack now in an effort to regain energy self sufficiency.
All NATO countries should be self-sufficient in energy so that NATO’s global responsibilities can be more clearly defined.