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Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!

I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.

Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.

Get off fossil fuels is not exactly a new idea is it.

But on practially every aspect of the detail EdM has been wrong.

He is wrong to stop North Sea drilling and rely on imports of hydorcarbons
He is wrong to ignore Tidal power and geothermal as viable renewable sources.
He is wrong to continue with the old 'National Grid' model when we need to be looking at localised power sources for day to day provision and use the grid as a backup
He is wrong to pursue CCS - a technology with massive flaws which is having billions thrown at it for absolutely no return.
He is wrong to pursue North Sea electrification, a hugely expensive and pointless idea that is driving companies to shut down viable assets years ahead of time

Basically in every detailed decision he has made he has been wrong.

You are the expert on this, and those who are net zero zealots need to listen to reason and accept the transition, which most everyone supports, needs to be viewed over a much longer time frame

Richard is an expert on geology, but he's also an AGW sceptic which I suspect colours his opinions. The problem is that from a climate point of view, we simply don't have a much longer time frame. A transition to renewables over a much longer time frame will ultimately result in world in which we failed to avert most of the effects of climate change.

I just do not agree that we impoverish ourselves when realistically we are only responsible for 1% of emissions

We should be extracting as much oil and gas as we can from the North Sea as are Norway, and I see no condemnation of Norway

Climate change is happening, but preventing our use of the North sea for tax revenues over the next 20 years is lunacy

So is the number of ships sunk by Iran still at precisely zero ?

If so then that's less than the number of Russian ships sunk by Ukraine in the Mediterranean this month.

Hormuz is not the equivalent of Malta 1942, its simply a matter of Trump or the Gulf Arabs paying the extra risk money to the shipping companies.

Three ships have been struck, but not sunk: Skylight, Hercules Star and the MKD Vyom.

The reason they haven’t sunk is probably to do with the fact that modern ships are vast and the better ones have a zillion compartments. Modern design/ops is to have every compartment you can, unmanned, closed off and with a monitoring camera.

Fun fact - even during the age of armour plate on ships, much of the protection was done by having lots of compartments.

Tankers have either vast reserve buoyancy (unloaded) or a cargo that actually absorbs shock and supports the ship after a breach. It’s quite hard to get even light crude to burn.

In the Tanker War in the 80s, next to none were sunk, but many damaged.

The loss of trade isn’t from sinkings. It’s from damage stopping ships. And insurance vanishing.

Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!

I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.

Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.

CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.

Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.

I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.

The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.

Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.

Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time

The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.

That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.

I like how the solution of right wing suits to economic disruption caused by dependence on hydrocarbons is to increase dependence on hydrocarbons.

If the right wing idealogues had had their way over the past couple of decades, we'd be in really deep shit now with total reliance on hydrocarbons and an almost completely depleted North Sea.

Alternatively the entire baseload would be nuclear, and the demand for both hydrocarbons and renewables would be minimal. The hydrocarbons we would have self-sufficiency and a large strategic store, making the UK pretty much immune from short-term market fluctuations.

I guess they would be more relaxed about sourcing the uranium from Russia or Kazakhstan...

You could stockpile a decade or two of reactor fuel, quite easily.

It’s not radioactive, really. I wouldn’t recommend eating it. Just a bunch of metal

It wouldn’t even take up much space. I’d be a little bit careful of how you pile (ha!) it up, though. Bird cages and all that.

People of PB, please attend carefully...

Draft 15 of the trans article has been up backstage since 4am 10Mar2026. Of the people currently cleared to see it (rcs1000, DavidL, fitalass, Cyclefree, TSE, Nigelb, kyf_100, turbotubbs) none have suggested further changes and I am in my weekday digs so are limited in what I can do anyway. So Draft 15 is going to be the prepublish version released to the prereaders.

If anybody wants to preread the article before it is released to the mods please let me know by liking this comment before 9pm 12Mar2026 and I'll add you to the backstage.

I'm not looking for an argument and kyf_100 and Cyclefree have added extensive well-argued arguments in both directions as discussants, so change/comment requests in either direction will probably be ignored. Given the very tight word count, additions will additionally be ignored. But if you spot errors, misnumbered sources, typos, bad punctuation, etc, please tell me and I'll change it/collapse screaming/politely note your point in the article.

I have had interest from Nigelb, kyf_100 (who can already see it) and I think @Andy_JS and @Kinabalu want to be pre-readers (can you confirm this please?)

.

The US and Israeli brothers in arms have really fucked this one up.

There is a reason Israel wanted to do this for forty years and they couldn't find a US President stupid enough to agree, until now...

Not sure Israel has fucked up. Seems to me they have got exactly what they wanted.

They want the Iranian regime gone. Not happened.

They want to be able to build the Trump resort and casino in Gaza without any threat of drone attacks. Not happened.

They want the US to continue to unconditionally support anything and everything they do. Not sure that happened.

My reading of Israeli strategic aims:

1. Undisputed regional hegemon
2. America remains Israel's constant and unconditional ally
3. All countries in the region, especially but not only Iran, reduced to dysfunction
4. Free hand to invade and occupy the neighborhood

With this operation Israel has enhanced (1); (2) bound the United States further; (3) Iran reduced further to rubble with the bonus of the Gulf economies possibly also ruined; (4) currently rampaging Lebanon free of consequences to Israel.

But on 2 they used to receive almost universal cross-party support in the US.
Now their are many voices, and not just Democrats, openly questioning the value of this alliance.

Given the UK has not taken part in the strikes on Iran I expect Starmer can largely blame Trump if the oil price rise leads to increased cost of living at home. Though he might want to sack Ed Miliband and push for more oil drills in the North Sea just to be on the safe side!

I think the point is that regardless of his total blamelessness for this global crisis, the voters will blame him.

Also FFS the whole point of the renewables transition is to isolate the UK from these oil price shocks. Spain and Portugal will fare better, having decoupled their energy market from gas prices, generally Ed Milliband is right, on some of the details CCS, floating wind, he's not, but generally big picture "get off fossil fuels" is correct. Support and guidance on better options, not opposition.

CCS on EfW and cement plants, yes.

Building new CCGT and blue hydrogen projects with CCS, locking us in to natural gas consumption for decades, no.

I'd tentatively support that. There may indeed be a use case for CCS in areas where it is very difficult to avoid CO2 release such as the ones you mention, but there's an awful lot of lower hanging fruit to be picked first. The first priority has got to be electrification of everything that can be electrified and a corresponding massive expansion of low emission electricity generation, transport and storage.

The big gaps are transport (transmission) and storage.

Indeed, though I gather the problems with expansion of transmission are largely political in nature in that people don't want pylons, etc, whereas storage is a more technical issue in that it's just really hard to do.

Battery storage is now cheaper than building hydro. Even if the sites for enough hydro were available - they aren’t. And it’s getting cheaper all the time

The desparate NIMBY pushback is something to behold, though. Particularly when it comes from Green local politicians. Apparently the fact that 30MWh and below doesn’t need the full planning enquiry that a power station gets is Evil.

That’s 10 ISO containers, basically.

Are you sure - unless I’ve got my maths very wrong I suspect it would be 3 40ft containers max

The vape shop fire in Glasgow is going to be a nightmare for this. People are itching to find a way to ban EVs (bikes and cars), batteries etc.

There’s dozens of vape shops on Union St and that end of Sauchiehall St. They can’t all be making money selling vapes. Scottish version of the Turkish barber, or Walter White’s car wash?

Dozens? Google map shows 3 on Union St and Sauchiehall St is nowhere near there (and is any case not throbbing with vape shops).

I see vape shops are the new meme for the only asking questions, great replacement theory lads.

There is a side street in North Manchester - just off the infamous and now destroyed counterfeit alley - where there are a good 20, with a trading estate at the end where there are another 20. Have a look and I defy you to conclude that this is anything but dodgy as fuck.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/M3zZ2RaoXn6pjNT76