We should have listened to the Greens and Al Gore a long time ago.
Good counterfactual this. And not only on climate change. Would he have killed bin laden quicker? Maybe. Because he would not have invaded Iraq. Would he have let China into the WTO? Yes, naughty silly Gore. Much else of note? Probably not.
Would he have been re-elected? Yeah. He’d have ridden the 9/11 wave too. Which probably means no Obama in 2008. And no Tea Party. Instead then we’d have probably got Macain. And then what? The pressures from globalisation would still be there. So perhaps we’d have got that loopy guy, I forget his name now in this heat, that screamed at his rally like a baboon. A leftist-Trump policy wise. He’d have crashed and burned after a term. We’d probably have Romney right now.
Not loopy at all; an excellent political strategist campaigner and organiser. The Scream was one of those momentary aberrations, but for which the Democratic party might have been a very different beast.
I've got a GoPro (most recent version) and Pano DC-TZ200. They both have bewildering options regarding sattings.
E.g. Pano:
If MP4:
4k 100M 30p 4K 100M 25p 4k 100M 24p FHD 28M 60p FHD 28M 50p FHD 20M 30p FHD 20M 25p HD 10M 30p HD 10M 25p
That's for MP4. If I select AVCHD Instead of MP4 there are yet more options.
How is a normal person expected to understand this?
I want top quality film to play on my TV. TV is 4K. I've discovered that when I record video on the Pano in 4k it crops the video which is annoying. The TV is only 40 inch so I'm inclined towards the FHD with no crop I think.
I'm filming everyday stuff inc holidays and Go Pro for skiing. Any advice on the best settings to use would be much appreciated.
Edit: I tried to find a Go Pro in-person training course but none exists in the UK! Jessops used to run one but not now.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
IIRC Sri Lanka didn’t run out of currency first - they chose to ban fertiliser for their own reasons (albeit mad ones) failing to realise that the existing cash export crops were dependent on fertiliser imports & there wasn’t enough domestically produced fertiliser (regardless of source) to make up the difference. So exports fell more than imports & triggered a currency / balance of payments crisis.
/Now/ they can’t afford to import fertiliser (or fuel, or much of anything) due to lack of foreign currency, but that wasn’t the original problem, as I understand things.
So, a summary of recent threads. Treasury civil servants are crap at long term planning. DoE civil servants are even crapper at running education. DfT civil servants are crapper still at managing the railways. The common themes - Public School educated Cowley Tech graduates, London based, and not specialists in their area of employment. Solution - employ comprehensive educated specialists and move their jobs away from London.
You may have a point. A related point is whether we would be better to have more of a distinction between legislature and executive. Many ministerial posts would be better filled by specialist outsiders temporarily in the Lords for accountability.
Alternatively, appoint specialist outsiders to the Lords permanently, instead of it being a home for retired politicians and political donors. Make it a forum of experts.
China backsliding on coal? "SHANGHAI, Feb 24 (Reuters) - China started building 33 gigawatts of new coal-fired power generation capacity last year, the most since 2016, research published on Thursday showed, a sign the country is falling back on fossil fuels as economic worries mount.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it need after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
Nonsense, they've been running out of money for many years. They've had a consistent budget deficit for many years, a terrible and widening trade deficit for many years, and plummeting foreign reserves for years. And they've lost the tourism sector (even pre-Covid) that was one of the major ways they gained foreign currency.
The switch to organic had nothing to do with green dogma, it was because they couldn't afford imported fertiliser. So they tried to put a face-saving spin on that.
If you're going to make these silly claims, you might want to learn what it is you're talking about.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
No. That's not clear to me. The *real* catastrophe would be not driving hard targets.
Look at the data on coal fired power stations being built around the world, and then reflect on that statement.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Because other governments are failing to impose targets we should abandon ours? How does that help?
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it need after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
It was a bit of both. The fertiliser import ban was presented as a green policy but was ultimately motivated by the country's chronic lack of foreign exchange, as I understand it from my Sri Lankan family.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka's woes are because of tax cuts and organic farming. They didn't change policy on fossil fuels. There have been blackouts now because they can't afford to pay for energy imports.
IF renewable energy is so cheap, then why does it need subsidies...?
What subsidies?
Most new renewables aren't getting subsidies now.
Green levy on electricity bills is between 9 and 12 per cent, according to Ofgem.
That is not a Green levy and it has nothing to do with subsidies for new electricity generation though. Apart from that . . . again try and understand what it is you're talking about.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it need after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
Sri Lanka also cut tax to and bankrupted their treasury. Thereby demonstrating that the Laffer curve is very flat at that point.
I've got a GoPro (most recent version) and Pano DC-TZ200. They both have bewildering options regarding sattings.
E.g. Pano:
If MP4:
4k 100M 30p 4K 100M 25p 4k 100M 24p FHD 28M 60p FHD 28M 50p FHD 20M 30p FHD 20M 25p HD 10M 30p HD 10M 25p
That's for MP4. If I select AVCHD Instead of MP4 there are yet more options.
How is a normal person expected to understand this?
I want top quality film to play on my TV. TV is 4K. I've discovered that when I record video on the Pano in 4k it crops the video which is annoying. The TV is only 40 inch so I'm inclined towards the FHD with no crop I think.
I'm filming everyday stuff inc holidays and Go Pro for skiing. Any advice on the best settings to use would be much appreciated.
What are the down sides of going for the highest resolution/frame rate? It may be battery life, or it may be the cost of bigger memory cards. Try some experiments....
The other thing to think about is processing the footage you shoot afterwards. Try it and see what your PC thinks about manipulating the various resolutions.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it need after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
Nonsense, they've been running out of money for many years. They've had a consistent budget deficit for many years, a terrible and widening trade deficit for many years, and plummeting foreign reserves for years. And they've lost the tourism sector (even pre-Covid) that was one of the major ways they gained foreign currency.
The switch to organic had nothing to do with green dogma, it was because they couldn't afford imported fertiliser. So they tried to put a face-saving spin on that.
If you're going to make these silly claims, you might want to learn what it is you're talking about.
How forceful you are, Brad. Rajapaksa is a nutter, and nobody else seems to have the clarity of insight you do into the fertiliser ban. The objection to your theory is, if you don't import fertiliser you import food instead.
We should have listened to the Greens and Al Gore a long time ago.
We did. We've done an absolutely fantastic job.
China didn't, and what we're emitting now is pissing in the ocean compared to them. So we need to continue what we're already doing steady as she goes, while investing in mitigation not just eliminating emissions.
"China is the world's leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States.[1] China's renewable energy sector is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity, and is expected to contribute 43 percent of global renewable capacity growth.[2] China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060, and achieve a combined 1,200GW of solar and wind capacity by 2030.[2]"
China is very big. If China does a less than fantastic job, they can still be the "world's leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources" while underperforming on the proportion of their electricity production being from renewable energy sources.
True, but did you read "China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015".
There are a number of different metrics depending on what you're counting, but https://yearbook.enerdata.net/renewables/renewable-in-electricity-production-share.html offers some comparative figures. The top ten are Norway, New Zealand, Brazil, Colombia, Canada, Sweden, Portugal, Chile, Spain, Romania, Germany, Italy. UK not too far behind. China some way behind.
Yes, it does depend on what you're counting and for which period of time. Better not go too far back towards the industrial revolution.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it need after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
No it didn't. It used the excuse of being green. Suspicion being it was also an attempt to drive farmers off the land so the wealthy elite (whose massive tax cuts were a major cause of the bankruptcy) could buy it up at knockdown prices.
IIRC Sri Lanka didn’t run out of currency - they chose to ban fertiliser for their own reasons (albeit mad ones) failing to realise that the existing cash export crops were dependent on fertiliser imports & there wasn’t enough domestically produced fertiliser (regardless of source) to make up the difference. So exports fell more than imports & triggered a currency / balance of payments crisis.
There was an excellent bbc world service programme on this last night;
“The Climate Question: Can we feed the world without using chemical fertilisers?”
TBH, I usually skip over these climate programmes because they tend to be rather boring. But the title of this one piqued my interest.
Anyway;
Short answer is: No. The world can probably feed about 4bn people. But long term, chemical fertilisers are a big climate problem because methane is such a destructive greenhouse gas.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it needed after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
You forgot about the tax cuts that came first: corporation tax down 4%, VAT cut, big increases in tax-free thresholds, income tax cut. That's part of why they ran out of foreign currency.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it need after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
No it didn't. It used the excuse of being green. Suspicion being it was also an attempt to drive farmers off the land so the wealthy elite (whose massive tax cuts were a major cause of the bankruptcy) could buy it up at knockdown prices.
Oddly that's a theme in the USA with Bill Gates trying to buy up vast tracts of farmland. Farmers in the UK are bejng encouraged to leave the industry with cash lump sums too. And there's big protests about farms being closed in Holland.
I've got a GoPro (most recent version) and Pano DC-TZ200. They both have bewildering options regarding sattings.
E.g. Pano:
If MP4:
4k 100M 30p 4K 100M 25p 4k 100M 24p FHD 28M 60p FHD 28M 50p FHD 20M 30p FHD 20M 25p HD 10M 30p HD 10M 25p
That's for MP4. If I select AVCHD Instead of MP4 there are yet more options.
How is a normal person expected to understand this?
I want top quality film to play on my TV. TV is 4K. I've discovered that when I record video on the Pano in 4k it crops the video which is annoying. The TV is only 40 inch so I'm inclined towards the FHD with no crop I think.
I'm filming everyday stuff inc holidays and Go Pro for skiing. Any advice on the best settings to use would be much appreciated.
What are the down sides of going for the highest resolution/frame rate? It may be battery life, or it may be the cost of bigger memory cards. Try some experiments....
The other thing to think about is processing the footage you shoot afterwards. Try it and see what your PC thinks about manipulating the various resolutions.
The PC does not play my 4k footage back smoothly. But when I watch on the TV it is fine. I only use the PC to preview and edit. I'm pleased with the GoPro 4k video but the file size and drain on battery is significant. The 4k crop on the Pano camera is a problem for me.
These days, footage comes from Pano camera, wife and daughters' iphones, my Go Pro - and I collect clips and stitch together using Videopad software into one continuous film to watch on our TV.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it need after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
Sri Lanka also cut tax to and bankrupted their treasury. Thereby demonstrating that the Laffer curve is very flat at that point.
The Laffer curve has a left hand side, some people forget that.
VAT can be a good tax to raise money from tourists, which was one of Sri Lanka's main revenue sources in the past, as its a tax paid by visitors to the country unlike income tax etc - cutting it from 15% to 8% is unlikely to pay for itself, unlike say cutting corporation tax from excessively high rates which can spur more investment - or cutting real marginal income tax rates which at 70% to 90%+ act as a disincentive to work.
IIRC Sri Lanka didn’t run out of currency - they chose to ban fertiliser for their own reasons (albeit mad ones) failing to realise that the existing cash export crops were dependent on fertiliser imports & there wasn’t enough domestically produced fertiliser (regardless of source) to make up the difference. So exports fell more than imports & triggered a currency / balance of payments crisis.
There was an excellent bbc world service programme on this last night;
“The Climate Question: Can we feed the world without using chemical fertilisers?”
LOL. In an endeavour for clarity: 1. it was a long time ago as I said 1959. Many of my readers were not born then! My memory may well be imperfect. 2. Microbiology in hospital pharmacy was very, very new. However careful investigation suggested that there was cross contamination of samples in the microbiology fridge with the lollies, which led to the outbreak of boils among the junior nurses!
It was a shame, because my vacation student colleague John and myself rather liked 16-17-year-old nurses calling frequently at the pharmacy department!
Clearly the mistake was that, instead of throwing out the lollies, you should have thrown out the samples.
Colchester area is still 35.8°C. Son Two and his family are queued up in the car outside the Suffolk Center Parcs waiting to get in. I'm rather glad that Mrs C and I are not with them!
So, a summary of recent threads. Treasury civil servants are crap at long term planning. DoE civil servants are even crapper at running education. DfT civil servants are crapper still at managing the railways. The common themes - Public School educated Cowley Tech graduates, London based, and not specialists in their area of employment. Solution - employ comprehensive educated specialists and move their jobs away from London.
You may have a point. A related point is whether we would be better to have more of a distinction between legislature and executive. Many ministerial posts would be better filled by specialist outsiders temporarily in the Lords for accountability.
Alternatively, appoint specialist outsiders to the Lords permanently, instead of it being a home for retired politicians and political donors. Make it a forum of experts.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it needed after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
You forgot about the tax cuts that came first: corporation tax down 4%, VAT cut, big increases in tax-free thresholds, income tax cut. That's part of why they ran out of foreign currency.
They'd been running out of money for years before that. Sri Lanka's problems have been mounting since at least 2009.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
IIRC Sri Lanka didn’t run out of currency first - they chose to ban fertiliser for their own reasons (albeit mad ones) failing to realise that the existing cash export crops were dependent on fertiliser imports & there wasn’t enough domestically produced fertiliser (regardless of source) to make up the difference. So exports fell more than imports & triggered a currency / balance of payments crisis.
/Now/ they can’t afford to import fertiliser (or fuel, or much of anything) due to lack of foreign currency, but that wasn’t the original problem, as I understand things.
There were massively state subsidised fertilizers. When you are running out of foreign currency, it was a hugely expensive part of the budget they could cut.
Here on the Bucks/Oxon borders I think it must be around 36c but there is a bit of a breeze. I have certainly been in hotter places before but it is certainly very toasty for this country.
I am remarkably impressed by how well our new build (4 years old) house has coped. I closed everything at just after 9am today. Downstairs is about 23c and upstairs about 25c. When you step in from outside it feels air conditioned. All that insulation designed to keep the house warm is paying off now too. Our house is rendered white which I think must help too.
IF renewable energy is so cheap, then why does it need subsidies...?
What subsidies?
Most new renewables aren't getting subsidies now.
Green levy on electricity bills is between 9 and 12 per cent, according to Ofgem.
That is not a Green levy and it has nothing to do with subsidies for new electricity generation though. Apart from that . . . again try and understand what it is you're talking about.
Perhaps they should stop calling it 'the green levy on electricity bills' then?
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it need after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
No it didn't. It used the excuse of being green. Suspicion being it was also an attempt to drive farmers off the land so the wealthy elite (whose massive tax cuts were a major cause of the bankruptcy) could buy it up at knockdown prices.
Oddly that's a theme in the USA with Bill Gates trying to buy up vast tracts of farmland. Farmers in the UK are bejng encouraged to leave the industry with cash lump sums too. And there's big protests about farms being closed in Holland.
IIRC Sri Lanka didn’t run out of currency - they chose to ban fertiliser for their own reasons (albeit mad ones) failing to realise that the existing cash export crops were dependent on fertiliser imports & there wasn’t enough domestically produced fertiliser (regardless of source) to make up the difference. So exports fell more than imports & triggered a currency / balance of payments crisis.
There was an excellent bbc world service programme on this last night;
“The Climate Question: Can we feed the world without using chemical fertilisers?”
TBH, I usually skip over these climate programmes because they tend to be rather boring. But the title of this one piqued my interest.
Anyway;
Short answer is: No. The world can probably feed about 4bn people. But long term, chemical fertilisers are a big climate problem because methane is such a destructive greenhouse gas.
Innovative solutions required.
Farm kangaroos instead of cows. Produce much less methane.
On energy and (lack of) NIMBYism, my in-laws live in an area that until recently was within clear sight of three coal-burning plants (one completely demolished now; at another all the cooling towers are gone). There's a proposed new solar farm with storage on agricultural fields in the area, much closer than any of the power stations. They (and their neighbours, from what I've heard) are completely in favour - low visual impact, potential for mixed use and taking advantage of nearby grid infrastructure.
This is among mostly retired people, who have been in opposition to other local developments nearby. There are, of course, issues around competing land use etc to consider, but the apparent lack of opposition has been interesting.
Trevelyan has knifed Mordaunt on LBC. Went AWOL and other ministers had to pick up the pieces, apparently.
I have been fascinated at what appears to be the depth of sheer dislike for Mordaunt. It seems to go beyond genuine policy disagreement and more into a need to take her down and humiliate her. Wonder what the background is to all this.
It is certainly unusual to hear someone's competence questioned like this.
As it stands right now, 18th July I can’t see the membership choosing Truss or Mourdant over Sunak, not even close.
As a betting site, I think we can call it for Sunak now?
How would we describe Sunak’s personality type, he is sort of unconvincing uninspiring isn’t he, and with plenty to attack from period of his chancellorship, it’s hard to imagine him closing in on the Labour poll lead?
Sorry if someone answered this I havn’t found it, but do we know how many members comprise the electorate? Anything between 100,000 and 200,000 is not the most accurate of measurement. Does the Conservative Psrty have a central database - will we even know what turnout was in this election?
I cant see the members choosing Sunak. He's not inspiring enough for them.
I do find it weird they have no central database.
The Conservatives do have a central membership database - it's called Votesource. However there are a lot of legacy memberships from when local associations mostly ran their own affairs, little old ladies paying by cheque as they've done for 45 years etc, and frequently these legacy memberships don't get added to Votesource which makes it difficult to give a precise figure on how many members there are.
AIUI, membership has hovered around 180,000 for some time (with a brief spike to 220,000ish in the aftermath of the 2019 leadership contest, that dribbled out over the course of 2020).
Lack of central database or (apparently) any real rules regarding management of local constituency lists, makes fiddling with membership elections perhaps easier than is advisable.
Or maybe not, depending upon who is giving the "advice".
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
No it banned imports of chemical fertilizer because of green dogma.
It then ran out of foreign currency paying for the food imports it need after yields of rice and the vital tea crop collapsed because of organic farming.
Nonsense, they've been running out of money for many years. They've had a consistent budget deficit for many years, a terrible and widening trade deficit for many years, and plummeting foreign reserves for years. And they've lost the tourism sector (even pre-Covid) that was one of the major ways they gained foreign currency.
The switch to organic had nothing to do with green dogma, it was because they couldn't afford imported fertiliser. So they tried to put a face-saving spin on that.
If you're going to make these silly claims, you might want to learn what it is you're talking about.
Looks like you're right BR.
When Sri Lanka's foreign currency shortages became a serious problem in early 2021, the government tried to limit them by banning imports of chemical fertiliser.
It told farmers to use locally sourced organic fertilisers instead.
This led to widespread crop failure. Sri Lanka had to supplement its food stocks from abroad, which made its foreign currency shortage even worse.
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
IIRC Sri Lanka didn’t run out of currency first - they chose to ban fertiliser for their own reasons (albeit mad ones) failing to realise that the existing cash export crops were dependent on fertiliser imports & there wasn’t enough domestically produced fertiliser (regardless of source) to make up the difference. So exports fell more than imports & triggered a currency / balance of payments crisis.
/Now/ they can’t afford to import fertiliser (or fuel, or much of anything) due to lack of foreign currency, but that wasn’t the original problem, as I understand things.
There were massively state subsidised fertilizers. When you are running out of foreign currency, it was a hugely expensive part of the budget they could cut.
It was a major problem in Malawi when I was there. The staple crop is Maize, but this soon depletes the land of nutrients, so a good crop requires constant chemical fertilisation. The government porkbarrelled electorally with fertiliser subsidies, which then ran the country out of Forex to buy diesel fuel. There was none in the country for a month or longer.
A lot of small economies don't have a great deal of resilience in their budgets.
(*It's usual and indeed reasonable for the headline figure to be higher than the hourly figure.)
I don't see why...
Cambridge airport now 38 (could be rounded up or down) against record 38.7 (time of day annoyingly not given anywhere) so record could fall today
Not wanting to be a spoil sport but for the record to be meaningful it should be at a long-established weather station, one not affected by urban heat island effects. Airports are well dodgy sites for long-term significance.
LOL. In an endeavour for clarity: 1. it was a long time ago as I said 1959. Many of my readers were not born then! My memory may well be imperfect. 2. Microbiology in hospital pharmacy was very, very new. However careful investigation suggested that there was cross contamination of samples in the microbiology fridge with the lollies, which led to the outbreak of boils among the junior nurses!
It was a shame, because my vacation student colleague John and myself rather liked 16-17-year-old nurses calling frequently at the pharmacy department!
If you cross contaminated the lollies, did the same thing happen with the samples themselves ?
Kemi Badenoch has now backed net zero and committed to not stripping away climate commitments at the climate hustings - now all candidates back net zero
Bart gives up?
You talking to me? I've always supported net zero. 😕
I also think the UK is doing a fantastic job at it and we need to concentrate on continuing what we're already doing, not chastise ourselves for not doing it faster.
I also think that almost all global pollution comes from the rest of the world and we should be doing more for mitigation/adaptation and not only talk about prevention which isn't in our hands anyway. Preventing climate change isn't possible, mitigating and minimising it is.
We can't force the rest of the world to act. All we can do is what we do and show leadership to encourage others to follow.
What would be great is if we combined this zeal with what we used to be good at - engineering entrepreneurism. We should be developing and manufacturing the kit that we then export to help other countries hit their targets. As opposed to importing it all like we do now.
Carbon tax on imports, matching carbon tax on UK made equivelents.
That would pass WTO, I think.
We all want to reduce emissions, but its surely clear that government diktat driven hard targets for Net Zero are catastrophe waiting to happen.
Actually, not waiting to happen. Starting to happen.
Ah, so the way to deal with rising fossil fuel prices is to increase dependency on fossil fuels?
The way to deal with fossil fuel overuse is either produce better alternatives or stop using what we have and force billions back to the middle ages.
Sri Lanka chose B.
Sri Lanka banned imports of chemical fertilizer because it had run out of foreign currency to pay for it. What does that have to do with fossil fuels?
IIRC Sri Lanka didn’t run out of currency first - they chose to ban fertiliser for their own reasons (albeit mad ones) failing to realise that the existing cash export crops were dependent on fertiliser imports & there wasn’t enough domestically produced fertiliser (regardless of source) to make up the difference. So exports fell more than imports & triggered a currency / balance of payments crisis.
/Now/ they can’t afford to import fertiliser (or fuel, or much of anything) due to lack of foreign currency, but that wasn’t the original problem, as I understand things.
There were massively state subsidised fertilizers. When you are running out of foreign currency, it was a hugely expensive part of the budget they could cut.
Yes, the problem was that they completely failed to realise that by doing so they would make things worse, not better.
British trains often feel a bit cramped and for a long time I assumed Britain had a narrow gauge and therefore the carriages were narrower.
(As you can see I am not an engineer and know nothing about trains).
Having learned today that Britain is standard gauge, I presume therefore that the privatised operators merely pack the seating more densely.
As others have said, we (mostly) use a standard-gauge track. But we have a whole series of loading gauges - the profile the vehicle's body can fit into), most of which are more constrained that European or American practice. That's a result of building our railways first - and if you look at early railway wagons and locos, the loading gauge was massive in comparison.
Also the result of us not having most of the network flattened by war, and rebuilt to much more modern standards in the 1950s.
That's a bit ... inaccurate. BR's modernisation 1955 plan was an absolute disaster; a triumph of *not* predicting future traffic patterns. As a WAG, I'd say half the money 'invested' was wasted.
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean#Vermont_political_career
Not loopy at all; an excellent political strategist campaigner and organiser. The Scream was one of those momentary aberrations, but for which the Democratic party might have been a very different beast.
I've got a GoPro (most recent version) and Pano DC-TZ200. They both have bewildering options regarding sattings.
E.g. Pano:
If MP4:
4k 100M 30p
4K 100M 25p
4k 100M 24p
FHD 28M 60p
FHD 28M 50p
FHD 20M 30p
FHD 20M 25p
HD 10M 30p
HD 10M 25p
That's for MP4. If I select AVCHD Instead of MP4 there are yet more options.
How is a normal person expected to understand this?
I want top quality film to play on my TV. TV is 4K. I've discovered that when I record video on the Pano in 4k it crops the video which is annoying. The TV is only 40 inch so I'm inclined towards the FHD with no crop I think.
I'm filming everyday stuff inc holidays and Go Pro for skiing. Any advice on the best settings to use would be much appreciated.
Edit: I tried to find a Go Pro in-person training course but none exists in the UK! Jessops used to run one but not now.
/Now/ they can’t afford to import fertiliser (or fuel, or much of anything) due to lack of foreign currency, but that wasn’t the original problem, as I understand things.
*well, one, anyway - heard from someone who just landed at a different airport on a flight bound for Luton
Apparently the runway at Brize Norton has “melted”
Times radio.
The switch to organic had nothing to do with green dogma, it was because they couldn't afford imported fertiliser. So they tried to put a face-saving spin on that.
If you're going to make these silly claims, you might want to learn what it is you're talking about.
https://www.outlookindia.com/business/sri-lanka-lost-around-10-lakh-taxpayers-since-2019-tax-cuts-finance-minister-sabry-news-195205
The other thing to think about is processing the footage you shoot afterwards. Try it and see what your PC thinks about manipulating the various resolutions.
Better not go too far back towards the industrial revolution.
It used the excuse of being green. Suspicion being it was also an attempt to drive farmers off the land so the wealthy elite (whose massive tax cuts were a major cause of the bankruptcy) could buy it up at knockdown prices.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast/gcrrbygd0#?date=2022-07-19
Both the UK record and 40°C likely to be broken imo.
Why didn't @Leon warn us?!
(*It's usual and indeed reasonable for the headline figure to be higher than the hourly figure.)
“The Climate Question: Can we feed the world without using chemical fertilisers?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct3kj5
TBH, I usually skip over these climate programmes because they tend to be rather boring. But the title of this one piqued my interest.
Anyway;
Short answer is: No. The world can probably feed about 4bn people. But long term, chemical fertilisers are a big climate problem because methane is such a destructive greenhouse gas.
Innovative solutions required.
These days, footage comes from Pano camera, wife and daughters' iphones, my Go Pro - and I collect clips and stitch together using Videopad software into one continuous film to watch on our TV.
VAT can be a good tax to raise money from tourists, which was one of Sri Lanka's main revenue sources in the past, as its a tax paid by visitors to the country unlike income tax etc - cutting it from 15% to 8% is unlikely to pay for itself, unlike say cutting corporation tax from excessively high rates which can spur more investment - or cutting real marginal income tax rates which at 70% to 90%+ act as a disincentive to work.
Son Two and his family are queued up in the car outside the Suffolk Center Parcs waiting to get in. I'm rather glad that Mrs C and I are not with them!
When you are running out of foreign currency, it was a hugely expensive part of the budget they could cut.
Cambridge airport now 38 (could be rounded up or down) against record 38.7 (time of day annoyingly not given anywhere) so record could fall today
I am remarkably impressed by how well our new build (4 years old) house has coped. I closed everything at just after 9am today. Downstairs is about 23c and upstairs about 25c. When you step in from outside it feels air conditioned. All that insulation designed to keep the house warm is paying off now too. Our house is rendered white which I think must help too.
This is among mostly retired people, who have been in opposition to other local developments nearby. There are, of course, issues around competing land use etc to consider, but the apparent lack of opposition has been interesting.
Or maybe not, depending upon who is giving the "advice".
When Sri Lanka's foreign currency shortages became a serious problem in early 2021, the government tried to limit them by banning imports of chemical fertiliser.
It told farmers to use locally sourced organic fertilisers instead.
This led to widespread crop failure. Sri Lanka had to supplement its food stocks from abroad, which made its foreign currency shortage even worse.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-61028138
A lot of small economies don't have a great deal of resilience in their budgets.