Is it legitimate to flatten a building housing hundreds of civilians to kill a few Hamas fighters ?
Where do you draw the line ?
The answer is no, hence the ground invasion which will result in far, far fewer civilian deaths in Gaza than aerial bombardment but at a huge cost for Israel both in blood and treasure.
Should we run a market on what the argument will be, when the Israelis start re-enacting Fort Drum?
Is it legitimate to flatten a building housing hundreds of civilians to kill a few Hamas fighters ?
Where do you draw the line ?
The answer is no, hence the ground invasion which will result in far, far fewer civilian deaths in Gaza than aerial bombardment but at a huge cost for Israel both in blood and treasure.
If that had been the case then civilian casualties would surely have been much lower .
I don't think we know what the civilian casualties look like, the hospital incident is the most instructive here. Reported Hamas/PHO as an Israeli strike that killed hundreds of civilians, then increased to over 500, later after investigating independent sources now say well under a 100 died (French media report 10-50 according to French intelligence) due to an errant missile fired from Gaza at Israel. At a stroke we've taken at least 450 off the official 4000 death toll reported by Hamas and repeated by the UN/WHO.
That's not to minimise the suffering, yet the true number of civilian deaths will be substantially lower and in a war there will always be collateral damage and civilians have had weeks of notice now to leave certain areas.
> China 29% of world emissions, I can’t honestly see them take the remotest interest
If we're going to have posts that don't have any betting content than that's fine and I do appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to write them. But just a little bit of research to check your assumptions might be nice?
Yes. China are installing masses of renewables, and they seem to be aware that they face massive risks from climate change.
The whole argument of we shouldn't do anything until China does argument falls down a bit in the face of China's rollout of zero carbon technologies. The argument is two decades out of date.
Thats to misunderstand the argument. Assuming China unwinds there are lots of others to take its place. India is largely coal powered and expanding fast,
So to go back to my earlier question to you left unanswered: what do you propose? Because someone is still burning coal that so should we?
The coal we have left is uneconomical to dig up after binning the mining industry. So if we pull coal power stations out of mothballs we’re burning coal from Brazil.
Or do you prefer gas? We already burned most of the North Sea gas, we don’t want Russian gas, so ship it from Qatar?
Nuclear? We co-invented it but thanks to the Thatcherite industrial settlement we have to pay £vast to foreign governments to build power stations. We do not own, control, or have capability to do fossil fuel power generation, or even nuclear. But we could do renewables. Or, as Tory spies want, just keep paying other people.
That's not true, it was Blair and Brown that wound down British nuclear and starved it of investment. BNFL was sold to Westinghouse in 2000 iirc by Gordon Brown who then proceeded fumble it all and all of the expertise in our nuclear industry either went overseas or retired with no replacements entering from universities.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
Not to belabour the point, but Mrs T came into it too. Nuclear depends on a large industrial base (one of the reasons S Korea is starting to dominate nuclear manufacturing this decade), and her reforms, intentionally or not, decimated ours.
Blair and Brown inherited - and adopted - the Thatcher settlement (see also local government; housing sales; loose regulation of privatised utilities etc).
Everyone since has believed that any reset would involve socialism/Corbynism. That is a fallacy.
Is it legitimate to flatten a building housing hundreds of civilians to kill a few Hamas fighters ?
Where do you draw the line ?
Well, that's the hard question. Was it legitimate to kill 11,000 civilians in Mosul, and displace hundreds of thousands, to eradicate IS in 2017? On balance, I think most of us would say that it was.
Urban fighting, against people who simply use civilians as shields, is horrendous.
The Hamas attack on Israel was effectively their 9/11. All the horror was there and the casualties (at 50% of that fateful day) far more proportionately impactful on their populace than for the USA.
But, unlike for the US in the aftermath of the attacks on the Twin Towers, Israel had zero grace and very little sympathy.
By contrast, it was pouring out of every orifice for Gaza within 48 hours.
Very little sympathy apart from Britain, Europe and America?
“China coal plants” is just an excuse for Britain to get left behind on major infrastructure transformation, as usual.
A sad little kingdom of asset sweaters.
I was going to like this post, for the first sentence and Twitter link - which is broadly accurate; there should be a massive in Chinese renewables in the next 10 years - but the rest of the post put me off.
Why do so many on the left take such active pleasure in falsely denigrating and hating their own country?
Maybe because it's not the country or its people we hate, but the grifters and swindlers presently running it..
..and I am not on the left btw.
The government is shit, we all know that, full of arseholes, but for a very large majority of people, this is a very good place to live in. The same is true of most rich world countries.
Compared to any previous generation, our problems are modest ones.
I think it was Hume who said his toothache caused him more anxiety than the Lisbon earthquake, which sums it up.
That’s really not true any more: it is the Panglossian verdict of the 1990s-00s
AI alone is probably the biggest existential threat mankind has ever faced. Yes it may be utopian, it could also be apocalyptic. Truly. And it is coming - this is not some maybe or could be
Add to that the fractured geopolitical world, climate change, the rise of autocratic China, and our problems are not “modest”, sadly
"The rise of autocratic China" is quite likely to be swiftly followed by "the fall of autocratic China" judging by its disastrous demographic projections. The problem for Xi, if he wishes to be successful in his territorial ambitions, is that the window is closing. The Chinese century aint' gonna happen. The US will steam ahead again.
I suspect Putin's aggression is underlined by a sense that time is fast running out for Russia. It's great power pretensions were looking ever more hollow but it still had a supposedly mighty war machine. Best get on and use it ASAP.
If Russia was better governed it would surely be amongst the best positioned for climate change? Vast amounts of land likely to become more habitable at a time when the opposite is happening globally.
+1.5C is a 50/50 target and on current trend it's going to be more like 2.4.
And if we did manage to hold it back to +1.5C it wouldn't be happening here. The averages are global. At +1.5 the UK is likely to see +6C in summer +2C in winter.
With full fat climate change we are in deep shit. I've see estimates that place 'liveable climate 2100' to be north of Sheffield, south of that you don't make it. Nottingham will be on the coast within a couple of hundred years, maybe less, (things seem to be accelerating beyond the rates expected).
I know the right is trying to undermine the green agenda because they have been bought / corrupted by the carbon companies. This sad header is typical of the denier playbook.
We will be seeing one from the Meat Industry tomorrow.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Because it's nuclear power which requires a state guarantee for insurance purposes. It is, in this country, impossible to build nuclear power without insurance which can only provided by the state. Private investors will always be very wary of investing in something where the state can just turn around and withdraw insurance guarantees during the construction process and the only way to not have that happen is to tie the state into it with ownership.
Is it legitimate to flatten a building housing hundreds of civilians to kill a few Hamas fighters ?
Where do you draw the line ?
The answer is no, hence the ground invasion which will result in far, far fewer civilian deaths in Gaza than aerial bombardment but at a huge cost for Israel both in blood and treasure.
If that had been the case then civilian casualties would surely have been much lower .
I don't think we know what the civilian casualties look like, the hospital incident is the most instructive here. Reported Hamas/PHO as an Israeli strike that killed hundreds of civilians, then increased to over 500, later after investigating independent sources now say well under a 100 died (French media report 10-50 according to French intelligence) due to an errant missile fired from Gaza at Israel. At a stroke we've taken at least 450 off the official 4000 death toll reported by Hamas and repeated by the UN/WHO.
That's not to minimise the suffering, yet the true number of civilian deaths will be substantially lower and in a war there will always be collateral damage and civilians have had weeks of notice now to leave certain areas.
If the IDF had honoured what they said ? They told people to head south and then still bombed areas in the south . The WHO says the casualty figures look realistic . From the scale of the devastation that doesn’t look outlandish .
“China coal plants” is just an excuse for Britain to get left behind on major infrastructure transformation, as usual.
A sad little kingdom of asset sweaters.
I was going to like this post, for the first sentence and Twitter link - which is broadly accurate; there should be a massive in Chinese renewables in the next 10 years - but the rest of the post put me off.
Why do so many on the left take such active pleasure in falsely denigrating and hating their own country?
Maybe because it's not the country or its people we hate, but the grifters and swindlers presently running it..
..and I am not on the left btw.
The government is shit, we all know that, full of arseholes, but for a very large majority of people, this is a very good place to live in. The same is true of most rich world countries.
Compared to any previous generation, our problems are modest ones.
I think it was Hume who said his toothache caused him more anxiety than the Lisbon earthquake, which sums it up.
That’s really not true any more: it is the Panglossian verdict of the 1990s-00s
AI alone is probably the biggest existential threat mankind has ever faced. Yes it may be utopian, it could also be apocalyptic. Truly. And it is coming - this is not some maybe or could be
Add to that the fractured geopolitical world, climate change, the rise of autocratic China, and our problems are not “modest”, sadly
Things are more frightening than in the 1990's. But, before that, we had World War, a series of hideous conflicts after colonial powers withdrew from Africa and Asia, the Cold War, high unemployment, terrorism, bitter industrial conflict, and the threat of nuclear annihilation (my father tells me how frightened he was during the Cuban Missile Crisis), among other delights. And worldwide, both poverty and famine were at much higher levels than now.
The big difference between the 1950-2000 period and now, is that, back then, we could take for granted living standards growing by 2% a year, here, compared to 1% a year now. It doesn't sound like much, but it makes a big difference over the course of 25 years, and it hurts.
Sure, but even the nuclear threat of the 60s-80s was more controllable than the advent of AI. We will be sharing the planet with an intelligence alien to ours and greater than ours
What are the chances it is entirely benign? And beneficial?
Of course we could stop AI development now, but also we can’t. The economic and political structure of the planet makes that a non runner. So AI - then AGI - then ASI - is coming, in the next 3-30 years depending on which expert you consult
And even the people who estimate 30 years think AI will profoundly change humanity long before then. For good or ill
I retract my accusation that he pulled the number from his backside!
We do of course, still get something for our money - it doesn’t evaporate into thin air. I look forward to Alan’s suggestions as to how we can invest that £1.4trillion more effectively.
> China 29% of world emissions, I can’t honestly see them take the remotest interest
If we're going to have posts that don't have any betting content than that's fine and I do appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to write them. But just a little bit of research to check your assumptions might be nice?
Yes. China are installing masses of renewables, and they seem to be aware that they face massive risks from climate change.
The whole argument of we shouldn't do anything until China does argument falls down a bit in the face of China's rollout of zero carbon technologies. The argument is two decades out of date.
Thats to misunderstand the argument. Assuming China unwinds there are lots of others to take its place. India is largely coal powered and expanding fast,
So to go back to my earlier question to you left unanswered: what do you propose? Because someone is still burning coal that so should we?
The coal we have left is uneconomical to dig up after binning the mining industry. So if we pull coal power stations out of mothballs we’re burning coal from Brazil.
Or do you prefer gas? We already burned most of the North Sea gas, we don’t want Russian gas, so ship it from Qatar?
Nuclear? We co-invented it but thanks to the Thatcherite industrial settlement we have to pay £vast to foreign governments to build power stations. We do not own, control, or have capability to do fossil fuel power generation, or even nuclear. But we could do renewables. Or, as Tory spies want, just keep paying other people.
That's not true, it was Blair and Brown that wound down British nuclear and starved it of investment. BNFL was sold to Westinghouse in 2000 iirc by Gordon Brown who then proceeded fumble it all and all of the expertise in our nuclear industry either went overseas or retired with no replacements entering from universities.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
Blair and Brown are part of the the Thatcherite industrial settlement. As have all the Prime Ministers since. Nobody of any party has even attempted to redefine the landscape.
“China coal plants” is just an excuse for Britain to get left behind on major infrastructure transformation, as usual.
A sad little kingdom of asset sweaters.
I was going to like this post, for the first sentence and Twitter link - which is broadly accurate; there should be a massive in Chinese renewables in the next 10 years - but the rest of the post put me off.
Why do so many on the left take such active pleasure in falsely denigrating and hating their own country?
Maybe because it's not the country or its people we hate, but the grifters and swindlers presently running it..
..and I am not on the left btw.
Fine, but that's not what I'm hearing: "a sad little kingdom of asset sweaters".
yes, and who are the asset sweaters?
You lost me when you started insulting my own country.
Learn from it.
Learn from what?
I don't see many asset sweaters outside the tory party/government and their friends...
do you count yourself in that group?
PS: I never insult my own country, only morons like you with your blue tinged spectacles.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
> China 29% of world emissions, I can’t honestly see them take the remotest interest
If we're going to have posts that don't have any betting content than that's fine and I do appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to write them. But just a little bit of research to check your assumptions might be nice?
Yes. China are installing masses of renewables, and they seem to be aware that they face massive risks from climate change.
The whole argument of we shouldn't do anything until China does argument falls down a bit in the face of China's rollout of zero carbon technologies. The argument is two decades out of date.
Thats to misunderstand the argument. Assuming China unwinds there are lots of others to take its place. India is largely coal powered and expanding fast,
So to go back to my earlier question to you left unanswered: what do you propose? Because someone is still burning coal that so should we?
The coal we have left is uneconomical to dig up after binning the mining industry. So if we pull coal power stations out of mothballs we’re burning coal from Brazil.
Or do you prefer gas? We already burned most of the North Sea gas, we don’t want Russian gas, so ship it from Qatar?
Nuclear? We co-invented it but thanks to the Thatcherite industrial settlement we have to pay £vast to foreign governments to build power stations. We do not own, control, or have capability to do fossil fuel power generation, or even nuclear. But we could do renewables. Or, as Tory spies want, just keep paying other people.
That's not true, it was Blair and Brown that wound down British nuclear and starved it of investment. BNFL was sold to Westinghouse in 2000 iirc by Gordon Brown who then proceeded fumble it all and all of the expertise in our nuclear industry either went overseas or retired with no replacements entering from universities.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
Not to belabour the point, but Mrs T came into it too. Nuclear depends on a large industrial base (one of the reasons S Korea is starting to dominate nuclear manufacturing this decade), and
The sad truth is that so much of our infrastructure in this country is crumbling. Water pipes. Schools. Hospitals. Roads. Public services.
An ocean of cash will have to be invested because the cost of not doing so is higher. The right can complain about the impact on bills but oceans of money have been pocketed by the likes of Thames Water as they leave the infrastructure to crumble. Not that the right care about people anyway.
So we have to spend an ocean of cash to fix this country. Do we spend it on 21st century things or 19th century things? We need power generation - clean tech or coal? And if we need to have all these things does the right really think that importing them is the best approach?
We used to build things for the world. Clean tech is the opportunity to do so again.
So name your technology. Nuclear perhaps then what ?
Starter for 10: wind. We’re building an awful lot of big wind farms. Why aren’t we developing our own turbines, manufacturing them, and exporting them to other markets?
Off shore wind needs ancillaries- inter connectors, control gear, support ships. Let’s make those.
We’ve given up as an industrial nation. Too hard. Too expensive. Yet we pay more by importing the things we used to export
Ive been arguing for years here along with @another_richard that we have been throwing away our manufacturing . However a lot of the technology lead on wind sits with people like Siemens. The make things here but a multinational always suits itself. Unless we have more domestically controlled businesses I cannot see us recovering technologies. The RR mini nuclear plants may be somewhere we can establish a lead but we're screwing that up atm.
So let’s invest in business then. The Thatcher revolution was to stop investing and to start selling. We sold off the utilities and encouraged British industrial giants like ICI and GEC to split themselves apart and hive off chunks for a quick profit today and don’t worry about tomorrow.
We need to change that. We built up industrial capability before and we can do it again - but we have to invest. And sadly the right seems to see investment as communism - or close to it. Why tie up money investing for the long term when your spiv mates could be making a profit now?
You really have to get over Thatcher. Firstly she's dead and scondly she left office in the last century. Blair killed more of our engineering that she did. Here's Gordon telling the City what fine chaps they are.
But imo we can have a manufacturing recovery. It wont be in high volume products but more in niche batch produced ones. We should encourage capital investment in new machinery to revive what we have and encourage new start ups. As a first step we should focus on import substitution rather than export since this is easier to get our industrial base going.
We have done common ground here - though I think you're wrong to rule out high volume manufacturing.
And yes, we do need to get over Thatcher. She made choices which continue to determine where we are now - the destruction of some of our large industries was one of the consequences of those choices. The point isn't to reopen old wounds, but to accept that we ought to have an industrial strategy that's a bit more than laissez faire.
Thatcher was hugely positive for the environment.
There were precisely two people talking about climate change in the late 80s: her, and the Greens.
Labour, at the time, were still invested in heavy industry. The Liberal Democrats largely localist, and focussed on protecting the green belt, river and local air pollution - and otherwise banging on about the EC/nascent EU.
Thatcher laid the foundations for the 1990 baseline for emissions reduction, the dash for gas in the 1990s (which phased down our coal) and no doubt would have commissioned much more new nuclear, earlier, had she remained in office.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Margaret Thatcher.
As I've said many times before, her legacy is decidedly mixed. I actually voted for her in 83, so I'm not some mad hater. But you need to recognise the bits of her legacy which were, and still are damaging.
Is it legitimate to flatten a building housing hundreds of civilians to kill a few Hamas fighters ?
Where do you draw the line ?
The answer is no, hence the ground invasion which will result in far, far fewer civilian deaths in Gaza than aerial bombardment but at a huge cost for Israel both in blood and treasure.
If that had been the case then civilian casualties would surely have been much lower .
I don't think we know what the civilian casualties look like, the hospital incident is the most instructive here. Reported Hamas/PHO as an Israeli strike that killed hundreds of civilians, then increased to over 500, later after investigating independent sources now say well under a 100 died (French media report 10-50 according to French intelligence) due to an errant missile fired from Gaza at Israel. At a stroke we've taken at least 450 off the official 4000 death toll reported by Hamas and repeated by the UN/WHO.
That's not to minimise the suffering, yet the true number of civilian deaths will be substantially lower and in a war there will always be collateral damage and civilians have had weeks of notice now to leave certain areas.
If the IDF had honoured what they said ? They told people to head south and then still bombed areas in the south . The WHO says the casualty figures look realistic . From the scale of the devastation that doesn’t look outlandish .
The WHO also went to China and accepted that the Chinese weren't lying about COVID. It's not an organisation that I really trust for anything.
But we're not going to agree on this, ultimately there will always be a level of civilian collateral. Israel, according to the Saudis, have offered a ceasefire in return for freeing the hostages. That offer was rejected, this is all on Hamas now.
“China coal plants” is just an excuse for Britain to get left behind on major infrastructure transformation, as usual.
A sad little kingdom of asset sweaters.
I was going to like this post, for the first sentence and Twitter link - which is broadly accurate; there should be a massive in Chinese renewables in the next 10 years - but the rest of the post put me off.
Why do so many on the left take such active pleasure in falsely denigrating and hating their own country?
Maybe because it's not the country or its people we hate, but the grifters and swindlers presently running it..
..and I am not on the left btw.
The government is shit, we all know that, full of arseholes, but for a very large majority of people, this is a very good place to live in. The same is true of most rich world countries.
Compared to any previous generation, our problems are modest ones.
I think it was Hume who said his toothache caused him more anxiety than the Lisbon earthquake, which sums it up.
That’s really not true any more: it is the Panglossian verdict of the 1990s-00s
AI alone is probably the biggest existential threat mankind has ever faced. Yes it may be utopian, it could also be apocalyptic. Truly. And it is coming - this is not some maybe or could be
Add to that the fractured geopolitical world, climate change, the rise of autocratic China, and our problems are not “modest”, sadly
"The rise of autocratic China" is quite likely to be swiftly followed by "the fall of autocratic China" judging by its disastrous demographic projections. The problem for Xi, if he wishes to be successful in his territorial ambitions, is that the window is closing. The Chinese century aint' gonna happen. The US will steam ahead again.
I suspect Putin's aggression is underlined by a sense that time is fast running out for Russia. It's great power pretensions were looking ever more hollow but it still had a supposedly mighty war machine. Best get on and use it ASAP.
Again, this all ignores AI
I’m sorry to bore on but talking airily about the future without referencing it is like talking airily about the future of hunter gathering - and only hunter gathering - even as the first farmers were sowing einkorn wheat in the Kurdish hills
Is it legitimate to flatten a building housing hundreds of civilians to kill a few Hamas fighters ?
Where do you draw the line ?
I've seen some of the reports coming out of Gaza - they are awful. Truly awful. You ask where do you draw the line? Apparently - according to Hamas - there is no line.
Hamas hide in civilian buildings. Hamas tell the civilians to stay. Hamas launch attacks from civilian areas. Hamas hold hostages and refuse a ceasefire.
This is the Hamas plan. Have Israel martyr as many civilians as possible. I keep reading stuff which infers that Israel has wanton disregard for human life and who will think of the Palestinians. Who exactly? Not Hamas.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Yes. The stock exchange needs quarterly results. It can't see beyond the next report and the current bonus round. Industry needs outside investors - so become PLCs. And are then driven to abandon the long term outlook for immediate profit.
I retract my accusation that he pulled the number from his backside!
We do of course, still get something for our money - it doesn’t evaporate into thin air. I look forward to Alan’s suggestions as to how we can invest that £1.4trillion more effectively.
"In a July 2021 report on fiscal risks, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated a net cost of the UK reaching net zero by 2050 to be £321bn, or just over £10bn per year.[7] This is made up of around £1.4trn in costs, offset by around £1.1trn in savings." *
Well that is a lot less scary than £1.4 trn. I wonder why it wasnt mentioned if this was supposed to be a serious argument?
* I also note that the savings at the end outweigh the costs by over £10bn a year so the longer you extend the time horizon and see the benefit from earlier investment, the less the net cost would be.
Mr. Leon, one of the most interesting ideas of AI is mingling different forms and putting it into a robot dog. Put together voice and text generation and, for a few thousand pounds, you have a talking dog that can also carry hundreds of pounds in weight.
“China coal plants” is just an excuse for Britain to get left behind on major infrastructure transformation, as usual.
A sad little kingdom of asset sweaters.
I was going to like this post, for the first sentence and Twitter link - which is broadly accurate; there should be a massive in Chinese renewables in the next 10 years - but the rest of the post put me off.
Why do so many on the left take such active pleasure in falsely denigrating and hating their own country?
Maybe because it's not the country or its people we hate, but the grifters and swindlers presently running it..
..and I am not on the left btw.
The government is shit, we all know that, full of arseholes, but for a very large majority of people, this is a very good place to live in. The same is true of most rich world countries.
Compared to any previous generation, our problems are modest ones.
I think it was Hume who said his toothache caused him more anxiety than the Lisbon earthquake, which sums it up.
That’s really not true any more: it is the Panglossian verdict of the 1990s-00s
AI alone is probably the biggest existential threat mankind has ever faced. Yes it may be utopian, it could also be apocalyptic. Truly. And it is coming - this is not some maybe or could be
Add to that the fractured geopolitical world, climate change, the rise of autocratic China, and our problems are not “modest”, sadly
"The rise of autocratic China" is quite likely to be swiftly followed by "the fall of autocratic China" judging by its disastrous demographic projections. The problem for Xi, if he wishes to be successful in his territorial ambitions, is that the window is closing. The Chinese century aint' gonna happen. The US will steam ahead again.
I suspect Putin's aggression is underlined by a sense that time is fast running out for Russia. It's great power pretensions were looking ever more hollow but it still had a supposedly mighty war machine. Best get on and use it ASAP.
Again, this all ignores AI
I’m sorry to bore on but talking airily about the future without referencing it is like talking airily about the future of hunter gathering - and only hunter gathering - even as the first farmers were sowing einkorn wheat in the Kurdish hills
Can't really argue with that.
Rishi seems to get it. One advantage of a techbro as PM.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Yes. The stock exchange needs quarterly results. It can't see beyond the next report and the current bonus round. Industry needs outside investors - so become PLCs. And are then driven to abandon the long term outlook for immediate profit.
This is the post-Thatcher settlement. Spivism.
No, it's the specific unlimited liability insurance that the regulator requires owners of nuclear power reactors to hold. There is only a single provider for that insurance and it is the state itself. If the state doesn't provide the insurance, which is extremely expensive, the project will never get off the ground and private investors face ruin. That is why, in this country (and most others who have similar insurance policies) there is always going to be a huge element of state subsidy in nuclear energy.
Mr. Leon, one of the most interesting ideas of AI is mingling different forms and putting it into a robot dog. Put together voice and text generation and, for a few thousand pounds, you have a talking dog that can also carry hundreds of pounds in weight.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Yes. The stock exchange needs quarterly results. It can't see beyond the next report and the current bonus round. Industry needs outside investors - so become PLCs. And are then driven to abandon the long term outlook for immediate profit.
This is the post-Thatcher settlement. Spivism.
If the govt is going to throw a pile of money at them, it should invest with a 51% stake so that they cannot be bought out after the money goes in, but they should maintain a hands-off role and let the tech companies do their thing.
If public funds are getting it going then they deserve to profit from it.
Is it legitimate to flatten a building housing hundreds of civilians to kill a few Hamas fighters ?
Where do you draw the line ?
I've seen some of the reports coming out of Gaza - they are awful. Truly awful. You ask where do you draw the line? Apparently - according to Hamas - there is no line.
Hamas hide in civilian buildings. Hamas tell the civilians to stay. Hamas launch attacks from civilian areas. Hamas hold hostages and refuse a ceasefire.
This is the Hamas plan. Have Israel martyr as many civilians as possible. I keep reading stuff which infers that Israel has wanton disregard for human life and who will think of the Palestinians. Who exactly? Not Hamas.
Yes, it is almost as if Hamas are bad people, but most of us already knew that.
Mr. Leon, one of the most interesting ideas of AI is mingling different forms and putting it into a robot dog. Put together voice and text generation and, for a few thousand pounds, you have a talking dog that can also carry hundreds of pounds in weight.
Equip it with an AK47 and it may even become as lethal as an xlBully too.
Mr. Leon, one of the most interesting ideas of AI is mingling different forms and putting it into a robot dog. Put together voice and text generation and, for a few thousand pounds, you have a talking dog that can also carry hundreds of pounds in weight.
They should put that in a car, maybe something retro cool like a black corvette, and then you could use it to go round fighting crime and in your spare time the car could remind you of your shopping list when you go to the supermarket.
Mr. Leon, one of the most interesting ideas of AI is mingling different forms and putting it into a robot dog. Put together voice and text generation and, for a few thousand pounds, you have a talking dog that can also carry hundreds of pounds in weight.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
I am not saying that govt should not invest, just that it is not a funding mechanism for startups. I would approve of the govt buying and holding a majority stake in anything it majorly funds.
One point of what may seem like pedantry but is actually quite important. The 1.5C target is 1.5C OVER PRE-INDUSTRIAL LEVELS. Estimates are that we are at 1.2C over such levels. So if the world manages to hit its target (which it won't), and if we're exactly representative of that, we're looking at an increase of only 0.3C. Which, sadly, won't make London into Lyon.
Quite conceivably climate change could make Britain colder and wetter as a result of changes to the Atlantic currents. So London more like Belfast in climate than Lyon.
The prediction was hotter summers and wetter autumns. But like all predictions it could be wrong.
It was the other way round this year.
Summer was warmer than average including the hottest June on record.
Autumn is rapidly becoming a very wet one after a dry start.
Though August was a washout and September unseasonably warm. Increased unpredictability of an already unpredictable climate is not a good thing.
Starmers Green Prosperity Plan does poll well incidentally. Strongly too with the "Loyal Nationalists" of the "Red Wall".
Well maybe, but everybody agrees on doing nice things until the bills come in. When the policies hit the pocket thats when we see if they really support it or not.
There is widespread polling support for green policies.
There are even a lot of Tories who don't want to trash the country and planet.
Well youre letting your views on conservatives blind the reality. Most conservatives support a clean environment, its in the name. You simply highlight that Lefties dont know how to get to common ground. If you spent less time making everything a political campaign and more time on bottom up measures we would all make more progress.
Well this government is noted for putting shit in our rivers and pollutants in our air.
Many conservatives do care about these things, which is one of many reasons that they are increasingly alienated from the current government.
That's guff. You can criticise them for not cleaning things up fast enough but they did not put them there in. Potentially the biggest natural disaster in the UK is taking place in Lough Neagh the British Isles largest fresh water lake. Thats controlled by Stormont who have been ignoring the problem and killing the lake.
Ive just spent 3 years working in the water sector and the problems go back decades. Nobody comes out well.
Especially not @Foxy's precious EU, and the UK enforcers of its writ, who have effectively banned new water infrastructure from being built, despite thr population increasing, something politely ignored by the ranters for inexplicable reasons.
“China coal plants” is just an excuse for Britain to get left behind on major infrastructure transformation, as usual.
A sad little kingdom of asset sweaters.
I was going to like this post, for the first sentence and Twitter link - which is broadly accurate; there should be a massive in Chinese renewables in the next 10 years - but the rest of the post put me off.
Why do so many on the left take such active pleasure in falsely denigrating and hating their own country?
Maybe because it's not the country or its people we hate, but the grifters and swindlers presently running it..
..and I am not on the left btw.
Fine, but that's not what I'm hearing: "a sad little kingdom of asset sweaters".
Is it legitimate to flatten a building housing hundreds of civilians to kill a few Hamas fighters ?
Where do you draw the line ?
The answer is no, hence the ground invasion which will result in far, far fewer civilian deaths in Gaza than aerial bombardment but at a huge cost for Israel both in blood and treasure.
If that had been the case then civilian casualties would surely have been much lower .
I don't think we know what the civilian casualties look like, the hospital incident is the most instructive here. Reported Hamas/PHO as an Israeli strike that killed hundreds of civilians, then increased to over 500, later after investigating independent sources now say well under a 100 died (French media report 10-50 according to French intelligence) due to an errant missile fired from Gaza at Israel. At a stroke we've taken at least 450 off the official 4000 death toll reported by Hamas and repeated by the UN/WHO.
That's not to minimise the suffering, yet the true number of civilian deaths will be substantially lower and in a war there will always be collateral damage and civilians have had weeks of notice now to leave certain areas.
If the IDF had honoured what they said ? They told people to head south and then still bombed areas in the south . The WHO says the casualty figures look realistic . From the scale of the devastation that doesn’t look outlandish .
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
The net zero policies will self terminate if they punish the poor and benefit the rich, which is how it looks a lot of the time.
Good news is it should actually save people money. See the NIC report last week.
For example, if you electrify your house with solar panels and storage batteries you can cut your electricity bill by anything from 30-70%, ad-infinitum. The issue is being able to shell out the £6-10k up front for all the kit, but even then it repays for itself over 10-12 years, and then makes a profit thereafter.
I know this because I've just ordered. But I can only do so because I have (some) spare capital. HMG should be offering £5k+ discounts on all of this, and to borrow the rest at cost - or make it easy to add to mortgages.
Heat pumps are different. They need to be less shit. They need to pump in 20C+ of heat, with turboboost options for when it's really cold, not just 14-15C and only really working when your house is insulated like an igloo. But, again, once in - no gas bills.
I see no rationale for a discount - home owners are relatively well off and do not need free money. The UK Govt attitude, which I think is correct, has been to offer incentives where the market and actual cost / benefit cannot meet the need, or on condition of fabric improvements as applied to solar FIT and now applies far too minimally to Heat Pump grants. In the case of solar I think the market can do it already - a regulatory intervention to unlock the investment would be better value imo.
Given the rapid rise in house prices most can easily borrow such a small sum on a marginal mortgage increase. Perhaps the Govt could offer funding against 1-3% of equity in the house.
Can you elucidate on that "20C+ of heat"? Heat is in kWh or kJ, not Celsius, and heating a house is about amount of heat gained and lost not temperature differences.
(I won't draw attention to igloos being built out of material that are as poor as insulators as a naked brick wall )
Solar panels make your house look like shit.
Malcolm - You are just saying that because Scotland gets no sunshine....
[Ducks and runs for cover]
Bev, I was at the kidding, in the south west here we do get some lovely weather, never too warm. We do get a bit too much rain but it really means it is a green and pleasant land and the ayrshire coastline is beautiful. I miss the snow in the winter thoughas we get little here on coast due to the influence of the gulf stream, which must be warmer than when I was a boy. Though if you go in the water it does not appear so, 2 minutes and you would be blue.
I know the area well Malcolm and I know how nice and pleasant the weather can be. Growing up in N Ireland I was back and forth to Galloway and Ayrshire many times, but you will not get me in the water I did used to go in the sea when I was much younger so either the water is colder or I have wised up a lot
“China coal plants” is just an excuse for Britain to get left behind on major infrastructure transformation, as usual.
A sad little kingdom of asset sweaters.
I was going to like this post, for the first sentence and Twitter link - which is broadly accurate; there should be a massive in Chinese renewables in the next 10 years - but the rest of the post put me off.
Why do so many on the left take such active pleasure in falsely denigrating and hating their own country?
Maybe because it's not the country or its people we hate, but the grifters and swindlers presently running it..
..and I am not on the left btw.
The government is shit, we all know that, full of arseholes, but for a very large majority of people, this is a very good place to live in. The same is true of most rich world countries.
Compared to any previous generation, our problems are modest ones.
I think it was Hume who said his toothache caused him more anxiety than the Lisbon earthquake, which sums it up.
That’s really not true any more: it is the Panglossian verdict of the 1990s-00s
AI alone is probably the biggest existential threat mankind has ever faced. Yes it may be utopian, it could also be apocalyptic. Truly. And it is coming - this is not some maybe or could be
Add to that the fractured geopolitical world, climate change, the rise of autocratic China, and our problems are not “modest”, sadly
"The rise of autocratic China" is quite likely to be swiftly followed by "the fall of autocratic China" judging by its disastrous demographic projections. The problem for Xi, if he wishes to be successful in his territorial ambitions, is that the window is closing. The Chinese century aint' gonna happen. The US will steam ahead again.
I suspect Putin's aggression is underlined by a sense that time is fast running out for Russia. It's great power pretensions were looking ever more hollow but it still had a supposedly mighty war machine. Best get on and use it ASAP.
Again, this all ignores AI
I’m sorry to bore on but talking airily about the future without referencing it is like talking airily about the future of hunter gathering - and only hunter gathering - even as the first farmers were sowing einkorn wheat in the Kurdish hills
I retract my accusation that he pulled the number from his backside!
We do of course, still get something for our money - it doesn’t evaporate into thin air. I look forward to Alan’s suggestions as to how we can invest that £1.4trillion more effectively.
"In a July 2021 report on fiscal risks, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated a net cost of the UK reaching net zero by 2050 to be £321bn, or just over £10bn per year.[7] This is made up of around £1.4trn in costs, offset by around £1.1trn in savings." *
Well that is a lot less scary than £1.4 trn. I wonder why it wasnt mentioned if this was supposed to be a serious argument?
* I also note that the savings at the end outweigh the costs by over £10bn a year so the longer you extend the time horizon and see the benefit from earlier investment, the less the net cost would be.
When have they ever ever been within a country mile with their forecasts, double or treble the cost and quarter the savings and you will be nearer
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
I come from the oil and gas industry, where we built small towns on stilts in the North Sea to withstand the 100 year wave.
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
“China coal plants” is just an excuse for Britain to get left behind on major infrastructure transformation, as usual.
A sad little kingdom of asset sweaters.
I was going to like this post, for the first sentence and Twitter link - which is broadly accurate; there should be a massive in Chinese renewables in the next 10 years - but the rest of the post put me off.
Why do so many on the left take such active pleasure in falsely denigrating and hating their own country?
Maybe because it's not the country or its people we hate, but the grifters and swindlers presently running it..
..and I am not on the left btw.
The government is shit, we all know that, full of arseholes, but for a very large majority of people, this is a very good place to live in. The same is true of most rich world countries.
Compared to any previous generation, our problems are modest ones.
I think it was Hume who said his toothache caused him more anxiety than the Lisbon earthquake, which sums it up.
That’s really not true any more: it is the Panglossian verdict of the 1990s-00s
AI alone is probably the biggest existential threat mankind has ever faced. Yes it may be utopian, it could also be apocalyptic. Truly. And it is coming - this is not some maybe or could be
Add to that the fractured geopolitical world, climate change, the rise of autocratic China, and our problems are not “modest”, sadly
"The rise of autocratic China" is quite likely to be swiftly followed by "the fall of autocratic China" judging by its disastrous demographic projections. The problem for Xi, if he wishes to be successful in his territorial ambitions, is that the window is closing. The Chinese century aint' gonna happen. The US will steam ahead again.
I suspect Putin's aggression is underlined by a sense that time is fast running out for Russia. It's great power pretensions were looking ever more hollow but it still had a supposedly mighty war machine. Best get on and use it ASAP.
Again, this all ignores AI
I’m sorry to bore on but talking airily about the future without referencing it is like talking airily about the future of hunter gathering - and only hunter gathering - even as the first farmers were sowing einkorn wheat in the Kurdish hills
The net zero policies will self terminate if they punish the poor and benefit the rich, which is how it looks a lot of the time.
Good news is it should actually save people money. See the NIC report last week.
For example, if you electrify your house with solar panels and storage batteries you can cut your electricity bill by anything from 30-70%, ad-infinitum. The issue is being able to shell out the £6-10k up front for all the kit, but even then it repays for itself over 10-12 years, and then makes a profit thereafter.
I know this because I've just ordered. But I can only do so because I have (some) spare capital. HMG should be offering £5k+ discounts on all of this, and to borrow the rest at cost - or make it easy to add to mortgages.
Heat pumps are different. They need to be less shit. They need to pump in 20C+ of heat, with turboboost options for when it's really cold, not just 14-15C and only really working when your house is insulated like an igloo. But, again, once in - no gas bills.
I see no rationale for a discount - home owners are relatively well off and do not need free money. The UK Govt attitude, which I think is correct, has been to offer incentives where the market and actual cost / benefit cannot meet the need, or on condition of fabric improvements as applied to solar FIT and now applies far too minimally to Heat Pump grants. In the case of solar I think the market can do it already - a regulatory intervention to unlock the investment would be better value imo.
Given the rapid rise in house prices most can easily borrow such a small sum on a marginal mortgage increase. Perhaps the Govt could offer funding against 1-3% of equity in the house.
Can you elucidate on that "20C+ of heat"? Heat is in kWh or kJ, not Celsius, and heating a house is about amount of heat gained and lost not temperature differences.
(I won't draw attention to igloos being built out of material that are as poor as insulators as a naked brick wall )
Solar panels make your house look like shit.
Malcolm - You are just saying that because Scotland gets no sunshine....
[Ducks and runs for cover]
Bev, I was at the kidding, in the south west here we do get some lovely weather, never too warm. We do get a bit too much rain but it really means it is a green and pleasant land and the ayrshire coastline is beautiful. I miss the snow in the winter thoughas we get little here on coast due to the influence of the gulf stream, which must be warmer than when I was a boy. Though if you go in the water it does not appear so, 2 minutes and you would be blue.
I know the area well Malcolm and I know how nice and pleasant the weather can be. Growing up in N Ireland I was back and forth to Galloway and Ayrshire many times, but you will not get me in the water I did used to go in the sea when I was much younger so either the water is colder or I have wised up a lot
Bev, when I was a boy we went in all summer holidays, your teeth rattled for ages after getting out , but great fun. Big softie now though, even a paddle in it is too far.
"Israel offered a ceasefire in exchange for Hamas releasing all hostages and handing over the bodies of dead Israelis, but Hamas refused, Al Arabiya reported."
Al-Arabiyah is in effect an arm of the Saudi government and such a story would suit them well. It would give them an excuse to start edging towards Israel again when the current war ends.
A ground invasion is a very risky move which is why Biden has been trying to stop it (unsuccessfully it would seem). So it isn't impossible.
That said, given his track record I can imagine Netanyahu might make such an offer knowing it would be refused and he would then have a pretext to invade over Biden's objections. Bottom line is, if he is to survive he needs a ground offensive and a major win. Even that may not (hopefully, will not) be enough for his career.
Millions of innocents had to die just so Bush & Blair could be seen to be doing something, even if the something had nothing to do with the cause of 9/11….at least in this case you can join the dots between cause and effect, in terms of target. The issue is the hostages, which Hamas will release at two every week, with lots of taking (through intermediaries) in between, to try and keep Israeli in a painful limbo of inaction.
Well, if that was the intention, it's failed.
And I think that's partly because Hamas are actually not keen on peace either.
Though interestingly, the people of Gaza are, or were. 54% support a 2 state solution, and only 10% support the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. Only 24% would vote for Hamas in a democratic election. This polling finished on October 6th. Polling on the West Bank also supported a 2 state solution, though not quite so strongly.
Polling on Hamas's support is understandably all over the place. Here's a 2021 poll:
"Poll finds dramatic rise in Palestinian support for Hamas ... The poll found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,” while only 14% prefer Abbas’ secular Fatah party."
And a problem is this: everyone knows how thoroughly anti-Semitic Hamas is, and what their objective is wrt Jews. You cannot support Hamas and say that you're not anti-Semitic - it's like a German saying they supported the Nazis because they built good roads or had good education policies.
Hamas still exist in Gaza not just because they have power and guns; but because they also have enough support. Sadly, like the Iranian regime.
I think you are also referencing Hamas’s 1988 founding charter, which is antisemitic. However, Hamas have repudiated the document and issued a new charter in 2017, which talks about a Palestine within the 1967 borders, and explicitly says that Hamas does not seek war against all Jewish people but only against Zionism. This reflects comments going back as early as 2008 that were more moderate than the founding charter. That said, others are sceptical of their sincerity.
'Sceptical' is not a strong enough word. Would you trust a Nazi party that repudiated anti-Semitism? Did Hamas go around asking their victims if they were Zionists or not? No, they wanted to kill Jews.
Indeed but increasingly, as the death toll mounts, sympathisers of Palestine will be turning round your rhetoric. Did the Israeli air force ask of the thousands it killed, whether they were card-carrying Hamas members?
We were talking about Hamas's charter, and the way that was 'supposed' to have changed. I'm unsure what your comment has to do with that...
I retract my accusation that he pulled the number from his backside!
We do of course, still get something for our money - it doesn’t evaporate into thin air. I look forward to Alan’s suggestions as to how we can invest that £1.4trillion more effectively.
"In a July 2021 report on fiscal risks, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated a net cost of the UK reaching net zero by 2050 to be £321bn, or just over £10bn per year.[7] This is made up of around £1.4trn in costs, offset by around £1.1trn in savings." *
Well that is a lot less scary than £1.4 trn. I wonder why it wasnt mentioned if this was supposed to be a serious argument?
* I also note that the savings at the end outweigh the costs by over £10bn a year so the longer you extend the time horizon and see the benefit from earlier investment, the less the net cost would be.
When have they ever ever been within a country mile with their forecasts, double or treble the cost and quarter the savings and you will be nearer
Why ? Cost estimates are largely based on current technology. Renewables will get cheaper; fossil fuels won’t.
A small example is the new magnet technology just announced in the US. One of the limiting factors for EVs, wind turbines etc was world production capacity for rare earths. That’s just gone away.
“China coal plants” is just an excuse for Britain to get left behind on major infrastructure transformation, as usual.
A sad little kingdom of asset sweaters.
I was going to like this post, for the first sentence and Twitter link - which is broadly accurate; there should be a massive in Chinese renewables in the next 10 years - but the rest of the post put me off.
Why do so many on the left take such active pleasure in falsely denigrating and hating their own country?
Maybe because it's not the country or its people we hate, but the grifters and swindlers presently running it..
..and I am not on the left btw.
The government is shit, we all know that, full of arseholes, but for a very large majority of people, this is a very good place to live in. The same is true of most rich world countries.
Compared to any previous generation, our problems are modest ones.
I think it was Hume who said his toothache caused him more anxiety than the Lisbon earthquake, which sums it up.
That’s really not true any more: it is the Panglossian verdict of the 1990s-00s
AI alone is probably the biggest existential threat mankind has ever faced. Yes it may be utopian, it could also be apocalyptic. Truly. And it is coming - this is not some maybe or could be
Add to that the fractured geopolitical world, climate change, the rise of autocratic China, and our problems are not “modest”, sadly
"The rise of autocratic China" is quite likely to be swiftly followed by "the fall of autocratic China" judging by its disastrous demographic projections. The problem for Xi, if he wishes to be successful in his territorial ambitions, is that the window is closing. The Chinese century aint' gonna happen. The US will steam ahead again.
I suspect Putin's aggression is underlined by a sense that time is fast running out for Russia. It's great power pretensions were looking ever more hollow but it still had a supposedly mighty war machine. Best get on and use it ASAP.
Again, this all ignores AI
I’m sorry to bore on but talking airily about the future without referencing it is like talking airily about the future of hunter gathering - and only hunter gathering - even as the first farmers were sowing einkorn wheat in the Kurdish hills
Step 1: don't take sufficient action to stop climate change running out of control.
Step 2: realise Britain has failed to become a leader in any new technologies as other countries adapt faster.
Step 3: complain about all these new migrants from places that are now inhospitable, Britain's weather is fine thank you very much.
That's rather unfair. Firstly, Britain (yes, under the coalition *and* Conservatives) have made massive strides towards going green. We have adapted fast - and they get f'all credit for it.
Secondly, we're a small country with a (relatively) small industrial base, especially in low-value, high-volume stuff. The chances are we would always be outplayed in high-volume technology.
Thirdly, *nothing* Britain could do would stop climate change running out of control. Even if we had zero emissions, the emissions from the rest of the world would dwarf that.
Fourthly, people need jobs. I daresay people in public service, especially occupations such as the NHS or education, may feel a certain amount of job security. But going green too fast could really damage the economy. Like many things, it is a balancing game.
Where does this "relatively small industrial base" thing come from?
I know it's a meme that has been repeated ad infinitum in various media (decline of manufacturing etc), yet we are in the top 10 in the world.
AIUI (and I may be wrong), we're very good at low-volume, high-tech items. We're less good at what we used to be good at: low-cost, high-volume stuff. The *value* of what we produce is high; the volume is lower. (*)
Sadly, things like solar cells are the latter (and we want them to be low-cost, high-volume).
(*) I might be wrong, though.
Following on from my own post: IMV we'd be better off not trying to produce things we want to be low-cost and high-volume; other countries are much better at us than that, or we ever could be due to our size and resources (*). Therefore things like mass battery or solar-cell production should be left to others; preferably with us investing in them.
What we can excel at is R&D. We should be investing in things like new battery chemistries, then doing deals with people who can mass-produce them. Or even investing in factories elsewhere. We should play to our strengths.
(*) We could be much better at this, but environmental and NIMBY issues make it next to impossible. Remember the nonsense about Able UK's shipbreaking?
Sorry, but that's nonsense. We had a lot of very interesting battery research a decade or so back. Without being involved in manufacturing, it was meaningless. You're effectively saying, for example, that we shouldn't have a car industry.
We cannot do everything.
As for the car industry: we used to be a giant in car manufacturing. Now, for whatever reasons, we're not, at least in the mass market. We do have a fair few innovative and successful companies in the low-volume, high-value market though; and we have a load of F1 teams based here.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Yes. The stock exchange needs quarterly results. It can't see beyond the next report and the current bonus round. Industry needs outside investors - so become PLCs. And are then driven to abandon the long term outlook for immediate profit.
This is the post-Thatcher settlement. Spivism.
There’s a degree of truth in that, but there always have been people who prefer the short term rip off, to the better, but deferred, deferred return.
OTOH, people do make vast investments (overall investment is nearly one fifth of GDP). Mobile telecommunications firms spent immense sums establishing networks, before getting any return.
The sad truth is that so much of our infrastructure in this country is crumbling. Water pipes. Schools. Hospitals. Roads. Public services.
An ocean of cash will have to be invested because the cost of not doing so is higher. The right can complain about the impact on bills but oceans of money have been pocketed by the likes of Thames Water as they leave the infrastructure to crumble. Not that the right care about people anyway.
So we have to spend an ocean of cash to fix this country. Do we spend it on 21st century things or 19th century things? We need power generation - clean tech or coal? And if we need to have all these things does the right really think that importing them is the best approach?
We used to build things for the world. Clean tech is the opportunity to do so again.
So name your technology. Nuclear perhaps then what ?
Starter for 10: wind. We’re building an awful lot of big wind farms. Why aren’t we developing our own turbines, manufacturing them, and exporting them to other markets?
Off shore wind needs ancillaries- inter connectors, control gear, support ships. Let’s make those.
We’ve given up as an industrial nation. Too hard. Too expensive. Yet we pay more by importing the things we used to export
Ive been arguing for years here along with @another_richard that we have been throwing away our manufacturing . However a lot of the technology lead on wind sits with people like Siemens. The make things here but a multinational always suits itself. Unless we have more domestically controlled businesses I cannot see us recovering technologies. The RR mini nuclear plants may be somewhere we can establish a lead but we're screwing that up atm.
So let’s invest in business then. The Thatcher revolution was to stop investing and to start selling. We sold off the utilities and encouraged British industrial giants like ICI and GEC to split themselves apart and hive off chunks for a quick profit today and don’t worry about tomorrow.
We need to change that. We built up industrial capability before and we can do it again - but we have to invest. And sadly the right seems to see investment as communism - or close to it. Why tie up money investing for the long term when your spiv mates could be making a profit now?
You should be thanking Thatcher.
She was the first major leader to recognise the threat of climate change, and to deliver a UN speech on it. It was partly because of her the 1990 baseline was established, which we've cut against ever since. Because she understood the science.
It's remarkable people keep forgetting this, and that goes for fellow Conservatives too.
I was at a climate camp about 15 years ago, and I ended up in a small group facing off against some cops who were wanting to trample over everyone's tents. Someone thought it would help gee everyone up if we all took turns to talk about why we were there, and for some reason I provoked some odd looks from those assembled by talking about how even Thatcher had acknowledged it was a problem nearly two decades earlier, and had done something about it, and so I was incredibly frustrated we weren't making more progress more quickly.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
I come from the oil and gas industry, where we built small towns on stilts in the North Sea to withstand the 100 year wave.
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
There’s decades of experience in the North Sea; we’ve not built anything like this before in the U.K. And some of those costs (materials inflation, for example), are completely outside of your control.
I’m very sympathetic to the case for tidal, but are the figures you’re quoting today’s costs (I think you’ve been using those numbers for a while) ?
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Yes. The stock exchange needs quarterly results. It can't see beyond the next report and the current bonus round. Industry needs outside investors - so become PLCs. And are then driven to abandon the long term outlook for immediate profit.
This is the post-Thatcher settlement. Spivism.
There’s a degree of truth in that, but there always have been people who prefer the short term rip off, to the better, but deferred, deferred return.
OTOH, people do make vast investments (overall investment is nearly one fifth of GDP). Mobile telecommunications firms spent immense sums establishing networks, before getting any return.
Something that doesn’t get mentioned is this -
Inventing something is one thing. Getting it to production with reliability and cost control is a long long road.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
I come from the oil and gas industry, where we built small towns on stilts in the North Sea to withstand the 100 year wave.
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
There’s decades of experience in the North Sea; we’ve not built anything like this before in the U.K. And some of those costs (materials inflation, for example), are completely outside of your control.
I’m very sympathetic to the case for tidal, but are the figures you’re quoting today’s costs (I think you’ve been using those numbers for a while) ?
The costs for a 3.2 GW tidal lagoon plant have been inflated from £7.5 bn 3-4 years ago to £10 bn now.
This mostly reflects steel and turbine costs. But one of the main costs is rock. Inflation hasn't had such a massive impact there on quarrying.
And we've been building sea walls in this country for centuries...
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
I come from the oil and gas industry, where we built small towns on stilts in the North Sea to withstand the 100 year wave.
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
There’s decades of experience in the North Sea; we’ve not built anything like this before in the U.K. And some of those costs (materials inflation, for example), are completely outside of your control.
I’m very sympathetic to the case for tidal, but are the figures you’re quoting today’s costs (I think you’ve been using those numbers for a while) ?
The costs for a 3.2 GW tidal lagoon plant have been inflated from £7.5 bn 3-4 years ago to £10 bn now.
This mostly reflects steel and turbine costs. But one of the main costs is rock. Inflation hasn't had such a massive impact there on quarrying.
And we've been building sea walls in this country for centuries...
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Yes. The stock exchange needs quarterly results. It can't see beyond the next report and the current bonus round. Industry needs outside investors - so become PLCs. And are then driven to abandon the long term outlook for immediate profit.
This is the post-Thatcher settlement. Spivism.
There’s a degree of truth in that, but there always have been people who prefer the short term rip off, to the better, but deferred, deferred return.
OTOH, people do make vast investments (overall investment is nearly one fifth of GDP). Mobile telecommunications firms spent immense sums establishing networks, before getting any return.
Something that doesn’t get mentioned is this -
Inventing something is one thing. Getting it to production with reliability and cost control is a long long road.
Does the UK one come with a 20mph speed limit and loads of pot holes?
The sad truth is that so much of our infrastructure in this country is crumbling. Water pipes. Schools. Hospitals. Roads. Public services.
An ocean of cash will have to be invested because the cost of not doing so is higher. The right can complain about the impact on bills but oceans of money have been pocketed by the likes of Thames Water as they leave the infrastructure to crumble. Not that the right care about people anyway.
So we have to spend an ocean of cash to fix this country. Do we spend it on 21st century things or 19th century things? We need power generation - clean tech or coal? And if we need to have all these things does the right really think that importing them is the best approach?
We used to build things for the world. Clean tech is the opportunity to do so again.
So name your technology. Nuclear perhaps then what ?
Starter for 10: wind. We’re building an awful lot of big wind farms. Why aren’t we developing our own turbines, manufacturing them, and exporting them to other markets?
Off shore wind needs ancillaries- inter connectors, control gear, support ships. Let’s make those.
We’ve given up as an industrial nation. Too hard. Too expensive. Yet we pay more by importing the things we used to export
Ive been arguing for years here along with @another_richard that we have been throwing away our manufacturing . However a lot of the technology lead on wind sits with people like Siemens. The make things here but a multinational always suits itself. Unless we have more domestically controlled businesses I cannot see us recovering technologies. The RR mini nuclear plants may be somewhere we can establish a lead but we're screwing that up atm.
So let’s invest in business then. The Thatcher revolution was to stop investing and to start selling. We sold off the utilities and encouraged British industrial giants like ICI and GEC to split themselves apart and hive off chunks for a quick profit today and don’t worry about tomorrow.
We need to change that. We built up industrial capability before and we can do it again - but we have to invest. And sadly the right seems to see investment as communism - or close to it. Why tie up money investing for the long term when your spiv mates could be making a profit now?
You should be thanking Thatcher.
She was the first major leader to recognise the threat of climate change, and to deliver a UN speech on it. It was partly because of her the 1990 baseline was established, which we've cut against ever since. Because she understood the science.
It's remarkable people keep forgetting this, and that goes for fellow Conservatives too.
I was at a climate camp about 15 years ago, and I ended up in a small group facing off against some cops who were wanting to trample over everyone's tents. Someone thought it would help gee everyone up if we all took turns to talk about why we were there, and for some reason I provoked some odd looks from those assembled by talking about how even Thatcher had acknowledged it was a problem nearly two decades earlier, and had done something about it, and so I was incredibly frustrated we weren't making more progress more quickly.
Thatcher is effectively a four (eight?) letter word in this country.
The sad truth is that so much of our infrastructure in this country is crumbling. Water pipes. Schools. Hospitals. Roads. Public services.
An ocean of cash will have to be invested because the cost of not doing so is higher. The right can complain about the impact on bills but oceans of money have been pocketed by the likes of Thames Water as they leave the infrastructure to crumble. Not that the right care about people anyway.
So we have to spend an ocean of cash to fix this country. Do we spend it on 21st century things or 19th century things? We need power generation - clean tech or coal? And if we need to have all these things does the right really think that importing them is the best approach?
We used to build things for the world. Clean tech is the opportunity to do so again.
So name your technology. Nuclear perhaps then what ?
Starter for 10: wind. We’re building an awful lot of big wind farms. Why aren’t we developing our own turbines, manufacturing them, and exporting them to other markets?
Off shore wind needs ancillaries- inter connectors, control gear, support ships. Let’s make those.
We’ve given up as an industrial nation. Too hard. Too expensive. Yet we pay more by importing the things we used to export
Ive been arguing for years here along with @another_richard that we have been throwing away our manufacturing . However a lot of the technology lead on wind sits with people like Siemens. The make things here but a multinational always suits itself. Unless we have more domestically controlled businesses I cannot see us recovering technologies. The RR mini nuclear plants may be somewhere we can establish a lead but we're screwing that up atm.
So let’s invest in business then. The Thatcher revolution was to stop investing and to start selling. We sold off the utilities and encouraged British industrial giants like ICI and GEC to split themselves apart and hive off chunks for a quick profit today and don’t worry about tomorrow.
We need to change that. We built up industrial capability before and we can do it again - but we have to invest. And sadly the right seems to see investment as communism - or close to it. Why tie up money investing for the long term when your spiv mates could be making a profit now?
You should be thanking Thatcher.
She was the first major leader to recognise the threat of climate change, and to deliver a UN speech on it. It was partly because of her the 1990 baseline was established, which we've cut against ever since. Because she understood the science.
It's remarkable people keep forgetting this, and that goes for fellow Conservatives too.
I agree with the majority of what @Alanbrooke has written here, and applaud him for doing so, though on the problem diagnosis, we differ somewhat.
A 5000 piece jigsaw of vested interests, and the screaming of activists amplified by the media, make it almost impossible to look impartially at 'the science', but assuming that human activity is adding 'the bit that matters' to carbon emissions, it's good for the UK to get to Net Zero, especially if the journey there leads us to more efficient and environmentally-beneficial ways of doing things. However, as we also know that CO2 is (amongst other things) plant food, and given that human initiatives often result in unintended consequences, we should also be prepared to reverse out of Net Zero quickly and start pumping out CO2 more if we need to. I am thinking of the recent ban on a type of maritime fuel, which is likely to have lead to the recent concerning increases in sea temperature.
This being the case, the problem is not Net Zero, but the ways we get there. Deindustrialisation has already been mentioned. Permanent moves toward more expensive and less reliable forms of energy is another. Driving poor people off the roads is another. These are all bad things, and not easy to reverse.
This change in approach would necessitate Net Zero becoming its own department, not attached to the Energy Security department (which should be focusing on just that), or perhaps just make it like the vaccines, and give the problem to Kate Bingham and a small team to deal with. Net Zero would still require a lot of tax payers' money, and for the Government to place big bets, but supported by an economy allowed to grow - like doing covid without lockdowns.
Is it legitimate to flatten a building housing hundreds of civilians to kill a few Hamas fighters ?
Where do you draw the line ?
I've seen some of the reports coming out of Gaza - they are awful. Truly awful. You ask where do you draw the line? Apparently - according to Hamas - there is no line.
Hamas hide in civilian buildings. Hamas tell the civilians to stay. Hamas launch attacks from civilian areas. Hamas hold hostages and refuse a ceasefire.
This is the Hamas plan. Have Israel martyr as many civilians as possible. I keep reading stuff which infers that Israel has wanton disregard for human life and who will think of the Palestinians. Who exactly? Not Hamas.
Yes, it is almost as if Hamas are bad people, but most of us already knew that.
It also suggests that wanting humane living conditions for people in Palestine and in Israel is not the same as supporting Hamas, as many here have claimed.
I retract my accusation that he pulled the number from his backside!
We do of course, still get something for our money - it doesn’t evaporate into thin air. I look forward to Alan’s suggestions as to how we can invest that £1.4trillion more effectively.
"In a July 2021 report on fiscal risks, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated a net cost of the UK reaching net zero by 2050 to be £321bn, or just over £10bn per year.[7] This is made up of around £1.4trn in costs, offset by around £1.1trn in savings." *
Well that is a lot less scary than £1.4 trn. I wonder why it wasnt mentioned if this was supposed to be a serious argument?
* I also note that the savings at the end outweigh the costs by over £10bn a year so the longer you extend the time horizon and see the benefit from earlier investment, the less the net cost would be.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
I come from the oil and gas industry, where we built small towns on stilts in the North Sea to withstand the 100 year wave.
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
There’s decades of experience in the North Sea; we’ve not built anything like this before in the U.K. And some of those costs (materials inflation, for example), are completely outside of your control.
I’m very sympathetic to the case for tidal, but are the figures you’re quoting today’s costs (I think you’ve been using those numbers for a while) ?
The costs for a 3.2 GW tidal lagoon plant have been inflated from £7.5 bn 3-4 years ago to £10 bn now.
This mostly reflects steel and turbine costs. But one of the main costs is rock. Inflation hasn't had such a massive impact there on quarrying.
And we've been building sea walls in this country for centuries...
Fair enough. What about U.K. planning… ?
Swansea tidal lagoon got through planning in two years.
> China 29% of world emissions, I can’t honestly see them take the remotest interest
If we're going to have posts that don't have any betting content than that's fine and I do appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to write them. But just a little bit of research to check your assumptions might be nice?
Yes. China are installing masses of renewables, and they seem to be aware that they face massive risks from climate change.
The whole argument of we shouldn't do anything until China does argument falls down a bit in the face of China's rollout of zero carbon technologies. The argument is two decades out of date.
Thats to misunderstand the argument. Assuming China unwinds there are lots of others to take its place. India is largely coal powered and expanding fast,
While I really like Alan's series of interesting articles, I think he's a bit too ready to state received wisdom as established fact. On China in particular, while they are expanding everything they are doing renewables far faster than us.
"investment in low-carbon energy continues to grow at a staggering pace. If low-carbon capacity growth meets forecasts, it would be sufficient to cover expected electricity demand growth and could even put China on track to peak its emissions within two years."
India is as Alan says still expanding fast, but there too the arc is bending:
I read a lot of international press, and everywhere there are commentators saying "Why are we making these sacrifices when nobody else is bothering much?" It's one issue where global action is essential and on the whole actually happening. Of course we shouldn't be the odd man out at either extreme, but it's right that we keep up with the pack. As a benefit, the whole planet will be buying renewable stuff going forward, so it's a good idea to aim to be market leaders in its production and use.
This is a good country to live in, but it should be a great country to live in. It ain't, because we've had shit government, both local and national, for decades, and we get rinsed by big business. We can't even build a fecking trainline. I read something last week that stated that the Thames crossing road project has spent 270 million quid just on planning applications. 800 million before work has even started. Norway built the longest road tunnel in the world for less than our paperwork! I'll get shouted at and told that you can't compare Norway and the UK as the geology and demographics and population density is totally different, but I reckon my point about shit government and rinsing big business still stands.
I'm not a massive fan of Cyclefree's off-piste diversions away from politics but at least they're cogently argued and generally interesting. This isn't. This is boomer prejudice masquerading as commentary, and if I wanted to read half-arsed boomer opinions about nEt zERo!!11 then I'd go over to Facebook which at least has the decency to intersperse the drivel with pictures of attractive 20-something influencers on top of a mountain or something.
I'm not going to flounce because I'm a third-division minor commenter on PB at best, and no one would, or indeed should, notice if I cleared off. But I don't see a whole bunch of point in sticking around for apprentice Allister Heathery like this. See you in the next politics thread.
@Alanbrooke I actually like this article, both in the substance and style, but it does raise some questions about PB. The lack of national-level US/UK elections in 2023 would always cause a problem, and attempts by @stodge / @Peter_the_Punter / @DoubleCarpet / @slade / @Cicero et al to interest people in alternatives have not gained traction and, despite my pleading, they have not written articles.
So, lacking articles about elections, and betting articles reducing to screenshots+comments instead of the more time-consuming researched ones, PB is moving from a site that talks about betting on elections to a site that talks about politics, and this will probably continue until Q3 2024.
So although I liked your article and look forward to its successor, it is accompanied by a wistful regret of what we are losing.
This is a good country to live in, but it should be a great country to live in. It ain't, because we've had shit government, both local and national, for decades, and we get rinsed by big business. We can't even build a fecking trainline. I read something last week that stated that the Thames crossing road project has spent 270 million quid just on planning applications. 800 million before work has even started. Norway built the longest road tunnel in the world for less than our paperwork! I'll get shouted at and told that you can't compare Norway and the UK as the geology and demographics and population density is totally different, but I reckon my point about shit government and rinsing big business still stands.
I can't be bothered to shout but shall whisper my full agreeement.
This is an interesting little story from our local newspaper. I think it shows how fast the technology is developing that, even in cloudy West Cork you can do so much with solar power.
A couple of decades ago it was hard for people to believe that the technology would improve so that this would happen. People holding onto those old views are like the generals insisting there would always be a place for cavalry on the battlefield. The world is moving on.
> China 29% of world emissions, I can’t honestly see them take the remotest interest
If we're going to have posts that don't have any betting content than that's fine and I do appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to write them. But just a little bit of research to check your assumptions might be nice?
Yes. China are installing masses of renewables, and they seem to be aware that they face massive risks from climate change.
The whole argument of we shouldn't do anything until China does argument falls down a bit in the face of China's rollout of zero carbon technologies. The argument is two decades out of date.
Thats to misunderstand the argument. Assuming China unwinds there are lots of others to take its place. India is largely coal powered and expanding fast,
While I really like Alan's series of interesting articles, I think he's a bit too ready to state received wisdom as established fact. On China in particular, while they are expanding everything they are doing renewables far faster than us.
"investment in low-carbon energy continues to grow at a staggering pace. If low-carbon capacity growth meets forecasts, it would be sufficient to cover expected electricity demand growth and could even put China on track to peak its emissions within two years."
India is as Alan says still expanding fast, but there too the arc is bending:
I read a lot of international press, and everywhere there are commentators saying "Why are we making these sacrifices when nobody else is bothering much?" It's one issue where global action is essential and on the whole actually happening. Of course we shouldn't be the odd man out at either extreme, but it's right that we keep up with the pack. As a benefit, the whole planet will be buying renewable stuff going forward, so it's a good idea to aim to be market leaders in its production and use.
China and India are experimenting with renewables to meet their growing power needs. That's great and how it should be done. They are not making *any* sacrifices in their economic growth or prosperity on the altar of Net Zero, nor will they. Those admiring their progress simply make the UK look even more stupid for handling this the way that we are.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
I come from the oil and gas industry, where we built small towns on stilts in the North Sea to withstand the 100 year wave.
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
There’s decades of experience in the North Sea; we’ve not built anything like this before in the U.K. And some of those costs (materials inflation, for example), are completely outside of your control.
I’m very sympathetic to the case for tidal, but are the figures you’re quoting today’s costs (I think you’ve been using those numbers for a while) ?
The costs for a 3.2 GW tidal lagoon plant have been inflated from £7.5 bn 3-4 years ago to £10 bn now.
This mostly reflects steel and turbine costs. But one of the main costs is rock. Inflation hasn't had such a massive impact there on quarrying.
And we've been building sea walls in this country for centuries...
Fair enough. What about U.K. planning… ?
Swansea tidal lagoon got through planning in two years.
Mr. Leon, one of the most interesting ideas of AI is mingling different forms and putting it into a robot dog. Put together voice and text generation and, for a few thousand pounds, you have a talking dog that can also carry hundreds of pounds in weight.
Mechanical mules were trialled by the US armed forces and abandoned: they are too loud, need refuelling/recharging, and you can't repair them in field. That was nearly ten years ago: I don't know if things have changed.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
I come from the oil and gas industry, where we built small towns on stilts in the North Sea to withstand the 100 year wave.
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
There’s decades of experience in the North Sea; we’ve not built anything like this before in the U.K. And some of those costs (materials inflation, for example), are completely outside of your control.
I’m very sympathetic to the case for tidal, but are the figures you’re quoting today’s costs (I think you’ve been using those numbers for a while) ?
The costs for a 3.2 GW tidal lagoon plant have been inflated from £7.5 bn 3-4 years ago to £10 bn now.
This mostly reflects steel and turbine costs. But one of the main costs is rock. Inflation hasn't had such a massive impact there on quarrying.
And we've been building sea walls in this country for centuries...
Fair enough. What about U.K. planning… ?
Swansea tidal lagoon got through planning in two years.
The sad truth is that so much of our infrastructure in this country is crumbling. Water pipes. Schools. Hospitals. Roads. Public services.
An ocean of cash will have to be invested because the cost of not doing so is higher. The right can complain about the impact on bills but oceans of money have been pocketed by the likes of Thames Water as they leave the infrastructure to crumble. Not that the right care about people anyway.
So we have to spend an ocean of cash to fix this country. Do we spend it on 21st century things or 19th century things? We need power generation - clean tech or coal? And if we need to have all these things does the right really think that importing them is the best approach?
We used to build things for the world. Clean tech is the opportunity to do so again.
So name your technology. Nuclear perhaps then what ?
Starter for 10: wind. We’re building an awful lot of big wind farms. Why aren’t we developing our own turbines, manufacturing them, and exporting them to other markets?
Off shore wind needs ancillaries- inter connectors, control gear, support ships. Let’s make those.
We’ve given up as an industrial nation. Too hard. Too expensive. Yet we pay more by importing the things we used to export
Ive been arguing for years here along with @another_richard that we have been throwing away our manufacturing . However a lot of the technology lead on wind sits with people like Siemens. The make things here but a multinational always suits itself. Unless we have more domestically controlled businesses I cannot see us recovering technologies. The RR mini nuclear plants may be somewhere we can establish a lead but we're screwing that up atm.
So let’s invest in business then. The Thatcher revolution was to stop investing and to start selling. We sold off the utilities and encouraged British industrial giants like ICI and GEC to split themselves apart and hive off chunks for a quick profit today and don’t worry about tomorrow.
We need to change that. We built up industrial capability before and we can do it again - but we have to invest. And sadly the right seems to see investment as communism - or close to it. Why tie up money investing for the long term when your spiv mates could be making a profit now?
You should be thanking Thatcher.
She was the first major leader to recognise the threat of climate change, and to deliver a UN speech on it. It was partly because of her the 1990 baseline was established, which we've cut against ever since. Because she understood the science.
It's remarkable people keep forgetting this, and that goes for fellow Conservatives too.
I was at a climate camp about 15 years ago, and I ended up in a small group facing off against some cops who were wanting to trample over everyone's tents. Someone thought it would help gee everyone up if we all took turns to talk about why we were there, and for some reason I provoked some odd looks from those assembled by talking about how even Thatcher had acknowledged it was a problem nearly two decades earlier, and had done something about it, and so I was incredibly frustrated we weren't making more progress more quickly.
Thatcher is effectively a four (eight?) letter word in this country.
She got lots of things right and lots of things wrong. The end of her reign and the aftermath she was increasingly wrong and it is that side of her that gets remembered by both the left and right. So much of the left thinks she was evil and much of the right has misunderstood the good things she did and her scientific approach including the benefits of listening to experts and of a broad and balanced cabinet.
It is not fair, just like it is not fair on Blair but thats how it works.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
I come from the oil and gas industry, where we built small towns on stilts in the North Sea to withstand the 100 year wave.
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
There’s decades of experience in the North Sea; we’ve not built anything like this before in the U.K. And some of those costs (materials inflation, for example), are completely outside of your control.
I’m very sympathetic to the case for tidal, but are the figures you’re quoting today’s costs (I think you’ve been using those numbers for a while) ?
The costs for a 3.2 GW tidal lagoon plant have been inflated from £7.5 bn 3-4 years ago to £10 bn now.
This mostly reflects steel and turbine costs. But one of the main costs is rock. Inflation hasn't had such a massive impact there on quarrying.
And we've been building sea walls in this country for centuries...
Fair enough. What about U.K. planning… ?
Swansea tidal lagoon got through planning in two years.
The idea that global warming will gently raise the temperature of the UK to levels comparable to the Dordogne is naive to say the least.
As we know, the UK is kept warmer than it would otherwise be by the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports heat from the tropics and towards north-western Europe. Warm water flows northwards near the ocean surface, becoming colder and also saltier due to evaporation, until its increased density makes it sink. It than flows back to the tropics as a deep ocean current.
The fear is that, as the world warms, melt-water from the Greenland ice cap will reduce the salinity of the water so much that it no longer sinks in the north and the AMOC stops. There is evidence of sharp swings in the climate of the north Atlantic as the world warmed into the current interglacial period, and it is thought that these may well have been caused by collapses in the AMOC due to melting ice at that time.
The upshot is that, while the UK is currently warming, it may well be plunged back into a period of sharp cooling as the AMOC slows and possibly stops, even as the global temperature keeps rising. Eventually, though, the AMOC will restart and the temperature of the UK will rise very rapidly.
In short, the Earth's climate is a complex, chaotic system, and is very unlikely to change in a linear fashion. Rather, we are likely to experience a kaleidoscope of fluctuating weather patterns as the global temperature rises. Dealing with this is going to be a major challenge for our descendants.
Regarding climate change, I am not one of those people who thinks there’s little point in us decarbonising because we make little difference. Indeed as others have argued there is great economic value in us driving, refining and creating the processes to do so as it will pay dividends in the future as larger economies step up a gear in their efforts and look to those who are further ahead.
However, the way that we and most Western economies are facing this change is nothing short of negligent. The common belief seems to be that the market and society will just adjust to the change, with a bit of prodding and regulation at the top. What’s more, the change is not being sold properly to the electorate. It has allowed a narrative to be set that you’ll fly less, drive less, move less, be colder and more miserable in your homes, have generally less fun and oh it’ll be costing you more as well.
The first thing governments should be doing is investing in new technologies and research, rather than handing out diktats on end dates for existing tech without having practical replacements ready to go. We are such an innovative species - I have no doubt we can find the technology to deliver the same standards of living without the use of carbon. But we need to develop those, and refine those.
And the second point is that government needs to be more invested in the process. Western governments seem to think that the change will be akin to the Industrial Revolution - with the capital there and the market adjusting people will just build and make and change things automatically without much intervention from the government. But we live in a very different world from the 18th and 19th centuries. Our society is more complex, more caring, less deferential. Government needs to bring the people with it, and to do so it needs a plan, and the power, to bring about the change in an equitable and fair way that protects its people and their living standards, without relying on the market to do it all for it.
Also, the UK is a hotbed of gen 4 and gen 5 nuclear reactors as well as fusion. We have the second highest rate of private investment in experimental reactors in the world, what we lack is commercialisation which needs state subsidies and I don't see this government or Labour putting up the £10-20bn requires to get those designs from labs to power generation by 2035. It is feasible but as ever, the UK government will decide that the NHS, pensions and other old people benefits are more important and our reactor IP will be bought up by American companies who will commercialise them with state subsidies and sell the reactors to us at a huge profit.
So the private industries can make a great success of it if only the govt would throw a pile of money their way?
It's a view I suppose....
Every nuclear power station on the planet has required large state subsidies to make it happen.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
Allow for at least 50% cost overrun. This is the U.K., after all.
I come from the oil and gas industry, where we built small towns on stilts in the North Sea to withstand the 100 year wave.
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
There’s decades of experience in the North Sea; we’ve not built anything like this before in the U.K. And some of those costs (materials inflation, for example), are completely outside of your control.
I’m very sympathetic to the case for tidal, but are the figures you’re quoting today’s costs (I think you’ve been using those numbers for a while) ?
The costs for a 3.2 GW tidal lagoon plant have been inflated from £7.5 bn 3-4 years ago to £10 bn now.
This mostly reflects steel and turbine costs. But one of the main costs is rock. Inflation hasn't had such a massive impact there on quarrying.
And we've been building sea walls in this country for centuries...
Fair enough. What about U.K. planning… ?
Swansea tidal lagoon got through planning in two years.
With 80-odd percent local approval.
I think the time for tidal will come.
Normally every twelve and a half hours.
You beach!
Bore
(Geddit? Geddit??? It has two meani[that's enough - Ed])
> China 29% of world emissions, I can’t honestly see them take the remotest interest
If we're going to have posts that don't have any betting content than that's fine and I do appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to write them. But just a little bit of research to check your assumptions might be nice?
A link has been provided at the top of the article.
We know they have a lot of emissions, they have a massive population that is now a long way on the path to being fully industrialized. What you said was "I can't honestly see them take the remotest interest". This is completely wrong, you can see how wrong it is from a few minutes of googling, and it's the whole premise of your argument.
They have massive renewable energy programs, they're building loads of nuclear which the US and EU have almost given up, they're subsidizing EVs and getting loads of traction with them. They are doing the energy transition. And the reason renewables are seeing the spectacular cost reductions they are is because *both* Obama *and* Xi promoted and subsidized them. It's true that their net zero target is somewhat less ambitious than Britain's (2060 vs 2050) for whatever that's worth, but they also set shorter-term targets and mostly hit them.
If you try to you can of course find some measures where they're worse - since you're comparing a massive still-industrializing economy to a medium-sized mature economy you'll be able to find measures on either side. In any country you'll find people like you who will pick the parts to say the other countries aren't doing anything. The way for this stuff to grind to a halt is if British people listen to the British Alanbrooke and Chinese people listen to the Chinese Alanbrooke and each country decides to stop trying to solve the problem on the grounds that they're being taken for a ride by all the other countries.
I've always disliked the argument that we shouldn't pay because we're such a small fraction of the total and our contribution won't be noticed - either others also won't pay and ours is pointless, or they'll pay and ours is unnecessary.
On Topic. The problem with global warming has always been that it is a global problem and a long term problem. No one country can solve the problem alone not even China. Even if China somehow magiced away their entire CO2 output in the next 12 months, most of the slack would be taken up by India and many other countries because coal, oil and gas would become so much cheaper.
There are two advantages with taking unilateral action though. The first is that it helps on the political level. The UK has in the last 10 years become a world leader, but quite a lot of countries have similar intentions and are not far behind. As more countries get on board the harder it will be for other countries to continue with the "I don't care" policy to climate change. One country has to be first and with out a first there cannot be a second or a hundredth country. The second advanage is being a leader in the reduction of CO2 & Methane brings a huge economic advantage, in manufacturing and technical expertise. There are other sectors in which 'climate leading countries' will also have a head start, agriculture being a clear example.
Looking at it from the side of inaction, doing nothing will also cost a huge amount of money. The cost will be global, but Russia, China and India will also be hit very hard if they continue of their business as usual approach. It is better to get most countries to invest in solving the problem rather than paying for the result of the problems.
We are in a global multiplayer version of the prisoner's dilemma. We need to find a way out of the prisoners dilemma, for all the "prisoner's" to collabrate and to minimise the global cost. I look forward to reading Alanbrooke's solution to the prisoner's dilemma.
The debate by the Right is dominated and funded by rich people, and the debate by the Right in the UK is dominated and funded by rich people living/working outside the UK. They do not need to know anything about classical capitalism since inherited wealth, crony capitalism, oligopolies, technofeudalism et al serve their interests perfectly well. As Bannon said, serfdom works...for the nobles if not for the serfs.
The idea that global warming will gently raise the temperature of the UK to levels comparable to the Dordogne is naive to say the least.
As we know, the UK is kept warmer than it would otherwise be by the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports heat from the tropics and towards north-western Europe. Warm water flows northwards near the ocean surface, becoming colder and also saltier due to evaporation, until its increased density makes it sink. It than flows back to the tropics as a deep ocean current.
The fear is that, as the world warms, melt-water from the Greenland ice cap will reduce the salinity of the water so much that it no longer sinks in the north and the AMOC stops. There is evidence of sharp swings in the climate of the north Atlantic as the world warmed into the current interglacial period, and it is thought that these may well have been caused by collapses in the AMOC due to melting ice at that time.
The upshot is that, while the UK is currently warming, it may well be plunged back into a period of sharp cooling as the AMOC slows and possibly stops, even as the global temperature keeps rising. Eventually, though, the AMOC will restart and the temperature of the UK will rise very rapidly.
In short, the Earth's climate is a complex, chaotic system, and is very unlikely to change in a linear fashion. Rather, we are likely to experience a kaleidoscope of fluctuating weather patterns as the global temperature rises. Dealing with this is going to be a major challenge for our descendants.
Oh no no, what alarmist nonsense!
People like Alanbrooke have a far more accurate understand of complex nonlinear systems than anyone to be found in a university, and they just know that whatever happens it isn't going to be too bad and we'll do far better just to ignore the whole subject and be guided by our wallets.
Or at least by looking at our wallets in the immediate future and not worrying about the medium or long term.
"We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions,"
That paper includes this very important statement which is not widely understood in public debate around climate change.
"There are, however, model biases toward overestimated stability of the AMOC, both from tuning to the historic climate record..."
All of the criticism of climate models in the general public debate is from a denialist standpoint that paints them as useless and tuned to create alarmist results. However, the contrary situation is quite likely, as the way in which climate models are tuned to match the observed climate is very likely to produce models that are undersensitive to forcing, and so underestimate the impacts of global warming.
This has been seen when climate models have been used to reproduce past climate changes. In general models have struggled to create the magnitude of past warmings and coolings, most likely because they have been tuned to reliably recreate the recently, well-observed climate, with too little random variability, and possibly some missing positive feedback effects.
> China 29% of world emissions, I can’t honestly see them take the remotest interest
If we're going to have posts that don't have any betting content than that's fine and I do appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to write them. But just a little bit of research to check your assumptions might be nice?
A link has been provided at the top of the article.
We know they have a lot of emissions, they have a massive population that is now a long way on the path to being fully industrialized. What you said was "I can't honestly see them take the remotest interest". This is completely wrong, you can see how wrong it is from a few minutes of googling, and it's the whole premise of your argument.
They have massive renewable energy programs, they're building loads of nuclear which the US and EU have almost given up, they're subsidizing EVs and getting loads of traction with them. They are doing the energy transition. And the reason renewables are seeing the spectacular cost reductions they are is because *both* Obama *and* Xi promoted and subsidized them. It's true that their net zero target is somewhat less ambitious than Britain's (2060 vs 2050) for whatever that's worth, but they also set shorter-term targets and mostly hit them.
If you try to you can of course find some measures where they're worse - since you're comparing a massive still-industrializing economy to a medium-sized mature economy you'll be able to find measures on either side. In any country you'll find people like you who will pick the parts to say the other countries aren't doing anything. The way for this stuff to grind to a halt is if British people listen to the British Alanbrooke and Chinese people listen to the Chinese Alanbrooke and each country decides to stop trying to solve the problem on the grounds that they're being taken for a ride by all the other countries.
I've always disliked the argument that we shouldn't pay because we're such a small fraction of the total and our contribution won't be noticed - either others also won't pay and ours is pointless, or they'll pay and ours is unnecessary.
The argument of the free rider through the ages.
And trawling my memories of student days and their aftermath, that rsole flatmate who felt they didn’t have to do the dishes or buy milk because they ‘hardly ever’ cooked food or drank tea.
> China 29% of world emissions, I can’t honestly see them take the remotest interest
If we're going to have posts that don't have any betting content than that's fine and I do appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to write them. But just a little bit of research to check your assumptions might be nice?
A link has been provided at the top of the article.
We know they have a lot of emissions, they have a massive population that is now a long way on the path to being fully industrialized. What you said was "I can't honestly see them take the remotest interest". This is completely wrong, you can see how wrong it is from a few minutes of googling, and it's the whole premise of your argument.
They have massive renewable energy programs, they're building loads of nuclear which the US and EU have almost given up, they're subsidizing EVs and getting loads of traction with them. They are doing the energy transition. And the reason renewables are seeing the spectacular cost reductions they are is because *both* Obama *and* Xi promoted and subsidized them. It's true that their net zero target is somewhat less ambitious than Britain's (2060 vs 2050) for whatever that's worth, but they also set shorter-term targets and mostly hit them.
If you try to you can of course find some measures where they're worse - since you're comparing a massive still-industrializing economy to a medium-sized mature economy you'll be able to find measures on either side. In any country you'll find people like you who will pick the parts to say the other countries aren't doing anything. The way for this stuff to grind to a halt is if British people listen to the British Alanbrooke and Chinese people listen to the Chinese Alanbrooke and each country decides to stop trying to solve the problem on the grounds that they're being taken for a ride by all the other countries.
I've always disliked the argument that we shouldn't pay because we're such a small fraction of the total and our contribution won't be noticed - either others also won't pay and ours is pointless, or they'll pay and ours is unnecessary.
The argument of the free rider through the ages.
So what I've been wondering about this is whether it appeals to people if you take away the victimhood and the resentment. Let's imagine for the sake of argument that everyone agrees that climate change is a terrible threat, and all the countries in the world have stepped up to deal with it, in a way that isn't ruinous, but has some non-trivial cost. Let's also assume we know this is going to work, and the crisis is averted. Do people currently persuaded by Alanbrooke's argument then also say, "everyone is doing it so *we* can get away with not doing it and then we'll be fine"?
I don't mean this as a rhetorical point; There are lots of cases like tax policy where countries do exploit free rider opportunities and everyone seems to be cool with it. I guess the line where a lot of people would support international solidarity would be when there's something existential at stake; For example you don't really hear British people saying, let France and Germany send their ammunition to Ukraine, we can get away with keeping ours".
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we have solved global warming. We have won. Existing measures (on the lower side), plus technology changes, will see average temperatures rise by maybe 2-2.5 degrees. That’s fine (unless you live somewhere like Mauritius, and we should help them).
The bizarre nature of politics, shifts in BAME representation, gender stuff and the rapidity of change is wonderfully illustrated by Wm Hills market for next Tory leader.
The top White Male who is currently an MP is Barclay, 9th in the betting at 25/1. In front of are three WMs not currently MPs; (Boris, Nigel, Frost!).
As for Labour, in the Labour betting, of the top 7 only Wes Streeting is both male and an MP.
Value? Cleverley at 8/1. Streeting at 8/1. Phillipson 20/1 (can she beat the handicapper, being a Catholic?)
The sad truth is that so much of our infrastructure in this country is crumbling. Water pipes. Schools. Hospitals. Roads. Public services.
An ocean of cash will have to be invested because the cost of not doing so is higher. The right can complain about the impact on bills but oceans of money have been pocketed by the likes of Thames Water as they leave the infrastructure to crumble. Not that the right care about people anyway.
So we have to spend an ocean of cash to fix this country. Do we spend it on 21st century things or 19th century things? We need power generation - clean tech or coal? And if we need to have all these things does the right really think that importing them is the best approach?
We used to build things for the world. Clean tech is the opportunity to do so again.
So name your technology. Nuclear perhaps then what ?
Starter for 10: wind. We’re building an awful lot of big wind farms. Why aren’t we developing our own turbines, manufacturing them, and exporting them to other markets?
Off shore wind needs ancillaries- inter connectors, control gear, support ships. Let’s make those.
We’ve given up as an industrial nation. Too hard. Too expensive. Yet we pay more by importing the things we used to export
Ive been arguing for years here along with @another_richard that we have been throwing away our manufacturing . However a lot of the technology lead on wind sits with people like Siemens. The make things here but a multinational always suits itself. Unless we have more domestically controlled businesses I cannot see us recovering technologies. The RR mini nuclear plants may be somewhere we can establish a lead but we're screwing that up atm.
So let’s invest in business then. The Thatcher revolution was to stop investing and to start selling. We sold off the utilities and encouraged British industrial giants like ICI and GEC to split themselves apart and hive off chunks for a quick profit today and don’t worry about tomorrow.
We need to change that. We built up industrial capability before and we can do it again - but we have to invest. And sadly the right seems to see investment as communism - or close to it. Why tie up money investing for the long term when your spiv mates could be making a profit now?
You should be thanking Thatcher.
She was the first major leader to recognise the threat of climate change, and to deliver a UN speech on it. It was partly because of her the 1990 baseline was established, which we've cut against ever since. Because she understood the science.
It's remarkable people keep forgetting this, and that goes for fellow Conservatives too.
I was at a climate camp about 15 years ago, and I ended up in a small group facing off against some cops who were wanting to trample over everyone's tents. Someone thought it would help gee everyone up if we all took turns to talk about why we were there, and for some reason I provoked some odd looks from those assembled by talking about how even Thatcher had acknowledged it was a problem nearly two decades earlier, and had done something about it, and so I was incredibly frustrated we weren't making more progress more quickly.
Thatcher is effectively a four (eight?) letter word in this country.
She got lots of things right and lots of things wrong. The end of her reign and the aftermath she was increasingly wrong and it is that side of her that gets remembered by both the left and right. So much of the left thinks she was evil and much of the right has misunderstood the good things she did and her scientific approach including the benefits of listening to experts and of a broad and balanced cabinet.
It is not fair, just like it is not fair on Blair but thats how it works.
She was unpopular in many parts of the country even in the first 5 years, the obvious exception being the liberation of the Falkland Islands which was popular with most voters.
The reson for her unpopularity in the early years was the quick shift to reduce inflation meant that unemployment shot through the roof. I remember being in New Zealand in 1980 and someone there commenting it is unbelievable that the number of unemployed in the UK was more than the population of New Zealand. This unempoyment hit was not spread equally around the country, so if you lived in South England the problem was minimal, confined to teenagers with no O-levels or poor areas like unless the East End or Brixton. Unemploymant hit much harder in most other parts of the UK.
Day from hell update. After a long dark night of the soul perched on and over the bog I managed to make it to the first airport and flight without barfing and with just a couple of trips to the gents.
Now I’m in Istanbul airport, largest terminal in the known universe, and they don’t have an airside pharmacy. Even LCY has an airside boots. So no Imodium, rehydration sachets or magnesium tablets until home.
The bizarre nature of politics, shifts in BAME representation, gender stuff and the rapidity of change is wonderfully illustrated by Wm Hills market for next Tory leader.
The top White Male who is currently an MP is Barclay, 9th in the betting at 25/1. In front of are three WMs not currently MPs; (Boris, Nigel, Frost!).
As for Labour, in the Labour betting, of the top 7 only Wes Streeting is both male and an MP.
Value? Cleverley at 8/1. Streeting at 8/1. Phillipson 20/1 (can she beat the handicapper, being a Catholic?)
Always bet on Labour picking the white bloke. It appears to be engrained.
The sad truth is that so much of our infrastructure in this country is crumbling. Water pipes. Schools. Hospitals. Roads. Public services.
An ocean of cash will have to be invested because the cost of not doing so is higher. The right can complain about the impact on bills but oceans of money have been pocketed by the likes of Thames Water as they leave the infrastructure to crumble. Not that the right care about people anyway.
So we have to spend an ocean of cash to fix this country. Do we spend it on 21st century things or 19th century things? We need power generation - clean tech or coal? And if we need to have all these things does the right really think that importing them is the best approach?
We used to build things for the world. Clean tech is the opportunity to do so again.
So name your technology. Nuclear perhaps then what ?
Starter for 10: wind. We’re building an awful lot of big wind farms. Why aren’t we developing our own turbines, manufacturing them, and exporting them to other markets?
Off shore wind needs ancillaries- inter connectors, control gear, support ships. Let’s make those.
We’ve given up as an industrial nation. Too hard. Too expensive. Yet we pay more by importing the things we used to export
Ive been arguing for years here along with @another_richard that we have been throwing away our manufacturing . However a lot of the technology lead on wind sits with people like Siemens. The make things here but a multinational always suits itself. Unless we have more domestically controlled businesses I cannot see us recovering technologies. The RR mini nuclear plants may be somewhere we can establish a lead but we're screwing that up atm.
So let’s invest in business then. The Thatcher revolution was to stop investing and to start selling. We sold off the utilities and encouraged British industrial giants like ICI and GEC to split themselves apart and hive off chunks for a quick profit today and don’t worry about tomorrow.
We need to change that. We built up industrial capability before and we can do it again - but we have to invest. And sadly the right seems to see investment as communism - or close to it. Why tie up money investing for the long term when your spiv mates could be making a profit now?
You should be thanking Thatcher.
She was the first major leader to recognise the threat of climate change, and to deliver a UN speech on it. It was partly because of her the 1990 baseline was established, which we've cut against ever since. Because she understood the science.
It's remarkable people keep forgetting this, and that goes for fellow Conservatives too.
I was at a climate camp about 15 years ago, and I ended up in a small group facing off against some cops who were wanting to trample over everyone's tents. Someone thought it would help gee everyone up if we all took turns to talk about why we were there, and for some reason I provoked some odd looks from those assembled by talking about how even Thatcher had acknowledged it was a problem nearly two decades earlier, and had done something about it, and so I was incredibly frustrated we weren't making more progress more quickly.
Thatcher is effectively a four (eight?) letter word in this country.
She got lots of things right and lots of things wrong. The end of her reign and the aftermath she was increasingly wrong and it is that side of her that gets remembered by both the left and right. So much of the left thinks she was evil and much of the right has misunderstood the good things she did and her scientific approach including the benefits of listening to experts and of a broad and balanced cabinet.
It is not fair, just like it is not fair on Blair but thats how it works.
She was unpopular in many parts of the country even in the first 5 years, the obvious exception being the liberation of the Falkland Islands which was popular with most voters.
The reson for her unpopularity in the early years was the quick shift to reduce inflation meant that unemployment shot through the roof. I remember being in New Zealand in 1980 and someone there commenting it is unbelievable that the number of unemployed in the UK was more than the population of New Zealand. This unempoyment hit was not spread equally around the country, so if you lived in South England the problem was minimal, confined to teenagers with no O-levels or poor areas like unless the East End or Brixton. Unemploymant hit much harder in most other parts of the UK.
Sure, but there is a big difference between being unpopular and being right or wrong. She was polarising from the start, but her percentage of good calls declined markedly towards the end.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we have solved global warming. We have won. Existing measures (on the lower side), plus technology changes, will see average temperatures rise by maybe 2-2.5 degrees. That’s fine (unless you live somewhere like Mauritius, and we should help them).
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we have solved global warming. We have won. Existing measures (on the lower side), plus technology changes, will see average temperatures rise by maybe 2-2.5 degrees. That’s fine (unless you live somewhere like Mauritius, and we should help them).
We can declare victory and move on.
We still have to do the actual work.
That’s the thing, I don’t think we do. All the “don’t eat meat” type stuff can be safely ignored, and all the moves towards alternative fuels and recycling is in our self-interest anyway. The economics and incentives of it have shifted.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we have solved global warming. We have won. Existing measures (on the lower side), plus technology changes, will see average temperatures rise by maybe 2-2.5 degrees. That’s fine (unless you live somewhere like Mauritius, and we should help them).
We can declare victory and move on.
We still have to do the actual work.
To a certain extent economics will now do a lot of the heavy lifting for us, if we don't get in the way, because renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels.
There's are things we could do to speed things along, smooth out the transition and fill in some of the gaps, but most of the difficult work has been done. The pump-priming, where we had to put the money into new technology so that it could develop to be better, has been done.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we have solved global warming. We have won. Existing measures (on the lower side), plus technology changes, will see average temperatures rise by maybe 2-2.5 degrees. That’s fine (unless you live somewhere like Mauritius, and we should help them).
We can declare victory and move on.
Restricting the world to just a 2 degree increase globally is like claiming that Labour won the 2017 general election. It will not be a "ah that's OK then" scenario and most of the world will suffer not just Mauritius.
The sad truth is that so much of our infrastructure in this country is crumbling. Water pipes. Schools. Hospitals. Roads. Public services.
An ocean of cash will have to be invested because the cost of not doing so is higher. The right can complain about the impact on bills but oceans of money have been pocketed by the likes of Thames Water as they leave the infrastructure to crumble. Not that the right care about people anyway.
So we have to spend an ocean of cash to fix this country. Do we spend it on 21st century things or 19th century things? We need power generation - clean tech or coal? And if we need to have all these things does the right really think that importing them is the best approach?
We used to build things for the world. Clean tech is the opportunity to do so again.
So name your technology. Nuclear perhaps then what ?
Starter for 10: wind. We’re building an awful lot of big wind farms. Why aren’t we developing our own turbines, manufacturing them, and exporting them to other markets?
Off shore wind needs ancillaries- inter connectors, control gear, support ships. Let’s make those.
We’ve given up as an industrial nation. Too hard. Too expensive. Yet we pay more by importing the things we used to export
Ive been arguing for years here along with @another_richard that we have been throwing away our manufacturing . However a lot of the technology lead on wind sits with people like Siemens. The make things here but a multinational always suits itself. Unless we have more domestically controlled businesses I cannot see us recovering technologies. The RR mini nuclear plants may be somewhere we can establish a lead but we're screwing that up atm.
So let’s invest in business then. The Thatcher revolution was to stop investing and to start selling. We sold off the utilities and encouraged British industrial giants like ICI and GEC to split themselves apart and hive off chunks for a quick profit today and don’t worry about tomorrow.
We need to change that. We built up industrial capability before and we can do it again - but we have to invest. And sadly the right seems to see investment as communism - or close to it. Why tie up money investing for the long term when your spiv mates could be making a profit now?
You should be thanking Thatcher.
She was the first major leader to recognise the threat of climate change, and to deliver a UN speech on it. It was partly because of her the 1990 baseline was established, which we've cut against ever since. Because she understood the science.
It's remarkable people keep forgetting this, and that goes for fellow Conservatives too.
I was at a climate camp about 15 years ago, and I ended up in a small group facing off against some cops who were wanting to trample over everyone's tents. Someone thought it would help gee everyone up if we all took turns to talk about why we were there, and for some reason I provoked some odd looks from those assembled by talking about how even Thatcher had acknowledged it was a problem nearly two decades earlier, and had done something about it, and so I was incredibly frustrated we weren't making more progress more quickly.
Thatcher is effectively a four (eight?) letter word in this country.
She got lots of things right and lots of things wrong. The end of her reign and the aftermath she was increasingly wrong and it is that side of her that gets remembered by both the left and right. So much of the left thinks she was evil and much of the right has misunderstood the good things she did and her scientific approach including the benefits of listening to experts and of a broad and balanced cabinet.
It is not fair, just like it is not fair on Blair but thats how it works.
She was unpopular in many parts of the country even in the first 5 years, the obvious exception being the liberation of the Falkland Islands which was popular with most voters.
The reson for her unpopularity in the early years was the quick shift to reduce inflation meant that unemployment shot through the roof. I remember being in New Zealand in 1980 and someone there commenting it is unbelievable that the number of unemployed in the UK was more than the population of New Zealand. This unempoyment hit was not spread equally around the country, so if you lived in South England the problem was minimal, confined to teenagers with no O-levels or poor areas like unless the East End or Brixton. Unemploymant hit much harder in most other parts of the UK.
Sure, but there is a big difference between being unpopular and being right or wrong. She was polarising from the start, but her percentage of good calls declined markedly towards the end.
Comments
That's not to minimise the suffering, yet the true number of civilian deaths will be substantially lower and in a war there will always be collateral damage and civilians have had weeks of notice now to leave certain areas.
Blair and Brown inherited - and adopted - the Thatcher settlement (see also local government; housing sales; loose regulation of privatised utilities etc).
Everyone since has believed that any reset would involve socialism/Corbynism. That is a fallacy.
this is scarily complacent and poorly informed.
+1.5C is a 50/50 target and on current trend it's going to be more like 2.4.
And if we did manage to hold it back to +1.5C it wouldn't be happening here. The averages are global. At +1.5 the UK is likely to see +6C in summer +2C in winter.
With full fat climate change we are in deep shit. I've see estimates that place 'liveable climate 2100' to be north of Sheffield, south of that you don't make it. Nottingham will be on the coast within a couple of hundred years, maybe less, (things seem to be accelerating beyond the rates expected).
I know the right is trying to undermine the green agenda because they have been bought / corrupted by the carbon companies. This sad header is typical of the denier playbook.
We will be seeing one from the Meat Industry tomorrow.
What are the chances it is entirely benign? And beneficial?
Of course we could stop AI development now, but also we can’t. The economic and political structure of the planet makes that a non runner. So AI - then AGI - then ASI - is coming, in the next 3-30 years depending on which expert you consult
And even the people who estimate 30 years think AI will profoundly change humanity long before then. For good or ill
I retract my accusation that he pulled the number from his backside!
We do of course, still get something for our money - it doesn’t evaporate into thin air. I look forward to Alan’s suggestions as to how we can invest that £1.4trillion more effectively.
I don't see many asset sweaters outside the tory party/government and their friends...
do you count yourself in that group?
PS: I never insult my own country, only morons like you with your blue tinged spectacles.
Hinkley C required £37 billion in Government and bill-payer subsidies to make it happen. Still not producing, of course.
In a world of post-HS2 value for money, it is worth noting that Hinkley C has a life of project cost that has now reached £50 billion. For 60 years of production. (Then you have to demolish it - very expensively. Whilst keeping the waste products safe for thousands of years more.)
A tidal power station of identical output that costs £10 billion (of private capital) will last for twice as long. No fuel to buy, no waste products to manage.) So to compare apples and apples, there will need to be a Hinkley D ready to produce in 60 years time. Let's be generous on inflation over the next 60 years and say that Hinkley D can be delivered for £75 billion.
To compare power output for 120 years, tidal is £10 billion with another set of turbines in say 60 years. Let's say £15 billion. Compared with an identical nuclear power output at a cost of £125 bilion.
Now, let's talk value for money....
But you need to recognise the bits of her legacy which were, and still are damaging.
But we're not going to agree on this, ultimately there will always be a level of civilian collateral. Israel, according to the Saudis, have offered a ceasefire in return for freeing the hostages. That offer was rejected, this is all on Hamas now.
I’m sorry to bore on but talking airily about the future without referencing it is like talking airily about the future of hunter gathering - and only hunter gathering - even as the first farmers were sowing einkorn wheat in the Kurdish hills
Hamas hide in civilian buildings. Hamas tell the civilians to stay. Hamas launch attacks from civilian areas. Hamas hold hostages and refuse a ceasefire.
This is the Hamas plan. Have Israel martyr as many civilians as possible. I keep reading stuff which infers that Israel has wanton disregard for human life and who will think of the Palestinians. Who exactly? Not Hamas.
This is the post-Thatcher settlement. Spivism.
Betting PostF1: backed Norris each way at 9.5 to 'win' qualifying:
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2023/10/mexico-pre-qualifying-2023.html
Looks tight. Probably between him, Leclerc, and Perez to be runner-up to Verstappen.
Well that is a lot less scary than £1.4 trn. I wonder why it wasnt mentioned if this was supposed to be a serious argument?
* I also note that the savings at the end outweigh the costs by over £10bn a year so the longer you extend the time horizon and see the benefit from earlier investment, the less the net cost would be.
Rishi seems to get it. One advantage of a techbro as PM.
Useful background on his summit here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67172230
I wonder if, in the sweep of history, his looming loss of power may be seen as something of a downer given the implications of AI.
Like losing Mrs T just as she was majoring on the risks of climate change.
If public funds are getting it going then they deserve to profit from it.
Come to think of it, that would be terrifying in a trench in a war zone.
Now imagine them with rifles as their main appendage.
The future isn't just scary, it's positively dystopian at this point.
Edit: beaten by EiT!
This is the U.K., after all.
https://thehill.com/business/4280477-gm-stellantis-to-offer-to-match-pay-hike-included-in-uaw-ford-deal/
And if costs over-ran by more than 10%, you got replaced as operator.
We are not talking HS2 here. These numbers are robust - and will be delivered.
Cost estimates are largely based on current technology. Renewables will get cheaper; fossil fuels won’t.
A small example is the new magnet technology just announced in the US. One of the limiting factors for EVs, wind turbines etc was world production capacity for rare earths. That’s just gone away.
As for the car industry: we used to be a giant in car manufacturing. Now, for whatever reasons, we're not, at least in the mass market. We do have a fair few innovative and successful companies in the low-volume, high-value market though; and we have a load of F1 teams based here.
OTOH, people do make vast investments (overall investment is nearly one fifth of GDP). Mobile telecommunications firms spent immense sums establishing networks, before getting any return.
https://justgiving.com/campaign/savelivstreet
I must admit the proposed building looks rather poor.
I’m very sympathetic to the case for tidal, but are the figures you’re quoting today’s costs (I think you’ve been using those numbers for a while) ?
Inventing something is one thing. Getting it to production with reliability and cost control is a long long road.
This mostly reflects steel and turbine costs. But one of the main costs is rock. Inflation hasn't had such a massive impact there on quarrying.
And we've been building sea walls in this country for centuries...
What about U.K. planning… ?
A 5000 piece jigsaw of vested interests, and the screaming of activists amplified by the media, make it almost impossible to look impartially at 'the science', but assuming that human activity is adding 'the bit that matters' to carbon emissions, it's good for the UK to get to Net Zero, especially if the journey there leads us to more efficient and environmentally-beneficial ways of doing things. However, as we also know that CO2 is (amongst other things) plant food, and given that human initiatives often result in unintended consequences, we should also be prepared to reverse out of Net Zero quickly and start pumping out CO2 more if we need to. I am thinking of the recent ban on a type of maritime fuel, which is likely to have lead to the recent concerning increases in sea temperature.
This being the case, the problem is not Net Zero, but the ways we get there. Deindustrialisation has already been mentioned. Permanent moves toward more expensive and less reliable forms of energy is another. Driving poor people off the roads is another. These are all bad things, and not easy to reverse.
What we need is actually a complete 180 in how we think about Net Zero. The target should be aimed for, but in creative ways that don't undermine our economy, or standard of living. I disagree that Net Zero is all about energy consumption. Science says otherwise:
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/managing-uk-agriculture-rock-dust-could-absorb-45-cent-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-needed-net-zero
This change in approach would necessitate Net Zero becoming its own department, not attached to the Energy Security department (which should be focusing on just that), or perhaps just make it like the vaccines, and give the problem to Kate Bingham and a small team to deal with. Net Zero would still require a lot of tax payers' money, and for the Government to place big bets, but supported by an economy allowed to grow - like doing covid without lockdowns.
With 80-odd percent local approval.
"investment in low-carbon energy continues to grow at a staggering pace. If low-carbon capacity growth meets forecasts, it would be sufficient to cover expected electricity demand growth and could even put China on track to peak its emissions within two years."
India is as Alan says still expanding fast, but there too the arc is bending:
https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/assessing-india-s-ambitious-climate-commitments/
I read a lot of international press, and everywhere there are commentators saying "Why are we making these sacrifices when nobody else is bothering much?" It's one issue where global action is essential and on the whole actually happening. Of course we shouldn't be the odd man out at either extreme, but it's right that we keep up with the pack. As a benefit, the whole planet will be buying renewable stuff going forward, so it's a good idea to aim to be market leaders in its production and use.
It ain't, because we've had shit government, both local and national, for decades, and we get rinsed by big business. We can't even build a fecking trainline. I read something last week that stated that the Thames crossing road project has spent 270 million quid just on planning applications. 800 million before work has even started. Norway built the longest road tunnel in the world for less than our paperwork!
I'll get shouted at and told that you can't compare Norway and the UK as the geology and demographics and population density is totally different, but I reckon my point about shit government and rinsing big business still stands.
I'm not a massive fan of Cyclefree's off-piste diversions away from politics but at least they're cogently argued and generally interesting. This isn't. This is boomer prejudice masquerading as commentary, and if I wanted to read half-arsed boomer opinions about nEt zERo!!11 then I'd go over to Facebook which at least has the decency to intersperse the drivel with pictures of attractive 20-something influencers on top of a mountain or something.
I'm not going to flounce because I'm a third-division minor commenter on PB at best, and no one would, or indeed should, notice if I cleared off. But I don't see a whole bunch of point in sticking around for apprentice Allister Heathery like this. See you in the next politics thread.
So, lacking articles about elections, and betting articles reducing to screenshots+comments instead of the more time-consuming researched ones, PB is moving from a site that talks about betting on elections to a site that talks about politics, and this will probably continue until Q3 2024.
So although I liked your article and look forward to its successor, it is accompanied by a wistful regret of what we are losing.
I think it shows how fast the technology is developing that, even in cloudy West Cork you can do so much with solar power.
A couple of decades ago it was hard for people to believe that the technology would improve so that this would happen. People holding onto those old views are like the generals insisting there would always be a place for cavalry on the battlefield. The world is moving on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legged_Squad_Support_System
It is not fair, just like it is not fair on Blair but thats how it works.
As we know, the UK is kept warmer than it would otherwise be by the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports heat from the tropics and towards north-western Europe. Warm water flows northwards near the ocean surface, becoming colder and also saltier due to evaporation, until its increased density makes it sink. It than flows back to the tropics as a deep ocean current.
The fear is that, as the world warms, melt-water from the Greenland ice cap will reduce the salinity of the water so much that it no longer sinks in the north and the AMOC stops. There is evidence of sharp swings in the climate of the north Atlantic as the world warmed into the current interglacial period, and it is thought that these may well have been caused by collapses in the AMOC due to melting ice at that time.
The upshot is that, while the UK is currently warming, it may well be plunged back into a period of sharp cooling as the AMOC slows and possibly stops, even as the global temperature keeps rising. Eventually, though, the AMOC will restart and the temperature of the UK will rise very rapidly.
In short, the Earth's climate is a complex, chaotic system, and is very unlikely to change in a linear fashion. Rather, we are likely to experience a kaleidoscope of fluctuating weather patterns as the global temperature rises. Dealing with this is going to be a major challenge for our descendants.
However, the way that we and most Western economies are facing this change is nothing short of negligent. The common belief seems to be that the market and society will just adjust to the change, with a bit of prodding and regulation at the top. What’s more, the change is not being sold properly to the electorate. It has allowed a narrative to be set that you’ll fly less, drive less, move less, be colder and more miserable in your homes, have generally less fun and oh it’ll be costing you more as well.
The first thing governments should be doing is investing in new technologies and research, rather than handing out diktats on end dates for existing tech without having practical replacements ready to go. We are such an innovative species - I have no doubt we can find the technology to deliver the same standards of living without the use of carbon. But we need to develop those, and refine those.
And the second point is that government needs to be more invested in the process. Western governments seem to think that the change will be akin to the Industrial Revolution - with the capital there and the market adjusting people will just build and make and change things automatically without much intervention from the government. But we live in a very different world from the 18th and 19th centuries. Our society is more complex, more caring, less deferential. Government needs to bring the people with it, and to do so it needs a plan, and the power, to bring about the change in an equitable and fair way that protects its people and their living standards, without relying on the market to do it all for it.
(Geddit? Geddit??? It has two meani[that's enough - Ed])
Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation
"We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions,"
The argument of the free rider through the ages.
The problem with global warming has always been that it is a global problem and a long term problem. No one country can solve the problem alone not even China. Even if China somehow magiced away their entire CO2 output in the next 12 months, most of the slack would be taken up by India and many other countries because coal, oil and gas would become so much cheaper.
There are two advantages with taking unilateral action though. The first is that it helps on the political level. The UK has in the last 10 years become a world leader, but quite a lot of countries have similar intentions and are not far behind. As more countries get on board the harder it will be for other countries to continue with the "I don't care" policy to climate change. One country has to be first and with out a first there cannot be a second or a hundredth country. The second advanage is being a leader in the reduction of CO2 & Methane brings a huge economic advantage, in manufacturing and technical expertise. There are other sectors in which 'climate leading countries' will also have a head start, agriculture being a clear example.
Looking at it from the side of inaction, doing nothing will also cost a huge amount of money. The cost will be global, but Russia, China and India will also be hit very hard if they continue of their business as usual approach. It is better to get most countries to invest in solving the problem rather than paying for the result of the problems.
We are in a global multiplayer version of the prisoner's dilemma. We need to find a way out of the prisoners dilemma, for all the "prisoner's" to collabrate and to minimise the global cost. I look forward to reading Alanbrooke's solution to the prisoner's dilemma.
People like Alanbrooke have a far more accurate understand of complex nonlinear systems than anyone to be found in a university, and they just know that whatever happens it isn't going to be too bad and we'll do far better just to ignore the whole subject and be guided by our wallets.
Or at least by looking at our wallets in the immediate future and not worrying about the medium or long term.
"There are, however, model biases toward overestimated stability of the AMOC, both from tuning to the historic climate record..."
All of the criticism of climate models in the general public debate is from a denialist standpoint that paints them as useless and tuned to create alarmist results. However, the contrary situation is quite likely, as the way in which climate models are tuned to match the observed climate is very likely to produce models that are undersensitive to forcing, and so underestimate the impacts of global warming.
This has been seen when climate models have been used to reproduce past climate changes. In general models have struggled to create the magnitude of past warmings and coolings, most likely because they have been tuned to reliably recreate the recently, well-observed climate, with too little random variability, and possibly some missing positive feedback effects.
I don't mean this as a rhetorical point; There are lots of cases like tax policy where countries do exploit free rider opportunities and everyone seems to be cool with it. I guess the line where a lot of people would support international solidarity would be when there's something existential at stake; For example you don't really hear British people saying, let France and Germany send their ammunition to Ukraine, we can get away with keeping ours".
We can declare victory and move on.
The top White Male who is currently an MP is Barclay, 9th in the betting at 25/1. In front of are three WMs not currently MPs; (Boris, Nigel, Frost!).
As for Labour, in the Labour betting, of the top 7 only Wes Streeting is both male and an MP.
Value? Cleverley at 8/1. Streeting at 8/1. Phillipson 20/1 (can she beat the handicapper, being a Catholic?)
The reson for her unpopularity in the early years was the quick shift to reduce inflation meant that unemployment shot through the roof. I remember being in New Zealand in 1980 and someone there commenting it is unbelievable that the number of unemployed in the UK was more than the population of New Zealand. This unempoyment hit was not spread equally around the country, so if you lived in South England the problem was minimal, confined to teenagers with no O-levels or poor areas like unless the East End or Brixton. Unemploymant hit much harder in most other parts of the UK.
Now I’m in Istanbul airport, largest terminal in the known universe, and they don’t have an airside pharmacy. Even LCY has an airside boots. So no Imodium, rehydration sachets or magnesium tablets until home.
Travelling while ill is not recommended.
"And then of course there’s the reality climate change might have some benefits."
Sorry, but you've lost all credibility.
There's are things we could do to speed things along, smooth out the transition and fill in some of the gaps, but most of the difficult work has been done. The pump-priming, where we had to put the money into new technology so that it could develop to be better, has been done.