Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
We've been having that argument on PB for a couple of decades - certainly pre-Brexit.
Those who argued going all in unfortunately lost that argument - pretty well across the west. Which is one of the reasons China dominates renewables manufacturing.
What made the incrementalism in the UK worse is the perennial inability of government to make prompt decisions and get stuff done.
We did lose that argument, but on the other hand I think we're in a better place than I expected despite losing that argument. The energy transition that is happening now means that the worst case scenarios are no longer possible. That's a win.
There's a lot more we could do to reduce the warming we end up committing to, and we're going to experience some pretty bad impacts due to missing the opportunity to make the energy transition more quickly, but I think things could have been a lot worse.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Is anything in China free market capitalism?
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
It is because "the market" does not take into account negative externalities that we are in such a mess.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
We've been having that argument on PB for a couple of decades - certainly pre-Brexit.
Those who argued going all in unfortunately lost that argument - pretty well across the west. Which is one of the reasons China dominates renewables manufacturing.
What made the incrementalism in the UK worse is the perennial inability of government to make prompt decisions and get stuff done.
We did lose that argument, but on the other hand I think we're in a better place than I expected despite losing that argument. The energy transition that is happening now means that the worst case scenarios are no longer possible. That's a win.
There's a lot more we could do to reduce the warming we end up committing to, and we're going to experience some pretty bad impacts due to missing the opportunity to make the energy transition more quickly, but I think things could have been a lot worse.
I more or less expected the market based solution that we've arrived at, but the extent of China's complete domination of the manufacturing did surprise me.
Insane footage of Iranian police officers wielding automatic rifles opening firing on U.S. Air Force HH-60G “Pave Hawk” Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) Helicopters flying low earlier today over Southern Iran, during the search for the crewmembers of an American F-15E Strike Eagle shot down by Iran.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Again, I kinda agree. We are making real progress. But, as you say, people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time, and the Earth has been warming by small percentage changes over long periods of time. Global warming is already have significant detrimental effects. It will go on having significant detrimental effects without CO2 output falling to zero within the year, which isn't going to happen, of course.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Is anything in China free market capitalism?
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
The market would have had better answers to both.
I'm a big fan of capitalism, but this simply isn't true
Market forces are dynamic and productive, but they must be regulated. My maternal grandmother Annie Maud Jory was a bal-maiden - a ten year old girl sent to work, barefoot, above a Cornish tin mine in all weathers (sorting rocks for useful ore). She died young, I am confident there is a causal effect at work
Market forces would send kids down mines today, quite likely. They are small, nimble and easy to boss about. You need regulations to prevent this
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Is anything in China free market capitalism?
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
The market would have had better answers to both.
China - 50,000 kilometres of High Speed rail.
India - 500 kilometres of High Speed rail (under construction!)
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Is anything in China free market capitalism?
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
The market would have had better answers to both.
I'm a big fan of capitalism, but this simply isn't true
Market forces are dynamic and productive, but they must be regulated. My maternal grandmother Annie Maud Jory was a bal-maiden - a ten year old girl sent to work, barefoot, above a Cornish tin mine in all weathers (sorting rocks for useful ore). She died young, I am confident there is a causal effect at work
Market forces would send kids down mines today, quite likely. They are small, nimble and easy to boss about. You need regulations to prevent this
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
I'm more hopeful than I was 10 years ago certainly but as others have and will state, we have a lot of pain to get through before we reach a new equilibrium based on renewables and, who knows, perhaps, one day, clean fusion energy.
We have the challenge of a Super El Nino approaching this year and next which will be a shock to many with droughts and heatwaves - I fear we could have a very long and very hot summer here and for all those who relish long lazy afternoons in the pub garden, a fortnight of temperatures at or above 40c and high night time minima are going to test a lot of people and won't be funny. We had a taste of it in 2022 but La Nina conditions since have insulated us (so to speak).
In other parts of the world, climatic conditions are going to be more existentially difficult and the next immigration challenge will beclimate refugees displaced north from parts of the world which are or have become borderline uninhabitable.
Yet, I remain convinced human ingenuity will see us through and the one thing the UK can do is lead the way in looking at solutions aimed at mitigating the worst impacts of climate change and developing new socio-economic models based on a Net Zero (or close to it) economy.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Is anything in China free market capitalism?
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
The market would have had better answers to both.
I'm a big fan of capitalism, but this simply isn't true
Market forces are dynamic and productive, but they must be regulated. My maternal grandmother Annie Maud Jory was a bal-maiden - a ten year old girl sent to work, barefoot, above a Cornish tin mine in all weathers (sorting rocks for useful ore). She died young, I am confident there is a causal effect at work
Market forces would send kids down mines today, quite likely. They are small, nimble and easy to boss about. You need regulations to prevent this
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Is anything in China free market capitalism?
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
The market would have had better answers to both.
I'm a big fan of capitalism, but this simply isn't true
Market forces are dynamic and productive, but they must be regulated. My maternal grandmother Annie Maud Jory was a bal-maiden - a ten year old girl sent to work, barefoot, above a Cornish tin mine in all weathers (sorting rocks for useful ore). She died young, I am confident there is a causal effect at work
Market forces would send kids down mines today, quite likely. They are small, nimble and easy to boss about. You need regulations to prevent this
Well done for that massive non sequitur.
No-one was arguing for anarcho-capitalism and a total absence of any form of government role, merely that governments aren't the answer to this except as an enabler - whereas markets are.
Insane footage of Iranian police officers wielding automatic rifles opening firing on U.S. Air Force HH-60G “Pave Hawk” Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) Helicopters flying low earlier today over Southern Iran, during the search for the crewmembers of an American F-15E Strike Eagle shot down by Iran.
That's the most disappointing "insane footage" I've ever seen
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
It is because "the market" does not take into account negative externalities that we are in such a mess.
Markets are deeply out of fashion right now, but the facts are as true as they ever have been.
The older one gets the more one realises that Fatch was right, about almost everything.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Is anything in China free market capitalism?
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
The market would have had better answers to both.
I'm a big fan of capitalism, but this simply isn't true
Market forces are dynamic and productive, but they must be regulated. My maternal grandmother Annie Maud Jory was a bal-maiden - a ten year old girl sent to work, barefoot, above a Cornish tin mine in all weathers (sorting rocks for useful ore). She died young, I am confident there is a causal effect at work
Market forces would send kids down mines today, quite likely. They are small, nimble and easy to boss about. You need regulations to prevent this
Well done for that massive non sequitur.
No-one was arguing for anarcho-capitalism and a total absence of any form of government role, merely that governments aren't the answer to this except as an enabler - whereas markets are.
Er, OK
I'm not sure this is a productive debate, for either of us, we may have crossed wires - so let's move on
I wish you a very Happy Easter! May all the Lord's blessing fall upon you and yours. Indeed Happy Easter to all PBers, especially those in peril on the high seas
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, one of the first Windows PC games I played.
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, one of the first Windows PC games I played.
It entered service in 1976! While military technology advances rapidly, it's amazing how long airframes remain in service.
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
When I was in the US (25 years ago) they used to fly round the office from the local air base
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Is anything in China free market capitalism?
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
The market would have had better answers to both.
Very much so.
China operates industrial policy, and the state exercises power impossible in a (and antithetical to) democracy, but it also allows the exercise of raw capitalism on a widespread basis to achieve its ends.
"The market" had no answers to global warming twenty years ago; it took state action to prime the pump.
There's no good reason - other than political will - that the west surrendered (for example) the solar industry.
He spent 30 years drinking and whoring (to a quite astonishig extent, possibly four figures). His family never found out about the hookers, they certainly knew about his drinking
He gave it all up, abruptly, 3 years ago, after he nearly died of kidney disease. Today he looked healthy and fit, relaxed and happy. Indeed I've never seen him more contented. Enjoying life, and his interesting career (an artist) but taking it all more slowly. He will drink the odd glass of wine but no more, he has abandoned hookers entirely
Can anyone else come up with original, satirical, political nicknames?
Yes
Do you have any PB examples, since Chris Creases Huhne?
THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
This has never been bettered, in the history of British political nicknaming
That does resound, even nearly twenty years on; I know exactly who you mean
I prefer a nickname with a hint of wordplay
That was coined by my stalker, who is, to be fair, a genius, so none of us can hope to match him
But I was quite pleased with
Skyr Toolmakersson
Which captures Sir Keir's blandness - like Icelandic yoghurt, skyr, but also combined his two stupid first names "Sir Keir" into one easy to type four letter word, Skyr, and also adds more IcelandIc-ness with his constant whining about his Toolmaker dad: Toolmakersson
So there is quite a lot of wordplay there. But, I confess, it is not as profoundly intense as THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
"As rich as Creases" remains one of the all-time PB highpoints. Who created it? @stjohn?
Sorry to pop your balloon, but I was the one that created "Skyr" on here.
Also, the related Downhill Skyr.
I think Alanbrooke or myelf might have been the originator of the Brittas tag. I remeber getting so much shit from his fans. Maybe, deep down, they knew it really hit a chord.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
Which is one reason for what I argued yesterday: democracy is doomed
It is no longer producing optimal results. The oldest democracy in the world is ruled by Keir Starmer, the most powerful democracy in the world is ruled by Donald Trump, the "only democracy in the Middle East", Israel, has been ruled by Bibi Netanyahu for 18 years and has now introduced a Nazi-like race-based death penalty
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
It is because "the market" does not take into account negative externalities that we are in such a mess.
Markets are deeply out of fashion right now, but the facts are as true as they ever have been.
The older one gets the more one realises that Fatch was right, about almost everything.
Best PM we ever had.
She really wasn't. The assumption that Thatcher got everything right is absolutely responsible for many of our problems today.
She wasn't a bad PM, but a far more sceptical approach to her legacy would have made it a far better legacy.
He spent 30 years drinking and whoring (to a quite astonishig extent, possibly four figures). His family never found out about the hookers, they certainly knew about his drinking
He gave it all up, abruptly, 3 years ago, after he nearly died of kidney disease. Today he looked healthy and fit, relaxed and happy. Indeed I've never seen him more contented. Enjoying life, and his interesting career (an artist) but taking it all more slowly. He will drink the odd glass of wine but no more, he has abandoned hookers entirely
He spent 30 years drinking and whoring (to a quite astonishig extent, possibly four figures). His family never found out about the hookers, they certainly knew about his drinking
He gave it all up, abruptly, 3 years ago, after he nearly died of kidney disease. Today he looked healthy and fit, relaxed and happy. Indeed I've never seen him more contented. Enjoying life, and his interesting career (an artist) but taking it all more slowly. He will drink the odd glass of wine but no more, he has abandoned hookers entirely
There ARE second chances: he took his
I shall mull over this advice! I’m desirous of having non-drunk sex and also not getting drunk but I need a girlfriend I think to stop both but I’m still too in love with someone and hope that the drunk sex and drinks help find one bit all I seem to get is the need to shower with hibiscrub and amusing conversations with taxi drivers on the way home after having to ask the woman to tell them where they live so I can leave.
Can anyone else come up with original, satirical, political nicknames?
Yes
Do you have any PB examples, since Chris Creases Huhne?
THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
This has never been bettered, in the history of British political nicknaming
That does resound, even nearly twenty years on; I know exactly who you mean
I prefer a nickname with a hint of wordplay
That was coined by my stalker, who is, to be fair, a genius, so none of us can hope to match him
But I was quite pleased with
Skyr Toolmakersson
Which captures Sir Keir's blandness - like Icelandic yoghurt, skyr, but also combined his two stupid first names "Sir Keir" into one easy to type four letter word, Skyr, and also adds more IcelandIc-ness with his constant whining about his Toolmaker dad: Toolmakersson
So there is quite a lot of wordplay there. But, I confess, it is not as profoundly intense as THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
"As rich as Creases" remains one of the all-time PB highpoints. Who created it? @stjohn?
Sorry to pop your balloon, but I was the one that created "Skyr" on here.
Also, the related Downhill Skyr.
I think Alanbrooke or myelf might have been the originator of the Brittas tag. I remeber getting so much shit from his fans. Maybe, deep down, they knew it really hit a chord.
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, one of the first Windows PC games I played.
It entered service in 1976! While military technology advances rapidly, it's amazing how long airframes remain in service.
The B-52 entered service in 1955. It will still be flying in twenty years time.
The A-10 will be scrapped pretty soon.
None of the airframes are original; they've all undergone extensive upgrades and (eg) wing replacement.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
As to being in a 'really great place' I remain unconvinced.
It seems to me the world has convinced itself of something that isn't true. The truth is that falling CO2 output = rising CO2. Just as falling borrowing levels = rising debt. Just as falling inflation rates = rising prices.
Our brains are wired to hear 'falling' as meaning falling. And we unconsciously apply it to the total amount instead of just the amount of the increase.
Unless the science is wrong, rising CO2 = more climate change and warming. I hope the science is wrong, though I don't suppose it is, because I don't think there's another way out of it.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
Which is one reason for what I argued yesterday: democracy is doomed
It is no longer producing optimal results. The oldest democracy in the world is ruled by Keir Starmer, the most powerful democracy in the world is ruled by Donald Trump, the "only democracy in the Middle East", Israel, has been ruled by Bibi Netanyahu for 18 years and has now introduced a Nazi-like race-based death penalty
Democracy is done
British democracy also pulled off the industrial revolution, with enormous investments in national infrastucture. I'm sure someone will have them to hand - astonishing percentages of GDP being spent on canals etc. Then came motorways, genuinely world-class telecoms... it's possible. Don't give up hope.
The best example of a free, rabid market delivering something completely fucked up are the two main stations in Glasgow. Misaligned by 350m and a nuisance to this day. That's why market-ultras are wrong.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
Which is one reason for what I argued yesterday: democracy is doomed
It is no longer producing optimal results. The oldest democracy in the world is ruled by Keir Starmer, the most powerful democracy in the world is ruled by Donald Trump, the "only democracy in the Middle East", Israel, has been ruled by Bibi Netanyahu for 18 years and has now introduced a Nazi-like race-based death penalty
Can anyone else come up with original, satirical, political nicknames?
Yes
Do you have any PB examples, since Chris Creases Huhne?
THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
This has never been bettered, in the history of British political nicknaming
That does resound, even nearly twenty years on; I know exactly who you mean
I prefer a nickname with a hint of wordplay
That was coined by my stalker, who is, to be fair, a genius, so none of us can hope to match him
But I was quite pleased with
Skyr Toolmakersson
Which captures Sir Keir's blandness - like Icelandic yoghurt, skyr, but also combined his two stupid first names "Sir Keir" into one easy to type four letter word, Skyr, and also adds more IcelandIc-ness with his constant whining about his Toolmaker dad: Toolmakersson
So there is quite a lot of wordplay there. But, I confess, it is not as profoundly intense as THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
"As rich as Creases" remains one of the all-time PB highpoints. Who created it? @stjohn?
Sorry to pop your balloon, but I was the one that created "Skyr" on here.
Also, the related Downhill Skyr.
I think Alanbrooke or myelf might have been the originator of the Brittas tag. I remeber getting so much shit from his fans. Maybe, deep down, they knew it really hit a chord.
What is the alternative to natural gas in the bulk production of fertiliser which is keeping a third of humanity alive ?
The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary shock. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in how energy flows around the world, and Europe is not positioned for it.
This is the Fourth Systemic Risk-driven global crisis (after GFC, Covid and Russia‘s war on Ukraine) and it will hit global economy like a tsunami due to physical scarcity and supply-shock induced multiplicative cascading effects.
This is not just about higher gas bills. It is about whether European farms can grow food next year. Whether European factories and industries can keep running. Whether European governments can hold together when people cannot heat their homes or afford bread. Here is what must be done immediately:
1. Protect fertilizer production before the upcoming planting season Natural gas is the raw material for fertilizers. No gas → no fertilizers → harvests collapse within two seasons. Europe came dangerously close to this in 2022. There is still no law preventing it from happening again. Governments must guarantee that fertilizer plants get gas first before any other industrial use. This is the fastest path from an energy crisis to a food crisis, and it is entirely preventable.
2. Turn political promises into real contracts Europe has signed countless “energy partnership” declarations with like-minded countries the US, Canada, and Australia. Declarations do not keep the lights on. Binding, long-term supply agreements (real commercial contracts) need to be finalised within the year. Canada must get its act together and boost production ad hoc. Asian buyers are already moving faster.
Can anyone else come up with original, satirical, political nicknames?
Yes
Do you have any PB examples, since Chris Creases Huhne?
THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
This has never been bettered, in the history of British political nicknaming
That does resound, even nearly twenty years on; I know exactly who you mean
I prefer a nickname with a hint of wordplay
That was coined by my stalker, who is, to be fair, a genius, so none of us can hope to match him
But I was quite pleased with
Skyr Toolmakersson
Which captures Sir Keir's blandness - like Icelandic yoghurt, skyr, but also combined his two stupid first names "Sir Keir" into one easy to type four letter word, Skyr, and also adds more IcelandIc-ness with his constant whining about his Toolmaker dad: Toolmakersson
So there is quite a lot of wordplay there. But, I confess, it is not as profoundly intense as THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
"As rich as Creases" remains one of the all-time PB highpoints. Who created it? @stjohn?
Sorry to pop your balloon, but I was the one that created "Skyr" on here.
Also, the related Downhill Skyr.
I think Alanbrooke or myelf might have been the originator of the Brittas tag. I remeber getting so much shit from his fans. Maybe, deep down, they knew it really hit a chord.
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, one of the first Windows PC games I played.
It entered service in 1976! While military technology advances rapidly, it's amazing how long airframes remain in service.
The B-52 entered service in 1955. It will still be flying in twenty years time.
The A-10 will be scrapped pretty soon.
None of the airframes are original; they've all undergone extensive upgrades and (eg) wing replacement.
I don't think there is an original rivet in the B-52.
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, one of the first Windows PC games I played.
It entered service in 1976! While military technology advances rapidly, it's amazing how long airframes remain in service.
The B-52 entered service in 1955. It will still be flying in twenty years time.
The A-10 will be scrapped pretty soon.
None of the airframes are original; they've all undergone extensive upgrades and (eg) wing replacement.
I don't think there is an original rivet in the B-52.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
Which is one reason for what I argued yesterday: democracy is doomed
It is no longer producing optimal results. The oldest democracy in the world is ruled by Keir Starmer, the most powerful democracy in the world is ruled by Donald Trump, the "only democracy in the Middle East", Israel, has been ruled by Bibi Netanyahu for 18 years and has now introduced a Nazi-like race-based death penalty
Democracy is done
British democracy also pulled off the industrial revolution, with enormous investments in national infrastucture. I'm sure someone will have them to hand - astonishing percentages of GDP being spent on canals etc. Then came motorways, genuinely world-class telecoms... it's possible. Don't give up hope.
The best example of a free, rabid market delivering something completely fucked up are the two main stations in Glasgow. Misaligned by 350m and a nuisance to this day. That's why market-ultras are wrong.
If we had kept listening to the policy advisors, we would *still* be investing money in hydrogen fuelled cars.
This was the Proper Policy - The oil companies would move to making Hydrogen (the fact they have not much expertise in the area was ignored), it would be sold in existing filling stations (apart from the requirement to completely rebuild and often relocate every filling station, due to hydrogen's safety requirements) to power the hydrogen cars (that were never actually got to production ready).
If was the Proper Policy because the supply chain companies would be protected (apart from that was bollocks) and taxing hydrogen would be a continuation of fuel duty.
Sadly, Reality failed to understand the Proper Policy. Or implement it.
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, one of the first Windows PC games I played.
It entered service in 1976! While military technology advances rapidly, it's amazing how long airframes remain in service.
The B-52 entered service in 1955. It will still be flying in twenty years time.
The A-10 will be scrapped pretty soon.
None of the airframes are original; they've all undergone extensive upgrades and (eg) wing replacement.
I don't think there is an original rivet in the B-52.
Can anyone else come up with original, satirical, political nicknames?
Yes
Do you have any PB examples, since Chris Creases Huhne?
THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
This has never been bettered, in the history of British political nicknaming
That does resound, even nearly twenty years on; I know exactly who you mean
I prefer a nickname with a hint of wordplay
That was coined by my stalker, who is, to be fair, a genius, so none of us can hope to match him
But I was quite pleased with
Skyr Toolmakersson
Which captures Sir Keir's blandness - like Icelandic yoghurt, skyr, but also combined his two stupid first names "Sir Keir" into one easy to type four letter word, Skyr, and also adds more IcelandIc-ness with his constant whining about his Toolmaker dad: Toolmakersson
So there is quite a lot of wordplay there. But, I confess, it is not as profoundly intense as THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
"As rich as Creases" remains one of the all-time PB highpoints. Who created it? @stjohn?
Sorry to pop your balloon, but I was the one that created "Skyr" on here.
Also, the related Downhill Skyr.
I think Alanbrooke or myelf might have been the originator of the Brittas tag. I remeber getting so much shit from his fans. Maybe, deep down, they knew it really hit a chord.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
Is anything in China free market capitalism?
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
The market would have had better answers to both.
I'm a big fan of capitalism, but this simply isn't true
Market forces are dynamic and productive, but they must be regulated. My maternal grandmother Annie Maud Jory was a bal-maiden - a ten year old girl sent to work, barefoot, above a Cornish tin mine in all weathers (sorting rocks for useful ore). She died young, I am confident there is a causal effect at work
Market forces would send kids down mines today, quite likely. They are small, nimble and easy to boss about. You need regulations to prevent this
We could sent Barty’s kids down first to test his economic liberalism.
What is the alternative to natural gas in the bulk production of fertiliser which is keeping a third of humanity alive ?
The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary shock. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in how energy flows around the world, and Europe is not positioned for it.
This is the Fourth Systemic Risk-driven global crisis (after GFC, Covid and Russia‘s war on Ukraine) and it will hit global economy like a tsunami due to physical scarcity and supply-shock induced multiplicative cascading effects.
This is not just about higher gas bills. It is about whether European farms can grow food next year. Whether European factories and industries can keep running. Whether European governments can hold together when people cannot heat their homes or afford bread. Here is what must be done immediately:
1. Protect fertilizer production before the upcoming planting season Natural gas is the raw material for fertilizers. No gas → no fertilizers → harvests collapse within two seasons. Europe came dangerously close to this in 2022. There is still no law preventing it from happening again. Governments must guarantee that fertilizer plants get gas first before any other industrial use. This is the fastest path from an energy crisis to a food crisis, and it is entirely preventable.
2. Turn political promises into real contracts Europe has signed countless “energy partnership” declarations with like-minded countries the US, Canada, and Australia. Declarations do not keep the lights on. Binding, long-term supply agreements (real commercial contracts) need to be finalised within the year. Canada must get its act together and boost production ad hoc. Asian buyers are already moving faster.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
One of the lessons is that existing companies will distort markets to protect themselves from competition, and that a healthy market requires new companies to shake things up.
I'm not sure why we expected existing car companies - with decades of experience of making profit from ICE cars - to be the best placed people to develop electric drivetrains and destroy their existing business model.
It was a new car company - Tesla - that has done most in Europe and the US to develop EV technology. The question we need to answer is why there was only one such company, instead of dozens. I think you could make similar arguments for a lot of other industries where it is the established companies that are a blocker to progress, and we need to make it easier for new companies to enter markets.
Bit of a U-turn from Ed Miliband isn't it. Gas fields, etc.
Why is it, whenever a politician changes their mind, it's presented as a "U-Turn", a sign of weakness?
It seems a perfectly practical response to a changing energy security environment though I suspect the short term impact of the new policy will be limited and it doesn't alter an overall commitment to renewables.
Can anyone else come up with original, satirical, political nicknames?
Yes
Do you have any PB examples, since Chris Creases Huhne?
THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
This has never been bettered, in the history of British political nicknaming
That does resound, even nearly twenty years on; I know exactly who you mean
I prefer a nickname with a hint of wordplay
That was coined by my stalker, who is, to be fair, a genius, so none of us can hope to match him
But I was quite pleased with
Skyr Toolmakersson
Which captures Sir Keir's blandness - like Icelandic yoghurt, skyr, but also combined his two stupid first names "Sir Keir" into one easy to type four letter word, Skyr, and also adds more IcelandIc-ness with his constant whining about his Toolmaker dad: Toolmakersson
So there is quite a lot of wordplay there. But, I confess, it is not as profoundly intense as THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
"As rich as Creases" remains one of the all-time PB highpoints. Who created it? @stjohn?
Sorry to pop your balloon, but I was the one that created "Skyr" on here.
Also, the related Downhill Skyr.
I think Alanbrooke or myelf might have been the originator of the Brittas tag. I remeber getting so much shit from his fans. Maybe, deep down, they knew it really hit a chord.
Bit of a U-turn from Ed Miliband isn't it. Gas fields, etc.
Why is it, whenever a politician changes their mind, it's presented as a "U-Turn", a sign of weakness?
It seems a perfectly practical response to a changing energy security environment though I suspect the short term impact of the new policy will be limited and it doesn't alter an overall commitment to renewables.
I'm just pleased he appears to have accepted my pragmatic argument.
Can anyone else come up with original, satirical, political nicknames?
Yes
Do you have any PB examples, since Chris Creases Huhne?
THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
This has never been bettered, in the history of British political nicknaming
That does resound, even nearly twenty years on; I know exactly who you mean
I prefer a nickname with a hint of wordplay
That was coined by my stalker, who is, to be fair, a genius, so none of us can hope to match him
But I was quite pleased with
Skyr Toolmakersson
Which captures Sir Keir's blandness - like Icelandic yoghurt, skyr, but also combined his two stupid first names "Sir Keir" into one easy to type four letter word, Skyr, and also adds more IcelandIc-ness with his constant whining about his Toolmaker dad: Toolmakersson
So there is quite a lot of wordplay there. But, I confess, it is not as profoundly intense as THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
"As rich as Creases" remains one of the all-time PB highpoints. Who created it? @stjohn?
Sorry to pop your balloon, but I was the one that created "Skyr" on here.
Also, the related Downhill Skyr.
I think Alanbrooke or myelf might have been the originator of the Brittas tag. I remeber getting so much shit from his fans. Maybe, deep down, they knew it really hit a chord.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
One of the lessons is that existing companies will distort markets to protect themselves from competition, and that a healthy market requires new companies to shake things up.
I'm not sure why we expected existing car companies - with decades of experience of making profit from ICE cars - to be the best placed people to develop electric drivetrains and destroy their existing business model.
It was a new car company - Tesla - that has done most in Europe and the US to develop EV technology. The question we need to answer is why there was only one such company, instead of dozens. I think you could make similar arguments for a lot of other industries where it is the established companies that are a blocker to progress, and we need to make it easier for new companies to enter markets.
Imagine you are in the board room of a car maker.
The CEO says "We should pivot to making electric cars"
But that is not what is heard - the engine and transmissions divisions heard - "You are worthless, shit and we are going to fire you. And everyone who works for you. Your career is going in the toilet. Now fuck off".
The shareholders hear "We are going to invest billions of your money on a gamble. No return (in fact massive losses) for years"
To change the trajectory of any large organisation takes enormous will and ability. You are ruining the plans of many people, some very powerful.
And the CEOs of most such companies are selected to conciliate the shareholders with the various power brokers within the company. Not to radically change the world.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
One of the lessons is that existing companies will distort markets to protect themselves from competition..
That's been a truism ever since Adam Smith came up with the idea of the invisible hand - and he was quite explicit about it in his exposition of the market.
What is the alternative to natural gas in the bulk production of fertiliser which is keeping a third of humanity alive ?
The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary shock. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in how energy flows around the world, and Europe is not positioned for it.
This is the Fourth Systemic Risk-driven global crisis (after GFC, Covid and Russia‘s war on Ukraine) and it will hit global economy like a tsunami due to physical scarcity and supply-shock induced multiplicative cascading effects.
This is not just about higher gas bills. It is about whether European farms can grow food next year. Whether European factories and industries can keep running. Whether European governments can hold together when people cannot heat their homes or afford bread. Here is what must be done immediately:
1. Protect fertilizer production before the upcoming planting season Natural gas is the raw material for fertilizers. No gas → no fertilizers → harvests collapse within two seasons. Europe came dangerously close to this in 2022. There is still no law preventing it from happening again. Governments must guarantee that fertilizer plants get gas first before any other industrial use. This is the fastest path from an energy crisis to a food crisis, and it is entirely preventable.
2. Turn political promises into real contracts Europe has signed countless “energy partnership” declarations with like-minded countries the US, Canada, and Australia. Declarations do not keep the lights on. Binding, long-term supply agreements (real commercial contracts) need to be finalised within the year. Canada must get its act together and boost production ad hoc. Asian buyers are already moving faster.
“A knight of the seven kingdoms” is seriously and surprisingly good. If you like Game of Thrones spin offs. Which I do
It is very good. It’s almost unlike GOT as it’s really a “buddy movie”. The combination of the decent but slightly dim adult and the wise and clever child is brilliant. The violence is needed in the parts it exists and there are no dragons and not a lot of tits. Was a very good series.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
One of the lessons is that existing companies will distort markets to protect themselves from competition, and that a healthy market requires new companies to shake things up.
I'm not sure why we expected existing car companies - with decades of experience of making profit from ICE cars - to be the best placed people to develop electric drivetrains and destroy their existing business model.
It was a new car company - Tesla - that has done most in Europe and the US to develop EV technology. The question we need to answer is why there was only one such company, instead of dozens. I think you could make similar arguments for a lot of other industries where it is the established companies that are a blocker to progress, and we need to make it easier for new companies to enter markets.
Imagine you are in the board room of a car maker.
The CEO says "We should pivot to making electric cars"
But that is not what is heard - the engine and transmissions divisions heard - "You are worthless, shit and we are going to fire you. And everyone who works for you. Your career is going in the toilet. Now fuck off".
The shareholders hear "We are going to invest billions of your money on a gamble. No return (in fact massive losses) for years"
To change the trajectory of any large organisation takes enormous will and ability. You are ruining the plans of many people, some very powerful.
And the CEOs of most such companies are selected to conciliate the shareholders with the various power brokers within the company. Not to radically change the world.
Exactly so. It's perfectly rational from their position. But we should make that the problem of their shareholders, and not the rest of society.
Where things have gone wrong is that we didn't have the new companies to take their place.
As a contrary example, things seem to be going a bit better with Fintech companies emerging to challenge the existing banks.
What is the alternative to natural gas in the bulk production of fertiliser which is keeping a third of humanity alive ?
The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary shock. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in how energy flows around the world, and Europe is not positioned for it.
This is the Fourth Systemic Risk-driven global crisis (after GFC, Covid and Russia‘s war on Ukraine) and it will hit global economy like a tsunami due to physical scarcity and supply-shock induced multiplicative cascading effects.
This is not just about higher gas bills. It is about whether European farms can grow food next year. Whether European factories and industries can keep running. Whether European governments can hold together when people cannot heat their homes or afford bread. Here is what must be done immediately:
1. Protect fertilizer production before the upcoming planting season Natural gas is the raw material for fertilizers. No gas → no fertilizers → harvests collapse within two seasons. Europe came dangerously close to this in 2022. There is still no law preventing it from happening again. Governments must guarantee that fertilizer plants get gas first before any other industrial use. This is the fastest path from an energy crisis to a food crisis, and it is entirely preventable.
2. Turn political promises into real contracts Europe has signed countless “energy partnership” declarations with like-minded countries the US, Canada, and Australia. Declarations do not keep the lights on. Binding, long-term supply agreements (real commercial contracts) need to be finalised within the year. Canada must get its act together and boost production ad hoc. Asian buyers are already moving faster.
Starmer obsessed with making it easier for M&S to ship sandwiches to a couple of stores in Paris and missing the serious issues. But the sandwiches thing is very important in Islington.
He spent 30 years drinking and whoring (to a quite astonishig extent, possibly four figures). His family never found out about the hookers, they certainly knew about his drinking
He gave it all up, abruptly, 3 years ago, after he nearly died of kidney disease. Today he looked healthy and fit, relaxed and happy. Indeed I've never seen him more contented. Enjoying life, and his interesting career (an artist) but taking it all more slowly. He will drink the odd glass of wine but no more, he has abandoned hookers entirely
There ARE second chances: he took his
I shall mull over this advice! I’m desirous of having non-drunk sex and also not getting drunk but I need a girlfriend I think to stop both but I’m still too in love with someone and hope that the drunk sex and drinks help find one bit all I seem to get is the need to shower with hibiscrub and amusing conversations with taxi drivers on the way home after having to ask the woman to tell them where they live so I can leave.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
One of the lessons is that existing companies will distort markets to protect themselves from competition..
That's been a truism ever since Adam Smith came up with the idea of the invisible hand - and he was quite explicit about it in his exposition of the market.
Sure, but all too often so-called pro-market politicians have actually been pro-existing large companies, and competition has been stifled.
It's a lesson that we need to keep learning, over and over again.
Can anyone else come up with original, satirical, political nicknames?
Yes
Do you have any PB examples, since Chris Creases Huhne?
THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
This has never been bettered, in the history of British political nicknaming
That does resound, even nearly twenty years on; I know exactly who you mean
I prefer a nickname with a hint of wordplay
That was coined by my stalker, who is, to be fair, a genius, so none of us can hope to match him
But I was quite pleased with
Skyr Toolmakersson
Which captures Sir Keir's blandness - like Icelandic yoghurt, skyr, but also combined his two stupid first names "Sir Keir" into one easy to type four letter word, Skyr, and also adds more IcelandIc-ness with his constant whining about his Toolmaker dad: Toolmakersson
So there is quite a lot of wordplay there. But, I confess, it is not as profoundly intense as THE GAYLORDING PONCEYBOOTS
"As rich as Creases" remains one of the all-time PB highpoints. Who created it? @stjohn?
Sorry to pop your balloon, but I was the one that created "Skyr" on here.
Also, the related Downhill Skyr.
I think Alanbrooke or myelf might have been the originator of the Brittas tag. I remeber getting so much shit from his fans. Maybe, deep down, they knew it really hit a chord.
“A knight of the seven kingdoms” is seriously and surprisingly good. If you like Game of Thrones spin offs. Which I do
It is very good. It’s almost unlike GOT as it’s really a “buddy movie”. The combination of the decent but slightly dim adult and the wise and clever child is brilliant. The violence is needed in the parts it exists and there are no dragons and not a lot of tits. Was a very good series.
It’s actually much better than Game of Thrones itself because the story is simple. I really enjoyed GoT but half the time I didn’t know who was doing what to whom and why. House Kinabalu is allied with er House Horse Battery but wait why are they helping House SMITHSON junior, etc etc
The best stories are simple. Boy meets loses and wins girl. Son of god is amazing is killed and rises again. Hobbits are good and must prevail
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
One of the lessons is that existing companies will distort markets to protect themselves from competition, and that a healthy market requires new companies to shake things up.
I'm not sure why we expected existing car companies - with decades of experience of making profit from ICE cars - to be the best placed people to develop electric drivetrains and destroy their existing business model.
It was a new car company - Tesla - that has done most in Europe and the US to develop EV technology. The question we need to answer is why there was only one such company, instead of dozens. I think you could make similar arguments for a lot of other industries where it is the established companies that are a blocker to progress, and we need to make it easier for new companies to enter markets.
Imagine you are in the board room of a car maker.
The CEO says "We should pivot to making electric cars"
But that is not what is heard - the engine and transmissions divisions heard - "You are worthless, shit and we are going to fire you. And everyone who works for you. Your career is going in the toilet. Now fuck off".
The shareholders hear "We are going to invest billions of your money on a gamble. No return (in fact massive losses) for years"
To change the trajectory of any large organisation takes enormous will and ability. You are ruining the plans of many people, some very powerful.
And the CEOs of most such companies are selected to conciliate the shareholders with the various power brokers within the company. Not to radically change the world.
Exactly so. It's perfectly rational from their position. But we should make that the problem of their shareholders, and not the rest of society.
Where things have gone wrong is that we didn't have the new companies to take their place.
As a contrary example, things seem to be going a bit better with Fintech companies emerging to challenge the existing banks.
And managed not to turn it into a pile of scandal laden shit (like crypto) either. The alt-banks have caused the exiting big names to pull their socks up a bit, as well.
What is the alternative to natural gas in the bulk production of fertiliser which is keeping a third of humanity alive ?
The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary shock. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in how energy flows around the world, and Europe is not positioned for it.
This is the Fourth Systemic Risk-driven global crisis (after GFC, Covid and Russia‘s war on Ukraine) and it will hit global economy like a tsunami due to physical scarcity and supply-shock induced multiplicative cascading effects.
This is not just about higher gas bills. It is about whether European farms can grow food next year. Whether European factories and industries can keep running. Whether European governments can hold together when people cannot heat their homes or afford bread. Here is what must be done immediately:
1. Protect fertilizer production before the upcoming planting season Natural gas is the raw material for fertilizers. No gas → no fertilizers → harvests collapse within two seasons. Europe came dangerously close to this in 2022. There is still no law preventing it from happening again. Governments must guarantee that fertilizer plants get gas first before any other industrial use. This is the fastest path from an energy crisis to a food crisis, and it is entirely preventable.
2. Turn political promises into real contracts Europe has signed countless “energy partnership” declarations with like-minded countries the US, Canada, and Australia. Declarations do not keep the lights on. Binding, long-term supply agreements (real commercial contracts) need to be finalised within the year. Canada must get its act together and boost production ad hoc. Asian buyers are already moving faster.
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, one of the first Windows PC games I played.
It entered service in 1976! While military technology advances rapidly, it's amazing how long airframes remain in service.
The B-52 entered service in 1955. It will still be flying in twenty years time.
The A-10 will be scrapped pretty soon.
None of the airframes are original; they've all undergone extensive upgrades and (eg) wing replacement.
I don't think there is an original rivet in the B-52.
There is a lot of original material left in the B-52Gs. They were designed in the 40s before any computational analysis and design optimisation was possible. As a result they were massively over-designed, inadvertently giving them a very long service life. The flexible wing (the tip can deflect 10m in normal flight regimes) helps too.
So their longevity isn't because loads of structural components have been replaced, it's because the original bits were many times stronger than they needed to be for the aircraft's intended lifespan. See also RC/KC-135. This made it economically viable to do systems and propulsion upgrade to keep the platform relevant.
Why are UK North Sea hydrocarbons more environmentally damaging than the rest of the World's hydrocarbons?
Ironically they are less damaging by almost every measure. Including how they are extracted. The UK and Noway have just about the strictest environmental rules in the world governing North Sea operations. They are so strict about pollution we have to collect the rain water that falls on the rig and send it back to the beach for processing in case it has picked up any hydrocarbons.
As I said earlier my wife lost a nephew in Piper Alpha and no doubt lessons were learnt but I just cannot see any sense in Miliband destroying jobs and tax revenues on an increasingly isolated idealistic position
Agree entirely.
Well not entirely. The underlying premise of Big_G_NorthWales' proposition is that Ed Miliband has sense but appears to be acting contrary to it on this particular occasion. It is not a premise that I agree with.
One thing this political betting site has failed to discuss is public opinion. You might get the false sense from my posts that even the looniest econ-loons think we should be open to drilling the North Sea, but I'm afraid that isn't the case. Fossil fuels are widely unpopular.
There is a simple, perverse logic that is difficult to quash - keeping oil and gas in the ground = oil and gas that isn't burnt. And in the Trump era, non-sensical destructive defiance is now commonplace in all sorts of areas. This time the shoe is on the other foot.
Good friends of mine who are very capable academics at Edinburgh University were 100% behind the banning of further exploration in the North Sea. And they still are. Their reasoning is that we must do everything possible to reduce our use of hydrocarbons as rapidly as possible and that means not encouraging any further production where we can control it.
I am all for us building up our renewables, ideally to over 100% of our internal demand, but I simply do not understand this rationale at all. If we still need hydrocarbons whilst we are transitioning as fast as possible we should use our own rather than importing it from elsewhere in the world where much of the production is far more ecologically damaging than north sea production. The idea that the amount we can produce from the North Sea will have any effect of world production and consumption is frankly ridiculous and self harming. But these are exceptionally bright people that I respect greatly and I have to accept it is not quite the no brainer I consider it.
Many people are sufficiently distanced from the means of production (whether agriculture, energy or manufacturing) that they neither know nor care what the requirements of production are.
I do not want to name these people on here for obvious reasons but they both work in geosciences, these are not some airy fairy theoreticians. They simply regard the global warming crisis as overwhelmingly the greatest threat to life and civilisation and think we need to do everything, no matter how small, to reduce it. As you will have gathered I strongly disagree but I always find it thought provoking when seriously intelligent and informed people hold very different views.
Do they not realise that their actions are likely counterproductive and will spur a backlash (a la Trump) that will make global warming worse?
It's a hell of a lot more productive to live in the land of the possible and thing, what can I do today that won't negatively impact living standards, and will make a difference to emissions. And then tomorrow, we can have the same discussion. And the day after. Incrementalism is more likely to be successful than revolution.
I kinda agree with you, but then slow incrementalism and lip service to global warming has led to where we are now. A much hotter planet and vast amounts of CO2 still going into the atmosphere. I was on a training course recently with someone who studies glaciers. He was saying they discourage young researchers from coming into the field as it’s just too depressing to see these dramatic effects on our climate and not enough being done.
Where were are now is in a really great place.
Yes, yes, I know it doesn't feel like it. But it only doesn't feel like it because people aren't very good at recognizing the impact of small percentage changes over long periods of time.
In 2025, 86% of all new electricity generating capacity was renewables. Solar is going to pass both nuclear and wind this year in terms of production of kilowatts. Coal has all but disappeared in many markets (or at least it had until the recent blocking of the Straits of Hormuz). China's carbon emissions are now falling, and they are building a quite insane amount of solar right now, which is displacing... yes... mostly coal. China roads are full of electric vehicles. Falling battery prices make intermittant power sources that much more usable.
Global CO2 emissions will soon start to fall, and so long as solar and battery prices keep falling (which they will), they are going to keep falling.
We don't *need* governments to do anything anymore. The market is going to replace first coal, then petrol and eventually (albeit probably on a pretty long time horizon) natural gas. Now, can the government help this along? Sure they can: and best of all, doing that makes us more resilient to supply disruptions. But the idea we're in a terrible place is absurd. Literally no one forecast that Chinese CO2 emissions would fall, and that coal would start to get pushed out that market by solar. That's how quickly things are changing, and they're mostly changing for the better.
Indeed and well said
I was struck, on my recent visit to Shanghai, by the silence of the streets. By that I mean, the total absence of infernal combustion engines. Basically everything is electric (including mopeds and motorbikes, so there are no wankers like @Dura_Ace trying to wreck your sleep with souped up "cans")
So all you can hear is... humans. Human laughter and chatter, humans selling and buying, humans having fun and living life. Not disgusting engines churning out smoke
Life does get better
Indeed. I was last in China in late 2019 or very early 2020 (just before Covid). And at that time the roads and the pollution were hideous.
Now... not so much.
It's a whole new world.
It really is. Well done China
We desperately need India to follow suit. Last time I was in New Delhi - about 2018 - the pollution was literally the worst I have ever encountered, anywhere, and I travelled a fair bit around the old communist bloc, and I know Cairo and Mexico City very well
AIUI India is not much improved. Ugh
According to Google India has 60-80 of the world's 100 most polluted cities. It is grim
So, what we've learned here kids is that the market is the answer.
Worth remembering that.
Is it the market? Surely China is an example of STATE-directed capitalism. Not pure market forces
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
I suspect it's more that the Chinese realised the future is electric, intervened in the market in quite a brutal way (but then let firms get on with it), and have probably jumped 20-30 years ahead of where they would be as a result.
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
One of the lessons is that existing companies will distort markets to protect themselves from competition, and that a healthy market requires new companies to shake things up.
I'm not sure why we expected existing car companies - with decades of experience of making profit from ICE cars - to be the best placed people to develop electric drivetrains and destroy their existing business model.
It was a new car company - Tesla - that has done most in Europe and the US to develop EV technology. The question we need to answer is why there was only one such company, instead of dozens. I think you could make similar arguments for a lot of other industries where it is the established companies that are a blocker to progress, and we need to make it easier for new companies to enter markets.
Imagine you are in the board room of a car maker.
The CEO says "We should pivot to making electric cars"
But that is not what is heard - the engine and transmissions divisions heard - "You are worthless, shit and we are going to fire you. And everyone who works for you. Your career is going in the toilet. Now fuck off".
The shareholders hear "We are going to invest billions of your money on a gamble. No return (in fact massive losses) for years"
To change the trajectory of any large organisation takes enormous will and ability. You are ruining the plans of many people, some very powerful.
And the CEOs of most such companies are selected to conciliate the shareholders with the various power brokers within the company. Not to radically change the world.
You secretly support the setup of a new company designing and manufacturing electric cars. If if fails, it’s nothing to do with you. If it succeeds, you buy it out at a very reasonable price.
“A knight of the seven kingdoms” is seriously and surprisingly good. If you like Game of Thrones spin offs. Which I do
It is very good. It’s almost unlike GOT as it’s really a “buddy movie”. The combination of the decent but slightly dim adult and the wise and clever child is brilliant. The violence is needed in the parts it exists and there are no dragons and not a lot of tits. Was a very good series.
It’s actually much better than Game of Thrones itself because the story is simple. I really enjoyed GoT but half the time I didn’t know who was doing what to whom and why. House Kinabalu is allied with er House Horse Battery but wait why are they helping House SMITHSON junior, etc etc
The best stories are simple. Boy meets loses and wins girl. Son of god is amazing is killed and rises again. Hobbits are good and must prevail
And so on and so forth
Keep it simple
It works nicely as a palate cleanser - I thought house of the dragon was a bit meh and hoping it takes off in next series but KOT7K was more like a historical fiction in a very human way. It could have been a knight and squire story in the 100 years war or war of the roses so it was slightly outside the GoT lore and better for it, the families you know from GoT could just be simalcrums of families from English medieval history and it wouldn’t matter. It was a happy, even with the dark side, journey.
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, one of the first Windows PC games I played.
It entered service in 1976! While military technology advances rapidly, it's amazing how long airframes remain in service.
The B-52 entered service in 1955. It will still be flying in twenty years time.
The A-10 will be scrapped pretty soon.
None of the airframes are original; they've all undergone extensive upgrades and (eg) wing replacement.
I don't think there is an original rivet in the B-52.
There is a lot of original material left in the B-52Gs. They were designed in the 40s before any computational analysis and design optimisation was possible. As a result they were massively over-designed, inadvertently giving them a very long service life. The flexible wing (the tip can deflect 10m in normal flight regimes) helps too.
So their longevity isn't because loads of structural components have been replaced, it's because the original bits were many times stronger than they needed to be for the aircraft's intended lifespan. See also RC/KC-135. This made it economically viable to do systems and propulsion upgrade to keep the platform relevant.
Can't that go horribly wrong though? Thinking of Nimrod, where the upgrades didn't work.
What is the alternative to natural gas in the bulk production of fertiliser which is keeping a third of humanity alive ?
The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary shock. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in how energy flows around the world, and Europe is not positioned for it.
This is the Fourth Systemic Risk-driven global crisis (after GFC, Covid and Russia‘s war on Ukraine) and it will hit global economy like a tsunami due to physical scarcity and supply-shock induced multiplicative cascading effects.
This is not just about higher gas bills. It is about whether European farms can grow food next year. Whether European factories and industries can keep running. Whether European governments can hold together when people cannot heat their homes or afford bread. Here is what must be done immediately:
1. Protect fertilizer production before the upcoming planting season Natural gas is the raw material for fertilizers. No gas → no fertilizers → harvests collapse within two seasons. Europe came dangerously close to this in 2022. There is still no law preventing it from happening again. Governments must guarantee that fertilizer plants get gas first before any other industrial use. This is the fastest path from an energy crisis to a food crisis, and it is entirely preventable.
2. Turn political promises into real contracts Europe has signed countless “energy partnership” declarations with like-minded countries the US, Canada, and Australia. Declarations do not keep the lights on. Binding, long-term supply agreements (real commercial contracts) need to be finalised within the year. Canada must get its act together and boost production ad hoc. Asian buyers are already moving faster.
What is the alternative to natural gas in the bulk production of fertiliser which is keeping a third of humanity alive ?
The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary shock. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in how energy flows around the world, and Europe is not positioned for it.
This is the Fourth Systemic Risk-driven global crisis (after GFC, Covid and Russia‘s war on Ukraine) and it will hit global economy like a tsunami due to physical scarcity and supply-shock induced multiplicative cascading effects.
This is not just about higher gas bills. It is about whether European farms can grow food next year. Whether European factories and industries can keep running. Whether European governments can hold together when people cannot heat their homes or afford bread. Here is what must be done immediately:
1. Protect fertilizer production before the upcoming planting season Natural gas is the raw material for fertilizers. No gas → no fertilizers → harvests collapse within two seasons. Europe came dangerously close to this in 2022. There is still no law preventing it from happening again. Governments must guarantee that fertilizer plants get gas first before any other industrial use. This is the fastest path from an energy crisis to a food crisis, and it is entirely preventable.
2. Turn political promises into real contracts Europe has signed countless “energy partnership” declarations with like-minded countries the US, Canada, and Australia. Declarations do not keep the lights on. Binding, long-term supply agreements (real commercial contracts) need to be finalised within the year. Canada must get its act together and boost production ad hoc. Asian buyers are already moving faster.
Needless to say that the UK is a big importer of fertilizer.
I'm sure both Ed Miliband and Daniel Hannan would explain why that doesn't matter and we can always 'trade for it'.
Organic fertiliser isn’t the panacea - not enough of it - but I expect many farmers in Western countries will probably turn that way over the next few months if we get shortages, because there are domestic suppliers. I recently put down a load of granulated, graded dry application chicken shit on the vineyard as it was showing signs of P and N deficiency in places. The organic options available now, in easily spreadable form, are way better than even a few years ago. The price gap has closed too.
BREAKING: A second Air Force combat plane, a A-10 Warthog, crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued. This happened around the same time a F-15E was shot down over Iran.
The A-10s are old planes, those left flying are pretty much reprieved from the boneyards. Not too surprising if one has mechanical issues.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
Ah, A-10 Tank-killer, one of the first Windows PC games I played.
It entered service in 1976! While military technology advances rapidly, it's amazing how long airframes remain in service.
The B-52 entered service in 1955. It will still be flying in twenty years time.
The A-10 will be scrapped pretty soon.
None of the airframes are original; they've all undergone extensive upgrades and (eg) wing replacement.
I don't think there is an original rivet in the B-52.
There is a lot of original material left in the B-52Gs. They were designed in the 40s before any computational analysis and design optimisation was possible. As a result they were massively over-designed, inadvertently giving them a very long service life. The flexible wing (the tip can deflect 10m in normal flight regimes) helps too.
So their longevity isn't because loads of structural components have been replaced, it's because the original bits were many times stronger than they needed to be for the aircraft's intended lifespan. See also RC/KC-135. This made it economically viable to do systems and propulsion upgrade to keep the platform relevant.
What is the alternative to natural gas in the bulk production of fertiliser which is keeping a third of humanity alive ?
The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary shock. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in how energy flows around the world, and Europe is not positioned for it.
This is the Fourth Systemic Risk-driven global crisis (after GFC, Covid and Russia‘s war on Ukraine) and it will hit global economy like a tsunami due to physical scarcity and supply-shock induced multiplicative cascading effects.
This is not just about higher gas bills. It is about whether European farms can grow food next year. Whether European factories and industries can keep running. Whether European governments can hold together when people cannot heat their homes or afford bread. Here is what must be done immediately:
1. Protect fertilizer production before the upcoming planting season Natural gas is the raw material for fertilizers. No gas → no fertilizers → harvests collapse within two seasons. Europe came dangerously close to this in 2022. There is still no law preventing it from happening again. Governments must guarantee that fertilizer plants get gas first before any other industrial use. This is the fastest path from an energy crisis to a food crisis, and it is entirely preventable.
2. Turn political promises into real contracts Europe has signed countless “energy partnership” declarations with like-minded countries the US, Canada, and Australia. Declarations do not keep the lights on. Binding, long-term supply agreements (real commercial contracts) need to be finalised within the year. Canada must get its act together and boost production ad hoc. Asian buyers are already moving faster.
So President Trump is seeking to divert $1 trillion from housing and education for Americans into bombs and missiles for foreign wars (but not to fight or deter any of the big boys). We need somebody like Niall Ferguson to explain this doctrine in a Times column. It would be premature to comment until we've had the benefit of that.
Comments
https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/1sb6q5o/cycling_under_an_antidrone_net_in_kharkiv_ukraine/
Trump's Net-Approval In Republican Pollster RMG's Polling:
April 2, 2026: -18%
March 26, 2026: -9%
February 26, 2026: -9%
January 28, 2026: -3%
December 18, 2025: +1%
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/2040125201640218753
There's a lot more we could do to reduce the warming we end up committing to, and we're going to experience some pretty bad impacts due to missing the opportunity to make the energy transition more quickly, but I think things could have been a lot worse.
Worth remembering that.
The CCP decided that China must clean up its act, and that they have done, and it is deeply impressive
The CCP helped create the problem and are now helping create the answer.
The market would have had better answers to both.
A huge misstep by the west.
Insane footage of Iranian police officers wielding automatic rifles opening firing on U.S. Air Force HH-60G “Pave Hawk” Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) Helicopters flying low earlier today over Southern Iran, during the search for the crewmembers of an American F-15E Strike Eagle shot down by Iran.
Market forces are dynamic and productive, but they must be regulated. My maternal grandmother Annie Maud Jory was a bal-maiden - a ten year old girl sent to work, barefoot, above a Cornish tin mine in all weathers (sorting rocks for useful ore). She died young, I am confident there is a causal effect at work
Market forces would send kids down mines today, quite likely. They are small, nimble and easy to boss about. You need regulations to prevent this
The president's first post since an F-16 was shot down over Iran with one American still missing.
https://bsky.app/profile/mattgertz.bsky.social/post/3mimh4nwvbk22
India - 500 kilometres of High Speed rail (under construction!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_railway_lines
We have the challenge of a Super El Nino approaching this year and next which will be a shock to many with droughts and heatwaves - I fear we could have a very long and very hot summer here and for all those who relish long lazy afternoons in the pub garden, a fortnight of temperatures at or above 40c and high night time minima are going to test a lot of people and won't be funny. We had a taste of it in 2022 but La Nina conditions since have insulated us (so to speak).
In other parts of the world, climatic conditions are going to be more existentially difficult and the next immigration challenge will beclimate refugees displaced north from parts of the world which are or have become borderline uninhabitable.
Yet, I remain convinced human ingenuity will see us through and the one thing the UK can do is lead the way in looking at solutions aimed at mitigating the worst impacts of climate change and developing new socio-economic models based on a Net Zero (or close to it) economy.
But equally not too surprising if it has been brought down. It is from a different era of surface to air weaponry.
“It’s a war. We’re in a war.”
So much for the “excursion.”
https://bsky.app/profile/bcfinucane.bsky.social/post/3mimiadqw322p
No-one was arguing for anarcho-capitalism and a total absence of any form of government role, merely that governments aren't the answer to this except as an enabler - whereas markets are.
The older one gets the more one realises that Fatch was right, about almost everything.
Best PM we ever had.
I'm not sure this is a productive debate, for either of us, we may have crossed wires - so let's move on
I wish you a very Happy Easter! May all the Lord's blessing fall upon you and yours. Indeed Happy Easter to all PBers, especially those in peril on the high seas
We thought ICEs were going to kill the planet, but cowered in the face of legacy car manufacturers, dithered, sent all sorts of mixed signals, and continue to dither. As a result we've killed off European car manufacturing, not switched to EVs, and are probably a decade behind where we should be.
The lesson is to only make these kinds of intervetions with conviction. Not sure that's really possible in a democracy because you'll always have worriers who vote and vested interests more powerful than the state.
China operates industrial policy, and the state exercises power impossible in a (and antithetical to) democracy, but it also allows the exercise of raw capitalism on a widespread basis to achieve its ends.
"The market" had no answers to global warming twenty years ago; it took state action to prime the pump.
There's no good reason - other than political will - that the west surrendered (for example) the solar industry.
Robert Colvile
@rcolvile
·
1h
I'm generally a peaceable man, but whoever came up with Making Tax Digital For Income Tax needs to die in a fire.
https://x.com/rcolvile/status/2040130001283039568
He spent 30 years drinking and whoring (to a quite astonishig extent, possibly four figures). His family never found out about the hookers, they certainly knew about his drinking
He gave it all up, abruptly, 3 years ago, after he nearly died of kidney disease. Today he looked healthy and fit, relaxed and happy. Indeed I've never seen him more contented. Enjoying life, and his interesting career (an artist) but taking it all more slowly. He will drink the odd glass of wine but no more, he has abandoned hookers entirely
There ARE second chances: he took his
Also, the related Downhill Skyr.
I think Alanbrooke or myelf might have been the originator of the Brittas tag. I remeber getting so much shit from his fans. Maybe, deep down, they knew it really hit a chord.
It is no longer producing optimal results. The oldest democracy in the world is ruled by Keir Starmer, the most powerful democracy in the world is ruled by Donald Trump, the "only democracy in the Middle East", Israel, has been ruled by Bibi Netanyahu for 18 years and has now introduced a Nazi-like race-based death penalty
Democracy is done
The assumption that Thatcher got everything right is absolutely responsible for many of our problems today.
She wasn't a bad PM, but a far more sceptical approach to her legacy would have made it a far better legacy.
Happy Easter kids!!
Krazy Blathercock?
"Yes, hence my "swastikas in Nuremburg" remark
I am, btw, copyrighting "Skyr Toolmakersson"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyr"
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4841610#Comment_4841610
If you can find something earlier by you, then I resile and apologise. But I don't think you can
It will still be flying in twenty years time.
The A-10 will be scrapped pretty soon.
None of the airframes are original; they've all undergone extensive upgrades and (eg) wing replacement.
It seems to me the world has convinced itself of something that isn't true. The truth is that falling CO2 output = rising CO2. Just as falling borrowing levels = rising debt. Just as falling inflation rates = rising prices.
Our brains are wired to hear 'falling' as meaning falling. And we unconsciously apply it to the total amount instead of just the amount of the increase.
Unless the science is wrong, rising CO2 = more climate change and warming. I hope the science is wrong, though I don't suppose it is, because I don't think there's another way out of it.
The best example of a free, rabid market delivering something completely fucked up are the two main stations in Glasgow. Misaligned by 350m and a nuisance to this day. That's why market-ultras are wrong.
See also (eg) Zelensky vs Putin.
Happy to let you have "Skyr Toolmakersson" though.
The fact Rogerdamus so dislikes him, only reinforces that.
The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary shock. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in how energy flows around the world, and Europe is not positioned for it.
This is the Fourth Systemic Risk-driven global crisis (after GFC, Covid and Russia‘s war on Ukraine) and it will hit global economy like a tsunami due to physical scarcity and supply-shock induced multiplicative cascading effects.
This is not just about higher gas bills. It is about whether European farms can grow food next year. Whether European factories and industries can keep running. Whether European governments can hold together when people cannot heat their homes or afford bread.
Here is what must be done immediately:
1. Protect fertilizer production before the upcoming planting season
Natural gas is the raw material for fertilizers. No gas → no fertilizers → harvests collapse within two seasons. Europe came dangerously close to this in 2022. There is still no law preventing it from happening again.
Governments must guarantee that fertilizer plants get gas first before any other industrial use. This is the fastest path from an energy crisis to a food crisis, and it is entirely preventable.
2. Turn political promises into real contracts
Europe has signed countless “energy partnership” declarations with like-minded countries the US, Canada, and Australia. Declarations do not keep the lights on.
Binding, long-term supply agreements (real commercial contracts) need to be finalised within the year. Canada must get its act together and boost production ad hoc. Asian buyers are already moving faster.
3. Drill, produce, and refine more: at home
Europe is sitting on significant untapped energy. Roman..
https://x.com/vtchakarova/status/2040147190555828560
This was the Proper Policy - The oil companies would move to making Hydrogen (the fact they have not much expertise in the area was ignored), it would be sold in existing filling stations (apart from the requirement to completely rebuild and often relocate every filling station, due to hydrogen's safety requirements) to power the hydrogen cars (that were never actually got to production ready).
If was the Proper Policy because the supply chain companies would be protected (apart from that was bollocks) and taxing hydrogen would be a continuation of fuel duty.
Sadly, Reality failed to understand the Proper Policy. Or implement it.
https://simpleflying.com/oldest-active-b-52-guide/
Keirflation - for the upcoming inflationary fun.
For twenty quid, I can ensure you have the oldest reference to Skyr on PB.
I'm sure both Ed Miliband and Daniel Hannan would explain why that doesn't matter and we can always 'trade for it'.
I'm not sure why we expected existing car companies - with decades of experience of making profit from ICE cars - to be the best placed people to develop electric drivetrains and destroy their existing business model.
It was a new car company - Tesla - that has done most in Europe and the US to develop EV technology. The question we need to answer is why there was only one such company, instead of dozens. I think you could make similar arguments for a lot of other industries where it is the established companies that are a blocker to progress, and we need to make it easier for new companies to enter markets.
It seems a perfectly practical response to a changing energy security environment though I suspect the short term impact of the new policy will be limited and it doesn't alter an overall commitment to renewables.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crk16j2j1ygo
The CEO says "We should pivot to making electric cars"
But that is not what is heard - the engine and transmissions divisions heard - "You are worthless, shit and we are going to fire you. And everyone who works for you. Your career is going in the toilet. Now fuck off".
The shareholders hear "We are going to invest billions of your money on a gamble. No return (in fact massive losses) for years"
To change the trajectory of any large organisation takes enormous will and ability. You are ruining the plans of many people, some very powerful.
And the CEOs of most such companies are selected to conciliate the shareholders with the various power brokers within the company. Not to radically change the world.
Where things have gone wrong is that we didn't have the new companies to take their place.
As a contrary example, things seem to be going a bit better with Fintech companies emerging to challenge the existing banks.
It's a lesson that we need to keep learning, over and over again.
Bless.
The best stories are simple. Boy meets loses and wins girl. Son of god is amazing is killed and rises again. Hobbits are good and must prevail
And so on and so forth
Keep it simple
See Saudi Arabia importing sand for construction projects.
So their longevity isn't because loads of structural components have been replaced, it's because the original bits were many times stronger than they needed to be for the aircraft's intended lifespan. See also RC/KC-135. This made it economically viable to do systems and propulsion upgrade to keep the platform relevant.