Wait, Steve Baker just called Brexit a political fiasco.
Politicians need to level with the public about the scale of change needed in our lives so we don’t have another political fiasco like Brexit
I think what he's saying is that Brexit happened as a powerful movement, against the wishes of the majority of politicians because the establishment had spent the last 30 years doing stuff people didn't like and blaming the EU, whilst a cosy concensus of the "mainstream" ensured we never got a vote on it (because if we did they knew they would lose).
The green idocy is going the same way. People want their gas central heating and their economical diesel cars (even the No10 spokeswoman it seems). They'd quite like cheap electricity. But without their consent (there has never been an election with a credible party against this) the government has promised to take all this stuff away from them. If the government persists with this without real democratic consent, as the various deadlines start to bite and actually effect people's lives it's going to become very unpopular. If they carry on as they are, setting future targets which are going to be very painful for large chunks of the population, then when they bute claiming they are unchangeable and immutable like some sort of divine decree, net zero is going to become the new Brexit. We'll moan about it for a bit, a pressure group will force the government's hand, and as soon as the people get a real democratic say the silent majority of the population will decide that enough is enough, and will tear the elite a new arsehole - just like happened with Brexit.
Except global warming and climate change is happening NOW, and perhaps worse than scientists predicted.
So you’ll need to get used to net zero. Before net zero tears *you* a new arsehole.
I'm on board with net zero but am mildly sceptical about some of the measures proposed to get there, for instance, as Allegra Stratton has inadvertently drawn to our attention, the benefits of electric cars over diesel without considering the cost of building and scrapping. Or at a more domestic level, what about the rush to smart meters? Will that really help reduce consumption or was it just an excuse to sack the old meter-readers and will lead to higher bills because someone has to pay?
Hospital admissions are down and the death rate will follow.
I think this is arrogant.
Today's figure shows a rise in cases. ZOE suggest that the Gov't stats have been underplaying the true figure.
I suspect we're heading for problems. If I'm wrong then I'll be delighted but I will just note that everytime people arrogantly think this virus is beaten, it has a habit of biting them in the ass. A little more circumspection, grace and humility from you Mr Seal wouldn't go amiss.
ZOE panicked two weeks ago when the drop in cases started and fudged their data, on the pretext of who their cohort was. Now it’s again showing a decent fall. Cases on Wednesdays are always up, as weekend effects roll through. I am not expecting the cases to fall away rapidly. More likely we will be stuck with substantial cases for a while. But crucially there are no legal restrictions in England and vaccines are making that happen.
I think that's what's really key here, we're well past the point where the step 4 unlockdown should be visible in cases. That we haven't seen an explosion, just a slowdown in the contraction rate, is actually a huge win. I was on record here saying that 100k per day in mid-late August was plausible based on what we've previously seen in an unrestricted environment. Vaccines are holding the R down to about 1 and we're still adding people into the two dose cohort and all of the infections are pushing people into the acquired immunity cohort.
The difficulty is that three things happened at pretty much the same time. Stage 4 (you'd expect a faster spread), the end of the Euros (undoing what looks like a biggish temporary peak) and schools closing (which has always slowed the spread down thus far, whatever the mechanism).
That makes it hard to unpick what's going on. The next tricky bit is what happens when schools reopen; we either have sufficient slack to cope with that, or we don't...
Football stadiums will be reopening at much the same time, which will complicate things further.
Errr ... surely stadia.
Nah. We don't have to follow the rules of a language just because words from it appear in ours and it is influenced by it.
I have the hundreds on in the background and do not know much about the teams or format, but it does seem to be far more exciting than watching England but maybe the most important aspect is the huge number of young children attending and seemingly jumping up and down as the game ebbs and flows
I don’t think tomorrow’s test will be exciting. Four medium pacers bowling on a flat pitch against Pujara, Kohli, Rahane and Pant is not going to be pretty.
Our one chance is four days of rain.
I was pleased when Smith was fired. Clearly I celebrated too soon.
Hospital admissions are down and the death rate will follow.
I think this is arrogant.
Today's figure shows a rise in cases. ZOE suggest that the Gov't stats have been underplaying the true figure.
I suspect we're heading for problems. If I'm wrong then I'll be delighted but I will just note that everytime people arrogantly think this virus is beaten, it has a habit of biting them in the ass. A little more circumspection, grace and humility from you Mr Seal wouldn't go amiss.
If I may:
We’ve always known (from comparison with the ONS survey if nothing else) that recorded cases are less than the real rate of infections. Cases have been between a third and a half of infections - but there hasn’t been a significant change in this ratio recently.
Thus increases in cases are proportionate to increases in infections and vice versa.
The R number quoted is always calculated back to a couple of weeks earlier. It’s thus not much use - it can “predict” that cases would be rising two weeks ago, but we already knew that.
If cases (and infections) are declining, R is (in real time) under 1. It now looks as though it’s levelling out at 1.
Hospital admissions follow cases with a lag of c. one week. They look to have continued following that trajectory (the 7-day average of cases maxed out on the 16th of July, and the 7-day average of hospitalisations peaked on the 23rd.
As cases have dropped significantly since the 16th, we can reasonably expect hospitalisations to continue to drop in conjunction (lagged 7 days).
Deaths are lagged by a further 10 days from hospitalisations. We can reasonably expect the 7-day average of deaths by date of death to peak around the 2nd of August. The data lag in information on deaths also kicks in - we realistically only have close enough to full data for up to about the 28th of July. Accordingly, deaths data will continue to rise for about 5-6 days.
Hospital admissions are down and the death rate will follow.
I think this is arrogant.
Today's figure shows a rise in cases. ZOE suggest that the Gov't stats have been underplaying the true figure.
I suspect we're heading for problems. If I'm wrong then I'll be delighted but I will just note that everytime people arrogantly think this virus is beaten, it has a habit of biting them in the ass. A little more circumspection, grace and humility from you Mr Seal wouldn't go amiss.
ZOE panicked two weeks ago when the drop in cases started and fudged their data, on the pretext of who their cohort was. Now it’s again showing a decent fall. Cases on Wednesdays are always up, as weekend effects roll through. I am not expecting the cases to fall away rapidly. More likely we will be stuck with substantial cases for a while. But crucially there are no legal restrictions in England and vaccines are making that happen.
I think that's what's really key here, we're well past the point where the step 4 unlockdown should be visible in cases. That we haven't seen an explosion, just a slowdown in the contraction rate, is actually a huge win. I was on record here saying that 100k per day in mid-late August was plausible based on what we've previously seen in an unrestricted environment. Vaccines are holding the R down to about 1 and we're still adding people into the two dose cohort and all of the infections are pushing people into the acquired immunity cohort.
The difficulty is that three things happened at pretty much the same time. Stage 4 (you'd expect a faster spread), the end of the Euros (undoing what looks like a biggish temporary peak) and schools closing (which has always slowed the spread down thus far, whatever the mechanism).
That makes it hard to unpick what's going on. The next tricky bit is what happens when schools reopen; we either have sufficient slack to cope with that, or we don't...
Football stadiums will be reopening at much the same time, which will complicate things further.
Not in the bright new world of Latin lessons mandated by the Spider God, it isn't!
We speak English in this country, NOT a dead language like Latin!
It's an interesting question, though: Latin has been formally incepted into English a great deal, and so has Greek. Quite a few plurals in formal English and also technical English derive directly from them. For instance, one writes of stomata in plant leaves (but not the sort of stoma with a colostomy bag - they are stomas plural).
I tend to use the more conservative grammar, plural, etc., to play safe - for me, 'data' is always a plural word, for instance.
I'd like it if more people knew what 'et cetera' means and how to pronounce it. Then they'd realise that 'and the rest' is shorter and that they don't need to mispronounce it twice.
Yes, people are annoying and exhausting. With practice it is fairly easy for an introvert to fake extraversion, indeed, I do it for a living. After all extroverts are fairly superficial people and so easy to fool. The key is to build in plenty of time to decompress in solitary activities afterwards, such as walking, gardening, reading or even arguing on PB. It is in those quiet moments that inspiration comes.
Generally the world is set up to benefit superficial showmen, and this has been a period that has rebalanced things considerably in favour of more thoughtful folk who are happy in their own company. Of course the extroverts resent this, they want their entourages and flunkies back.
Bit harsh to call all extroverts superficial… even if I did give you a like.
It's a comfort thing for introverts. Helps them with the FOMO worry. And the envy.
That is where extroverts fail. There is no FOMO worry, that being an extrovert fear. Introverts are the sort that quite like missing out.
I don't think all extroverts are superficial, though plenty are. I meant after all...
I work in an extremely social environment and this has largely continued through lockdowns. My job is to talk to people, often strangers, and to get to the point quickly without being brusque. I have learnt to do it well, indeed have been given a national award for sympathetic communication skills. I am rather relieved when it is all over at the end of the day so I can retreat to my garden.
Wait, Steve Baker just called Brexit a political fiasco.
Politicians need to level with the public about the scale of change needed in our lives so we don’t have another political fiasco like Brexit
I think what he's saying is that Brexit happened as a powerful movement, against the wishes of the majority of politicians because the establishment had spent the last 30 years doing stuff people didn't like and blaming the EU, whilst a cosy concensus of the "mainstream" ensured we never got a vote on it (because if we did they knew they would lose).
The green idocy is going the same way. People want their gas central heating and their economical diesel cars (even the No10 spokeswoman it seems). They'd quite like cheap electricity. But without their consent (there has never been an election with a credible party against this) the government has promised to take all this stuff away from them.
If they carry on as they are, setting future targets which are going to be very painful for large chunks of the population, then when they bite claiming they are unchangeable and immutable like some sort of divine decree, net zero is going to become the new Brexit. We'll moan about it for a bit, a pressure group will force the government's hand, and as soon as the people get a real democratic say, the silent majority of the population will decide that enough is enough, and will tear the elite a new arsehole - just like happened with Brexit.
As I mentioned earlier today my energy deal runs out this month and even the best 2 year fix I could find saw my daily unit rate for electricity and gas rise by 50%
And this is just the start, as from October further rises are on the way
I really do not think the politicians have even started to understand just how the unimaginable costs involved in their green agenda are going to be paid by the majority of taxpayers
Don't think your rise is green related. There's a worldwide wholesale price issue for this winter.
Its three things.
1) The government discovered that the retail energy markets were working as intended - i.e. regular switchers got the best deals. They decided that this was unfair on those who couldn't be bothered to switch, and so introduced price caps which mean there are no-longer good deals around for diligent switchers.
2)Global commodities prices are up for pretty much everything (I wonder how much this is relating to lots of countries having printed a load of cash for Covid).
3)We've deliberately gone for expensive electricity from wind + massive amounts of conventional backup rather than cheap coal or gas baseload. Everyone is pretending that wind is competitive, but that's only because we've tilted the playing field until it is.
Incidentally, an amusing story I heard recently - there is a moderate onshore windfarm near me, built on ground which was extensively shallow mined for lead and copper in the early Victorian era. In order to get the required ground stability for the towers, they poured a lot of concrete into holes in the ground. The site engineer did the maths - apparently the turbines should have nicely offset the co2 from the concrete foundations in around 400 years time...
Hospital admissions are down and the death rate will follow.
I think this is arrogant.
Today's figure shows a rise in cases. ZOE suggest that the Gov't stats have been underplaying the true figure.
I suspect we're heading for problems. If I'm wrong then I'll be delighted but I will just note that everytime people arrogantly think this virus is beaten, it has a habit of biting them in the ass. A little more circumspection, grace and humility from you Mr Seal wouldn't go amiss.
ZOE panicked two weeks ago when the drop in cases started and fudged their data, on the pretext of who their cohort was. Now it’s again showing a decent fall. Cases on Wednesdays are always up, as weekend effects roll through. I am not expecting the cases to fall away rapidly. More likely we will be stuck with substantial cases for a while. But crucially there are no legal restrictions in England and vaccines are making that happen.
I think that's what's really key here, we're well past the point where the step 4 unlockdown should be visible in cases. That we haven't seen an explosion, just a slowdown in the contraction rate, is actually a huge win. I was on record here saying that 100k per day in mid-late August was plausible based on what we've previously seen in an unrestricted environment. Vaccines are holding the R down to about 1 and we're still adding people into the two dose cohort and all of the infections are pushing people into the acquired immunity cohort.
The difficulty is that three things happened at pretty much the same time. Stage 4 (you'd expect a faster spread), the end of the Euros (undoing what looks like a biggish temporary peak) and schools closing (which has always slowed the spread down thus far, whatever the mechanism).
That makes it hard to unpick what's going on. The next tricky bit is what happens when schools reopen; we either have sufficient slack to cope with that, or we don't...
Football stadiums will be reopening at much the same time, which will complicate things further.
I don't doubt it. It's an unsurprisingly selfish attitude from the middle classes who have those marginal benefits to want to inflict social misery on the rest of the country so they can keep them.
Loads of them will definitely fear the idea of decisions being made in the room a year from now while they sit in splendid isolation at home. I think that's partly why they want to keep everyone home, if no one can go into the office then they know there's no way they can be dragged in. If the office is open eventually people will gravitate towards it and they'll have an absolutely mega case of FOMO as well as being cut out of lunch and pub based decisions.
This old chestnut you keep dragging out to justify your weak argument people should be back in offices.
Most modern organisations don't function in the way you describe. The notion a small group want to keep everyone WFH so they alone can take the decisions is so absurd I'm surprised it's even taken seriously.
My organisation (and those with which I deal) are universally either abandoning commercial office space entirely or looking for something that isn't banks of desks all packed together like battery hens - those days are over mercifully.
The "office" will be a place for collaborative meetings and team working visited at most two days per week - that's what I'm hearing across both the private and public sectors. We are already seeing Councils such as West Berkshire and Cornwall putting up papers looking at reductions of up to 50% in office accommodation - why, because old-fashioned administrative offices are history.
No one liked them, no one wants them and we've now discovered no one needs them.
I've heard the equally banal comment on here people prefer air conditioned offices to working at home when it's hot. Perhaps but working at home will be attractive on dark, cold, wet November mornings and especially in the depths of winter.
The last gasp of the antisocial remote worker coming to the realisation that decisions are going to be made in the room.
Also, I've never said people should do anything. I've said that people will inevitably go back.
The vast majority of office workers weren't in the room when decisions were made in the first place. They were outside waiting to be told what to do. For many it is easier to take orders at home.
I don't like it, but you're totally right about the way things generally work. Most seem content with that, though I think the seniors love it most of all. No need to gather people to receive a dictat.
Max I think what you’re missing, is the lack of office has also meant the end of office politics. While I have once had someone scream down the phone at me that I’m a “fucking c**t” on a recorded phone line, generally most people are fairly cordial on email, IM and the phone. Even the most obnoxious knobheads struggle to get their sarcastic disdain across when it’s not person to person. Dunno what end of banking you’re in but the dodgier / corrupt practices are also far harder to do in this brave new world, which is a big plus in my book.
For the office politics reason alone, I’d be perfectly happy never to go in again. Though there are of course many other reasons not to. That said, I’m not remotely ambitious anymore. I just wanna cruise it for 5-10 years. Do my job competently and professionally, engage cordially with the people I need to get things done and have time for the other things in life. And I long ago stopped using work as a crutch for a social life. For the reasons you describe, it’s far better to be friends with people who don’t even understand your job.
Wait, Steve Baker just called Brexit a political fiasco.
Politicians need to level with the public about the scale of change needed in our lives so we don’t have another political fiasco like Brexit
I think what he's saying is that Brexit happened as a powerful movement, against the wishes of the majority of politicians because the establishment had spent the last 30 years doing stuff people didn't like and blaming the EU, whilst a cosy concensus of the "mainstream" ensured we never got a vote on it (because if we did they knew they would lose).
The green idocy is going the same way. People want their gas central heating and their economical diesel cars (even the No10 spokeswoman it seems). They'd quite like cheap electricity. But without their consent (there has never been an election with a credible party against this) the government has promised to take all this stuff away from them. If the government persists with this without real democratic consent, as the various deadlines start to bite and actually effect people's lives it's going to become very unpopular. If they carry on as they are, setting future targets which are going to be very painful for large chunks of the population, then when they bute claiming they are unchangeable and immutable like some sort of divine decree, net zero is going to become the new Brexit. We'll moan about it for a bit, a pressure group will force the government's hand, and as soon as the people get a real democratic say the silent majority of the population will decide that enough is enough, and will tear the elite a new arsehole - just like happened with Brexit.
Except global warming and climate change is happening NOW, and perhaps worse than scientists predicted.
So you’ll need to get used to net zero. Before net zero tears *you* a new arsehole.
I didn't say it wasn't, although I do occasionally wonder if some of the climate modelers have been moonlighting doing the University of Warwick's Covid projections - I'm not sure it's changing as fast as a lot of climate scientists claim.
The reality is that there is sweet FA we can do about it. We've already done what we can sensibly do to curb emissions, going further and ending up shivering in the cold because we've banned affordable central heating whilst the Chinese are still building coal fire power stations by the dozen is pointless.
We'd do better to admit that climate change is going to happen, and use 10% of the money we were going to spend on net zero for mitigation works, and let the public keep the other 90%.
"I'm not sure it's changing as fast as a lot of climate scientists claim."
This season's events in NW America have made climate scientists think they haven't been pessimistic enough on the modelling.
Hospital admissions are down and the death rate will follow.
I think this is arrogant.
Today's figure shows a rise in cases. ZOE suggest that the Gov't stats have been underplaying the true figure.
I suspect we're heading for problems. If I'm wrong then I'll be delighted but I will just note that everytime people arrogantly think this virus is beaten, it has a habit of biting them in the ass. A little more circumspection, grace and humility from you Mr Seal wouldn't go amiss.
ZOE panicked two weeks ago when the drop in cases started and fudged their data, on the pretext of who their cohort was. Now it’s again showing a decent fall. Cases on Wednesdays are always up, as weekend effects roll through. I am not expecting the cases to fall away rapidly. More likely we will be stuck with substantial cases for a while. But crucially there are no legal restrictions in England and vaccines are making that happen.
I think that's what's really key here, we're well past the point where the step 4 unlockdown should be visible in cases. That we haven't seen an explosion, just a slowdown in the contraction rate, is actually a huge win. I was on record here saying that 100k per day in mid-late August was plausible based on what we've previously seen in an unrestricted environment. Vaccines are holding the R down to about 1 and we're still adding people into the two dose cohort and all of the infections are pushing people into the acquired immunity cohort.
The difficulty is that three things happened at pretty much the same time. Stage 4 (you'd expect a faster spread), the end of the Euros (undoing what looks like a biggish temporary peak) and schools closing (which has always slowed the spread down thus far, whatever the mechanism).
That makes it hard to unpick what's going on. The next tricky bit is what happens when schools reopen; we either have sufficient slack to cope with that, or we don't...
Football stadiums will be reopening at much the same time, which will complicate things further.
Hospital admissions are down and the death rate will follow.
I think this is arrogant.
Today's figure shows a rise in cases. ZOE suggest that the Gov't stats have been underplaying the true figure.
I suspect we're heading for problems. If I'm wrong then I'll be delighted but I will just note that everytime people arrogantly think this virus is beaten, it has a habit of biting them in the ass. A little more circumspection, grace and humility from you Mr Seal wouldn't go amiss.
ZOE panicked two weeks ago when the drop in cases started and fudged their data, on the pretext of who their cohort was. Now it’s again showing a decent fall. Cases on Wednesdays are always up, as weekend effects roll through. I am not expecting the cases to fall away rapidly. More likely we will be stuck with substantial cases for a while. But crucially there are no legal restrictions in England and vaccines are making that happen.
I think that's what's really key here, we're well past the point where the step 4 unlockdown should be visible in cases. That we haven't seen an explosion, just a slowdown in the contraction rate, is actually a huge win. I was on record here saying that 100k per day in mid-late August was plausible based on what we've previously seen in an unrestricted environment. Vaccines are holding the R down to about 1 and we're still adding people into the two dose cohort and all of the infections are pushing people into the acquired immunity cohort.
The difficulty is that three things happened at pretty much the same time. Stage 4 (you'd expect a faster spread), the end of the Euros (undoing what looks like a biggish temporary peak) and schools closing (which has always slowed the spread down thus far, whatever the mechanism).
That makes it hard to unpick what's going on. The next tricky bit is what happens when schools reopen; we either have sufficient slack to cope with that, or we don't...
Football stadiums will be reopening at much the same time, which will complicate things further.
Not in the bright new world of Latin lessons mandated by the Spider God, it isn't!
We speak English in this country, NOT a dead language like Latin!
It's an interesting question, though: Latin has been formally incepted into English a great deal, and so has Greek. Quite a few plurals in formal English and also technical English derive directly from them. For instance, one writes of stomata in plant leaves (but not the sort of stoma with a colostomy bag - they are stomas plural).
I tend to use the more conservative grammar, plural, etc., to play safe - for me, 'data' is always a plural word, for instance.
First lesson in statistics: "data are gifts and are plural".
Yes, people are annoying and exhausting. With practice it is fairly easy for an introvert to fake extraversion, indeed, I do it for a living. After all extroverts are fairly superficial people and so easy to fool. The key is to build in plenty of time to decompress in solitary activities afterwards, such as walking, gardening, reading or even arguing on PB. It is in those quiet moments that inspiration comes.
Generally the world is set up to benefit superficial showmen, and this has been a period that has rebalanced things considerably in favour of more thoughtful folk who are happy in their own company. Of course the extroverts resent this, they want their entourages and flunkies back.
Bit harsh to call all extroverts superficial… even if I did give you a like.
It's a comfort thing for introverts. Helps them with the FOMO worry. And the envy.
That is where extroverts fail. There is no FOMO worry, that being an extrovert fear. Introverts are the sort that quite like missing out.
I don't think all extroverts are superficial, though plenty are. I meant after all...
I work in an extremely social environment and this has largely continued through lockdowns. My job is to talk to people, often strangers, and to get to the point quickly without being brusque. I have learnt to do it well, indeed have been given a national award for sympathetic communication skills. I am rather relieved when it is all over at the end of the day so I can retreat to my garden.
Communication skills from you lot is certainly a rare attribute. But who cares, if you get the work done.
If you hate every minute of it that's also fine. Interacting with real people has never been an NHS core competence.
Hospital admissions are down and the death rate will follow.
I think this is arrogant.
Today's figure shows a rise in cases. ZOE suggest that the Gov't stats have been underplaying the true figure.
I suspect we're heading for problems. If I'm wrong then I'll be delighted but I will just note that everytime people arrogantly think this virus is beaten, it has a habit of biting them in the ass. A little more circumspection, grace and humility from you Mr Seal wouldn't go amiss.
ZOE panicked two weeks ago when the drop in cases started and fudged their data, on the pretext of who their cohort was. Now it’s again showing a decent fall. Cases on Wednesdays are always up, as weekend effects roll through. I am not expecting the cases to fall away rapidly. More likely we will be stuck with substantial cases for a while. But crucially there are no legal restrictions in England and vaccines are making that happen.
I think that's what's really key here, we're well past the point where the step 4 unlockdown should be visible in cases. That we haven't seen an explosion, just a slowdown in the contraction rate, is actually a huge win. I was on record here saying that 100k per day in mid-late August was plausible based on what we've previously seen in an unrestricted environment. Vaccines are holding the R down to about 1 and we're still adding people into the two dose cohort and all of the infections are pushing people into the acquired immunity cohort.
The difficulty is that three things happened at pretty much the same time. Stage 4 (you'd expect a faster spread), the end of the Euros (undoing what looks like a biggish temporary peak) and schools closing (which has always slowed the spread down thus far, whatever the mechanism).
That makes it hard to unpick what's going on. The next tricky bit is what happens when schools reopen; we either have sufficient slack to cope with that, or we don't...
Football stadiums will be reopening at much the same time, which will complicate things further.
Wait, Steve Baker just called Brexit a political fiasco.
Politicians need to level with the public about the scale of change needed in our lives so we don’t have another political fiasco like Brexit
I think what he's saying is that Brexit happened as a powerful movement, against the wishes of the majority of politicians because the establishment had spent the last 30 years doing stuff people didn't like and blaming the EU, whilst a cosy concensus of the "mainstream" ensured we never got a vote on it (because if we did they knew they would lose).
The green idocy is going the same way. People want their gas central heating and their economical diesel cars (even the No10 spokeswoman it seems). They'd quite like cheap electricity. But without their consent (there has never been an election with a credible party against this) the government has promised to take all this stuff away from them. If the government persists with this without real democratic consent, as the various deadlines start to bite and actually effect people's lives it's going to become very unpopular. If they carry on as they are, setting future targets which are going to be very painful for large chunks of the population, then when they bute claiming they are unchangeable and immutable like some sort of divine decree, net zero is going to become the new Brexit. We'll moan about it for a bit, a pressure group will force the government's hand, and as soon as the people get a real democratic say the silent majority of the population will decide that enough is enough, and will tear the elite a new arsehole - just like happened with Brexit.
Except global warming and climate change is happening NOW, and perhaps worse than scientists predicted.
So you’ll need to get used to net zero. Before net zero tears *you* a new arsehole.
I'm on board with net zero but am mildly sceptical about some of the measures proposed to get there, for instance, as Allegra Stratton has inadvertently drawn to our attention, the benefits of electric cars over diesel without considering the cost of building and scrapping. Or at a more domestic level, what about the rush to smart meters? Will that really help reduce consumption or was it just an excuse to sack the old meter-readers and will lead to higher bills because someone has to pay?
I don't think that the penny has really dropped with most people in terms of what net zero means. I agree that keeping old cars running until they expire is probably the best carbon plan, and that is what I am doing with my 13 Yr old Fiat 500. I will replace it with electric when the time comes. A zero carbon economy is much more fundamental than that though.
I am a pessimist in these things. There are enough selfish people in the world, and enough who cannot afford the marginal cost of going Green, that the world will continue to change climate. The after effects of this on ecosystems and economies are going to dominate this century, and even more so on population movements. When Bangladesh is underwater there will be a lot of migration.
Wait, Steve Baker just called Brexit a political fiasco.
Politicians need to level with the public about the scale of change needed in our lives so we don’t have another political fiasco like Brexit
I think what he's saying is that Brexit happened as a powerful movement, against the wishes of the majority of politicians because the establishment had spent the last 30 years doing stuff people didn't like and blaming the EU, whilst a cosy concensus of the "mainstream" ensured we never got a vote on it (because if we did they knew they would lose).
The green idocy is going the same way. People want their gas central heating and their economical diesel cars (even the No10 spokeswoman it seems). They'd quite like cheap electricity. But without their consent (there has never been an election with a credible party against this) the government has promised to take all this stuff away from them.
If they carry on as they are, setting future targets which are going to be very painful for large chunks of the population, then when they bite claiming they are unchangeable and immutable like some sort of divine decree, net zero is going to become the new Brexit. We'll moan about it for a bit, a pressure group will force the government's hand, and as soon as the people get a real democratic say, the silent majority of the population will decide that enough is enough, and will tear the elite a new arsehole - just like happened with Brexit.
As I mentioned earlier today my energy deal runs out this month and even the best 2 year fix I could find saw my daily unit rate for electricity and gas rise by 50%
And this is just the start, as from October further rises are on the way
I really do not think the politicians have even started to understand just how the unimaginable costs involved in their green agenda are going to be paid by the majority of taxpayers
Don't think your rise is green related. There's a worldwide wholesale price issue for this winter.
Its three things.
1) The government discovered that the retail energy markets were working as intended - i.e. regular switchers got the best deals. They decided that this was unfair on those who couldn't be bothered to switch, and so introduced price caps which mean there are no-longer good deals around for diligent switchers.
2)Global commodities prices are up for pretty much everything (I wonder how much this is relating to lots of countries having printed a load of cash for Covid).
3)We've deliberately gone for expensive electricity from wind + massive amounts of conventional backup rather than cheap coal or gas baseload. Everyone is pretending that wind is competitive, but that's only because we've tilted the playing field until it is.
Incidentally, an amusing story I heard recently - there is a moderate onshore windfarm near me, built on ground which was extensively shallow mined for lead and copper in the early Victorian era. In order to get the required ground stability for the towers, they poured a lot of concrete into holes in the ground. The site engineer did the maths - apparently the turbines should have nicely offset the co2 from the concrete foundations in around 400 years time...
I did wonder about the carbon cost of concrete footings, but I think that the cost that you cite is way off. The offset is 7-9 months:
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Let us know how it is!
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/im-plagued-by-worries-of-disaster-dominic-cummings-interviewed
We’ve always known (from comparison with the ONS survey if nothing else) that recorded cases are less than the real rate of infections. Cases have been between a third and a half of infections - but there hasn’t been a significant change in this ratio recently.
Thus increases in cases are proportionate to increases in infections and vice versa.
The R number quoted is always calculated back to a couple of weeks earlier. It’s thus not much use - it can “predict” that cases would be rising two weeks ago, but we already knew that.
If cases (and infections) are declining, R is (in real time) under 1. It now looks as though it’s levelling out at 1.
Hospital admissions follow cases with a lag of c. one week. They look to have continued following that trajectory (the 7-day average of cases maxed out on the 16th of July, and the 7-day average of hospitalisations peaked on the 23rd.
As cases have dropped significantly since the 16th, we can reasonably expect hospitalisations to continue to drop in conjunction (lagged 7 days).
Deaths are lagged by a further 10 days from hospitalisations. We can reasonably expect the 7-day average of deaths by date of death to peak around the 2nd of August. The data lag in information on deaths also kicks in - we realistically only have close enough to full data for up to about the 28th of July. Accordingly, deaths data will continue to rise for about 5-6 days.
I don't think all extroverts are superficial, though plenty are. I meant after all...
I work in an extremely social environment and this has largely continued through lockdowns. My job is to talk to people, often strangers, and to get to the point quickly without being brusque. I have learnt to do it well, indeed have been given a national award for sympathetic communication skills. I am rather relieved when it is all over at the end of the day so I can retreat to my garden.
Kium car
1) The government discovered that the retail energy markets were working as intended - i.e. regular switchers got the best deals. They decided that this was unfair on those who couldn't be bothered to switch, and so introduced price caps which mean there are no-longer good deals around for diligent switchers.
2)Global commodities prices are up for pretty much everything (I wonder how much this is relating to lots of countries having printed a load of cash for Covid).
3)We've deliberately gone for expensive electricity from wind + massive amounts of conventional backup rather than cheap coal or gas baseload. Everyone is pretending that wind is competitive, but that's only because we've tilted the playing field until it is.
Incidentally, an amusing story I heard recently - there is a moderate onshore windfarm near me, built on ground which was extensively shallow mined for lead and copper in the early Victorian era. In order to get the required ground stability for the towers, they poured a lot of concrete into holes in the ground. The site engineer did the maths - apparently the turbines should have nicely offset the co2 from the concrete foundations in around 400 years time...
For the office politics reason alone, I’d be perfectly happy never to go in again. Though there are of course many other reasons not to. That said, I’m not remotely ambitious anymore. I just wanna cruise it for 5-10 years. Do my job competently and professionally, engage cordially with the people I need to get things done and have time for the other things in life. And I long ago stopped using work as a crutch for a social life. For the reasons you describe, it’s far better to be friends with people who don’t even understand your job.
new thread
This season's events in NW America have made climate scientists think they haven't been pessimistic enough on the modelling.
If you hate every minute of it that's also fine. Interacting with real people has never been an NHS core competence.
I am a pessimist in these things. There are enough selfish people in the world, and enough who cannot afford the marginal cost of going Green, that the world will continue to change climate. The after effects of this on ecosystems and economies are going to dominate this century, and even more so on population movements. When Bangladesh is underwater there will be a lot of migration.
https://www.newscientist.com/lastword/mg24332461-400-what-is-the-carbon-payback-period-for-a-wind-turbine/