Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
If Labour are not the political wing of just stop oil, they have too easily allowed themselves to be presented as such, due to their desperate greed to accept huge donations from other than unions.
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
I think that's being a bit silly. I have great doubt that *all* their stated nuclear arsenal is in working condition. But could they have kept (say) 10% of it in working order?
Yes. And that's more than enough to create massive damage to their enemies.
Russian warhead pits aren’t sealed like US/U.K. ones. They corrode rapidly - 2-3 lifespan.
Plus they need multiple kilos of Tritium per year to replace decay losses.
It would be a pleasant surprise to discover that almost none of them work. Since, for now, the only way to find out would involve rolling the dice on the continued existence of civilisation, I'm not as sanguine about the idea as either you or Barty seem to be.
Time for the west to give Russia an ultimatum - if they blow up the NPP (or have an 'accidental' leak) then remaining gloves are off - Russia to ceasefire and immediately start withdrawing to 2014 borders. Failure to comply will result in NATO strikes against non-complying Russian forces - but with clear assurance that no attacks will take place against Russia itself.
Is that not what Putin wants? If the Russians can't win, he will need a story to sell.
The provocation is surely a sign that they think they are losing already, without official NATO involvement.
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
Russia have successfully killed a lot of people and destroyed a number of urban areas. If North Korea can build functioning nuclear weapons then I think Russia can.
Many fewer than they claim to have, but enough.
Russia have killed people using conventional weaponry, but are failing massively even there.
Having working ICBMs that can reach their targets without interception and without failing is an order of magnitude more complicated. I see nothing from Russia's performance in this war to suggest they are capable of it, though obviously I don't want to see that put to the test.
I think that Russia's weapons have mostly worked okay in a technical sense - it's been the training, battlefield intelligence for target acquisition, strategy, etc, that's been lacking.
This is moot though, as it's not going to be tested. Russia won't play the nuclear card. We can see this with the response to events in Belgorod and the drone attack on Moscow. Putin has played these down because to do otherwise would expose how weak Russia is. We can expect similar rationalisations to avoid escalation in response to future humiliation on the battlefield.
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
I think that's being a bit silly. I have great doubt that *all* their stated nuclear arsenal is in working condition. But could they have kept (say) 10% of it in working order?
Yes. And that's more than enough to create massive damage to their enemies.
Russian warhead pits aren’t sealed like US/U.K. ones. They corrode rapidly - 2-3 lifespan.
Plus they need multiple kilos of Tritium per year to replace decay losses.
Indeed. But as I said, they don't need to maintain all their arsenal. Even 10% of it would cause massive problems - and even if only 10% of that 10% worked. Russia is supposed to have nearly 6,000 warheads. 10% of 10% would still leave 60 working ones.
Now, I don't believe they have just under 6,000 working warheads. But I fear that if you;'re claiming they have no working warheads, then that's just hope over experience. If I was them, I would have maintained 1,000 in working order and kept the others as 'paper' warheads to frighten opponents.
Even if they have 60 working ones, that doesn't necessarily mean 60 successful launches even if they try to launch them. Nor would all successful launches equate to successful explosions at the intended target. There's multiple possible failure points along the sequence.
Yes, they exist to frighten opponents. But if they were actually called upon, I don't for one second think it would be a case of mutually assured destruction.
I don't think we should be quite that laid back about their Strategic Rocket Forces. Likely somewhat better funded & maintained than the army.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
I think that's being a bit silly. I have great doubt that *all* their stated nuclear arsenal is in working condition. But could they have kept (say) 10% of it in working order?
Yes. And that's more than enough to create massive damage to their enemies.
Russian warhead pits aren’t sealed like US/U.K. ones. They corrode rapidly - 2-3 lifespan.
Plus they need multiple kilos of Tritium per year to replace decay losses.
It would be a pleasant surprise to discover that almost none of them work. Since, for now, the only way to find out would involve rolling the dice on the continued existence of civilisation, I'm not as sanguine about the idea as either you or Barty seem to be.
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
I think that's being a bit silly. I have great doubt that *all* their stated nuclear arsenal is in working condition. But could they have kept (say) 10% of it in working order?
Yes. And that's more than enough to create massive damage to their enemies.
Russian warhead pits aren’t sealed like US/U.K. ones. They corrode rapidly - 2-3 lifespan.
Plus they need multiple kilos of Tritium per year to replace decay losses.
It would be a pleasant surprise to discover that almost none of them work. Since, for now, the only way to find out would involve rolling the dice on the continued existence of civilisation, I'm not as sanguine about the idea as either you or Barty seem to be.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
If we hit the 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures that's not going to make the world uninhabitable. That's a fraction of a degree above where we have been in recent decades and fractions of a degree are perfectly normal variance.
Of course climate change is real, but we're already working on it. We're already decarbonising. We still need fossil fuel extraction, for the interim, and we will need fossil fuel extraction even when we hit net zero as petrochemicals are required for many medicines, materials and other industrial purposes not remotely related to burning and releasing carbon.
I want a habitable world. We are working on that already though and need to continue to do the right thing, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If it stayed at 1.5 degrees, possibly - although there is a big issue that if we were to get to 1.5 the feedback loop would still lead to greater warming. I also don't really see the decarbonising push by individual countries as useful if all they are doing is outsourcing their carbon producing industries to other countries who end up producing our consumer goods and then blamed for the new emissions, whilst also not benefitting from any wealth creation themselves.
And by uninhabitable I don't just mean the climate, I mean the political reality also leading to uninhabitable scenarios. If 700 million people are displaced by 2030 due to droughts across Asia and Africa (as is projected), then the current anti immigrant fervour will continue through the roof, and the fortress nation state will lead to increased authoritarianism. The current food inflation will pale in comparison to impacts of mass drought / flooding; one of the reasons wheat prices have been so bad (beyond the Ukraine war) is that wheat producing areas in the US, China and Africa have also been ravaged by harsh climate events. Resource wars, especially water wars, could become common in the not to distant future.
How much of a dent to standard of living can people take without things collapsing? If we had made the necessary investment earlier, we could have slowly changed expectations and sourcing for things. Now, who knows. Putting our head in the sand and hoping business as usual works hasn't worked so far. The next generation are more extreme on this issue, on the left and right, and as much as you hate the JSO or XR activists the ecofascists are much worse.
Yes, there are feedback loops. We need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere before we get runaway temperature rise. So far we only are slowing the increase. The economic case for new fossil fuel investment is getting much weaker, the danger is that they will become stranded assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsnkPLkf1ao
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
I think that's being a bit silly. I have great doubt that *all* their stated nuclear arsenal is in working condition. But could they have kept (say) 10% of it in working order?
Yes. And that's more than enough to create massive damage to their enemies.
Russian warhead pits aren’t sealed like US/U.K. ones. They corrode rapidly - 2-3 lifespan.
Plus they need multiple kilos of Tritium per year to replace decay losses.
It would be a pleasant surprise to discover that almost none of them work. Since, for now, the only way to find out would involve rolling the dice on the continued existence of civilisation, I'm not as sanguine about the idea as either you or Barty seem to be.
I'm sanguine as its not in our hands anyway.
Do we let the threat of nuclear war allow Russia to get away with war crimes, invasions and seizing any territory they want?
If yes, then you can live with that world, but I'm not OK with it and nor is anyone else.
If no, then there is a risk there but its not in our hands. All we can do is support Ukraine to the best of our ability to try to end this war sooner than later, and ensure our air defences etc are as primed as they can be just in case it happens and hope it does not.
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
I think that's being a bit silly. I have great doubt that *all* their stated nuclear arsenal is in working condition. But could they have kept (say) 10% of it in working order?
Yes. And that's more than enough to create massive damage to their enemies.
Russian warhead pits aren’t sealed like US/U.K. ones. They corrode rapidly - 2-3 lifespan.
Plus they need multiple kilos of Tritium per year to replace decay losses.
Indeed. But as I said, they don't need to maintain all their arsenal. Even 10% of it would cause massive problems - and even if only 10% of that 10% worked. Russia is supposed to have nearly 6,000 warheads. 10% of 10% would still leave 60 working ones.
Now, I don't believe they have just under 6,000 working warheads. But I fear that if you;'re claiming they have no working warheads, then that's just hope over experience. If I was them, I would have maintained 1,000 in working order and kept the others as 'paper' warheads to frighten opponents.
Even if they have 60 working ones, that doesn't necessarily mean 60 successful launches even if they try to launch them. There's multiple possible failure points along the sequence.
Yes, they exist to frighten opponents. But if they were actually called upon, I don't for one second think it would be a case of mutually assured destruction.
No. My point was that they might have 10% of their stated warheads in working condition. That means 600. If 10% of the launches worked (given multiple warheads on the same missile), then that would be 60 *successful* ones.
And I'm probably lowballing the figures.
Yes, it is very difficult to know just how serviceable Russia's nuclear arsenal is, but it would be foolhardy in the extreme to assume that it is completely inoperative. Despite its rampant corruption and general economic malaise, Russia actually has a pretty impressive history of technological development in both nuclear technology and aerospace engineering. To believe otherwise is to believe our own propaganda.
On the bright, side, I am heartened by the news of what sounds like operations by Russian elements hostile to Putin's regime in, for example, the Belgorod area. I think our best hope of ending the war with a liberated Ukraine and intact cities lies with Putin's overthrow by elements from his own populace.
Forget the figures on small boats, what is the percentage decrease in the value of Rishi Sunak’s outfits these days? Is that something we are monitoring?
I am. When he stepped out in Dover yesterday, Sunak probably thought that the focus would be on the update to his immigration policy, but it’s his wardrobe that interests me. Please explain.
Just look at what he had on his feet. I’d rather not.
Not for our PM the £490 Prada loafers or £335 Common Projects trainers he has previously worn out and about. In place of those chichi accessories was a pair of £190 distressed Timberland boots. Are you sure?
I’ll level with you: the PR for Timberland wouldn’t confirm as such (not the “right positioning”, apparently) but look, you can clearly see the logo. Yikes. Bit awks.
If Alastair Campbell was working for him he would rip £5,000 shirts off his back straight after streams of foul language. So don’t blame Rishi, blame his handlers.
Time for the west to give Russia an ultimatum - if they blow up the NPP (or have an 'accidental' leak) then remaining gloves are off - Russia to ceasefire and immediately start withdrawing to 2014 borders. Failure to comply will result in NATO strikes against non-complying Russian forces - but with clear assurance that no attacks will take place against Russia itself.
I hope they have already been given a stern message regards 'accidents' at the NPP though it is a situation I'd like to see revisited. From a previous analysis that was done I believe the only danger is from a deliberate explosion inside the plant. Modern facilities are designed to cope with a meltdown. I stand to be corrected if others - Max? - know more.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
If Labour are not the political wing of just stop oil, they have too easily allowed themselves to be presented as such, due to their desperate greed to accept huge donations from other than unions.
The political wing of a protest group is not typically in favour of said protest group being locked up with harsh sentences.
It's also interesting that this government are keen to dismiss far right street violence, whether that is over migrants being housed in hotels, or attacking drag queen story time, and yet it is Starmer who is accused of being the political wing of a left wing protest movement when he is at war with some of his own members and elected officials due to them being too left wing.
Yes, it is very difficult to know just how serviceable Russia's nuclear arsenal is, but it would be foolhardy in the extreme to assume that it is completely inoperative. Despite its rampant corruption and general economic malaise, Russia actually has a pretty impressive history of technological development in both nuclear technology and aerospace engineering.
That is not the issue.
The question is not could they develop it (they could, and they did) the question is did they maintain it after the wall fell.
Look at the pictures of the 'space shuttle' when the money ran out...
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
If we hit the 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures that's not going to make the world uninhabitable. That's a fraction of a degree above where we have been in recent decades and fractions of a degree are perfectly normal variance.
Of course climate change is real, but we're already working on it. We're already decarbonising. We still need fossil fuel extraction, for the interim, and we will need fossil fuel extraction even when we hit net zero as petrochemicals are required for many medicines, materials and other industrial purposes not remotely related to burning and releasing carbon.
I want a habitable world. We are working on that already though and need to continue to do the right thing, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If it stayed at 1.5 degrees, possibly - although there is a big issue that if we were to get to 1.5 the feedback loop would still lead to greater warming. I also don't really see the decarbonising push by individual countries as useful if all they are doing is outsourcing their carbon producing industries to other countries who end up producing our consumer goods and then blamed for the new emissions, whilst also not benefitting from any wealth creation themselves.
And by uninhabitable I don't just mean the climate, I mean the political reality also leading to uninhabitable scenarios. If 700 million people are displaced by 2030 due to droughts across Asia and Africa (as is projected), then the current anti immigrant fervour will continue through the roof, and the fortress nation state will lead to increased authoritarianism. The current food inflation will pale in comparison to impacts of mass drought / flooding; one of the reasons wheat prices have been so bad (beyond the Ukraine war) is that wheat producing areas in the US, China and Africa have also been ravaged by harsh climate events. Resource wars, especially water wars, could become common in the not to distant future.
How much of a dent to standard of living can people take without things collapsing? If we had made the necessary investment earlier, we could have slowly changed expectations and sourcing for things. Now, who knows. Putting our head in the sand and hoping business as usual works hasn't worked so far. The next generation are more extreme on this issue, on the left and right, and as much as you hate the JSO or XR activists the ecofascists are much worse.
Yes, there are feedback loops. We need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere before we get runaway temperature rise. So far we only are slowing the increase. The economic case for new fossil fuel investment is getting much weaker, the danger is that they will become stranded assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsnkPLkf1ao
Slowing the increase is all we can do for now. Unless you want a catastrophe then slowing is how you stop, its a transition. If I'm driving at 70mph and do an emergency stop, I have to slow before I stop or go into reverse and I will keep going forwards while slowing - but if I'm slowing down, I'm doing what I can.
We are slowing.
If new fossil fuel extraction becomes a stranded asset then that is the responsibility of the investors and they can lose out. Not a problem, some investments fail. Buyer beware and all that. But the environmental case for using domestically sourced fossil fuels over imported ones from countries like Russia or Saudi Arabia is unequivocally clear. Domestic fuels are much cleaner to use, while we transition to alternatives, and lets leave the Sheikhs and Oligarchs with stranded assets instead if that's what it comes to.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
If we hit the 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures that's not going to make the world uninhabitable. That's a fraction of a degree above where we have been in recent decades and fractions of a degree are perfectly normal variance.
Of course climate change is real, but we're already working on it. We're already decarbonising. We still need fossil fuel extraction, for the interim, and we will need fossil fuel extraction even when we hit net zero as petrochemicals are required for many medicines, materials and other industrial purposes not remotely related to burning and releasing carbon.
I want a habitable world. We are working on that already though and need to continue to do the right thing, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If it stayed at 1.5 degrees, possibly - although there is a big issue that if we were to get to 1.5 the feedback loop would still lead to greater warming. I also don't really see the decarbonising push by individual countries as useful if all they are doing is outsourcing their carbon producing industries to other countries who end up producing our consumer goods and then blamed for the new emissions, whilst also not benefitting from any wealth creation themselves.
And by uninhabitable I don't just mean the climate, I mean the political reality also leading to uninhabitable scenarios. If 700 million people are displaced by 2030 due to droughts across Asia and Africa (as is projected), then the current anti immigrant fervour will continue through the roof, and the fortress nation state will lead to increased authoritarianism. The current food inflation will pale in comparison to impacts of mass drought / flooding; one of the reasons wheat prices have been so bad (beyond the Ukraine war) is that wheat producing areas in the US, China and Africa have also been ravaged by harsh climate events. Resource wars, especially water wars, could become common in the not to distant future.
How much of a dent to standard of living can people take without things collapsing? If we had made the necessary investment earlier, we could have slowly changed expectations and sourcing for things. Now, who knows. Putting our head in the sand and hoping business as usual works hasn't worked so far. The next generation are more extreme on this issue, on the left and right, and as much as you hate the JSO or XR activists the ecofascists are much worse.
Yes, there are feedback loops. We need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere before we get runaway temperature rise. So far we only are slowing the increase. The economic case for new fossil fuel investment is getting much weaker, the danger is that they will become stranded assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsnkPLkf1ao
I mean, that is an inevitable problem - the best way to deal with that is for pension funds and other actually socially valuable interests divest and leave the losses with people who can take the hit...
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
I think that's being a bit silly. I have great doubt that *all* their stated nuclear arsenal is in working condition. But could they have kept (say) 10% of it in working order?
Yes. And that's more than enough to create massive damage to their enemies.
Russian warhead pits aren’t sealed like US/U.K. ones. They corrode rapidly - 2-3 lifespan.
Plus they need multiple kilos of Tritium per year to replace decay losses.
It would be a pleasant surprise to discover that almost none of them work. Since, for now, the only way to find out would involve rolling the dice on the continued existence of civilisation, I'm not as sanguine about the idea as either you or Barty seem to be.
Is civilisation worth saving? Discuss.
One to ask GPT-8, perhaps.
'Can you wait 10 years until we've evolved beyond dependence on you puny mortals?'
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
I'm not sure which zealots you mean, but I'm all in favour of heavily taxing all imports of fossil fuels as well as reducing our own production. It's not a case of either/or; we have to reduce both our production and importation of fossil fuels.
I notice however TSE fails to mention Starmer only leads Sunak 42% to 37% as preferred PM in the same Redfield poll. A result which if reflected in voting intention after the debates and election campaign would produce a hung parliament
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
I'm not sure which zealots you mean, but I'm all in favour of heavily taxing all imports of fossil fuels as well as reducing our own production. It's not a case of either/or; we have to reduce both our production and importation of fossil fuels.
We have to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.
If we increase our own production, while reducing imports by more than the increase in domestic production, so we net reduce consumption, then that is good for the environment.
However as some production expires continuously anyway we need new licensing and new generation to replace expiring old generation and licenses anyway even if and while reducing overall production.
Simply saying "just stop new licenses" is bad for the environment. It simply means more imports, from dirtier countries, with lower standards.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
I'm not sure which zealots you mean, but I'm all in favour of heavily taxing all imports of fossil fuels as well as reducing our own production. It's not a case of either/or; we have to reduce both our production and importation of fossil fuels.
I must say the current and previous Conservative administrations seem to have lost interest in such boring (no pun intended) matters as renewables and tidal power. Or is that a misperception?
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
If we hit the 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures that's not going to make the world uninhabitable. That's a fraction of a degree above where we have been in recent decades and fractions of a degree are perfectly normal variance.
Of course climate change is real, but we're already working on it. We're already decarbonising. We still need fossil fuel extraction, for the interim, and we will need fossil fuel extraction even when we hit net zero as petrochemicals are required for many medicines, materials and other industrial purposes not remotely related to burning and releasing carbon.
I want a habitable world. We are working on that already though and need to continue to do the right thing, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If it stayed at 1.5 degrees, possibly - although there is a big issue that if we were to get to 1.5 the feedback loop would still lead to greater warming. I also don't really see the decarbonising push by individual countries as useful if all they are doing is outsourcing their carbon producing industries to other countries who end up producing our consumer goods and then blamed for the new emissions, whilst also not benefitting from any wealth creation themselves.
And by uninhabitable I don't just mean the climate, I mean the political reality also leading to uninhabitable scenarios. If 700 million people are displaced by 2030 due to droughts across Asia and Africa (as is projected), then the current anti immigrant fervour will continue through the roof, and the fortress nation state will lead to increased authoritarianism. The current food inflation will pale in comparison to impacts of mass drought / flooding; one of the reasons wheat prices have been so bad (beyond the Ukraine war) is that wheat producing areas in the US, China and Africa have also been ravaged by harsh climate events. Resource wars, especially water wars, could become common in the not to distant future.
How much of a dent to standard of living can people take without things collapsing? If we had made the necessary investment earlier, we could have slowly changed expectations and sourcing for things. Now, who knows. Putting our head in the sand and hoping business as usual works hasn't worked so far. The next generation are more extreme on this issue, on the left and right, and as much as you hate the JSO or XR activists the ecofascists are much worse.
Yes, there are feedback loops. We need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere before we get runaway temperature rise. So far we only are slowing the increase. The economic case for new fossil fuel investment is getting much weaker, the danger is that they will become stranded assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsnkPLkf1ao
Slowing the increase is all we can do for now. Unless you want a catastrophe then slowing is how you stop, its a transition. If I'm driving at 70mph and do an emergency stop, I have to slow before I stop or go into reverse and I will keep going forwards while slowing - but if I'm slowing down, I'm doing what I can.
We are slowing.
If new fossil fuel extraction becomes a stranded asset then that is the responsibility of the investors and they can lose out. Not a problem, some investments fail. Buyer beware and all that. But the environmental case for using domestically sourced fossil fuels over imported ones from countries like Russia or Saudi Arabia is unequivocally clear. Domestic fuels are much cleaner to use, while we transition to alternatives, and lets leave the Sheikhs and Oligarchs with stranded assets instead if that's what it comes to.
Time for the west to give Russia an ultimatum - if they blow up the NPP (or have an 'accidental' leak) then remaining gloves are off - Russia to ceasefire and immediately start withdrawing to 2014 borders. Failure to comply will result in NATO strikes against non-complying Russian forces - but with clear assurance that no attacks will take place against Russia itself.
I don't think such an ultimatum is credible given that NATO is sitting by after watching Russia blow the dam. Only a proportionate response to the destruction of the dam would convince Russia NATO was serious about consequences for blowing the NPP.
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
If we hit the 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures that's not going to make the world uninhabitable. That's a fraction of a degree above where we have been in recent decades and fractions of a degree are perfectly normal variance.
Of course climate change is real, but we're already working on it. We're already decarbonising. We still need fossil fuel extraction, for the interim, and we will need fossil fuel extraction even when we hit net zero as petrochemicals are required for many medicines, materials and other industrial purposes not remotely related to burning and releasing carbon.
I want a habitable world. We are working on that already though and need to continue to do the right thing, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If it stayed at 1.5 degrees, possibly - although there is a big issue that if we were to get to 1.5 the feedback loop would still lead to greater warming. I also don't really see the decarbonising push by individual countries as useful if all they are doing is outsourcing their carbon producing industries to other countries who end up producing our consumer goods and then blamed for the new emissions, whilst also not benefitting from any wealth creation themselves.
And by uninhabitable I don't just mean the climate, I mean the political reality also leading to uninhabitable scenarios. If 700 million people are displaced by 2030 due to droughts across Asia and Africa (as is projected), then the current anti immigrant fervour will continue through the roof, and the fortress nation state will lead to increased authoritarianism. The current food inflation will pale in comparison to impacts of mass drought / flooding; one of the reasons wheat prices have been so bad (beyond the Ukraine war) is that wheat producing areas in the US, China and Africa have also been ravaged by harsh climate events. Resource wars, especially water wars, could become common in the not to distant future.
How much of a dent to standard of living can people take without things collapsing? If we had made the necessary investment earlier, we could have slowly changed expectations and sourcing for things. Now, who knows. Putting our head in the sand and hoping business as usual works hasn't worked so far. The next generation are more extreme on this issue, on the left and right, and as much as you hate the JSO or XR activists the ecofascists are much worse.
Yes, there are feedback loops. We need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere before we get runaway temperature rise. So far we only are slowing the increase. The economic case for new fossil fuel investment is getting much weaker, the danger is that they will become stranded assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsnkPLkf1ao
Slowing the increase is all we can do for now. Unless you want a catastrophe then slowing is how you stop, its a transition. If I'm driving at 70mph and do an emergency stop, I have to slow before I stop or go into reverse and I will keep going forwards while slowing - but if I'm slowing down, I'm doing what I can.
We are slowing.
If new fossil fuel extraction becomes a stranded asset then that is the responsibility of the investors and they can lose out. Not a problem, some investments fail. Buyer beware and all that. But the environmental case for using domestically sourced fossil fuels over imported ones from countries like Russia or Saudi Arabia is unequivocally clear. Domestic fuels are much cleaner to use, while we transition to alternatives, and lets leave the Sheikhs and Oligarchs with stranded assets instead if that's what it comes to.
Are we slowing quickly enough?
Domestically? Yes.
The technology is coming along, and is being implemented as and when plausible. The swift change from coal power in this country should be held up as a shining example to the world of what can be done, and the rollout of electric cars continues apace.
Globally? No.
Other countries are not doing what we're doing, which is why we need to put more pressure on other countries to follow our example, while reducing our reliance upon dirtier countries and showing a positive example of how you can have both growth and cleaner living, rather than cutting off your own nose to spite your face and then importing everything from dirty countries.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
I'm not sure which zealots you mean, but I'm all in favour of heavily taxing all imports of fossil fuels as well as reducing our own production. It's not a case of either/or; we have to reduce both our production and importation of fossil fuels.
We have to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.
If we increase our own production, while reducing imports by more than the increase in domestic production, so we net reduce consumption, then that is good for the environment.
However as some production expires continuously anyway we need new licensing and new generation to replace expiring old generation and licenses anyway even if and while reducing overall production.
Simply saying "just stop new licenses" is bad for the environment. It simply means more imports, from dirtier countries, with lower standards.
Absolutely. We are reducing our use of fossil fuels. But that doesn't require us to bin off our own resources - if we stop drilling for North Sea oil and gas it just means we are reliant on imposts from the gulf - total madness.
I notice however TSE fails to mention Starmer only leads Sunak 42% to 37% as preferred PM in the same Redfield poll. A result which if reflected in voting intention after the debates and election campaign would produce a hung parliament
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
We should also realign with the EU on pushing back ICE disimplementation for 5 years to 2035 as they seem to be. The potential gap is going to do nothing but fuck up our car industry whilst making a gnat's fart on carbon emissions. Absolute silence from both parties on this though.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
I'm not sure which zealots you mean, but I'm all in favour of heavily taxing all imports of fossil fuels as well as reducing our own production. It's not a case of either/or; we have to reduce both our production and importation of fossil fuels.
I must say the current and previous Conservative administrations seem to have lost interest in such boring (no pun intended) matters as renewables and tidal power. Or is that a misperception?
The party donors are more likely to be in nuclear and wanky carbon capture.
This government is determined to lock in the most expensive options for the bill payer, regardless. It's energy policy is as good a reason not to vote for them as any.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
I'm not sure which zealots you mean, but I'm all in favour of heavily taxing all imports of fossil fuels as well as reducing our own production. It's not a case of either/or; we have to reduce both our production and importation of fossil fuels.
We have to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.
If we increase our own production, while reducing imports by more than the increase in domestic production, so we net reduce consumption, then that is good for the environment.
However as some production expires continuously anyway we need new licensing and new generation to replace expiring old generation and licenses anyway even if and while reducing overall production.
Simply saying "just stop new licenses" is bad for the environment. It simply means more imports, from dirtier countries, with lower standards.
If we were planning to rapidly reduce our imports in the near future then there might be a case for prolonging our own production for a little longer. But I haven't seen any evidence that this is the case, and net zero by 2050 means substantially reducing both our production and imports of fossil fuels.
I notice however TSE fails to mention Starmer only leads Sunak 42% to 37% as preferred PM in the same Redfield poll. A result which if reflected in voting intention after the debates and election campaign would produce a hung parliament
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
I'm not sure which zealots you mean, but I'm all in favour of heavily taxing all imports of fossil fuels as well as reducing our own production. It's not a case of either/or; we have to reduce both our production and importation of fossil fuels.
We have to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.
If we increase our own production, while reducing imports by more than the increase in domestic production, so we net reduce consumption, then that is good for the environment.
However as some production expires continuously anyway we need new licensing and new generation to replace expiring old generation and licenses anyway even if and while reducing overall production.
Simply saying "just stop new licenses" is bad for the environment. It simply means more imports, from dirtier countries, with lower standards.
If we were planning to rapidly reduce our imports in the near future then there might be a case for prolonging our own production for a little longer. But I haven't seen any evidence that this is the case, and net zero by 2050 means substantially reducing both our production and imports of fossil fuels.
Eh? What evidence for plans to cut our imports are you looking for? We've already sanctioned Russia, are you wanting us to announce sanctions on Saudi Arabia and other dirty countries too, before we have alternatives in place?
But its a simple mathematical formula anyway.
Imports = Consumption - Production + Exports
If Production goes up, then unless Consumption or Exports correspondingly go up, then Imports must go down.
If our Production goes down, without adjusting Consumption, then we simply rely more on Imports - and since Imports are dirtier as we've established, that is bad for the environment.
We need to concentrate on lowering Consumption and looking to eliminate dirty imports before we eliminate domestic production.
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
The blast rattled windows 80 km away. No way could Ukraine have delivered that amount of explosives.
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
I think that's being a bit silly. I have great doubt that *all* their stated nuclear arsenal is in working condition. But could they have kept (say) 10% of it in working order?
Yes. And that's more than enough to create massive damage to their enemies.
Russian warhead pits aren’t sealed like US/U.K. ones. They corrode rapidly - 2-3 lifespan.
Plus they need multiple kilos of Tritium per year to replace decay losses.
Indeed. But as I said, they don't need to maintain all their arsenal. Even 10% of it would cause massive problems - and even if only 10% of that 10% worked. Russia is supposed to have nearly 6,000 warheads. 10% of 10% would still leave 60 working ones.
Now, I don't believe they have just under 6,000 working warheads. But I fear that if you;'re claiming they have no working warheads, then that's just hope over experience. If I was them, I would have maintained 1,000 in working order and kept the others as 'paper' warheads to frighten opponents.
Even if they have 60 working ones, that doesn't necessarily mean 60 successful launches even if they try to launch them. There's multiple possible failure points along the sequence.
Yes, they exist to frighten opponents. But if they were actually called upon, I don't for one second think it would be a case of mutually assured destruction.
No. My point was that they might have 10% of their stated warheads in working condition. That means 600. If 10% of the launches worked (given multiple warheads on the same missile), then that would be 60 *successful* ones.
And I'm probably lowballing the figures.
Yes, it is very difficult to know just how serviceable Russia's nuclear arsenal is, but it would be foolhardy in the extreme to assume that it is completely inoperative. Despite its rampant corruption and general economic malaise, Russia actually has a pretty impressive history of technological development in both nuclear technology and aerospace engineering. To believe otherwise is to believe our own propaganda.
On the bright, side, I am heartened by the news of what sounds like operations by Russian elements hostile to Putin's regime in, for example, the Belgorod area. I think our best hope of ending the war with a liberated Ukraine and intact cities lies with Putin's overthrow by elements from his own populace.
IMV we'd be stupid to say they are *all* working (I'd also argue that the US's stockpile of 5,400 weapons are serviceable and ready for use).
In fact, they're not: "The US arsenal contains about 5,400 nuclear weapons, 1,744 of which are deployed and ready to be delivered" (1). The same source says the figure for Russian ready-use warheads is 1,584.
But also IMV, you'd be stupid to assume that *no* Russian warheads work. As you say, Russia has an impressive history in technology. I'd argue that nuclear-powered submarines are more complex systems than nuclear warheads and missiles, and Russia manages to keep a few of those going.
So the truth is probably somewhere in between the two - somewhere between 0 and ~1600; with the most likely figure to be somewhere in the middle - say 500 to 1000 range.
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
The blast rattled windows 80 km away. No way could Ukraine have delivered that amount of explosives.
It was Russia.
That 80km blast figure does not pass the sniff test to me. It feels way too large; if it rattled windows at that distance, I'd expect far more devastation on land at the source, even for an underwater explosion. But I might be wrong...
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
Plus this - Russia raised the water level as far as was possible by closing the sluices.
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
The blast rattled windows 80 km away. No way could Ukraine have delivered that amount of explosives.
It was Russia.
That 80km blast figure does not pass the sniff test to me. It feels way too large; if it rattled windows at that distance, I'd expect far more devastation on land at the source, even for an underwater explosion. But I might be wrong...
I remember when Buncefield blew up. We were about 70km away, straight line. The blast wave rippled the chicken wire that covered the thatch roof of our cottage. I suspect the Russians used a damned site bigger explosive force to blow a hole of several hundred metres in the span of the damn.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
Of course carbon capture works. It just costs a lot. Applying the true externality cost of CO2 emissions and it would however represent a lower cost option than emitting the CO2.
Back to hydrocarbons, Starmer clearly wants to help Newcastle's Champions' League campaign by prioritising oil imports from Saudi over domestic production. For the time being, we still need the oil, so better to produce it here than import it from despots.
The PB Curried Toy Soldiers are out on a big training exercise today.
Why not give your views, rather than sneering at those who support Ukraine?
Nothing else to do but sneer. Russia doesn't exactly give Ana much to work with on the balanced argument stakes....
I support Ukraine.
What makes me cringe is a load of toy soldiering beardy wargamers pontificating on real world military strategy on a chat room.
What makes me cringe is how easily triggered you are by people considering what might happen, particularly if they're positive for Ukraine...
Two key objectives in the Ukraine war: 1. Defeat Russia. 2. Avoid it collapsing into nuclear war.
We know there is a risk of a trapped and embattled Putin deciding he needs to roll the dice with all he has left to avoid (1). That any such move would very quickly escalate into a world where Russia is reduced to a sea of radioactivity and islands of molten glass hopefully makes him Stop and Think.
Well along with London, New York, Washington Paris and a large number of other cities.
Please.
Russia's Potemkin military has been a shambles in everything that has come to pass.
I highly doubt they'll be able to successfully nuke any city if it came to it - their radioactive materials will either have decayed, or their weaponry would fail to launch, or be intercepted.
I think that's being a bit silly. I have great doubt that *all* their stated nuclear arsenal is in working condition. But could they have kept (say) 10% of it in working order?
Yes. And that's more than enough to create massive damage to their enemies.
Russian warhead pits aren’t sealed like US/U.K. ones. They corrode rapidly - 2-3 lifespan.
Plus they need multiple kilos of Tritium per year to replace decay losses.
Indeed. But as I said, they don't need to maintain all their arsenal. Even 10% of it would cause massive problems - and even if only 10% of that 10% worked. Russia is supposed to have nearly 6,000 warheads. 10% of 10% would still leave 60 working ones.
Now, I don't believe they have just under 6,000 working warheads. But I fear that if you;'re claiming they have no working warheads, then that's just hope over experience. If I was them, I would have maintained 1,000 in working order and kept the others as 'paper' warheads to frighten opponents.
Even if they have 60 working ones, that doesn't necessarily mean 60 successful launches even if they try to launch them. There's multiple possible failure points along the sequence.
Yes, they exist to frighten opponents. But if they were actually called upon, I don't for one second think it would be a case of mutually assured destruction.
No. My point was that they might have 10% of their stated warheads in working condition. That means 600. If 10% of the launches worked (given multiple warheads on the same missile), then that would be 60 *successful* ones.
And I'm probably lowballing the figures.
Yes, it is very difficult to know just how serviceable Russia's nuclear arsenal is, but it would be foolhardy in the extreme to assume that it is completely inoperative. Despite its rampant corruption and general economic malaise, Russia actually has a pretty impressive history of technological development in both nuclear technology and aerospace engineering. To believe otherwise is to believe our own propaganda.
On the bright, side, I am heartened by the news of what sounds like operations by Russian elements hostile to Putin's regime in, for example, the Belgorod area. I think our best hope of ending the war with a liberated Ukraine and intact cities lies with Putin's overthrow by elements from his own populace.
IMV we'd be stupid to say they are *all* working (I'd also argue that the US's stockpile of 5,400 weapons are serviceable and ready for use).
In fact, they're not: "The US arsenal contains about 5,400 nuclear weapons, 1,744 of which are deployed and ready to be delivered" (1). The same source says the figure for Russian ready-use warheads is 1,584.
But also IMV, you'd be stupid to assume that *no* Russian warheads work. As you say, Russia has an impressive history in technology. I'd argue that nuclear-powered submarines are more complex systems than nuclear warheads and missiles, and Russia manages to keep a few of those going.
So the truth is probably somewhere in between the two - somewhere between 0 and ~1600; with the most likely figure to be somewhere in the middle - say 500 to 1000 range.
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
I'm not sure which zealots you mean, but I'm all in favour of heavily taxing all imports of fossil fuels as well as reducing our own production. It's not a case of either/or; we have to reduce both our production and importation of fossil fuels.
We have to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.
If we increase our own production, while reducing imports by more than the increase in domestic production, so we net reduce consumption, then that is good for the environment.
However as some production expires continuously anyway we need new licensing and new generation to replace expiring old generation and licenses anyway even if and while reducing overall production.
Simply saying "just stop new licenses" is bad for the environment. It simply means more imports, from dirtier countries, with lower standards.
If we were planning to rapidly reduce our imports in the near future then there might be a case for prolonging our own production for a little longer. But I haven't seen any evidence that this is the case, and net zero by 2050 means substantially reducing both our production and imports of fossil fuels.
Eh? What evidence for plans to cut our imports are you looking for? We've already sanctioned Russia, are you wanting us to announce sanctions on Saudi Arabia and other dirty countries too, before we have alternatives in place?
But its a simple mathematical formula anyway.
Imports = Consumption - Production + Exports
If Production goes up, then unless Consumption or Exports correspondingly go up, then Imports must go down.
If our Production goes down, without adjusting Consumption, then we simply rely more on Imports - and since Imports are dirtier as we've established, that is bad for the environment.
We need to concentrate on lowering Consumption and looking to eliminate dirty imports before we eliminate domestic production.
According to this, oil from the North Sea isn't particularly clean in terms of greenhouse emissions per barrel. Saudi oil is generally better.
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
This is also interesting.
https://twitter.com/Info_Rosalie/status/1666022509861539840 One week before the Kakhovskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) dam failed (whether from negligence or intentional destruction), Russian authorities lifted the requirement to investigate dangerous facilities triggered by "military operations" and terrorism.
...It states that technical investigations of accidents resulting from military actions, sabotage, and terrorist acts will not be conducted until January 1, 2028.
Long tweet on the chronology of the evolving Russian version of the Kakhovka dam failure demolition:
Very important on #Kakhovka. The chronology of the terrorist attack by Russian terrorists. Or how Russians screwed in their excuses.
At two o'clock in the morning, the Russians blow up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, but they don't see how much. It's not very visible, but it can still hit....
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
If, if, if... The police carried out an investigation. No-one's presented evidence that their investigation was substantially defective.
Also, obviously, the idea of Ukraine rendering a large section of the front impassable, just as they're starting a counteroffensive - and giving themselves the additional headache of evacuating numerous towns - is implausible.
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
The blast rattled windows 80 km away. No way could Ukraine have delivered that amount of explosives.
It was Russia.
That 80km blast figure does not pass the sniff test to me. It feels way too large; if it rattled windows at that distance, I'd expect far more devastation on land at the source, even for an underwater explosion. But I might be wrong...
I remember when Buncefield blew up. We were about 70km away, straight line. The blast wave rippled the chicken wire that covered the thatch roof of our cottage. I suspect the Russians used a damned site bigger explosive force to blow a hole of several hundred metres in the span of the damn.
Surely you'd be seeing Buncefield-level scenes of devastation away from the dam )and not caused by the water). More so, if it was underwater. Buncefield was about a 30-tonne TNT equivalent. Basically: that's overkill.
Also, obviously, the idea of Ukraine rendering a large section of the front impassable, just as they're starting a counteroffensive - and giving themselves the additional headache of evacuating numerous towns - is implausible.
Clearly the number 1 suspect is Russia since they were in control of the dam? But I don't think we know enough to rule stuff out as implausible. For instance, just pulling this out of my arse, the Russians had the ability to blow the dam at any time which prevented the Ukrainians from attacking across the river for fear of being drowned or stuck on the wrong side without supplies, but it can only be blown up once, so now they can wait for the water level to drop then go ahead with their crossing.
Russians have clearly decided to blow the dam to block a secondary axis of the Ukrainian Counter Offensive - they can now redirect all of their troops in western Kherson to the main axis in Zaparozhia. I now think they will blow up Zaporizhia Nuclear power plant and use that as justiofication to withdraw all troops back to Donbass. The mother of all surrenders while salting the erath behind them.
The timing is remarkably coincidental to say the least. It would make sense on the face of it simply to slow an advance and allow redirection if their own forces. Involving the plant would be a remarkable admission of admitting the permanence of redirecting.
The 'peace' brigade will be getting very noisy.
Russia need to see that there are consequences for an act like this.
Only Ukraine can deliver that consequence (with help). What further escalation will the West do? And I bet much of the rest of the world is both sides ing it as we speak, since its not in their interests to go further than previous condemnation.
I recall a video from a youtuber about the dam a few months ago, not about its destruction but how Russia could or was using it if they were regrouping for attack or expecting to lose southern territory. Only 13 mins.
In Florida, doctors can cite Succubus but educators can’t teach Morrison https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4031852-in-florida-doctors-can-cite-succubus-but-educators-cant-teach-morrison/ In medieval times, it was believed that pregnancy and certain medical conditions were caused by the demons Incubus and Succubus that would invade the body during sleep. As bizarre as it may seem, the role of spiritual demons influencing human reproduction was recently championed by a medical group leader with other physicians standing nearby in nodding approval. In a few months, a recently passed law will go into effect in Florida that would not only allow medical practitioners in Florida to espouse such dangerous myths and beliefs without recourse but also deny medical care based on personal beliefs — no matter how outrageous or wrong. Yet, if a state-certified teacher used some of the writings of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, for example, speaking to high-school students about understanding community diversity and the impact on public health, that person could be subject to disciplinary action if a parent of a student in the class objects...
Also, obviously, the idea of Ukraine rendering a large section of the front impassable, just as they're starting a counteroffensive - and giving themselves the additional headache of evacuating numerous towns - is implausible.
Clearly the number 1 suspect is Russia since they were in control of the dam? But I don't think we know enough to rule stuff out as implausible. For instance, just pulling this out of my arse, the Russians had the ability to blow the dam at any time which prevented the Ukrainians from attacking across the river for fear of being drowned or stuck on the wrong side without supplies, but it can only be blown up once, so now they can wait for the water level to drop then go ahead with their crossing.
Through acres of mud ? Also, who just filled the dam to its highest level in 30 years ?
No, implausible is quite fair - note I didn't say impossible.
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
What Labour said before during or after does not change the law.
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
If, if, if... The police carried out an investigation. No-one's presented evidence that their investigation was substantially defective.
Let's assume for a minute that there is a WhatsApp smoking gun. "After campaigning for the day, let's be really naughty and stay for a curry and a couple of beers".
Again, as their "naughty" plan was legal, why would the police care? A criminal conspiracy to not break the law is not criminal.
In Florida, doctors can cite Succubus but educators can’t teach Morrison https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4031852-in-florida-doctors-can-cite-succubus-but-educators-cant-teach-morrison/ In medieval times, it was believed that pregnancy and certain medical conditions were caused by the demons Incubus and Succubus that would invade the body during sleep. As bizarre as it may seem, the role of spiritual demons influencing human reproduction was recently championed by a medical group leader with other physicians standing nearby in nodding approval. In a few months, a recently passed law will go into effect in Florida that would not only allow medical practitioners in Florida to espouse such dangerous myths and beliefs without recourse but also deny medical care based on personal beliefs — no matter how outrageous or wrong. Yet, if a state-certified teacher used some of the writings of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, for example, speaking to high-school students about understanding community diversity and the impact on public health, that person could be subject to disciplinary action if a parent of a student in the class objects...
What DeSantis has delivered in Florida, so Badenoch and HYUFD want for the UK?
In Florida, doctors can cite Succubus but educators can’t teach Morrison https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4031852-in-florida-doctors-can-cite-succubus-but-educators-cant-teach-morrison/ In medieval times, it was believed that pregnancy and certain medical conditions were caused by the demons Incubus and Succubus that would invade the body during sleep. As bizarre as it may seem, the role of spiritual demons influencing human reproduction was recently championed by a medical group leader with other physicians standing nearby in nodding approval. In a few months, a recently passed law will go into effect in Florida that would not only allow medical practitioners in Florida to espouse such dangerous myths and beliefs without recourse but also deny medical care based on personal beliefs — no matter how outrageous or wrong. Yet, if a state-certified teacher used some of the writings of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, for example, speaking to high-school students about understanding community diversity and the impact on public health, that person could be subject to disciplinary action if a parent of a student in the class objects...
What DeSantis has delivered in Florida, so Badenoch and HYUFD want for the UK?
Also, obviously, the idea of Ukraine rendering a large section of the front impassable, just as they're starting a counteroffensive - and giving themselves the additional headache of evacuating numerous towns - is implausible.
Clearly the number 1 suspect is Russia since they were in control of the dam? But I don't think we know enough to rule stuff out as implausible. For instance, just pulling this out of my arse, the Russians had the ability to blow the dam at any time which prevented the Ukrainians from attacking across the river for fear of being drowned or stuck on the wrong side without supplies, but it can only be blown up once, so now they can wait for the water level to drop then go ahead with their crossing.
I suspect we'll have to wait for the nightly Russian TV shows to find out the real culprit, but the country of Barnes Wallis and Dambusters must be the prime suspect.
Pivotal day in the war today, both with Ukranians seemingly on the offensive in the East of the country, and the Russians deciding that infrastructure terrorism is the way forward.
In Florida, doctors can cite Succubus but educators can’t teach Morrison https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4031852-in-florida-doctors-can-cite-succubus-but-educators-cant-teach-morrison/ In medieval times, it was believed that pregnancy and certain medical conditions were caused by the demons Incubus and Succubus that would invade the body during sleep. As bizarre as it may seem, the role of spiritual demons influencing human reproduction was recently championed by a medical group leader with other physicians standing nearby in nodding approval. In a few months, a recently passed law will go into effect in Florida that would not only allow medical practitioners in Florida to espouse such dangerous myths and beliefs without recourse but also deny medical care based on personal beliefs — no matter how outrageous or wrong. Yet, if a state-certified teacher used some of the writings of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, for example, speaking to high-school students about understanding community diversity and the impact on public health, that person could be subject to disciplinary action if a parent of a student in the class objects...
What DeSantis has delivered in Florida, so Badenoch and HYUFD want for the UK?
Well the question of whether America wants to be more like California, or more like Florida, was clearly answered by the migration flows during the past three years.
Also, obviously, the idea of Ukraine rendering a large section of the front impassable, just as they're starting a counteroffensive - and giving themselves the additional headache of evacuating numerous towns - is implausible.
Clearly the number 1 suspect is Russia since they were in control of the dam? But I don't think we know enough to rule stuff out as implausible. For instance, just pulling this out of my arse, the Russians had the ability to blow the dam at any time which prevented the Ukrainians from attacking across the river for fear of being drowned or stuck on the wrong side without supplies, but it can only be blown up once, so now they can wait for the water level to drop then go ahead with their crossing.
Through acres of mud ? Also, who just filled the dam to its highest level in 30 years ?
No, implausible is quite fair - note I didn't say impossible.
I mean, they're not going to cross it tomorrow. But otherwise they weren't going to cross it in numbers at all unless they could first get control of the dam from the Russians, which sounds hard. This is consistent with the Russians filling it up so they could empty it on the Ukrainians if they tried to attack across the river.
I'm not at all saying this is what happened, just that we don't really know anything. It only just happened, it's war, the Ukrainian plan is a successfully-kept secret, and everybody lies routinely.
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
What Labour said before during or after does not change the law.
"Wordup Raynz, Big K here. U wanna party 2nite? Get some canz and da boyz round, mebbe a ruby? Best invite sum campaign peeps 2 so it looks legit, innit?"
There's your smoking gun. A party, not a work/campaign meeting
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
What Labour said before during or after does not change the law.
"Wordup Raynz, Big K here. U wanna party 2nite? Get some canz and da boyz round, mebbe a ruby? Best invite sum campaign peeps 2 so it looks legit, innit?"
There's your smoking gun. A party, not a work/campaign meeting
That would remove his 'dull' label once and for all. Deal sealed, majority in the bag.
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
If, if, if... The police carried out an investigation. No-one's presented evidence that their investigation was substantially defective.
Let's assume for a minute that there is a WhatsApp smoking gun. "After campaigning for the day, let's be really naughty and stay for a curry and a couple of beers".
Again, as their "naughty" plan was legal, why would the police care? A criminal conspiracy to not break the law is not criminal.
AS it was this was a total and utter waste of police resources and Durham Council Taxpayers money investigating this non event for purely partisan political purposes.
What's interesting about that is that there are three major obvious failures of the dam: a large one centred on the two sluices; another, in the middle of the building, and another large one to the right.
My guess would be that this makes a natural overtopping failure less likely, especially for the one in the building.
Incidentally, for comparison, this video shows the devastation after a Russian hydroselectric turbine failed a few years back:
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
However we need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Simply refusing new licenses to extract our own and reduce reliance on other nations is crazy. Richard Tyndall has posted quite a bit about it here.
Oil is used for far more than just "fossil fuels" and produces a wide range of products we simply do not have an easy option to replace.
Labour taking money from a donor who has a vested financial interest in onshore wind generation and then, by a happy coincidence, announcing their policy on North Sea Licenses is interesting.
Well perhaps the best option would be to stop burning the stuff and instead use it only for essential purposes. Then we wouldn't need so much of it.
Which we're doing.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
I'm not sure which zealots you mean, but I'm all in favour of heavily taxing all imports of fossil fuels as well as reducing our own production. It's not a case of either/or; we have to reduce both our production and importation of fossil fuels.
Oil provides far more than fossil fuels though. There are many products that are oil derivatives and these cannot be replaced easily overnight or just wishing them away.
Well the question of whether America wants to be more like California, or more like Florida, was clearly answered by the migration flows during the past three years.
What's interesting about that is that there are three major obvious failures of the dam: a large one centred on the two sluices; another, in the middle of the building, and another large one to the right.
My guess would be that this makes a natural overtopping failure less likely, especially for the one in the building.
Incidentally, for comparison, this video shows the devastation after a Russian hydroselectric turbine failed a few years back:
What's interesting about that is that there are three major obvious failures of the dam: a large one centred on the two sluices; another, in the middle of the building, and another large one to the right.
My guess would be that this makes a natural overtopping failure less likely, especially for the one in the building.
Incidentally, for comparison, this video shows the devastation after a Russian hydroselectric turbine failed a few years back:
A structural failure would have been unlikely to have rattled windows 80km away.
It’s not impossible that the Russians did a Chernobyl though, closing the sluice gates and switching off all the safety bypass systems, ignoring the alarms, until it went bang.
Also, obviously, the idea of Ukraine rendering a large section of the front impassable, just as they're starting a counteroffensive - and giving themselves the additional headache of evacuating numerous towns - is implausible.
Clearly the number 1 suspect is Russia since they were in control of the dam? But I don't think we know enough to rule stuff out as implausible. For instance, just pulling this out of my arse, the Russians had the ability to blow the dam at any time which prevented the Ukrainians from attacking across the river for fear of being drowned or stuck on the wrong side without supplies, but it can only be blown up once, so now they can wait for the water level to drop then go ahead with their crossing.
I suspect we'll have to wait for the nightly Russian TV shows to find out the real culprit, but the country of Barnes Wallis and Dambusters must be the prime suspect.
I wonder if Putin will blame Wagner/Prigozhin for going rogue and doing it.
What's interesting about that is that there are three major obvious failures of the dam: a large one centred on the two sluices; another, in the middle of the building, and another large one to the right.
My guess would be that this makes a natural overtopping failure less likely, especially for the one in the building.
Incidentally, for comparison, this video shows the devastation after a Russian hydroselectric turbine failed a few years back:
A structural failure would have been unlikely to have rattled windows 80km away.
It’s not impossible that the Russians did a Chernobyl though, closing the sluice gates and switching off all the safety bypass systems, ignoring the alarms, until it went bang.
Again, I'm really sceptical about that 80km figure.
What's interesting about that is that there are three major obvious failures of the dam: a large one centred on the two sluices; another, in the middle of the building, and another large one to the right.
My guess would be that this makes a natural overtopping failure less likely, especially for the one in the building.
Incidentally, for comparison, this video shows the devastation after a Russian hydroselectric turbine failed a few years back:
A structural failure would have been unlikely to have rattled windows 80km away.
It’s not impossible that the Russians did a Chernobyl though, closing the sluice gates and switching off all the safety bypass systems, ignoring the alarms, until it went bang.
This happened just as the Russian Telegrams were reportedly starting to panic about Ukraine's offensive.
This happened just as the sluices had been messed with to ensure that water was at its highest ever level which will mean maximum flooding.
If this is a coincidental structural failing and not deliberate action by Russia, then that is so remarkable that we ought to be able to in practice rule that out.
Also, obviously, the idea of Ukraine rendering a large section of the front impassable, just as they're starting a counteroffensive - and giving themselves the additional headache of evacuating numerous towns - is implausible.
Clearly the number 1 suspect is Russia since they were in control of the dam? But I don't think we know enough to rule stuff out as implausible. For instance, just pulling this out of my arse, the Russians had the ability to blow the dam at any time which prevented the Ukrainians from attacking across the river for fear of being drowned or stuck on the wrong side without supplies, but it can only be blown up once, so now they can wait for the water level to drop then go ahead with their crossing.
I suspect we'll have to wait for the nightly Russian TV shows to find out the real culprit, but the country of Barnes Wallis and Dambusters must be the prime suspect.
I wonder if Putin will blame Wagner/Prigozhin for going rogue and doing it.
Putin seems to be on the side of his "chef".
More probable would be Wagner/Prigozhin blaming army figures for panicking and going rogue.
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
What Labour said before during or after does not change the law.
"Wordup Raynz, Big K here. U wanna party 2nite? Get some canz and da boyz round, mebbe a ruby? Best invite sum campaign peeps 2 so it looks legit, innit?"
There's your smoking gun. A party, not a work/campaign meeting
That would remove his 'dull' label once and for all. Deal sealed, majority in the bag.
Yeah, but, you know... Imagine the die hard Sunak fans chanting 'lock him up' about SKS at the Conservative election rallies at the next GE
*No immediate risk to the reactors *Drawdown is about 5 cm/hour *Current height of reservoir is 16.4 m; below 12.7 m it can no longer be pumped *There are other sources of cooling water
Well the question of whether America wants to be more like California, or more like Florida, was clearly answered by the migration flows during the past three years.
Was it ?
If we're following that logic, surely the GOP want Greg Abbot on the slate?
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
What Labour said before during or after does not change the law.
"Wordup Raynz, Big K here. U wanna party 2nite? Get some canz and da boyz round, mebbe a ruby? Best invite sum campaign peeps 2 so it looks legit, innit?"
There's your smoking gun. A party, not a work/campaign meeting
Exactly. A WhatsApp leak could look exactly like your post.
What is Rochdale banging on about here, legal this, lockdown rules said could party that, absolutely nothing to do with it Rochdale. This is about Labour talking to the country about this, and they’re looking you in the eye honesty about this, that’s all that matters. Remember Labour already lied to the country at first about Angela Rayner being at the party, and tried to pass it off as an admin error that they told us all the wrong thing.
When Brown looked into camera and said “election? I wasn’t planning a snap election” and instantly lost the 2010 election, that wasn’t a matter of legality was it like you are trying to twist and spin Starmer’s Browner into - Starmer looked into the camera and told the people what honestly happened, but the smoking gun in the WhatsApp proves Starmer 100% lying is what makes it smoking gun and causes immense damage like what happened to Gordon Brown. You don’t understand this at all Rochdale, do you.
*No immediate risk to the reactors *Drawdown is about 5 cm/hour *Current height of reservoir is 16.4 m; below 12.7 m it can no longer be pumped *There are other sources of cooling water
*No immediately risk to the flatpack *Drawers have 5 cm dowels *Current height of cabinets are 164 cm, below 127 it can not be stable *There are other sources of Allen Screws
Well the question of whether America wants to be more like California, or more like Florida, was clearly answered by the migration flows during the past three years.
What's interesting about that is that there are three major obvious failures of the dam: a large one centred on the two sluices; another, in the middle of the building, and another large one to the right.
My guess would be that this makes a natural overtopping failure less likely, especially for the one in the building.
Incidentally, for comparison, this video shows the devastation after a Russian hydroselectric turbine failed a few years back:
A structural failure would have been unlikely to have rattled windows 80km away.
It’s not impossible that the Russians did a Chernobyl though, closing the sluice gates and switching off all the safety bypass systems, ignoring the alarms, until it went bang.
This happened just as the Russian Telegrams were reportedly starting to panic about Ukraine's offensive.
This happened just as the sluices had been messed with to ensure that water was at its highest ever level which will mean maximum flooding.
If this is a coincidental structural failing and not deliberate action by Russia, then that is so remarkable that we ought to be able to in practice rule that out.
Not necessarily: if the water was at unprecedented high levels, and the dam had been damaged by action before, them overtopping *can* cause dams to fail. Allegedly the road on top was swept away a few days ago. But you should never let dams not designed to overtop overtop, and the Russians did.
But if you factor in the timing as well, then it becomes less likely. Either way, it's the Russian's fault.
Yes, it is another theory going around that it may have been the level of water got so high the dam couldn't take it.
Cock up or conspiracy? When Russia's involved it's hard to say. It ought to be an example for all those who bemoan 'experts'. Be careful what you wish for. You could end up like Russia.
Also, obviously, the idea of Ukraine rendering a large section of the front impassable, just as they're starting a counteroffensive - and giving themselves the additional headache of evacuating numerous towns - is implausible.
Clearly the number 1 suspect is Russia since they were in control of the dam? But I don't think we know enough to rule stuff out as implausible. For instance, just pulling this out of my arse, the Russians had the ability to blow the dam at any time which prevented the Ukrainians from attacking across the river for fear of being drowned or stuck on the wrong side without supplies, but it can only be blown up once, so now they can wait for the water level to drop then go ahead with their crossing.
I suspect we'll have to wait for the nightly Russian TV shows to find out the real culprit, but the country of Barnes Wallis and Dambusters must be the prime suspect.
I wonder if Putin will blame Wagner/Prigozhin for going rogue and doing it.
Putin seems to be on the side of his "chef".
More probable would be Wagner/Prigozhin blaming army figures for panicking and going rogue.
Yes, potentially. Odd that the Russian ambassador to Vienna (at the IAEA) has stopped short of blaming Ukraine, while denying Russian responsibility.
The rescue vehicle which came to mend my damaged wheel wanted paying in cash, which I did. A very nice man, recommended by husband's insurer - Adrian Flux. Eventually got home at 2:30 am.
Pretty scary sitting on hard shoulder with lorries thundering past. God knows what it'd have been like on a so-called "smart" motorway.
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
What Labour said before during or after does not change the law.
"Wordup Raynz, Big K here. U wanna party 2nite? Get some canz and da boyz round, mebbe a ruby? Best invite sum campaign peeps 2 so it looks legit, innit?"
There's your smoking gun. A party, not a work/campaign meeting
That would remove his 'dull' label once and for all. Deal sealed, majority in the bag.
Yeah, but, you know... Imagine the die hard Sunak fans chanting 'lock him up' about SKS at the Conservative election rallies at the next GE
I’m pleased to have you on side with this one Selebian, this isn’t going away for Starmer is it? Nailing Starmer’s Beergate dishonesty, as proved by the WhatsApp message being covered up and withheld from the public, will likely dominate next general election campaign for the Daily Mail and CCHQ.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
If we hit the 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures that's not going to make the world uninhabitable. That's a fraction of a degree above where we have been in recent decades and fractions of a degree are perfectly normal variance.
Of course climate change is real, but we're already working on it. We're already decarbonising. We still need fossil fuel extraction, for the interim, and we will need fossil fuel extraction even when we hit net zero as petrochemicals are required for many medicines, materials and other industrial purposes not remotely related to burning and releasing carbon.
I want a habitable world. We are working on that already though and need to continue to do the right thing, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If it stayed at 1.5 degrees, possibly - although there is a big issue that if we were to get to 1.5 the feedback loop would still lead to greater warming. I also don't really see the decarbonising push by individual countries as useful if all they are doing is outsourcing their carbon producing industries to other countries who end up producing our consumer goods and then blamed for the new emissions, whilst also not benefitting from any wealth creation themselves.
And by uninhabitable I don't just mean the climate, I mean the political reality also leading to uninhabitable scenarios. If 700 million people are displaced by 2030 due to droughts across Asia and Africa (as is projected), then the current anti immigrant fervour will continue through the roof, and the fortress nation state will lead to increased authoritarianism. The current food inflation will pale in comparison to impacts of mass drought / flooding; one of the reasons wheat prices have been so bad (beyond the Ukraine war) is that wheat producing areas in the US, China and Africa have also been ravaged by harsh climate events. Resource wars, especially water wars, could become common in the not to distant future.
How much of a dent to standard of living can people take without things collapsing? If we had made the necessary investment earlier, we could have slowly changed expectations and sourcing for things. Now, who knows. Putting our head in the sand and hoping business as usual works hasn't worked so far. The next generation are more extreme on this issue, on the left and right, and as much as you hate the JSO or XR activists the ecofascists are much worse.
Yes, there are feedback loops. We need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere before we get runaway temperature rise. So far we only are slowing the increase. The economic case for new fossil fuel investment is getting much weaker, the danger is that they will become stranded assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsnkPLkf1ao
Slowing the increase is all we can do for now. Unless you want a catastrophe then slowing is how you stop, its a transition. If I'm driving at 70mph and do an emergency stop, I have to slow before I stop or go into reverse and I will keep going forwards while slowing - but if I'm slowing down, I'm doing what I can.
We are slowing.
If new fossil fuel extraction becomes a stranded asset then that is the responsibility of the investors and they can lose out. Not a problem, some investments fail. Buyer beware and all that. But the environmental case for using domestically sourced fossil fuels over imported ones from countries like Russia or Saudi Arabia is unequivocally clear. Domestic fuels are much cleaner to use, while we transition to alternatives, and lets leave the Sheikhs and Oligarchs with stranded assets instead if that's what it comes to.
Well the question of whether America wants to be more like California, or more like Florida, was clearly answered by the migration flows during the past three years.
Yes Keir "Lock 'Em Up" Starmer is the political wing of the green protest movement... There are a few projections suggesting we may hit the 1.5 degrees above industrial temperatures this summer. And that could be a consistent temperature increase by 2030. That is the line at which most projections are like "we could likely protect civilisation as we know it in developed countries at the expense of a lot of lives elsewhere". We do not have the time to not halt new fossil fuel extraction. The ONLY argument for more fossil fuel extraction would be if we ever actually solve carbon capture (a thing we have not actually solved despite selling it as if it is a thing that works) and the short term value of fossil fuels allows us to invest in that. I'm in my early 30s. I would quite like a habitable and safe planet by the time I'm 60. Hell, if I'm lucky enough to live into my 90s like my grandad currently is, I'd quite like a habitable planet then!
If we hit the 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures that's not going to make the world uninhabitable. That's a fraction of a degree above where we have been in recent decades and fractions of a degree are perfectly normal variance.
Of course climate change is real, but we're already working on it. We're already decarbonising. We still need fossil fuel extraction, for the interim, and we will need fossil fuel extraction even when we hit net zero as petrochemicals are required for many medicines, materials and other industrial purposes not remotely related to burning and releasing carbon.
I want a habitable world. We are working on that already though and need to continue to do the right thing, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If it stayed at 1.5 degrees, possibly - although there is a big issue that if we were to get to 1.5 the feedback loop would still lead to greater warming. I also don't really see the decarbonising push by individual countries as useful if all they are doing is outsourcing their carbon producing industries to other countries who end up producing our consumer goods and then blamed for the new emissions, whilst also not benefitting from any wealth creation themselves.
And by uninhabitable I don't just mean the climate, I mean the political reality also leading to uninhabitable scenarios. If 700 million people are displaced by 2030 due to droughts across Asia and Africa (as is projected), then the current anti immigrant fervour will continue through the roof, and the fortress nation state will lead to increased authoritarianism. The current food inflation will pale in comparison to impacts of mass drought / flooding; one of the reasons wheat prices have been so bad (beyond the Ukraine war) is that wheat producing areas in the US, China and Africa have also been ravaged by harsh climate events. Resource wars, especially water wars, could become common in the not to distant future.
How much of a dent to standard of living can people take without things collapsing? If we had made the necessary investment earlier, we could have slowly changed expectations and sourcing for things. Now, who knows. Putting our head in the sand and hoping business as usual works hasn't worked so far. The next generation are more extreme on this issue, on the left and right, and as much as you hate the JSO or XR activists the ecofascists are much worse.
Yes, there are feedback loops. We need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere before we get runaway temperature rise. So far we only are slowing the increase. The economic case for new fossil fuel investment is getting much weaker, the danger is that they will become stranded assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsnkPLkf1ao
Slowing the increase is all we can do for now. Unless you want a catastrophe then slowing is how you stop, its a transition. If I'm driving at 70mph and do an emergency stop, I have to slow before I stop or go into reverse and I will keep going forwards while slowing - but if I'm slowing down, I'm doing what I can.
We are slowing.
If new fossil fuel extraction becomes a stranded asset then that is the responsibility of the investors and they can lose out. Not a problem, some investments fail. Buyer beware and all that. But the environmental case for using domestically sourced fossil fuels over imported ones from countries like Russia or Saudi Arabia is unequivocally clear. Domestic fuels are much cleaner to use, while we transition to alternatives, and lets leave the Sheikhs and Oligarchs with stranded assets instead if that's what it comes to.
Most of the policy suggestions appear to want to curtail emissions and economic progress, while raising energy prices, in Western nations, but simultaneously increasing reliance for energy on more polluting developing countries.
Btw this is the Colonel Hugh Lincoln Cooper, of the US Army Corps of Engineers who supervised construction of the dam*. Soviet industrialisation was not just planned by the American industrialists: it was managed and supervised directly https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1666052627208044545
The same people that insisted SKS was being dodgy around Sue Gray are the same people that insisted he was guilty when he ate a curry.
Perhaps it is that these people hate somebody so much that they're unable to see the wood for the trees
If you are referring to me, I said that *if* Gray had had meetings with Labour before the report over a job, then it stunk to high heaven. Note the conditional.
And as for currygate: again, Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law. That is from a big-brained lawyer who I believe voted for the relevant legislation. If he had his doubts, why didn't you (and that's going away from the utter stupidity of the event anyway).
Perhaps those people so keen to clear Labour of things hate other parties so much they're unable to see the wood for the trees...
This “Starmer could not say that he had not broken the law” line has zero traction outside your head.
Yes, Starmer seemed to have been pretty confident when he said he would resign if he was found to have broken the law.
Of course, to certain Tories, this was a fiendish trick designed to bounce the police into clearing him.
If the police did not check the Labour WhatsApp’s because of the pressure Starmer put on them, it means the investigation was botched, and this needs to be reopened before the GE to investigate Starmer and Labour more thoroughly. It can’t be properly done without investigating what they said on WhatsApp “we’ll have a beer and curry after and put it on parliamentary expenses” for example.
So campaigning was legal at the time (cf. Labour and Tory leadership both seen eating and drinking with aides).
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
If the WhatsApp says something different to the retrospective line Labour publicly took, that’s a huge smoking gun that blows Labour out the water. Without police and public seeing those WhatsApp’s and knowing it tally with Labours public answers, it’s like there hasn’t even been a proper investigation yet.
If, if, if... The police carried out an investigation. No-one's presented evidence that their investigation was substantially defective.
Let's assume for a minute that there is a WhatsApp smoking gun. "After campaigning for the day, let's be really naughty and stay for a curry and a couple of beers".
Again, as their "naughty" plan was legal, why would the police care? A criminal conspiracy to not break the law is not criminal.
AS it was this was a total and utter waste of police resources and Durham Council Taxpayers money investigating this non event for purely partisan political purposes.
See also partygate. I mean how much was reaped in the fines vs how much spent investigating?
Comments
Since, for now, the only way to find out would involve rolling the dice on the continued existence of civilisation, I'm not as sanguine about the idea as either you or Barty seem to be.
The provocation is surely a sign that they think they are losing already, without official NATO involvement.
This is moot though, as it's not going to be tested. Russia won't play the nuclear card. We can see this with the response to events in Belgorod and the drone attack on Moscow. Putin has played these down because to do otherwise would expose how weak Russia is. We can expect similar rationalisations to avoid escalation in response to future humiliation on the battlefield.
We're decarbonising already. Its already working. Technology and investment is changing rapidly for the better already.
In 2012 we had most of our electricity coming from coal. A decade later coal is all but eliminated and renewables provide far more.
Electric cars, which can run off clean fuels, are already starting to replace oil based cars.
It takes time to make the transition, but its already happening, and its already working.
If you want to look where its not working, look abroad. But zealots don't care about what's working or not, they just want to be seen and to pretend that we are responsible and need to stop developing because that suits their agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.
If you were serious about wanting to lower global emissions you'd want to look at stopping or reducing imports from dirty more polluting countries. But our zealots want to do the polar opposite.
One to ask GPT-8, perhaps.
Do we let the threat of nuclear war allow Russia to get away with war crimes, invasions and seizing any territory they want?
If yes, then you can live with that world, but I'm not OK with it and nor is anyone else.
If no, then there is a risk there but its not in our hands. All we can do is support Ukraine to the best of our ability to try to end this war sooner than later, and ensure our air defences etc are as primed as they can be just in case it happens and hope it does not.
On the bright, side, I am heartened by the news of what sounds like operations by Russian elements hostile to Putin's regime in, for example, the Belgorod area. I think our best hope of ending the war with a liberated Ukraine and intact cities lies with Putin's overthrow by elements from his own populace.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/24/keir-starmer-backs-stiff-sentences-for-climate-protesters-who-block-roads
It's also interesting that this government are keen to dismiss far right street violence, whether that is over migrants being housed in hotels, or attacking drag queen story time, and yet it is Starmer who is accused of being the political wing of a left wing protest movement when he is at war with some of his own members and elected officials due to them being too left wing.
The question is not could they develop it (they could, and they did) the question is did they maintain it after the wall fell.
Look at the pictures of the 'space shuttle' when the money ran out...
We are slowing.
If new fossil fuel extraction becomes a stranded asset then that is the responsibility of the investors and they can lose out. Not a problem, some investments fail. Buyer beware and all that. But the environmental case for using domestically sourced fossil fuels over imported ones from countries like Russia or Saudi Arabia is unequivocally clear. Domestic fuels are much cleaner to use, while we transition to alternatives, and lets leave the Sheikhs and Oligarchs with stranded assets instead if that's what it comes to.
If we increase our own production, while reducing imports by more than the increase in domestic production, so we net reduce consumption, then that is good for the environment.
However as some production expires continuously anyway we need new licensing and new generation to replace expiring old generation and licenses anyway even if and while reducing overall production.
Simply saying "just stop new licenses" is bad for the environment. It simply means more imports, from dirtier countries, with lower standards.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/29/ukraine-offensive-kharkiv-kherson-donetsk/
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
The technology is coming along, and is being implemented as and when plausible. The swift change from coal power in this country should be held up as a shining example to the world of what can be done, and the rollout of electric cars continues apace.
Globally? No.
Other countries are not doing what we're doing, which is why we need to put more pressure on other countries to follow our example, while reducing our reliance upon dirtier countries and showing a positive example of how you can have both growth and cleaner living, rather than cutting off your own nose to spite your face and then importing everything from dirty countries.
Absolute silence from both parties on this though.
This government is determined to lock in the most expensive options for the bill payer, regardless. It's energy policy is as good a reason not to vote for them as any.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/07/24/Blair-outstrips-Major-in-UK-poll/7700775022400/
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/06/1121201310/ukraine-flooded-village-dam-blown-up
But its a simple mathematical formula anyway.
Imports = Consumption - Production + Exports
If Production goes up, then unless Consumption or Exports correspondingly go up, then Imports must go down.
If our Production goes down, without adjusting Consumption, then we simply rely more on Imports - and since Imports are dirtier as we've established, that is bad for the environment.
We need to concentrate on lowering Consumption and looking to eliminate dirty imports before we eliminate domestic production.
It was Russia.
In fact, they're not: "The US arsenal contains about 5,400 nuclear weapons, 1,744 of which are deployed and ready to be delivered" (1). The same source says the figure for Russian ready-use warheads is 1,584.
But also IMV, you'd be stupid to assume that *no* Russian warheads work. As you say, Russia has an impressive history in technology. I'd argue that nuclear-powered submarines are more complex systems than nuclear warheads and missiles, and Russia manages to keep a few of those going.
So the truth is probably somewhere in between the two - somewhere between 0 and ~1600; with the most likely figure to be somewhere in the middle - say 500 to 1000 range.
(1): https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/worldwide
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1665974996311605250
Ah but the police may have not seen WhatsApp messages related to this legal thing. aaaaaAAAAHHHHHaaaaa. But why would the police want to investigate Starmer's WhatsApp messages - in relation to an offence he hasn't committed?
There is desperate, then there is just funny. This is the latter.
Back to hydrocarbons, Starmer clearly wants to help Newcastle's Champions' League campaign by prioritising oil imports from Saudi over domestic production. For the time being, we still need the oil, so better to produce it here than import it from despots.
Of course, they could have loaded duds.
https://oci.carnegieendowment.org/#analysis
https://twitter.com/Info_Rosalie/status/1666022509861539840
One week before the Kakhovskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) dam failed (whether from negligence or intentional destruction), Russian authorities lifted the requirement to investigate dangerous facilities triggered by "military operations" and terrorism.
...It states that technical investigations of accidents resulting from military actions, sabotage, and terrorist acts will not be conducted until January 1, 2028.
...The document also states that until specific dates in 2023 and 2024, certain clauses of the Russian law, "On industrial safety of dangerous production facilities" and "On the safety of hydrotechnical structures," will not be applied. https://web.archive.org/web/20230601110434/http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/document/0001202305310067
Very important on #Kakhovka. The chronology of the terrorist attack by Russian terrorists. Or how Russians screwed in their excuses.
At two o'clock in the morning, the Russians blow up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, but they don't see how much. It's not very visible, but it can still hit....
[Continues]
https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1666015265971118082?s=20
(Waits for a dozen other comics to pile in on Tate).
Just in the off chance of something happening to Biden, I think.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/06/gavin-newsom-ron-desantis-feud-00100320
I recall a video from a youtuber about the dam a few months ago, not about its destruction but how Russia could or was using it if they were regrouping for attack or expecting to lose southern territory. Only 13 mins.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UF7OLFMYJ5w
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4031852-in-florida-doctors-can-cite-succubus-but-educators-cant-teach-morrison/
In medieval times, it was believed that pregnancy and certain medical conditions were caused by the demons Incubus and Succubus that would invade the body during sleep. As bizarre as it may seem, the role of spiritual demons influencing human reproduction was recently championed by a medical group leader with other physicians standing nearby in nodding approval.
In a few months, a recently passed law will go into effect in Florida that would not only allow medical practitioners in Florida to espouse such dangerous myths and beliefs without recourse but also deny medical care based on personal beliefs — no matter how outrageous or wrong.
Yet, if a state-certified teacher used some of the writings of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, for example, speaking to high-school students about understanding community diversity and the impact on public health, that person could be subject to disciplinary action if a parent of a student in the class objects...
Also, who just filled the dam to its highest level in 30 years ?
No, implausible is quite fair - note I didn't say impossible.
https://twitter.com/JasonFarrellSky
Again, as their "naughty" plan was legal, why would the police care? A criminal conspiracy to not break the law is not criminal.
Its building is completely destroyed.[VIDEO]
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1666041898979536896
Pivotal day in the war today, both with Ukranians seemingly on the offensive in the East of the country, and the Russians deciding that infrastructure terrorism is the way forward.
I'm not at all saying this is what happened, just that we don't really know anything. It only just happened, it's war, the Ukrainian plan is a successfully-kept secret, and everybody lies routinely.
There's your smoking gun. A party, not a work/campaign meeting
My guess would be that this makes a natural overtopping failure less likely, especially for the one in the building.
Incidentally, for comparison, this video shows the devastation after a Russian hydroselectric turbine failed a few years back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMtbkFF3RM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayano-Shushenskaya_power_station_accident
https://twitter.com/gbrumfiel/status/1665959437981429762
It’s not impossible that the Russians did a Chernobyl though, closing the sluice gates and switching off all the safety bypass systems, ignoring the alarms, until it went bang.
This happened just as the sluices had been messed with to ensure that water was at its highest ever level which will mean maximum flooding.
If this is a coincidental structural failing and not deliberate action by Russia, then that is so remarkable that we ought to be able to in practice rule that out.
https://twitter.com/SevaUT/status/1666046791467294720
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/4a6c801b-f272-4ffd-b13c-053272e92a4f
More probable would be Wagner/Prigozhin blaming army figures for panicking and going rogue.
*No immediate risk to the reactors
*Drawdown is about 5 cm/hour
*Current height of reservoir is 16.4 m; below 12.7 m it can no longer be pumped
*There are other sources of cooling water
https://iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/iaea-director-general-statement-to-the-iaea-board-of-governors
What is Rochdale banging on about here, legal this, lockdown rules said could party that, absolutely nothing to do with it Rochdale. This is about Labour talking to the country about this, and they’re looking you in the eye honesty about this, that’s all that matters. Remember Labour already lied to the country at first about Angela Rayner being at the party, and tried to pass it off as an admin error that they told us all the wrong thing.
When Brown looked into camera and said “election? I wasn’t planning a snap election” and instantly lost the 2010 election, that wasn’t a matter of legality was it like you are trying to twist and spin Starmer’s Browner into - Starmer looked into the camera and told the people what honestly happened, but the smoking gun in the WhatsApp proves Starmer 100% lying is what makes it smoking gun and causes immense damage like what happened to Gordon Brown. You don’t understand this at all Rochdale, do you.
*No immediately risk to the flatpack
*Drawers have 5 cm dowels
*Current height of cabinets are 164 cm, below 127 it can not be stable
*There are other sources of Allen Screws
https://www.northamerican.com/migration-map
But if you factor in the timing as well, then it becomes less likely. Either way, it's the Russian's fault.
Cock up or conspiracy? When Russia's involved it's hard to say. It ought to be an example for all those who bemoan 'experts'. Be careful what you wish for. You could end up like Russia.
"Are renewable energy sources cheaper than fossil fuels?
Yes, renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels. In 2021, IRENA reported that two-thirds of newly installed renewable power in G20 countries had lower costs than the cheapest fossil fuel-fired option – and they’re only set to get more affordable from here on out."
https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/blog/is-renewable-energy-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels#:~:text=Are renewable energy sources cheaper than fossil fuels?,to get more affordable from here on out.
https://twitter.com/LordAshcroft/status/1665994335312130050
@LordAshcroft
Would Boris lose a by-election? Not according to my poll in Uxbridge & South Ruislip. Full report at
@ConHome
https://conservativehome.com/2023/06/06/lord-ashcroft-my-new-poll-suggests-that-johnson-would-win-a-by-election-in-uxbridge-and-south-ruislip/"
Most of the policy suggestions appear to want to curtail emissions and economic progress, while raising energy prices, in Western nations, but simultaneously increasing reliance for energy on more polluting developing countries.
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1666052627208044545
*The one they blew up in '41