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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Russia blowing up the dam is going to have severe consequences. The act equates to the use of weapons of mass destruction under international law. ------ "Dams like the Dnipro dam in Nova Kahkovka are protected by the laws of war and the Geneva convention. Destroying it would be considered a weapon of mass destruction and an indiscriminate war crime. Article 56 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I provides:
'Works and installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population. Other military objectives located at or in the vicinity of these works or installations shall not be made the object of attack if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces from the works or installations and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.'
Talking about Desert Storm, the Americans thought about blowing up the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers if the Iraqis used WMD in Desert Storm.
Colin Powell said they stopped when they realised it would cause more damage than nuking Baghdad and realised they would likely face war crimes charges.
It is interesting that an event we celebrate in film and memorial and which just had its 80th anniversary marked by a flypast of all the WW2 airfields in Lincolnshire would now be considered a war crime.
The problem with war crimes is they are only work if those who committed them are defeated and can be put on trial, as with the Nazis in WW2 or Serbs in Bosnia or ousted tyrants in Africa or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
It doesn't matter how many war crimes Putin or indeed the US are alleged to have committed, they are not going to voluntarily hand themselves over to war crimes tribunals and nor are security forces going to be able to arrest them in Moscow or DC
But that should not impact whether or not things are considered a war crime. We all know that sometime speople get away with doing terrible things. That doesn't mean we should not still insist that these things ARE terrible and that we will hold people to account where we get the opportunity.
My original comment was just an observation on how the world has changed but we still perceive some things as being acceptable long after they are now considered criminal.
It's an interesting one.
Perhaps it's because there's thankfully been progress, but most people can see it in the context of the times? It was, for the time, total war, but there were standards. Even then, Britain, the US and Germany held back from using chemical weapons (not the Japanese, though...). The Red Cross was generally respected.
As I remember the RAF Chaplain at the time of Dresden used an argument that given that war is a complete negation of civilised behaviour, the only reasonable response from civilised people was to use all means at their disposal to bring it to an end as quickly as possible.
I have to say I don't necessarily hold with that view and think it can and is used to condone things which are completely beyond the pale. I only mention it as it seemed apposite to your comment.
'In 1139, a Church council declared crossbows unfit for Christian use -- except against Infidels. In the next decades other councils repeated the ban. So Crusaders carried crossbows to the Holy Land, and they kept on developing the technology.
The crossbow became a regular part of military tactics. When the ban was inconvenient, kings forgot it. I suppose any enemy became an Infidel on the battlefield.'
Security experts are to turn on an old phone belonging to Boris Johnson to try to extract WhatsApp messages revealing discussions with government figures at the start of the pandemic.
The phone was switched off in 2021 because of fears that it had been hacked with Israeli spy software. The advice was that it should never be turned back on.
But the Covid inquiry revealed today that it had reached a deal with the Cabinet Office to hand the phone to the “appropriate personnel in government for its contents to be downloaded”.
You remove the SIM card, and switch it on in a room with no other phones within bluetooth range, and no wifi signal. You download the contents to a brand new computer that’s never had an internet connection, then switch the phone off.
The only thing that could kill it, would be spyware with system access, set to delete everything if it were switched off for a period of time, in which case it’s dead already.
Exciting as dams and Sir Keir's regurgitated curry are, other news.
I'd hazard a guess that winning by only 7pts would be disappointing for the prospects of 'We need change from the pro Brexit, anti immigration, pro NHS privatisation Tories' Labour.
What is the Union Divvie bar for a successful Labour by-election?
A cynic might suggest it would be five points better than the result...
I yield to your expertise in this area, so feel free to posit a stellar/good/mediocre/shite result for Labour in the context of an oncoming GE. I think 7pts ahead of the SNP would be mediocre.
It's been more than six months since I left Scotland. I feel my expertise fading. I'd be interested in your thoughts (and the reasoning behind them).
SLab held Rutherglen and Hamilton with a 44pt lead in 2010, since then it has swung back and forth beween Lab & the SNP for the last 3 elections so it's not some SNP stronghold. Fwiw depending on the SNP candidate and whether ALBA run I think SLab are likely to win by more than 7pts, but I don't think even then it'll be some portent of the demise of the SNP or a sign that Scotland is as sick of them as the UK is of the Tories.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
On an aggregate basis China emits more emissions per annum than the UK has ever done through the whole of history. So the idea they're "unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us" is rather laughable, when they already have done and do so on an ongoing basis per annum per capita too.
Security experts are to turn on an old phone belonging to Boris Johnson to try to extract WhatsApp messages revealing discussions with government figures at the start of the pandemic.
The phone was switched off in 2021 because of fears that it had been hacked with Israeli spy software. The advice was that it should never be turned back on.
But the Covid inquiry revealed today that it had reached a deal with the Cabinet Office to hand the phone to the “appropriate personnel in government for its contents to be downloaded”.
You remove the SIM card, and switch it on in a room with no other phones within bluetooth range, and no wifi signal. You download the contents to a brand new computer that’s never had an internet connection, then switch the phone off.
The only thing that could kill it, would be spyware with system access, set to delete everything if it were switched off for a period of time, in which case it’s dead already.
I tink WhatsApp saves most (not all) data on the phone's internal storage, and not on the SIM. At least by default ...
Without a shadow of a doubt. One thing I have learned from PB is that it is always appropriate to extrapolate a line forever. By New Year Labour will have a negative vote share.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Just discovered I have a Chat GPT account. Not passing the Turing test yet:
Cookie: Where do you weigh a whale?
Chat GPT: You weigh a whale at a specialized facility or location equipped to handle the immense size and weight of these marine mammals. These facilities are typically marine research centers, aquariums, or other institutions that work with whales and have the necessary infrastructure and equipment.
To weigh a whale, the most common method is to use a large-scale or platform scale. The scale is typically placed on a solid foundation, such as a reinforced floor, capable of supporting the weight of the whale. The whale is carefully guided onto the scale, either by using a specialized lift or by coaxing it onto the weighing platform through training techniques.
It's important to note that weighing a whale is a complex and challenging task due to their size, weight, and the need to ensure the safety and well-being of the animal throughout the process. Therefore, it is typically carried out by experienced professionals who follow strict protocols to minimize stress and potential harm to the whale.
What's wrong with that answer ?
I think it's the one most of the world would give (If they had the knowledge). Is there a parochial joke you're making chatgpt is missing ?
I suspect a similar pattern to the aftermath of the MH17 shootdown will emerge; Russians on the ground will brag about it, and then when the extent of the calamity they've wrought begins to emerge, Moscow will instruct their forces to shut up and blame Kyiv. https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1666010850514161664
Just discovered I have a Chat GPT account. Not passing the Turing test yet:
Cookie: Where do you weigh a whale?
Chat GPT: You weigh a whale at a specialized facility or location equipped to handle the immense size and weight of these marine mammals. These facilities are typically marine research centers, aquariums, or other institutions that work with whales and have the necessary infrastructure and equipment.
To weigh a whale, the most common method is to use a large-scale or platform scale. The scale is typically placed on a solid foundation, such as a reinforced floor, capable of supporting the weight of the whale. The whale is carefully guided onto the scale, either by using a specialized lift or by coaxing it onto the weighing platform through training techniques.
It's important to note that weighing a whale is a complex and challenging task due to their size, weight, and the need to ensure the safety and well-being of the animal throughout the process. Therefore, it is typically carried out by experienced professionals who follow strict protocols to minimize stress and potential harm to the whale.
What's wrong with that answer ?
I think it's the one most of the world would give (If they had the knowledge). Is there a parochial joke you're making chatgpt is missing ?
You can tell it's an answer generated by a computer.
Indeed. It's nice, polite, logical, and answers the question. So definitely not a human...
"Wagner captures Russian commander as Prigozhin feud with army escalates Lt Col Roman Venevitin seen telling interrogator he ordered troops to shoot at convoy of mercenaries"
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
On an aggregate basis China emits more emissions per annum than the UK has ever done through the whole of history. So the idea they're "unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us" is rather laughable, when they already have done and do so on an ongoing basis per annum per capita too.
Sorry, but you're talking bollocks.
Cumulative emissions of CO2 by UK to 2021: 78.5 billion tons CO2 emissions by China in 2021: 11.47 billion tons.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
Security experts are to turn on an old phone belonging to Boris Johnson to try to extract WhatsApp messages revealing discussions with government figures at the start of the pandemic.
The phone was switched off in 2021 because of fears that it had been hacked with Israeli spy software. The advice was that it should never be turned back on.
But the Covid inquiry revealed today that it had reached a deal with the Cabinet Office to hand the phone to the “appropriate personnel in government for its contents to be downloaded”.
You remove the SIM card, and switch it on in a room with no other phones within bluetooth range, and no wifi signal. You download the contents to a brand new computer that’s never had an internet connection, then switch the phone off.
The only thing that could kill it, would be spyware with system access, set to delete everything if it were switched off for a period of time, in which case it’s dead already.
I tink WhatsApp saves most (not all) data on the phone's internal storage, and not on the SIM. At least by default ...
Correct. It’s all on local storage. I’ve done this for old phones before, but the specific issue here is the suspicion that the phone may contain malware, such as the Pegasus spyware that got Jeff Bezos and others. I don’t know what the process might be, for a phone that’s been switched off for two years that may contain a time bomb.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
That's a bizarre way to view it. By that logic, small countries all get a free pass to emit as much as they like.
Prince Harry said the government was "at rock bottom".
What on Earth is this guy thinking? He’s claiming that a newspaper published a story obtained from “hacking his phone”, when the same story has been published elsewhere previously.
Oh, and he turned up a day late, officially because he was at a birthday party for a three-year-old, unofficially because he was at SoHo House until very late the night before.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
On an aggregate basis China emits more emissions per annum than the UK has ever done through the whole of history. So the idea they're "unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us" is rather laughable, when they already have done and do so on an ongoing basis per annum per capita too.
Sorry, but you're talking bollocks.
Cumulative emissions of CO2 by UK to 2021: 78.5 billion tons CO2 emissions by China in 2021: 11.47 billion tons.
"Wagner captures Russian commander as Prigozhin feud with army escalates Lt Col Roman Venevitin seen telling interrogator he ordered troops to shoot at convoy of mercenaries"
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
That's a bizarre way to view it. By that logic, small countries all get a free pass to emit as much as they like.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
On an aggregate basis China emits more emissions per annum than the UK has ever done through the whole of history. So the idea they're "unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us" is rather laughable, when they already have done and do so on an ongoing basis per annum per capita too.
Sorry, but you're talking bollocks.
Cumulative emissions of CO2 by UK to 2021: 78.5 billion tons CO2 emissions by China in 2021: 11.47 billion tons.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
That's a bizarre way to view it. By that logic, small countries all get a free pass to emit as much as they like.
It's not bizarre to say that the earth cares about the aggregate but a simple statement of fact. How you handle the politics of it is an entirely separate question.
I only ever read or hear about Currygate on PB. It is not something ever encounter in real life.
You mean in your ,'real life' where no-one uses cash...
Actually cash use is incredibly rare around me. I rarely see a note or coin used by anyone from one week to the next, unless I'm behind a very old person in the queue in Sainsbury's
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
It's a shame that more is not made of the UK's success in halving carbon emissions relative to 1990 levels.
It demonstrates that this is a solvable problem, and that we have reason to be optimistic rather than pessimistic.
Hopefully China will start cutting its per capita emissions before it reaches the UK's historical peak, which was about 50% higher than China's current levels.
Russia blowing up the dam is going to have severe consequences. The act equates to the use of weapons of mass destruction under international law. ------ "Dams like the Dnipro dam in Nova Kahkovka are protected by the laws of war and the Geneva convention. Destroying it would be considered a weapon of mass destruction and an indiscriminate war crime. Article 56 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I provides:
'Works and installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population. Other military objectives located at or in the vicinity of these works or installations shall not be made the object of attack if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces from the works or installations and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.'
Talking about Desert Storm, the Americans thought about blowing up the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers if the Iraqis used WMD in Desert Storm.
Colin Powell said they stopped when they realised it would cause more damage than nuking Baghdad and realised they would likely face war crimes charges.
It is interesting that an event we celebrate in film and memorial and which just had its 80th anniversary marked by a flypast of all the WW2 airfields in Lincolnshire would now be considered a war crime.
The problem with war crimes is they are only work if those who committed them are defeated and can be put on trial, as with the Nazis in WW2 or Serbs in Bosnia or ousted tyrants in Africa or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
It doesn't matter how many war crimes Putin or indeed the US are alleged to have committed, they are not going to voluntarily hand themselves over to war crimes tribunals and nor are security forces going to be able to arrest them in Moscow or DC
But that should not impact whether or not things are considered a war crime. We all know that sometime speople get away with doing terrible things. That doesn't mean we should not still insist that these things ARE terrible and that we will hold people to account where we get the opportunity.
My original comment was just an observation on how the world has changed but we still perceive some things as being acceptable long after they are now considered criminal.
It's an interesting one.
Perhaps it's because there's thankfully been progress, but most people can see it in the context of the times? It was, for the time, total war, but there were standards. Even then, Britain, the US and Germany held back from using chemical weapons (not the Japanese, though...). The Red Cross was generally respected.
As I remember the RAF Chaplain at the time of Dresden used an argument that given that war is a complete negation of civilised behaviour, the only reasonable response from civilised people was to use all means at their disposal to bring it to an end as quickly as possible.
I have to say I don't necessarily hold with that view and think it can and is used to condone things which are completely beyond the pale. I only mention it as it seemed apposite to your comment.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
On an aggregate basis China emits more emissions per annum than the UK has ever done through the whole of history. So the idea they're "unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us" is rather laughable, when they already have done and do so on an ongoing basis per annum per capita too.
Sorry, but you're talking bollocks.
Cumulative emissions of CO2 by UK to 2021: 78.5 billion tons CO2 emissions by China in 2021: 11.47 billion tons.
You're falling into the £350m on the side of a bus trap.
Cookie (still enjoying himself): How can you tell there is an elephant in bed with you?
ChatGPT: If you were to wake up and suspect that there is an elephant in bed with you, you would likely notice several unmistakable signs:
Size and Space: You would likely feel an extreme lack of space in the bed, as an elephant would take up a significant portion of it. The bed would feel crowded and cramped.
Weight and Pressure: The immense weight of an elephant would cause the mattress to sink or compress significantly, leading to an unusual sensation of pressure and possibly discomfort.
Movement and Vibrations: An elephant's size and weight would likely result in noticeable movements and vibrations. You might feel the bed shaking or shifting as the elephant adjusts its position.
Sounds and Noises: Elephants are large animals, and their presence in a bed would likely produce audible sounds. You might hear heavy breathing, rustling, or even low rumbling sounds coming from the elephant.
Visual Confirmation: If you manage to look or glance in the direction of the supposed elephant, you would likely see the unmistakable sight of a massive creature beside or partially on the bed.
However, it's important to note that an elephant in bed with you is an unlikely scenario in reality, and it's more likely to be a humorous or imaginative concept.
Cookie (still enjoying himself): How can you tell there is an elephant in bed with you?
ChatGPT: If you were to wake up and suspect that there is an elephant in bed with you, you would likely notice several unmistakable signs:
Size and Space: You would likely feel an extreme lack of space in the bed, as an elephant would take up a significant portion of it. The bed would feel crowded and cramped.
Weight and Pressure: The immense weight of an elephant would cause the mattress to sink or compress significantly, leading to an unusual sensation of pressure and possibly discomfort.
Movement and Vibrations: An elephant's size and weight would likely result in noticeable movements and vibrations. You might feel the bed shaking or shifting as the elephant adjusts its position.
Sounds and Noises: Elephants are large animals, and their presence in a bed would likely produce audible sounds. You might hear heavy breathing, rustling, or even low rumbling sounds coming from the elephant.
Visual Confirmation: If you manage to look or glance in the direction of the supposed elephant, you would likely see the unmistakable sight of a massive creature beside or partially on the bed.
However, it's important to note that an elephant in bed with you is an unlikely scenario in reality, and it's more likely to be a humorous or imaginative concept.
What do you call a blind deer?
What do you call a blind deer with no legs?
What do you call a blind deer with no legs and no genitals?
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?
On the other hand, if it deters politicians from ordering damaging and counter-productive future lockdowns for fear of being shown up as hypocrites, it will have been worth every penny
Until we have a pandemic which needs lockdowns. And then people would be screaming about why we didn't lock down...
(For the record, my view is that the first lockdown in March 2020 was definitely needed. The second probably was.)
Did we really need a lockdown?
I think it's obvious that we needed people to reduce social contact to prevent spread of the virus, but did that require the force of law?
Good pandemic response should avoid any need for lockdowns. Lockdowns are last resorts. So, one can imagine a counter-factual where we didn’t need a lockdown. But that would have required a much better response in Jan-Mar, better test & trace measures, etc. If you don’t want lockdowns, you invest in public health.
I have a strong suspicion that the state of health required so that some people think lockdowns are unnecessary would always be just around the corner. Everyone has an agenda.
Look at the fuss and bother over disposable vapes. They interviewed someone on R4 from the BMA or somesuch who wanted them banned primarily because of their environmental impact. Oh yes and the health implications are as yet unproven but the environmental impact was very bad indeed.
Everyone has an agenda.
Yes, people who work on pandemic preparedness have an agenda. That agenda is stopping pandemics! (Preceded by apologies and followed by any other business, and date of next meeting.)
Of course - gawd bless them (and you, I believe?).
However, it ain't so simple as saying "Me guv? I just want to stop the next pandemic." We have finite resources and a sliding scale of cost/benefit. I could stop every single death or injury from road traffic accidents tomorrow. If I was allowed to ban people driving.
If I was a health professional I would want a health service that was able to cope, effortlessly, with any and every possibility. All tail events (and the pandemic was one such) included.
That would require a ridiculous and unrealistic level of spending.
So given that this is not going to happen compromises must be made and in this instance, one compromise was to allow "normal" (although of course far from normal) life to go on, or at least allow life to go on with no laws to regulate who you could invite to dinner (or have a curry with) and accept the increase in deaths that might have occurred as a result.
Of course we need to have a system — like a democratically elected government — to decide how to raise and apportion public funds. Like, duh.
Yep absolutely. I disagreed with their policy, just like I disagree with the Labour Party policy to nationalise Tescos (I think that's what they want to do).
The difference is that we are talking about considerable restrictions of liberties and, IIRC, a cancelled election, wasn't there? This takes the danger of such policies into a different domain and beyond just "oh it's democratic decision made by a democratically-elected government".
Some local elections were postponed. The Government didn’t cancel any elections affecting itself.
Oh that's ok, then. Just some local elections.
I'm not saying it was trivial, but there is a difference between a Government keeping itself in power, which has been done in the UK (once for each world war?), and a Government re-scheduling lower tier elections.
The Government has repeatedly re-scheduled legally mandated elections for the Northern Irish Assembly, by re-writing the law. Have you complained about that?
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
On an aggregate basis China emits more emissions per annum than the UK has ever done through the whole of history. So the idea they're "unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us" is rather laughable, when they already have done and do so on an ongoing basis per annum per capita too.
Sorry, but you're talking bollocks.
Cumulative emissions of CO2 by UK to 2021: 78.5 billion tons CO2 emissions by China in 2021: 11.47 billion tons.
Are you suggesting the poster who said Boris Johnson is the 'best Prime Minister' since the war has suddenly started talking bollocks?
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
On an aggregate basis China emits more emissions per annum than the UK has ever done through the whole of history. So the idea they're "unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us" is rather laughable, when they already have done and do so on an ongoing basis per annum per capita too.
Sorry, but you're talking bollocks.
Cumulative emissions of CO2 by UK to 2021: 78.5 billion tons CO2 emissions by China in 2021: 11.47 billion tons.
Is that true? Seems implausible.
We've had a lot of time to do it, having industrialized early. But, yes, that's why I asked for a source.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
China doesn't even make the top 20 in the list of countries by cumulative emissions per capita, while we are in 8th place.
But who cares today about “cumulative emissions”?
Surely the goal is to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, to save the planet?
Talk of “cumulative emissions”, sounds awfully like the Californians asking for $5m payments to those who had families affected by slavery two centuries ago.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
Only 17% of china's emissions are down to exported stuff
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
China doesn't even make the top 20 in the list of countries by cumulative emissions per capita, while we are in 8th place.
But who cares today about “cumulative emissions”?
Surely the goal is to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, to save the planet?
Talk of “cumulative emissions”, sounds awfully like the Californians asking for $5m payments to those who had families affected by slavery two centuries ago.
If I was a developing country, I'd certainly care. Why should I have to reduce my emissions to solve a problem largely caused by already developed 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!
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
That's a bizarre way to view it. By that logic, small countries all get a free pass to emit as much as they like.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
Only 17% of china's emissions are down to exported stuff
A surprisingly large proportion is going to be cement related.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
China doesn't even make the top 20 in the list of countries by cumulative emissions per capita, while we are in 8th place.
But who cares today about “cumulative emissions”?
Surely the goal is to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, to save the planet?
Talk of “cumulative emissions”, sounds awfully like the Californians asking for $5m payments to those who had families affected by slavery two centuries ago.
If I was a developing country, I'd certainly care. Why should I have to reduce my emissions to solve a problem largely caused by already developed 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!
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
On an aggregate basis China emits more emissions per annum than the UK has ever done through the whole of history. So the idea they're "unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us" is rather laughable, when they already have done and do so on an ongoing basis per annum per capita too.
Sorry, but you're talking bollocks.
Cumulative emissions of CO2 by UK to 2021: 78.5 billion tons CO2 emissions by China in 2021: 11.47 billion tons.
Are you suggesting the poster who said Boris Johnson is the 'best Prime Minister' since the war has suddenly started talking bollocks?
I never said that. I've always said that Thatcher was the best PM since Churchill.
I said he was likely to be the most consequential after Atlee and Thatcher post-war.
Considering how much you rail about how awful Brexit is, and how the country has gone to the dogs because of it, it seems your own comments rather confirm that too. Or was Brexit inconsequential and overblown?
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.
Why not deal with demand and let production deal with itself. That way your hydrocarbon needs are met through local production which is the most environmentally friendly way of doing it, you maintain energy security and you don't impact your balance of payments.
There are literally no sane reasons for reducing local production except in response to reductions in consumption. Anything else just causes more of the very thing you are trying to reduce.
Precisely. This is a demand-based problem that needs demand-based solutions.
Getting people to switch from petrol/diesel vehicles to electric ones will significantly reduce the amount of fossil fuels burnt in this country. Switching our petrol/diesel from North Sea to Middle Eastern, or vice-versa, does not change the amount burnt whatsoever.
If you want to be serious about the problem, you need serious solutions. Like how do we electrify heating/transportation etc and make it work with clean electricity. What you don't need is clowns blocking domestic extraction of the fuel we rely upon to live our lives in the interim so that we import from shady characters from shady parts of the world instead.
I don’t think that banning or penally taxing FF extraction in the UK makes sense - better for the market to handle
That said, if you have a policy to force a shift to renewable energy then banning it reduces the power of the FF lobby so there is a second order benefit even if FF are just imported to replace
For lower taxes it seems that many Americans are willing to live in the most dreadful places
The cities of Florida and Texas aren't that bad.
Austin and Miami look like the places to be at the moment. New York, LA, SF, Boston, are all experiencing population declines.
Austin is a victim of its own success: it's now extremely expensive to live there and the traffic is worse than LA.
I would have happily moved there three years ago; now I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
How can a city of 1m people, have traffic worse than LA?
I’ve not been there recently, but the totally unbiased Joe Rogan says the traffic in Austin is fantastic compared to LA, because the place is so small it never takes more than half an hour to cross town.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
China doesn't even make the top 20 in the list of countries by cumulative emissions per capita, while we are in 8th place.
But who cares today about “cumulative emissions”?
Surely the goal is to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, to save the planet?
Talk of “cumulative emissions”, sounds awfully like the Californians asking for $5m payments to those who had families affected by slavery two centuries ago.
If you wanted to establish who was responsible for the damage caused by global warming then you would want to look at cumulative emissions, so it will be relevant when countries are looking to be compensated for the damage they suffer from the carbon emissions of other countries.
Just discovered I have a Chat GPT account. Not passing the Turing test yet:
Cookie: Where do you weigh a whale?
Chat GPT: You weigh a whale at a specialized facility or location equipped to handle the immense size and weight of these marine mammals. These facilities are typically marine research centers, aquariums, or other institutions that work with whales and have the necessary infrastructure and equipment.
To weigh a whale, the most common method is to use a large-scale or platform scale. The scale is typically placed on a solid foundation, such as a reinforced floor, capable of supporting the weight of the whale. The whale is carefully guided onto the scale, either by using a specialized lift or by coaxing it onto the weighing platform through training techniques.
It's important to note that weighing a whale is a complex and challenging task due to their size, weight, and the need to ensure the safety and well-being of the animal throughout the process. Therefore, it is typically carried out by experienced professionals who follow strict protocols to minimize stress and potential harm to the whale.
What's wrong with that answer ?
I think it's the one most of the world would give (If they had the knowledge). Is there a parochial joke you're making chatgpt is missing ?
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
That's a bizarre way to view it. By that logic, small countries all get a free pass to emit as much as they like.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
Based on your own figures, China has been responsible for more emissions in the last decade than the UK in the whole of its history, so your claim that we bear greater responsibility doesn't stand up.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
China doesn't even make the top 20 in the list of countries by cumulative emissions per capita, while we are in 8th place.
But who cares today about “cumulative emissions”?
Surely the goal is to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, to save the planet?
Talk of “cumulative emissions”, sounds awfully like the Californians asking for $5m payments to those who had families affected by slavery two centuries ago.
If you wanted to establish who was responsible for the damage caused by global warming then you would want to look at cumulative emissions, so it will be relevant when countries are looking to be compensated for the damage they suffer from the carbon emissions of other countries.
Why are you interested in “establish[ing] who was responsible for the damage caused by global warming”?
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
That's a bizarre way to view it. By that logic, small countries all get a free pass to emit as much as they like.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
Those emissions haven't gone away but the people who did those emissions have.
So people in the past used to burn coal to warm their homes instead of using energy efficient boilers. Or used coal powered power stations to generate electricity instead of cleaner energy. There's nothing that can be done about that.
What matters is how we're warming our homes and powering our lives today. And others can do the same as us. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. In the past coal was the only economically efficient way people had to generate power or heat homes, but its not anymore.
We have cleaner technologies, the technologies are available to the whole world today.
That people in the past used the technologies of the past is no excuse for people of the present still using the technologies of the past.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
Cookie (still enjoying himself): How can you tell there is an elephant in bed with you?
ChatGPT: If you were to wake up and suspect that there is an elephant in bed with you, you would likely notice several unmistakable signs:
Size and Space: You would likely feel an extreme lack of space in the bed, as an elephant would take up a significant portion of it. The bed would feel crowded and cramped.
Weight and Pressure: The immense weight of an elephant would cause the mattress to sink or compress significantly, leading to an unusual sensation of pressure and possibly discomfort.
Movement and Vibrations: An elephant's size and weight would likely result in noticeable movements and vibrations. You might feel the bed shaking or shifting as the elephant adjusts its position.
Sounds and Noises: Elephants are large animals, and their presence in a bed would likely produce audible sounds. You might hear heavy breathing, rustling, or even low rumbling sounds coming from the elephant.
Visual Confirmation: If you manage to look or glance in the direction of the supposed elephant, you would likely see the unmistakable sight of a massive creature beside or partially on the bed.
However, it's important to note that an elephant in bed with you is an unlikely scenario in reality, and it's more likely to be a humorous or imaginative concept.
Footprints in the butter...?
No, no wrong feed line! The answer should be 'By the 'E' on his pyjamas'.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
Yes, William, we are all perfectly aware the China's emissions per capita are greater than those of the UK now.
And now is all that matters.
In the past there was not the knowledge about how the emissions mattered that there is in the present, and there was not the alternatives that there are in the present either.
Its like saying that someone who starts smoking today is in the same situation as someone who started smoking seventy years ago.
Time has moved on. Technology has moved on. The past has happened, it is the present that matters.
People used coal in the past as that was their only option. Anyone using coal today is in a totally different situation.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
That's a bizarre way to view it. By that logic, small countries all get a free pass to emit as much as they like.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
Based on your own figures, China has been responsible for more emissions in the last decade than the UK in the whole of its history, so your claim that we bear greater responsibility doesn't stand up.
Oh FFS. China has far more people than the UK. Do you not understand what "per capita" means?
Cookie (still enjoying himself): How can you tell there is an elephant in bed with you?
ChatGPT: If you were to wake up and suspect that there is an elephant in bed with you, you would likely notice several unmistakable signs:
Size and Space: You would likely feel an extreme lack of space in the bed, as an elephant would take up a significant portion of it. The bed would feel crowded and cramped.
Weight and Pressure: The immense weight of an elephant would cause the mattress to sink or compress significantly, leading to an unusual sensation of pressure and possibly discomfort.
Movement and Vibrations: An elephant's size and weight would likely result in noticeable movements and vibrations. You might feel the bed shaking or shifting as the elephant adjusts its position.
Sounds and Noises: Elephants are large animals, and their presence in a bed would likely produce audible sounds. You might hear heavy breathing, rustling, or even low rumbling sounds coming from the elephant.
Visual Confirmation: If you manage to look or glance in the direction of the supposed elephant, you would likely see the unmistakable sight of a massive creature beside or partially on the bed.
However, it's important to note that an elephant in bed with you is an unlikely scenario in reality, and it's more likely to be a humorous or imaginative concept.
Footprints in the butter...?
No, no wrong feed line! The answer should be 'By the 'E' on his pyjamas'.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
Yes, William, we are all perfectly aware the China's emissions per capita are greater than those of the UK now.
And now is all that matters.
In the past there was not the knowledge about how the emissions mattered that there is in the present, and there was not the alternatives that there are in the present either.
Its like saying that someone who starts smoking today is in the same situation as someone who started smoking seventy years ago.
Time has moved on. Technology has moved on. The past has happened, it is the present that matters.
People used coal in the past as that was their only option. Anyone using coal today is in a totally different situation.
It is the present that matters, but how people feel in the present can depend on the past, and how people feel, now nations feel, matters when it comes to organising collaborative global change.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
The issue is we have a problem *now* which needs fixing *now*.
China increasing their CO2 emissions because westerners were bad in the past doesn’t solve the problem.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
No, that doesn't work. Nowhere does he say "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it". To avoid misunderstanding it's the "in favour of importing it" bit that you seem to have invented. Keep looking.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
China doesn't even make the top 20 in the list of countries by cumulative emissions per capita, while we are in 8th place.
But who cares today about “cumulative emissions”?
Surely the goal is to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, to save the planet?
Talk of “cumulative emissions”, sounds awfully like the Californians asking for $5m payments to those who had families affected by slavery two centuries ago.
If you wanted to establish who was responsible for the damage caused by global warming then you would want to look at cumulative emissions, so it will be relevant when countries are looking to be compensated for the damage they suffer from the carbon emissions of other countries.
Why are you interested in “establish[ing] who was responsible for the damage caused by global warming”?
A country that suffers severe financial losses as a result of global warming might be very interested in doing so, to convince said countries to compensate them for that loss.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
That's a bizarre way to view it. By that logic, small countries all get a free pass to emit as much as they like.
Not really, you should look at small countries emissions on an ongoing basis per capita - and if you do that, then China is emitting more than us as on ongoing basis.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
We are emitting less per capita than China now, but for a long time were weren't. Those emissions haven't gone away - they are still there, doing their bit to warm the Earth. You're right that we don't have a Tardis and can't change that, but it does mean that we, alongside other nations that industrialised early, bear greater responsibility when it comes to fixing the damage that has been done.
Based on your own figures, China has been responsible for more emissions in the last decade than the UK in the whole of its history, so your claim that we bear greater responsibility doesn't stand up.
Oh FFS. China has far more people than the UK. Do you not understand what "per capita" means?
Let's stick to more comparable countries then. Germany bears more responsibility than Britain with more historical emissions and more per capita emissions now.
What's its excuse for lagging behind? Should the rest of Europe sanction them? Should we have forced them to deindustrialise after the war?
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
The issue is we have a problem *now* which needs fixing *now*.
China increasing their CO2 emissions because westerners were bad in the past doesn’t solve the problem.
What solves the problem is getting China on board with a plan. Getting China on board with a plan requires slightly more empathy and diplomacy than some PB.com veterans often show.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
China doesn't even make the top 20 in the list of countries by cumulative emissions per capita, while we are in 8th place.
But who cares today about “cumulative emissions”?
Surely the goal is to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, to save the planet?
Talk of “cumulative emissions”, sounds awfully like the Californians asking for $5m payments to those who had families affected by slavery two centuries ago.
If I was a developing country, I'd certainly care. Why should I have to reduce my emissions to solve a problem largely caused by already developed countries?
The answer, as always, is technology. Solar tech is an order of magnitude better than a decade ago - we just need to find a cheap and reliable storage method, to make huge swathes of Africa the next generation’s technology hubs.
Had we never industrialised, then indeed, we would not have warmed the earth's temperature.
OTOH, a vastly higher proportion of the world's population, probably around 70%, would be living in absolute poverty than is the case today. The current figure worldwide is 8%. Famine would be normal, rather than a relatively rare disaster.
That's why I think it's wrong to allocate blame to those nations that industrialised first. Those nations were doing the world a favour. No one was actually doing anything *wrong* by burning fossil fuels in the past.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
No, that doesn't work. Nowhere does he say "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it". To avoid misunderstanding it's the "in favour of importing it" bit that you seem to have invented. Keep looking.
He isn’t saying that it should be eliminated in the short term - so if it’s not coming from local supply, it’s going to be imported.
Cookie (still enjoying himself): How can you tell there is an elephant in bed with you?
ChatGPT: If you were to wake up and suspect that there is an elephant in bed with you, you would likely notice several unmistakable signs:
Size and Space: You would likely feel an extreme lack of space in the bed, as an elephant would take up a significant portion of it. The bed would feel crowded and cramped.
Weight and Pressure: The immense weight of an elephant would cause the mattress to sink or compress significantly, leading to an unusual sensation of pressure and possibly discomfort.
Movement and Vibrations: An elephant's size and weight would likely result in noticeable movements and vibrations. You might feel the bed shaking or shifting as the elephant adjusts its position.
Sounds and Noises: Elephants are large animals, and their presence in a bed would likely produce audible sounds. You might hear heavy breathing, rustling, or even low rumbling sounds coming from the elephant.
Visual Confirmation: If you manage to look or glance in the direction of the supposed elephant, you would likely see the unmistakable sight of a massive creature beside or partially on the bed.
However, it's important to note that an elephant in bed with you is an unlikely scenario in reality, and it's more likely to be a humorous or imaginative concept.
Footprints in the butter...?
No, no wrong feed line! The answer should be 'By the 'E' on his pyjamas'.
My ex-father-in-law’s favourite joke went…
My dog’s got no nose.
How does it smell?
Antigua.
Robot humour is different to ours:
Cookie: A Jamaica joke is a joke of the format :"My wife went on holiday to the west indies. Jamaica? No, she went of her own accord." Tell me some more jokes of this format.
ChatGPT: Certainly! Here are a few more jokes in the same format:
"I asked my friend if he wanted to visit the Caribbean. 'Jamaica?' I asked. 'No,' he replied, 'but I might Belize it!'"
"My neighbor told me he's planning a trip to the Bahamas. 'Nassau?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'I'll be flying there.'"
"I told my dad I wanted to go to Cuba. 'Havana?' he asked. 'No,' I replied, 'just a desire for some good salsa dancing.'"
"My coworker mentioned he was considering a vacation in Puerto Rico. 'San Juan?' I asked. 'No,' he laughed, 'I'll be Juan-less!'"
"I met someone who recently traveled to Trinidad and Tobago. 'Port of Spain?' I inquired. 'No,' he said, 'but I did bring back a lot of spice!'"
Remember, these jokes play on the puns and wordplay of different locations, so enjoy the lighthearted humor!
For lower taxes it seems that many Americans are willing to live in the most dreadful places
The cities of Florida and Texas aren't that bad.
Austin and Miami look like the places to be at the moment. New York, LA, SF, Boston, are all experiencing population declines.
Austin is a victim of its own success: it's now extremely expensive to live there and the traffic is worse than LA.
I would have happily moved there three years ago; now I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
How can a city of 1m people, have traffic worse than LA?
I’ve not been there recently, but the totally unbiased Joe Rogan says the traffic in Austin is fantastic compared to LA, because the place is so small it never takes more than half an hour to cross town.
Because it was built to be a city of 300,000 people.
Since 2000, it has almost doubled in size, but the main arteries haven't got any bigger.
Cookie (still enjoying himself): How can you tell there is an elephant in bed with you?
ChatGPT: If you were to wake up and suspect that there is an elephant in bed with you, you would likely notice several unmistakable signs:
Size and Space: You would likely feel an extreme lack of space in the bed, as an elephant would take up a significant portion of it. The bed would feel crowded and cramped.
Weight and Pressure: The immense weight of an elephant would cause the mattress to sink or compress significantly, leading to an unusual sensation of pressure and possibly discomfort.
Movement and Vibrations: An elephant's size and weight would likely result in noticeable movements and vibrations. You might feel the bed shaking or shifting as the elephant adjusts its position.
Sounds and Noises: Elephants are large animals, and their presence in a bed would likely produce audible sounds. You might hear heavy breathing, rustling, or even low rumbling sounds coming from the elephant.
Visual Confirmation: If you manage to look or glance in the direction of the supposed elephant, you would likely see the unmistakable sight of a massive creature beside or partially on the bed.
However, it's important to note that an elephant in bed with you is an unlikely scenario in reality, and it's more likely to be a humorous or imaginative concept.
What do you call a blind deer?
What do you call a blind deer with no legs?
What do you call a blind deer with no legs and no genitals?
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Because
1. Looking for new fossil fuels in no way prevents us from also doing far more investment in renewables, it is not an either or and the monies raised by taxes on fossil fuels helps pay for more renewables 2, Hydrocarbon sources are not just about fossil fuels. Your electric cars won't get very far without those lubricants and coolants you need to make them run and of course you won't even have the electric cars without hydrocarbon based plastics. Nor a whole host of other things. And when that gives you a headacheyou won't have asprin either.
And meanwhile all you are going to be doing is importing those fossil fuels from other parts of the world with far poorer environmental controls and using far more energy to get them here.
Deal with demand and leave supply alone to deal with its own issues.
The public demand heating and transport, we don't demand that gas, coal or oil to be used to provide that. We will need vastly less fossil fuels to produce aspirin, plastic and lubricants than for petrol, diesel to use in transport and for power stations. Very few people are suggesting closing down existing sources of fossil fuels in this country before they become economically irrelevant, but spending time and money searching for and developing new coal mines and oil wells rather than building more renewables is a bad idea.
Again wrong. That is exactly what Starmer is suggesting. And stopping companies drilling for oil and gas will in no way mean more money spent on renewables. Indeed it will mean there is less money available whilst those companies which are driling for oil and gas will simply go and do it elsewhere in the world.
Yes, William, we are all perfectly aware the China's emissions per capita are greater than those of the UK now.
And now is all that matters.
In the past there was not the knowledge about how the emissions mattered that there is in the present, and there was not the alternatives that there are in the present either.
Its like saying that someone who starts smoking today is in the same situation as someone who started smoking seventy years ago.
Time has moved on. Technology has moved on. The past has happened, it is the present that matters.
People used coal in the past as that was their only option. Anyone using coal today is in a totally different situation.
You have a point, but it still needs to be recognised that we as a country have benefitted from early industrialisation using fossil fuels but are effectively asking other nations to forgo this benefit. We need to help other countries to industrialise as cleanly as possible, but it would be unfair not to cut them some short-term slack on emissions given our own history.
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
Well indeed. Nobody is suggesting that UK should abandon fossil fuel extraction in favour of importing it - that appears to be a strawman dreamt up by those who are determined to slow down the transition from fossil fuels. And if anyone were suggesting it, the idea isn't without some environmental merit, given that the extraction of oil from the North Sea results in the emission of more CO2 than, say, the extraction of oil from the Saudi desert.
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
Actually that is precisely what is suggested by blocking North Sea licences, but not blocking imports.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
you might want to think about 'let alone on an aggregate basis'
Not really.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
Only if you refuse for some reason to slice it per capita on an aggregate basis, which I think is clearly what FeersumEnjineeya meant.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
This article explains the point I'm trying to make:
China doesn't even make the top 20 in the list of countries by cumulative emissions per capita, while we are in 8th place.
I blame Ug and Zog, the first fools to realise that if you heated some rocks hot enough you could get metal, giving a better class of weapon/tool. Its been all downhill since then...
Although I often wonder about flint tools, and whether in time, flint users would have run out of new flint... @Leon may have a view on this, he normally does...
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.
'We' is the world in general. Curtailing emissions doesn't imply curtailing economic progress or raising energy prices. Nobody now should build a coal fired power station because it would cost more to run than Renewables and within a few years be a stranded asset. https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
So long as the “We” continues to be the whole world, and that policy suggestions reduce the CO2 emissions from the whole world, then great.
But that’s not what’s currently seen in practice.
OK Sandpit, explain what you mean. Is this a criticism of any particular country? "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's total renewable energy capacity exceeded 1,000 GW in 2021, accounting for 43.5 per cent of the country's total power generation capacity, 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2015. The country aims to have 80 per cent of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
The UK is doing ok, 7th in the WEF ETI list, but 'we' (the whole world) need to increase the rate at which we move to renewables to hit net zero by 2030 - have a look at the graph here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/doubling-renewable-energy-net-zero-emissions/ So, how does it make any sense, environmental or economic to spend time and money looking for new fossil fuels now?
Becuase most of the policy suggestions, are that the UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it - at a higher global CO2 impact - from other countries.
China is still building coal power plants.
Who is suggesting that "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it" ? They would obviously be a complete idiot. Or is it that somebody else is accusing someone of doing so? China should stop building coal power plants, obviously.
That is exacty what Starmer is suggesting. That is the whole point of this discussion.
Please provide reference where he says that UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it.
No new licences. I know you don't understand any of this but that very rapidly means no more production. Meanwhile apparently we are going to replace this by magically building all those new Neclear Power Stations we have failed to build for the last 30 years. Anyone who thinks we will not haveto massively increase our imports of hydrocarbons as a result of this policy is economically illiterate.
Yes, William, we are all perfectly aware the China's emissions per capita are greater than those of the UK now.
And now is all that matters.
In the past there was not the knowledge about how the emissions mattered that there is in the present, and there was not the alternatives that there are in the present either.
Its like saying that someone who starts smoking today is in the same situation as someone who started smoking seventy years ago.
Time has moved on. Technology has moved on. The past has happened, it is the present that matters.
People used coal in the past as that was their only option. Anyone using coal today is in a totally different situation.
You have a point, but it still needs to be recognised that we as a country have benefitted from early industrialisation using fossil fuels but are effectively asking other nations to forgo this benefit. We need to help other countries to industrialise as cleanly as possible, but it would be unfair not to cut them some short-term slack on emissions given our own history.
There's no better example of someone who is blinded by their own ideology. You would happily allow the environment to be destroyed in the name of saving the environment because to do otherwise would be 'unfair'.
Yes, William, we are all perfectly aware the China's emissions per capita are greater than those of the UK now.
And now is all that matters.
In the past there was not the knowledge about how the emissions mattered that there is in the present, and there was not the alternatives that there are in the present either.
Its like saying that someone who starts smoking today is in the same situation as someone who started smoking seventy years ago.
Time has moved on. Technology has moved on. The past has happened, it is the present that matters.
People used coal in the past as that was their only option. Anyone using coal today is in a totally different situation.
You have a point, but it still needs to be recognised that we as a country have benefitted from early industrialisation using fossil fuels but are effectively asking other nations to forgo this benefit. We need to help other countries to industrialise as cleanly as possible, but it would be unfair not to cut them some short-term slack on emissions given our own history.
Perhaps we in the west should ask those countries to all pay us for the benefits of industrialisation and communications we have gifted them since the industrial revolution.
For lower taxes it seems that many Americans are willing to live in the most dreadful places
The cities of Florida and Texas aren't that bad.
Austin and Miami look like the places to be at the moment. New York, LA, SF, Boston, are all experiencing population declines.
Austin is a victim of its own success: it's now extremely expensive to live there and the traffic is worse than LA.
I would have happily moved there three years ago; now I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
How can a city of 1m people, have traffic worse than LA?
I’ve not been there recently, but the totally unbiased Joe Rogan says the traffic in Austin is fantastic compared to LA, because the place is so small it never takes more than half an hour to cross town.
Because it was built to be a city of 300,000 people.
Since 2000, it has almost doubled in size, but the main arteries haven't got any bigger.
Yes, but it still only takes half an hour to get from one side to the other. (According to Rogan).
As opposed to LA, where you can allow three or four hours, where private jets regularly make 10m flights from Santa Monica to Long Beach, and the air is full of helicopters.
Yes, William, we are all perfectly aware the China's emissions per capita are greater than those of the UK now.
And now is all that matters.
In the past there was not the knowledge about how the emissions mattered that there is in the present, and there was not the alternatives that there are in the present either.
Its like saying that someone who starts smoking today is in the same situation as someone who started smoking seventy years ago.
Time has moved on. Technology has moved on. The past has happened, it is the present that matters.
People used coal in the past as that was their only option. Anyone using coal today is in a totally different situation.
You have a point, but it still needs to be recognised that we as a country have benefitted from early industrialisation using fossil fuels but are effectively asking other nations to forgo this benefit. We need to help other countries to industrialise as cleanly as possible, but it would be unfair not to cut them some short-term slack on emissions given our own history.
There's no better example of someone who is blinded by their own ideology. You would happily allow the environment to be destroyed in the name of saving the environment because to do otherwise would be 'unfair'.
You seem to have lost the ability to comprehend English.
For lower taxes it seems that many Americans are willing to live in the most dreadful places
The cities of Florida and Texas aren't that bad.
Austin and Miami look like the places to be at the moment. New York, LA, SF, Boston, are all experiencing population declines.
Austin is a victim of its own success: it's now extremely expensive to live there and the traffic is worse than LA.
I would have happily moved there three years ago; now I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
How can a city of 1m people, have traffic worse than LA?
I’ve not been there recently, but the totally unbiased Joe Rogan says the traffic in Austin is fantastic compared to LA, because the place is so small it never takes more than half an hour to cross town.
Because it was built to be a city of 300,000 people.
Since 2000, it has almost doubled in size, but the main arteries haven't got any bigger.
Yes, but it still only takes half an hour to get from one side to the other. (According to Rogan).
As opposed to LA, where you can allow three or four hours, where private jets regularly make 10m flights from Santa Monica to Long Beach, and the air is full of helicopters.
Seth Rogan is talking shit. I've spent 30 minutes waiting to cross the bridge into downtown.
For lower taxes it seems that many Americans are willing to live in the most dreadful places
The cities of Florida and Texas aren't that bad.
Austin and Miami look like the places to be at the moment. New York, LA, SF, Boston, are all experiencing population declines.
Austin is a victim of its own success: it's now extremely expensive to live there and the traffic is worse than LA.
I would have happily moved there three years ago; now I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
How can a city of 1m people, have traffic worse than LA?
I’ve not been there recently, but the totally unbiased Joe Rogan says the traffic in Austin is fantastic compared to LA, because the place is so small it never takes more than half an hour to cross town.
Because it was built to be a city of 300,000 people.
Since 2000, it has almost doubled in size, but the main arteries haven't got any bigger.
Yes, but it still only takes half an hour to get from one side to the other. (According to Rogan).
As opposed to LA, where you can allow three or four hours, where private jets regularly make 10m flights from Santa Monica to Long Beach, and the air is full of helicopters.
Both sound dire. Why don’t the Americans invest in rapid transit systems?
Comments
And yes, China should stop building coal power plants, but, on a per capita basis, China is responsible for far less CO2 in the air than we are and is unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us. We are hardly in a position to criticise them for something we did in spades while simultaneously dragging our heels on cleaning up our own act.
The crossbow became a regular part of military tactics. When the ban was inconvenient, kings forgot it. I suppose any enemy became an Infidel on the battlefield.'
You remove the SIM card, and switch it on in a room with no other phones within bluetooth range, and no wifi signal. You download the contents to a brand new computer that’s never had an internet connection, then switch the phone off.
The only thing that could kill it, would be spyware with system access, set to delete everything if it were switched off for a period of time, in which case it’s dead already.
You don't change demand one iota by doing that, you don't help the environment at all. All you do is generate more imports, worsen our balance of payments, worsen our control over the environment and regulatory framework. And make yourself feel good by exporting emissions to other nations.
It is superficial foppery. If you want to be serious about it, do serious actions, like banning imports or banning gas boilers, or banning petrol stations. But if you're not prepared to do that, then we need fuel, and if we need fuel, then there is no scientific reason to block North Sea licences.
Oh and you're wrong on per capita climate emissions too. China is responsible for more ongoing emissions on a per capita basis than the UK is, let alone on an aggregate basis.
On an aggregate basis China emits more emissions per annum than the UK has ever done through the whole of history. So the idea they're "unlikely ever to contribute to climate change as much as us" is rather laughable, when they already have done and do so on an ongoing basis per annum per capita too.
The earth cares about the aggregate basis, and on an aggregate basis they utterly dwarf UK emissions.
On a per capita basis, they also dwarf UK emissions on an ongoing basis.
So either way you slice it, they are more responsible than we are. Which is unsurprising to anyone without an axe to grind.
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1666010850514161664
"Wagner captures Russian commander as Prigozhin feud with army escalates
Lt Col Roman Venevitin seen telling interrogator he ordered troops to shoot at convoy of mercenaries"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/05/wagner-group-release-video-of-captured-russian-commander
Cumulative emissions of CO2 by UK to 2021: 78.5 billion tons
CO2 emissions by China in 2021: 11.47 billion tons.
And while you're right that in principle it doesn't make much sense to stop local extraction of fossil fuels just to increase imports (though it might depend a bit). By the same logic, you can argue that a share of emissions due to manufacturing things should be allocated to the consuming country, rather than the producing country - it makes equally little sense to reduce local emissions by exporting production. I don't know if China still produces more emissions per capita on this basis - maybe someone has the figures?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-65823221
Such artillery attacks are making it impossible for the UA military to evacuate people stuck on the islands.
https://twitter.com/ThomasVLinge/status/1666002318343512065
Oh, and he turned up a day late, officially because he was at a birthday party for a three-year-old, unofficially because he was at SoHo House until very late the night before.
We don't have a Tardis to change the past, all we can do is look after the Earth on an ongoing basis, and having done that we are emitting per capita less than China is.
We are doing our bit. In the present. We need others to, as well.
It demonstrates that this is a solvable problem, and that we have reason to be optimistic rather than pessimistic.
Hopefully China will start cutting its per capita emissions before it reaches the UK's historical peak, which was about 50% higher than China's current levels.
What do you call a blind deer with no legs?
What do you call a blind deer with no legs and no genitals?
The Government has repeatedly re-scheduled legally mandated elections for the Northern Irish Assembly, by re-writing the law. Have you complained about that?
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change/
China doesn't even make the top 20 in the list of countries by cumulative emissions per capita, while we are in 8th place.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-57018837
I would have happily moved there three years ago; now I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
Surely the goal is to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, to save the planet?
Talk of “cumulative emissions”, sounds awfully like the Californians asking for $5m payments to those who had families affected by slavery two centuries ago.
Note the facial expression of Russian propagandist Skabeyeva. [VIDEO]
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1666080690188988420?s=20
I said he was likely to be the most consequential after Atlee and Thatcher post-war.
Considering how much you rail about how awful Brexit is, and how the country has gone to the dogs because of it, it seems your own comments rather confirm that too. Or was Brexit inconsequential and overblown?
United States - 15.52
Germany - 9.44
China - 7.38
United Kingdom - 5.55
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/
That said, if you have a policy to force a shift to renewable energy then banning it reduces the power of the FF lobby so there is a second order benefit even if FF are just imported to replace
I’ve not been there recently, but the totally unbiased Joe Rogan says the traffic in Austin is fantastic compared to LA, because the place is so small it never takes more than half an hour to cross town.
So people in the past used to burn coal to warm their homes instead of using energy efficient boilers. Or used coal powered power stations to generate electricity instead of cleaner energy. There's nothing that can be done about that.
What matters is how we're warming our homes and powering our lives today. And others can do the same as us. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. In the past coal was the only economically efficient way people had to generate power or heat homes, but its not anymore.
We have cleaner technologies, the technologies are available to the whole world today.
That people in the past used the technologies of the past is no excuse for people of the present still using the technologies of the past.
Russia-appointed Kherson oblast governor Saldo, speaking right in front of the flooded streets of Novaya Kakhovka:
"Everything is fine in Novaya Kakhovka, people go about their daily business like any day" [VIDEO]
https://twitter.com/maxfras/status/1666079339178500100?s=20
In the past there was not the knowledge about how the emissions mattered that there is in the present, and there was not the alternatives that there are in the present either.
Its like saying that someone who starts smoking today is in the same situation as someone who started smoking seventy years ago.
Time has moved on. Technology has moved on. The past has happened, it is the present that matters.
People used coal in the past as that was their only option.
Anyone using coal today is in a totally different situation.
My dog’s got no nose.
How does it smell?
Antigua.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change/
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=population+of+china+/+population+of+the+united+kingdom
China increasing their CO2 emissions because westerners were bad in the past doesn’t solve the problem.
However, as we're looking at the last eight years it probably doesn't matter that much.
Nowhere does he say "UK should abandon FF extraction, in favour of importing it".
To avoid misunderstanding it's the "in favour of importing it" bit that you seem to have invented.
Keep looking.
What's its excuse for lagging behind? Should the rest of Europe sanction them? Should we have forced them to deindustrialise after the war?
OTOH, a vastly higher proportion of the world's population, probably around 70%, would be living in absolute poverty than is the case today. The current figure worldwide is 8%. Famine would be normal, rather than a relatively rare disaster.
That's why I think it's wrong to allocate blame to those nations that industrialised first. Those nations were doing the world a favour. No one was actually doing anything *wrong* by burning fossil fuels in the past.
Cookie: A Jamaica joke is a joke of the format :"My wife went on holiday to the west indies. Jamaica? No, she went of her own accord." Tell me some more jokes of this format.
ChatGPT:
Certainly! Here are a few more jokes in the same format:
"I asked my friend if he wanted to visit the Caribbean. 'Jamaica?' I asked. 'No,' he replied, 'but I might Belize it!'"
"My neighbor told me he's planning a trip to the Bahamas. 'Nassau?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'I'll be flying there.'"
"I told my dad I wanted to go to Cuba. 'Havana?' he asked. 'No,' I replied, 'just a desire for some good salsa dancing.'"
"My coworker mentioned he was considering a vacation in Puerto Rico. 'San Juan?' I asked. 'No,' he laughed, 'I'll be Juan-less!'"
"I met someone who recently traveled to Trinidad and Tobago. 'Port of Spain?' I inquired. 'No,' he said, 'but I did bring back a lot of spice!'"
Remember, these jokes play on the puns and wordplay of different locations, so enjoy the lighthearted humor!
Since 2000, it has almost doubled in size, but the main arteries haven't got any bigger.
ii) Doug
iii) E-wa Woo-wa
Although I often wonder about flint tools, and whether in time, flint users would have run out of new flint...
@Leon may have a view on this, he normally does...
NEW THREAD
As opposed to LA, where you can allow three or four hours, where private jets regularly make 10m flights from Santa Monica to Long Beach, and the air is full of helicopters.