One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The tragedy of the commons.
Kind of anyway. Nobody else is doing anything, why should we?
Of course we should do things, but just different things than we are currently doing.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
Weve picked up our litter it would be nice if you Germans could do the same given you produce twice as much carbon as we do.
Deutschland - Spitzenverschmutzer
If memory serves, don't you live in/have property in Germany? Perhaps your ire would be better directed into the German political system if you are in a position to influence there.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
Do you have the figures on that? Because I would have assumed that we are now importing more fuel than under Thatcher, when we were a major producer of gas and oil and dug up our own coal.
Don’t know anything about it and would be genuinely interested to see the figures.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
The Western US is setting all kinds of heat records right now.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
Sunak isn't timing his backtrack on Net Zero very well.
Is he the most politically unlucky of them all?
Just not very good. With a party that's a great deal worse.
Agreed. He’s not unlucky - as Spaffer’s Chief Handouts Officer during covid he became quite popular; unusual for CotE.
He is genuinely crap at politics and I suspect has quite a lacklustre team around him. He needs someone to bop him on the head hourly and shout ‘economy and cost of living’ in his ear.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
We’re already missing out on a lot of the trillions of new investment in green tech because our system and incentives aren’t properly set up for it, as per usual.
Net zero = the future world economy. I know we’re already semi checked out of that but we don’t really want to go all the way like Russia (probably the worlds joint largest net zero sceptic, with Australia - the latter is of course changing now). Even the Saudis are slowly getting it.
The reason why this country is so absurdly expensive for shitty services is because we've been conditioned to believe that we can't afford stuff, because stuff is a cost and not an investment. Which is ow we spend record amounts on stuff despite seeing the front-line execution of said stuff being awful.
The money is being stolen by the spiv class. They own the Tories, and Labour seem petrified of them as well.
No, the reason taxes are so high for poor services is epic public sector waste - spineless, lazy and incompetent managers and demotivated, unionised employees. They own Labour, and the Tories seem petrified of them as well.
"Public sector waste" - Thames Water as a prime example...?
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
False comparison. If the climate measures achieve nothing at massive economic cost compared to other countries that is just plain stupid. Your litter in the bin does you credit and damages nothing.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
Its not so much the sea ice but the risk that the ice shelf on Antartica is now able to slide off on a massive scale. If that happens Canary Warf becomes Canary ponds.
Of course it may remove a number of the inner city constituencies. But probably not on a timescale to help Rishi.
As for climate alarmism there was a good prog with some prof saying how previous cataclysmic climate change/feedback loops had occurred at six degrees of warming and we were below two (and this latter, as @BartholomewRoberts rightly points out, from from 100-odd years ago).
Hence if and when we start approaching six then we should worry but we don't seem to be there quite yet.
Not sure if that is supposed to be a joke, but I think the geological record is far from comforting. Rather it suggests that massively increasing the thickness of the greenhouse gas blanket around us is, at best, criminally reckless, and risks ending human civilisation.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
Do you have the figures on that? Because I would have assumed that we are now importing more fuel than under Thatcher, when we were a major producer of gas and oil and dug up our own coal.
Don’t know anything about it and would be genuinely interested to see the figures.
My guess is that we first increased our dependence in the 1990s and 2000s as we transitioned to gas, and have since reduced it again once renewables got going and energy efficiency started rising. But that’s just a guess.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
We are doing Net Zero almost entirely wrong.
All that matters is to remove methane and carbon dioxide emissions at source from being emitted into the atmosphere now and, if they are, to remove them as best we can. Actually coming up with alternative ways of creating energy and maintaining our way of life can wait.
In other words it's almost entirely a chemistry challenge with engineering solutions and should be solely treated as such. However, because the voices we almost always hear from on this are the hard activist and radical ones who want to use it as a burning platform to remake society in their own image it becomes political and virtually nothing is done.
To give just one example: we could legislate immediately post recess that all cattle feed in this country must have seaweed/daffodil additives added to it, by law, and start reducing farm-based methane significantly (95%+) within a year. But, activists and the allies in the media are far more interested in hectoring us on the ethics of meat and signalling their willingness to self-sacrifice to each other accordingly, and so they are ignored and nothing is done and the methane emissions remain the same.
You can extend this to virtually any field of it: focus on what most effectively removes carbon and methane from going into the atmosphere and just sideline and ignore everything else.
If you are interested in leading on solving the problem that is.
As for climate alarmism there was a good prog with some prof saying how previous cataclysmic climate change/feedback loops had occurred at six degrees of warming and we were below two (and this latter, as @BartholomewRoberts rightly points out, from from 100-odd years ago).
Hence if and when we start approaching six then we should worry but we don't seem to be there quite yet.
Not sure if that is supposed to be a joke, but I think the geological record is far from comforting. Rather it suggests that massively increasing the thickness of the greenhouse gas blanket around us is, at best, criminally reckless, and risks ending human civilisation.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
And since we've done the major share of that then we should as I have suggested shift our priorities. We are now at the point of marginal gains at high cost and have other priroties imo. - bio diversity, plastics and life proofing our national infrastructure.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
False comparison. If the climate measures achieve nothing at massive economic cost compared to other countries that is just plain stupid. Your litter in the bin does you credit and damages nothing.
IF they achieve nothing at massive cost
I mean you can't have it both ways - "the UK has already made big reductions and we're doing fine" and at the same time, "we can't make any meaningful reductions without doing massive harm"
Thing is, the situation is getting pretty desperate so just sticking our heads in the sand and keeping calm and carrying on doesn't seem like a great option
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
America, Canada, Australia and the BRICS are far behind us though.
The first three probably about 20-30 years behind us. The latter? 40-50 years, if that.
On the ULEZ thing, it really isn't a difficult sell.
"It's your car. It's everyone's air. Do what you want with your car, but don't push particulates and NoX into our air because it will kill."
Push that message at breathers of air rather than drivers of cars. It's a smoking in public places argument.
If Labour can't be bothered selling that, why should they expect to be successful.
Such arguments can, and indeed have, created majority support for ULEZ.
Electoral support works differently however, and this is what is being consistently missed. For supporters it is not in their top 10 issues. For those forking out a few £k extra, especially those hurt hard by cost of living, it might be their very top issue.
If Labour want to change the electoral math on ULEZ they need to support those drivers and make it less regressive.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
Weve picked up our litter it would be nice if you Germans could do the same given you produce twice as much carbon as we do.
Deutschland - Spitzenverschmutzer
If memory serves, don't you live in/have property in Germany? Perhaps your ire would be better directed into the German political system if you are in a position to influence there.
No. Used to live in Germany for 5 years some time ago. Now Im UK resident,.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
Its not so much the sea ice but the risk that the ice shelf on Antartica is now able to slide off on a massive scale. If that happens Canary Warf becomes Canary ponds.
The rise in sea level will probably become the UK's biggest headache in the future. There is evidence that the sea level during the last interglacial period - the last time temperatures were comparable to now - was around 6 to 9 metres higher than today. It takes a while* for all that water to warm and the ice to melt, so it won't be our problem. It'll be a nasty legacy for our children and grandchildren though.
* Having said that, there have been occasions in the past when tipping points have passed and the Earth's climate has changed very rapidly, as Richard Tyndall has pointed out. It's very difficult to know what these points might be and when they will be passed, but the warming of the Earth is unlikely to remain a smooth process.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
We are doing Net Zero almost entirely wrong.
All that matters is to remove methane and carbon dioxide emissions at source from being emitted into the atmosphere now and, if they are, to remove them as best we can. Actually coming up with alternative ways of creating energy and maintaining our way of life can wait.
In other words it's almost entirely a chemistry challenge with engineering solutions and should be solely treated as such. However, because the voices we almost always hear from on this are the hard activist and radical ones who want to use it as a burning platform to remake society in their own image it becomes political and virtually nothing is done.
To give just one example: we could legislate immediately post recess that all cattle feed in this country must have seaweed/daffodil additives added to it, by law, and start reducing farm-based methane significantly (95%+) within a year. But, activists and the allies in the media are far more interested in hectoring us on the ethics of meat and signalling their willingness to self-sacrifice to each other accordingly, and so they are ignored and nothing is done and the methane emissions remain the same.
You can extend this to virtually any field of it: focus on what most effectively removes carbon and methane from going into the atmosphere and just sideline and ignore everything else.
If you are interested in leading on solving the problem that is.
Taking methane out of oil and gas extraction is an urgent and perfectly achievable task.
Agricultural Methane is a big contributor but reducing it is only a one time hit, because its atmospheric life is much lower than carbon. So long as cattle farming isn’t growing long term (it has done recently of course) then farming methane emissions won’t grow. Other sources are much harder to control.
Reducing carbon emissions at source means burning less fossil fuel, which is pretty much what we’re all trying to do.
I agree we need to treat this more as a problem of industrial waste disposal than a social system problem. Regulate (and tax) carbon emissions just like we regulate almost all other pollutants. Regulation and levies are why the edges of our cities are not all toxic slagheaps these days.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
And since we've done the major share of that then we should as I have suggested shift our priorities. We are now at the point of marginal gains at high cost and have other priroties imo. - bio diversity, plastics and life proofing our national infrastructure.
The biggest threat to bio-diversity is climate change. Many species just cannot react quickly enough.
You made a sweeping assertion that the laffer curve is a fiction. In my view that’s just partisan garbage
From a philosophical perspective, in a free society, if the government takes 100% of earned income there is no incentive to earn income and hence government revenue approaches zero. Similarly if the government takes 0% of earned income then by definition its income is zero.
I’m not sure how you can argue with the endpoints.
Clearly reality is somewhere in between: all the Laffer curve really says that reducing someone’s net income (by increasing the tax take) reduces the incentive to work. I’m not sure that’s too controversial?
The complexity is what is the shape of the curve. Under Osborne HMRC said he peak was in the high 40s as a share. That’s plausible (I certainly know that it would “feel wrong” if the government were to take more than 50% of my wages) but knowing Osborne I assume he fiddled the analysis
But saying a problem is difficult and a matter of debate doesn’t make it an”fiction”. It’s a useful tool for how to think about tax rates from a philosophical perspective
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
We are doing Net Zero almost entirely wrong.
All that matters is to remove methane and carbon dioxide emissions at source from being emitted into the atmosphere now and, if they are, to remove them as best we can. Actually coming up with alternative ways of creating energy and maintaining our way of life can wait.
In other words it's almost entirely a chemistry challenge with engineering solutions and should be solely treated as such. However, because the voices we almost always hear from on this are the hard activist and radical ones who want to use it as a burning platform to remake society in their own image it becomes political and virtually nothing is done.
To give just one example: we could legislate immediately post recess that all cattle feed in this country must have seaweed/daffodil additives added to it, by law, and start reducing farm-based methane significantly (95%+) within a year. But, activists and the allies in the media are far more interested in hectoring us on the ethics of meat and signalling their willingness to self-sacrifice to each other accordingly, and so they are ignored and nothing is done and the methane emissions remain the same.
You can extend this to virtually any field of it: focus on what most effectively removes carbon and methane from going into the atmosphere and just sideline and ignore everything else.
If you are interested in leading on solving the problem that is.
My contribution is to eat as much steak as possible to try and get rid of those pesky methane producing cows. Having made this massive lifestyle sacrifice allows me to feel relaxed about my long haul flights.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
All those Africans have every intention of changing their lifestyle though, from a level of poverty quite unimaginable to anyone who has not seen it to something well below the standard of living of the very poorest in the UK. Arguing that they should not do so for the greater good is quite hard. We are stuffed.
As a Northerner, train user, and snake hater, this is my worst nightmare. I hope they charged him the penalty fare as I see no ticket.
Train passengers switched carriages after a 1.5m (5ft) snake was spotted slithering on a service in Yorkshire.
Northern said the brightly-coloured but harmless corn snake was found on a Skipton to Leeds train.
Photos and video of the non-venomous commuter were shared on social media before it was removed in Leeds.
The serpent, now named Noodles, was collected by the RPSCA and is being cared for by a specialist.
Corn snakes are native to North America and are one of the most commonly kept exotic pets in the UK.
It is currently unclear how the snake ended up loose onboard the service on Saturday, with some passengers said to have switched carriages after the discovery.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
Weve picked up our litter it would be nice if you Germans could do the same given you produce twice as much carbon as we do.
Deutschland - Spitzenverschmutzer
The German record is terrible. Obviously that is entirely my fault and I will never disagree with you again. Sorry.
Germany's record is terrible.
You lecture the rest of us while chugging out lignite emissions and buying Putins oil and gas. Your green agenda is going backwards because of public resistance to - heat pumps will go tits up here too - and you have closed down all your nuclear .
There are many places one could take a note of the green agenda, but Germany isnt really one of them.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
It's hard to see how the UK will remain a highly liveable country when most of its major cities and half its agricultural land have vanished under the waves.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
America, Canada, Australia and the BRICS are far behind us though.
The first three probably about 20-30 years behind us. The latter? 40-50 years, if that.
They both need to accelerate - a lot.
I'm not sure that's true.
The move to renewables in power generation is astonishing, and it's happening everywhere.
Take climate change and America. They're about two years behind us in terms of taking coal out of the generating mix. And they're putting in a hell of a lot of new wind and solar.
At the same time, you're seeing an incredible shift towards electric vehicles. Because the *average* age of a vehicle is 12 years, this means only 4% of the vehicle fleet turns over every year. And that hides underlying trends. But the direction is only one way.
As I understand it nobody other than Vox will work with PP. Than again, everyone will work with PSOE.
So a choice of a minority coalition with the hard right, or a minority coalition with the separatists and terrorists. Or another roll of the dice and hope people vote differently.
They need to try a grand coalition. Push out the lunatics, promote mainstream politics and hope they flush away the Vox and Basque idiots.
Obviously this racism as everybody loves a flash solicitor.
High-flying London lawyers and sleepy countryside villages are not always the happiest of combinations, especially when the criminal law specialist really wants to take to the air.
Mayus Karia bills himself as a “ferocious litigator” but the residents of Durley, in Hampshire, will doubtless have a litany of other names for the solicitor-advocate, who has triggered a row over plans to make frequent helicopter landings at his six-bedroom £1.3 million home.
Neighbours in the village, which has a population of about 1,000, have objected to having their “peace ended” by the “flash” lawyer.
The dispute started when Karia, who qualified as a solicitor in 2005 and is said on his law firm’s website to have an “unrivalled . . . sixth sense in litigation”, won permission to construct a helipad in his back garden.
Officials at Winchester city council originally granted him only two personal use round trips a month between the hours of 8am and 6pm. However, local authority planning application documents show that last month Karia applied for unrestricted use to allow multiple landings and take-offs.
In the application, an agent for Karia said the lawyer needed “a loosening of the restriction to allow flexibility of irregular visits by some clients . . .”
Karia, a father of three, who charges between £1,000 and £1,200 an hour for legal advice, is said by neighbours to drive an SUV Rolls-Royce, while his firm, London Litigation Partnership Solicitors, describes him as “a ferocious and meticulous litigator”. His firm’s website goes on to liken his legal skills to “the genius of Field Marshal Montgomery in the battlefield”.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
All those Africans have every intention of changing their lifestyle though, from a level of poverty quite unimaginable to anyone who has not seen it to something well below the standard of living of the very poorest in the UK. Arguing that they should not do so for the greater good is quite hard. We are stuffed.
The solution is to help them improve their standard of living while keeping emissions down. This is politically tricky though.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
Its not so much the sea ice but the risk that the ice shelf on Antartica is now able to slide off on a massive scale. If that happens Canary Warf becomes Canary ponds.
The rise in sea level will probably become the UK's biggest headache in the future. There is evidence that the sea level during the last interglacial period - the last time temperatures were comparable to now - was around 6 to 9 metres higher than today. It takes a while* for all that water to warm and the ice to melt, so it won't be our problem. It'll be a nasty legacy for our children and grandchildren though.
* Having said that, there have been occasions in the past when tipping points have passed and the Earth's climate has changed very rapidly, as Richard Tyndall has pointed out. It's very difficult to know what these points might be and when they will be passed, but the warming of the Earth is unlikely to remain a smooth process.
IANAE but there seems to me to be some fairly obvious tipping points. The Antarctic ice sheet is one, the Greenland ice sheet another, the quantity of sealed in gases on the ocean floor in hydrates and in Siberia yet another. If any of these are triggered we could find things changing very fast.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
You made a sweeping assertion that the laffer curve is a fiction. In my view that’s just partisan garbage
From a philosophical perspective, in a free society, if the government takes 100% of earned income there is no incentive to earn income and hence government revenue approaches zero. Similarly if the government takes 0% of earned income then by definition its income is zero.
I’m not sure how you can argue with the endpoints.
Clearly reality is somewhere in between: all the Laffer curve really says that reducing someone’s net income (by increasing the tax take) reduces the incentive to work. I’m not sure that’s too controversial?
The complexity is what is the shape of the curve. Under Osborne HMRC said he peak was in the high 40s as a share. That’s plausible (I certainly know that it would “feel wrong” if the government were to take more than 50% of my wages) but knowing Osborne I assume he fiddled the analysis
But saying a problem is difficult and a matter of debate doesn’t make it an”fiction”. It’s a useful tool for how to think about tax rates from a philosophical perspective
I'm saying it is invariably used by people who can't draw one, don't know where we are on it, don't care overmuch, and use it as a duckspeak tag to justify tax cuts for themselves.. if you can't draw the curve and it exists only as a rhetorical/partisan tool, then describing it as a "fiction" makes sense.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
Weve picked up our litter it would be nice if you Germans could do the same given you produce twice as much carbon as we do.
Deutschland - Spitzenverschmutzer
The German record is terrible. Obviously that is entirely my fault and I will never disagree with you again. Sorry.
Germany's record is terrible.
You lecture the rest of us while chugging out lignite emissions and buying Putins oil and gas. Your green agenda is going backwards because of public resistance to - heat pumps will go tits up here too - and you have closed down all your nuclear .
There are many places one could take a note of the green agenda, but Germany isnt really one of them.
Germany doesn't buy any Russian gas any more, does it? In fact, if you want to be really picky and look at the Enerdata stats, we've bought more Russian gas* than the Germans in 2023.
* Albeit we probably didn't know it was Russian, because we bought if from a UAE broker
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
Weve picked up our litter it would be nice if you Germans could do the same given you produce twice as much carbon as we do.
Deutschland - Spitzenverschmutzer
If memory serves, don't you live in/have property in Germany? Perhaps your ire would be better directed into the German political system if you are in a position to influence there.
No. Used to live in Germany for 5 years some time ago. Now Im UK resident,.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
Weve picked up our litter it would be nice if you Germans could do the same given you produce twice as much carbon as we do.
Deutschland - Spitzenverschmutzer
The German record is terrible. Obviously that is entirely my fault and I will never disagree with you again. Sorry.
Germany's record is terrible.
You lecture the rest of us while chugging out lignite emissions and buying Putins oil and gas. Your green agenda is going backwards because of public resistance to - heat pumps will go tits up here too - and you have closed down all your nuclear .
There are many places one could take a note of the green agenda, but Germany isnt really one of them.
Germany doesn't buy any Russian gas any more, does it? In fact, if you want to be really picky and look at the Enerdata stats, we've bought more Russian gas* than the Germans in 2023.
* Albeit we probably didn't know it was Russian, because we bought if from a UAE broker
You made a sweeping assertion that the laffer curve is a fiction. In my view that’s just partisan garbage
From a philosophical perspective, in a free society, if the government takes 100% of earned income there is no incentive to earn income and hence government revenue approaches zero. Similarly if the government takes 0% of earned income then by definition its income is zero.
I’m not sure how you can argue with the endpoints.
Clearly reality is somewhere in between: all the Laffer curve really says that reducing someone’s net income (by increasing the tax take) reduces the incentive to work. I’m not sure that’s too controversial?
The complexity is what is the shape of the curve. Under Osborne HMRC said he peak was in the high 40s as a share. That’s plausible (I certainly know that it would “feel wrong” if the government were to take more than 50% of my wages) but knowing Osborne I assume he fiddled the analysis
But saying a problem is difficult and a matter of debate doesn’t make it an”fiction”. It’s a useful tool for how to think about tax rates from a philosophical perspective
On one level it certainly is fiction. It's a fictional curve for which nobody can provide the formula or co-ordinates.
On another level it clearly exists - as a real weapon used by rich people to keep their taxes as low as possible.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
For quite a while I’ve felt the most likely outcome over the next 50 years or so is essentially the film Children of Men (without the fertility issues, but with the ‘fortress Britain’ mentality).
I believe we have two fundamentally different choices: 1. Use our relative wealth to ease the global transition to a hotter world through eg generous immigration policies and a much higher proportion of development aid; or, 2. Attempt to fortify Britain against the coming waves of climate and resource refugees cf Children of Men.
I would choose 1 both for me and my kids. I recognise democratically the country might choose 2 (Alan that sounds like what you’re advocating). My fear, though, is that we are sleepwalking into 2 by making incremental choices to be anti migrant and anti wealth distribution, but that the end result of 2 is a pretty horrific world that few of us would actually choose to live in.
Entirely off-topic, have just pushed the button and ordered my first ever MacBook Pro. I know I will get bomb-proof build quality and enough power to last for a good few years. Its the OS that makes me the most nervy. Despite hating Windows with a passion I know where everything is - MacOS will be a whole new ecosystem.
But something had to be done. I still run a Chromebook for personal use but the OS can't cope with business use. Bought this Surface Pro 8 for a previous client project, and after nearly 18 months the battery life is dire and the processor turns itself into Three Mile Island when I try to run anything taxing like Adobe Premiere. Even Sky Go makes it burney burney.
You made a sweeping assertion that the laffer curve is a fiction. In my view that’s just partisan garbage
From a philosophical perspective, in a free society, if the government takes 100% of earned income there is no incentive to earn income and hence government revenue approaches zero. Similarly if the government takes 0% of earned income then by definition its income is zero.
I’m not sure how you can argue with the endpoints.
Clearly reality is somewhere in between: all the Laffer curve really says that reducing someone’s net income (by increasing the tax take) reduces the incentive to work. I’m not sure that’s too controversial?
The complexity is what is the shape of the curve. Under Osborne HMRC said he peak was in the high 40s as a share. That’s plausible (I certainly know that it would “feel wrong” if the government were to take more than 50% of my wages) but knowing Osborne I assume he fiddled the analysis
But saying a problem is difficult and a matter of debate doesn’t make it an”fiction”. It’s a useful tool for how to think about tax rates from a philosophical perspective
I'm saying it is invariably used by people who can't draw one, don't know where we are on it, don't care overmuch, and use it as a duckspeak tag to justify tax cuts for themselves.. if you can't draw the curve and it exists only as a rhetorical/partisan tool, then describing it as a "fiction" makes sense.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
America, Canada, Australia and the BRICS are far behind us though.
The first three probably about 20-30 years behind us. The latter? 40-50 years, if that.
They both need to accelerate - a lot.
First time I’ve seen the BRICS acronym for a while.
Feels quite redundant now, seeing the different paths the constituent nations have taken. Russia always felt like an odd inclusion anyway.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
It's hard to see how the UK will remain a highly liveable country when most of its major cities and half its agricultural land have vanished under the waves.
Is precisely the sort of bollocks which turns people off the whole thing.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
Its not so much the sea ice but the risk that the ice shelf on Antartica is now able to slide off on a massive scale. If that happens Canary Warf becomes Canary ponds.
The rise in sea level will probably become the UK's biggest headache in the future. There is evidence that the sea level during the last interglacial period - the last time temperatures were comparable to now - was around 6 to 9 metres higher than today. It takes a while* for all that water to warm and the ice to melt, so it won't be our problem. It'll be a nasty legacy for our children and grandchildren though.
* Having said that, there have been occasions in the past when tipping points have passed and the Earth's climate has changed very rapidly, as Richard Tyndall has pointed out. It's very difficult to know what these points might be and when they will be passed, but the warming of the Earth is unlikely to remain a smooth process.
IANAE but there seems to me to be some fairly obvious tipping points. The Antarctic ice sheet is one, the Greenland ice sheet another, the quantity of sealed in gases on the ocean floor in hydrates and in Siberia yet another. If any of these are triggered we could find things changing very fast.
Another possible tipping point I was reading about recently was the Amazon rain forest. If the climate were to dry sufficiently there - and it is indeed drying - we could reach a point at which the whole lot suddenly goes up in flames.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
Its not so much the sea ice but the risk that the ice shelf on Antartica is now able to slide off on a massive scale. If that happens Canary Warf becomes Canary ponds.
Of course it may remove a number of the inner city constituencies. But probably not on a timescale to help Rishi.
That's some way off, even on pessimistic forecasts. The lack of sea ice has immediate effects to increase the rate of warming.
Obviously this racism as everybody loves a flash solicitor.
High-flying London lawyers and sleepy countryside villages are not always the happiest of combinations, especially when the criminal law specialist really wants to take to the air.
Mayus Karia bills himself as a “ferocious litigator” but the residents of Durley, in Hampshire, will doubtless have a litany of other names for the solicitor-advocate, who has triggered a row over plans to make frequent helicopter landings at his six-bedroom £1.3 million home.
Neighbours in the village, which has a population of about 1,000, have objected to having their “peace ended” by the “flash” lawyer.
The dispute started when Karia, who qualified as a solicitor in 2005 and is said on his law firm’s website to have an “unrivalled . . . sixth sense in litigation”, won permission to construct a helipad in his back garden.
Officials at Winchester city council originally granted him only two personal use round trips a month between the hours of 8am and 6pm. However, local authority planning application documents show that last month Karia applied for unrestricted use to allow multiple landings and take-offs.
In the application, an agent for Karia said the lawyer needed “a loosening of the restriction to allow flexibility of irregular visits by some clients . . .”
Karia, a father of three, who charges between £1,000 and £1,200 an hour for legal advice, is said by neighbours to drive an SUV Rolls-Royce, while his firm, London Litigation Partnership Solicitors, describes him as “a ferocious and meticulous litigator”. His firm’s website goes on to liken his legal skills to “the genius of Field Marshal Montgomery in the battlefield”.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
That's why those clever boffins have come up with the concept of standard deviations from the mean, which is what is referred to by five sigma. Quite a good real crisis identifier.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
Nonsense yourself. "The problem with the current batch of policies...." Exactly. What sort of policies could exist which would achieve what you want to achieve. An imaginary batch is what.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
What is truly pitiful about this position is that it falsely implies there is zero cost on the other side of the equation. Which works when persuading the uninformed and frankly unintelligent that they should vote against their own interests.
But this isn't GBeebies or the Daily Mail, and we know better.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
Do you have the figures on that? Because I would have assumed that we are now importing more fuel than under Thatcher, when we were a major producer of gas and oil and dug up our own coal.
Don’t know anything about it and would be genuinely interested to see the figures.
There are, of course, many ways to measure this, but I'd say the simplest is good old BTUs. (Or British Thermal Units.)
How many BTUs - net - does the UK import each year?
So, this means adding up electricity, coal, natural gas and oil.
The UK was, briefly, a net exporter on this measure, before entering into a steep decline, until its nadir was reached in 2012/2013. Since then, falling demand, flat supply of oil and gas, and rising renewables has meant that we've reduced net imports from 2.4-2.7% of GDP to around 1.5%.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
It's hard to see how the UK will remain a highly liveable country when most of its major cities and half its agricultural land have vanished under the waves.
Is precisely the sort of bollocks which turns people off the whole thing.
The thing is, it's not bollocks. It's a long-term thing and difficult for some people to accept, but it's not bollocks.
Brownbelt = turn Canary Wharf into a residential area.
No, that's just reeuse of an existing building. Brownbelt is like the land that was reclaimed for the OLympics (and so with huge public subsidy). Old gasworks saturated with tars and phenols, that sort of thing.
Canary Wharf used to be docks.
No shit! Canary Wharf ? Are you sure?
@Carnyx was suggesting it wasn't a brownfield site back in the 1980s, but it was!
W were talking about CW in 2024. Not the 1980s.
The whole point of the discussion is that the "brownbelt" of HYUFD's imagining doesn't exist any more in the SE towns.
Entirely off-topic, have just pushed the button and ordered my first ever MacBook Pro. I know I will get bomb-proof build quality and enough power to last for a good few years. Its the OS that makes me the most nervy. Despite hating Windows with a passion I know where everything is - MacOS will be a whole new ecosystem.
But something had to be done. I still run a Chromebook for personal use but the OS can't cope with business use. Bought this Surface Pro 8 for a previous client project, and after nearly 18 months the battery life is dire and the processor turns itself into Three Mile Island when I try to run anything taxing like Adobe Premiere. Even Sky Go makes it burney burney.
So, a brave new world. May need my hand-holding.
You won't regret it. Particularly as you are clearly aware that you will have to get used to where stuff is.
Bought my first MacBook Air in 2011. Still using it for work*.
(*It's on its second battery and no longer officially supported but works fine.)
An easyJet pilot taking British holidaymakers to Rhodes told passengers it was a 'terrible idea' to go there while wildfires rage, leading to some getting off the plane just before take off from Gatwick.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
One caveat to that- timeframes.
Current energy policies everywhere are going to create an awful lot of stick for people a generation or two down the line. (I think we've got past the point where we can plausibly water down that "will".)
So the question is how much misery we are going to pile on them and how much we are going to take ourselves.
Not a cheerful thought, and a hard one to sell on the doorstep. But it doesn't stop it being a necessary one, not helped by those who continue to insist that everything is fine.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
What is truly pitiful about this position is that it falsely implies there is zero cost on the other side of the equation. Which works when persuading the uninformed and frankly unintelligent that they should vote against their own interests.
But this isn't GBeebies or the Daily Mail, and we know better.
Exactly. The British public knows better and doesn't want to pay that cost.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
Weve picked up our litter it would be nice if you Germans could do the same given you produce twice as much carbon as we do.
Deutschland - Spitzenverschmutzer
The German record is terrible. Obviously that is entirely my fault and I will never disagree with you again. Sorry.
Germany's record is terrible.
You lecture the rest of us while chugging out lignite emissions and buying Putins oil and gas. Your green agenda is going backwards because of public resistance to - heat pumps will go tits up here too - and you have closed down all your nuclear .
There are many places one could take a note of the green agenda, but Germany isnt really one of them.
Germany doesn't buy any Russian gas any more, does it? In fact, if you want to be really picky and look at the Enerdata stats, we've bought more Russian gas* than the Germans in 2023.
* Albeit we probably didn't know it was Russian, because we bought if from a UAE broker
Didn't know it was or didn't 'know' it was?
OK... there are *many* answers to that question.
If you contract to buy LNG from Woodside in Australia, and then charter a ship from MOL to take it from the North West Shelf to Milford Haven, while ONGC in India orders some gas from Novotek in Russia, then MOL is likely to look at the ships, shrug their shoulders, and reverse the orders to free up LNG shipping capacity.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
America, Canada, Australia and the BRICS are far behind us though.
The first three probably about 20-30 years behind us. The latter? 40-50 years, if that.
They both need to accelerate - a lot.
I'm not sure that's true.
The move to renewables in power generation is astonishing, and it's happening everywhere.
Take climate change and America. They're about two years behind us in terms of taking coal out of the generating mix. And they're putting in a hell of a lot of new wind and solar.
At the same time, you're seeing an incredible shift towards electric vehicles. Because the *average* age of a vehicle is 12 years, this means only 4% of the vehicle fleet turns over every year. And that hides underlying trends. But the direction is only one way.
I think that shows everything about our approach vs the USA. THEY (& China) are doing it through carrot and technological innovation & green investment; we are wearing the hair shirt stopping coal, petrol vehicles and gas boilers but also have world leading NIMBYism stopping green energy production. Now which approach is going to bring people along with it ?
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
Weve picked up our litter it would be nice if you Germans could do the same given you produce twice as much carbon as we do.
Deutschland - Spitzenverschmutzer
The German record is terrible. Obviously that is entirely my fault and I will never disagree with you again. Sorry.
Germany's record is terrible.
You lecture the rest of us while chugging out lignite emissions and buying Putins oil and gas. Your green agenda is going backwards because of public resistance to - heat pumps will go tits up here too - and you have closed down all your nuclear .
There are many places one could take a note of the green agenda, but Germany isnt really one of them.
Germany doesn't buy any Russian gas any more, does it? In fact, if you want to be really picky and look at the Enerdata stats, we've bought more Russian gas* than the Germans in 2023.
* Albeit we probably didn't know it was Russian, because we bought if from a UAE broker
You must be fairly desperate today Robert, Germany opened the floodgates on Russian gas many years ago and based its industry on it. It took a war to show the folly of it. Now the industry is looking exposed with even the head of the BDI saying things are looking gloomy.
They didnt base their energy on sustainable "green" under Merkel
Obviously this racism as everybody loves a flash solicitor.
High-flying London lawyers and sleepy countryside villages are not always the happiest of combinations, especially when the criminal law specialist really wants to take to the air.
Mayus Karia bills himself as a “ferocious litigator” but the residents of Durley, in Hampshire, will doubtless have a litany of other names for the solicitor-advocate, who has triggered a row over plans to make frequent helicopter landings at his six-bedroom £1.3 million home.
Neighbours in the village, which has a population of about 1,000, have objected to having their “peace ended” by the “flash” lawyer.
The dispute started when Karia, who qualified as a solicitor in 2005 and is said on his law firm’s website to have an “unrivalled . . . sixth sense in litigation”, won permission to construct a helipad in his back garden.
Officials at Winchester city council originally granted him only two personal use round trips a month between the hours of 8am and 6pm. However, local authority planning application documents show that last month Karia applied for unrestricted use to allow multiple landings and take-offs.
In the application, an agent for Karia said the lawyer needed “a loosening of the restriction to allow flexibility of irregular visits by some clients . . .”
Karia, a father of three, who charges between £1,000 and £1,200 an hour for legal advice, is said by neighbours to drive an SUV Rolls-Royce, while his firm, London Litigation Partnership Solicitors, describes him as “a ferocious and meticulous litigator”. His firm’s website goes on to liken his legal skills to “the genius of Field Marshal Montgomery in the battlefield”.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
One caveat to that- timeframes.
Current energy policies everywhere are going to create an awful lot of stick for people a generation or two down the line. (I think we've got past the point where we can plausibly water down that "will".)
So the question is how much misery we are going to pile on them and how much we are going to take ourselves.
Not a cheerful thought, and a hard one to sell on the doorstep. But it doesn't stop it being a necessary one, not helped by those who continue to insist that everything is fine.
I see you are already adopting the "us" and "them" approach. You will pile misery on "them" while you sit back and berate them for not doing or paying enough.
And I thought this was supposed to be a website for political sophisticates.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
The problem with that argument is that it means no one ever does anything.
Personally, I think the UK government - under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, etc - has done a pretty good job on CO2 emissions and global warming.
We've substantially decarbonised our economy, reduced our dependence on imported fuel, and done this without (mostly) negatively impacting living standards.
Do you have the figures on that? Because I would have assumed that we are now importing more fuel than under Thatcher, when we were a major producer of gas and oil and dug up our own coal.
Don’t know anything about it and would be genuinely interested to see the figures.
There are, of course, many ways to measure this, but I'd say the simplest is good old BTUs. (Or British Thermal Units.)
How many BTUs - net - does the UK import each year?
So, this means adding up electricity, coal, natural gas and oil.
The UK was, briefly, a net exporter on this measure, before entering into a steep decline, until its nadir was reached in 2012/2013. Since then, falling demand, flat supply of oil and gas, and rising renewables has meant that we've reduced net imports from 2.4-2.7% of GDP to around 1.5%.
Thanks.
So we are importing more than under Thatcher but much less than under Blair and it’s going the right way.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
It's a fair point, but when one is faced with orbital photos of Australia on fire in 2020 and Mediterranean islands on fire in 2023, one does start wondering if this hug-a-penguin green crap might actually have a bit of a point.
If the UK cut its carbon footprint to zero it would stop precisely nothing,
That's why I always throw my litter in the street, what difference does it make when 99.9% of litter is dropped by other people?
LOL
thats why we burn all that lignite in our coal fired power stations and have 7 of Europes top ten polluters on our land
Weve picked up our litter it would be nice if you Germans could do the same given you produce twice as much carbon as we do.
Deutschland - Spitzenverschmutzer
The German record is terrible. Obviously that is entirely my fault and I will never disagree with you again. Sorry.
Germany's record is terrible.
You lecture the rest of us while chugging out lignite emissions and buying Putins oil and gas. Your green agenda is going backwards because of public resistance to - heat pumps will go tits up here too - and you have closed down all your nuclear .
There are many places one could take a note of the green agenda, but Germany isnt really one of them.
Germany doesn't buy any Russian gas any more, does it? In fact, if you want to be really picky and look at the Enerdata stats, we've bought more Russian gas* than the Germans in 2023.
* Albeit we probably didn't know it was Russian, because we bought if from a UAE broker
You must be fairly desperate today Robert, Germany opened the floodgates on Russian gas many years ago and based its industry on it. It took a war to show the folly of it. Now the industry is looking exposed with even the head of the BDI saying things are looking gloomy.
They didnt base their energy on sustainable "green" under Merkel
I'm just pointing out that your criticism is a year out of date.
After all, you wrote "You lecture the rest of us while chugging out lignite emissions and buying Putins oil and gas".
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
It's hard to see how the UK will remain a highly liveable country when most of its major cities and half its agricultural land have vanished under the waves.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
The thing that makes me suspicious of this sort of political line is that we see sweet FA from the right in terms of campaigning against plastics, for biodiversity or climate mitigation.
Obviously this racism as everybody loves a flash solicitor.
High-flying London lawyers and sleepy countryside villages are not always the happiest of combinations, especially when the criminal law specialist really wants to take to the air.
Mayus Karia bills himself as a “ferocious litigator” but the residents of Durley, in Hampshire, will doubtless have a litany of other names for the solicitor-advocate, who has triggered a row over plans to make frequent helicopter landings at his six-bedroom £1.3 million home.
Neighbours in the village, which has a population of about 1,000, have objected to having their “peace ended” by the “flash” lawyer.
The dispute started when Karia, who qualified as a solicitor in 2005 and is said on his law firm’s website to have an “unrivalled . . . sixth sense in litigation”, won permission to construct a helipad in his back garden.
Officials at Winchester city council originally granted him only two personal use round trips a month between the hours of 8am and 6pm. However, local authority planning application documents show that last month Karia applied for unrestricted use to allow multiple landings and take-offs.
In the application, an agent for Karia said the lawyer needed “a loosening of the restriction to allow flexibility of irregular visits by some clients . . .”
Karia, a father of three, who charges between £1,000 and £1,200 an hour for legal advice, is said by neighbours to drive an SUV Rolls-Royce, while his firm, London Litigation Partnership Solicitors, describes him as “a ferocious and meticulous litigator”. His firm’s website goes on to liken his legal skills to “the genius of Field Marshal Montgomery in the battlefield”.
I somehow suspect it isn't a £1.3m home in Hampshire. Not if you can afford a RR and helicopter and it appears to have a large plot, lake and covered swimming pool.
You made a sweeping assertion that the laffer curve is a fiction. In my view that’s just partisan garbage
From a philosophical perspective, in a free society, if the government takes 100% of earned income there is no incentive to earn income and hence government revenue approaches zero. Similarly if the government takes 0% of earned income then by definition its income is zero.
I’m not sure how you can argue with the endpoints.
Clearly reality is somewhere in between: all the Laffer curve really says that reducing someone’s net income (by increasing the tax take) reduces the incentive to work. I’m not sure that’s too controversial?
The complexity is what is the shape of the curve. Under Osborne HMRC said he peak was in the high 40s as a share. That’s plausible (I certainly know that it would “feel wrong” if the government were to take more than 50% of my wages) but knowing Osborne I assume he fiddled the analysis
But saying a problem is difficult and a matter of debate doesn’t make it an”fiction”. It’s a useful tool for how to think about tax rates from a philosophical perspective
I'm saying it is invariably used by people who can't draw one, don't know where we are on it, don't care overmuch, and use it as a duckspeak tag to justify tax cuts for themselves.. if you can't draw the curve and it exists only as a rhetorical/partisan tool, then describing it as a "fiction" makes sense.
@viewcode this is worth more than a like. An admirably pithy description that could be applied to many more concepts in economics!
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
It's hard to see how the UK will remain a highly liveable country when most of its major cities and half its agricultural land have vanished under the waves.
Is precisely the sort of bollocks which turns people off the whole thing.
The thing is, it's not bollocks. It's a long-term thing and difficult for some people to accept, but it's not bollocks.
Thing is, you have no idea whether it is or isn't bollocks. It is meaningless rhetoric but sadly/happily neither you nor I will be around to see who's right.
(Although not to worry you but longer term I don't get a good feeling about our sun.)
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
One caveat to that- timeframes.
Current energy policies everywhere are going to create an awful lot of stick for people a generation or two down the line. (I think we've got past the point where we can plausibly water down that "will".)
So the question is how much misery we are going to pile on them and how much we are going to take ourselves.
Not a cheerful thought, and a hard one to sell on the doorstep. But it doesn't stop it being a necessary one, not helped by those who continue to insist that everything is fine.
I see you are already adopting the "us" and "them" approach. You will pile misery on "them" while you sit back and berate them for not doing or paying enough.
And I thought this was supposed to be a website for political sophisticates.
We are the boomers, this is what we do.
More seriously, it is asymmetrical because time is asymmetrical. We should be piling misery on ourselves, now, but the effects will inevitably be worse later.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
What is truly pitiful about this position is that it falsely implies there is zero cost on the other side of the equation. Which works when persuading the uninformed and frankly unintelligent that they should vote against their own interests.
But this isn't GBeebies or the Daily Mail, and we know better.
Exactly. The British public knows better and doesn't want to pay that cost.
As someone who used to live literally on the inner ring road in that London (top of Grays Inn Road) I know exactly what that cost is. Air you can taste. A generation with asthma and worse. Decades of "misery piled on misery" making engines more efficient and less pollutey were followed by ULEZ. And when I go back there now the air is quite clearly cleaner than it used to be. More needs to be done and is being done.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
For quite a while I’ve felt the most likely outcome over the next 50 years or so is essentially the film Children of Men (without the fertility issues, but with the ‘fortress Britain’ mentality).
I believe we have two fundamentally different choices: 1. Use our relative wealth to ease the global transition to a hotter world through eg generous immigration policies and a much higher proportion of development aid; or, 2. Attempt to fortify Britain against the coming waves of climate and resource refugees cf Children of Men.
I would choose 1 both for me and my kids. I recognise democratically the country might choose 2 (Alan that sounds like what you’re advocating). My fear, though, is that we are sleepwalking into 2 by making incremental choices to be anti migrant and anti wealth distribution, but that the end result of 2 is a pretty horrific world that few of us would actually choose to live in.
I have a more nuanced position than that. I think option 2 should be our base case but there are bits of option 1 we could and should do where this makes sense,
Entirely off-topic, have just pushed the button and ordered my first ever MacBook Pro. I know I will get bomb-proof build quality and enough power to last for a good few years. Its the OS that makes me the most nervy. Despite hating Windows with a passion I know where everything is - MacOS will be a whole new ecosystem.
But something had to be done. I still run a Chromebook for personal use but the OS can't cope with business use. Bought this Surface Pro 8 for a previous client project, and after nearly 18 months the battery life is dire and the processor turns itself into Three Mile Island when I try to run anything taxing like Adobe Premiere. Even Sky Go makes it burney burney.
So, a brave new world. May need my hand-holding.
You won't regret it. Particularly as you are clearly aware that you will have to get used to where stuff is.
Bought my first MacBook Air in 2011. Still using it for work*.
(*It's on its second battery and no longer officially supported but works fine.)
NB. If you’re using an out-of-support Mac then you’re one malicious online ad away from having your machine hacked if you use Safari as your web browser.
Switch to a browser that still gets security updates & you’re secure against the most likely threat - someone planting a drive-by bit of malware via an ad on a major site that sucks up all your banking details next time you do any online banking, or spelunks through your email in order to get access.
Firefox would be the obvious choice - IIRC they’re still making releases for Macs of that vintage.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
What is truly pitiful about this position is that it falsely implies there is zero cost on the other side of the equation. Which works when persuading the uninformed and frankly unintelligent that they should vote against their own interests.
But this isn't GBeebies or the Daily Mail, and we know better.
Exactly. The British public knows better and doesn't want to pay that cost.
As someone who used to live literally on the inner ring road in that London (top of Grays Inn Road) I know exactly what that cost is. Air you can taste. A generation with asthma and worse. Decades of "misery piled on misery" making engines more efficient and less pollutey were followed by ULEZ. And when I go back there now the air is quite clearly cleaner than it used to be. More needs to be done and is being done.
Absolutely. It's called progress. As we get richer (using fossil fuels to do so) we then look at ways of improving our lifestyles. Totally normal. Electric cars might be a rich man's sport atm but it will develop and before too long they will become standard. Just like we don't live in woad huts and burn peat indoors any more.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
One caveat to that- timeframes.
Current energy policies everywhere are going to create an awful lot of stick for people a generation or two down the line. (I think we've got past the point where we can plausibly water down that "will".)
So the question is how much misery we are going to pile on them and how much we are going to take ourselves.
Not a cheerful thought, and a hard one to sell on the doorstep. But it doesn't stop it being a necessary one, not helped by those who continue to insist that everything is fine.
Good morning
I have commented before on this but if anyone wants an example of pure zealotry then the SNP/ Green proposal that from 2025 they are to change the energy efficiency criteria so that it is impossible for any home with a gas boiler to meet category C which will be mandated for all home sales
Apparently the cost would be around 33 billion with only 1.8 billion coming from the Scottish government
You do wonder just how anyone could even think of such a stupid proposal, not least because there is not the capacity to fit all the homes with heat pumps or electricity boilers, and whoever thought an attack of this nature on homeowners in a cost of living crisis was good politics is out of touch with reality and has resonance with the ill fated poll tax
Yesterday someone posted a Scottish sub samples with labour 38% SNP 21% conservatives 17% and the question is when will crossover come between the conservatives and the SNP if this is enacted
It will be interesting to see if Starmer rejects this madness and if so how he counters it
We need to address climate change sensibly, and at a cost that the public will accept and anyway, as has been said, with Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and others refusing to take the action demanded by the G20 it is they that need to change
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
Tosh. First, you're a complete numpty if you think you can forecast populations for the end if this century. Second, they're going to discover relatively soon that they can grow their economies faster without fossil fuels. The point of wealthier countries leading that process is to accelerate the technology development.
One of the many constitutional reforms Labour should be offering should be fixed four year Parliaments with the election to be held in May.
It’s laughable that the ruling party can pick and choose the timing of the election. And the media can speculate pointlessly and endlessly about when it will happen.
I somehow suspect it isn't a £1.3m home in Hampshire. Not if you can afford a RR and helicopter and it appears to have a large plot, lake and covered swimming pool.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
What is truly pitiful about this position is that it falsely implies there is zero cost on the other side of the equation. Which works when persuading the uninformed and frankly unintelligent that they should vote against their own interests.
But this isn't GBeebies or the Daily Mail, and we know better.
Exactly. The British public knows better and doesn't want to pay that cost.
As someone who used to live literally on the inner ring road in that London (top of Grays Inn Road) I know exactly what that cost is. Air you can taste. A generation with asthma and worse. Decades of "misery piled on misery" making engines more efficient and less pollutey were followed by ULEZ. And when I go back there now the air is quite clearly cleaner than it used to be. More needs to be done and is being done.
Absolutely. It's called progress. As we get richer (using fossil fuels to do so) we then look at ways of improving our lifestyles. Totally normal. Electric cars might be a rich man's sport atm but it will develop and before too long they will become standard. Just like we don't live in woad huts and burn peat indoors any more.
Nothing to do with climate catastrophising.
Then we have the commercial reality. We need oil. It makes all kinds of useful things, so burning it for propulsion is a waste. We're sat on a finite supply of the stuff, and the more we drill the higher the access cost of the next field to be tapped.
What really makes me laugh is that the people most against electric cars have never driven one. ULEZ and urban driving has been a hot topic - an EV driven by an electric motor is massively superior as a driving experience in traffic vs a mechanic car with a gearbox.
With prices dropping and options increasing, it won't be long before choosing a mechanic car in places like Uxbridge will be as minority a choice as diesel now is.
PB Brains Trust: can you think of a loanword from French that ends in unpronounced t and is stressed on the final syllable in normal British pronunciation? (So not beret or debut.)
Cabaret?
I think that's sometimes stressed on the first syllable in Britain. Rapport as above is always the last though.
I only say it as sung by Liza Minnelli, of course.
Bouquet then? Or ricochet?
Bouquet, yes. Ricochet is often stressed on the first syllable AFAIK.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
For quite a while I’ve felt the most likely outcome over the next 50 years or so is essentially the film Children of Men (without the fertility issues, but with the ‘fortress Britain’ mentality).
I believe we have two fundamentally different choices: 1. Use our relative wealth to ease the global transition to a hotter world through eg generous immigration policies and a much higher proportion of development aid; or, 2. Attempt to fortify Britain against the coming waves of climate and resource refugees cf Children of Men.
I would choose 1 both for me and my kids. I recognise democratically the country might choose 2 (Alan that sounds like what you’re advocating). My fear, though, is that we are sleepwalking into 2 by making incremental choices to be anti migrant and anti wealth distribution, but that the end result of 2 is a pretty horrific world that few of us would actually choose to live in.
I have a more nuanced position than that. I think option 2 should be our base case but there are bits of option 1 we could and should do where this makes sense,
You’re right, I suspect the two choices are two ends of a spectrum and almost everyone would choose a mix of the two. But I suspect 2 will turn out to be both more unpleasant and less ‘enforceable’ than we think (not least because we won’t have the economic strength to sustain a fortress approach without impoverishing ourselves far more than option 1 would).
On a personal view I also suspect option 1 would be a lot less bad than most suspect, as long as the UK didn’t foist most of the negative impacts of migration on the poorest, as we currently do.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
Tosh. First, you're a complete numpty if you think you can forecast populations for the end if this century. Second, they're going to discover relatively soon that they can grow their economies faster without fossil fuels. The point of wealthier countries leading that process is to accelerate the technology development.
You're a conservative Luddite.
Nigeria's TFR is still 5+ and there's a lot of life expectancy growth still to come there.
Still: you are right that TFRs will no doubt collapse there, as they have everywhere else.
Now back in Scotland after most of July in Spain. The surreal thing about British politics at the moment is both main parties trying to compete with each other about who can bin the most green policies. Whilst Europe burns.
I expect it from the Tories. But from Labour? Starmer truly is frit. We could drive our economy investing in "green crap" as America is doing. But our polity has been poisoned by "who will pay for it" questions, as opposed to "how much will we benefit from it".
The reason why this country is so absurdly expensive for shitty services is because we've been conditioned to believe that we can't afford stuff, because stuff is a cost and not an investment. Which is ow we spend record amounts on stuff despite seeing the front-line execution of said stuff being awful.
The money is being stolen by the spiv class. They own the Tories, and Labour seem petrified of them as well.
Yep, totally agree. A nation of Neros. With the opposition led by a fool.
You made a sweeping assertion that the laffer curve is a fiction. In my view that’s just partisan garbage
From a philosophical perspective, in a free society, if the government takes 100% of earned income there is no incentive to earn income and hence government revenue approaches zero. Similarly if the government takes 0% of earned income then by definition its income is zero.
I’m not sure how you can argue with the endpoints.
Clearly reality is somewhere in between: all the Laffer curve really says that reducing someone’s net income (by increasing the tax take) reduces the incentive to work. I’m not sure that’s too controversial?
The complexity is what is the shape of the curve. Under Osborne HMRC said he peak was in the high 40s as a share. That’s plausible (I certainly know that it would “feel wrong” if the government were to take more than 50% of my wages) but knowing Osborne I assume he fiddled the analysis
But saying a problem is difficult and a matter of debate doesn’t make it an”fiction”. It’s a useful tool for how to think about tax rates from a philosophical perspective
It's fiction because it suggests a calculable relationship between tax rates and efficiency if tax take. The reductio (100% or 0% tax) doesn't tell you anything about what happens in between. For any given society, the 'optimum' rate might be anywhere between 30 and 75% - as economists have at various times demonstrated.
As I understand it nobody other than Vox will work with PP. Than again, everyone will work with PSOE.
So a choice of a minority coalition with the hard right, or a minority coalition with the separatists and terrorists. Or another roll of the dice and hope people vote differently.
They need to try a grand coalition. Push out the lunatics, promote mainstream politics and hope they flush away the Vox and Basque idiots.
Grand coalitions tend to promote the extremes, though - if people dislike the government (and every government runs into trouble), then the extremes become the only alternative. I know minority governments with confidence and supply support are not the Spanish tradition, but perhaps thast's the way to go?
Satisfying to see Vox crash and burn, though. One can get lots of media coverage and initial support by culture war stuff, but in the end people don't want it as the main raison d'etre of government.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
One caveat to that- timeframes.
Current energy policies everywhere are going to create an awful lot of stick for people a generation or two down the line. (I think we've got past the point where we can plausibly water down that "will".)
So the question is how much misery we are going to pile on them and how much we are going to take ourselves.
Not a cheerful thought, and a hard one to sell on the doorstep. But it doesn't stop it being a necessary one, not helped by those who continue to insist that everything is fine.
I see you are already adopting the "us" and "them" approach. You will pile misery on "them" while you sit back and berate them for not doing or paying enough.
And I thought this was supposed to be a website for political sophisticates.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
What is truly pitiful about this position is that it falsely implies there is zero cost on the other side of the equation. Which works when persuading the uninformed and frankly unintelligent that they should vote against their own interests.
But this isn't GBeebies or the Daily Mail, and we know better.
Exactly. The British public knows better and doesn't want to pay that cost.
As someone who used to live literally on the inner ring road in that London (top of Grays Inn Road) I know exactly what that cost is. Air you can taste. A generation with asthma and worse. Decades of "misery piled on misery" making engines more efficient and less pollutey were followed by ULEZ. And when I go back there now the air is quite clearly cleaner than it used to be. More needs to be done and is being done.
Absolutely. It's called progress. As we get richer (using fossil fuels to do so) we then look at ways of improving our lifestyles. Totally normal. Electric cars might be a rich man's sport atm but it will develop and before too long they will become standard. Just like we don't live in woad huts and burn peat indoors any more.
Nothing to do with climate catastrophising.
I was born, and spent my early childhood, a little over a mile from a coal-fired power station (actually two, an A and a B plant). If the wind was in the wrong direction, mum had to take the washing in as it would soon be covered in little black specks. Those stations closed over twenty years ago; at their peak they produced over 1,400 tonnes of ash a day; most, but not all, was captured.
I think there are at least two aspects in play here.
Firstly, local effects. The various Clean Air acts have probably been the biggest boon for health of any UK regulation ever, and have made local air quality massively better. They plucked the low-hanging fruit. The latest sets of regulations (e.g. on NOx) are just building on these. If you think differently, just remember the 1950s London smogs.
Secondly, regional and global effects. These are much less noticeable, but just as vital.
The thing is, tackling the former also helps the latter. Would anyone want to go back to every town having dozens of tall chimneys belching our smoke? Back to the Black Country being truly black?
We have made tremendous progress on local air quality, and reasonable progress in the UK on regional air quality. There is less to do on the former, but much more needs to be done on the latter.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
Nonsense yourself. "The problem with the current batch of policies...." Exactly. What sort of policies could exist which would achieve what you want to achieve. An imaginary batch is what.
I should warn you Im currently ploughing my way through Piketty;s Capital in the 21st Century and am all for taking all your money and reformatting your avatar to a flat cap.
However, we can stop putting made up timelines on citizens for them to conform to legislation such as heat punps or EVs, We as a country will fail to meet these deadlines by quite some margin, Stop hitting the less well off who cant afford to comply. Accelerate the build of nuclear power stations and tidal to make the UK energy independent, This will eventually reduce our exposure to oil and improve our balance of payments. Oddly build more houses as improvements in our housing stock will reduce energy needs and there a crying need for them to house a growing population.
Ban single use plastics.
Create more woodlands and meadows to encourage bio diversity and the same at sea with no fishing zones to let marine life recover,
Jut a few top of the head ideas which most people will agree with and which dont punish citizens for being alive.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
One caveat to that- timeframes.
Current energy policies everywhere are going to create an awful lot of stick for people a generation or two down the line. (I think we've got past the point where we can plausibly water down that "will".)
So the question is how much misery we are going to pile on them and how much we are going to take ourselves.
Not a cheerful thought, and a hard one to sell on the doorstep. But it doesn't stop it being a necessary one, not helped by those who continue to insist that everything is fine.
Good morning
I have commented before on this but if anyone wants an example of pure zealotry then the SNP/ Green proposal that from 2025 they are to change the energy efficiency criteria so that it is impossible for any home with a gas boiler to meet category C which will be mandated for all home sales
Apparently the cost would be around 33 billion with only 1.8 billion coming from the Scottish government
You do wonder just how anyone could even think of such a stupid proposal, not least because there is not the capacity to fit all the homes with heat pumps or electricity boilers, and whoever thought an attack of this nature on homeowners in a cost of living crisis was good politics is out of touch with reality and has resonance with the ill fated poll tax
Yesterday someone posted a Scottish sub samples with labour 38% SNP 21% conservatives 17% and the question is when will crossover come between the conservatives and the SNP if this is enacted
It will be interesting to see if Starmer rejects this madness and if so how he counters it
We need to address climate change sensibly, and at a cost that the public will accept and anyway, as has been said, with Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and others refusing to take the action demanded by the G20 it is they that need to change
You've posted this quite a few times - I'm sure they have said it, but as a policy its a non-starter. A lot of homes up here would be very difficult to get to Category C. My own house was rated as Category F with the potential to improve to Category D. No government is going to make it illegal to sell granite homes when significant parts of the housing stock are granite.
So its vapourware - stop quoting it. If you want to hit the SNP on zealotry and energy (and why wouldn't you - its fun), lets go after their nonsense about blocking new oil licences. Yes we're moving away from oil. But we still need the stuff. So how does it make more sense to ship oil from the middle east rather than extracting our own?
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
I think you only need to look at the reactions to eg Just Stop Oil - or indeed the M25 at 6pm on any day - to see where the British public is wrt such action to change their lifestyles.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Nonsense.
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
What is truly pitiful about this position is that it falsely implies there is zero cost on the other side of the equation. Which works when persuading the uninformed and frankly unintelligent that they should vote against their own interests.
But this isn't GBeebies or the Daily Mail, and we know better.
Exactly. The British public knows better and doesn't want to pay that cost.
As someone who used to live literally on the inner ring road in that London (top of Grays Inn Road) I know exactly what that cost is. Air you can taste. A generation with asthma and worse. Decades of "misery piled on misery" making engines more efficient and less pollutey were followed by ULEZ. And when I go back there now the air is quite clearly cleaner than it used to be. More needs to be done and is being done.
Absolutely. It's called progress. As we get richer (using fossil fuels to do so) we then look at ways of improving our lifestyles. Totally normal. Electric cars might be a rich man's sport atm but it will develop and before too long they will become standard. Just like we don't live in woad huts and burn peat indoors any more.
Nothing to do with climate catastrophising.
Then we have the commercial reality. We need oil. It makes all kinds of useful things, so burning it for propulsion is a waste. We're sat on a finite supply of the stuff, and the more we drill the higher the access cost of the next field to be tapped.
What really makes me laugh is that the people most against electric cars have never driven one. ULEZ and urban driving has been a hot topic - an EV driven by an electric motor is massively superior as a driving experience in traffic vs a mechanic car with a gearbox.
With prices dropping and options increasing, it won't be long before choosing a mechanic car in places like Uxbridge will be as minority a choice as diesel now is.
Just a thought but with the US and EU seriously rethinking the 2030 cut off for ICE cars towards 2035 and the UK also reviewing it then these cars will be available for the next 12 years and anyone buying one in the 2030s will no doubt keep it for many years, when do you expect that ICE cars will cease to exist on UK roads ?
Of course all these iCE cars will be ULEZ compliant so that ends the problem
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
Tosh. First, you're a complete numpty if you think you can forecast populations for the end if this century. Second, they're going to discover relatively soon that they can grow their economies faster without fossil fuels. The point of wealthier countries leading that process is to accelerate the technology development.
You're a conservative Luddite.
Forecasting population size is relatively easy, by prediction standards, and the argument only requires that there be a hell of a lot of Nigerians. Which there will be.
The much, much deeper problem with your argument is this. I don't know if you have been to sub saharan Africa? I have. I have also read a travel book by an African who said the trouble with European writing about Africa is they travel by car. They think their Toyota 4wd is taking them into the heart of the dark continent. Most Africans are a day on foot or by bicycle away from the nearest road. The point is infrastructure. There isn't any.
Which brings us to the China paradox. China leads the world both on clean energy, and clean energy kit like solar panels and windmills, and on pollution and carbon emissions, because it is furiously building. You cannot do infrastructure without coal and cement. You can run a car on sunshine and cucumber juice but you can't build a road for it to run on that way.
One of the climate feedback loops just went off the chart. Antarctic sea ice extent in southern hemisphere summers is highly variable, but it always recovers in the winter. Thus year it hasn't.
(*six sigma would be once in a billion years - actually five sigma.)
The problem with alarmism is when everything is a crisis nothing is.
Its the same crisis. Its slow-acting but the effects are starting to get more severe and in greater frequency.
So what ? Nothing our government and environmentalists are suggesting will impact this.
The top ten polluters account for 67% of the carbon produced globally. China India Iran and Indonesia are all developing economies and will shove out more carbon in the next decade than the UK. The UK isnt even a top 10 polluter but number 17 and moving down the rankings.
Net zero is not an appropriate priority for us. We should be focussing policies of bio diversity, reducing plastics and liveability in a changed climate.
That's what everyone says.
Unless everyone starts to act, no one will.
Tosh.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
This is why I am defeatist on climate change. There are too many with no intention of changing their lifestyles, at least not until we have trashed the planet.
Splutter
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
It's hard to see how the UK will remain a highly liveable country when most of its major cities and half its agricultural land have vanished under the waves.
Is precisely the sort of bollocks which turns people off the whole thing.
The thing is, it's not bollocks. It's a long-term thing and difficult for some people to accept, but it's not bollocks.
Thing is, you have no idea whether it is or isn't bollocks. It is meaningless rhetoric but sadly/happily neither you nor I will be around to see who's right.
(Although not to worry you but longer term I don't get a good feeling about our sun.)
There is a process called science, in which evidence is gathered and analysed to determine what is bollocks and what isn't bollocks. It is science that tells us that burning large amounts of fossil fuels will almost certainly cause the sea level to rise by a number of meters on a timescale of a few hundred years. It's not simply my guess against yours.
Science also tells us that the sun is very unlikely to change its output significantly for many millions of years. Interestingly, though, the sun's luminosity has increased by around 30% over the time of the Earth existence. But the temperature of the Earth has been kept within a liveable range by the reduction in the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere over that period. That's another of those lucky breaks that has led to our existence. (Google faint young sun paradox).
Comments
Don’t know anything about it and would be genuinely interested to see the figures.
Most of it bad.
Net zero = the future world economy. I know we’re already semi checked out of that but we don’t really want to go all the way like Russia (probably the worlds joint largest net zero sceptic, with Australia - the latter is of course changing now). Even the Saudis are slowly getting it.
Of course it may remove a number of the inner city constituencies. But probably not on a timescale to help Rishi.
"It's your car. It's everyone's air. Do what you want with your car, but don't push particulates and NoX into our air because it will kill."
Push that message at breathers of air rather than drivers of cars. It's a smoking in public places argument.
If Labour can't be bothered selling that, why should they expect to be successful.
The major economies are shifting to Asia and Africa. Their politicians are not going to recommend to their people they sit in abject poverty. Nigeria alone will have something like 750 million people by the end of this century, that popultaion growth plus a rising standard of living will dwarf anything the UK will do.
Nobody is going to follow the UK as they have their own priorities.
All that matters is to remove methane and carbon dioxide emissions at source from being emitted into the atmosphere now and, if they are, to remove them as best we can. Actually coming up with alternative ways of creating energy and maintaining our way of life can wait.
In other words it's almost entirely a chemistry challenge with engineering solutions and should be solely treated as such. However, because the voices we almost always hear from on this are the hard activist and radical ones who want to use it as a burning platform to remake society in their own image it becomes political and virtually nothing is done.
To give just one example: we could legislate immediately post recess that all cattle feed in this country must have seaweed/daffodil additives added to it, by law, and start reducing farm-based methane significantly (95%+) within a year. But, activists and the allies in the media are far more interested in hectoring us on the ethics of meat and signalling their willingness to self-sacrifice to each other accordingly, and so they are ignored and nothing is done and the methane emissions remain the same.
You can extend this to virtually any field of it: focus on what most effectively removes carbon and methane from going into the atmosphere and just sideline and ignore everything else.
If you are interested in leading on solving the problem that is.
I mean you can't have it both ways - "the UK has already made big reductions and we're doing fine"
and at the same time, "we can't make any meaningful reductions without doing massive harm"
Thing is, the situation is getting pretty desperate so just sticking our heads in the sand and keeping calm and carrying on doesn't seem like a great option
The first three probably about 20-30 years behind us. The latter? 40-50 years, if that.
They both need to accelerate - a lot.
Electoral support works differently however, and this is what is being consistently missed. For supporters it is not in their top 10 issues. For those forking out a few £k extra, especially those hurt hard by cost of living, it might be their very top issue.
If Labour want to change the electoral math on ULEZ they need to support those drivers and make it less regressive.
My brother currently lives in Germany.
* Having said that, there have been occasions in the past when tipping points have passed and the Earth's climate has changed very rapidly, as Richard Tyndall has pointed out. It's very difficult to know what these points might be and when they will be passed, but the warming of the Earth is unlikely to remain a smooth process.
Agricultural Methane is a big contributor but reducing it is only a one time hit, because its atmospheric life is much lower than carbon. So long as cattle farming isn’t growing long term (it has done recently of course) then farming methane emissions won’t grow. Other
sources are much harder to control.
Reducing carbon emissions at source means burning less fossil fuel, which is pretty much what we’re all trying to do.
I agree we need to treat this more as a problem of industrial waste disposal than a social system problem. Regulate (and tax) carbon emissions just like we regulate almost all other pollutants. Regulation and levies are why the edges of our cities are not all toxic slagheaps these days.
- Señor Mateo Goodwin, por El Espectador
https://twitter.com/DmitryOpines/status/1683401937826504706
You made a sweeping assertion that the laffer curve is a fiction. In my view that’s just partisan garbage
From a philosophical perspective, in a free society, if the government takes 100% of earned income there is no incentive to earn income and hence government revenue approaches zero. Similarly if the government takes 0% of earned income then by definition its income is zero.
I’m not sure how you can argue with the endpoints.
Clearly reality is somewhere in between: all the Laffer curve really says that reducing someone’s net income (by increasing the tax take) reduces the incentive to work. I’m not sure that’s too controversial?
The complexity is what is the shape of the curve. Under Osborne HMRC said he peak was in the high 40s as a share. That’s plausible (I certainly know that it would “feel wrong” if the government were to take more than 50% of my wages) but knowing Osborne I assume he fiddled the analysis
But saying a problem is difficult and a matter of debate doesn’t make it an”fiction”. It’s a useful tool for how to think about tax rates from a philosophical perspective
Mr Fox we agree for once, James lovelock ( the Gaia man ) said the same thing some time ago. I cannot see Modi or Xi stopping their counties getting richer and thats before Africa moves in to gear.
For the UK I think we need to look at what this means for us and address the issues will which keep UK being a highly liveable country and improve our citizens standard of living.
We don't want to.
Someone who doesn't want to change at all has access to all the information that someone who is a passionate Just Stop Oiler. So it can't be information asymmetry. It must be intention.
Oh but then you say that there are a lot of people who don't, how shall we put this, understand the complexities of climate change but then you are left with the elite telling the plebs what to do. Again. And that never usually ends well.
Train passengers switched carriages after a 1.5m (5ft) snake was spotted slithering on a service in Yorkshire.
Northern said the brightly-coloured but harmless corn snake was found on a Skipton to Leeds train.
Photos and video of the non-venomous commuter were shared on social media before it was removed in Leeds.
The serpent, now named Noodles, was collected by the RPSCA and is being cared for by a specialist.
Corn snakes are native to North America and are one of the most commonly kept exotic pets in the UK.
It is currently unclear how the snake ended up loose onboard the service on Saturday, with some passengers said to have switched carriages after the discovery.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-66287434
You lecture the rest of us while chugging out lignite emissions and buying Putins oil and gas. Your green agenda is going backwards because of public resistance to - heat pumps will go tits up here too - and you have closed down all your nuclear .
There are many places one could take a note of the green agenda, but Germany isnt really one of them.
The move to renewables in power generation is astonishing, and it's happening everywhere.
Take climate change and America. They're about two years behind us in terms of taking coal out of the generating mix. And they're putting in a hell of a lot of new wind and solar.
At the same time, you're seeing an incredible shift towards electric vehicles. Because the *average* age of a vehicle is 12 years, this means only 4% of the vehicle fleet turns over every year. And that hides underlying trends. But the direction is only one way.
So a choice of a minority coalition with the hard right, or a minority coalition with the separatists and terrorists. Or another roll of the dice and hope people vote differently.
They need to try a grand coalition. Push out the lunatics, promote mainstream politics and hope they flush away the Vox and Basque idiots.
High-flying London lawyers and sleepy countryside villages are not always the happiest of combinations, especially when the criminal law specialist really wants to take to the air.
Mayus Karia bills himself as a “ferocious litigator” but the residents of Durley, in Hampshire, will doubtless have a litany of other names for the solicitor-advocate, who has triggered a row over plans to make frequent helicopter landings at his six-bedroom £1.3 million home.
Neighbours in the village, which has a population of about 1,000, have objected to having their “peace ended” by the “flash” lawyer.
The dispute started when Karia, who qualified as a solicitor in 2005 and is said on his law firm’s website to have an “unrivalled . . . sixth sense in litigation”, won permission to construct a helipad in his back garden.
Officials at Winchester city council originally granted him only two personal use round trips a month between the hours of 8am and 6pm. However, local authority planning application documents show that last month Karia applied for unrestricted use to allow multiple landings and take-offs.
In the application, an agent for Karia said the lawyer needed “a loosening of the restriction to allow flexibility of irregular visits by some clients . . .”
Karia, a father of three, who charges between £1,000 and £1,200 an hour for legal advice, is said by neighbours to drive an SUV Rolls-Royce, while his firm, London Litigation Partnership Solicitors, describes him as “a ferocious and meticulous litigator”. His firm’s website goes on to liken his legal skills to “the genius of Field Marshal Montgomery in the battlefield”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/high-flying-lawyers-plans-for-helipad-hit-turbulence-in-village-rwqgrwg5g
The public will go along with policies which dont hurt much,
The problem with the current batch of policies is they are all stick and no carrot. When green policies are just misery piled upon misery or greenwashed taxation eventually you are going to be told to eff off.
* Albeit we probably didn't know it was Russian, because we bought if from a UAE broker
On another level it clearly exists - as a real weapon used by rich people to keep their taxes as low as possible.
I believe we have two fundamentally different choices:
1. Use our relative wealth to ease the global transition to a hotter world through eg generous immigration policies and a much higher proportion of development aid; or,
2. Attempt to fortify Britain against the coming waves of climate and resource refugees cf Children of Men.
I would choose 1 both for me and my kids. I recognise democratically the country might choose 2 (Alan that sounds like what you’re advocating). My fear, though, is that we are sleepwalking into 2 by making incremental choices to be anti migrant and anti wealth distribution, but that the end result of 2 is a pretty horrific world that few of us would actually choose to live in.
But something had to be done. I still run a Chromebook for personal use but the OS can't cope with business use. Bought this Surface Pro 8 for a previous client project, and after nearly 18 months the battery life is dire and the processor turns itself into Three Mile Island when I try to run anything taxing like Adobe Premiere. Even Sky Go makes it burney burney.
So, a brave new world. May need my hand-holding.
Feels quite redundant now, seeing the different paths the constituent nations have taken. Russia always felt like an odd inclusion anyway.
See also: MIKTA. And the PIGS?
The lack of sea ice has immediate effects to increase the rate of warming.
But this isn't GBeebies or the Daily Mail, and we know better.
How many BTUs - net - does the UK import each year?
So, this means adding up electricity, coal, natural gas and oil.
The UK was, briefly, a net exporter on this measure, before entering into a steep decline, until its nadir was reached in 2012/2013. Since then, falling demand, flat supply of oil and gas, and rising renewables has meant that we've reduced net imports from 2.4-2.7% of GDP to around 1.5%.
The whole point of the discussion is that the "brownbelt" of HYUFD's imagining doesn't exist any more in the SE towns.
Bought my first MacBook Air in 2011. Still using it for work*.
(*It's on its second battery and no longer officially supported but works fine.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12332951/amp/You-leave-plane-travelling-Rhodes-terrible-idea-EasyJet-pilot-issues-stern-warning-Brits-flying-island-thousands-exhausted-holidaymakers-arrive-Gatwick-slam-chaotic-evacuation.html
Brave of him.
Current energy policies everywhere are going to create an awful lot of stick for people a generation or two down the line. (I think we've got past the point where we can plausibly water down that "will".)
So the question is how much misery we are going to pile on them and how much we are going to take ourselves.
Not a cheerful thought, and a hard one to sell on the doorstep. But it doesn't stop it being a necessary one, not helped by those who continue to insist that everything is fine.
If you contract to buy LNG from Woodside in Australia, and then charter a ship from MOL to take it from the North West Shelf to Milford Haven, while ONGC in India orders some gas from Novotek in Russia, then MOL is likely to look at the ships, shrug their shoulders, and reverse the orders to free up LNG shipping capacity.
Now which approach is going to bring people along with it ?
They didnt base their energy on sustainable "green" under Merkel
And I thought this was supposed to be a website for political sophisticates.
So we are importing more than under Thatcher but much less than under Blair and it’s going the right way.
Which is roughly what I would have assumed.
After all, you wrote "You lecture the rest of us while chugging out lignite emissions and buying Putins oil and gas".
It is an excuse to do nothing.
(Although not to worry you but longer term I don't get a good feeling about our sun.)
More seriously, it is asymmetrical because time is asymmetrical. We should be piling misery on ourselves, now, but the effects will inevitably be worse later.
And Windows 11 has moved everything...
You'll be fine.
Switch to a browser that still gets security updates & you’re secure against the most likely threat - someone planting a drive-by bit of malware via an ad on a major site that sucks up all your banking details next time you do any online banking, or spelunks through your email in order to get access.
Firefox would be the obvious choice - IIRC they’re still making releases for Macs of that vintage.
Nothing to do with climate catastrophising.
I have commented before on this but if anyone wants an example of pure zealotry then the SNP/ Green proposal that from 2025 they are to change the energy efficiency criteria so that it is impossible for any home with a gas boiler to meet category C which will be mandated for all home sales
Apparently the cost would be around 33 billion with only 1.8 billion coming from the Scottish government
You do wonder just how anyone could even think of such a stupid proposal, not least because there is not the capacity to fit all the homes with heat pumps or electricity boilers, and whoever thought an attack of this nature on homeowners in a cost of living crisis was good politics is out of touch with reality and has resonance with the ill fated poll tax
Yesterday someone posted a Scottish sub samples with labour 38% SNP 21% conservatives 17% and the question is when will crossover come between the conservatives and the SNP if this is enacted
It will be interesting to see if Starmer rejects this madness and if so how he counters it
We need to address climate change sensibly, and at a cost that the public will accept and anyway, as has been said, with Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and others refusing to take the action demanded by the G20 it is they that need to change
First, you're a complete numpty if you think you can forecast populations for the end if this century.
Second, they're going to discover relatively soon that they can grow their economies faster without fossil fuels. The point of wealthier countries leading that process is to accelerate the technology development.
You're a conservative Luddite.
One of the many constitutional reforms Labour should be offering should be fixed four year Parliaments with the election to be held in May.
It’s laughable that the ruling party can pick and choose the timing of the election. And the media can speculate pointlessly and endlessly about when it will happen.
I expect Wishi Washi will go for October 2024.
£1M in Durley gets you this
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/132154151#/?channel=RES_NEW
or £1.5M a bit outside this:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/134803283#/?channel=RES_BUY
£1.3M for a small swimming pool, & helipad sounds tight but doable.
What really makes me laugh is that the people most against electric cars have never driven one. ULEZ and urban driving has been a hot topic - an EV driven by an electric motor is massively superior as a driving experience in traffic vs a mechanic car with a gearbox.
With prices dropping and options increasing, it won't be long before choosing a mechanic car in places like Uxbridge will be as minority a choice as diesel now is.
On a personal view I also suspect option 1 would be a lot less bad than most suspect, as long as the UK didn’t foist most of the negative impacts of migration on the poorest, as we currently do.
Still: you are right that TFRs will no doubt collapse there, as they have everywhere else.
The reductio (100% or 0% tax) doesn't tell you anything about what happens in between. For any given society, the 'optimum' rate might be anywhere between 30 and 75% - as economists have at various times demonstrated.
Satisfying to see Vox crash and burn, though. One can get lots of media coverage and initial support by culture war stuff, but in the end people don't want it as the main raison d'etre of government.
The us is all of us alive now.
The them is our children and grandchildren.
If I wasn't clear about that, sorry.
I think there are at least two aspects in play here.
Firstly, local effects. The various Clean Air acts have probably been the biggest boon for health of any UK regulation ever, and have made local air quality massively better. They plucked the low-hanging fruit. The latest sets of regulations (e.g. on NOx) are just building on these. If you think differently, just remember the 1950s London smogs.
Secondly, regional and global effects. These are much less noticeable, but just as vital.
The thing is, tackling the former also helps the latter. Would anyone want to go back to every town having dozens of tall chimneys belching our smoke? Back to the Black Country being truly black?
We have made tremendous progress on local air quality, and reasonable progress in the UK on regional air quality. There is less to do on the former, but much more needs to be done on the latter.
However, we can stop putting made up timelines on citizens for them to conform to legislation such as heat punps or EVs, We as a country will fail to meet these deadlines by quite some margin, Stop hitting the less well off who cant afford to comply.
Accelerate the build of nuclear power stations and tidal to make the UK energy independent, This will eventually reduce our exposure to oil and improve our balance of payments. Oddly build more houses as improvements in our housing stock will reduce energy needs and there a crying need for them to house a growing population.
Ban single use plastics.
Create more woodlands and meadows to encourage bio diversity and the same at sea with no fishing zones to let marine life recover,
Jut a few top of the head ideas which most people will agree with and which dont punish citizens for being alive.
So its vapourware - stop quoting it. If you want to hit the SNP on zealotry and energy (and why wouldn't you - its fun), lets go after their nonsense about blocking new oil licences. Yes we're moving away from oil. But we still need the stuff. So how does it make more sense to ship oil from the middle east rather than extracting our own?
Of course all these iCE cars will be ULEZ compliant so that ends the problem
The much, much deeper problem with your argument is this. I don't know if you have been to sub saharan Africa? I have. I have also read a travel book by an African who said the trouble with European writing about Africa is they travel by car. They think their Toyota 4wd is taking them into the heart of the dark continent. Most Africans are a day on foot or by bicycle away from the nearest road. The point is infrastructure. There isn't any.
Which brings us to the China paradox. China leads the world both on clean energy, and clean energy kit like solar panels and windmills, and on pollution and carbon emissions, because it is furiously building. You cannot do infrastructure without coal and cement. You can run a car on sunshine and cucumber juice but you can't build a road for it to run on that way.
Science also tells us that the sun is very unlikely to change its output significantly for many millions of years. Interestingly, though, the sun's luminosity has increased by around 30% over the time of the Earth existence. But the temperature of the Earth has been kept within a liveable range by the reduction in the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere over that period. That's another of those lucky breaks that has led to our existence. (Google faint young sun paradox).