Global Warming

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, Xann said:

A very Telegraph headline.

Obviously the Chinese will just be bugging cars.

Everything else they make is fine. Phones, computers and nuclear power stations are all good.

Yeah. I mean if you're going to spy on someone I'm sure the components in your phone/tablet/computer/broadband would be much more sensible products to use. 

I'm not that bothered about China knowing that I've driven to the train station or Villa Park to be honest. Google already do. 

The Mail and Telegraph are so blatantly in the pay of The Oil and Gas industry.  Literally every day they print stories rubbishing EV's, Heat Pumps in fact anything that isn't a continuation of Fossil Fuel use or of course Hydrogen/Synthetic fuel as that's broadly a continuation of Oil and Gas Industry activities so they are keen if they can't save the status quo. 

Edited August 6, 2023 by sidcow

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

That’s poor from them. There are several counters to that line. Firstly there’s the top level argument that goes along the lines of “ if we reduce fossil fuels and go renewables and it turns out that climate change isn’t as bad as we predicted, we’ll have gone and created cleaner air, healthier people, less pollution and all for what?”

The second one is that while there is a degree of  uncertainty on the precise severity of the consequences and how adversely they will affect people, there is certainty around the nature of the consequences already seen and around the impact this has had. It makes the implied point from the Uni rather moot -“ until we can absolutely precisely identify the exact outcomes we should not do anything”. It’s arguing something from a stance that deliberately ignores what we already, accurately know to be true and by excluding that knowledge from the “argument” paints a skewed  thesis.

It's not right to do anything until the world has definitely ended, just in case the world doesn't end. 

[blandy]

52 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

I think what they are suggesting is that as resources are finite and the actual consequences uncertain, it is difficult to prepare for.

If sea-levels are to rise and parliament is only 10ft above sea-level, do we move the capital, or if the country is to be plunged into scandinavian winters, are our projected power-generation requirements adequate?

Fossil fuel resources are finite. And we've used a lot of them up, it's true. Sunlight, wind, wave... not quite infinite, but a lot less finite than Oil and coal. So transitioning to them, regardless of climate change and regardless of pollution still is something that can and is being (at least in part) prepared for and it's difficult to argue against the logic for doing so, even excluding war and Russia and gas....

Now if that helps reduce climate change and the consequences of that, then that's also undeniably beneficial. Further, though we don't know for sure how much sea levels will rise, or how much the oceans will warm, or how much more acidic they will get, or how much coral and life will suffer and die as a consequence, we do know for certain that sea levels have risen, temperatures have risen, aciddity has increased, reefs have died, biodiversity has been hit, fish stocks and therefore food resources have fallen, coastal areas have been flooded more and been hit by ever fiercer storms and we know as the warming increases the severity of all those things increases. And we know as some places get wetter and windier more often, others are getting dryer and hotter more often.

So whether we decide to move a low lying capital, or build sea walls, or just chance our arm, these climate change related consequences are happening. Like I said if we overshoot and go "too much" towards solar or wind or whatever and the consequences are therefore or co-incidentally, if you like, less bad than predicted, it's still a "win". "Are our projected power-generation requirements adequate" is something that is nad has been and should be asked regardless of climate change - States need to plan long term even if the climate was constant, because people move, industries transform, life changes, new tech comes along and stuff evolves - electrification of the rail network, or the (again) reduction of available, affordable fossil fuels and societal pressures to "save energy" due to that, and neigbourhoods getting more solar panels to save money, or windfarms being put up because they're cheaper than nuclear - all these things affect the national grid and require predictions and investment and planning and all of that has "the uncertainty [and]... is not readily quantified in probabilistic terms".

It's unwise to fail to act because you don't have complete certainty, but you do have clear evidence of consequences, even if not the precise meta level of those consequences.

[MakemineVanilla]

16 minutes ago, blandy said:

Fossil fuel resources are finite. And we've used a lot of them up, it's true. Sunlight, wind, wave... not quite infinite, but a lot less finite than Oil and coal. So transitioning to them, regardless of climate change and regardless of pollution still is something that can and is being (at least in part) prepared for and it's difficult to argue against the logic for doing so, even excluding war and Russia and gas....

Now if that helps reduce climate change and the consequences of that, then that's also undeniably beneficial. Further, though we don't know for sure how much sea levels will rise, or how much the oceans will warm, or how much more acidic they will get, or how much coral and life will suffer and die as a consequence, we do know for certain that sea levels have risen, temperatures have risen, aciddity has increased, reefs have died, biodiversity has been hit, fish stocks and therefore food resources have fallen, coastal areas have been flooded more and been hit by ever fiercer storms and we know as the warming increases the severity of all those things increases. And we know as some places get wetter and windier more often, others are getting dryer and hotter more often.

So whether we decide to move a low lying capital, or build sea walls, or just chance our arm, these climate change related consequences are happening. Like I said if we overshoot and go "too much" towards solar or wind or whatever and the consequences are therefore or co-incidentally, if you like, less bad than predicted, it's still a "win". "Are our projected power-generation requirements adequate" is something that is nad has been and should be asked regardless of climate change - States need to plan long term even if the climate was constant, because people move, industries transform, life changes, new tech comes along and stuff evolves - electrification of the rail network, or the (again) reduction of available, affordable fossil fuels and societal pressures to "save energy" due to that, and neigbourhoods getting more solar panels to save money, or windfarms being put up because they're cheaper than nuclear - all these things affect the national grid and require predictions and investment and planning and all of that has "the uncertainty [and]... is not readily quantified in probabilistic terms".

It's unwise to fail to act because you don't have complete certainty, but you do have clear evidence of consequences, even if not the precise meta level of those consequences.

I was thinking more in terms of the amount of capital which can be raised and realistically spent, to build the required infrastructure: the double-whammy of shutting down the economy and record spending hardly left the country in the best place to start from.

The country's diminishing state capacity is hardly encouraging.

Nearer at home, where you live, is only 26ft above sea-level and the sea wall looks knackered - they don't seem to even keep the drainage channels clear.

 

[blandy]

17 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

I was thinking more in terms of the amount of capital which can be raised and realistically spent, to build the required infrastructure: the double-whammy of shutting down the economy and record spending hardly left the country in the best place to start from.

The country's diminishing state capacity is hardly encouraging.

Nearer at home, where you live, is only 26ft above sea-level and the sea wall looks knackered - they don't seem to even keep the drainage channels clear.

Ah, OK. I misunderstood, perhaps.

The handling of the pandemic, though not easy, was a mess from starty to (ongoing) finish. The question to ask is as much "can we afford not to act" as it is "can we afford to act". I believe the answer is that we can't afford not to act. Aside from the impact of rising temperatures and sea levels killing and disrupting people, and increasing health costs and all that, there's also a kind of race on between nations to attract investment in the new tech like batteries and wind turbine manufacture and research and so on. Signals matter, here. A nation whose government says "nah, it's all bollocks we're encouraging diesel cars and hate ULEZ and hate wind turbines" - well they're not going to get the new industries new electric car factories, new science research, it'll go where natioons say "yeah, we need that stuff, come over here".

26 feet is probably an over-estimate of my altitude (unless I go upstairs). The sea wall has been repaired and fettled, but that's less of a concern than the streams and channels flowing towards the sea that pass very close by and are about 8 feet, if that below the land level. This place is bound to become flooded. I got me some waterproof socks.

[chrisp65]

My monthly report for July from google maps:

 

Glad I don’t drive a Chinese car.

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

Fossil fuel resources are finite. And we've used a lot of them up, it's true. Sunlight, wind, wave... not quite infinite, but a lot less finite than Oil and coal. So transitioning to them, regardless of climate change and regardless of pollution still is something that can and is being (at least in part) prepared for and it's difficult to argue against the logic for doing so, even excluding war and Russia and gas....

Now if that helps reduce climate change and the consequences of that, then that's also undeniably beneficial. Further, though we don't know for sure how much sea levels will rise, or how much the oceans will warm, or how much more acidic they will get, or how much coral and life will suffer and die as a consequence, we do know for certain that sea levels have risen, temperatures have risen, aciddity has increased, reefs have died, biodiversity has been hit, fish stocks and therefore food resources have fallen, coastal areas have been flooded more and been hit by ever fiercer storms and we know as the warming increases the severity of all those things increases. And we know as some places get wetter and windier more often, others are getting dryer and hotter more often.

So whether we decide to move a low lying capital, or build sea walls, or just chance our arm, these climate change related consequences are happening. Like I said if we overshoot and go "too much" towards solar or wind or whatever and the consequences are therefore or co-incidentally, if you like, less bad than predicted, it's still a "win". "Are our projected power-generation requirements adequate" is something that is nad has been and should be asked regardless of climate change - States need to plan long term even if the climate was constant, because people move, industries transform, life changes, new tech comes along and stuff evolves - electrification of the rail network, or the (again) reduction of available, affordable fossil fuels and societal pressures to "save energy" due to that, and neigbourhoods getting more solar panels to save money, or windfarms being put up because they're cheaper than nuclear - all these things affect the national grid and require predictions and investment and planning and all of that has "the uncertainty [and]... is not readily quantified in probabilistic terms".

It's unwise to fail to act because you don't have complete certainty, but you do have clear evidence of consequences, even if not the precise meta level of those consequences.

We are happy to spend billions on ‘security’ in the form of clever aircraft and big ships and tanks with non wobbly turrets.

You’d imagine security would extend to something close to self reliance for energy and food.

The whole idea of moving towards all forms of renewables just feels like common sense for so many reasons, from job creation, GDP, security, climate.

[MakemineVanilla]

43 minutes ago, blandy said:

Ah, OK. I misunderstood, perhaps.

The handling of the pandemic, though not easy, was a mess from starty to (ongoing) finish. The question to ask is as much "can we afford not to act" as it is "can we afford to act". I believe the answer is that we can't afford not to act. Aside from the impact of rising temperatures and sea levels killing and disrupting people, and increasing health costs and all that, there's also a kind of race on between nations to attract investment in the new tech like batteries and wind turbine manufacture and research and so on. Signals matter, here. A nation whose government says "nah, it's all bollocks we're encouraging diesel cars and hate ULEZ and hate wind turbines" - well they're not going to get the new industries new electric car factories, new science research, it'll go where natioons say "yeah, we need that stuff, come over here".

26 feet is probably an over-estimate of my altitude (unless I go upstairs). The sea wall has been repaired and fettled, but that's less of a concern than the streams and channels flowing towards the sea that pass very close by and are about 8 feet, if that below the land level. This place is bound to become flooded. I got me some waterproof socks.

I do hope that windmill is not just for decoration!

[blandy]

Just now, MakemineVanilla said:

I do hope that windmill is not just for decoration!

I hate to disappoint you, so I'll say, er, it's um,...yes, I know, switched on when there's no wind, to use like a big fan and make wind...no that won't do, how about it's a rainbow making machine. Here's the proof, I took this a while ago in the pandemic

 

 

[blandy]

34 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

You’d imagine security would extend to something close to self reliance for energy and food.

Less sure about that, in terms of food. More self reliance, yes (Go Brexit!) but realistically "close to" is not really a viable path, is it? There will always be trading, where we swap delicious Welsh potatoes for humble foreign staples like mangoes and pineapples and olives and wotnot.

If we have more intensive farming to make more foods, then that's not really helping climate change - we need more treeses and hedges and fewer sheeps and cowses and pigglys.

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

Less sure about that, in terms of food. More self reliance, yes (Go Brexit!) but realistically "close to" is not really a viable path, is it? There will always be trading, where we swap delicious Welsh potatoes for humble foreign staples like mangoes and pineapples and olives and wotnot.

If we have more intensive farming to make more foods, then that's not really helping climate change - we need more treeses and hedges and fewer sheeps and cowses and pigglys.

We don’t necessarily need pineapple or olives in dire times, we need ‘food’. If we were exporting sufficient spuds and apples that come a major international crisis we simply switch to eating them instead of the avocados we traded them for, that would be fine. I suspect we are not.

The farming doesn’t need to be more intensive either, I’d be fairly confident importing palm oil based products isn’t doing the world too many favours so being more reliant on home grown sunflower and rape seed would surely be a plus more than a negative in that we wouldn’t be sticking it on 3,000 mile boat trips.

Fewer sheep and pigs is absolutely what we need to be aiming for, then the 7 fields of crops we use to feed the 1 field of animals, well hell, we could be eating that stuff! According to the WWF (not the play fighting people) 40% of all UK agricultural land is set aside to grow feed crops for animals.

 

[MakemineVanilla]

4 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

The farming doesn’t need to be more intensive either, I’d be fairly confident importing palm oil based products isn’t doing the world too many favours so being more reliant on home grown sunflower and rape seed would surely be a plus more than a negative in that we wouldn’t be sticking it on 3,000 mile boat trips.

According to Harry Metcalfe, oil seed rape is not viable because the insecticide used to control the flea beetle has been banned and so we import rape seed from countries where it is not.

[chrisp65]

19 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

According to Harry Metcalfe, oil seed rape is not viable because the insecticide used to control the flea beetle has been banned and so we import rape seed from countries where it is not.

Ok, didn’t know that.

What’s the yellow stuff in fields up and down the country? I thought thats what that was?

But I’m not promoting a specific crop, I’m promoting the idea that 40% of our land being needed to feed animals feels a little inefficient.

[blandy]

30 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

We don’t necessarily need pineapple or olives in dire times, we need ‘food’. If we were exporting sufficient spuds and apples that come a major international crisis we simply switch to eating them instead of the avocados we traded them for, that would be fine. I suspect we are not.

The farming doesn’t need to be more intensive either, I’d be fairly confident importing palm oil based products isn’t doing the world too many favours so being more reliant on home grown sunflower and rape seed would surely be a plus more than a negative in that we wouldn’t be sticking it on 3,000 mile boat trips.

Fewer sheep and pigs is absolutely what we need to be aiming for, then the 7 fields of crops we use to feed the 1 field of animals, well hell, we could be eating that stuff! According to the WWF (not the play fighting people) 40% of all UK agricultural land is set aside to grow feed crops for animals.

Yeah, you're right. I was being a bit facetious talking about mangoes n'that. But the point behind it was in essence that it'd be a bit dull if we had to live off spuds, cabbages and rapeseed oil. Trading our produce for citrus fruit and olive oil and stuff improves diet. Also, while you're right about the need to eat fewer critters and instead grow food for humans, to make up the massive gap between what we produce and "close to self sufficient" would mean  at least some more intensive farming and better yields and that does bring problems. Variable climactic conditions - storms, drought, flooding, fires... will cause more frequent crop failures not just in the UK, but across yurp and africa and threaten global food security. We need to grow more, eat more seasonally, but I think close to self sufficient is probably a pipe dream.

[blandy]

27 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

According to Harry Metcalfe, oil seed rape is not viable because the insecticide used to control the flea beetle has been banned and so we import rape seed from countries where it is not.

Well, sort of. But it's another thing where intensive farming is bad.

We never used to have fields and fields of rape. Then when we did the pest critters had a huge new food resource, so they multiplied  and starting happily munching away on this new monoculture crop. So "we" got a bunch of toxic chemicals (neonics) and sprayed them and GM'd them into the crops, and it sort of held the pests at bay, but also killed pollinators like bees and hoverflies and so on. Which reduced pollination and biodiversity...so they were banned.

But the answer isn't to unban them, or to import loads of tons of rape oil, it's to rotate crops instead of huge swathes of countryside dedicated to one crop type. Corn and vegetable and sunflower and etc...as well as rapeseed for oil.

[sidcow]

We're always going to have to import food. 

In WW2 even when every scrap of land was used, rationing etc plus even then some imports got through, we were still on the verge of starvation. The UK population in 1939 was only 48m. We're at 68m now. 

Even reducing meat production for more crops won't make up that gap. And yes, the war diet was indeed dull. 

[sidcow]

I see the oil and gas lobby are ramping up their campaign to prevent the 2035 ban on gas boiler sales.  Daily stories from the usual rags and Tory politicians spouting uneducated crap.  The usual tactics.

[MakemineVanilla]

On 06/08/2023 at 16:47, sidcow said:

We're always going to have to import food. 

In WW2 even when every scrap of land was used, rationing etc plus even then some imports got through, we were still on the verge of starvation. The UK population in 1939 was only 48m. We're at 68m now. 

Even reducing meat production for more crops won't make up that gap. And yes, the war diet was indeed dull. 

History records that agriculture was deliberately run down in late 1920s, which meant that Britain was in the worst possible position by 1939, as nearly a millon acres had been taken out of production.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1930-11-26/debates/fa95287e-708b-4a99-b835-adc791200f15/Agriculture

Quote

There are only one or two figures which I propose to put to the House. There are something like 30,000,000 acres under cultivation and there were in 1925 10,682,000 acres under arable cultivation. A steady reduction has been taking place in the amount of land under the plough. In 1929 it was reduced to 9,848,000 acres, showing a reduction of 734,000 acres, or getting on for 1,000,000 acres in the four years. The agricultural workers in 1925 numbered 803,338 and in 1929, 770,252. showing a reduction of 33,086, and that reduction is steadily going on.

This is not too different from the present policies of the government, and follows the tradition of the UK's political muddle.

Wartime rationing and the introduction of the National Loaf, improved the diets of the poor because it gave them access to more nutritious food.

An anecdote told about Churchill, is that the ration was explained to him, and he said that it sounded like it could provide a very decent meal, and he was told to his amazement, that the ration wasn't for a day but for a week.

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by MakemineVanilla

[sidcow]

4 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

History records that agriculture was deliberately run down in late 1920s, which meant that Britain was in the worst possible position by 1939, as nearly a millon acres had been taken out of production.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1930-11-26/debates/fa95287e-708b-4a99-b835-adc791200f15/Agriculture

This is not too different from the present policies of the government, and follows the tradition of the UK's political muddle.

Wartime rationing and the introduction of the National Loaf, improved the diets of the poor because it gave them access to more nutritious food.

An anecdote told about Churchill, is that the ration were explained to him, and he said that it sounded like it could provide a very decent meal, and he was told to his amazement, that the ration wasn't for a day but for a week.

 

Come on, by the end of the war they were utilising every scrap of land and modernising techniques.  Farmers who couldn't be productive enough were literally turfed out of their farms.  What happened in the 1920's is irrelevant to where we were by the end of the war and still Britain was still starving.

[maqroll]

Summer in Hawaii and the wildfire devastation makes this town look like Kharkiv in the winter. Such a horror and so very sad.