Rishi Sunak Presses On With Net Zero U-Turn (theguardian.com) 192
Rishi Sunak has vowed to press ahead with watering down key green measures despite intense criticism, because he still believes the UK will hit its net zero target in 2050. From a report: The prime minister defended defying the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and said he had "absolute confidence and belief" the country was on track to meet its end goal. In a BBC radio interview on Thursday morning, Sunak shrugged off suggestions he had ignored the view of the official body that advises governments on reducing emissions. He said: "I'm very happy to have opinions and advice from everybody, and everyone's entitled to their view. We're very confident -- being in government, with all the information at our disposal -- that we we are on track to hit all our targets."
Sunak told Radio 4's Today programme that Margaret Thatcher would have agreed with his rationale, and that it was not right for "working families" to face significant costs as part of the country's transition to net zero. But he struggled to provide an explanation for claims he had scrapped measures critics said had never seriously been mooted -- such as an alleged tax on meat, compulsory car sharing and forcing households to use seven recycling bins. "These are all things that have been raised by very credible people," he argued. When pressed, Sunak was unable to provide evidence that those specific measures had been suggested by anyone and instead said they had been euphemistically advocated for by bodies such as the CCC.
Sunak told Radio 4's Today programme that Margaret Thatcher would have agreed with his rationale, and that it was not right for "working families" to face significant costs as part of the country's transition to net zero. But he struggled to provide an explanation for claims he had scrapped measures critics said had never seriously been mooted -- such as an alleged tax on meat, compulsory car sharing and forcing households to use seven recycling bins. "These are all things that have been raised by very credible people," he argued. When pressed, Sunak was unable to provide evidence that those specific measures had been suggested by anyone and instead said they had been euphemistically advocated for by bodies such as the CCC.
Pandering (Score:4, Insightful)
At this point he is just trying to limit the damage. Lies like his current lot are designed to appeal to the last of the hard-core loonies so that the party can at least continue to exist.
John Major did the same thing in the dying days of his regime. Rishi's real problem is that he can't blame all Britain's problems on Europe anymore, because the idiot wing of his party was allowed to have its way.
No doubt he'll retire to live on a huge pile of gold.
Re: (Score:2)
He is committing to not doing things that the Conservative party has no intention of doing. There was no intention by the Conservative party to tax meat, compulsory car sharing or force households to use seven recycling bins so it's a very easy commitment to keep.
Far easier to do nothing and look like a great deal is being done than do something and risk becoming even more unpopular.
Complicated (Score:2)
https://live.fullfact.org/euro... [fullfact.org]
Re: Pandering (Score:2)
Re: Pandering (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That happens because it is in fact an effective way to get your personal agenda passed.
Re: (Score:2)
See https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu... [unl.edu]. Notice anything. A better view is https://www.climate.gov/news-f... [climate.gov].
Bet you won't see anything there either.
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, at this point, I'm more worried about Social Security staying solvent...and that I get my full share for retirement.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Pandering (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It concerns me that people are saying this is a fallacy just because one image is faked. It isn't, this happened and there is evidence for that teaching. Whether it's right or not is entirely different to whether it actually happened. 'Our
Re: (Score:3)
I was at school in Canada during the '70's and my memory was some discussion about global warming vs global dimming and which would win out, greenhouse gases or coal pollution. As the coal pollution was much more immediate, moves were made, by the right wing governments of the day, to clean up coal.
Even today some warming is offset by the various particulates and aerosols emitted by coal plants etc.
Re: (Score:3)
No doubt he'll retire to live on a huge pile of gold.
He already has a huge pile of gold and his wife has far, far more. It's not about money for him, it's about power.
Re: (Score:2)
Then plug him into a power socket, and he'll have way, way more power than he can handle.
Re: (Score:2)
It's about Tory Party donors, and about a recent local election result that suggested that ditching policies designed to make people's lives better might be a vote winner.
Re: Pandering (Score:2, Troll)
>At this point he is just trying to limit the damage. Lies like his current lot are designed to appeal to the last of the hard-core loonies so that the party can at least continue to exist.
Sunak is trying to trick through loonies - he's desperately grasping for the normal people his party has repeatedly betrayed. The previous pledges, while lovely for elites, have serious impact to the large chunk of people who are neither rich nor poor. Take migration as another example.
Back in the 1990s then Prime Mini
Re: (Score:2)
Mind defining what "the elites" are? I keep reading that from various sources but they're all pretty vague concerning what it's supposed to mean. Generally, it feels like something akin to "a group of people we don't like that has some sort of power in some way".
Could we get a bit more definition to that? Because depending on whatever conspiracy you're into, this can be anything from reptiloids to the Jews.
Re: Pandering (Score:2)
Yeah, elitists is an imperfect label. I mean it to refer to the political classes and those with inordinate influence on policy and society as a whole. Of those it'd also be those who exercise that influence.
Charles Schwab, the Koch brothers, and Soros come to mind. They all have big ideas for how they think society should function. Where it becomes dangerous is when many of them agree on drastic societal changes, such as lax immigration control or climate change avoidance, caring little about how it'll imp
Re: (Score:2)
You act as if someone being elected somehow makes that person better suited at dealing with a problem than someone who just does it.
Historical evidence is not really on your side in this one.
Re: Pandering (Score:5, Insightful)
You act as if someone being elected somehow makes that person better suited at dealing with a problem than someone who just does it.
Historical evidence is not really on your side in this one.
The odd thing is, we have "elitists" that the Tories tend to pander to. They're not the "liberal lefty" types that let in all the immigrants that do the jobs British people wont for money the British people wouldn't get out of bed for... It's what is called the "old boys club". We've seen this a lot in the last few years when a lucrative government contract is awarded to a long time Tory donor who the top party members went to Eton with. Quite the opposite to what this swivel-eyed tosser is claiming.
It's this kind of corruption and scandal that Sunak and the Conservatives are trying to distract people from, even though the next election is over a year away (the current term ends mid Dec 2024).
As for the changes themselves, for the most part they just bring us into line with the EU. Much ado over nothing.
Re: Pandering (Score:2)
>You act as if someone being elected somehow makes that person better suited at dealing with a problem than someone who just does it.
Agreed, there's no simple solution. Even if we elect people, they're either of the mindset or will be brought into it.
Buggered if I know the answer. Reducing power and decentralising it would at least limit the extent to which a person can break the country. That's probably as good as it gets.
Re: (Score:2)
I always get reminded of what George Carlin had to say about politicians: "Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American un
Re: (Score:2)
Immigration doesn't cause demand for houses to increase, all it increases is a demand for cheap flats. You think any immigrants could buy a house for 300 grand or more? Or that they could get a mortgage for that? Hell, people under 30 can't even get a mortgage for the amount they'd need to buy a house! This doesn't even remotely increase demand for housing, unless you plan to let it instead of selling it.
And what middle-class person want to let to those people? We're not talking about people who own apartme
Immigrants have same income distribution (Score:2)
https://fullfact.org/news/do-u... [fullfact.org]
Therefore they will be bidding up the price of ALL housing.
Re: (Score:3)
Housing could not keep up with the massive influxes, leading to many being priced out
I'll take issue with just this one bit. Housing could absolutely keep up, especially with a massive influx of people willing to work as labourers and spend the money they received for it on a house. The fact that it didn't was a choice made jointly by government and voters who wanted to make money out of house scarcity.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, policies concerning building new homes could well be part of this. However, population growth is certainly a factor, nowhere near keeping up with this - driven by migration.
From 1990 to 2020, the UK population increased by around 15% - even during a period of declining birthrates. In 1995 the rate of net migration leapt under Tony Blair, far beyond past norms. For perspective, prior to 1995 it was below 1 per 1,000 of the population. This would peak at 7 in 2008 (Blair left office in 2007) and is in g
Re: Pandering (Score:5, Insightful)
>At this point he is just trying to limit the damage. Lies like his current lot are designed to appeal to the last of the hard-core loonies so that the party can at least continue to exist.
Sunak is trying to trick through loonies - he's desperately grasping for the normal people his party has repeatedly betrayed. The previous pledges, while lovely for elites, have serious impact to the large chunk of people who are neither rich nor poor. Take migration as another example.
Back in the 1990s then Prime Minister Blair massively ramped up migration. For context, the UK then went from 93.8% white to 81% by 2021. That's one hell of an ethnic shift. If the same shift occurred, displacing non-whites then there'd be cries of colonisation/genocide.
You were doing well up until there.
Whites are not an "endangered species" in the UK, this is flat out UKIP/BNP (read: racist) propaganda. Especially the genocide bit, what utter tosh.
The UK is a great example of how a society that values tolerance and personal liberty have allowed other cultures to join and flourish. Now the closet racists hate this because it disproves all their assertions about how the "furreners" have ruined everything.
The first thing you have to realise about his statistic is that around the same time they separated out "white" from "British" because you had non-white British being born into the UK as 2nd and 3rd generations. Also I'm "white - other" because I was born in Australia (somehow this gives me a free pass amongst the UKIP/BNP crowd where as a 3rd generation Asian is not). 86% of the UK are British, as in born here.
It's a standard ploy by people who are just hateful to blame immigration for all the ills, the housing supply shortage is more than just 15%, this is due to sucessive governments doing nothing to promote the construction of new houses. The current government has taken huge measures to make housing even more expensive because they hold a huge amount of their own wealth in housing (as does their supporters).
As has been noted by several popular car publications, this is just Sunak putting us back in line with the EU. His predecessor Johnson had tried to use more advanced dates because he doesn't like the EU and Brexit has turned out to be a complete and unmitigated disaster. It's reshuffling deck chairs on the Torytanic.
The people claiming this is all about immigration are the swivel-eyed loons one has to avoid on the train.
Re: Pandering (Score:3)
An AC already responded, but you make a good point. While white as a category didn't change, different categories of white didn't exist in the older surveys (e.g. 1961). While it did exist in the 1991 census, I went with the general white number so it could be more honestly compared with much older data.
British English dropped by a similar amount from 2001 to 2021, down to 73.5%. I'd estimate European migration is likely the majority of the gap between 73.5% and the 81% total white. Irish is in slow decline
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are no solutions that don't cost money. Put industrial emissions caps on, then consumer prices go up. Put emissions caps on vehicles, then prices go up. This is the nature of economics; we enjoyed what amounted to very very cheap energy, with the problem being that it has led to significant increases in the capture of solar radiation over an extended period of time. So now, that mighty cosmic bookkeeper, thermodynamics, makes it inevitable that the balance sheet be balanced.
So it is going to cost us a
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sooooo f*cking tired of this line. When it comes to disincentivising bad habits, there are two main ways to do it: ban it, or tax it.
Who decides bad habits? The Sierra Club? The church? The UN? The WEF? The King?
If you are lucky it is the voter. None of the other options are better.
Re: (Score:2)
You want to leave that decision to a bunch of morons who will do whatever the next scaremongering report on the news tells them to?
Why not simply hand over the government to the media and voting could be done by checking what channels have more viewers. In the future, we won't have Reps and Dems run the country but rather Fox News and CNN.
I.e. the way it already is anyway, but at least we'll call the spade a spade.
Re: Pandering (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sooooo f*cking tired of this line. When it comes to disincentivising bad habits, there are two main ways to do it: ban it, or tax it.
And I'm so tired of this line. You can also incentivise the good, rather than just leaving one choice and f*cking people for choosing it. If you were going as 4 adults today from London to Bristol by train - it will be 476 quid. We'll take the car.
Re: Pandering (Score:2)
Or £188 return if you leave on the 10:28 this morning, and if your destination is in the city centre, way more convenient. It can probably be reduced further with a bit of planning. Then again, Iâ(TM)m not a fan of the M4 either having spent too many days of my life in itâ(TM)s traffic.
Re: Pandering (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Staying alive isn't a "bad habit".
Re: (Score:2)
I can't understand the idea that governments cannot create anything. In the sense that you seem to use it, no institutions can create anything. What they can do is provide people with the resources, the time and the space that they need to create things.
Both renewable energy and fossil fuels are subsidised. The whole electricity market in the UK is regulated. The reason for this are relatively straight-forward. First, the national grid which is the distribution mechanism is a natural monopoly and can really
Re: (Score:3)
Why should we subsidize anything? Well, I told you that in the answer.
Electricity is a critical service. If it fails then the whole country fails for the duration that the electricity is out. It's a key piece of infrastructure like transport systems, police, health services and so forth. And, of course, governments get unelected.
So, we have a system called CfD or contract for difference, which essentially guarantees the price of electricity for a significant period. It was introduced for and still applies t
Re: Pandering (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Please stop spreading ignorance.
By 2050? Won't happen & too late anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
In 2006, George Monbiot made a solid case for why it would have to be a 90% cut by 2030 & a sector by sector plan of how to achieve these goals
https://www.theguardian.com/bo... [theguardian.com]
Unfortunately, he unwittingly made the case that it was unachievable by human beings who think & act as we do
The cuts we do buy time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
So even if because of politics and the influence of the oil industry we can't actually do what we should be doing we should do as much as we can because we're buying time for the next generation to fix their parent's mess
I do hope you grow up at some point in your life. Talking about generations like this is stupid and not useful. My parents were just as powerless as I am and my children are. WTF is even your point? That having someone to blame makes it all better and fixes it? Your nonsense is annoying because it keeps you from seeing how things work.
Thoughts are thoughts. Actions are actions. Thoughts control actions. When you get lost in thought trying to figure out who to blame, you fail to take action.
Fortunately for y
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
His mention of nuclear fission not being helpful in lowering CO2 emissions is contradicted by reports from the IPCC and studies done by the UK government. I don't recall the timeline on when these reports came out on how nuclear power is vital to solving the problem of CO2 emissions so it could be Monbiot was simply working with incomplete data.....
Monbiot started having a conversion experience a few years later, declaring himself "nuclear-neutral" in 2009 & in favor of it in March 2011, quite surprisingly *because* of Fukushima and NOT despite it
https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
He's been vociferous about spiraling costs & outdated designs in more recent years but afaik is still supportive of more nukes over other forms of power generation
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
One of those what? If the IPCC reports say we need nukes to cut co2 then what's the problem?
You only believe in science when it fits your agenda?
I don't own a nuclear plant and run my house and car on solar 100% so at a personal level I don't care where everyone else gets power or how much they pay, but science is science. Yes? No?
Re:By 2050? Won't happen & too late anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, imagine of we had stopped building fossil fuel plants in America and gone full nuclear power like France starting in the 1970's instead of getting scared away from nuclear power by the fossil fuel industry astro-turfing from so-called environmental groups.
Of course we cannot time-travel and change things, but we can sure the fuck learn who NOT to listen to (psst qweihir that's you)
Some people took the bait so hard, they cannot even face their mistake today
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, imagine of we had stopped building fossil fuel plants in America and gone full nuclear power like France starting in the 1970's instead of getting scared away from nuclear power by the fossil fuel industry astro-turfing from so-called environmental groups.
Of course we cannot time-travel and change things, but we can sure the fuck learn who NOT to listen to (psst qweihir that's you)
Some people took the bait so hard, they cannot even face their mistake today
This is why the world has 400 reactors and 8000 thermal coal plants. They have certainly done quite enough damage already and we should ignore any of their advice for the future with extreme prejudice.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course we cannot time-travel and change things, but we can sure the fuck learn who NOT to listen to (psst qweihir that's you)
I recall something about how the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is now. We can't go back 20 years to build more nuclear power plants then to see they'd been operating for 10 to 15 years today. We can start building nuclear power plants today so in 5 to 10 years we have the means to close fossil fuel power plants to lower CO2 emissions and still keep the lights on.
I agree it would have been preferable to continue the rate of new nuclear power construction in the 1970s to to
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, imagine of we had stopped building fossil fuel plants in America and gone full nuclear power like France starting in the 1970's instead of getting scared away from nuclear power by the fossil fuel industry...
Or spent billions/trillions building windmills and solar farms, instead of invading Iraq and Afghanistan for 2+ decades...
We are committing the next generations to a very unpleasant future.
Promises 27 years into the future (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... I believe anybody who says they "believe" something will happen 27 years from now.
Especially politicians who only care about the outcome of the next elections.
And especially rich politcians who, like all rich people, don't share the problems of the general population and can pay to ecape the consequences of global warming entirely.
I have a dwindling pension plan and ever-increasing prospective retirement age here that tells me long-term promises made by politicians are worthless.
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Pretty impressive, actually.
Of course gains will get harder at some point so progress isn't linear. But this is not like saying something will be started and finished 27 years hence.
Re: (Score:2)
I remember seeing people running for POTUS giving their ten year plan for lowering CO2 emissions. What good is that plan if they cannot legally be in office for more than eight years? The great thing about the plan is if it all falls apart in the last two years then they can blame it on whomever followed them into office. If it works then they get to run on the lecture circuit on how they saved the world from "global heating" and the "climate crisis".
When JFK made his famous "we choose to go to the moon"
Re: (Score:2)
Easy. They say they have a plan for after their death because uh, they'll be dead by then. Set untestable goals far far far into the future and you can never be wrong or blamed for anything. Btw, vote for me if you want to see people not even born yet living under the plan I wrote on a napkin yesterday!
If you vote for me, I have a 1000 year plan to turn Earth into a paradise for everyone! How can you vote against global paradise?
Re: (Score:2)
Some things take more than 4-8 years. Are presidents just suppose to not attempt any of those things?
Global warming is still a major problem and in no way solved. We know how, but it'll take effort in both greener energy sources (including nuclear) and reducing emissions
Re: (Score:2)
Some things take more than 4-8 years. Are presidents just suppose to not attempt any of those things?
Maybe we should have candidates for POTUS that admit that they can't solve every problem in 4, 8, or 10 years. They aren't kings that can dictate every aspect of government, and even if they were kings with absolute authority over government there's still things governments, or at least the federal government, should not be doing.
A candidate for POTUS that is serious about lowering CO2 emissions will admit openly that there needs to be a 50 year plan to get to net zero carbon emissions, and the part of the
Re: (Score:2)
The global average build time for a nuclear power plant is between seven and eight years, ...
Yes, but that is only the time for building the plant, i.e. the time from when construction starts to the date when the plant produces electricity.
That omits the planing and preparatory work. If you include that, the time taken is 10-15 years according to the IAEA.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a direct reaction to a recent election result, in which the Labour Party were perceived to have been punished because the Labour Mayor of London expanded the ULEZ - Ultra Low Emissions Zone. Inside the ULEZ you have to pay to drive cars that emit a lot of CO2 and other pollutants. Most people are exempt, it's mostly ones with SUVs and commercial vehicles that aren't.
The expansion of ULEZ was actually a Conservative Party policy, they asked the mayor to do it. Voters are idiots, unfortunately.
Anyway,
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody can pay to escape the consequences of global warming.
But some people just believe they can, because they have been surfing on top of society for too long.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a dwindling pension plan and ever-increasing prospective retirement age here that tells me long-term promises made by politicians are worthless.
Retirement is not a thing most people can aspire to now. Sure, on paper, it is theoretically possible, but the reality is, most of us will work every day until we die because if we don't work, we die.
That is as it should be. Those better than us deserve to have us suffer for their pleasure. By definition, we are unworthy, because if we were worthy, we would already have consideration.
Re: (Score:2)
Retirement is not a thing most people can aspire to now
You're totally correct. I don't expect to retire.
But here's the thing: when I was young, I was promised retirement at 60 with full pension. Fortunately, I never really believed it. But the point is, the bozos in charge back then lied to an entire generation and they knew full well it would never happen. In fact, most of them are dead by now, and they also knew they wouldn't be around to take the blame when their lies would be exposed.
How do you expect people who were promised things and played the pension b
Green dreams (Score:2, Insightful)
Here in Liberal Massachusetts, some local XR nutterbutters decided today that morning rush hour was a great time to stage a protest on a busy street right by one of the main highway offramps into downtown Boston.
Their demands? A complete ban on all fossil fuel infrastructure, including natural gas hookups for buildings, power plants, pipelines, filling stations, and airport expansion projects.
How they expect people would react? I'm sure they believe they'll be welcomes as liberators. After all, being able t
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
A complete ban on all fossil fuel infrastructure, including natural gas hookups for buildings, power plants, pipelines, filling stations, and airport expansion projects.
Thing is they could just go to Haiti or Somalia for a quick check to see what it is like first. None of them have ever tasted their own dog food.
Re: (Score:3)
The ban on natural gas hookups for new construction is probably the most likely to happen. It's a good way to reduce the growth without affecting people that already have it
Re: (Score:2)
How they expect people would react?
They probably think that 99.9% of people will be angry at them, poor deluded self-destroying fucks.
They should be angry at the people destroying our biosphere, not the people insisting that we should protect our life support system. But they are too brainwashed to think that way, and too deprived of knowledge to even know who to be mad at. They turn on the news and see dozens of misleading messages about who is at fault, which are literally sponsored by the actual guilty parties using the system to distract
Net zero isn't good enough (Score:4, Insightful)
"Net zero" as a political goal is pointless and stupid. It's already far too late for that. We need to start mining CO2 from the atmosphere actively and as fast as possible. Also from the sea.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, pretty much. "Net Zero" for 2000 would habe been a good goal in 1985, when the Science was solid. Now? Forget it. But it looks like they cannot even do Net Zero 50 years too late....
Re: (Score:2)
For the same resources, which results in lower CO2 in the atmosphere: reducing the amount we put in, or extracting some out?
Re: (Score:2)
We have to do both!! Any amount we don't emit, any amount we remove from the atmosphere, same. It's not in circulation.
I'm actually in favor of using the CO2 to make syngas, which would be "net zero" if it was burned, because the technologies to mine CO2 will improve more quickly if it's a valuable product
That doesn't work (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes it requires a net energy input. Ummm use solar?
Re: (Score:2)
"Net zero" as a political goal is pointless and stupid. It's already far too late for that. We need to start mining CO2 from the atmosphere actively and as fast as possible. Also from the sea.
I agree, so we should stop paving over cropland to put up "solar farms". We'd do more to capture CO2 with other means of generating electricity and continuing to grow something on that land. Or, we could not grow crops there but let it go wild, or cultivate it into some kind of preserve, or any of a number of things far more "green" than denying the ground access to sunlight so all plant life dies and the ground turns to sand.
While growing up on the family farm I recall the machine sheds having a sand flo
Re: (Score:3)
What do people think happens to land deprived of sunlight because it's covered by solar PV panels? I know what happens, it turns to sand
Sorry, you're claiming that you grew up on a farm, but you think that fertile ground deprived of sunlight turns into sand? It sounds a lot like you don't know what sand is.
Re: (Score:2)
What do people think happens to land deprived of sunlight because it's covered by solar PV panels? I know what happens, it turns to sand.
I've been under a lot of stuff in my day, where the land was deprived of sunlight, and in no cases has the ground ever turned to sand. That's not a thing that happens. You know what does happen, though? Grass grows on sand, then it dies, and leaves sand behind. If it grows there for long enough it will both trap and degrade into soil, and then you will have sandy soil.
You saw something you didn't understand and then generalized it into a completely false principle. When you put up solar panels in a pasture
Re: (Score:3)
"Net zero" as a political goal is pointless and stupid. It's already far too late for that. We need to start mining CO2 from the atmosphere actively and as fast as possible. Also from the sea.
I have yet to see any evidence that any active CO2 sequestration method aside from planting trees is a net success. The problem is where the energy comes from to sequester the carbon, and how much is required. It seems to inevitably require so much power that producing the power with fossil fuels generates more CO2 than you would sequester. You can, of course, use renewable power for this, but that still makes little sense while plenty of power generation is still from fossil fuels. It makes more sense to p
Re: (Score:2)
Planting trees is a pretty short-term way to sequester carbon. They die, and start releasing that carbon, sooner than you would like. https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I maintain that it doesn't matter how much it costs. This is a matter of life or death. The government needs to start heavily subsidizing CO2 extraction technologies, it's the only way to kickstart it. Again, cost should NOT be a major concern here
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds great. What do we do with the CO2 once we've got it?
Re: (Score:2)
Turn it into syngas and burn it. It's a renewable resource. With a large mining industry we'll also be making it available for any organic chemistry factories which will tend to produce solids like construction materials that help remove CO2 more permanently
Re: (Score:2)
Using it for materials production would be a better plan . . . in the short term. In the long term one would have to be very careful. It is possible to have too little atmospheric CO2.
net zero by 2050... (Score:5, Insightful)
From my little understanding, the situation is so dire that even if we went "net zero"* tomorrow, we'd still be spectacularly screwed the coming decades. Yes, there are skeptics (one John Christy comes to mind) but all their counterarguments range from scientifically weak to downright lying. All metrics we see point to the ecosystem rapidly collapsing. There is no other way to phrase it. Some call me a "doomer". Maybe I am, maybe not. Maybe you somehow survive if you drive your car at120 kph into a tree. If I say "you're going to die if you continue driving 120 kph towards a tree", does that make me a "doomer"? Does it matter if it wasn't 120 kph but 115 kph?
Because as far as I understand, that's pretty much what we've been doing.
It seems to me the only hope our species has to continue living in a way that even slightly resembles today, is if the population took over all fossil fuel plants and shut them down. "But people will die, society will collapse, etc" well, yes. That is very true. That way, however, there is the possibility that in the long-term we'll recover, without fossil fuels and with the ecosystem no longer *worsening*. If we continue as we now do, not only will people again die, but the ecosystem will be even more damaged. There is no time to gradually "wean" us away from (out of?) fossil fuels. As far as I know, up until today, fossil fuel use has been monotonically increasing (smoothed curve over decades, there have been single years when fossil fuel use had actually dropped, 2008-2009, 2019-2020, only to resume increasing the next, even picking up the slack from the drop)
*: "net zero" is a term that is dangerously vague at best and downright impossible at worst.
Lord Almighty and I thought I was a doomer (Score:3, Insightful)
First things first like I said on another post everything we do buys time for the next generation. Keep in mind that human populations are going to start declining in the very near future. Basically the only country on Earth left with a positive population growth is Africa (using the term country here loosely) and li
Re:Lord Almighty and I thought I was a doomer (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand your point of view. It is a reasonable point of view. We do have solutions. We've had them for *decades*. The problem is *they are not being used*.
Warnings from specialists to start doing something were ignored, downplayed, ridiculed. They still are.
We did that 40 years ago. 30 years ago. 20 years ago. 10 years ago. We're not using them this decade: Like I said, fossil fuel use is uncontrollably increasing, but we still have 6 and a half years until 2030.
What makes you think we're gonna start using them in the future?
Because the situation will be so bad, homo sapiens-sapiens will be *forced* to do something?
Not only that, but the reaction will be the *correct* one?
To a problem that involves the single most complicated system we have ever seen, bar none and by a comically large margin?
On a planetary scale?
From a species that refused to wear a fabric mask to help a pandemic? (a few thousand tons of *plastic* medical waste yearly, by the way. Maybe those refusing to wear a mask were ecologically conscious?)
From a species that has never in its history of existence faced anything even remotely similar?
Successfully?
On the first and *only* attempt?
The ecosystem does not function on a yearly basis. It has huge, huge inertia. Not only that, but some changes are *irreversible*.
If species goes extinct, they're not coming back, and we've driven many, many species extinct already.
If farmland gets destroyed, it's not getting back.
If water becomes toxic, it's not going back.
By the time we *observe* the destruction, by *definition* it will be too late and we are *already* observing destruction. It's just not "in our face". And there is no warning shot. Once it starts, you can't hold it back.
I hope you can understand now why I say these things which seem pessimistic to others.
More is reversible than you admit (Score:2)
If farmland gets destroyed, it's not getting back.
Depend on how it is 'destroyed', but probably more reversible than you're admitting
If water becomes toxic, it's not going back.
The UK's rivers - despite the present attention to sewerage releases - are far cleaner than they were 50 years ago
https://www.countrylife.co.uk/... [countrylife.co.uk]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We've already had enough food and shelter and medicine to take care of everyone on the planet for some time now. We also have massive large-scale automation that makes it possible to allow our population to decline so long as we're willing to make sure the fruits of that automation don't wind up in the hands of only a lucky few.
And finally we can stop blowing so much money on silly ass imperialistic bullshit once Russia gets it out of their system and vladdy boy dies.
Grow up. Greed and desire for power are never going away. Build systems resistant to such things and you might just succeed... but just hoping those issues go away is a sign of an immature mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
> we'd still be spectacularly screwed the coming decades.
The problem is that some jerks have been using that fact as an argument for not doing anything.
We still have power over how much the world will be screwed. We are at risk of destroying life on Earth, not just our own sustenance.
We also have to stop looking at this problem as being only about fossil fuels. There are multiple causes of CO2:
How land is farmed. How houses and infrastructure is built. Land clearing. How cities are laid out.
We have to b
Who is surprised? Watch EU & US next. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is surprised that these empty pledges got kicked to the side when the time comes to fulfil them? It is obvious from the start that these empty pledges are only to attract votes from "green" voters. When the times get rough and actually following through would cost more votes, these targets will get postponed or abandoned.
I predict that the other net zero targets in US and EU will be similarly postponed or abandoned in the next 3-5 years.
You must be (Score:2)
new around here.
Re: (Score:3)
The UK badly needs some of these policies, and not for "green" reasons. For example, UK housing stock is some of the worst insulated in Europe. It's cold in the winter, hot in the summer. Expensive to heat, and expensive to cool.
A lot of people can't do anything about it either. Maybe they rent and their landlord doesn't care. Cost is a major problem too, for things like cavity wall insulation.
It makes complete sense for the government to intervene and help upgrade these properties. In the long run, it save
So impressive (Score:3)
These efforts to do as little as they can get away with and generally ignore the problem. With people like these, I do not think the human race ever had a chance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck with that. Belief does not change reality. It may delay reacting to reality though and that can be lethal.
A continuous function to negative passes through 0 (Score:2)
Wilful ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)
*Perhaps from the point of view of some Tory party donors, they think Sunak is doing his job well, for them at least, i.e. a tiny, obscenely wealthy & powerful minority f**king everyone else to increase their own wealth, power, & status among their peers.
Contrary to the Guardian, its not a U-turn at all. (Score:2)
The extraordinary thing is, its not a U-turn. Instead of a ban on new sales of ICE cars in 2030, now 80% will have to be EVs. This is enforced by quotas on the manufacturers. Tiny difference.
Oil boilers can now be replaced until 2035. But there are less than 4 million of them installed. Again, tiny difference.
Some hints about not being so rigorous about gas boilers (85% of UK homes) in 2035. But nothing major.
An increased subsidy for heat pumps.
Continued production of North Sea oil and gas. Inevitabl
Re: (Score:3)
Kermit kingdom. The muppets are in charge.