Why we need "Net zero"

[BotusBuild]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

I suspect you give him too much credit for strategic thinking. 

 

But some of his courtiers are probably thinking along those lines. 

 

 

Perhaps should have said "The Orange Clown (TOC) and the US Elite". There is a pattern of the US "invading" oil producing nations.

 

It's just that TOC is prepared to make things happen irrespective of non-US points of view, and even of his own population (80% + against taking control of Greenland in a recent survey referenced on one of the satirical US shows).

 

{Bunkering down}

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, BotusBuild said:

We need to get the nuclear and renewables online ASAP

Nuclear has been holding back the UK electricity new build.

There is a 'hope' that it will be cheaper and built faster. That hope is used against the renewables industry.

We should, and can, deploy wind and solar at the megawatt scale today, and cheaper than nuclear.

It is really our ludicrously slow planning system that is holding us up.

I think I read about the Anglesea nuclear replacement being approved. There was a clause for a 95 year decommissioning period at the end of life.

95 years for (expletive deleted)s sake. What are people thinking.

[Big Jimbo]

My son in law works for a British, French, Belgium Company, that designs and manufacturers, and maintains weapons, missiles, including nukes. They do use a lot of American software, and hardware, and have begun designing this out. That makes a lot of sense to me. I hope we do have the ability to up our UK skill level. If we need a lighter, or a box of matches to make fire. We are buggered. The reason he says that they are moving away from US components, is that worlds buyers no longer trust the US, and want weapons that do not rely on either the US or China. He says that he doubts that the US will ever get the trust back. I'm sure that will have implications for them in the coming years. As he said, when he was in a previous industry, they used to send stuff to China to be produced because it was cheap. They used to basically steal all the R and D and re-badge it as there own technology. We still to this day, educate there people in our universities, to allow them to go home, and have the skills to do exactly that. America, is heading in the same direction. Can't be trusted, and thought of in the same way as China in the future.

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

I hope we do have the ability to up our UK skill level

Not sure it is the skill level that is missing.

Think it is the capital investment in new plant and machinery that is missing.

We have many companies that barely make any money, and revenue is often used to pay director's bonuses and pensions. These are know as Zombie Companies. While running a zombie company can be good for the major shareholders, it (expletive deleted)s better investment opportunities and crucified industrial sector investment.

I am coming to the conclusion I work for a zombie company.

[Big Jimbo]

well as i am currently drilling deeply down into my fabric, and ventilation heat losses @SteamyTea . After completing my part "O". I am going to consider myself very skilled, but only when i get it bloody completed. I could murder a Kebab, or a bloody good burger, as my brian is currently using energy at a rapid rate.

Edited 8 hours ago by Big Jimbo

[-rick-]

Financialisation as well. ie, companies (and the government) focusing on maximizing the next set of financial returns rather than long term plans.

 

Been reading a lot of criticism of this recently focussed on our large financial sector dominating the discussions that leads to cutting longer term investments for the short term returns. It's obviously something that happens everywhere but is a particular issue here. If companies aren't doing well then they have a difficult situation but this financial focus means that there isn't the focus of getting out of the hole, just making the best of the current situation.

 

In terms of government we seem to have had repeated attempts to set up long term planning, investment in capabilities (that will only pay off with continued investment/projects) only for those future projects to be cancelled and all the investment ploughed into the capacity being wasted (with other countries going to hire the engineers we expensively trained).

Edited 8 hours ago by -rick-

[SteamyTea]

33 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

could murder a Kebab, or a bloody good burger, as my brian is currently using energy at a rapid rate.

Is Brian that hard to work with.

More usual to murder an Indian or a Chinese when hungry.

Seems a bit extreme to me, but each to their own.

[Spinny]

Sorry Beelbeebub, but you have some daft self contradictory arguments here...

 

It is the mad Millipede and the extreme net zero nutters that are actually greatly responsible for UK dependence on oil & gas from overseas - because they have spent the last 10-20 years stopping all uk fossil fuel production. You cannot then argue that the UK should go net zero because it depends on overseas oil and gas and that is a security issue. You are in the land of the madman there.

 

The UK probably has plenty of fossil fuels on and around it's own shores that would provide energy independence for an awful long time. In case you were not born then the UK shut down it's coal mines in the 1980's. There is more gas and oil around our coast, ample coal reserves, and then there is fracking. Also worth remembering that at some point mankind will master fusion power anyway. The UK has very very foolishly done away with its gas storage facilities.

 

You also claim one nearly 80 year old man aka Trump, will hold the UK as an LNG energy hostage in the same way Putin was doing with Europe. Trump will be gone in 3 years, may become powerless after the mid terms, why would any nation take the slightest bit of notice of Trump when planning for energy security for the next century.

 

(PS There is no definitive scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change of course. Many people are unfortunately making a good living touring the world on jet planes and cranking out unscientific lies and misinformation that the world will end if we don't stop cows farting, and blaming every flood or fire (which we have always had) on carbon dioxide. It is nonsense and the wheels are already beginning to fall off the band wagon.)

 

The way to energy security is a diversified energy infrastructure using multiple sources, not a self righteous dependence on 100% renewables only. Technology will render many of today's solutions obsolete within a decade or two anyway. The world is only just beginning on engineered proteins for example.

 

So nothing wrong with building energy efficient homes or using alternative energy sources, but let's not kid ourselves with net zero extremism.

[SteamyTea]

17 minutes ago, Spinny said:

There is no definitive scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change of course

Have you a published and peer reviewed academic paper published, or an even better source for your assumptions?

[Roger440]

43 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Have you a published and peer reviewed academic paper published, or an even better source for your assumptions?

 

Are those the "peers" that get paid to support a conclusion. And dont get paid if they dont.

[Beelbeebub]

1 hour ago, Spinny said:

The UK probably has plenty of fossil fuels on and around it's own shores that would provide energy independence for an awful long time. In case you were not born then the UK shut down it's coal mines in the 1980's. There is more gas and oil around our coast, ample coal reserves, and then there is fracking. Also worth remembering that at some point mankind will master fusion power anyway. The UK has very very foolishly done away with its gas storage facilities.

Thank you for proving my point 

 

It is a common misconception amongst people such as yourselves that the UK could achive energy independence if only the "greens" would let us drill for more oil and gas. 

 

In case you misread my OP the oil and gas industry itself is predicting production will fall even with no restrictions on drilling. 

 

Let's take the "Rosebank" field, described as the Uk's largest undeveloped oil and gas field. At it's peak, it's owners predict it will produce in excess of 21 MMSCF of natural gas every day, which sounds impressive until you realise that is about as much as Aberdeen uses per day. That won't make a dent in our imports.

 

There is no way the UK can pull enough oil and gas out of it's territory to satisfy it's current demand for oil and gas 

 

That is the considered opinion of all the experts including oil and gas industry. 

 

So the only option is to reduce our consumption of oil and gas via things like efficency, reducing journeys by car, electrification of heat and transport. 

 

All the "Net zero" things but not for environmental reasons, for purely pragmatic reasons. 

 

As for coal, let us assume, for a moment that there are near unlimited coal reserves available to the UK. How do you propose we heat our homes and drive out cars on coal? Go back to coal cellars, and a fire in every room? Rip out out combi boilers for solid fuel boilers? And as for cars.... If you think EV's have too short a range and take too long to charge, wait until you try steam cars! 😁 

 

If you genuinely think the future of UK energy is coal you should be cheering for EVs and pushing for the adoption of Heatpumps alongside the blue haired vegan tree huggers. 

 

It's not your fault. The oil and gas companies have a well funded disinformation and lobbying campaign for keeping the UK hooked on oil and gas.

 

After all, drug dealers aren't going to help you kick the habit - not when there are vast profits to be made.

 

 

[Beelbeebub]

2 hours ago, Spinny said:

You also claim one nearly 80 year old man aka Trump, will hold the UK as an LNG energy hostage in the same way Putin was doing with Europe. Trump will be gone in 3 years, may become powerless after the mid terms, why would any nation take the slightest bit of notice of Trump when planning for energy security for the next century.

Trump may keel over tomorrow. 

 

But that is to miss the point. 

 

The fact that he has been allowed to drive a coach and horses through the old world order, threatening economic and military force to take over Iceland/Greenland with no pushback from the much vaunted "checks and balances" of the US constitution is the problem. 

 

He has shown that the institutions that were supposed to keep any madman in check are toothless. 

 

The US can no longer be considered a reliable partner. We are just one suoreme court appointment, one special election away from everything being thrown up in the air. 

 

I can't remember the source of the quote but "we cannot base our security and prosperity on some voters in Florida every 4 years" 

 

 

[Beelbeebub]

2 hours ago, Spinny said:

There is no definitive scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change of course. Many people are unfortunately making a good living touring the world on jet planes and cranking out unscientific lies and misinformation

Aside from my point that "Net zero" policies are neccesary from a security perspective regardless of climate change, I should point out that the people along money from touring the world on jet planes cranking out unscientific lies are the climate change deniers. 

 

Have a look how much climate scientists earn and then look how much the scientists who zip about denying climate change are paid. 

[RedRhino]

We demolished a house to get a building plot. As a result there was already a gas supply but we chose to have it disconnected in the street. 

Our reasons were: 

Increased insulation means heating loads are small

Solar panels can heat DHW for 2/3 of the year meaning the heat demand is zero - the gas standing charge (something for nothing) is galling

As fewer people subscribe to gas heating, the cost of the network is going to be carried by fewer and fewer consumers - best get out early

 

In contrast our ASHP + solar + battery performs very well without emissions or fossil fuel dependency

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Roger440 said:

Are those the "peers" that get paid to support a conclusion. And dont get paid if they dont.

Not how academic peer reviewing works.

Rogue reviewers soon get found out, and the consequences are usually pretty severe.

There is a big difference between science (as in the method) and opinion.  Opinion is not science, it is just thoughts.

Worth studying Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend and how they differed in their approach to quantum physics.  It is heavy going philosophy but put the scientific method on a firmer footing.

If an opinion is said, heard or quoted, assume that there has been no experiments, data collected, analysis and reviewing.  An opinion is not science so cannot be falsified.

[SteamyTea]

18 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

wait until you try steam cars

Cough

SASOL

 

[Beelbeebub]

10 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Cough

SASOL

 

I was being facetious, but on a serious note coal derived fuels are more expensive and there is a serious bottleneck in terms of production facilities 

 

We woikd also need around 100milliom tons of coal per year - a level we haven't seen since the 80's when something happened to the mining industry 

 

You would need to argue that restarting the uk coal industry (good luck getting Gen Z down the pits - though they do love Minecraft so maybe not! 😁) and building the largest conversion facility in the world  from scratch, twice, is cheaper than upgrading our grid, increacing renewables (and nuclear) and switching to EVs

 

 

[Spinny]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Have you a published and peer reviewed academic paper published, or an even better source for your assumptions?

I don't need to cite a paper to disprove something. Anthropogenic driven climate change through emmissions of carbon dioxide is a hypothesis which has not been scientifically proven. There are no papers that prove it occurs. All we have is a claimed correlation over 50-100 years between industrialisation and global CO2 emmissions and some average global temperatures. 50-100 years is a short time period - there are plenty of climate variations with no industrialisation - the romans grew grapes in england. It is a theory and correlation is not necessarily causation. Many models are built and used where CO2 driven warming is assumed as input and therefore produce warming output. There are alternative theories and many doubting and questioning scientists that are frequently censored, blocked, and cancelled. Others use their wealth to promote the theory by paying journalists to write anthropogenic climate change propaganda. That doesn't mean it is wrong, but it is certainly unproven and has very considerable doubt and uncertainty.

 

Unfortunately many people do not understand how science works, many people are unable to cope with things being uncertain, many people are content to watch BBC climate propaganda without questioning it, many people want to make political capital out of it, or to make money off the back of it.

 

It is very wrong to be tearing up the UK economy and finances as though it is a climate emergency when it is not. If we get some perspective we can think of many things that we were told 20 years ago would be upon us but are not - from polar bears dying out, coral reefs being no more, the sea lapping at the ankles of the statue of liberty, the earth ''boiling'', the polar ice retreating opening up the arctic seas - none of which has occurred.

 

In the internet age nothing sells like fear, every other piece of clickbait is a scare story. 

 

[jack]

21 hours ago, Beelbeebub said:

Note that China only has the lead in these areas because the UK and Europe have dragged their feet - witness cars, thr legacy automakers pissed around with various campaigns against EVs rather than knuckling down and transitioning. 

 

Most western car companies have been (pardon the analogy) asleep at the wheel.

Look at the Top Gear episode from around 2012 where they visited China and ripped the piss out of what was being made over there. To be fair, much of it was dreadful, but I remember reading an article from probably that time plus or minus a couple of years where car experts opined that the Chinese wouldn't be able to replicate the complexity of existing supply chains etc in less than a couple of decades. They also said that China were too far behind in metallurgy to make good quality ICE engines. 

 

It's quite extraordinary how wrong they were. The Chinese have addressed the supply chains and metallurgy issues in short order, plus focused on EVs where the component count is much lower and the need for super high spec materials and machining is reduced in any event. 

[SteamyTea]

13 minutes ago, Spinny said:

Unfortunately many people do not understand how science works

You are one of them.

I don't know your educational background, it is not Physics.

There is a scientific reason that seemingly small rises in atmospheric can have a disproportionate effect on global temperatures.

There is also research that shows global temperatures going going back 1.2 million years. Is that long enough for you.

Anthropogenic climate change is happening, whether you wish to believe it or not.

 

[Onoff]

I read that as polar bears drying out! 

[Spinny]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Not how academic peer reviewing works.

Rogue reviewers soon get found out, and the consequences are usually pretty severe.

If only that were still true. In today's world academics get monitored and ranked by papers published and citations. Lots of junk journals and journals with biased editors etc. Academics can often engage in mutual back scratching, reviewing, citing, and naming each other on papers for mutual advantage.

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, jack said:

Look at the Top Gear episode from around 2012 where they visited China and ripped the piss out of what was being made over there

Same episode that pointed out that in a few years they would be the world leaders.

Did BMW, Toyota etc all really think that the only benefit was to themselves. Be interesting to find out how much they have invested in Chinese companies that make car parts or assemble cars, similar to what the Japanese did in the UK car market in the 1990s.

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, Spinny said:

only that were still true. In today's world academics get monitored and ranked by papers published and citations

Shall pop your comments into the conspiracy theory bin.

[Beelbeebub]

I have a load of old motorcycle magazines. From the 50's and 60's.  About when the first Japanese bikes appeared in the UK. 

 

Every single review basically commented how the bikes started reliably, didn't leak oil, handled well, were smooth and powerful, excellent value etc and basically superior on every way to the offerings of BSA, Norton, Triumph etc. 

 

And every single review ended with something along the lines... "of course no real motorcyclist would choose this over a thoughbred british sports bike" 

 

And thus died the British motorcycle industry. 

 

Europe risks the same. 

 

That said there are some "green shoots".  The manufacturers are starting to churn out the volume everyday cars that people actually drive and buy at prices reaching parity or even cheaper than ICE cars.