Why we need "Net zero"

[Beelbeebub]

42 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Trouble is the environmental activists, demonstrate, with their plastic tents, plastic drinks bottles, fleece jackets, nylon ropes, and don't understand all that vanishes with no oil

Ah this old chestnut..... 

 

Fossil fuels are absolutely vital to modern life for all thr reasons you just mentioned and many more. 

 

Which is why it is daft to burn the stuff when we don't need to. 

 

Imagine you were a furniture maker and luckily had a nice forest of trees ideally suited for all sorts of furniture projects. It wasn't a huge forest but, if you used it just for making wooden things it would be sufficient and you could trade some of your wood for other wood when you needed a specific wood you didn't have. 

 

Now do you heat your workshop with a wood fire, cutting down perfectly usable trees to do so? Do you generate the electricity for your workshop with a wood powered generator? All the whole consuming that valuable resource at a rate that will.empty the forest in less than a decade? Or do you use wind and solar etc to do that, only burning some of your valuable wood over the few winter weeks where the suns nd wind are insufficient, so you can make that resource that you cannot make furniture without last longer? 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Beelbeebub

[JohnMo]

3 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

Ah this old chestnut..... 

 

Fossil fuels are absolutely vital to modern life for all thr reasons you just mentioned and many more. 

 

Which is why it is daft to burn the stuff when we don't need to. 

 

Imagine you were a furniture maker and luckily had a nice forest of trees ideally suited for all sorts of furniture projects. It wasn't a huge forest but, if you used it just for making wooden things it would be sufficient and you could trade some of your wood for other wood when you needed a specific wood you didn't have. 

 

Now do you heat your workshop with a wood fire, cutting down perfectly usable trees to do so? Do you generate the electricity for your workshop with a wood powered generator? All the whole consuming that valuable resource at a rate that will.empty the forest in less than a decade? Or do you use wind and solar etc to do that, only burning some of your valuable wood over the few winter weeks where the suns nd wind are insufficient, so you can make that resource that you cannot make furniture without last longer? 

Are you not just arguing for the sake if it? No one one says (well maybe a few some ill informed are) that we must stick with hydrocarbon energy sources. NIMBY's are complaining about anything and everything, even if happens 20 miles from them.

 

If we can get all our energy from renewables (which doesn't include nuclear) let's fill our boots. Distribution of said electric needs to happen, more NIMBY action there. In the time to bring renewables on line oil/gas needs to back fill. All very simple. 

[Beelbeebub]

21 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Are you not just arguing for the sake if it? No one one says (well maybe a few some ill informed are) that we must stick with hydrocarbon energy sources. NIMBY's are complaining about anything and everything, even if happens 20 miles from them.

 

If we can get all our energy from renewables (which doesn't include nuclear) let's fill our boots. Distribution of said electric needs to happen, more NIMBY action there. In the time to bring renewables on line oil/gas needs to back fill. All very simple. 

More or less, yes to all that. 

 

The central point is that the UK is a waning FF producer because of geology and not any policy. There is no reversing that. No "give more tax credits" or "allow more drilling" that will increace FF production. 

 

The NIMBY's often come up with reasons to be against the various things we need to do. One of those reasons is "claimed change/net zero is a scam, we have plenty of fossil fuels of our lefty government would just let us drill" - that is bollocks. 

 

Of course there are other nimby reasons - "thousands of birds will die", "the view", "rare snail/newt/bat once was seen here", "my house price!" 

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

thousands of birds will die

And domestic cats kill way more - every year. But no-one complains about that. Don't here any slogans "stop the wind farm and neuter/ban all cats"

[Beelbeebub]

23 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

And domestic cats kill way more - every year. But no-one complains about that. Don't here any slogans "stop the wind farm and neuter/ban all cats"

Exactly. 

 

And don't forget the poor whales driven deaf by offshore wind turbines...... 😁 

 

(Scotland should greenlight an even bigger windfarm offshore a certain golf course and onshore all around it.....) 

[Roger440]

3 hours ago, Beelbeebub said:

Not for the individual with the PV. My January bill is looking to be about about half what it would have been otherwise and I'm expecting to drop to zero sometime in March before becoming cash positive.  So from my perspective it's lowered my prices. 

 

And the fact that my demand from the.grid has been lower will (ever so slightly) lower prices for those still fully on grid due to lower demand. 

 

You are clutching at straws now. Stop being ridiculous. You cannot possibly argue that prices have come because you have fitted PV. You know full well that not what i mean, or any of the debate, at any level, has been about.

[Mattg4321]

Half the problem is the debate at national level is binary. 
 

One side is renewables are great, shut everything else down asap, we don’t need it and the planet is ‘on fire’. 
 

The other is don’t bother with renewables, keep burning FF. 

 

Both are idiotic. I just want the lowest price energy possible. I definitely care about air quality and pollution. I admit that I don’t worry about co2 emissions very much at all. We can’t do anything about it in the U.K. anyway, so I don’t want to be impoverished via virtue signalling. 
 

I read today that the government are thinking of forcing blast furnaces producing steel to buy carbon credits on the open market. Currently they effectively get a free pass. Scunthorpe is already losing £1M a day! We obviously need the ability to make virgin steel from a national security pov. Are they insane? I sometimes wonder…

[Roger440]

1 minute ago, Mattg4321 said:

Half the problem is the debate at national level is binary. 
 

One side is renewables are great, shut everything else down asap, we don’t need it and the planet is ‘on fire’. 
 

The other is don’t bother with renewables, keep burning FF. 

 

Both are idiotic. I just want the lowest price energy possible. I definitely care about air quality and pollution. I admit that I don’t worry about co2 emissions very much at all. We can’t do anything about it in the U.K. anyway, so I don’t want to be impoverished via virtue signalling. 
 

I read today that the government are thinking of forcing blast furnaces producing steel to buy carbon credits on the open market. Currently they effectively get a free pass. Scunthorpe is already losing £1M a day! We obviously need the ability to make virgin steel from a national security pov. Are they insane? I sometimes wonder…

Insane? No. Either making lots of money or fully paid up members of the cult.

[Roger440]

3 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Are you not just arguing for the sake if it?

 

Certainly seems like it. Similar threads, posted reeguarly, all of which lead to exactly the same debate every time. 

[Mattg4321]

1 minute ago, Roger440 said:

Insane? No. Either making lots of money or fully paid up members of the cult.

It’s a bit like giving away Chagos and paying billions to lease it back. Total madness. These people should be removed from their posts immediately for that sort of treasonous behaviour. 
 

The only thing that makes sense is the elites wanting to virtue signal on the world stage or personal monetary gain. There’s no other explanation for half this madness. 

[Roger440]

3 hours ago, Beelbeebub said:

We're these news articles from sources like the telegraph, times, express, mail? They have a tendency to put the most negative spin on stuff eg quoting costs and not savings 

 

"will add £140 to each bill!!" - neglecting the saving element which reduces that to £30 net and so on.

 

And the £400 figure would be if the entire £13bn was split evenly amongst all households and then charge in one year.-again not waht woukd happen even if it was being added to bills. 

 

So you brandish comments like "Ed added £300 to everyones bill last week!" 

 

When actually you mean

 

"I don't know it it's going on bills but if it did and it was all charged on one year then it would be £300"

 

Incidentally there is good eveidnce not all of the 13bn, if any, is going on bills because some of that is on thr form of 0% loans over several years.  That means the money is paid back so thr government only needs to back the loans not actually pay out. The eventual cost woikd be defaults and interest which won't be all of thr loaned out figure. 

 

Truth is, detail is sparse, beyond it being £13bn of taxpayer money, to try and micromanage people and their homes.  The result, as always with such schemes will be a disaster, grant havesters ride into the sunset with bags of cash, and the taxpayer gets to pay to sort out the mess. Thats barely got started on the ECO4 nonsense, the remedial costs of which will doubtless run into billions.

 

But whatever the detail, it wont reduce the price of electricity, and will, almost certainly, increase it. I dont find it credible to believe Ed has extract an extra £13bn of funding from the tresuary.

[Roger440]

3 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

It’s a bit like giving away Chagos and paying billions to lease it back. Total madness. These people should be removed from their posts immediately for that sort of treasonous behaviour. 
 

The only thing that makes sense is the elites wanting to virtue signal on the world stage or personal monetary gain. There’s no other explanation for half this madness. 

 

That particular one is personal monetary gain. Thats obvious with only a small amount of digging. But, sadly, thats the world we are in now. 

 

In any sensible world, they would all be in prison.

[Beelbeebub]

Chaos is off topic but my understanding is thr Uk's claim is legally poor - various international courts have found against the UK,so it was always likely that we would struggle to hold onto them.

 

The current scheme, as thought up by thr last government and endorsed by the US assures the UK (and US) foothold in the region. 

 

I don't personally like it, I suspect it was done more to curry favour with the US, which is proving to be a pointless waste of time now. But there we go. 

[Beelbeebub]

56 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

Half the problem is the debate at national level is binary.

Very much so

56 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

One side is renewables are great, shut everything else down asap, we don’t need it and the planet is ‘on fire’. 
 

The other is don’t bother with renewables, keep burning FF.

Yes and I would say the idea we can exist without any fossil fuels for either feedstocks or energy (at least I the near to medium term) is as fanciful as ditching all renewables to burn fossil fuels like it's 1980. Just as a very simple example, aviation is not going to get off fossil fuels for quite some time

 

59 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

. I just want the lowest price energy possible. I definitely care about air quality and pollution. I admit that I don’t worry about co2 emissions very much at all. We can’t do anything about it in the U.K. anyway, so I don’t want to be impoverished via virtue signalling

I would caveat that with lowest price over time, not just today and tomorrow and that there are some external factors like air quality, environmental protection etc. which make paying a little more for energy worth it. 

 

It doesn't matter what your view on co2 is - none of my argument for reducing demand and reducing our reliance on FF for certain sectors relies on carbon emissions or climate. 

 

Failing to do the above will impoverish us more in the long (and medium) run, it's not virtue signalling 

1 hour ago, Mattg4321 said:

read today that the government are thinking of forcing blast furnaces producing steel to buy carbon credits on the open market. Currently they effectively get a free pass. Scunthorpe is already losing £1M a day! We obviously need the ability to make virgin steel from a national security pov. Are they insane? I sometimes wonder

I don't think we habe any left do we? Unless that last one that was in the news is still on life support?

 

But longer term electric furnaces are better suited to the UK. The FF ones need to be kept firing continuously for years at a time,which means your steel output needs to be bought and put steel demand in thr UK isn't that continuous. Which makes the plants that need to keep running difficult to manage. 

 

Electric furnaces can start and stop more easily and run on thr cheap excess electricity at night etc. Especially wind - our electric price can go negative at times.  Imagine how competitive hour steel making could be if you could do it with zero cost energy. 

 

Again, we need to invest now to reap the rewards later - something the UK has conspicuouy failed to do for Decades because of a "but we want it as cheap as possible now" mindset. 

[saveasteading]

1 hour ago, Mattg4321 said:

like giving away Chagos

getting seriously off topic...

[SteamyTea]

What sleep scientists recommend doing to fall asleep more easily

Helping yourself get to sleep isn’t just about avoiding screens before bedtime. From cognitive shuffling to sleep-restriction therapy, columnist Helen Thomson finds out what actually works

By Helen Thomson

26 June 2025

A restless mind is one of the most common barriers to sleep

Andrii Lysenko/Getty Images

 

Perhaps it’s age or the hot weather, but sleep is becoming a rare commodity in my household. Between my husband’s insomnia, my children’s high spirits and my racing mind, it feels as if our nights are often as lively as our days. As my social media feed started serving up videos of people recommending a technique called “cognitive shuffling” for drifting off to sleep, I wondered if it really worked and, if not, whether there were any other cognitive tricks I could use instead.

One of the most common barriers to good sleep is a restless mind, and this is what cognitive shuffling tries to help with. Luc Beaudoin at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, developed the technique as a way of steering your attention away from spiralling thoughts and worries before bed.

How to do cognitive shuffling

The idea is simple: choose a random word, let’s say “plonk”, then try to think of all the words you can conjure using each of its letters. Plimsol, puma, prize… lion, lemon, levitate… and so on. As each word comes to mind, spend time picturing it – a process that mimics the spontaneous images characteristic of the “hypnogogic state”, that transient period between wakefulness and sleep.

 

 

Good sleepers often report imagery in the form of hallucinations before sleep, whereas bad sleepers report planning and problem solving, says Sophie Bostock, a doctor and sleep consultant. “It’s not that we need to make the mind blank (and in fact, that can be counter-productive), but we do want to steer it away from anything too logical,” she says.

Cognitive shuffling seems to promote this more fluid way of thinking. In a small study of 154 students who reported problems with “pre-sleep arousal”, it did indeed help them reduce the time it took to get to sleep.

Your science-backed guide to the easy habits that will help you sleep well, stress less, eat smarter and age better.

That said, there is no gold-standard research on cognitive shuffling – or, for that matter, any direct comparisons of bedtime cognitive techniques discussed in the scientific literature, something Beaudoin himself acknowledged to me.

So instead, I turned to some of the world’s best sleep scientists to ask what they would recommend to someone hoping to quieten their mind at night.

What works for insomnia

Kevin Morgan, who established the Clinical Sleep Research Unit at Loughborough University, UK, pointed me straight in the direction of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBTI). “CBTI is the internationally recommended, evidence-based first line treatment for insomnia disorder,” he says.

This therapy works by teaching you how to control intrusive thoughts, which would otherwise elevate cognitive arousal (mental alertness) and increase levels of hormones like adrenaline, interfering with the normal process of sleep. CBTI also tackles other aspects of insomnia from a variety of angles, such as helping people conquer their nerves around their lack of sleep or teaching them meditation techniques.

 

While effective, CBTI takes around six to eight weeks to learn, so it has a high dropout rate.

Nevertheless, elements of CBTI may be useful on their own. For instance, a 2021 randomised controlled trial showed that a popular meditation app can improve depression and anxiety in people with sleep disturbance, with the effects driven by improvements in pre-sleep arousal.

Morgan says the component of CBTI that appears to have the largest effect is sleep-restriction therapy. This counterintuitive-sounding technique, which involves trying to get the number of hours spent in bed as close to the number of hours spent asleep as possible, “has proved very effective”, he says.

 

This was similar to the advice I received from Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford. The thing to remember, he tells me, is that you can’t get to sleep. “No one can or ever has,” he says. “You can only fall asleep. It’s an involuntary behaviour that happens to us, and for us, but not by us. So go to bed when you feel ‘sleepy tired’ and not before. Let sleep come to you.”

Create a sleep sanctuary

Another easy tip to enact is something several people advised: make sure your room is a sleep sanctuary. “A sleep-friendly space is critical,” says Joseph Dzierzewski, senior vice president of research and scientific affairs at the US National Sleep Foundation. Others concurred. “The single most important recommendation is to develop a bedroom that is conducive to sleep – cool, dark, quiet and uncluttered,” says Emerson Wickwire, head of sleep medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Of course, several people pointed out that you should avoid screens before bed – the blue light from them can suppress melatonin production and mess with our circadian rhythms, making it harder to sleep and giving your mind more time to start thinking. But Dzierzewski points out that consuming stimulating content, like the news or social media, before bedtime is also emotionally arousing, which could stimulate an anxious mind. “Unfortunately, more than half of Americans say they look at screens within an hour of bedtime or in bed before sleep,” he says.

Something I might try with my kids is the practice of gratitude, recommended by Bostock, who points to research showing its effectiveness for helping improve pre-sleep worries. “It’s very difficult to feel grateful and stressed at the same time,” she says.

 

Perhaps the best advice I received wasn’t a tip or trick to silence our collective thoughts at night, but a simple reminder to take the problem seriously. Many experts, including Aparajitha Verma, a neurologist specialising in sleep medicine at UTHealth Houston in Texas, emphasised the importance of prioritising sleep. Morgan also made it clear that anyone with insomnia “should seek professional help and engage with a recommended programme of treatment ASAP”.

Chronic poor sleep is linked with increased risk of dementia, type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease and even some cancers. That itself is enough to keep you awake at night. As is the thought of “uncluttering” my kids’ room. But it’s something I’ll be putting to the top of my to-do list as a matter of urgency – hopefully it’s a good first step towards a quiet night’s rest for all of us.