True enough John, however that explanation doesn’t get people into electric cars and give them a guilty conscience about flying abroad for their holidays each year. Nah, that’ll never do John.
I haven't checked the truth of the claim, but apparently there is no mechanism to prevent it, and the claim was that the energy supplied to people signed up for the green tariff exceeds the amount of energy produced by 'green' methods. The 'reduction' generated by people signed up is still added to the improvement figures though. On the tree topic, there are claims that the majority of trees planted don't survive to maturity, and many of those planted are the wrong sort, so can increase concentrations, and can have a detrimental effect on local wildlife, as they don't support the local biodiversity. There are also arguments over trees being planted on peat bogs and other areas that are actually better at absorbing carbon than the trees they're sticking on them. They're all just a few examples of people feeling good about measures that aren't actually helping at all, but they still look good on reduction figures.
It's from here, which has some other interesting stuff on it too. WARNING: If you are of the view that there's no problem, you won't like the site. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hottest-earths-ever-been
If the UK sank under the sea without trace, world c02 emissions would reduce by just 1.1%. Think about that the next time you have angst over whether an item should go in the blue or green bin.
One of my pet hates is inappropriate tree planting, time and time again i've seen it destroy a better more biodiverse wildlife habitat, the fact a lot of this tree planting usually comes from conservation groups leaves a lot to be desired. As far as the Climate stuff it's just like Covid all over again, the gaslighting, fear mongering and outright lies from the media.
The attempts to dismiss anyone that raises questions on the topic is fuel[sic] for conspiracy theorists, and it's not helped by some official reports not using the scientific data in the manner it was produced for. The IPCC reports themselves have been guilty of this. Science is never 'settled' it's always just the nearest to reality that current knowledge enables, and questioning is part of the scientific process, and how progress is made. There are also issues with silo mentalities which encourage people to avoid taking a holistic view, which should include an assessment of how many lives have been saved and extended from the use of fossil fuels when assessing the risk. Until we have a realistic, low cost, energy dense alternative, there could be investment in cleaning up fuels and engines in the short term. There are far to many measures being pushed, with claims they'll resolve the situation that have yet to be proven or have pretty much failed wherever they've been tried, and some measures just seem to have been ill-conceived, for example the rush to end ICE's mean that manufacturers understandably cut right back on investing in cleaning them up, so by the time we get to 2030, there are going to be a lot of cars on the road that are in effect 20 year old technology, and for at least a decade after they'll be kicking out more than could have been the case with a more sensible approach. You'd think that with all the money and conversation involved, there's be an exemplar town created, just to show how it can all work in reality. It'd be near on impossible to argue against a working proof, especially as if it worked, it would demonstrate the claims of free/low cost reliable energy too.
I think one thing that stops people getting more worked up about the situation, at least here in the U.K, is that many would like to see it get a fair bit warmer before we start slowing things down.
After standing in the rain and mud for 6/7 hours at the tramline’s festival yesterday I could be one of them. Then probably not now I’m dry.
I suspect that the cost is also a bit of stumbling block to governments and the voters, with the governments own figures, which were largely felt to be optimistic, and relying on every measure being right first time as being around £1.4 trillion. This is offset by what are felt to be equally optimistic figures for how much will be clawed back. It's one thing to ask if people are in favour of cleaning the environment, but it's not often asked how much they'd pay to do it. https://www.ft.com/content/b02b9d51-3e0c-435c-9b53-774ee12ea277
There are some so called renewables that are not really green, especially eco fuels. The only one that’s truly green is electricity generated from the Earths elements, wind, sun, wave etc. but we have the capability to switch over to that pretty easily. They are not cheap to set up, but once in production, they are very cheap to run compared to using fossil fuels. They absolutely are a credible option right now. Any good business manager would say “don’t just come with a problem, bring a solution too”. So here are some examples of renewables that could be sorted right now, but we hardly harness: - Solar panels on roofs of houses and cars. I’m not sure about the viability of the latter, but it seems bloody obvious and I don’t understand why it isn’t used. Even if it adds 3-4 k onto the cost of a car, it would pay for itself pretty quickly. Every house roof should have one. I know there are questions about recycling solar panels, but that’s just small parts of the over all mechanism and some investment would sort this pretty quickly. Any waste would be a drop in the ocean compared to the plastics we throw away all the time. - Wind turbines in place of electricity pylons. Cannot argue about the aesthetics. - Hydroelectric dams. These can be used as giant batteries in the event that stagnant weather restricts the power generated from other sources. - Tidal and wave power. We have one of the best potentials in the world for both. Tidal is especially reliable! - Insulation. We throw away masses of British wool that could be used. There are some downsides to each of the above - they usually cause temp damage to the environment during production, but their net benefit far outweighs any downsides.
There are massive downsides relating to cost, the environment, reliability and availability with all of those options you mention, and a switch over is proving very difficult as the infrastructure is inadequate for what we currently have, never mind what it would need to be if all of that switched. They also require a meaningful storage capacity, which doesn't currently exist, so they need a reliable back up supply, which is currently achieved using traditional methods operating below optimum which increases the running costs and emissions.
We don’t throw away British wool, it’s doubled in price in the last couple of years and we’re a major exporter again (around 60% of it goes to China).
The sheep farmers are still moaning, some have had to wait two years to get paid, one paid 200 quid for the shearing and got 116 for the wool, plenty are talking of burning it or chucking it on the muck heap. From a farming forum, I have no knowledge of sheep farming.
