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Clark, do you think our world environment or our U.K. economy or our self worth will improve if we delude ourselves about Carbon Zero.
We have almost stopped mining Coal in the U.K. but we have 300 plus years of Coal resource left. We now only make 1%-2% of the U.K. Electricity from Coal. We no longer use Coal to drive our Railways. We no longer use Coal to make Methane. We are closing down our Indigenous Steel Industry, this apparently because we now hate Coal, yet we will buy Steel from India or China or U.S.A. that is made using Coal? We apparently have an ambition to make 50% of our Electricity with wind by 2050. These wind turbines use rather a lot of steel, especially the big ones.
The Labour Party have promised hundreds of thousands of new green jobs.
It does not look like Steel will be part of this mix, yet you need lots of Steel to make Wind Turbine, lots of Steel to make Nuclear Power Stations, lots of Steel to make Pumped Hydro. You also will need a lot of Steel to grow out the Grid by four of five times. Shutting down our own Steel Industry is complete lunacy, we are supposed to be one of the world’s largest economy, without a Steel Industry. How will we make shells fore the guns, there are war drums beating across Europe? Concrete is made from Limestone. Lots of Concrete will be needed in the Brave New World. Anybody worked out how much Carbon will be returned to the atmosphere if we go one hundred percent Electric?Elon Musk is possibly the biggest scamster in history.
He probably has no worries about the mining to gain resources to make battery cars.
Possibly there will never be more than a few percent of people on the Earth who could afford a battery vehicle.
I wouldn’t mind betting the same people who buy battery vehicles are the same ones who fly multiple times in their lives, whilst paying no tax on their aviation fuel, no road tax on their battery cars. They are living the life.
Does anybody care about the ludicrous volume of rocks that have to be blown up crushed, moved and processed just to make battery cars? Do they care about the contaminated water? Do they care about the local population who have their environment degraded?
I guess the answer is no, they don’t even consider these downsides.CLARK
“AG, sorry; what are NNPPs?”
yeah, ask my keyboard… of course it´s supposed to be NPP – nuclear power plant.
(Don´t know why. The computer heats up. Messes with the keyboard apparently. I am having these issues more often now…)
sry. [ Mod: yet another odd abbreviation – does your keyboard make you skip letters as well? ]Glenn, the article you linked is disingenuous. Did you read this: How to Escape From the Iron Age?
From it: “The solution seems obvious: let’s produce all that steel in electric arc furnaces. However, this is impossible. There’s not enough scrap available: the continuous growth of the global steel output makes a circular flow of resources impossible. It takes decades before most steel becomes available for recycling.”
Michael, I don’t believe anyone is helped by being deluded about anything.
Thatcher began the deindustrialisation of the UK, probably to break the power of the trade unions. I know she trashed the British nuclear power development programme for her biggest donor, because he held the licence to deploy US Pressurised Water Reactors. These days deindustrialisation is popular; who’d be bossed about as a steel worker rather than have some cushy management job bossing the precariat about?
Here is a very good article, relevant to any discussion about energy: https://www.rexweyler.ca/ecologue/2017/10/1/real-wealth-howard-t-odums-energy-economics
“Neo-classical economic theory only worked on the way up, and won’t work on the way down. The self-amplifying growth agenda falls apart the minute you reduce the energy inputs. Those autocatalytic feedback loops cause a Wile E. Coyote, beep-beep moment as our economy finds itself suspended in thin air over the chasm.”
AG, thanks. Maybe your computer needs fluff removing from its cooling system; they frequently do, and if the fan is running more or faster than it used to, fluff build-up is almost certainly the cause. If you decide to clean it out yourself with a vacuum cleaner or compressed air, wedge the fan stationary first; the air flow can make the fan spin, causing the fan motor to act as a, er, wind turbine. The resulting voltage can fry the computer chips.
James, many thanks. How to Escape From the Iron Age? and Real wealth: Howard T. Odum’s energy economics are both excellent articles, especially the latter. I think I need to read more from Howard T. Odum.
Glenn_nl, the article you linked – Does it really matter if we can’t produce “virgin steel” anymore? – is valuable too, and adds an additional perspective to be considered along with How to Escape From the Iron Age?.
MOD/CLARK
Since you are asking, it does both. Mostly skipping, but sometimes doing doubles too.
For several months now I have been typing additionally with the OSX integrated virtual keyboard open on my screen because a couple of letters are permanently broken.
I thought about ordering a new keyboard from The Bookyard in Liverpool but then there is the money issue and I had hoped it would just go away like it once did in the past.
My machine is over a decade old, I have stopped updating OSX since some of the software that I need might not work after major new updates, which has happened in the past and Apple is certainly not going to pay for my new software purchase. (That would be an interesting legal case actually…). May be such an update would solve things.
I have not dared to make a system reset which might solve the fan issue as a last resort, as well.
I did replace the left fan 2 years ago and dirt is not the issue.
And I have always had difficulties to check spelling on screens in contrast to paper. Which causes many of my typos.
And even if I had the money I would hesitate with a new Mac since by now they are said to be glued together and I need to have access to my own computer via screws etc. (Fuck Steve Jobs.)
So it´s a Catch-22. I might just jump off the cliff…But thx for asking and making a few sound suggestions.
(“thx”should be “ok”…)
p.s. many of these abbrevations stem from incorrect transfer from German.Haven´t checked this myself yet:
It was mentioned in a new post on Znetwork about “green cities of the future” aka “Solarpunk” (as in “Steampunk” I assume). Never heard of that. Sounds hollow. But the below list seemed to offer a bit of substance though.
“Future City Resources
Research & Papers:”
https://ourchangingclimate.notion.site/Future-City-Resources-c1277c028cf84d91b565ec94ee419070AG, how about simply plugging in an external generic German USB keyboard?
The longer term solution is to move to a Linux* distribution; you’ll never find yourself locked into specific hardware ever again 🙂 You can install a Linux distribution “dual boot” alongside your existing system, or on a USB stick (a “LiveUSB”), so that you don’t lose what you already have, and don’t have to learn everything at once.
* A “Linux distribution” should properly be called a GNU/Linux distribution; GNU started it all off by creating the General Public Licence that made software freedom possible, years before Linus Torvalds was persuaded to jump on the bandwagon. But I wanted to avoid introducing too many new concepts in a single paragraph.
AG, you can also use a LiveUSB plus an external hard disk to ‘image’ your entire existing OSX system. You could then do the OSX updates, and if they bork the software that you need you can restore the image and be back where you started. Someone in your local Linux User Group would help you with all this if you don’t feel confident yourself.
This is somewhat relevant to this thread’s topic; software freedom enables us to extend the life of our hardware, conserving valuable resources, whereas proprietary software forces far more frequent replacement of hardware than is necessary.
What I am trying to get at is, (just taking the U.K.) I don’t think we can do Zero Carbon quickly.
If we need to build out the National Grid by four or five times for an all electric near future, there are a few hiccups.
If we are to install a couple of million on street E.V. chargers, if we are to build cars, buses, trams, trucks and trains that only run on Electric.
If most houses will run on Electric, if almost all factories run on Electric. We are going to need quite a lot of Electric.
We are also going to need an unprecendented quantity of steel. We used to get our Iron/Steel pigs from Ukraine, that no longer happens, we no longer trade with Russia. Russia has 30% of all the world’s known resources. We are shutting down South Wales Steel production, it was largest blast furnace in Europe because it uses Coal. The route through the Suez Canal is essentially close by the Iranian/Houthis,this means that any Iron/Steel from Asia has to go the long way around Southern Africa, this will increase the price of the Iron/Steel we buy.
As we mostly take the U.K. and Ukraine and Russia out of Steel. production/trade, that will mean that the price will rise.
We will need a lot to build out Railway Electrification, I know Cross Rail goes near me, there is a lot of steel, most of the bridges had to be raised to allow for the over head steel gantry.
Allthe Pylon system will have to be replaced, yes they can melt down the old ones but what if that is the wrong type of steel for the new pylon?
The future build out of wind turbines off the coast will use a massive quantity of steel.
We no longer mine Copper in this country.
If the whole world wants Copper, the price will ramp up. Silver is needed for Solar, already the price of Silver is skyrocketing.
Uranium is now in short supply, that will make it expensive, where does the U.K. currently get the Uranium we need.
This mineral resource problem, will just get more difficult, if all the world quickly goes to Carbon Zero.The situation is dire. The required combination of energy and materials is just not there. Energy is needed to mine the materials to build the energy infrastructure… all while ERoEI decreases (or ECoE rises), inexorably.
This writer has some good articles about it, including this one: https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/2025-a-civilizational-tipping-point
James, A Civilizational Tipping Point is another excellent link. I thank you deeply for joining this forum; this entire discussion would have been off-topic under Craig’s posts.
Michael, James’s link (in #99279) explains the commercial push for electric vehicles. Energy cannibalism is engulfing the oil industry which is the base of the commercial pyramid, so the commercial system is trying to save itself by tooling up to produce vehicles that don’t need liquid fuel. Net zero acts as the most convenient excuse, to avoid facing and admitting to the truth of liquid fuel depletion.
Net zero is itself a type of denial!
So climate change denial may be acting for some people as an additional layer of denial – a first line of defence. It is far easier to fudge the complex and interrelated facts of the radiative, atmospheric, oceanic and organic systems involved in climate. “Oil production will soon hit unavoidable decline” is much harder to hand-wave away.
Hurricane Beryl is currently building in the Atlantic and has reached cat 5 status. Apparently, this is unusual this early in hurricane season. The comments on this piece are entertaining.
One commentator expressed a view that abstract terms like “climate change,”global warming,”anthropogenic global warming,” are, well… too abstract to engage people. We ought to be using more direct terminology such as “extreme weather (events),” “catastrophic wild fires,” “extreme heat waves” to document what’s happening. I’m inclined to agree.
Minerals Deniers
It probably does not really mater if you believe in Global Warming,
but what you should believe is that it is going to be stupidly difficult and stupidly expensive, to gain all these needed minerals from the earth, for Carbon Zero to become the new reality.Just take this one fact, the Western Countries, no longer trade with Russia.
Russia has 30% of all tradeable commodities.
It is quite possible that in less than ten years, the West will no longer be doing trade with China.Where do people think these minerals are going to come from?
If you can not answer these questions, who can you imagine Carbon Zero can become real?
ET, I agree. Similarly, all this talk of 1.2 degrees, 1.5 degrees, 2 degrees by 2100 – the global average temperature has to be the most trivialising way possible to quantify global heating. It makes people think it’s like their living room getting a degree or two warmer. Actually its about a hundred times as much heat as all human energy usage put together. We think of greenhouse heating as a side effect but quantitively it’s the major effect by far, and ocean acidification probably comes second.
Actually it’s a long time since I did a back-of-an-envelope guestimate of greenhouse heating versus human energy use; it might have been nearer 1000:1, I no longer remember.
Michael; about money:
Washington, D.C., May 2023 – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, “Who Pays the Price: The Real Cost of Fossil Fuels.”
– …the United States subsidizes the fossil fuel industry with taxpayer dollars. It’s not just the US: according to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuel handouts hit a global high of $1 trillion in 2022 – the same year Big Oil pulled in a record $4 trillion of income.
– Researchers from Harvard found pollutants from oil and gas combustion were responsible for 8.7 million premature deaths annually. …growing costs from intensifying disasters: wildfires, floods, droughts, which according to OMB could cost the federal budget $2 trillion annually and reduce US GDP 3 to 10 percent by the end of the century.
– You tally up the harms, and the IMF estimates it at a $5.4 trillion annual subsidy worldwide. In the United States, it’s $646 billion – every single year.
Clark, thanks.
Well let’s say I am wrong and there are more than enough minerals for the U.K. to quickly move to Carbon Zero; let’s say we have enough money to pay for it all.
Let’s imagine that all the old pylons have been melted down, brand new pylons have been made and installed and the National Grid has grown by four times, the 2024 level.
Four new double-pot nuclear power stations are either making electricity or will be soon.
The North Sea now produces 45% of U.K. electricity on its way to make 50% of U.k. electricity. Vast fields have been covered in solar/battery farms and substations. Two million on street E.V. chargers have been installed. There are now eight million private E.V. cars on the road.
Most of the railways have had their bridges raised and overhead galvanized steel gantries have been installed, the old steel conductor rails ripped up and recycled. Almost all diesel trains have been scrapped, apart from those needed to pull minerals trains. Almost all buses and trams, now overhead mains electric or battery run.
The North Sea Gas Industry is in the process of being decommissioned. Almost all houses now have solar roofs and electric E.V. charging points and Tesla Battery Packs. We are living the Dream.
All multistory car parks have been knocked down, some have been remade as E.V. friendly; most E.V. parking spaces are in open fields, this is because it is easier to deal with the fires in open fields than in underground or multistorey parking.MGUY Australia – EV danger: Another MASSIVE SPIKE in Lithium Ion battery fires (3 Jul 2024) – YouTube, 7m 43s
Michael, both a crisis in the recoverability and availability of mineral resources (with which to tackle a climate crisis) and a climate crisis due to global warming can be happening at the same time.
Shouldn’t we be managing mineral resources proactively so that we can manage energy availability?
All environmental groups and causes are useless. Pathetic, piecemeal sops to make people feel good while the machine keeps doing the only thing it can do – destroying Nature.
Ultimately, there is nothing to ‘be done’, there is only stuff to ‘stop doing’. This is because, any course of ‘action’ inevitably involves more laws, more manufacturing of products, more building, more mining, more chemicals, more pollution, more deforestation, more wars, more coercion… etc etc etc.The game is up. There are just too many people, and hence too high a burden, on the planet.
After IC ends, people can live in small, ‘horizontal’ (as opposed to hierarchical) groups. That is the future.
No governments, no bureaucracies, no ‘high-tech’ bollocks. All that shit is dead.
James: It’s baffled me for years why nobody talks about overpopulation. It seems so obvious that human numbers are so out of whack with anything remotely sustainable, and yet talk is constantly about how to raise standards for everyone, and what an unquestionably good thing increased growth is for economies everywhere, always, without end.
What is it, some notion that it’s impolite to question the wisdom of having huge families? Never mind third world countries – why do we want to have ever growing populations here? (Apart from keeping the nationalists happy, of course.) Is it a religious thing, or long-standing conventional wisdom that passes unquestioned?
I doubt we could sensibly sustain even a tenth of our current population. Maybe 1%, very careful managed through modest living, would be as much as our ecosystem could stand without rapid and irreparable decline.
