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Clark, I barely ever watch T.V. unless it is something I am very interested in.
I almost don’t read newspapers, because you have to pay to be mislead and bullshitted.
You almost can’t trust anything the BBC come out with.
It is quite difficult, I imagine, if you are working, to have much bandwidth to think much through, especially if you have small children.
Do people get their information from sound bites or stuff sent to their smartphones?
I don’t know, I am in my early seventies, so I have a lot of time to waste on the internet and a lot of time to think and run things past friends. I think it would be an extremely useful exercise, to try and clue the public up on the extreme difficulty we will have to achieve Carbon Zero by 2025 “ESO”
or within the next 50-100 years.
I wouldn’t mind betting society will break down before it ever happens.
I expect very few people understand the phenominally difficult position we are in, with a world population of 8,100,000,000 people to clothe/house and supply energy to.Michael, your media habits are similar to my own, and I too have worried that people lack time and energy after the pressures of everyday life. Commercialism wastes people’s time and energy just like it wastes resources, which makes what I call “politics as a spectator sport” attractive; people feel they’re participating by picking the “right side”, arguing over it, and occasionally voting, but that “system” is what got us into this mess.
– “I wouldn’t mind betting society will break down before [net zero] ever happens”
I agree that looks most likely, but there are some things that give me hope.
The inequality figures I posted on the previous page. Clearly, with 6/7ths of the world’s population living on only slightly more resources than us, the mere 1/7th in the “advanced economies”, the problem is much smaller than it looks from our high-energy, high-materialism perspective.
Further, “net zero” doesn’t mean no fossil fuel use at all, it means that emissions have to be balanced by removal, and rewilding would draw down carbon dioxide remarkably quickly. Atmospheric methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and decays much faster, so reduction of methane emissions would buy us time. Simple mirrors can reflect away solar heat, and they can be made from waste. Mounting them on rooftops reduces the need for air conditioning:
There’s actually a lot that’s hopeful; the main obstacle is the investment-based financial system, which is what enforces perpetual economic growth and corrupts our politics and the advertising-funded media.
Clark, it has been imagined, that Sir Starmer is going to go “Hell for Leather” towards a Carbon Free Economy.
He has invented his own energy firm, that does not have any money, will not make any electricity and will not sell any electricity.
Probably much like the current ESO.
Ask Sir Starmer just one question.
How will he install two million E.V. on street chargers?– “…it has been imagined,”
Well; precisely. I think you covered this a couple of pages back with “governments are mostly useless”. Actually Starmer has slashed the energy transition budget he said he’d committed to to get elected leader of the Labour party. I think he slashed it to one seventh, funnily enough.
Clark:
“Simple mirrors can reflect away solar heat, and they can be made from waste. Mounting them on rooftops reduces the need for air conditioning”
That’s a really interesting proposition and it may have some merit. However, would reflecting the energy from sunlight not have more of a localised warming effect than if it were absorbed by the building? Not sure if our avian friends would relish the prospect either, but I’d be interested to read about any projects using reflective tech.
Shibboleth – “…I’d be interested to read about any projects using reflective tech.”
The link I gave, http://www.meer.org – MEER have some projects going. MEER stands for Mirrors for Earth’s Energy Rebalancing. They suggest making mirrored surfaces with remoulded plastic from discarded transparent bottles, backed with a layer of aluminium from discarded drink cans. By angling such mirrors skyward, visible wavelengths of sunlight can be reflected away from the surface, preventing them from heating less reflective surfaces such as rooftops. The resultant lower average temperature of the surface reduces re-radiation in the infrared bands, which are the ones greenhouse gases would trap. The atmosphere is as transparent to reflected visible light on its way back up as it was on its way down. Of course some of the reflected visible light gets stopped by clouds on its way back up, but any that gets out to space is a net reduction in the solar energy absorbed by Earth. Basically, it artificially increases Earth’s albedo.
I like the idea because it’s so low-tech, and in the unlikely event that it has bad effects you can just take the mirrors down, and they were made from waste anyway. I’ve often seen suggestions of orbiting sunshades, or even a vast sunshade at the L1 Lagrange point, but reflection works just as well at ground level, at about a thousandth of the cost. The big drawback is the vast area needed to make a big difference; planting different crops is probably more effective. It has been looked into extensively and Wikipedia has quite a bit on it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_surfaces_(climate_engineering)
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solar_radiation_modification&oldid=1233324046#Terrestrial
Thank you – I couldn’t open the link earlier, but that’s most helpful. Remarkable – but then some simple solutions are!
Cheers.
Sir Starmer goes to South Wales.
“Roy Rickhuss, the general secretary of the Community union, said there was a “real opportunity” to persuade Tata to keep blast furnace 4 operating beyond September.
Mr. Rickhuss, whose union is the largest representing steelworkers in Port Talbot, said there were four to six weeks of negotiations to try and change direction but “we are up against it, time-wise”.
“We’re living in with this fear and uncertainty, it’s not in their interest to prolong the debate. We need to have these discussions quick,” he said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp08vy1lgnvoYou can’t have a transition, without steel.
Shibboleth, when a user restricts JavaScript it sometimes makes links invisible to them on this site. I must be more disciplined, and always type out full html a-tags, as I did in my repost of the MEER link. In case my Wikipedia links aren’t showing, I shall repost them properly as well:
Michael, it does make sense to make steel locally. Same with everything else too; the more we re-localise, the less emissions from transport. It also preserves skills and infrastructure locally, making our society more resilient as societies start to collapse.
I am worried for the United Kingdom, we can’t keep going, by thinking we used to be a world power, yet we now mine almost nothing.
https://www.westcumbriamining.com/woodhouse-colliery/#:~:text=Woodhouse%20Colliery%20is%20a%20new,of%20Whitehaven%20in%20Cumbria%2C%20UK.
There must be good reasons why the Industrial Revolution started in the U.K.
We now seem to think ourselves aloof from extraction.
Yet where will the minerals come from, if we want an almost all electric future?
Is it even moral to expect people in other lands to rip their land apart, so we can have an electric future?
We still have Graphite, Coal, Oil, Methane, Slate, Clay, Salt, Tin, Copper, Tungsten, Lead, Gold, Silver, Iron, Zinc, Kaolin, Limestone, Sand, Ballast, Chalk, Phosphates and Polyhalite.A question is, does net Zero or Carbon Zero mean leaving all this stuff in the ground?
If that is to be the future, then we are truly buggered.
What will we trade with the rest of the world, what exactly is it we do, selling insurance for shipping, that bird might be flying out the window as we speak.
We have decided to cut ourselves off from Russia, they are beyond the pale. We no longer buy their raw materials, like the Iron that comes from the Kursk Anomaly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_Magnetic_Anomaly
About 60,000,000,000 of Iron Ore.
This massive deposit is just to the north of the Black Sea, so, if we were to resume trade with Russia, not that long a journey. So, what will Sir Kier Starmer line up for our future/
I expect today he will be in Washington, to kiss the hand of Joe Biden.
We will be told Russia bad, Ukraine good.
War, war, war.
Maybe that will be our future?Re fitting mirrored surfaces made from remoulded plastic and aluminium from cans, an even more low-tech solution is to just use white paint, like they do in some hot parts of the world.
Study:
“Investing in Climate Chaos 2024: $4.3 trillion for fossil fuel industries”
“Berlin, 09.07.2024
Today, urgewald, together with 17 partner organizations, published this year’s edition of the financial research “Investing in Climate Chaos”. It reveals the fossil investments of over 7,500 institutional investors worldwide. The financial data was collected in May 2024 and shows that these investors are currently invested with 4.3 trillion US dollars in bonds and shares of companies active in fossil industries. These investments are held by pension funds, insurers, asset managers, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, foundation funds or asset management subsidiaries of commercial banks. ”
truthout:
“As NATO Members’ Military Spending Surges, So Do Emissions
The sharp uptick that exacerbates climate breakdown serves only to enrich weapons manufacturers, says a new briefing.”By Edward Carver CommonDreams
July 9, 2024Concerning white-washing roofs – there’s a discussion of it on Inside science, radio4, 22 minutes in:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0020xzx
They seemed to have neglected the point that having cooler buildijgs actually reduces requirements for air conditioning, which itself pours more heat into the local environment besides requiring a lot of electricity.
Labour have been talking about GB Energy for some time.
It seems to be something that has no money, will not make any electricity and will not sell any electricity – also it does not exist – in reality?“According to the Labour Party, some of the funding for GBE would be provided from additional taxation of the fossil fuel industry.”
Ed Milliband wants to have no more coal mines, no more gas wells and no more oil wells, yet he will fund GB Energy by taxing the fossile fuel industries, is this what Labour mean by joined up thinking?AG, thanks for the Edward Carver CommonDreams link, which led me to a very useful website the Conflict and Environment Observatory:
Michael: “Ed Milliband wants to have no more coal mines, no more gas wells and no more oil wells, yet he will fund GB Energy by taxing the fossil fuel industries, is this what Labour mean by joined up thinking?”
Various points here:
(1) The Millipede may have said that, but I’m sure I read in the past couple of days that Labour has gone back on its pre-election promise to stop issuing exploration and extraction licenses in British territory, and he can’t stop other governments issuing such licenses in their own territories.
(2) British fossil fuel companies explore, extract and sell globally, so they could still be taxed even with no British extraction, and even with zero sales in Britain. Also, foreign (including Chinese) companies extract in British territory, and they could be taxed more on that. They certainly should be taxed more; the CEO of BP (I think, or someone in a very similar position) said that since prices rocketed a couple of years back, they’ve had “more money than they know what to do with”.
Paint vs. mirrors – paint reflects very efficiently but omnidirectionally, possibly leading to more absorption of light on other surfaces, e.g. a bungalow with a white roof surrounded by taller buildings, where a judiciously angled mirror could prove more effective by reflecting more completely at open sky, despite the lower total reflectivity of mirrors.
Everyone: I’m away from home so I’m unlikely to be participating as much as usual.
Clark, I wonder if Ed Milliband could be putting all our eggs in one basket?
https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1925471/crowdstrike-it-outage-shows-firms
Ed wants the U.K. to dig almost nothing out of the earth beneath our feet, yet he claims we will have an all electric future – some day soon. Putting to one side the phenominal costs, putting to one side that we will have to purchase most of the minerals we would require from overseas, many other countries, also want these minerals, the prices will go up, just look at the price of Copper.If Ed Milliband gets his way, no oil, no coal, no Methane, just electricity and the state control of the National Grid, what happens if it fails?
Today IT failed, doesn’t IT control the National Grid, its all about switching, it is not men in boiler suits pulling levers like we used to have for signal boxes, this is about electronic programmes and electronic switches.
If it goes tits up, even for a few days, can you imagine the chaos?
How will the fire engines ( running on Lithium batteries) respond to the fires?
How will the police respond the the riots?
How will the food distribution networks function?
How will the G.P. services respond?
How will the banks respond?
How will the government respond?
How will the electrified railways respond?
What is Ed Milliband’s back up plan?Apparently the new Labour Government have ( or maybe will not) agree to give civil servants 5 1/2% increase in pay.
This will be an extra £10,000,000,000 they will have to find/tax. Ten Billion pounds.
Ed Milliband imagines a near future where we use no coal, no oil and no Methane.
Where will they “find” the colossal sums of money for the energy transition.
It is a simple question for the New Labour Government,
how will you fund the energy transition?I don’t think it is possible to find that amount of materials, let alone the money for it.
In case Julien Jomaux has not been quoted her before.
This his his Substack:
https://gemenergyanalytics.substack.com/“This is my personal site where I write posts on the energy sector with a focus on the European electricity markets. I am an electrical engineer with 10+ years of experience.”
It was recommended in the comment section of “naked capitalism” several weeks ago.
Clark
have a good trip & thx for pointing at above)The more we go and the quicker we go to an electric future, I fear we will be on a razor edge.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr4zkq1kkwo
BT failed for quite a while to put 999 calls through, then their fix did not work, this last year.
Elon Musk is already saying he is very worried about an AI future.The new Labour Government plan to have one and a half million more homes built, I guess these homes will need electricity, internet connections, sewers, drinking water, EV charge points, and plenty of concrete?
I can’t see how covering up land, taking agriculture out of use – for ever – will help the world get any cooler?Not really sure Michael how the BT story relates to an electrified future. It does relate tangentially to the removal of analog phone networks and the move to digitalisation of the network, ie. provided by data networks. The old analog system was also electrified allbeit on a different supply network and at a lower voltage. However, I get your point on the reliance on software managed systems and the recent crowdstrike issue underlines that.
ET this is astounding and really big.
« “I first saw this in 2013 – an enormous amount of oxygen being produced at the seafloor in complete darkness,” explains lead researcher Prof Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science. “I just ignored it, because I’d been taught – you only get oxygen through photosynthesis.
Eventually, I realised that for years I’d been ignoring this potentially huge discovery,” he told BBC News.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c728ven2v9eoBecause these nodules contain metals like lithium, cobalt and copper – all of which are needed to make batteries – many mining companies are developing technology to collect them and bring them to the surface.
But Prof Sweetman says the dark oxygen they make could also support life on the seafloor. And his discovery, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, raises new concerns about the risks of proposed deep-sea mining ventures. »
Heaven and Earth
we understand very little about the Earth works.
Only 40 years ago Archaea was starting to be understood.
Some now think that fifty percent of the mass of life in the oceans, is Archaea.I heard about that (oxygen on the sea floor).
It might explain why dead zones persist, many years after mining has finished.
