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Clark, yes it is a pity, I want to reply quickly, spontaneously, even if what comes out does not make perfect sense, as in a personal conversation.
Conversations are not normally recorded, we probably barely understand, that much of spontaneous talk, is not perfect but usually the people you are speaking with, get your notion, if they don’t, then they often ask you to elaborate. When it goes wrong and you come to know, you were not sure what you were saying but I guess sometimes you thrash around, and just sometimes, a gem comes out. Most of human interaction is inane, that is socialising.I fear that our betters, like Ed Milliband, have this idea of Global Warming.
They have collectively hit on a solution.
From what I can gather, that is no more Coal extraction, no more Oil extraction , no more Methane extraction – on U.K. land or sea. All electric future.
Yet Ed Milliband will not tell us where he will get the minerals, the steel, aluminium, silver, tin, copper, lead, lithium, silicon, nickle, zinc, chromium, potash, manganese, cobalt and so on.
Where will our food come from in a Carbon free world?
How will we pay for a grid that will need to be four or five time the size it is now?
He is like a fairy waving a magic wand.
i doubt he has two brain cells to rub together.
Does Ed worry about the awful destruction of third world countries that will happen while this rush to extraction goes on.
Does he know that there is not enough economically recoverable copper in the world? Does he know how to fund and does he understand the disruption that will ensue in the installation of two million EV street chargers?
Does he know that mineral extraction only happens because of the use of fossil fuel. Does he know that marine transportation only happens because of the use of fossil fuel?
What does he actually know, is he just playing a bit part in some globalist game, we ordinary people are not aware of?The New Labour Government have claimed that one and a half million extra homes will be constructed.
This will cause a lot of Limestone to emit Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This land will be taken out of use for forest/wildlife or agricultural land, forever. How will they obtain enough food for all these extra mouths?
Does Ed Milliband know that fossil fuels are used in agriculture? They have talked about the energy transion of jobs, people will move from extraction jobs to Green jobs. They have not yet fleshed this out.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyx5x44vnyeo
The New Labour Government shelves 1.3 billion pounds investment that had been earmarked for high tech and AI. That investment promise included £800m for the creation of an exascale supercomputer at Edinburgh University.The International Energy Agency says “To avoid the worse effects of Climate Change in the coming decades the world needs to mine at least four times as many metals as it does now”
The Dystopian Future is already upon us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZoTxvMsOnw
IEA headquartered in Paris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilp-IFGeP84
I had never heard of them, does not seem to be democratic.
More like carving the world up for the rich.Michael, the warnings about greenhouse heating come from the scientific community, not politicians. Far from it. Politicians and governments have been woefully late to respond, too little too late, and the advertising-funded ‘news’ media has been even worse. A lot of climate scientists are now suffering psychological problems, knowing as they do the terrible consequences of governments ignoring the scientific warnings for decades.
Greenhouse heating was proven in 1988 when stratospheric cooling was confirmed by measurement, causing NASA climate scientist James Hansen to testify to the US government – at the time, part of NASA’s mission was to protect planet Earth, though this responsibility was abolished under Trump’s presidency. I remember this proof being reported by the BBC, though I did not understand its place in the theory at that time. The BBC said that “the signature of greenhouse heating has been detected”. I was 25 then; I am now 61, and appropriate action is still not being taken.
1988 was when politicians should have told us that we were living beyond Earth’s means and that we needed to reduce our fossil fuel consumption. Instead, governments incentivised fossil fuel extraction and consumption with both policies and subsidies. None of this is to imply that mining is not terribly harmful; it is, which is yet another reason we should never have gone out on this limb of rampant consumerism. As you have said, governments are mostly useless. They do not lead; they make promises that are impossible to fulfil.
– – – – – – – –
I’m sorry but I don’t have time to watch your video links at present; there’s a lot of community coordination to do, protection against the ongoing riots. The International Energy Agency IEA is part of the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The IEA was set up following the 1973 oil crisis, its original mission being to globally coordinate the fossil fuel industry to prevent such a thing happening again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Energy_Agency
The OECD basically represents the governments of the richest, most industrialised nations – i.e. the governments that will pillage the poorer nations for their minerals, just as they have pillaged their fossil fuels:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_for_Economic_Co-operation_and_Development
Clark, I doubt many would still suggest that Anthropogenic Climate Change is here, that the World may have heated by 1.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The Industrial Revolution got underway in the U.K. (1730ish) at the tail end of a colder phase in our climate. However that only takes us back to the last inter-glaciation, it is not unprecedented, maybe if the use of world wide instrumentation/the internet had not happened, most people would hardly have noticed a one to one and a half degree world average warming. If we are to step up mining by four times, how much devastation will that cause?
I would suggest an awful lot.The International Energy Agency says “To avoid the worse effects of Climate Change in the coming decades the world needs to mine at least four times as many metals as it does now”
Michael:
– “I doubt many would still suggest that Anthropogenic Climate Change is here…”
Is that actually what you meant to write, or did you mean “…is not here”?
Britain is highly protected from greenhouse heating by its latitude and especially by its maritime climate, you and I are lucky to live in one of the best protected regions in the world, but globally we are seeing killer heatwaves, killer droughts, and record breaking wildfires.
Then remember that there is a delay. If emissions stopped completely right now, Earth would continue to gather heat so the average temperature would continue to rise. It will take centuries to millennia for carbon dioxide levels to fall. It’s not the case that we can just stop emissions if it gets too hot. It’s like piling on duvets, except you can’t just take them off again.
Fossil fuel combustion has driven atmospheric carbon dioxide to its highest concentration in fourteen million years, and atmospheric heat content is unprecedented for the Holocene:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere
Then there’s ocean acidification; another thing that can’t just be undone:
We may be well protected here in Britain, but the heat is coming for us too, albeit somewhat delayed; we’ve already seen summer temperatures reach 40 centigrade, 104 F. Additionally, we’re economically affected by the rest of the world; crop failure anywhere imperils us. Then there are all the climate refugees.
This isn’t a choice between fossil fuels and mining; we need to change our way of life to be more frugal. We’re setting a literally lethal example.
correction
“I doubt many would still suggest that Anthropogenic Climate Change is not here”
Humans started in Africa.
It is hot in Africa.
I can’t see that it will get too hot in Northern Europe – ever.
People live in Africa, to this day, a lot of people.
Many Africans are a lot richer, than they used to be. Some of that increase in wealth will be because they have access to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam
inexpensive power. Ethiopians have recently constructed the Grand Renaissance Hydroelectic plant, largest in Africa.
They have done this using their own money.
Members of the public have bought into the scheme.
Ethiopians are no longer the starving poor of Africa, this is because they are developing and educating themselves, quite an example. Other countries like Nigeria rely on oil for their power. I guess you use what God gives you.
We should applaud the Ethiopians for what they are achieving but should we tell the people in Nigeria, they are bad for using Oil? Should we tell them to just stop oil and starve?Glencore shareholders have voted to keep coal-mining part of the company after the company had made suggestions to give up on it.
short note on FT
“Glencore ditches plan to spin off coal business”
https://archive.is/iNg4Vbasic argument, if we don´t do it others will:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/07/glencore-drops-plan-to-ditch-coal-after-shareholder-u-turn/THIS was FT on the issue in 2022
“Glencore to accelerate coal mine closures”
https://archive.is/GfCWn“(…)Glencore expects to shut down 12 coal mines over the next 12 years even as the world’s largest mining company enjoys bumper profits because of high coal prices.(…)Glencore’s coal business is expected to generate about $16.7bn in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation next year, more than half the company’s total.(…)”.
Wonder what global share of emission that business is reponsible for and what it costs everyone but Glencore (the popular handing-over costs while keeping the diamonds.)
Here’s an interesting paper, Michael, that should provide you with some food for thought. Especially the Summary and what might actually salvage civilisation.
Eye of the Needle Saga: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/15/4508
Shibboleth, this you tube by a young woman geologist shines a little light into the origin of Dark Oxygen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSgIgI2weLw
Although she is obviously quite excited by all this, we are still in very early days, her best guess, would seem to be that the polymetalic nodules could not have formed without Oxygen, therefor, probably, they were not the go-getter of life or even complex life on Earth.
https://asm.org/articles/2022/february/the-great-oxidation-event-how-cyanobacteria-change#:~:text=The%20Great%20Oxidation%20Event%20and,life%2C%20creating%20an%20extinction%20event.
She also suggests that most of the Hydrogen would be taken in by microbes, like Archaea, with little reaching the sea surface.Michael, why do you think that fossil fuel production would be good for Africans, but mining would be bad?
I expect Clark would agree this is helpful news?
12 August 2024
“Older trees are able to accelerate their rates of absorbing planet-warming emissions,
scientists at the University of Birmingham have found.A forest of mature oak trees was exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide for seven years and in response, the trees increased their production of wood – locking in the greenhouse gas and preventing it from warming the planet.
The researchers hope the study, published in Nature Climate Change, will demonstrate the importance of protecting and maintaining mature forests for tackling climate change.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d7p0n1e3roI did know that according to NASA the green leaf coverage of the planet has been increasing a lot for the past forty years.
Michael, it’s a glimmer of hope, which is one of the reasons I was in the group pictured in this article:
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2024/08/13/drax-protests-selby/
But it is only a glimmer; for multiple reasons, one of which is in the very article you linked – “It is estimated that globally a football field of primary forest is lost every six seconds.”
Another is that the authorities seem hell bent on protecting such deforestation. From my link – “…on 8 August, North Yorkshire police, led by the Met, conducted a raid. They pre-emptively arrested 22 climate protesters purportedly for conspiracy to interfere with key national infrastructure. Of course, this was before the protesters had done anything.” Other ‘ecological’ protesters have recently been sentenced to up to five years prison on the same charge.
A third reason becomes clear with thought. The fossil fuel deposits are the remains of tens or hundreds of millions of years of growth, but human activity will burn them away in mere centuries. So the carbon dioxide is being re-released more than 10,000 times faster than organic growth originally drew it out of the atmosphere. Trees increasing their CO2 capture by 10%, as stated in the BBC article, just isn’t nearly enough; trees would have to step up by over a million percent. We’d need acorns to grow into full sized oaks in eleven days rather than 300 years!
I’m really sorry; I really wish I had some good news. All I can offer is that disaster could still be mitigated, but only with immediate and gargantuan change.
Promoting hemp as a cover crop would also help transfer carbon into the soil.
Hemp is a very hardy plant that requires little maintenance, it grows quickly and has many uses: the leaves can be left on the field as fertilizer, the stalks can be used for paper making or concrete ag, the seeds for bird food or oil.
Talk about increasing amounts of greenery is a bit exaggerated, and somewhat misleading. China has initiated quite a large forestry programme, but as Clark mentioned, this is not equal to the devastating losses of old growth forests, such as in the Amazon and Indonesia.
Much of this greenery is light growth in areas that was previously too cold or covered in ice.
There was an examination of this in Radio 4’s “More or Less” last week, which found the claims of increased greenery were hugely exaggerated by the right wing – which is curious, as they spend most of their time denying that there’s any problem at all.
____
May I recommend “The Earth transformed : an untold history”
Author: Frankopan, Peter, author.
ISBN: 9781526622563Abstract: Most people can name the influential leaders and major battles of the past. Few can name the most destructive storms, the worst winters, the most devastating droughts. In this book, historian Peter Frankopan reconnects us with our ancestors who, like us, worshipped, exploited and conserved the natural environment – and draws salutary conclusions about what the future may bring.
____It goes from ancient times to the present, with the most comprehensive analysis I have ever seen. For instance, we always hear about the mini ice-age from denialists – but never that such swings in temperature were local to a continent or only part of one, while global average temperature remained consistent.
A sizeable read, weighing in at about 700 pages, it will provide a solid background for anyone genuinely interested in this fairly important subject.
Glenn_nl, thanks for the recommendation which I shall add to my reading list, right after How Westminster Works which Essex Libraries was unable or unwilling to obtain for me. Plenty of bodice rippers though.
Hemp is great; I’ve grown some myself 😀
Visiting the Drax power station gave me a feel for the vast scale of the human project of burning stuff. On the road the sound is like standing near a large waterfall. This proves to be six constructed circular waterfalls, one under each of the massive cooling towers, as much of the turbines’ exhaust that the towers have managed to re-condense. Imagine how fast you’d have to burn wood to vaporise that much water and more. I didn’t see a trainload of pellets arrive, probably because it was a Sunday, but the train back from Selby did pass a couple, each about the size of a middling to large traffic jam.
Cut down trees including some ancient forest using petrol chainsaws.
Load the timber onto diesel trucks using diesel tractors.
Drive the trucks to a pellet factory that makes the locals ill.
Load the pellets onto diesel trains and transport them to a coastal port.
Ship them thousands of miles across the Atlantic by burning bunker fuel.
Load them onto more diesel trains to get them to Drax.
Burn them at 34% efficiency to make electricity.
Discharge their CO2 into the atmosphere.Claim 1.7 million per day from British taxpayers for being ‘sustainable’.
Clark, this is probably a good idea but I am not sure why a subsea cable system is thought preferable to land based transmission.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clynlkjp5m1oWhat I can’t get my head round, is how splurging four and a half billion pounds can make electricity cheaper?
Michael, from the BBC piece:
– She added: “We’re obviously trying to have cleaner electricity from renewable sources but what this also does, crucially, is improve our energy security and will ultimately bring down bills.”
I think the critical word is ‘ultimately’. North sea gas is depleted. The same will happen to gas from Norway via the Langeled pipeline; the UK already causes earthquakes off Norway when gas demand is high. US liquefied natural gas from fracking etc. is unlikely to last long. Nordstream got blown up and the USSR-era Russian super-giant gas fields are in terminal decline. Nuclear plants cost a fortune and take decades to build, if they get completed at all; just ask France or China.
So wind looks set to be the cheapest but it’s intermittent. But there’s always wind blowing somewhere, so supergrids seem to be the best option.
Subsea is probably cheaper. They can just lay the cables on the seabed; no need for pylons, compulsory purchase, or compensation for devalued property.
Infrastructure has to be paid for I guess. Underground or undersea high voltage cables may be even more expensive than overhead lines because of the lengths the engineering has to go to to prevent arcing and deal with heat. Here is a video/article about an underground cable failure in Los Angeles from practical engineering yt channel which describes many of the issues. It’s a good channel for information on engineering stuff.
Marine high voltage cables (MHVCs) for a typical 1-gigawatt (GW) windfarm cost about £400 million to design and install, with operation and maintenance costs of several millions of pounds every year.
Cl;ark, of note this subsea cable system goes from Scotland to Drax, of North American wood infamy.
Not all renewable /sustainable?Scotland – Snowball Earth
this is really very interesting
“The Garvellach islands off the west coast of Scotland are the best record of Earth entering its biggest ever ice age around 720 million years ago, researchers have discovered.The big freeze, which covered nearly all the globe in two phases for 80 million years, is known as “Snowball Earth”, after which the first animal life emerged.
Clues hidden in rocks about the freeze have been wiped out everywhere – except in the Garvellachs.”
The Garvellach islands are just South of the island of Mull.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9l2mrn43jo
“Researchers hope the islands will tell us why Earth went into such an extreme icy state for so long and why it was necessary for complex life to emerge.”The subsea cable is probably going to Drax because it’s a central place to connect to England’s existing grid. There were six or seven big coal burning power stations in that part of Yorkshire (of which the converted Drax plant is the last remaining), because that’s where the coal was mined (and because swanky “Home Counties” types would have objected to power stations and pylons all over their local area). So the existing distribution hub is right there, and the Drax plant specifically is near the coast too. And I guess if the subsea interconnection system fails, there’s always the Drax plant as a backup. Note that the northern end is at Peterhead, likewise a major combustion powered generating station and thus well connected to the grid.
Trains of pellets at Drax:
– On average, there are 35 deliveries [i.e. trains] a day, 6 days a week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Drax_Power_Station&oldid=1236649335#Fuel_supply
Bloody hell!
