Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

pile-o-stone

Oh dear God, get ready for pages and pages of GA's latest Electric Scooter idea. I'm still recovering from the Nuclear Powered District Heating idea that he banged on about for weeks. Perhaps GA could combine the two and have nuclear powered scooters that also heat your house at the end of the day?

This really is the forum that moderation forgot.

mmmmikey

pile-o-stone wrote: »

This really is the forum that moderation forgot.

Yes indeed - possibly also the forum that sanity and reason forgot. Perhaps we should superglue ourselves to train roofs or something like that so we can balance out loony denial with loony protest?

silverwhistle

JKenH wrote: »

AGW worriers are insisting we spend money now to solve the climate problem but is that the best policy? Do we want the UK to be an early adopter of RE or is it better to allow the technology to develop then buy in more cost effectively?

Ah, the wealthy landowner and rentier approach approach best summarised as 'do we really need industry, education, research, investment, training, experience..?'.



As a country, I believe we do..

mmmmikey

silverwhistle wrote: »

Ah, the wealthy landowner and rentier approach approach best summarised as 'do we really need industry, education, research, investment, training, experience..?'.

As a country, I believe we do..

Again, agreed. I would also question the ethics of sitting back and letting somebody else sort the problem out - I guess we all have a different sense of what we believe is morally right.

Martyn1981

JKenH wrote: »

AGW worriers are insisting we spend money now to solve the climate problem but is that the best policy? Do we want the UK to be an early adopter of RE or is it better to allow the technology to develop then buy in more cost effectively?

As an example the cost of wind power has fallen dramatically over the last decade. Is it not better to be investing now than 10 years ago? How much cheaper in another decade? Should we have waited even longer?

Battery storage costs have fallen dramatically and are expected to continue to do so. Investment of say £1 million in 10 years time may produce a far greater return in terms of CO2 savings than investing that sum now.

If in a decade’s time the cost of cutting CO2 has say halved then for the same investment we can save twice the amount of CO2 emitted.

Yes, there will be some catching up to do but if we are say aiming for zero emissions by 2050 then for the same total spend will we not get there much quicker by deferring the start date for 10 years?

Seems a pointless question as we already know the answer, as the whole World is already acting.

Will solving the problem (actually just minimising it) later cost less, of course not, the longer we put of dealing with the issue of CO2 emissions the greater the problem gets, and the greater the cost of action.

And of course you are misrepresenting the issue, as we are not going to spend all the money today, we are simply spending it year by year, and much of it is simply spending on one thing instead of spending on another.

The 'we should wait till it gets cheap' argument has come up for 10yrs on here, but it's always been, shall we say, 'daft'. It relies entirely on somebody else doing it, or the costs will never fall, so it's not a valid alternative, just another morally bankrupt argument.

This argument, and the similar one of spending monies on adaptation instead of prevention seem to be popular with the FF industry and the Republicans in the US. It is similar to the diversion tactics of clean coal, to slow down RE deployment, or investigations into fuel cells, to slow down action on BEV's. The status quo also seems to benefit the FF suppliers by deferring action for as long as possible.

Also, looking at the adaptation diversion, what we spend on preventing the worst elements of AGW is also a direct investment in adapting to change, since less adaptation (and cost) is therefore needed.

To put it simply, as we spend, costs fall, they are linked, wind costs around the World, like PV fell because we rolled out it, it's not magic.

mmmmikey

Evening Martyn - welcome to loony denial hour - as you've seen they've been out in force this afternoon


I don't think reasoned argument is going to work, best put your catwoman suit on and see if that helps.....

Martyn1981

1961Nick wrote: »

For the record it's "spend money also"....not "instead of".

My point is, what happens if we spend 100% of our resources on trying to restrict GW (or is that AGW?) to 1.5C and then miss the target? It's not inconceivable that we could overshoot by 2 or 3C ...some would argue that that's the more likely scenario. Maybe world leaders should be giving equal weight to dealing with the consequences of +4C rather than just jumping on the trendy prevention bandwagon....which is more often linked to garnering votes to further their political careers/egos.

I appreciate it's also, however you can't spend the same money twice, and you, in particular, are very keen on suggesting we will spend too much, or as you suggest here, we will have spent all our money?????

I'm not sure if you realise how serious this is. You suggest we could overshoot by 2 or 3C (and have previously suggested heating so far isn't a problem. Well, we are already seeing serious weather/storm changes, and impacts (many/most involving costs (that money you hope to save)), and the 1.5C rise is scary. If we overshoot by 2 or 3C then we are completely stuffed.

If you don't understand the need to avoid exceeding the 1.5C set out in the Paris Accord, then you haven't accepted just how bad this all is.

But the great news is that solutions, cost effective solutions already exist, and deploying these, as fast as possible, will both minimise the temp rise, and the enormous costs of adaptation that are going to follow.

Your suggestion of less spend now, for more money later is backwards, the longer we delay the greater the total cost will be, and not just economically.

Martyn1981

mmmmikey wrote: »

Evening Martyn - welcome to loony denial hour - as you've seen they've been out in force this afternoon


I don't think reasoned argument is going to work, best put your catwoman suit on and see if that helps.....

Who says I'm not already wearing it?

mmmmikey

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Who says I'm not already wearing it?

Worth a try. For my part, I'm only getting involved today because I've got an all day dentist session tomorrow and I thought if I read some of these posts first the dentist wouldn't seem as bad by comparison.


A bit like Ken's "global warming doesn't seem so bad when you compare it with a nuclear holocaust" argument. Maybe not the most convincing argment made here, but on par with a lot of them

Martyn1981

mmmmikey wrote: »

On a slightly different tack, this song seems somehow appropriate in the context of this thread



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs

Shirley it should be something more positive?

Oh and please don't worry about me, and if it seems I'm shouting then I should explain I find all this denial BS quite funny, and a good mental exercise to quickly search for the old links to combat it.

My real problem (I'm sure there are actually many), is that I simply struggle to understand why some (small but loud) people take such an interest in trying to argue against science, facts, commonsense etc, when it's so much easier and fun to go with the flow. [I'm absolutely fascinated by the psychology of Moon landing deniers, their use of part science, such as a single source of light would result in uniform shadows (in photographs) but their avoidance of full science, such as that would also require a flat (not spherical) and smooth surface. My interest goes off the charts however at their refusal to consider 'tricky' issues, such as the Indian Moon shot photos of the landing sites, or the ability to shoot a laser at the Moon (set to stun of course) to measure the distance, thanks to the 180d reflectors left at the Apollo sites (and Russian landers)? but as always, I digress.]

I'm absolutely loving this energy and transport revolution ..... you might have noticed ..... every day is full of more fun news, and progress that always seems to make my optimism look more like full blown pessimism.

On that note, I'm probably pointing out the absolute obvious, but do others appreciate how lucky we are to be living through this right now, even if AGW is a bit of a drag?

As Confucius didn't say - 'May we live in interesting times'