Lots of hot air

[TominDales]

I struggle to think of an instance when the world has come together to jointly solve an international crisis. Climate change is no different. The following is a generalisation, but no less relevant for that.

The most recent example is covid - genuinely global with the capacity to affect every nation (and person) on the planet. Countries initially responded individually - lockdowns (Europe), denial (US, Brazil), shut borders completely (Oz, NZ), autocratic crisis management (China).

Then a vaccine is developed. Developed wealthy countries get the first supplies. Poorer nations are left to struggle - definitely second class citizens in the vaccine race.

In the context of climate change it is naive to assume that the community of nations will somehow see and act upon the mutual benefit of responding collectively and constructively.

Richer nations who consume more can afford to adapt and understand the benefits of so doing. Poorer nations cannot afford to adapt, fortunately they create low levels of greenhouse gas.

Wealthier nations will have tensions over how costs of adaptation and transition are funded. It will no doubt follow the approach taken for other societal stresses from a genuine "we are all in this together" through to "it's up to everyone to make their own arrangements".

Assuming climate change response will herald a new age of collaborative endeavour to solve a global problem is IMHO sadly misplaced. Whilst supporting cooperative efforts, we should prepare our own response if/when this proves ineffectual.

I'm not so pessimistic, there have been examples of global coming together in reasonable equity, although not so much recently.
The Montreal protocol is the best example where CFCs were phased out rapidly. The rich nations bore the early brunt of the phase out, and allowed developing nations much longer to do so. There was also generous funding provided from rich nations to enable developing countries to adapt.

Gordon Browns debt relieve in 2007 at the G20 was a massive forgiveness of debt to developing nations. Both of these initiatives were pretty well aimed at a collective good.

Other institutions such as the Word bank, IMF, and GATT/ WTO had specific policies to enable developing nations to industrialise, although these were partly self-serving as they supported the post WW2 Bretton woods world order, but they did provide global stability for developing nations to thrive.

The problem with covid responses is due to the sheer suddenness of the crisis. Rich nations were taken by surprise and pretty well had to look after themselves first. The old maxim about parents and marriage is look after yourself so you can look after others is an analogy. Until the nations that can invent vaccines keep their populations safe its hard to justify policy to help others. As vaccine capacity expands and the immediate threat of death is removed I think we will see a generous role-out in quite a timely fashion. Even now, the bulk of the deaths is still in developed countries. Very few of the top death rates are developing countries, the UK, US, France Italy are near the top of the death rate list. In Sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa has about half the death rate of us. Even taking into consideration underreporting in developing nations, Europe, North and south America have been hardest hit. The virous will, in time, start to devastate Africa, but hopefully vaccines will be flowing by then. In previous crises the world has come together to tackle Ebola outbreaks etc. There is a lot of self interest in averting global crises for all.

With climate change there is time to reach some form or consensus/equitable solution. There are a lot of vested interests to address such as the gulf nations, the industrial nations emerging nations, low lying countries, so its complicated and will be a messy process but I do think we have the capacity to act together.
A thing to worry about is the old American /western order is crumbling. With a dominant China with its different agenda and a very disruptive Russia with an agenda of causing maximum chaos it may be a lot tougher than past crisis management. Putin has publicly relished climate change. But China is very vulnerable to climate change so may well act as a catalyst and positive force going forward.
So whilst its generally a difficult and pessimistic situation, I don't think history has been that bad a president and there is just about time for collective self interest to kick in.

 

[RobinBHM]

This argument China produces so much more carbon than any other country is a bit short sighted…..if China wasn’t the worlds factory, the stuff would be made elsewhere…….and the West generally have a higher per capita carbon rate.

 

[TominDales]

This argument China produces so much more carbon than any other country is a bit short sighted…..if China wasn’t the worlds factory, the stuff would be made elsewhere…….and the West generally have a higher per capita carbon rate.

Very true.
Past UK polices on energy taxation etc have encouraged the trend of energy intensive industries to go offshore. The ONS now tracks this imported CO2. Clear trend over 30 years of UK industrial production replaced by imports.
Future policy could address both of these issues by stimulating low carbon on-shore manufacturing.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nati...ofeconomicgrowthfromcarbonemissionsukevidence

 

[RobinBHM]

Clear trend over 30 years of UK industrial production replaced by imports

I also find the UK fracking debate interesting.

environmental protestors argue against any further fossil fuel production…..but the reality is the transition away from fossil fuels will take years and if we don’t frack, it means buying in from foreign regions with potentially lower environmental controls.

There are no simple answers

 

[John Brown]

I think people will accept donkey and horse but dog will take some convincing, but on the other hand I bet many people have already eaten dog without realising it, lots in chinese takeaways. Actually some countries have a problem with lots of stray dogs, so another source of food for countries with food poverty.

I'll bet the number of people who've eaten dog without knowing about it is vanishingly small. In the UK, at any rate.
Horse? Yes. Dog? I really doubt it.

 

[Rorschach]

I'll bet the number of people who've eaten dog without knowing about it is vanishingly small. In the UK, at any rate.
Horse? Yes. Dog? I really doubt it.

The stories about dog in chinese restaurants are all a bit dodgy. For a start, getting dog meat and using it is not cheaper than buying processed chicken and inherently more difficult and dangerous for the business owner. There are probably restaurants that serve it to special guests at a high price, all sorts of illegal meat is sold this way, but they are not going to put in the average punters meal.

 

[Blackswanwood]

Future policy could address both of these issues by stimulating low carbon on-shore manufacturing.

I think this is exactly what is happening in the U.K.

Another factor that is starting to play through is the cost of capital dropping for low carbon initiatives. Banks (and other investors) increasingly want to be seen to be supporting environmentally responsible businesses and projects.

 

[John Brown]

The stories about dog in chinese restaurants are all a bit dodgy. For a start, getting dog meat and using it is not cheaper than buying processed chicken and inherently more difficult and dangerous for the business owner. There are probably restaurants that serve it to special guests at a high price, all sorts of illegal meat is sold this way, but they are not going to put in the average punters meal.

My thoughts exactly.

Have you looked at dog prices lately, Spectric? You could buy a few thousand chickens for the price of a small french bulldog.

 

[hairy]

This shows a large number of large machines that would require very large batteries if all ended up being EVs. I read a while back a container ship with a lithium battery would take two years to charge, and I think some UK army chap suggesting electric tanks were being considered said to power a Challenger the battery would weigh forty tons.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Just ask Elon Musk to sort it out.

In a few months a tank would emerge with a speed of 60mph, range of 200 miles and helicopters equipped with fast chargers for when the tank gets a bit low on leccy and the local power grid can only deliver 13amps to a couple of tanks at a time.

 

[hairy]

UK Energy Secretary. Kwasi Kwarteng, said yesterday (?) in talking about gas boilers and heat pumps

"I don't think actually heat pumps are that much worse than boilers."

So current Govt policy is to make things worse?

 

[Rorschach]

UK Energy Secretary. Kwasi Kwarteng, said yesterday (?) in talking about gas boilers and heat pumps

"I don't think actually heat pumps are that much worse than boilers."

So current Govt policy is to make things worse?

Heat pumps are great IF, you have a well insulated home, your climate is fairly stable and doesn't get too cold for too long, you can afford to keep it running 24/7, you are in a house (that ones pretty important) that has plenty of space between you and your neighbours, you have the extra room for all the stuff needed.

If however you live in a council flat, or a tiny council house, poorly insulated and on a low income you are pretty stuffed.

 

[hairy]

Heat pumps are great IF, you have a well insulated home, your climate is fairly stable and doesn't get too cold for too long, you can afford to keep it running 24/7, you are in a house (that ones pretty important) that has plenty of space between you and your neighbours, you have the extra room for all the stuff needed.

If however you live in a council flat, or a tiny council house, poorly insulated and on a low income you are pretty stuffed.

Our last house was a 2018 new build just like that in SE UK, underfloor heating, nice big windows, lots of insulation. The water in the floor was only about 27degC, hot water tank lovely for long showers, weekly program heated it high enough to kill bugs. Quiet country road now not so quiet with it running. Not loud, but no longer silent.
But, it quite often decided the fan was iced up so shut everything down, or any other random reason every now and again. You didn't notice until the floor got cold. It then takes a day or more to heat it up again during which time you are cold.
The nice big windows would also let in a lot of heat despite triple glazing, so you would have to open them to let some out, or draw the curtains (the point of nice big windows was the view weirdly) to stop it coming in. If the windows were open a bit too long, you got cold because it took too long to heat up again.
If you had a Huf house with a closely controlled internal atmosphere then maybe it would be a good idea, but I like fresh air sometimes which this low temp form of heating seems to preclude?

 

[Droogs]

IT's fine. The MOD is seriously considering ditching us having MBTs anyway. It appears that the race between armour and anti-tank projectile has been lost by the tank. Some of the new man portable shoulder mounted systems are predicted to have a 70% penetration rate against chobham within the next decade.So no need to have a £4 1/2 million tank when we can have £200K bazookas.

 

[TominDales]

Heat pumps are great IF, you have a well insulated home, your climate is fairly stable and doesn't get too cold for too long, you can afford to keep it running 24/7, you are in a house (that ones pretty important) that has plenty of space between you and your neighbours, you have the extra room for all the stuff needed.

If however you live in a council flat, or a tiny council house, poorly insulated and on a low income you are pretty stuffed.

Sadly you are entirely correct. We have known about energy poverty and climate change for years. The first rule of conservation is eliminate waste, stop using stuff, in this case energy. Why council houses aren't properly insulated and new houses build to be totally insulated is beyond me. Its a very fast payback, especially roof insulation.
There will always be some properties that will be hard to adapt, but why we don't seriously tackle the rest is beyond me. If Kwasi wants to get some environmental cred that would be the thing to do. Even massive subsidies for insulation would pay back the country in terms of energy imports etc. Its not as if council house tenants can go mad partying with glass wool.

On the space issue, round us, they are putting in street/district heat pumps and the each property gets a branch connection, but as you observed the poorly insulated houses have seen their bills go up. Its only where the work has been done to a high standard that people claim a saving.

 

[Spectric]

Some of the new man portable shoulder mounted systems are predicted to have a 70% penetration rate against chobham within the next decade.

Yes but by then I think the current planes will have merged with drones to form a hybrid that without the need for a pilot will pull much higher G and maybe be a harder target to shoot at, and could even have some level of stealth and hunt down armoured vehicles. So what is the purpose of a tank these days, modern warfare is just becoming a computer game and anything like planes, tanks, ships or troops will just become objects in your game to take out from somewhere a long way from any action.

 

[TominDales]

This shows a large number of large machines that would require very large batteries if all ended up being EVs. I read a while back a container ship with a lithium battery would take two years to charge, and I think some UK army chap suggesting electric tanks were being considered said to power a Challenger the battery would weigh forty tons.

Net zero means all of those machines become zero carbon by 2050, its an enormous change.
The UK media often underestimates the change by focusing on the electric grid, which ignores 80% of carbon consumption. There are ways to make sustainable fuels but they are about 50% more costly than fossil derived. It's going to take a lot of innovation to get to net zero, not many governments have fully appreciated the scale of this challenge

 

[Rorschach]

The ironic thing of course is that if we are going to see warmer winters here in the UK, spending a load of money on way to cut down heating emissions will be an absolute waste of time as we won't need as much heating anyway.

 

[hairy]

Above I mentioned our previous house had mucho insulation, underfloor heating and a heat pump and it was a bit rubbish to put it mildly.
Before that we had a similarly sized several centuries old thatched house with oil fired central heating. The annual cost of oil was about the same as the electric bill for the new build "eco" house. The old one still had a leccy bill of course but the difference between the two houses was not much. The previous owner of the thatched cottage had removed some of the internal wall thickness to make the rooms a bit bigger which made it much cooler, mud and horse hair I think.
Our current house has 400mm insulation all round, electric radiators which 99.9% of the time don't get used, and a multi fuel fire which, until we can produce some of our own firewood, burns £450 of Columbian coal per year at the top of Scotland. Nice and controllable and comfy.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

"Net zero" means that greenhouse gas emissions produced equal those removed from the atmosphere. It is not "zero emissions" - it no doubt gives the government some wriggle room.

As noted above the best solution is not to use the energy in the first place. Using carbon capture and other technologies to enable greater consumption is patching up the broken rather than doing the job properly - hammering a nail into a broken table leg to stop it falling over rather than re-making the joint, to use a woodworking analogy.

The failure to mandate better building standards is evidence of the influence property developers have over government policy. The government should govern. We will live with the consequences for 50-100 years. Much better to include in the original build than retrofit.

We also seem to have a one size fits all approach - rather than recognise that different parts of the UK experience very different conditions - eg: snow cover and temperature in the highlands vs southern UK where snow is usually infrequent to non-existent.

I don't understand why air source heat pumps cannot be used across most of the UK - they don't need extra land, work to high levels of efficiency to both warm and cool, and can be installed in the average house at a cost not dissimilar to the average gas CH system.

There are some who find any threat to a profligate lifestyle unacceptable - a 4L V8 is both a right and necessity, I want to be warm, have some fresh air, and simply turn the heating up.

I don't subscribe to a nanny state mandating personal choices and behaviours. A tax and regulatory framework which ensures those who choose to enjoy (selfish) freedoms pay for the pleasure is a better solution. The cheapest form of heating is a woolly jumper!