Net Zero

Very interesting comments by three leading scientists, here:

**LINK**

https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368

MichaelG.

An interesting link , one which discusses every 'solution' but the one which dare not be mentioned.

It's all a load of hokum

Once they ban range rovers and similar daft objects, 20 dollar flights across europe in jumbo jets and create large scale zero-take fishing zones then I'll start to take an interest

until then it's all a load of hokum

Here's where your net zero rare earths come from

Edited By Ady1 on 22/04/2021 08:33:51

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What is ?

For clarity; could you please define “it”

Frankly, I can’t tell from your post whether you mean the scientists’ confession, or the concept of ‘net zero’

MichaelG.

It's institutionalised hypocrisy

definition

Edited By Ady1 on 22/04/2021 08:52:08

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Once again ... I can’t tell from your post whether you mean the scientists’ confession, or the concept of ‘net zero’

Or is “it” just ‘everything except what Ady1 thinks’ ?

MichaelG.

Ooh look

Here's yet another "British woodlands at crisis point" report

our rinse and repeat propaganda gets old after 50 years

Its brown envelopes we need to be reducing, not green stuff

I came across this this morning:

Willis

It's worth a read.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

I'm 100% in favour of reducing pollution btw, and the technology is amazing

My issue is the smokescreen the system generates to cover the mess we make and to line the pockets of thousands of corrupt institutional and political participants

...but if you rock the boat... you don't get any munny...

Edited By Ady1 on 22/04/2021 09:19:53

Still struggling to know whether you actually read the link that I posted, Ady

... I think we’re probably ‘on the same side’

... but perhaps not ‘on the same page’

MichaelG.

Classic! As Ady knows exactly what he means by 'it', he hasn't realised his post can be read in entirely opposite senses. I do this too, often finding people responding to what I said rather than what I meant, oh dear! It's hard to be clear. However, judging by Ady's 09:17 post, Michael is probably right about being on the same side but not on the same page!

It hadn't occurred to me before reading Michael's link that decision makers would be stupid enough to delay climate change counter-measures as a result of assuming net-zero will achieved by applying technology that doesn't exist. Yet it seems to be true! Was it Saint Aquinas who prayed for the gift of celibacy, but not yet?

I'm optimistic energy needs can be met with a combination of Green technology and relatively painless societal change. But that's of little value unless global warming is also controlled. I'm reminded of the boiling frog experiment: when frogs are gradually warmed up in water, they cheerfully stay put until cooked. So it is with people: we aren't good at managing risk and particularly bad unless problems are bleeding obvious. Very inclined to believe slow change isn't happening.

Many examples from history. Although medical research clearly indicated by 1930 that smoking is a major killer, tobacco companies successfully delayed reform by arguing inadequate proof, paying for confusing counter-opinion, fudging statistics, claiming freedom of trade, bribery, lobbying, and banging the personal freedom drum. We're all guilty, and maybe it was for the best anyway. I see advantage in a product that collects a huge amount of tax from working age people and then dramatically reduces the pension bill by bumping them off! Can't see any value in long-term global warming though - only chaotic change.

Dave

Are you serious?

Edited By blowlamp on 22/04/2021 11:40:33

Never , ever, underestimate the depths to which certain groups will sink to , to hide their true intentions or to cover-up their 'mistakes.

Back to the serious point, net zero.

This can only ever be achieved by near unlimited amounts of 'clean' electrical energy, continuously available.

Renewables can help but fission is all we have available ( until the fusion Geni is found ) .

And we ( UK) threw all that away when the CEGB was sold off .and all the heavy industry that supported it.

So far, the National Grid have been lucky every year , helped by.................Climate change.

Unlike Ady I do not go in for blanket condemnations of all politicians and business people. I don't let those off the hook though, because most of them can't handle difficult problems beyond their expertise or rapid solving. So they so tend, like the campaigners (of stridency inversely proportional to analysis and understanding) to go for the superficially easy answers.

However, if the scientists themselves have created a trap by suggesting what look like "easy" solutions based on purely numerical models, we can't blame politicians for falling into it too. The computer says... Aye, it does, but what did you ask the computer to compute, and just as importantly, what did you not ask it?

The stark truths emerge from that letter - whatever mitigation measure is proposed that depends on curing the effects, it brings with it enormous problems and costs of its own.Similarly, so do those measures aimed at the cause rather than effect.

Essentially the old adage about free lunches being not, is here more a matter of enormous banquets. Or at least it is for the portion of the world able even to have a sandwich. Whilst developed societies - like our own - can do with less of what we have by want rather than need, there are huge numbers of people who rightly, want what we do genuinely need, and have but too easily take for granted. Do we really need buy our children shiny polyethylene toys? Probably not but let's be brave enough to admit that raises an uncomfortable question about all that shiny metal we want in our own "play-rooms" - yet if we need the shiny blue polyethylene pipe bringing clean, potable water into our homes, then so do those who would not mind it supplying even the village-square tap. Though.... whence the raw materials for the polyethylene?

And those numbers, both of those with the luxury of choice between want and need and those without even what they need, are increasing, but world-wide population is a nettle too difficult and painful to grasp.

There grows alongside that nettle, another, also hinted at in the article. The theory is that presumably we leave hydrocarbon minerals in the ground, rather than risk drastic climate-changes and sea-level rise before depleting them anyway. That's all well and good but coal and oil produce important feed-stocks for a huge range of materials including some of those needed in structures like wind-turbines; and unlike the metals, those materials are not salvageable. With what and how will they be replaced in sufficient quantities at sufficient rates? Can coal and petroleum be refined to extract the "good" without the "bad"? If not, what would we do with millions of tons of left-over coke and inflammable liquid fuels we can no longer burn? How do we perform the tasks those fuels do, including ore-reduction, without bringing yet more serious problems down on our heads?

And so it goes on - one could write a book on the equivalents and ramifications that policy-makers tend to ignore or gloss over by lacking easy answers. The politicians on the whole are not corrupt or incompetent although far too many are desperately ignorant of anything related to science and engineering. Rather, they mean well but have no easy answers because there are no easy answers.

Once again we are back to the free banquet question, and the dark question if frankly, whatever we do, we are doomed or damned or both; though maybe not us personally, nor even our grand-children.

The trap those scientists have seen is far deeper and less escapable than they describe.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 22/04/2021 15:28:48

The answer on a personal level might be

1. Stop heating your house over 15C.
2. Stop running unnecessary electrical equipment in your shed unless treadle powered. Which will be pointless anyway as you can't get the gas to silver solder anything.
3. Stop buying mobiles and computers.
4. Stop buying meat or cheese more than once a week

Now we are back to the 1940's only without the bombs. After all where else can it go with a 10 year deadline?

Just imagine, THIS is the year 2035 , there is no more gas and the 'women/men ' have arrived at YOUR door to rip out YOUR gas cooker+boiler and dig up YOUR garden to install the ''expansion' chamber for the heat pump, etc .

Feeling good now ?

Many examples from history. Although medical research clearly indicated by 1930 that smoking is a major killer, tobacco companies successfully delayed reform by arguing inadequate proof, paying for confusing counter-opinion, fudging statistics, claiming freedom of trade, bribery, lobbying, and banging the personal freedom drum. We're all guilty, and maybe it was for the best anyway. I see advantage in a product that collects a huge amount of tax from working age people and then dramatically reduces the pension bill by bumping them off! Can't see any value in long-term global warming though - only chaotic change.

---------------------------------------------------

Another big plus was the huge number of industrial related deaths smoking covered up within a heavy industry society

If you breathe welding fumes all day and you smoke then it was the smoking wot killed you, honest guv

Once heavy industry disappeared in Britain then so did the British governments intransigence to smoking

Can't happen, freezing worms will be banned.