[Tubby Isaacs]

Given that I don't like them blocking roads (that's an avoidable death in ambulance waiting to happen, and I'm not sure many people will shrug and say "people die in ambulances all the time, Tories, innit?") I suppose I can't criticise them too much for this sort of thing.

But at least get some better symbolism/logic. It's to say the least counter intuitive to target a garden at a festival. People in the Global South aren't short of food because of the Chelsea Flower Show.

[Crabcakes]

They might care a little bit if they could see a way to make a profit from fresh air. As it is, there's no way of monetising the stuff, so just let the plebs choke.

The Tories will care the moment climate change tips over to there being a profit in carbon capture and heat removal. It’s already seeing changes in parts of the US were wildfires, insane heatwaves and hurricanes are becoming the norm when they were rare events well within living memory. Which will probably be far too late for many if not all of us, but after parts of the world are incinerated by El Niño this year, who knows?

[The Weeping Angel]

Something that often gets ignored around the discourse around Climate Change is that there is a huge shift going on in Clean Energy

[The Weeping Angel]

Given that I don't like them blocking roads (that's an avoidable death in ambulance waiting to happen, and I'm not sure many people will shrug and say "people die in ambulances all the time, Tories, innit?") I suppose I can't criticise them too much for this sort of thing.

But at least get some better symbolism/logic. It's to say the least counter intuitive to target a garden at a festival. People in the Global South aren't short of food because of the Chelsea Flower Show.

I've fast come to the conclusion that Climate Change activists aren't serious people.

[Bones McCoy]

If the Koch Brothers created a false flag environmentalist organisation.
In order to discredit the cause....
It would look like some of the recent protests.

[kreuzberger]

If the governments of the vast majority of industrialised nations began to understand what half a billion refugees on the move looks like, we wouldn't need climate activists, ridiculous or otherwise.

They have by wholehearted support, even when they do summat a bit silly.

[The Weeping Angel]

Nice one guys

[Tubby Isaacs]

If the governments of the vast majority of industrialised nations began to understand what half a billion refugees on the move looks like, we wouldn't need climate activists, ridiculous or otherwise.

They have by wholehearted support, even when they do summat a bit silly.

Yeah, I shouldn't be too critical, but they seem to be in a bit of a rut with this orange stuff. The Van Gogh stunt actually grew on me, but it's like they think they're on to some brilliant piece of symbolism by repeating it. It's above my pay grade to suggest what they should do instead, but aren't there some advertising hotshots involved who could do better?

[davidjay]

They might defend their actions by saying it's what the suffragettes, anti-apartheid movement and others did, but those protests weren't won by inconveniencing and alienating ordinary people.

[Bones McCoy]

They might defend their actions by saying it's what the suffragettes, anti-apartheid movement and others did, but those protests weren't won by inconveniencing and alienating ordinary people.

I'm also unconvinced that they're doing much to advance their aims.
If their aims are to increase awareness of hydrocarbon damage and alternatives, they're barely generating any discission.
They are generating a lot of discussion about trustafarian types bunking orange powder about and disrupting people's leisure time.

[Spoonman]

They might defend their actions by saying it's what the suffragettes, anti-apartheid movement and others did, but those protests weren't won by inconveniencing and alienating ordinary people.

IMO it's about the group/activists "reading the room". There's a fine line between bringing awareness of "just causes" in a publicly disruptive manner that an ordinary person can at least sympathise with that can gather organically growing support for your cause, and just tipping over that line where people start to tell you to "go away". Once you go too far over that line, it's next to impossible to successfully retreat behind that line, other than letting time - in terms of years, if not decades - letting memories heal/go. Fathers4Justice was one that springs to mind for me.

[The Weeping Angel]

Important news from Labour

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... s-projects

Labour has confirmed it will block all new domestic oil and gas developments if it wins power, proposing instead to invest heavily in renewable sources such as wind and also in nuclear power.

The shadow work and pensions secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said details would be announced soon.

“What we’ll be doing in the coming weeks is outlining how we want to invest in the green jobs of the future, to bring bills down, to create a more sustainable energy supply,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday show.

“We’ll be outlining that in a significant mission in the coming weeks, and we’ll be announcing more details then.

[kreuzberger]

Important news from Labour

The importance of the 360° climate clusterfuck is edging past the Ming vase - whouda thunk it? (Certainly not those tarbrush-tainted forrins who planned to come to the UK, work their bollocks off, and remit untold riches to the Treasury.)

[davidjay]

They might defend their actions by saying it's what the suffragettes, anti-apartheid movement and others did, but those protests weren't won by inconveniencing and alienating ordinary people.

I'm also unconvinced that they're doing much to advance their aims.
If their aims are to increase awareness of hydrocarbon damage and alternatives, they're barely generating any discission.
They are generating a lot of discussion about trustafarian types bunking orange powder about and disrupting people's leisure time.

If you asked a focus group their opinions of Just Stop Oil, words such as 'entitled', 'student' and 'disruptive' would feature heavily.

[kreuzberger]

If you asked a focus group their opinions of Just Stop Oil, words such as 'entitled', 'student' and 'disruptive' would feature heavily.

There's the point about what such focus groups are - or should be - for; pulling back the artichoke of underlying feelings and attitudes towards climate changes and the causes thereof, and how they are developing.

How has opinion shifted in the few short years since a wee hobgoblin sat on her tod outside her school?

[Crabcakes]

Meanwhile, I remain convinced science will save us all where politics and business will not:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -co2-study

[Youngian]

Politics provides the leadership, strategic direction and economic climate for the scientific innovations to survive. I saw in Australia that solar power is generating desalination. Engineers have done their bit so in theory no one should ever need to go without fresh water ever again. Over to you, politicians.

[Yug]

Why am I not surprised?

Government backing for new oil and coal, airport expansion plans and slow progress on heat pumps show that the UK has lost its leadership on climate issues, a government watchdog warns.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) described government efforts to scale up climate action as "worryingly slow".

It was "markedly" less confident than a year ago that the UK would reach its targets for cutting carbon emissions.

The government said it was committed to its climate targets.

Committee chairman Lord Deben, a former Conservative environment minister, was particularly critical of the government's policy on new coal and oil projects.

The decision to approve the UK's first new deep coal mine in 30 years in Cumbria last December was "total nonsense", he told the BBC.

Lord Deben was also damning about plans for a major new oilfield off the coast of Scotland. Approval for Rosebank, which could produce an estimated 300 million barrels of oil in its lifetime, is expected soon.

"How can we ask countries in Africa not to develop oil?" Lord Deben said. "How can we ask other nations not to expand the fossil fuel production if we start doing it ourselves?"...

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-enviro ... 032607.amp

Who would have thought that our splendid Tory government aren't bothered about hitting climate targets? I suppose when a Tory grandee's beachfront property starts suffering from higher than usual high tides they might start thinking that there is something in this climate change nonsense after all. Can the world wait that long?


I'm a bit torn on the coal issue. We still need the stuff unfortunately, so it must be more environmentally friendly to dig up our own than to import it from the other side of the world. The amount of clag a diseasel locomotive pumps into the atmosphere in 20 round trips from Cumbria to the end users is still an order of magnitude smaller than one ship travelling one way from South America. And the shipment from South America will still need to be transported from the port to the end users.

[Yug]

DfE in the firing line

The government’s spending watchdog has criticised the Department for Education’s green ambitions after it quietly slashed a climate change programme’s budget by more than £85 million.

National Audit Office bosses have warned the DfE its sustainability goals are at “risk of being deprioritised or traded-off when making decisions” in a damning report published today.

It found the department “does not know what contribution” its climate change schemes will have – even though education settings produce 37 per cent of public sector emissions.

The NAO also said school leaders – whose buildings are said to be in “poor condition” – are being allowed to use government cash from energy efficiency schemes on alternative projects.

It argued the department is failing to adequately fund green programmes – despite pledging to make the UK “a world leader in sustainability across the education system” two years ago...

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/85m-quietly-s ... ge-scheme/

And this is just one of the many reasons why young people won't be voting Conservative at the next GE. The Tories have shown that they couldn't giv a fuck about the environment, both locally and globally.

[Bones McCoy]

On Coal: An I'll admit I may be 40 years out of date here.

We tend to think of it as fuel, but it was also an important chemical ingredient.
Carbon for steel was the main use.

I think it was also important in manufacturing some types of plastics.
I'm light on details here, since I dropped Chemistry aged 18 before difficult stuff like polymerisation gets a look in to teh curriculum.


Coal / Steel had a pretty circular relationship:
Quarry the ore using a lot of metal machinery.
Mine the coal, which also consumes a lot of steel in machinery and reinforcement.
Then produce steel, often by burning coal and using some to provide the carbon.

It helped that Coal and Iron Ore were often co-located (I remember colouring in maps of Europe which showed this).
We don't produce as much steel now, which has an inevitable effect on demand for domestic coal.