[kreuzberger]

It is unlikely that a reporter, spending possibly several days on a piece like this, would speak to so many specialists and make the basic error of confusing the Amoc with the Gulf Stream. My money would be on that being a subbing error.

Still, if the upshot is that the deniers get to spend a few more minutes with their precious ignorance, great, but this won't be the only source of comfort for their towering stupidity.

[Philip Marlow]

I went to Svalbard myself, many moons ago, and so this piece stirs up a fair mixture of emotions.

[Boiler]

They're not that bad, in fact their climate has been on the whole pretty good, but they have a tendancy to engage in this sort of reporting. Here's a good article from the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... te-doomers

Stanford engineering professor and renewable energy expert Mark Z Jacobson tweeted the other day, “Given that scientists who study 100% renewable energy systems are unanimous that it can be done why do we hear daily on twitter and everywhere else by those who don’t study such systems that it can’t be done?” A significant percentage of the general public speaks of climate change with a strange combination of confidence and defeatism: confidence in positions often based on inaccurate or outdated or maybe no information; defeatism about what we can do to make a livable future. Maybe they just get their facts from other doom evangelists, who flourish on the internet, no matter how much reputable scientists demonstrate their errors.

They’re surrendering in advance and inspiring others to do the same. If you announce that the outcome has already been decided and we’ve already lost, you strip away the motivation to participate – and of course if we do nothing we settle for the worst outcome. It often seems that people are searching harder for evidence we’re defeated than that we can win. Warnings are a valuable thing, given with the sense that there’s something we can do to prevent the anticipated outcome; prophesies assume the future is settled and there’s nothing we can do. But the defeatists often describe a present they assert are locking in the worst outcomes.

One day this week, someone told me that she was “angry at people’s refusal to acknowledge what’s happening to the planet” and when I waved a couple of surveys at them showing that in 2023 “Nearly seven-in-ten Americans (69%) favor the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050” and in 2021 “three-quarters (75%) of adults in Great Britain said they were worried about the impact of climate change” they shifted to complaining about poor leadership and climate deniers. So far as I could tell, she wanted to be angry at obstacles, and if one was removed, she had others.

I'm seeing this a lot. All for environmental measures, as long as it's not them. I am hoping, perhaps vainly at the moment, that I can eke another two years out of my ageing but ULEZ-compliant gas-guzzler. By that time, I will have taken my modest employer's pension and I can finally hang up my soldering iron. At this point, I simply won't need a large and comfortable motorway cruiser for those odd trips into town and the shops and so it will be perfectly feasible for me to go fully electric. A secondhand Renault Zoe fits the bill admirably.

But the looks I get from neighbours, friends and family when I tell them this - they look at me with what can only be described as bemusement. "Why do you want to give that lovely and practical old Beemer up for a milk float?" is one of the more polite comments.

"Because I don't want to to see those 'Out ER' routes* used for real" doesn't seem to wash, no pun intended.

* Around the low-lying areas inland of The Wash are red signs against many main roads labelled "Out ER". These are planned Evacuation Routes should these areas become inundated 1953-style, but worse. They reach as far as Stamford.

[Boiler]

Of course, the anti-EV lobby are loving this story in the Mail:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -fire.html

From the BTL comments:

Screenshot 2023-07-26 at 19-30-40 Race to salvage sinking ship carrying 350 Mercedes and 3 000 vehicles.png (31.5 KiB) Viewed 5662 times

Lithium batteries on a plane? That'll be everyone with a phone and/or a laptop then, at the very least.

[Killer Whale]

Yes. You'd never catch a car ferry allowing on vehicles carrying tanks full of highly flammable liquid, would you?

[Boiler]

It seems that today, five councils were overruled on their objections to the ULEZ expansion.

The BBC is having a SYB on this and now it's "but diesel trains don't have to pay"... FFS. And there's a new one - "tyre crumb".

By contrast, on my late night journey home I found myself following a Dutch-registered electric motorbike, which I found fascinating...

[Bones McCoy]

It seems that today, five councils were overruled on their objections to the ULEZ expansion.

The BBC is having a SYB on this and now it's "but diesel trains don't have to pay"... FFS. And there's a new one - "tyre crumb".

By contrast, on my late night journey home I found myself following a Dutch-registered electric motorbike, which I found fascinating...

I always wondered where the line is drawn between electric bikes and electric motorbikes.

[Oboogie]

I always wondered where the line is drawn between electric bikes and electric motorbikes.

There may be additional differences, but I do know that an electric motorbike is one which has no pedals and is capable of speeds in excess of 15.5 mph.

[Bones McCoy]

I always wondered where the line is drawn between electric bikes and electric motorbikes.

There may be additional differences, but I do know that an electric motorbike is one which has no pedals and is capable of speeds in excess of 15.5 mph.

Thanks

[Boiler]

Well, the one I encountered last night was happily doing 70mph.

[Boiler]

Today, pointed out elsewhere that this afternoon, 57% of the UK's electricity requirement was being met by renewables.

Whiny octogenarian Brexiteer replies: "Yeah, but it's a sunny, breezy day. Then what? Eh? EH?"

I will await a response to my comment of "Okay, so what's YOUR solution to our growing problem? Let's hear from you."

[Bones McCoy]

Today, pointed out elsewhere that this afternoon, 57% of the UK's electricity requirement was being met by renewables.

Whiny octogenarian Brexiteer replies: "Yeah, but it's a sunny, breezy day. Then what? Eh? EH?"

I will await a response to my comment of "Okay, so what's YOUR solution to our growing problem? Let's hear from you."

Expect the height of Boomer wit "We used to put on a cardigan".

Missing the point that cardigans can't smelt steel or cool datacentres.

[Boiler]

So far... tumbleweed, which doesn't surprise me.

Thought: if we were to turn off teh Interwebz and all the crypto mining tomorrow, how much energy would it save?

[Boiler]

I doubt anyone here needs to read this, but it's a good description of what happens to your body in heatwave conditions.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66249805

Having endured the heatwave of 2019 in Paris, and remembering that Coningsby ain't so far from here in 2022, I really am quite disturbed by all this.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... birmingham

Meanwhile, HS2 is declared unachievable by the government's infrastructure review body.

Can it and divert the committed funds into whatever achievable can be salvaged. Now.

[soulboy]

The most significant but least mentioned benefit of HS2 is to greatly increase freight capacity on existing lines. Each tonne of freight transported by rail produces 76% less carbon emissions compared to road, with a freight train carrying as much as 110 lorries.

Whatever challenges there are with HS2 any decision to cancel it can't be taken lightly.

[Boiler]

The most significant but least mentioned benefit of HS2 is to greatly increase freight capacity on existing lines. Each tonne of freight transported by rail produces 76% less carbon emissions compared to road, with a freight train carrying as much as 110 lorries.

Whatever challenges there are with HS2 any decision to cancel it can't be taken lightly.

This is the thing the detractors choose to ignore: HS2 is not, repeat NOT, just about speed. It is about releasing capacity on the southern part of the WCML for more stopping passenger trains and getting goods off the roads and onto the railways. Unless of course, you don't mind the M1 and M6 filling up with more lorries and cars.

Here on the Drier Side, money was spent on upgrading the neglected Lincoln Loop to a 24/7 operation that could take heavier trains (again) and building the Werrington dive-under with extra running lines so that goods could (a) be taken off the crowded ECML south of Doncaster and (b) not cause problems to ECML passengers trains whilst long container trains crossed the path to get to the running lines that go into Peterborough and then across to March and the eastern ports.

[Andy McDandy]

All admirable, but sounds like a bunch of smaller projects rather than one great big one. So identify the doable bits, ease the pressure, and change the focus to decongestion over convenience. In the public eye it's still about getting in/out of London faster. And change the fucking name for a start. "High speed" kind of gives away the government's priorities there.

[kreuzberger]

Cross-posted.

Minor aside - since when did we adopt the American "swim", rather than "swimming"?

I'm also thinking about shellfish losses - is it this part of the world?

Now that the oceans' average temperatures are verging on being ok to drop in a tea bag and the job's a good'un, "sink" looks like bookie's favourite.

It has reached 21° C, and the average daily global sea surface temperature has trashed a 2016 record this week, and is far above the average for early-August. In the north, we have another six weeks for absurd temps and we could be back in the fire-zone within ten days or so.

Shellfish? These temperatures disturb marine species, upsetting the food chain from top to bottom, so that's pretty much a given. Christ knows what that will mean for ice-melt and the tides racing in in places that we would rather it didn't. The next ten to twenty years look more certain than ever to be more salutary than we had hoped for, and inescapably horrifying.

We had an evens chance during the first quarter of this century and shrugged our shoulders.

The global shit show, notwithstanding, it might actually do us good to be hit around the chops with a recently poached haddock.

[Boiler]

Read with interest, ta. I was more thinking about the decline allegedly caused by disease/pollutants.

On a different matter, I'm travelling south by electric train at the moment and I have passed numerous solar farms. Here's the thing - why do people oppose them so vigorously? Big campaign going on to oppose what is known as "Mallard Pass" locally but as far as I can see, they're unobtrusive and nothing's stopping you farming sheep around them, so what's the problem?