Climate Austerity

[slowcoach]

2020 seems to be a year promising a UK media emphasis on climate matters. The BBC is embarking on a year long campaign of programmes featuring the climate as well as other environmental impacts.

Will this do much other than preach to the converted? Perhaps but I expect not.

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For me, the bigger question is whether it will support some positive view of a future better than what's current or even what has passed since WWII? Perhaps but I expect not.

I anticipate the perpetuation and reinforcement of the need for cutbacks, for a reduction of choice, for an end to material and immaterial growth.

I fear that the activists are paving a way towards losing both the battle and the argument. If they do, I wonder if they will be receive their just deserts.

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I must suggest that I know more about how climate change scepticism functions than is the norm for an outsider. On the other hand sceptics are uncommonly well versed in the opposing view. I would go further and suggest that for many it is not in the consensus science or the evidence that matter as much as the implied outcomes.

If you find contraction and austerity anathema, you will alight upon whatever science or evidence supports your desirable future.

Everything will be up for grabs.

If you look right now you may find out that Greta Thunberg is a fake, a media pawn of her parents, a local think tank, and ultimately the likes of George Soros (this last suggestion is that it is all part of the New World Order Zionist Conspiracy).

Truth and evidence is no longer an issue, you pays your money and you makes your choice, the proposed future outcomes is an issue, and the activists need to come up with a vision of a world worth living in. 

[slowcoach]

The carbon dioxide issue is essentially an energy and fuel production issue which can be fixed by changes to the way energy and fuels are produced. I cannot see how, by itself, it requires the adoption of austere countermeasures.

That is my view.

There are many other environmental issues that I think it would be fruitful to address, but in their own terms.

Unfortunately for me, others profoundly disagree leading to statements such as a recent one from the UK's statuary Committee on Climate Change that it may prove necessary to introduce taxes on meat if the UK populace fail to cutback voluntarily. Theirs is a new voice adding to the preexisting clamour for Sin Taxes needed to combat climate change.

It is true that there is a need to manage land use in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way but loading the burden for a collective endeavour onto the individual shopper is a crass and I must suggest counterproductive way of managing land use or climate change.

Yes, I am annoyed. Yes I do think that demonisation of substances and people over a period of many decades is policy destined for failure.

I do care that I may be a minority of one, but that is not enough to change my thinking.

[auntieannie]

As ever, you make sense.

[slowcoach]

Thanks auntieannie,

I have just been skipping through the January 2020 report "Land use: Policies for a Net Zero UK" from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) and they appear to target a from 2,700,000 to 7,000,000 hectare reduction in agricultural land from an increase in "Healthy Eating" (reduction in meat and dairy).

With regard to what to do with that land they rightly suggest increasing/restoring forestry and peat land areas but interestingly NOT A SINGLE MENTION of Solar or Wind Farms. They do however favour bio-energy crops when combined with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

There is something like a potential annual reduction of 500,000,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent from decarbonizing UK energy and fuel supplies but just a 30,000,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent from their entire package of measures. Now some or much of their saving would be obtained by having carbon zero inputs, farm machinery, fertilisers, heating, lighting, drying, etc..

The smaller figure 2,700,000 hectares is an area larger than that designated as South East England (~19,000,000 hectares).

[auntieannie]

So... they're talking mostly bollocks, right?

[auntieannie]

Anyway, isn't austerity as in modern austerity measures, whether financial or else... completely counterproductive?

[sophie]

If one listens to the old adage ‘Follow the money’, one can make some sense out of the contradictions.

[auntieannie]

I love it how they can't fool you lot.

[slowcoach]

Jan 26, 2020 15:01:19 GMT 2 auntieannie said:

So... they're talking mostly bollocks, right?

Them and me both perhaps!

No, I am sure they are good people doing what is required of them.

They are part of the mechanism set in place by the UK's Climate Change Act 2008.

They are in effect charged with mandating UK policy; telling government how it must act, which is an oddity in itself.

The 2008 Act was largely the doing of Friends of the Earth (England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) who wrote the original draft legislation.

It was passed into law during a fit of madness when the main political parties were competing to have the best green credentials.

What the Committee does is very important, but it gets very little media attention. It produces long and I suppose tedious reports that I must suspect almost nobody reads and which are doubtlessly accompanied by press releases which do get read and regurgitated as News.

When the report in question was published the media picked up on the meat reduction statements and a suggestion of taxation to force the reduction to happen. What they didn't seem to report on was the underlying reduction in agricultural land on a scale on a massive scale that the meat/dairy reduction is to facilitate.

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My guess is that we have problem media, from my point of view at least. They don't make the time available to inform the public about the depth of what is going on behind the scenes, the headlines, and the press releases.

This leaves the field open the machinations of a bunch of retired old farts, who typically have a background in science/technology/engineering, who do read the reports and put their own spin on them, Yes slow, it is you we are talking about.

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FWIW I have to suspect that the majority of the very small pool of people who do read all the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports are sceptics looking for dodgy bits that they can pull apart and ridicule.

[slowcoach]

Jan 26, 2020 18:36:01 GMT 2 sophie said:

If one listens to the old adage ‘Follow the money’, one can make some sense out of the contradictions.

I hope this is true, that there is some sense to be found.

[slowcoach]

Carbon Intensity:

In particular the carbon intensities of economies as a whole carbon emitted per $ of gdp.
Which is the average amount of carbon transacted on every occasion that money is spent or alternatively when it is earned, but only count one or the other.

There is also:

The carbon intensity of specific goods, or more crucially, of specific transactions, i.e the transaction pays for more than just the goods, there is also profit, taxes, rents, and the whatever the staff involved in production and supply spent their small proportion of the value of the originating transaction.

Whereas the carbon intensity of specific goods can be estimated with some hope of accuracy, the carbon intensity of specific transactions is obscure.


The identity:

Carbon Emissions = "Carbon Intensity per Dollar Spent" times "Dollars Spent" is a truism an identity but it is clear that in order to decrease carbon emissions one must, at a minimum reduce either the "Carbon Intensity per Dollar Spent" or the amount of "Dollars Spent".

What I ponder, what concerns me, is how does one know or guess which transactions will lead to a lowering of the Carbon Intensity of the economy as a whole. The alternative is simply reduce the amount of money you earn and spend but that is a bit mean and meagre for a future economy.



Right now, averaged across the world, the Carbon Intensity is about 80 grams of carbon for every dollar transacted. (300 grams of CO2 per dollar).

Put that way, it seems a lot, to me at least.

It is also a concern that money itself has a carbon intensity (when it is transacted) so price has to be taken into account when selecting nominally "low carbon" options, and that may make for a crucial difference. For instance, UK rail journeys which viewed in isolation produce fwer emissions than private care journeys (per passenger mile), but if and when they are twice as expensive as road journeys then there has to be real doubt as to whether they are the better alternative.

On another tack:

It was once true that the Chinese economy was so much more carbon intensive than the "advanced economies'" that their products were a bad bet no matter how cheap they were. This is rapidly ceasing to be the case.

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ETA: Fix brain fade errors.

[tzarine]

On another tack:

It was once true that the Chinese economy was so much more carbon intensive than the "advanced economies'" that their products were a bad bet no matter how cheap they were. This is rapidly ceasing to be the case.


yea, their fentanyl is world class & as their counterfeit designer goods

i refused to not use my aircon this summer. tell the corporations to turn off the highrise towers & times square first & stop their private planes.
i will not be blackmailed by corporations to use a paper straw