Most have decided they prefer SUVs, cheap burgers and flying to Greece twice a year for 50 quid over the Amazon being a thing or co-existing with wildlife.
And the ones that didn't make that choice are unwilling to change things because deep down they know violence (in the short term) is the only thing that can stop the car going over the cliff.
Great.
Just like Brexit, the fuckwit Goehring but dumb Nigel Farage was going to steal Tory votes, so dumb dumb Cameron promised the Brexit vote to keep those votes. And he was too chickenshit to ignore the results of the referendum although the government was allowed to do so (again, for the price of electoral annihilation).
Any links? Last time I check they have huge amount of work going on in that area.
From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66740920 - "Dan McGrail, the chief executive of industry group RenewableUK, told the BBC: "Industry has highlighted to government on several occasions that this auction has been set up in a way which is very unlikely to secure the capacity we need to stay on track to meet the government's own target of 50 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2050 [up from 13.66GW now]." and also "Labour's shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC: "This is just the latest episode in the Tories' 13 years of failed energy policy. They broke the onshore wind market by banning it, they undermined the solar industry by removing the feed-in tariff, and they caused chaos in the home insulation market with their failed schemes."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749344 - "the lack of offshore wind will be a blow to the pledge to deliver 50 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030 compared with 14GW today."
So you can either think that was incompetent or malicious. And when trying to decide you can look at the mentioned de-facto onshore wind power block the Tories put in since 2015 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66715141 ) and the previously announced ban combustion cars by 2030 which they pushed back to 2035 while talking about a new ban on solar panels on farmland ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66863110 ). Or maybe their Return to Office policy ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61145692 and https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/get-back-work-office-britai... ) which.
And you can see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-redirects-hs2-funding-... about the HS2 rail, and wonder to yourself why the "Spiralling HS2 costs" were something the government could not cope with, but the "faster journey times, increased capacity and more frequent, reliable services across rail, buses and roads" are something they will be able to deliver. When part of the HS2 plan was to move intercity trains off the local lines and freight off the roads, leading to more frequent reliable road and bus journeys. "billions to fix potholes on the country’s roads" - first, we know what causes potholes; heavy vehicles moving frieght". And this is more reliable bus journeys from the government which brought us "Buses in 'crisis' as 3,000 routes reduced or scrapped" in 2018 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44681974 ) and killed off 20% of bus services in the last year ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66442599 ).
Browsing around on OpenInfraMap I have seen some grid scale battery storage, e.g. https://openinframap.org/#9.74/51.6119/-2.1051/L,P,S Minety 150MW battery down as 266MWh storage capacity so there are some around.
There's independent company Octopus Energy which pays ordinary people with solar / battery / wind turbines to export energy to the grid, and if you're an interested geeky customer you can download the half-hourly pricing so you can tune your system to import cheap power and export at peak times; they do this to encourage rollout of renewables - https://octopus.energy/press/octopus-energy-doubles-payments...
Without any form of meaningful storage (eg pumped hydro) the UK grid will be in trouble.
You are fundamentally incorrect and either do not understand what a capacitor is or are unwilling to use the correct language in an attempt to prove a point...which unfortunately undermines it. Additionally, smart grids are already capable of transitioning between sources and solar or wind with battery storage are more cost effective than fossil fuel generation today: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/04/15/wind-solar-power-now-th...
Fundamentally, at a grid level, lithium batteries can't provide what the average person considers "storage", that is running the grid from said storage. When people hear lithium battery, they think of a phone or laptop - the battery is the sole source of power for 6-12 hours.
On a grid however, lithium batteries provide very short duration stabilisation from "noisy" supply, absorb spikes in generation and boost troughs.
You cannot cost effectivly power the grid from lithium batteries on a still night. Pumped hydro etc are needed to cover prolonged periods of low supply (and absorb prolonged periods of oversupply).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
Cruachan in Scotland stores 7GWh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station
Ffestiniog in Wales stores 1.4GWh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ffestiniog_Power_Station
Foyer at Loch Ness exists, can’t quickly see how many Wh it stores.
Coire-Glas is proposed and could double the existing electricity storage apparently, which would make it huge, but not yet approved https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-650...
Still, powering a country though a cold dim calm winter is a lot of power; the UK uses around 800GWh/day of electricity, not counting gas/energy for heating. To store a week or a month or a winter of that is not a solved problem.
surely the power companies can just build them if wind is so cheap
2030-2049 all remaining airports close all shipping declines to zero, no flying for 2050, and after electric planes may fly.
Therefore, you would only need to find economic linchpins or similar points of leverage in the UKs fossil gas supply, automative supply chain and marketplace, and petroleum supplies to force a more rapid transition despite neglected policy. The rest of the global market will drag the UK, as California does in the US with regards to automative fuel efficiency standards.
A successful EV future depends on the continuing rapid expansion globally by Tesla and BYD [3] (as well as smaller players of course, if they can ramp expeditiously), not politicians or older constituents who could not care less about a future they won't exist in.
(also important is deploying as much inexpensive low carbon energy generation as possible as fast as possible, but is a topic for another thread [4])
[1] https://www.viking-link.com/
[2] https://www.drax.com/press_release/drax-ends-half-a-century-...
[3] https://www.statista.com/chart/30758/most-popular-plug-in-el...
Fixing Climate Change needs to be like the World War II Mobilization Effort. Nothing short of that will fix anything.
For example, I am currently homeless living in a minivan. I know my carbon footprint is way lower than most people. (Solar for my power, no heat, no ac, etc). But I would love to live in a tiny house close to town with solar. But no one will build them, and they can't even build them because of all the regulations.
And then you have people who would be against all this because they think their "freedom" is worth more than children's future.
So I am left being a positive nihilist. I know it will all fail but I act the way I do because it is the right thing to do.
nah that’s just what ideologues say because they care more about their top-down control agenda. If climate change was fixed tomorrow, they’d be disappointed because they wouldn’t be able to exact control over others in the name of climate concern.
Plant more trees. Invest in renewables.
I do not know how people can be convinced those things will do anything to mitigate the changes we are seeing and will see for years even if we stop all carbon output now.
What his needed is shame, for people to be shamed, but we have no religion anymore so no one cares about shame.
- global amount of co2 emissions per year
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi.... - average co2 sequestered per tree - 25-45 kg depending on species (google for estimates)
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2015/03/17/power-one-tree-ve... 37 billion metric tons / 25 kg = ~1.48 trillion
Amount of land available for reforestation as of 2019 is enough for 1.2 trillion native saplings.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax0848
Given the above, we could plant this many trees in a year or two if we really tried. Couple that effort with more renewables, more investment into fusion and co2 sequestration machines, more electric cars, etc, and it's taken care of. I would question the character of any person who wants to be the one doing the shaming or thinking we need shaming for this. This is an engineering problem.
Even by this logic, I'm gonna go with the guys who've put themselves behind the mitigate-climate-disaster agenda.
100% agree with you, why is it still allowed to build personal swimming pools? those insanely large cars, oversized houses, widespread ignorance and disrespect for the environment
https://earlyretirementextreme.com/
This isn't the poster you replied to, but someone with a similar point of view of trying to live simply.
Like, I applaud the dedication, and I hope you find this life fulfilling, but you can't expect _everyone_ to be able to live like that. And not even from a "but some people _neeeed_ sports cars" or other indefensible position, but I mean just from a purely practical position.
You very clearly live in a climate that allows for that. There are _billions_ of people who don't, or won't, shortly, no matter what we do. Heck, you might not live in a climate that will allow for that in the near future.
Again, not to shit on what you're doing, it's honestly interesting and like another commenter said, if you have a blog (maybe solar powered on some upcycled laptop-turned-server?), I'd be interested to read it. But all your choices are personal choices, and they are _really_ low-impact in the grand scheme of things. Even personal swimming pools aren't really moving any appreciable needle, we need broad, sweeping, systemic changes to really make an impact.
Somehow passing regulation to get a large industry to clean up its energy usage or reduce its waste by even 1% is likely going to do more than somehow convincing everyone in the world to give up electric toothbrushes. Please don't feel like I'm telling you to give up on what you're doing! But if you feel like you have any extra energy to try to change public opinion on things, well, I'd prefer if we could get around to the high-impact stuff first, is all.
There's no effort, I simply don't need all of that
I've no desk, no fork/spoon, just sticks for the rice, simplicity. and I'm still a remote developer when possible
Also I believe on hard work and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox, meaning that every effort, even small count. Regulations is one way, but also with inflation I think these minimal lifestyles will naturally spread, there are many advatanges to it (better quality of life)
Not even if the alternative would mean millions and millions of deaths due to heath, draught, fires, flooding and wars due to people try to move to livable areas?
I bet you could accept no fridge, no ac, no car, if the alternative would be sudden death…
and if you're healthy (not overweight, low BMI), you can endure heat below 40°C just fine
As a male, I can relate to living simply, but as a male living with my gf, there's no way I'd be in a relationship too long without some investment in modern luxuries!
Passing a carbon fee and dividend[1] would help a lot, though I guess it's uncertain whether something on that scale could be enforced without violence.
[1] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/energy...
And lobbyism too: 7T$ of FF subsidies per year, while a global energy transition has been estimated at 7T$. So in one year of subsidies we could solve a big part of the problem.
Yep, too busy boosting my lines of code for an unskilled BS manager. I don't even have time for my family, let alone the environment.
this is so untrue! Channeling a sense of futility is some kind of coping? Large numbers of people, specialists, researchers, university people, clergy.. Elementary school walkouts around the world on the same day?
This kind of public defeatism is exactly why under-25 leaders is required -- how about that idea?
But we do need younger people in politics. UK parliament is overwhelmingly old, rich, eurosceptic people. Funny how there's no diversity where it really matters.
You’re fearmongering in an attempt to incite violence. I half suspect this to be a closet Greenpeace account.
You're already under a form of violence - your kids will wonder why you never did anything about it.
/s