You are late to this (as is most of the political class in the U.K.) but it is very welcome. Keep working and In a few months time you might view the Ukraine conflict through the lens of energy/commodities. And if you really challenge yourself you will realise "net zero" is a Russian/Chinese scam to divert wealth from west to east. I look fwd to the journey
The really fun question is when will the blackouts start? Which is linked to the question of why aww we frantically building a wind power system that can be offline for 21 days at a time? With no backup. And actively trying to achieve large increases in peak demand with great pumps and EVs. Nuts.
I got red pilled on nuclear about a year ago. Welcome to the party.
Loved this ... as a middle-aged engineer who hails from the "grim" North and has spent their career working in the nuclear, chemicals and oil and gas sectors or, as Jonathan Porritt would have it, for "the forces of evil" it was refreshing to read something that recognised that perhaps these industries do matter ... particular if you care about people and the impact high energy prices have on employment, poverty, health inequality; well let's face it pretty much all aspects of life in a modern developed society.
I know very few people in industry who don't accept manmade climate change as real and that we need to act, all most of us want is a properly managed transition that doesn't wreck the economy taking all our hard won gains with it. All too often though we fail to communicate our concerns, which are blindingly obvious to us, in a way most people can understand. The debate is currently far too polarised, full of wishful thinking and alarmingly thin on evidence. As you point out, if we continue to get this wrong, there will be a backlash; just look at the US.
Almost no one approaches energy policy with curiosity and an open mind. Instead we see the same expert tendencies we see elsewhere: elites approach the problem with the biases they learned from their class and from college (something like 90% of ivy league graduates support wage and price controls to reduce emissions) and then they find the information that supports their (sometimes absurd) assumptions, and discard the rest. Your guidance about 'systems costs' is a very basic insight-yet it's almost never mentioned in news articles and academic papers (that I've seen). There are a dozen other issues like this. It's obvious that people are attending to confirmation bias and their own professional incentives (politicians, journalists, researchers, nonprofit employees, etc. will tend to favor restrictive climate policies, because they empower their fields and organizations).
Discussing this problem using extensive and contextual data and a full exploration of costs and benefits would be wonderful but it's very rare. That's why no one trusts experts these days. They're dishonest, cowardly midwits who invariably pay more attention to organizational incentives and class signals than truth or rigor.
> While the UK is becoming poorer, other countries who don’t share our values, like China or Russia, have continued to invest in the worst polluting energy production, like coal, to power their industries and produce more consumer goods to export to eager cash-strapped Europeans.
"Our values" being what exactly? Our history of centuries of intra-European wars, Holocaust, slavery, seggregation, colonial barbarism, cold war imperialism? Neo-colonialism? Endless wars "for democracy"? Furthering Thacherism and neoliber Blairite "revolution"? Bombing the third world, celebrating scum like Pinochet, or enabling Israel's genocide? Mindless consumerism? Our token lip service to the environment, to create a "Green transition" racket? Our support for newly advertised millitarism and re-arming Europe, after we pressed all Russia's buttons to help get the US neocons proxy war on?
Besides, those countries like China didn't magically got to produce those consumer goods either. Our countries outsourced their production there, in order to increase profit margins and not have to deal with pesky first world workers and their social, economic, and workplace demands.
The trouble is that when your old nuclear plants were a bit old in the 70s and 80s, 3 mile island and Chernobyl scared your people so that they had them closed. China is making very strong investments in nuclear power and already did for hydropower. Europe would do well to follow.
Nice work. I’ve been down a similar path, though am much older and have never been an activist. The alarming absolutism of calls to abandon our old sources of power for the sake of a rapid conversion to renewables began to seem suspect here in California when a state agency declared a statewide ban on internal combustion engines would be in place in 15 years; that was 2.5 years ago. Ironically, they announced that in mid-August and a few days later a heat wave forced utility companies to caution people about charging their Teslas lest they incur a brownout and lose their AC. Though I think the advent of EVs is a net positive significant performance issues remain unresolved. The fact that green sources still don’t shoulder anything near the load they would need to is not much acknowledged, but the steep demands of AI have basically blown them out of the water anyway. Offshore wind projects have floundered and been cancelled on the east coast and people who looked forward to development of them out here seem oblivious. I would never choose Trump to lead the charge for a sane and sustainable policy shift but the Democrats have blown-up their credibility. We’re in wait-&-see mode now.
Sure OK. Getting red-pilled on energy is first step. If you are serious about the matter, the next steps are getting some technical and techno economic training so you can understand wat is being said. You should start with the UK book Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air.
You get us all the way to full-footprint carbon pricing of energy resources and systems.
Please, when you can, use the correct units for the carbon economy: Tonnes Avoided CO2 (like for the forests economies, driven by maximization of EV TAC of the forests carbon bank), and Tonnes Atmospheric CO2 (the fundamental expense measure in the carbon economy).
For the forests, the Truth about too much atmospheric CO2 is Extremely Convenient, especially as its people persuade the rest of you all to join our carbon economy.
You are late to this (as is most of the political class in the U.K.) but it is very welcome. Keep working and In a few months time you might view the Ukraine conflict through the lens of energy/commodities. And if you really challenge yourself you will realise "net zero" is a Russian/Chinese scam to divert wealth from west to east. I look fwd to the journey
Good Stella. Keep on…
The really fun question is when will the blackouts start? Which is linked to the question of why aww we frantically building a wind power system that can be offline for 21 days at a time? With no backup. And actively trying to achieve large increases in peak demand with great pumps and EVs. Nuts.
I got red pilled on nuclear about a year ago. Welcome to the party.
Loved this ... as a middle-aged engineer who hails from the "grim" North and has spent their career working in the nuclear, chemicals and oil and gas sectors or, as Jonathan Porritt would have it, for "the forces of evil" it was refreshing to read something that recognised that perhaps these industries do matter ... particular if you care about people and the impact high energy prices have on employment, poverty, health inequality; well let's face it pretty much all aspects of life in a modern developed society.
I know very few people in industry who don't accept manmade climate change as real and that we need to act, all most of us want is a properly managed transition that doesn't wreck the economy taking all our hard won gains with it. All too often though we fail to communicate our concerns, which are blindingly obvious to us, in a way most people can understand. The debate is currently far too polarised, full of wishful thinking and alarmingly thin on evidence. As you point out, if we continue to get this wrong, there will be a backlash; just look at the US.
Had to Google 'red-pill' by the way.
Almost no one approaches energy policy with curiosity and an open mind. Instead we see the same expert tendencies we see elsewhere: elites approach the problem with the biases they learned from their class and from college (something like 90% of ivy league graduates support wage and price controls to reduce emissions) and then they find the information that supports their (sometimes absurd) assumptions, and discard the rest. Your guidance about 'systems costs' is a very basic insight-yet it's almost never mentioned in news articles and academic papers (that I've seen). There are a dozen other issues like this. It's obvious that people are attending to confirmation bias and their own professional incentives (politicians, journalists, researchers, nonprofit employees, etc. will tend to favor restrictive climate policies, because they empower their fields and organizations).
Discussing this problem using extensive and contextual data and a full exploration of costs and benefits would be wonderful but it's very rare. That's why no one trusts experts these days. They're dishonest, cowardly midwits who invariably pay more attention to organizational incentives and class signals than truth or rigor.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/leviathan
> While the UK is becoming poorer, other countries who don’t share our values, like China or Russia, have continued to invest in the worst polluting energy production, like coal, to power their industries and produce more consumer goods to export to eager cash-strapped Europeans.
"Our values" being what exactly? Our history of centuries of intra-European wars, Holocaust, slavery, seggregation, colonial barbarism, cold war imperialism? Neo-colonialism? Endless wars "for democracy"? Furthering Thacherism and neoliber Blairite "revolution"? Bombing the third world, celebrating scum like Pinochet, or enabling Israel's genocide? Mindless consumerism? Our token lip service to the environment, to create a "Green transition" racket? Our support for newly advertised millitarism and re-arming Europe, after we pressed all Russia's buttons to help get the US neocons proxy war on?
Besides, those countries like China didn't magically got to produce those consumer goods either. Our countries outsourced their production there, in order to increase profit margins and not have to deal with pesky first world workers and their social, economic, and workplace demands.
Lmao @ the cover photo of this article. Great write-up Stella as always.
When are we going to see a book from you?! You know that if you wrote one it would be an immediate bestseller.
The trouble is that when your old nuclear plants were a bit old in the 70s and 80s, 3 mile island and Chernobyl scared your people so that they had them closed. China is making very strong investments in nuclear power and already did for hydropower. Europe would do well to follow.
Nice work. I’ve been down a similar path, though am much older and have never been an activist. The alarming absolutism of calls to abandon our old sources of power for the sake of a rapid conversion to renewables began to seem suspect here in California when a state agency declared a statewide ban on internal combustion engines would be in place in 15 years; that was 2.5 years ago. Ironically, they announced that in mid-August and a few days later a heat wave forced utility companies to caution people about charging their Teslas lest they incur a brownout and lose their AC. Though I think the advent of EVs is a net positive significant performance issues remain unresolved. The fact that green sources still don’t shoulder anything near the load they would need to is not much acknowledged, but the steep demands of AI have basically blown them out of the water anyway. Offshore wind projects have floundered and been cancelled on the east coast and people who looked forward to development of them out here seem oblivious. I would never choose Trump to lead the charge for a sane and sustainable policy shift but the Democrats have blown-up their credibility. We’re in wait-&-see mode now.
Very impressive!
Sure OK. Getting red-pilled on energy is first step. If you are serious about the matter, the next steps are getting some technical and techno economic training so you can understand wat is being said. You should start with the UK book Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air.
You are amazing! Thank you for caring so much and working so hard!
Really good article! But had you actually not heard of Alexei Navalny when he died??
You get us all the way to full-footprint carbon pricing of energy resources and systems.
Please, when you can, use the correct units for the carbon economy: Tonnes Avoided CO2 (like for the forests economies, driven by maximization of EV TAC of the forests carbon bank), and Tonnes Atmospheric CO2 (the fundamental expense measure in the carbon economy).
For the forests, the Truth about too much atmospheric CO2 is Extremely Convenient, especially as its people persuade the rest of you all to join our carbon economy.