"Just stop oil"
- Thread starter Diddums
- Start date
Soldato
**** me!
Associate
David Cameron lowered the insulation standards for new-build housing and scrapped planning permission approval for onshore wind farms (to appease the Conservative voting NIMBYs in constituencies in middle/southern England). Even the Torygraph has admitted that his decision is now costing the average British household £150 a year:
Don't 'cut the green crap' – there's a better way to lower energy bills
There is high demand for fossil fuels because we have failed to invest sufficiently in alternative energy generation capacity for decades. We need to conserve energy (reduce demand) and simultaneously replace fossil fuels. The government has wasted many opportunities to do those things and it has also held back individuals/companies from doing it themselves with its planning permission rules, denial of reasonable grants and excessive taxation of insulation/low-carbon and renewable energy systems.
If you don't change your behaviour then how can you expect other people to change their behaviour when you advocate for it? We need to phase out fossil fuels by gradually reducing demand for them. There are many ways to implement that but the government has dragged its feet for years on those alternatives and obstructed new companies who sought to develop them. A cynical person might conclude that they are in bed with the fossil fuel companies.
Soldato
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Unless you are talking about nukes this is utter horse excrement. The Governments of all ilks have been throwing subsidies at onshore and offshore wind and solar for years. In 2010 we had about 5GW of wind we now have 29GW (I thought it was lower but that's the number I'm finding). We're aiming for 50GW by the end of the decade.
Solar power has gone from 0.01 GW(95MW) to 15 GW (15,000MW) from 2010 to today.
Your points about insulation and energy reduction are more reasonable but it is also a highly intractable problem given the size and age of the UK housing stock.
Anyway this winter there will still be times when that nearly 45GW of renenwable generation is producing naff all and the only thing keeing the lights on is fossil fired generation.
Soldato
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If someone is dragging a protester off the road they are doing it so they can get on with their day, not because they believe in a cause, there is no cause...people just want to get to work/earn money.
The protesters are going about it in the wrong way.
Soldato
I am surprised that they hasnt been any guerrilla tactics from the growing frustrated public to deal with these people. Criminals have been using the use of masks from the pandemic to hide their identity since so i am really surprised that a group of people, all masked up, havnt rocked up, grabbed them off the road and used large cable ties to tie them to lamposts/railings/etc to clear the roads. As seen time and time again, when they drag them out the way they just go back unless they have had an altercation.
I am however not condoning or suggesting people do this but i am really surprised that it hasnt get started to happen but there has been more and more violent instances from people.
I am however not condoning or suggesting people do this but i am really surprised that it hasnt get started to happen but there has been more and more violent instances from people.
Soldato
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Waste of time, electric is the most expensive method of heating unless you have solar to go with it...but that's cost prohibitive for most.Thanks. I didn't know those existed (all the sites I read talk about heat pumps and not electric combi boilers). I'll do some research.
Id love to get rid of my oil boiler and use something a bit cleaner...plus the boiler and tank take up a lot of space. I looked at ASHP but way too pricey and I'm not convinced it actually works that well. If they decided to bring natural gas to my village then id probably bite their hand off.
Soldato
yeah I'm thinking gas combi next, then hopefully they decouple electricity price from gas price so I can get an electric combi after that, quite far in the future so who knows if I'll even live here then.
Soldato
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Didn't even get into boxing stance before he legged it
one of the comments 'Dude ripped his jacket off like he's ready to fight while actively running away lmfao'
wtf?
Soldato
Didn't even get into boxing stance before he legged it
Suddenly occurred to him that he knew where the guy’s letterbox could be found?
You didn't actually address the point he made, the behavour you're advocating changing here is to simply import more in future rather than tap into any domestic resources for future consumption.
That doesn't have anything to do with reducing demand for them and a greater reliance on imported fuel would seem to be a spectacularly stupid idea as illustrated by current events re: Russia!
None of this has anything to do with actual solutions like investing in nuclear and renewables.
Caporegime
You will never get rid of oil. It is the most important thing in our civilisation. All you can do is make the production of it carbon neutral.
Soldato
one of the comments 'Dude ripped his jacket off like he's ready to fight while actively running away lmfao'
wtf?
They should have stopped and cleared the road as that women was pregnant. She was clearly due any minute.
Associate
Of course, I am talking about the shocking failure to build new nuclear power stations. We should have started building a new fleet of them 20 years ago!
Offshore wind farms have been built, but onshore has been badly neglected due to obstructionism by the government:
Furthermore:
The government has also scrapped the guaranteed feed-in-tariff for solar panel owners making them a far less attractive investment. They also still carry 20% VAT unless you have them installed by a licensed contractor which makes getting them considerably more expensive.
That's why they should remove VAT at the point-of-purchase, so more people can get on and insulate their own homes without having to pay out/wait around for overstretched contractors to do it (if they can afford them).
Which is why they were so foolish to not build a new generation of nuclear power stations for the last 20 years. They only have one new one which is billions over budget and five years behind schedule. Producing sufficient new nuclear reactor capacity to replace the fossil fueled generation that satisfies our baseload electricity requirement should have been a priority if they were serious about tackling GHG emissions going forward.
perhaps I don't blame the jso protestors invading the british open
- the arabs are trying to ingratiate themselves and their human rights record into world wide golf with oil money.
indeed, California has discussed increasing the price of units SP owners export because they are difficult to predict.
- the arabs are trying to ingratiate themselves and their human rights record into world wide golf with oil money.
if the solar panel owners din't ever need recourse to export from the grid then fine, otherwise their erratic demands don't reduce need for state investment, for other generation&storage mechanisms
indeed, California has discussed increasing the price of units SP owners export because they are difficult to predict.
Associate
Why not? It will be years before they can adequately exploit those new fossil fuel reserves, in the meantime we could be aggressively reducing our reliance on fossil fuels for our electricity generation and steel making. This is becoming a circular argument! Of course, if we continue to fail to reduce our energy requirements and fail to produce sufficient new low-carbon/winter-proof-renewable energy generation then we will have to either dig up more fossil fuels here or import more of them.
The reason why the government is happy to have a new coal mine in Cumbria and new oil/gas fields in the North Sea is because it will benefit the UK economy (create/maintain well-paid jobs) and raise lots of tax revenue/rent payments for the government. It's not about preventing British people from having to pay foreigners for expensive imported fossil fuels. If we support our economy by doing that then we are no better than all the other countries who are doing it and cannot lecture them about climate change and what they must do to prevent it. Having to import fossil fuels (because you don't have any alternative) is one thing, but seeking to profit from them yourself is something else.
Obviously, I want us off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. I want us to build sufficient nuclear/renewables/energy storage capacity as a high priority (starting immediately), but there are powerful vested interests standing in the way of that. The government's shortsightedness has forced us into this situation. They've had 13 years to implement a coherent energy strategy to reduce GHG emissions/generate baseload without using fossil fuels and they have failed to do it, what they have done is mostly just window dressing and giving empty promises.
Because it doesn't. If you think otherwise then it's on you to show it.
It makes no sense, whether we import more oil in future after halting exploration & extraction of new sites in the North Sea has nothing to do with whether we can invest in nuclear and renewables.
shortsightedness - that's still Captain Hindsight - what is the example economy that has had such an effective low carbon energy strategy - Norway - hmmh.
steel and carbon intensive goods we might make from new mine, will soon attract carbon border taxes going into EU too
steel and carbon intensive goods we might make from new mine, will soon attract carbon border taxes going into EU too