+1

I am not part of any fossil fuel lobby or any lobby come to that but question what we can achieve based on what we have done to-date eg in the last 30 years since 1990 the UK has reduced its CO2 emissions by about 30% often attributed to the de-industrialisation of the UK economy.

I do question what can be achieved in the next 30 years, interesting eg Germany has recently declared it cannot met it's 2050 climate commitments which is hardly surprising as they are replacing one fossil fuel coal with another fossil fuel Russian gas. I have in my time seen many Government briefing papers, proposals and projects that have failed to deal with the real issues and failed miserably to deliver the solutions necessary.

We need more people challenging the way forward, the proposed solutions and its impact on our way of life. Too often ideal solutions deliver their own problems which often are not appreciated at the outset. Its interesting when I raise the enormity of replacing just gas one of the current energy sources with other energy sources (not necessarily with electricity) the magnitude is equivalent to an additional increase of 2.5 times the size of our current electricity generation capability.

Obviously the efficiency of each energy source conversion into everyday life commodities like miles travelled, energy necessary to achieve same house warmth and so on may not be a straight one for one exchange. With new energy sources we may gain overall reductions in TWh equivalents ,others we may not and require more TWh to maintain the status quote based on 2018 I highlighted. This of course ignores efficiencies we may make in making our economy more efficient over the coming years.

Finally, we imported in 2018 36% of our current total energy needs, to have any form of energy security we already fall well short plus the ongoing conversion to new low carbon solutions just illustrates what a massive hill we have still to climb.

regards

The fossil fuel companies are busily buying into and/or researching alternate energy. After all the have to do something with all that dirty money.

From time to time especially relating the the current size of the world population and climate change and its potential impacts, I am reminded of Thomas Robert Malthus FRS an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography.

In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to famine and disease, a view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible

Malthus saw population growth as being inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".] As an Anglican cleric, he saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour.[5] Malthus wrote that "the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence"; "population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase"; and "the superior power of population is repressed by moral restraint, vice and misery"



regards

Which is why, of course, non freemartins had to practice their Malthusian Drill.

I think I'm on the wrong bus..

Influential at the time maybe, but pretty much discredited now. What he didn't take into account is that (as we are seeing in western countries) as standards of living and education levels rise, the birth rate falls. Endless population increase until a crash is by no means inevitable. Current estimates are that it will top out around 10.9 billion by the end of this century.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/

From Brave New World Steve.

A popular, but incorrect view of Malthus' theory was that he predicted exponential population growth hence In BNW Malthusian drill was Contraceptive drill a Freebird is a sterile woman.

Excellent stuff, then..

Does anyone know who won Bakeoff..?

Can I get on yours please.