Ben - something else to consider in the real world. As a civil engineer of 32yrs I estimate the country would need something like an additional 400,000 professional engineers and probably 2m tradesmen every yr between 2025 and 2050 for £1Tr capital investment. If we need upto £12Tr the situation gets even more ridiculous. I think (hope?) that might just get in the way of our m
Water vapour is a more serious GHG, but does H2O sound as deadly as CO2, nor have any of our Climate Zealots considered that CO2 is the basis of all life, we were heading for a climate crisis just prior to the Industrial Revolution, CO2 ppm had dropped to a low of 160, at 140 plant life dies - that means all life dies, we have now climbed up to 260 ppm, 600 would be ideal, the planet is greener, agriculture is producing more crop tonnage on a smaller footprint, more people are being fed - but this is good news and must be stopped - subsistence farming is the Green way Forward, if people starve they will do so knowing they are helping save the planet.
Ben great piece, showing us just how much we are being short-changed by Green dogma. This really is about reducing the standard of living of ordinary people, and is driven central diktat on a level soviet central planners could only dream of. That’s because they have the media, academia and big finance on side hoping to profit from selling green quasi-rents such as permits etc, and as with renewables, a nationalisation of risk. All Star Mellow above points out the insane supply issues around just one metal. The labour market aspect hasn’t been thought about either. PS I became a paid subscriber but can’t seem to access all articles as I expected.
I went to a University lecture about this years ago. The academics view then was "knock everything victorian down and start again". Unfortunately they mused, victorian houses are beloved by the middle class and are (often) in nice inner suburbs with parks etc and are extraordinarily expensive to buy. Therefore they hoped for some sort of new "slum laws" to compulsory purchase and lead to comprehensive planning, high density building, connected city stuff. They were an urban planning school after all. But apart from the "this time we know what we are doing" and "these people won't be able to afford to heat their homes in 20 years anyway" stuff, they did mention that the embedded energy lost, and the new concrete required would have a negative effect on CO2 over at least 100 years, "but what else can we do?". Like many things the liberal mindset has created insoluble problems for itself. like we in the west unjustly burn up too many resources + no borders = we burn up even more resources. or we have to destroy the existing poorly insulated housing stock + we cant meet existing housing demand = more people without homes. Of course in the end it will be rented apartments in 60 storey tower blocks for the middle class (who can live in them) and communal gated ethnically separated co-living housing communities for the poor on prime inner city sites so they can walk to their cleaning and barista jobs.
Is a civil engineer of 35 years experience I would also point out that the net zero future require that we mine in the next 22 years as much copper as we have extracted in the previous 5000 years. 700 million tons of copper will be required which means that the largest Coppermine in the world in Chile will need to be replicated between 15 and 20 times. Getting a license to build a copper mine takes up to 10 years or much more in Western Europe and North America.
The polysilicates that are required to make PV cells require heating in an electric arc furnace which is typically done in China using coal fired power stations. Net Zero calculations assume that these are zero carbon inputs when in fact polysilicates need to be fate baked at 1900°C for extended periods of time in order to get to the 99.9999% purity required. Depending on where the inputs come from and there is no evidence to suggest that solar panels do anything other than contribute towards carbon emissions unless you have more than 2000 hours of sunlight per annum. So unless you live in southern Spain North Africa, southern Texas or Arizona this technology simply adds to carbon emissions.
There is no accepted methodology for calculating the carbon embedded in many of the products which claim to contribute towards net zero - creating a standardised methodology for assessing the amount of embedded carbon should be the starting point for any net zero approach.
Oh, no! The only way all these average homes could possibly all be brought up to code would be if the government were to assume ownership of them and retrofit or replace them!
Who on earth would have foreseen that being the only eventual outcome?
"Climate of the Past, Present and Future: A Scientific Debate, 2nd Ed." by Javier Vinos should be required reading for all elected officials, technocrats, bureaucrats and anyone else demanding NetZero or any other reduction in CO2 emissions.
There's one house which could definitely benefit from a very deep retrofit - the House of Commons. They can start by throwing out the 650 squatters.
Second thoughts, they might make very good insulation for the sub-floor spaces. That would be a greener solution.
Ben - something else to consider in the real world. As a civil engineer of 32yrs I estimate the country would need something like an additional 400,000 professional engineers and probably 2m tradesmen every yr between 2025 and 2050 for £1Tr capital investment. If we need upto £12Tr the situation gets even more ridiculous. I think (hope?) that might just get in the way of our m
Masters plans for us🙏
Meanwhile there is no scientific proof that the trace atmospheric gas, c02, alone controls world climate. What they’re controlling is you.
Water vapour is a more serious GHG, but does H2O sound as deadly as CO2, nor have any of our Climate Zealots considered that CO2 is the basis of all life, we were heading for a climate crisis just prior to the Industrial Revolution, CO2 ppm had dropped to a low of 160, at 140 plant life dies - that means all life dies, we have now climbed up to 260 ppm, 600 would be ideal, the planet is greener, agriculture is producing more crop tonnage on a smaller footprint, more people are being fed - but this is good news and must be stopped - subsistence farming is the Green way Forward, if people starve they will do so knowing they are helping save the planet.
Global warming is history’s greatest scam.
Ben great piece, showing us just how much we are being short-changed by Green dogma. This really is about reducing the standard of living of ordinary people, and is driven central diktat on a level soviet central planners could only dream of. That’s because they have the media, academia and big finance on side hoping to profit from selling green quasi-rents such as permits etc, and as with renewables, a nationalisation of risk. All Star Mellow above points out the insane supply issues around just one metal. The labour market aspect hasn’t been thought about either. PS I became a paid subscriber but can’t seem to access all articles as I expected.
I went to a University lecture about this years ago. The academics view then was "knock everything victorian down and start again". Unfortunately they mused, victorian houses are beloved by the middle class and are (often) in nice inner suburbs with parks etc and are extraordinarily expensive to buy. Therefore they hoped for some sort of new "slum laws" to compulsory purchase and lead to comprehensive planning, high density building, connected city stuff. They were an urban planning school after all. But apart from the "this time we know what we are doing" and "these people won't be able to afford to heat their homes in 20 years anyway" stuff, they did mention that the embedded energy lost, and the new concrete required would have a negative effect on CO2 over at least 100 years, "but what else can we do?". Like many things the liberal mindset has created insoluble problems for itself. like we in the west unjustly burn up too many resources + no borders = we burn up even more resources. or we have to destroy the existing poorly insulated housing stock + we cant meet existing housing demand = more people without homes. Of course in the end it will be rented apartments in 60 storey tower blocks for the middle class (who can live in them) and communal gated ethnically separated co-living housing communities for the poor on prime inner city sites so they can walk to their cleaning and barista jobs.
Is a civil engineer of 35 years experience I would also point out that the net zero future require that we mine in the next 22 years as much copper as we have extracted in the previous 5000 years. 700 million tons of copper will be required which means that the largest Coppermine in the world in Chile will need to be replicated between 15 and 20 times. Getting a license to build a copper mine takes up to 10 years or much more in Western Europe and North America.
The polysilicates that are required to make PV cells require heating in an electric arc furnace which is typically done in China using coal fired power stations. Net Zero calculations assume that these are zero carbon inputs when in fact polysilicates need to be fate baked at 1900°C for extended periods of time in order to get to the 99.9999% purity required. Depending on where the inputs come from and there is no evidence to suggest that solar panels do anything other than contribute towards carbon emissions unless you have more than 2000 hours of sunlight per annum. So unless you live in southern Spain North Africa, southern Texas or Arizona this technology simply adds to carbon emissions.
There is no accepted methodology for calculating the carbon embedded in many of the products which claim to contribute towards net zero - creating a standardised methodology for assessing the amount of embedded carbon should be the starting point for any net zero approach.
Oh, no! The only way all these average homes could possibly all be brought up to code would be if the government were to assume ownership of them and retrofit or replace them!
Who on earth would have foreseen that being the only eventual outcome?
"Climate of the Past, Present and Future: A Scientific Debate, 2nd Ed." by Javier Vinos should be required reading for all elected officials, technocrats, bureaucrats and anyone else demanding NetZero or any other reduction in CO2 emissions.
Brilliant observations