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What is net zero and why is it necessary?
Former Community Member
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Biomass was supposed to be things like short rotation coppice, and left over plant matter from other things, such as sawmills. But never underestimate the ability of businesses to subvert the whole thing to increase their profitability.
It's turned out cheaper to buy whole forests worth of low-grade timber from America, rather than paying UK farmers to grow willow sticks. So that's what they do. Environmental considerations don't come into it.
So you have reached the first stage of enlightenment, most of it is about the money. Look a little more deeply at some of the other supposedly ‘Green’ things going on. The COP meetings are just big parties for the not so good and not so great. There is a lot of posturing and demanding more government (our) money for all sorts of things they never actually justify. Have you actually read the Paris Agreement? It says nothing useful at all. There are a lot of already rich people out there hovering up government subsidies for all sorts of things, wind turbines, solar PV, installing EV charge points, experimenting with hydrogen and carbon capture and, of course, biomass. I asked an XR acquaintance what the ‘truth’ was. The reply was: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That there's a climate & ecological emergency, as has been known for decades but campaigned against by Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Money. They've spent billions of dollars on casting doubt on the science, just like the tobacco industry and the world has fallen for it. The Truth is that our + most other governments are in bed with these guys. The result is this toxic system. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a just as toxic ‘Green’ movement run by people who are just in it for the money and don’t believe the science. If you really thought CO2 was damaging would you fly 10s of thousands of people to a conference, the leaders will probably fly in private planes. If you really believed that the ice is melting and the sea level is rising would you buy a beachfront property. There are certainly a few who do ‘believe’ and try to do something but they don’t really think about what’s going on. After George Monbiot discovered that the ‘Anti-Nuclear’ movement had simply made up most of the evidence, I tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to be a bit more analytical about some of the other ‘Green’ issues.
As I have said many times before I fully support reducing our impact on our planet and reducing our consumption of finite resources. I don’t think the current, money driven, path is correct. There are a lot of people out there demanding money and action but with no understanding of what they are demanding (just like teenagers). A FB friend of mine (who I met on a retreat) is a director of Greenpeace and is concerned that COP26 will be as bigger disaster as the Paris party. The only way it could be classed as a success would be to generate an actual plan, even in outline, rather than just demands for money.
Net zero is important as it's the best way we can tackle climate change by reducing global warming. What we do in the next decade to limit emissions will be critical to the future, which is why every country, sector, industry and each one of us must work together to find ways to cut the carbon we produce.
The problem here is that all the current plans will considerably increase our emission in lots of areas for the next 10-15 years.
The solutions promoted by the ‘Eco Warriors’ are wind turbines, solar PV, EVs, batteries and all the electrical infrastructure to join it together by 2050 (29 years) all over the world.
Where do we start? We need to dig mines to obtain the raw materials. We need processing plants to refine then. We need a petrochemical industry to produce the polymers for turbine blades, electrical insulation, lubricants, paints, etc. We need to build factories to make all of the above. We need to build special ships to install all the offshore wind turbines we will need. We need construction machines to install all the new cables.
All this will be supported by burning fossil fuels as there are not enough renewables to do this yet so CO2 emissions (as will a lot of other emissions from mining and manufacturing) will rise quite steeply.
The reduction in emissions can only start when these new systems are actually installed, working and can start to offset the emissions from the use of fossil fuels. How long will this take, 10 years? The accepted energy payback time for a wind farm is under a year, but this is based on the assumption that all the infrastructure above already exists. For solar PV in southern latitudes the energy payback time is nearer 2 years, in northern latitudes it may be never.
This paper looks at the dynamic Life Cycle Analysis for solar PV. It is from 2015 so the actual numbers may have changed but the principle remains.
I am totally unqualified to comment on Climate change. Personally I am more concerned about the damage being done to our planet by the continuous need for more of every rare resource going be it pangolin scales or cobalt, copper, diamond, tantalum, tin, gold etc much of which is mined in third world countries with minimal if any environmental controls.
However I do feel competent to comment on the hype surrounding our climate change emergency. The BBC was force to apologise a few years ago for allowing a government minister to pass negative comments on Climate Change as he was not qualified, but every news outlet reports Greta Thunberg's comments as gospel. I am not aware of any qualification she has on environmental science.
A few years ago a UK University, I forget which one as my memory for names is very poor, after a thorough investigation was forced to admit that some of the figures in a paper supporting the temperature increases of climate change had not been "calculated" correctly, others said they were deliberately falsified. More recently I read that there had not been any issue at all and the investigation had found the figures to be accurate.
A saw some figures a few years ago which claimed to prove that solar panels could never during their lifespan compensate for the CO2 and environmental damage from their production if used North of Spain. Given the changes in technology I would like to see the figures for the current solar panels.
I would like to see properly argued and proven case for and against climate change with proper debate and proven figures backing it up as I am fed up with the immediate castigation of anyone silly enough to ruin their career by making any negative comment about the current Climate Change Emergency bandwagon. I read that many scientists admit that the best way to get funding is to ensure that their research proposals include climate change issues.
Where is the proper scientific debate about the causes and consequences of climate change, which has been happening for at least a few million years, and engineering debate about the solutions to the problems?
A lot of questions and points that are difficult to answer. Sometimes the information is in what is not published.
I am in complete agreement about the excessive use of finite resources. The ‘Greens’ demands for ‘Net Zero’ by 2030-35 are ridiculous. Do they think that wind turbines are made from unicorn poo? A lot of fossil fuel with a long energy payback time will be burnt to meet St Greta’s demands. A lot of pollution will be generated by the mining and refining of these materials. The ‘Climate Emergency’ data seems rather dubious as I will show from a couple of ‘official’ sources. It appears we may have a climate problem rather than an ‘Emergency’ so solutions can be implemented rather more sensibly.
As most solar panels are made in China using coal as the prime energy source I doubt if the figures have changed much.
The UK Met office published a nice set of graphs, HadCRUT, showing global temperature increases. They stopped updating this in 2010 when the flattening was becoming obvious. Interestingly the Japanese numbers were significantly below the others at this point. The graphs also show the deviation increasing between the northern and southern hemispheres. Why should this be? If CO2 was responsible it should be reversed as the concentrations from the OCO2 satellite show higher concentrations in the southern hemisphere (this satellite was launched to ‘prove’ that the main source of CO2 was the industrial areas. After this appeared not to be the case all went quiet.)
The only current graphs I can find are from NASA GISS.
Between 2010 and 2020 the global temperatures and the northern hemisphere temperatures climb rapidly. The southern hemisphere continues on a fairly steady climb. What is also interesting is that the ‘Monthly Mean Global Surface Temperature’ graph shows a steady decrease in the last year. Both sets of graphs appear to be based on land and ocean data and use the same baseline. Is one real and one for publicity? Looking at this there may be a climate problem, but certainly not an emergency.
The melting of the Greenland Ice Caps is another interesting question. If you look at the official Danish website different measures tell completely different stories:
This uses a different satellite based measurement which shows a steady decline in mass unlike the previous measurement. This melting contributes around 0.6mm to sea level rise.
This is the big numbers complete disaster scenario page quoting likely temperature rises by 2100 of 5-10°C and giving a sea level rise of 7m if all the ice melted. The actual sea level rise quoted is currently around 0.6mm per year, 60mm per century as above.
So what is true/real? Is the reason there is no real engineering debate that the hype, exaggeration and some made up numbers will be discovered.
During the past 10 years, the CO2 concentration has risen by 70+ ppm. In another 10 years' time, we are likely to see the CO2 will be close to 500 ppm. Unfortunately, the upward trend will not be in reverse gears until every country starts capturing and stored way GHGs in a safe place wholeheartedly.
There are thousands of pro-CO2 scientists and researchers versus just a few dozen of CO2 skeptics that high concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere is 99% the most prominent factor in global warming.
If CO2 is truly the main culprit within the 'GHGs', until there is a genuine breakthrough in the reversal of global warming phenomenon across the globe, the next earth generation will just have to adapt to the change in climate and rising sea level.
Please read the graph again. The CO2 concentration has risen around 20 ppm (~390ppm in 2010 - ~412ppm in 2020) in the last 10 years. It will probably rise another 20 ppm in the next 10 years which will be less than 440 ppm. Here is the actual Mauna Loa graph that may be easier to read.
If you compare the CO2 levels with the global temperatures over the last 25 years there is no correlation. Currently the temperatures are dropping slightly. I will be interested to see what the IPCC AR6 has to say. AR5 noted the ‘pause’ which various so called climate scientists tried subsequently tried to make disappear along with the Medieval warm Period and the Little Ice Age that followed it.
Consensus is the last resort when the facts don’t work. Consensus kept the Earth centred view of the solar system when the calculations showed the sun was at the centre. 100 Authors wrote that Einstein was wrong, was he?
Roger Bryant: Please read the graph again. The CO2 concentration has risen around 20 ppm (~390ppm in 2010 - ~412ppm in 2020) in the last 10 years. It will probably rise another 20 ppm in the next 10 years which will be less than 440 ppm. Here is the actual Mauna Loa graph that may be easier to read.
If you compare the CO2 levels with the global temperatures over the last 25 years there is no correlation. Currently the temperatures are dropping slightly. I will be interested to see what the IPCC AR6 has to say. AR5 noted the ‘pause’ which various so called climate scientists tried subsequently tried to make disappear along with the Medieval warm Period and the Little Ice Age that followed it.
Consensus is the last resort when the facts don’t work. Consensus kept the Earth centred view of the solar system when the calculations showed the sun was at the centre. 100 Authors wrote that Einstein was wrong, was he?
There is no pause. 1998 was an exceptionally warm year, and the following years weren't quite so warm. Every year since then, the climate change deniers have been telling us that there is an unexplained pause in warming. They keep saying that, even though the temperature has started going up again and the 1998 temperature has been beaten repeatedly.
