LATEST MOAN FROM YOU AND ME - 2022

The woke getting gagged. What goes around..

 

I went to put a few bits in the Recycle Bin and someone had put a Dog Poo bag in there I had to pick out with a stick.
Ok better than throwing it in the street, but take it home with you

 

I understand that view is quite contraversial: I'm no expert here though. But the accusation is leveled that the fossil fuel industry is excellent at pushing the line that renewables are too expensive - where (perhaps predictably) the renewables industry has a very different set of figures. I have a friend who runs a renewables company in Kenya who is quite articulate about the misinformation from fossil fuel over their true costs - and the true costs of wind and sun (she doesn't do water). Certainly massive disinformation campaigns via dodgy 'research institututes' is now clearly the story with Exxon leading the way over decades. Their raison d'etre, it is now well reported, was to ensure that any time there is public discussion of climate or fossil fuels, someone sounding eminent was there inserting phrases like 'significant controversy' or 'evidence is unclear' when actually there hasn't really been any controversy or lack of evidence about the anthropomorphic source of global heating for decades! We could demonstrate it when I was at college in the early 1990's and it was clear then.

One thing for sure though, we have never factored in with the fossil fuels is the wider environmental and health costs which would put them well beyond any budget were we to have done so.

For nuclear I can't get my head passed the bad idea of leaving all that waste to our children and their children to deal with. I think that we need - as a species - to start insisting that we live within our means rather than creating this debt that future generations will have to pay. Just a view of course... but I live (increasingly nervously) just off a beach...

 

@shiney - not in the winter they ain't! It's freezing though we have a load of die hards who swim every day. It might be good for you...but there are some limits.

In the summer - for sure: I'm there as often as I can with a bass rod and plug in hand. Happy days! But the ice melt happening at the poles can't be ignored if you live close to sea level. Not sure what the current prediction is for us, but I suspect the 50 year year flood must be getting close to hitting our house - or might be as bad as 20...

 

All what waste? There is not a lot. My best friend was the head of the department that did the millions of tests and calculations to ensure the safety of our Candu reactors and he felt that the waste could easily be contained.

All of our province's electric comes from renewable power, nuclear power or gas plants. Natural gas is the cleanest burning of all fossil fuels.

You are living next to an ocean. An easy source for constant wind power so you can't compare your circumstances to ours as I am some thousand miles from the ocean but I don't know how I'd feel about the sight of massive wind generators along my shoreline if I was in your shoes.

We do not burn any coal. None. Which is good.

But we pay and pay and pay.

 

@Loofah Some of it is definitely faux. Quite a bit might not be (ie it is sincere), but is misinformed. I think a fair bit is hypocritical (ie Sajid Javid this morning suggesting folks should cancel a comedian is beyond laughable: I am speechless at the audacity. Does he think we are idiots and don't know his whole platform is based on stoking anti-cancel-culture, culture wars????); and some of it is entirely reasonable - call it accountability finally catching up. After all if you say horrible things a lot - then eventually maybe you have to just face the consequences of that?

I find it is a pretty mixed picture as always.

 

Yes - I really don't know the Canadian experience, but in the UK we now have decades of nuclear waste, a fair bit in deeply contaminated and dangerous disposal units - and they are having a nightmare trying to work out what to do with it. Serious discussion about sending it into space...

The principle has to be good though, surely: we shouldn't burden future generations with our radioactive waste. That's a bit of borrowing which seems unreasonable.

The argument which I cannot agree with though, is that we have to go with the least bad: if the least bad is still bad for future generations, then we need to modify our needs. We have got used to cheap food, cheap energy, cheap flights, cheap produc ts from China. That 'cheap' is subsidised by unpriced environmental hazard which our kids and their kids will not thank us for.

I'd take wind farms on my door step all day every day if it got me the clean energy I need: I think that those who object have to ask themselves what cost they are happy to inflict on others for their own energy needs. And the joy of wind - when it is available - is that it can be generated relatively close to use in many instances. It's not a total solution. But it's also not a bad part of one.

 

Talking to the bloke next door this morning. He has purchased a new car - which is being delivered in March. This means that his car will have a later number plate than mine .

 

Yes - I agree: there is a lack of clarity about total cost. And we need it.

I’m ok with a hack if it isn’t creating pollution down the line for our kids. And of course there are no perfect answers: CanadianLori is right that coal is a disaster and perhaps just above burning wet wood. But I also think individuals have to be realistic about what their energy needs mean in terms of environmental impact

 

Dead birds. You get lots of those with wind farms. On land. I'm not sure about out on the ocean.

 

Last night West Ham Utd took the decision to field one of theirs players who only that very same day had been reported for kicking his pet cat, video evidence. The manager even said, I am a football manager and it is my job to field his best players. Well it looks like that decision has well and truly backfired with sponsors now suspending sponsorship deals with the club.

The club should of automatically suspended the player pending further investigation, yet the club had the player in the starting eleven. Disgusting behaviour from both player and club.