Quote Originally Posted by anthonykay View Post
I'm rather surprised that you have said nothing about reducing energy use: insulating buildings, making the transport system efficient (like the Dutch have done, re-engineering their cities so that only an idiot would get in a car, because it is so much quicker to cycle or get a bus/tram), etc. Unfortunately, no-one makes any profit out of selling less oil, solar power or whatever (an example of the "Tragedy of the Commons), but since every form of energy generation has some effect on the environment, reducing our energy use is essential.



This would have been a reasonable statement 30 years ago. Our understanding of the climate system has moved on a huge amount since then, and it's now absolutely certain (inasmuch as any scientific theory can be certain), not merely "plausible", that humans have had a major impact on the climate.



I would be interested in your views on nuclear fusion: clean, safe energy, with no radioactive waste. I worked in research related to fusion for a while back in the 1980's, when it was predicted that commercial fusion reactors would be available in about 2030. Hmmmm. Even then, I sometimes got the impression that fusion research was a big pit into which money was being shovelled.
HI Anthony,

Fair point on the reduction. I think price has made folks perception one of being careful these days. Whether driving, heating, flying.... the cost is always an issue.
Government has a role, but take cars for example.
Before they decided to ban ICE from 2035, we were making huge progress with much lighter touch intervention.
That's essentially where I would be.
Government does too much in my opinion so any intervention should be sensible, balanced, fair. It also has to be affordable for the working class.
If you have £50k + to throw around on a car every few years you are mostly untouched by net zero policy.
I haven't written for all departments yet, but when I get to the departments where Housing, Business and Transport are dealt with, you might see something.

On the 30 years issue, the IPCC was set up 35 years ago. At that time climate science was mostly physics led. Now physicists that raise concerns about the level of scaremongering are told to shut up, you aren't a specialist.... etc.
The climatologists seem to forget that much of what they do would be impossible but for physicists, on which most of their work is built.

You even qualify your "absolutely certain" comment.

There's nothing absolutely certain. We have IPCC opinions ranging from negligible anthropogenic warming around 1C or less to 8C or higher by the end of the century.
That doesn't mean there aren't learned and qualified folk lower down the spectrum, just that their opinions are deemed not worthy of consideration and it does have the effect of lifting the average consensus, if you remove the bottom 10% from calculation.

It has been said about Covid that SAGE needed a Red Team. I'd suggest the same for climate. Unfortunately there is no money in being a climate sceptic and in an interview Richard Lindzen was asked if he had any "sceptics" in his classes.
He said of course.
He was asked how come we don't hear these voices coming through.
He said because they had to leave the climate industry to make a living.

I am optimistic that nuclear fusion is the future, but suspect we will have to manage with existing tech for the rest of the century.
I think here lies a problem with the route we have taken this last 20 years.
We shelved reliable gas and nuclear for unreliable wind tied to the ability to store - but without having established how we would store and at what cost.
If we'd have added 3-4 nuclear stations over the last 25 years (the last to come on stream was signed off under Mrs Thatcher) we would be in a much better position now ourselves and able to export energy at peak time rather than import it.