TeaFan

I've emailed them and asked to get your approval before they do anything like this again.

There have been XR protests in Poland, and Client Earth are currently trying to shut down a brown coal plant. It's a bizarre and ranty position to argue that there should only be protests in countries with worse records. On that basis, right wing Poles could argue that there are worse polluters than them, and so on down the chain until we identify the one population in the world who you think should be allowed to protest. And it is almost exclusively the Right who oppose climate activism isn't it. People should remember that, because when the crap hits the fan the Right will try to persuade us that it's someone else's fault. Always remember.

You realise that a lot of those countries have fertility rates below the UK? Thailand, South Korea, China, Taiwan for example. Poland also - the reason Poland produce so much CO2 is that they burn brown coal to produce electricity when they could use renewables. They also allow massive deforestation. Both policies could be changed overnight.

Contrast this risible list with what is going on in Denmark You are right that it can't be done overnight, which is why some countries made a start on this years ago. Generally it's countries populated by actual adults, that don't have the infantile culture Britain has, where massively important decisions are made based on whether someone is wearing sandals. We haven't got time to pish about like you are advocating, politicians have had all the time they needed to get ready and stave off disaster. Unless maximum pressure is put on them they will continue to dawdle and drag, because it doesn't really affect them because they are so old. (Note: post made without use of block capitals)

It's not possible to work with people who aren't interested, and this government is not interested. Pro-fracking, pro-airport expansion, not interested in imposing passivhaus standards on housebuilders, or insulation standards on landlords, banned onshore wind, not interested in tidal energy, set a date for banning sales of fossil vehicles which is after the point at which manufacturers will have stopped making them, pro-grouse moor vandalism, the list goes on. And it's because their focus is on Brexit and enabling wealthy people to have more money, not on addressing the most important issue of our time. In fact, it's turned out that conservative think tank The Institute for Economic Affairs, that has links to a lot of people in the current government, has been trying to undermine climate science for decades (though you acknowledge anthropogenic climate change has been a known reality for years). Therefore that leaves just direct action to attempt to focus the government's attention, by forcing them to take action. Just asking is a waste of time. If there was widespread support for people going on strike from work to demand action that would be something else we could do, but thanks to anti-union laws we'd be at risk of being sacked unless enough people were up for it

Just ignore him, he has nothing to offer except distractions.

You, Johnson, Morgan, Fox News and lots of others all have one thing in common - you've stopped attacking the science because there's no longer any doubt over it. But rather than be honest about that and thinking about what we can do to avoid catastrophe, you now just attack the people who keep reminding you what the science says, now you've given up attacking the science. Can you please either talk about what we can do to avoid catastrophe, or sit down.

While it's clear what XR protestors want (urgent and radical government action so that the effects of climate change are merely bad), it's a bit less clear what those who oppose them want. Presumably to not have to experience any inconvenience even if it means the deaths of billions of people later on. But if they are that psychopathic, then why are they not out raping and robbing all the time? Are they just worried about being caught?

We need deeper, more fundamental change even than that I'm afraid. There is actually a solution though. The cost of renewable energy production is plummeting, and has been for years. For example, there will come a point at which it will stop being profitable to make solar panels because they will cost so little to produce. This should be a good thing of course, but we are locked into a capitalist system which doesn't 'work' if things become that cheap to make. So the system will engineer scarcity to make them more expensive, either by numerous producers going bust because the marginal cost is so low or by producers artificially restricting supply, like housebuilders do. At the same time we have increasing automation, and more and more jobs are set to become automated, mainly due to Moore's Law. Jobs which were considered safe from automation a few years ago are now looking very vulnerable, including a number of medical and legal roles that are currently considered skilled. What we could do in response to this is embrace automation so that most of us would only have to work a day or two a week, and have completely free 100% renewable energy so as to avoid the worst, most catastrophic effects of anthropogenic climate change. But this can't happen in a capitalist system, because if so many jobs are automated then people won't have the wages to pay for goods and services so that business can make a profit. And because free energy is anathema to business. But if we free ourselves from capitalism and just divide the products of free, automated labour among everyone equally, we can have very free, enjoyable lives and avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The reason people like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are so against this kind of change is that they solely represent people who are rich, and those people do not want us to have enjoyable lives of leisure where we don't die from lack of food or clean water, because the flip side of that is that they will lose their priviliges and have to be like the rest of us, and their money-making disorders are the most important thing to them. But we are in a crisis situation, so people need to pick a side.

Be honest, in 100 years time, with all the nightmare climate consequences those people are going to be dealing with, is arresting people who were trying to stop it going to seem like the right thing to have done in hindsight? Of course it isn't.

Don't just accept that TRT is beneficial. The way the body processes testosterone is complex, and sometimes additional testosterone from medication is converted by the body to estrogen. Read a lot before you embark on it, is what I would do.

Been having a think about this and would like you to clarify if possible. Average car chucks out 4.6 tonnes of CO2 p.a. apparently. So how much CO2 does making a new EV use? Is it not better in the long run to ditch fossil and switch to EV asap? I partly ask because I am currently in the situation where I could ditch 1.6L petrol for full EV Renault Zoe. Petrol car has at least 5, possibly 10 years in it. Please send advice 🙂

Eh up 🙂 If your role exists in the new company they have to accept you under TUPE, but there is nothing to stop them almost immediately restructuring and making posts redundant. However, if they do that and anyone loses their job, they would do well to keep a close eye on any recruitment for that company, because if the same role reappeared a couple of months later on lower pay they would have a case against the employer. They can leave you on your existing Ts and Cs or transfer you to another set, usually after a year.

Thanks for that, it's interesting. I do think that British people are too wedded to their cars to try anything else radical at this point. Perhaps we should pay the Iranians to bomb the rest of Saudi's refineries 😀

Yes, but the immediate focus has to be on reducing CO2 emissions. We can come back to congestion later, the roads certainly will be quiet if most of us are dead!

It's an interesting question, but I wonder whether the priority should be transitioning all forms of transport to renewable energy as soon as possible. The price per Kw of solar PV and wind is dropping fast, as is the price point for lithium ion battery life and storage, so I think I would prefer to see state intervention focused on helping to bring the cost of new electric vehicles below that of petrol and diesel, and then a scrappage scheme on fossil fuel vehicles.

This has been the pattern so far. Iran does something, Trump says "Do anything else and that's it!". Iran does something else. Trump sends some more ships or troops over. Iran does something else, Trump says "This is the last warning" etc etc. Obviously it has the potential to escalate into all-out war, but that is what Iran threatened Saudia Arabia and the US with last week - seems they have calculated that it's the last thing USA/KSA want.

The Houthi insurgents are widely believed to be Iran's proxy. They are a largely Shia group, and although the conflict isn't a simplistic Shia vs Sunni conflict, it is a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran does love a proxy war. I'm not sure the US wants a full escalation of direct conflict. Even if they could predict the outcome reliably, it would have to be over quickly enough and the oil infrastructure rebuilt quickly enough to outweigh the shorter term huge increase in oil price. The US's last oil war resulted in Syria's oil being taken offline for a long time and the whole region is unstable, in no small part due to US policy over decades, so they can't reliably predict the outcome.

Obviously I mean the government of Iran, not the Iranian people, who hold very few cards. Of course Iran was behind the attacks on the Aramco refineries in Saudi Arabia, I should imagine very few people believe otherwise. I think it shows the strength of their position and perhaps explains why, despite all the tough talk, the US govt doesn't really want a war with them. Imagine the economic impact of full scale bombing of Saudi oil refineries, which can be done relatively cheaply. I have to wonder whether this realisation is why Trump was persuaded to get rid of John Bolton (he's too thick to have thought of it himself). Bolton was mad keen for war with Iran but I suspect some in the White House didn't fancy the idea of oil at $150+ a barrel. It seems notable that this latest assertion of conventional military power from Iran comes very soon after Bolton's exit. Of course, Trump has committed himself to fossil fuels and to backing the Saudi regime, even though they are as bad as the Iranian regime, so he's put himself properly in a corner. It seems US foreign policy is intent on not learning from the past. Why not invest massively in renewables and have done with all this?

It's weird to think there will be people who are disappointed by this. Some people have very sad lives.

Hi Robin, you're getting your terminology a bit mixed up there. Transitional protection is something that you can sometimes get when the government transfers you from one benefit to another, because they have replaced or are replacing one benefit with another. This is called 'migration'. People were migrated from Incapacity Benefit to Employment & Support Allowance, and people are now starting to be migrated from Employment & Support Allowance to UC. Transitional protection allows you to keep some of the features of the old benefit for a defined period of time when you transfer on the new benefit. What Car Boot was referring to (I think) is the advance you can get of UC to tide you over for the 5 weeks before you get a payment. This does have to be paid back, and is deducted from your monthly UC payments thereafter. Given that the normal amount of UC is what the government have calculated is the minimum you need to live on, deducting from it to repay the advance is of course going to leave you without enough to live on. So yes, this is a significant problem for people on UC. On the old ('legacy') benefits, you could get a short-term benefit advance but this would often be about half of your usual fortnightly payment. Because your first payment would come a lot quicker than it does with UC, you could just about budget, and you didn't have to pay it back. This is a significant, negative difference between UC and legacy benefits.

A local campaign against UC is starting to build in Sheffield. If anyone genuinely wants to be involved then please pm me. ta

What Don Kiddick looks like now is jaw-dropping

Haha, yes, well spotted! More than a metaphorical transformation I'm happy to say. ---------- Post added 13-10-2016 at 19:26 ---------- If anyone is in touch with PuressenceUK can they please thank them very much for getting me into Mass Effect? I'm very grateful for that.

Someone nudged me about this thread so thought I'd say hello. Have to say the forum looks pretty quiet these days - is that good or bad? It was very 'lively' to say the least back in the day but I fear we weren't very nice to each other a lot of the time, me included.