Climate change and the impending apocalypse

[s.a.m]

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France to join Germany in making month train passes €49. Amazing. You could get a few returns in some cases for that from Scotrail

https://www.euronews.com/travel/2023...tschlandticket

Also worth noting that in France, other than in very small businesses, employers are liable for 50% of the cost of their employees' public transport season tickets.

[Hibrandenburg]

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Also worth noting that in France, other than in very small businesses, employers are liable for 50% of the cost of their employees' public transport season tickets.

Most employees in Germany have also been entitled to a "Company Ticket". The employer pays 25% tax free towards the ticket and the transport companies add 5% meaning that the employee only has to fish out €34.30 per month for public transport.

[McD]

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Most employees in Germany have also been entitled to a "Company Ticket". The employer pays 25% tax free towards the ticket and the transport companies add 5% meaning that the employee only has to fish out €34.30 per month for public transport.

That’s excellent value, compared to here anyway

[Sylar]

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Most employees in Germany have also been entitled to a "Company Ticket". The employer pays 25% tax free towards the ticket and the transport companies add 5% meaning that the employee only has to fish out €34.30 per month for public transport.

And yet Scotrail think they're revolutionising things here by scrapping peak fares - off-peak fares for me going between my home town and Glasgow ONLY would still run me £240 odd a month...I assume the German model allows you to travel on any public transport for that fee each month?

[grunt]

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And yet Scotrail think they're revolutionising things here by scrapping peak fares - off-peak fares for me going between my home town and Glasgow ONLY would still run me £240 odd a month...I assume the German model allows you to travel on any public transport for that fee each month?

[Hibrandenburg]

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And yet Scotrail think they're revolutionising things here by scrapping peak fares - off-peak fares for me going between my home town and Glasgow ONLY would still run me £240 odd a month...I assume the German model allows you to travel on any public transport for that fee each month?

Yes, with the exception of ICE and IC trains, you can use any public transport bus, train, tram and ferry.

If I pay €15 more I can take my bike.

[grunt]

This ... does not look good.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66724246

[Just Alf]

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This ... does not look good.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66724246

Was reading that earlier, one commentator was saying its a tipping point, if it doesn't recover next cycle it'll keep getting worse... the current el nino event won't help :-(

[Ozyhibby]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66857551

Labour will soon match them.


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[Scorrie]

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66857551

Labour will soon match them.


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I’m not so sure. I think there’s a lot of votes in needing to address climate change. There’s also a lot of jobs and cheaper fuel bills as well. If Labour do go down that route, they risk losing seats as the Greens and Lib Dems could attract the votes from the environmental lobby

[Ozyhibby]

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[overdrive]

On the cost and convenience of public transport, we are going down to Liverpool for my birthday in December. We live a 5-10 min walk from South Gyle station so getting the train places is easy for us: a wee walk, get on the train and connect at Haymarket/Waverley depending where we are going.

We booked the hotel yesterday and went to book the train. £295 return and that's with a Two Together Railcard. What's more, there's only one train available on the day we come back (all the others are sold out for some reason) and it involves travelling through the night, arriving back the next day and requires 4 changes.

We are now driving there - we'd rather not. The cost alone got us reconsidering but the issue on the Sunday coming back decided it for us.

Whilst public transport is good in Edinburgh, it could be better. We are lucky we live in an area we have easy access to bus routes, tram and rail. A day ticket that would cover bus, tram and rail within Edinburgh would be good but would require different public transport organisations working together. One does actually exist via a website that I can't remember the name of but it is prohibitively expensive

[Pretty Boy]

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On the cost and convenience of public transport, we are going down to Liverpool for my birthday in December. We live a 5-10 min walk from South Gyle station so getting the train places is easy for us: a wee walk, get on the train and connect at Haymarket/Waverley depending where we are going.

We booked the hotel yesterday and went to book the train. £295 return and that's with a Two Together Railcard. What's more, there's only one train available on the day we come back (all the others are sold out for some reason) and it involves travelling through the night, arriving back the next day and requires 4 changes.

We are now driving there - we'd rather not. The cost alone got us reconsidering but the issue on the Sunday coming back decided it for us.

Whilst public transport is good in Edinburgh, it could be better. We are lucky we live in an area we have easy access to bus routes, tram and rail. A day ticket that would cover bus, tram and rail within Edinburgh would be good but would require different public transport organisations working together. One does actually exist via a website that I can't remember the name of but it is prohibitively expensive

I think these things are just luck of the draw.

I'm always moaning about pricing and reliability on trains. However I booked returns to go and see my father in law at New Year, departing 30th December, returning 4th January; Edinburgh to Newark. 2 adults and 2 kids with a friends and family railcard and it's £117 all in. That's a lot cheaper than just under 2 full tanks of fuel which is what it costs to drive. Also a lot less stress than driving with 2 kids in tow.

I understand dynamic pricing and so on but again it can make it cost prohibitive in situations like your for people to ditch the car and use public transport. I've been there plenty of times before myself. the same journey as I mentioned above has been well over £300 even with a railcard before.

[Ozyhibby]

https://x.com/edconwaysky/status/170...dxJXScFNwz8V4A


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[Just Alf]

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https://x.com/edconwaysky/status/170...dxJXScFNwz8V4A


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Remember the grief ScotGov got for the major delay in the deposit return scheme due to cost incurred by manufacturers and suppliers.... imagine the grief here as the car company's costs are on another magnitude all together!

[Stairway 2 7]

Sunaks press conference nauseating. Says he'll cancel a few measures like compulsory car sharing that was never going to happen. Then pushes back uks electric car date to match EU. Most disgusting is letting landlords away with green measures. No cost saving to the government but a bonus to the wealthy

[Ozyhibby]

https://x.com/richardlochhead/status...dxJXScFNwz8V4A


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[Kato]

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Sunaks press conference nauseating. Says he'll cancel a few measures like compulsory car sharing that was never going to happen. Then pushes back uks electric car date to match EU. Most disgusting is letting landlords away with green measures. No cost saving to the government but a bonus to the wealthy

A bit rinsing going on with the electioneering.

There was an article not too long ago saying they saw green issues as the New Brexit. Let's see if they go gung ho as the election.

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[AgentDaleCooper]

Chris Packham's documentary is essential viewing

[nonshinyfinish]

Depressing example of a lie going round the world while truth is pulling its boots on: https://www.theguardian.com/environm...k-wildly-wrong

[Pretty Boy]

Dale Vince pulls his funding from Just Stop Oil:

https://twitter.com/DaleVince/status...DMqbMiuIA&s=19

[jacomo]

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And yet Scotrail think they're revolutionising things here by scrapping peak fares - off-peak fares for me going between my home town and Glasgow ONLY would still run me £240 odd a month...I assume the German model allows you to travel on any public transport for that fee each month?

Tbf, Scotrail have no power to do much more. Way beyond their pay grade.

[jacomo]

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Depressing example of a lie going round the world while truth is pulling its boots on: https://www.theguardian.com/environm...k-wildly-wrong

Good spot. It’s a scandal that Gov ignores the civil service (and denigrates it every day) and instead bases policy on reports from shadowy lobby groups funded by vested interests.

[nonshinyfinish]

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Good spot. It’s a scandal that Gov ignores the civil service (and denigrates it every day) and instead bases policy on reports from shadowy lobby groups funded by vested interests.

The report was eventually retracted, but it had done its job by then: https://www.theguardian.com/environm...factual-errors

The Civitas report was covered by the Sun, the Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express and the Spectator. By Monday the Express had removed its article, while others had added footnotes but kept the pieces online.

[grunt]

News from SSE today that their Dogger Bank wind turbine site has gone online.

https://www.sserenewables.com/news-a...he-first-time/

Some astonishing stats in the press release:

Dogger Bank sits 70 nautical miles (130km) off the coast of Yorkshire and will occupy an area almost as large as Greater London and nearly twice the size of New York City.

[Stairway 2 7]

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News from SSE today that their Dogger Bank wind turbine site has gone online.

https://www.sserenewables.com/news-a...he-first-time/

Some astonishing stats in the press release:

That's amazing as you say some other stunning stats from that

Each rotation of the first turbine’s 107m long Haliade-X blades can produce enough clean energy to power an average home for two days

When fully complete, Dogger Bank’s world-record-beating 3.6GW capacity will comprise 277 giant offshore turbines capable of producing enough clean energy to power the equivalent of six million homes annually and deliver yearly CO2 savings equivalent to removing 1.5 million cars from the road

[Pretty Boy]

This is very interesting albeit caveated with a lot of if, but and maybe. Obviously most of us will have heard of hydrogen and fuel before but the processes involved here seem exciting if challenging:

https://www.independent.co.uk/climat...-b2440021.html

[Ozyhibby]

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This is very interesting albeit caveated with a lot of if, but and maybe. Obviously most of us will have heard of hydrogen and fuel before but the processes involved here seem exciting if challenging:

https://www.independent.co.uk/climat...-b2440021.html

Can’t read the article but hydrogen is probably the best source of heating if we can scale it. And Scotland is in a good place for that. To do so we need to instal a massive amount of electricity capacity which will bring down prices.


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[nonshinyfinish]

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Can’t read the article but hydrogen is probably the best source of heating if we can scale it. And Scotland is in a good place for that. To do so we need to instal a massive amount of electricity capacity which will bring down prices.

This article is about 'white hydrogen', i.e. naturally occurring hydrogen that is extracted rather than produced from something else, so it doesn't have the electricity cost involved in water splitting. There are obviously other challenges as the article describes.

What if the answer to the climate crisis has been tucked away, since time immemorial, beneath our feet?

That is the possibility posed by increasing discoveries of vast, underground deposits of white hydrogen around the world.

Burning hydrogen produces only heat and water, and it’s attracting billions of dollars in investment as countries race to wean themselves off fossil fuels.

But not all hydrogen is created equal, and the energy industry uses a colour-coded, sliding scale to indicate its sustainability. Most common is “gray hydrogen”, made using the fossil fuel, natural gas. “Blue hydrogen” is created the same way but captures the carbon emissions; “green hydrogen” is produced by using clean energy to split water. As the name suggests, green hydrogen is the “greenest” but expensive and produced in smaller quantities.

Then there’s white hydrogen – also known as natural, gold or geologic hydrogen – which doesn’t need to be freed from other elements like oxygen by using vast amounts of electricity.

For a long time, many scientists thought large deposits of white hydrogen weren’t possible – but now, millions of megatons of hydrogen are thought to be lodged in Earth’s crust. This has the potential to supply global hydrogen demand for thousands of years, said USGS research geologist Geoffrey Ellis, a leading expert on white hydrogen.

Pioneers in white hydrogen also claim it could be produced for much lower costs than its cousins. It will be twice as cheap as the cheapest green hydrogen, according to Natural Hydrogen Energy, a US-based startup.

Until recently, it went relatively unnoticed that white hydrogen was already in real-world operation. Bourakébougou, a remote village in the landlocked West African nation of Mali, has powered its electricity supply with white hydrogen for more than a decade. The discovery was made after a local businessman brought in a Canadian consulting firm to test a water well that had caught fire when a worker lit a cigarette near it.

That company, Hydroma, says the source contains 98 per cent hydrogen gas and is the world’s first electricity production from white hydrogen without any carbon emissions via direct combustion.

Inevitably, there’s a catch – and the hapless smoker in Bourakébougou provides the first clue.

Hydrogen is a lot more flammable than natural gas, and can cause fires and explosions if not handled properly. Because the gas is so light, no known odorants can be added to alert people to potential leaks, just as a sulfur-containing smell raises the alarm on natural gas and propane.

Another unknown quantity of hydrogen, in general, is what impact it has on heating our already overcooked planet.

Hydrogen’s floaty quality means it easily leaks, warned a recent study by the Environmental Defense Fund, so the gas’ warming impact is “both widely overlooked and underestimated”.

“Therefore, the effectiveness of hydrogen as a decarbonization strategy, especially over timescales of several decades, remains unclear,” the researchers noted.

These aren’t the only challenges to overcome. Next comes finding the stuff, as many of the large deposits discovered so far have been hit upon by accident.

The largest accumulation of white hydrogen to date was inadvertently found in France this summer by scientists who were studying methane at a mining basin.

“Every now and again, in science one happens to chance upon something one wasn’t looking for. Occasionally, that discovery is of greater value than one was originally after. Call it serendipity,” wrote Jacques Pironon and Philippe de Donato, from the University of Lorraine.

The presence of hydrogen is often flagged by fairy circles which crop up in grasslands and other vegetation as the gas leaks kill off plants.

The lightness of hydrogen also becomes an issue when you start trying to move it around, making it more expensive because large amounts leak. As with the Mali project, white hydrogen may make sense in localized areas but become too costly for long-distance transportation.

Regardless, there is no shortage of interest in white hydrogen as a possibly limitless source of clean energy, and the dollars are pouring in. Denver-based Koloma won $91m in investment from a group that includes Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Venture. One investment firm valued white hydrogen as a $75bn industry by 2030.

Michael E Webber, from the University of Texas in Austin, drew similarities between white hydrogen and the beginning of the fracking boom where “it’s mostly an idea waiting on better technologies, policies, and market conditions for it to prosper”.

“If it does, perhaps the oil and gas industry can turn its capabilities to extracting hydrogen produced by subsurface geological processes, shepherding in a new era of low-carbon fuels. That way it can avoid job disruption while using its global-scale competencies to ramp-up hydrogen quickly. It could give the hydrogen story the happy ending it deserves,” he wrote.

[Stairway 2 7]

In the least surprising news of the week UAE are using cop28 to make oil deals. People flying all over the world to an oil burning metropolis in the desert, to rub egos and eat canopies

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67508331