While Treehugger is still alive, barely, it isn’t the harder hitting / deeper posts of the past. Thus, I’m spending far less time there and I’m just going to put up the last comment threads from some of the posts I thought were worth keeping. This set is both timeless, in the past, and kinda short lived as it goes back to mid-September when Liz Truss supplanted Boris Johnson as Britain’s Prime Minister (for what, a couple of days? Heh!). Headline: Are British Conservatives Really Committed to Climate Action?” because all of the Left hates the Conservatives and must throw shade. Being TH, it’s always from an Eco-Socialist standpoint – and in TH stances, pit in the sky absurd thoughts of how things should work. Like this:
…Yet in an era of accelerating climate consequences, we also need to beware of what futurist Alex Steffen has described as “predatory delay,” meaning the strategic positioning of fossil fuels as a necessary and supposedly temporary evil as we navigate our way toward a lower carbon future. Here, there were signs during the Tory leadership debates that both Truss and Rishi Sunak—the two finalists in the contest—were willing to toss red meat to their base by throwing renewables under the metaphorical, diesel-powered, and chronically underfunded bus.
And now that Truss has taken office, this hostility to onshore wind farms and solar panels has manifested itself in one of the most baffling policy reversals of recent memory: She has confirmed she will allow fracking to resume in England.
Oh, the horrors from Sami Grover – hydrocarbons being taken from the ground to allow the poor and middle classes some semblance of modernity and a better lifestyle. They want what they want and EVERYONE must go on a war footing to make it happen NOW – and time and money never seem to be mentioned or taken into account. Well, Truss lasted only a couple of weeks before blowing herself up so the post is moot but the comments live forever (until TH gets really scrapped).
So, in true form, a commenter “Gr8bkset” brought up the Green New Deal (by AOC and recently passed as Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act under a false flag) of re-weatherize EVERYTHING. Hey, it will be quick and no fracking need. You know “anti-energy” instead of mining oil for energy.
Yet in a world where project development will most likely take years and where household economies are hurting now, a far more “populist” approach would surely be to finally get serious about massive insulation, energy efficiency, and heat pump drive for households across the country.
NO clue as to how slowly Govt would work on this. The guy thinks he’s in a Harry Potter movie and he’s got a Mega-wand (similar to most Eco-Socialists – time and money is irrelevant – just the goal of achieving that “little nirvana” matters. My friend Vindaloo Bugaboo started the intellectual caning:
Serious question—who in the blue hell thinks that “massive” improvements in home insulation, upgraded energy efficiency, and heat pump installations will be more timely than restarting fracking? If you do, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
I piled on – no sense of reality:
Gr8bkset, are you REALLY thinking in real world terms? Or is your ideology blinkered you in this?
Even just take 1,000 buildings. Tell me, how LONG would it take the Federal Govt to write the legislation, get it passed, shovel it out to the multiple bureaucracies that will claim to have jurisdiction, set up their own series of “grants”, the time for State and Local politicians and THEIR bureaucracies to evaluate and write their grant-response-proposals, pass them up and down their chains, send them in, have the Feds evaluate them, dither for a while in picking winners and losers, and then announce the awards?
Just THAT process will take months – a lot of them. In comparison, fracked wells that have been capped can be put back into production in a matter of weeks. Go ahead, tell me where both VB and I are wrong?
And I haven’t even mentioned how long it would take a bunch of contracters, all of whom can’t even get the help they need now, to take care of even ONE home. Now take that process country wide – I await your “how long will it take to do all that” answer in response.
So Gr8bkset effectively said “yeah – but individuals can do it for just short money. It’s ALWAYS the response – the Socialists arguing how individuals, some who DON’T even have that short money in their pockets, should spend their money. VB spanks him again by, you know, bringing up REAL costs. This is the important bit – Socialists rarely have the courage to use actual numbers in their statements. And when someone does, there is angst and anger
If weatherization only cost the average UK household $2000 it’d be done a long time ago. A simple Google search shows that fully insulating a UK detached home will typically cost £15-20,000. Assuming an existing structure (not new build) that cost will depend on a “top up” of insulation or a complete revamping of the insulative capabilities costing £5000 – £7000 for internal jobs (that cause you to lose square footage) or £8500-£15000 for external insulation and render.
https://job-prices.co.uk/in...
When the median average salary for all employees in the UK is £38,131 that’s a huge bite to take on, especially given housing affordability.
https://www.gov.uk/governme…
Someone else added in backing the claim that it cannot be instantaneous:
I work for a federal weatherization program . . . we deal with grants all the time. Although it’s convoluted and loopy at times, they get administered, implemented and followed. But returning to the thing that’s causing the problem in the first place is feel-good post-rationalizing while doing the headless chicken dance.
And just so everyone’s aware; the two biggest components of weatherizing are insulation and air infiltration. They go hand in hand, and unfortunately energy reduction is sometimes exaggerated. But the savings are slow and steady, and eventually pay for the costs. In an age of everything now however, slow and steady is a hard sell.
I agreed:
But the savings are slow and steady
No argument there – mine is with gr8bkset is trying to palm off this as a minor project taking no time at all. And as VB points out, it will take a LOT of money, too.
For RIGHT NOW, increasing fossil fuels available and at a much lower marginal cost, is the way to keep folks from freezing to death and halting the global economy as if it had parachutes streaming from it. Look, you want REs and other non-fossils? Fine.
But at least be intellectually honest and showing some integrity that it can’t be done instantaneously, can’t be done in 5 years, and most likely won’t be done in even 30 years.
There’s not enough money and there aren’t enough workers to make it happen.
And where do families go when Govt takes over their home in their “we’re from the govt and we’re here to help you” schtick? And HOW will the govt manage the disruptions to all those lives during that process?
And one of the “Ideologically blinkered” ones proved my point about being radically clueless, Nio:
It could be done in 5 years if the effort was made and it became a national priority. What choice is there but to try to keep all dirty fossil fuels in the ground with climate change getting worse? Solar and wind are at record low prices and continue to plunge in price. Battery storage is also coming down in price. The only solution you have is to keep us addicted to using dirty fossil fuels which are polluting and destroying this planet.
Those prices MAY come down in the future but they ain’t there yet. However, this nitwit, like all Progressives, wants the entire nation to go on a war footing to get something done that CAN’T BE DONE. There is no realistic way to get what he wants.
Reopening closed fracked wells can take but a few weeks as opposed to what Nio wants. VB, again, responding to another of my comments:
In comparison, fracked wells that have been capped can be put back into production in a matter of weeks.
Bingo. Those wells are sitting there unused; it’s not like you have to drill hundreds of new ones before you can begin pumping nat gas but instead can begin almost immediately. And since Britain’s economy is staring into an abyss over energy costs this winter (thanks, Russia and EU elitism) every cu ft of NG will be much appreciated.
Heck, Nio can’t even persuade a couple of rational Conservative / Libertarians that he’s right. How’s he going to persuade an entire nation that is severely divided?
He can’t. And this “Inflation Reduction Act” is going to fail after spending trillions.
OK, speak up – who got their home “weatherized” under this Act?
