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mdavidford wrote:

stomec wrote:

At this point I think "Nigel" is actually a bot progammed to illustrate the Dunning Kruger effect.

Nah - like SophisCyclist before, "Nigel" is a puppet account of the road.cc team, designed to generate extra comments.

Y'know - that was my very first thought. Never believe the names on the letters page, right? But now I'm not so sure. And maybe you're just road.cc too? Who can I trust? And what about me??

Nowhere near his recent standards. Did pick up a lot of quick wickets though (including mine...). Luck? Or the combination of a bait post and then teetering into possible factual contention rather than mere opining?

The government are against the so called eco warriors as they are holding them to account. The Tories altered the rules that would have had housebuilders (Tory donors?) having to build far more efficient houses from 2016. Made sure they didn't have to so we have another five years of houses that are poorly insulated and will need retro-fitting with better insulation.

Then there was the 'Green Deal' where householders could get money to help fit better insulation etc. The scheme was so shoddy in its organisation that insulation installers went out of business waiting to ne paid under the scheme. Most installers refusedt to do work under the scheme so the government had to scrap it.

No wonder Boris is telling Priti to throw these people in jail, can't have them reminding the world that the Tories aren't very green when there is a climate conference due can we?

Bizarrely despite the 'fact' that the "Tories aren't very green" the UK has achieved some of the largest CO2 reductions in the world since the Conservatives came to power.

There's still a lot more to do to get to net zero of course but the government's track record on climate change is actually very good.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-29-pe...

Rich_cb wrote:

Bizarrely despite the 'fact' that the "Tories aren't very green" the UK has achieved some of the largest CO2 reductions in the world since the Conservatives came to power. There's still a lot more to do to get to net zero of course but the government's track record on climate change is actually very good. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-29-pe...

But is it good enough? For clarity - I see "ambitious targets" from all sides in politics but until they get in and we actually see what actually happens (which will rarely if ever match the sales pitch) I will be sceptical. For example the discrepancy between what is trumpeted for "active travel" and the magic beans actually given to us in exchange for our optimism - by any government thus far - is a continual disappointment.

It may be that it's a "tragedy of the commons" and until we actually start running out of cheap power not enough people will make the first move - it not being in their short-term self-interest. Or our politics / organisations get more dictatorial. I guess we'll see how successful our societal groups are at getting over the "can't do worse than my neighbour" effect to do better in the longer term.

Anyway, I'm alright jack because I've got my bicycle. Although I'm not sure what happens when I run out of tyre patches.

I don't think we're going to know if it's 'good enough' for a long time.

Personally I don't think we're going to be able to reduce emissions globally fast enough to prevent significant warming but I'm quietly hopeful that in the UK we will be able to hit our net zero targets.

Rich_cb wrote:

I don't think we're going to know if it's 'good enough' for a long time. Personally I don't think we're going to be able to reduce emissions globally fast enough to prevent significant warming but I'm quietly hopeful that in the UK we will be able to hit our net zero targets.

In cynical moments I think we already know. On the optimistic side - depending on how "long term" your viewpoint - the descendants of the early cyanobacteria are still with us having survived their pollution catastrophe. The only thing I'm quietly certain of is that politicians will always find a way that they can say we hit whatever targets they're being judged against. Generally not in their self-interest to do otherwise!

Rich_cb wrote:

Bizarrely despite the 'fact' that the "Tories aren't very green" the UK has achieved some of the largest CO2 reductions in the world since the Conservatives came to power. There's still a lot more to do to get to net zero of course but the government's track record on climate change is actually very good. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-29-pe...

The main reason that CO2 emissions have fallen in the UK is because we've exported the manufacturing to China, so we are still responsible for them, but we can blame the Chinese, and criticise them for using coal to make the products that we buy.  Even worse, they have to be shipped here, using more energy and creating more CO2.

Ergo; the tories aren't very green.

As someone put it recently, the Tories are green and have been for years. After all in the early 80's they decimated the coal industry so how much CO2 was saved because of that....

But the figures have reduced the last decade, both because most technologies are now produced to be energy efficient or using alternative power sources. Yes, some Government guidances etc are in place, but it helps the companies are already going that route anyway. 

Up until 2008 all reductions in UK CO2 production were more than offset by emissions elsewhere as you describe.

Since 2010 that has not been the case.

Ergo you're wrong.

Here's a nice graph to prove it.

Rich_cb wrote:

Here's a nice graph to prove it.

I do like a graph and while tangential to groupsets or even LTNs the topic is an interest for me. However "proof" is assisted by expanations surrounding the datasets (or even the legends) and I couldn't find the link(s) in a quick Google - would you have those? (Otherwise we could mostly attribute this to the recession). For anyone else going the same route Leeds uni has a very quick intro.

Rich_cb wrote:

Ergo you're wrong. Here's a nice graph to prove it.

It doesn't prove that though. It looks (hard to tell from an image of the graph) as though Territorial Emissions were about 100m tonnes lower in 2015 than in 2010, while Consumption Emissions were something like 75-80m tonnes lower. So offshoring is contributing ~20-25% of the effect.

That's not the majority of the reduction, but it is a sizeable chunk, and could still make it the main reason. As others have pointed out, there are a multitude of other potential contributing factors, so these could each be having a smaller effect individually than offshoring is.

Having said that, I don't think we can really put all the blame for offshoring externalities on the Tories - it's a trend that's been going on since, oh, the beginnings of Empire, and before.

Burt said that the "main reason" UK emissions have fallen under the Conservatives is off-shoring of manufacturing etc.

That graph proves, as you rightly said, that off shoring is not the main contributor to the fall in CO2 emissions.

I'm not sure how you can argue that something that makes up a quarter of the effect can be the "main reason"?

If off-shoring is 20% of the effect, and 8 other things are 10% each, off-shoring is the main reason, even if it's not contributing the majority.

I'm not sure I would use the phrase 'main reason' in that way but regardless it's not the largest contributory factor so Burt remains wrong.

I'm not sure that helps.

For one thing, it doesn't split out the effect of offshoring (which is presumaby subsumed somewhere in the factors that are considered), and since it covers a different (longer) time span to the previous graph, we don't know how consumption-based emissions compare over this period in order to work that out.

For another, the aggregations it does use are too broad to be useful in this context. Essentially, all changes in emissions are always going to be accounted for by those four categories. It doesn't tell us how much was due to regulation, subsidies and incentives, new technology, increased investment, etc., etc.

In fairness the use of 'offshoring' as a topic is far more broad than what Burt proposed.

"The main reason that CO2 emissions have fallen in the UK is because we've exported the manufacturing to China"

Offshoring of CO2 will not just cover manufacturing but things like data centres/electricity generation/food production etc etc.

Comparing such a broad topic to other similarly broad topics seems reasonable if we're trying to establish the 'main' reason for CO2 reductions.

I don't disagree that it's hugely complex and causes are deeply intersecting. But what that basically means is that neither eburtthebike's original claim, nor your claim to have proven it wrong, have much objective meaning or truth - the terms just aren't clearly enough defined.

The point about aggregation, though, isn't that the causes are unfairly aggregated too much in that chart. It's that it's the wrong kind of dimension to aggregate on in the first place if you want to make this comparison. Any potential cause of emissions changes can be broken down into the factors given, including the one that you want to compare. If you choose to categorise in this way, the effect of offshoring (or any other cause) will, by definition, disappear into those categories.

Essentially, it's not aggregating causes, but the effects of those causes. So to try to compare those categories against offshoring (even if we agreed a definition for it) is comparing apples and oranges.

I've actually just looked at the original graph I posted again.

It absolutely does prove Burt's claim is wrong. Burt specifically claimed that the "main reason" for the decline in CO2 emissions was the outsourcing of manufacturing to China.

Consumption emissions are territorial emissions plus offshored emissions.

In 2010 consumption based emissions were 746.1 (million tonnes) and territorial emissions were 492.7. We offshored 253.4.

In 2015 (most recent figures in graph) the figures were 656.6 and 402.5. We offshored 254.1.

Consumption emissions fell by 89.5. Territorial emissions fell by 90.2.

So only 0.7 million additional tonnes were off shored. The remaining 89.5 fall in emissions was as a result of changes in the UK.

That conclusively shows that offshoring was not the 'main reason' for the decline.

Source:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/compend...

Well now that there are some numbers around it, it does look highly unlikely that it's true for those 5 years*, though not quite impossible. There are at least a couple of ways it could still be true.

The first is straightforwardly that there are so many other causes that each of them contributed <0.7m tonnes. That would require you to identify at least 128 other causes, though, which seems improbable.

The second is slightly more plausible. There could be reasons why, in the absence of any changes in levels of activity or where it took place, offshored emissions would have fallen by a significant amount (e.g. more efficient operations, cleaner energy, etc. in those existing offshore supply chains). In that case, we could then get rid of a hefty chunk of Territorial emissions by moving them offshore, and still only end up with this relatively small net increase.

[*eburtthebike could still reasonably claim that the original comment wasn't limited to just this period.]

The statistics only go up to 2017 in the most recent release and I can't find the detail for those just the graph. So the 2015 stats are the most detailed I can find for now.

Over the 2010-2015 period UK emissions from power generation fell by 50 million tonnes*. The offshore manufacturing would have to have made huge efficiency gains in order to outweigh that.

In the context of an internet forum debate I think it's safe to say Burt's claim is disproved.

*https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...

I wouldn't quite agree to 'disproved', but I would go as far as 'robustly rebutted'.

I'll take that.

The sector that the UK has been very effective with reducing CO2 emissions has been power generation.  This is the main area wher the UK has made reductions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas#:~:text=The%20Dash%20for%20....

The UK has effectively replaced coal with gas (the 'Dash for Gas') reducing emissions and then grown renewables like wind to reduce still further.  This has been better than many other industrial nations.  The 'Dash for Gas' started in the early 90s and therefore Governments of different colours supported it.

The UK has been less coherent so far on reductions in other areas that will have a more direct impact on individuals.  I would say that most politicians have shied away from saying that lifestyles will need to change.

An important thing to point out with Rich_cb's link is that the CO2 from airlines and shipping isn't included. I was reading somewhere else that we've been shutting down coal stations rather than adapting them to burn renewables (e.g. biomass) which could be a short-sighted move.

hawkinspeter wrote:

An important thing to point out with Rich_cb's link is that the CO2 from airlines and shipping isn't included. I was reading somewhere else that we've been shutting down coal stations rather than adapting them to burn renewables (e.g. biomass) which could be a short-sighted move.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/984685/transport-and-environment-statistics-2021.pdf

This is an interesting read, giving a breakdown of the fact that around 27% of the UK CO2 emissions come from domestic transport, and of that 68% come from cars and taxis.  So by my reckoning around 18% of total UK CO2 emissions come from cars and taxi's. (circa 83 Million tonnes CO2 equivalent[MtCO2])

And then when you add in the fact that a significant proportion of those CO2 emissions will come from short journeys of under 3 miles, journeys where ICE cars produce significantly more CO2 due to increased fuel consumption for warming up etc, you could probably come to a reasonable prediction that some 10% of GHG emissions in the UK could be removed if people would just walk or cycle those shorter journeys.

And as an aside there was an article in the Guardian that called for a ban on domestic air travel where the same journey could be undertaken by rail in under 5 hours because of the amount of GHG emissions from domestic flights which equates to 1.5MtCO2 according to that report.  My quick maths puts the MtCO2 saving of not using cars for short journeys at somewhere between 40 to 50MtCO2.  Needless to say when that was pointed out in a well known social media platform comments section.... it did not go down well at all

There certainly have been reductions; it would be interesting to see some research investigating what percentage of these reductions were attributable to the following factors:

a) Direct government action and initiatives since 2010;

b) Initiatives and action taken before 2010;

c) Increased shifting of previously British manufacturing overseas since 2010;

d) EU-funded grants and initiatives prior to 2018;

e) The effect of the quantum leap in new green technologies that have become available over the last decade that would have been adopted by individuals and industry under any government.

Without factoring in all those variables all one can say is that emissions have reduced under the Conservative party's decade in power, not that they have decreased as a result of same. Power projects in particular take many years to come to fruition, e.g. Hornsea One, the UK's largest offshore windfarm, was initiated in 2009 under a Labour government but has been entirely built and come online under a Conservative government, to whom is the green credit to be attributed? Similarly the next Labour government, if any/ever, will benefit from carbon reduction initiatives introduced in the last ten years that may not come onstream until the Tories are out of power.

Given that the Conservatives have been in power now for 11 years we are well past the point that Labour can continue to claim credit for changes.

Hornsea one being a good example. The very first part of the process to build it was agreed under the Labour government. Everything else, including the leases/subsidies etc, were agreed post 2010.

Subsidies were crucial to early off shore wind projects and were a direct result of Conservative policy.

On shore wind was barred from CfD bids leading to the rapid expansion of UK off shore capability which now operates without subsidy.

I've already addressed the manufacturing question in my reply to Burt.

Green technology has been available to all countries so if the UK has outperformed others, as it has, then clearly other factors are at play.

The UK has, since 2010, been far more ambitious with climate change policies than the EU and, as a net contributor to the EU, would have financed any EU grants itself.

Under the Conservatives the UK has genuinely been a world leader on climate change. Hopefully we can continue in the same vein at Glasgow

And how do all these grandiose claims (from a government that is about to approve the opening of 18 new gas and oil fields in the North Sea, that refuses to block the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria, that removed all reference to the Paris climate change goals from its trade deal with Australia, etc) sit with the statement four months ago from the Chair of the Climate Change Committee, Lord Debden (formerly John Selwyn Gummer, lifelong Conservative, former party chairman and Environment Secretary) that “[The targets] are remarkable and have set a major example [to the world]. But the policy is just not there. It’s very clear we need to step up very rapidly. If all we do is promise, other people will not take us seriously … it puts the whole process [of Cop26] into jeopardy. I rate the government 9 out of 10 on its targets but somewhere below 4 out of 10 on its efforts to meet them." Under the Conservatives the UK has genuinely been a world leader in talking about climate change.

Gas and oil will be needed for a long while yet, even under a net zero regime we'll likely still use some fossil fuels. I'd rather we had secure supplies than rely on our friends in Russia etc.

The coal mine is for coking coal.

It should actually reduce CO2 emissions.

The government have set some of the world's most ambitious targets for CO2 reduction and, you're right, at present we are not on track to meet them but I expect a flurry of policy announcements in the coming weeks that should move us a lot closer to target.

The UK track record since 2010 is amongst the best in the world which doesn't really fit with your final assertion does it?