mmm…Bundy Dark and cola. mmmmm
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Clearly a warmlander…
-40 it is so damn cold even the thermometer doesn’t care about C vs. F
-31 to -39 Dear God I need to find warm shelter now
-25 to -31 wtf I am doing outside
-19 to -24 fuck it’s cold, the snow is crunchy, black
-11 to -18 damn it’s cold, green
-4 to -11 the sweet spot, blue
-1 to -4 still a little too warm if we are going to do cold, purple
0-5 melty cold, red
5-8 uselessly cold, wet, klister
We used to spend a lot more of our winter in the sweet spot. Weirdly, we seem to get more frequent ‘wtf am I doing outside’ now, but way more of the melty cold ranges.
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winter football temps out here. I miss playing, but not in those temps.
That’s me 
Intolerable? 
I think I’m basically acclimatised to Scottish temperatures. This is one thing I’ve had trouble getting used to in Germany. For me:
< -20°C and I don’t want to go outside
-20° to -5° is cold but bearable
-5° to +5° is standard winter
5° to 15° is reasonably comfortable
15° to 20° is warm, short sleeve weather
20° to 25° is hot
25° is the internationally recognised melting point of Scots
25° to 30° is uncomfortable
30° to 35° is unbearable
35° spontaneous human combustion
When I did my German language course they described 18° as cold. I was trying to work out if they were talking in Fahrenheit.
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No top and Tennants at noon weather!
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38 here today. Uncomfortable.
Seriously…what is the fucking point of them?
Off with their heads.
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Totally expected. What else could have happened with this summit held at the core of oil-business? (Who took this stupid decision anyway?)
Of course they were going to try and destroy any credible agreement. It’s in their interest to hold out as long as possible.
At least, the whole hypocrisy of all this is clearly shown for all to see.
The summit being in the UAE is really only relevant to the critical role that the Chair (host) normally plays in holding the pen and getting a deal over the line. In that regard, I am not even sure that it was a mistake to try having a petro-crat try to persuade all the other petro-crats. We have already tried G8, G20, BRICS and other developing world chairs.
The fundamental problem is the need for consensus, even if 100% consensus is no longer strictly required. There are just too many different agendas that can hold compromises hostage.
We simply don’t need all the countries in the world to agree on a framework that can make vast progress, but instead we have spend 30 years chasing our tails for the impossible deal that gets more complicated each year. The major emitters were unable to produce a core agreement on reducing emissions. Adding more countries that aren’t actually relevant to that, adding in mitigation, adaptation, climate justice, Indigenous rights, etc., etc., all sounds great, but the simple reality is that adding in more goals and more constraints to a problem that already didn’t have a clear solution just puts any solution further away. It is just a recipe for the annual clusterfuck somewhere in the sun for the climate delegations, the ENGOs, the BINGOS, the other NGOs, etc. to go and do their pre-Christmas climate passion play.
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I agree with the general sense of your post, but about this bit here: the Abu Dhabi guy has already been showned up as a complete hypocrite. He won’t try to persuade his peers over anything, he just tries to keep out any binding decision.
Otherwise, I agree. The EU or the US don’t need a global agreement to get their act together and reduce their dependency on oil. They can act themselves and act as an example. Not holding my breath though.
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Which is why I think it is time to take a pause on the UN process, and stop pretending it is working toward a solution. Just to take two overnight positions as examples:
Bolivia group - the world needs to cut emissions, but the agreement cannot dictate (our) production of fossil fuels, it needs to be voluntary. But you need to fund us.
China group - we demand the right to determine what the global deal will look like, but reject that we have any responsibilities under such a deal.
You don’t need either of those parties at the table to determine a deal that reduces the emissions where both those groups insist they must be cut. There is actually a bizarre sort of consensus, the industrialized countries have largely given up asking for binding measures in the developing world, the developing world is firm in that position, China insists on still being treated as a developing country, the industrialized countries have largely given up on trying to change that.
Maybe once that framework is resolved and implemented, there is something to talk about. But this cycle of addressing each failure to find a solution by introducing additional requirements/constraints is just collective madness.
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Was hoping someone on here might have a bit of insight into this COP 28 ‘deal’, guess I’ll have to try and find something to read myself!
Ps. I’m sceptical, hoping to be proved wrong.
this is the second biggest concern about the shadow fleet moving Russian oil around the world. Specifically, being chartered through UAE shell companies on old should-be-decommissioned tankers moving oil without shipping beacons showing their locations. This is a game that the black market of the BRICS are playing under the nose of the west and it’s only a matter of time before we see an Exxon Valdez scale accident in the Mediterranean Sea or in the South Pacific. Who knows if these loads are even insured? Think one of Putin’s cronies are doing to pick up the bill of an oil spill? Dubai?
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I noticed this story on the news: Redcar hydrogen trial scrapped by government
I think this is a sensible move as the idea of replacing methane with hydrogen doesn’t make either economic or engineering sense, but I suspect this will be replaced with nothing.
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Not new news, but it was interesting.
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There’s some snippets of that article which are very troubling
The UK government is consulting on proposals for incentives to households to take up heat pumps, which at about £7,000 or more can cost two or three times as much up front as gas boilers. Boiler companies are also to be penalised if they fail to sell enough heat pumps, under a “market-based mechanism” that will require them to sell a certain quota of heat pumps or pay a penalty.
penalised by whom. pay to whom?
Some proponents of gas boilers have railed against the quota, which they claim will add costs to consumers, and at least one boiler company has responded by telling customers that the price of new gas boilers is likely to go up as a result of this green measure.
quel surprise…
That mechanism is already in use in North America for auto manufacturers. The fuel efficiency standards set some minimums, but the most direct regulation is at the portfolio level. If a company’s average fuel efficiency doesn’t meet the required standard, they are penalized/fined by a multiple of units necessary to bring them into compliance.
As for the second piece, we already have that in Canada too, in force as of January 1, 2025.
In the Air - HRAI Industry News.
Residential furnaces will be pushed upwards to what is now considered higher end 93+ AFUE. But the 300k BTU+ commercial boiler market is going to be transformed (and a lot more expensive). In practical terms, that is a condensing boiler and for now at least about 3x the capital cost. Our market is not large enough to swing all North American production toward condensing boilers, the regulation is forcing the entire country up-market. One entity I work with decided in 2022 to scrap some boilers 3 years early, because getting them replaced before the regulation would make for a much cheaper project.
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