The UK government's climate advisory body is launching its next carbon budget: basically, outlining what the UK can emit between 2033 and 2037. It's a big deal - launch video starting right now.
Watch along:

Will tweet along snippets. Pretty relevant to...............everything, really. #UKCarbonBudget

"Instead of being just a budget, it's a pathway we have to tread to reach net zero in 2050" @lorddeben
Just like quite a few other modelling exercises, CCC use a spectrum between behaviour change and between technological change. #UKCarbonBudget.

Both = best (just like @AEMO_Media's Step Change scenario in their ISP)
'Balanced' is what they use for their recs. "We're doing 60% of the emissions reductions in the first 15 years, and then 40% in the next".

The slinky kitty curve....good to see. No evidence of delaying action to Dec 29 2049, here. #UKCarbonBudget
"By front loading, we're minimising the UK's contribution to cumulative emissions" - really important point. A slow path to net zero - more climate harm than a fast one. #UKCarbonBudget
"This is our rainbow of abatement" - nice @IEA-style split-out of how to cut emissions to near-zero by 2050. Reducing demand for CO2 intensive stuff (flying, meat) is quite a big purple chunk there. #UKCarbonBudget
This is a really interesting graphic:

Orange = purely behavioural change
Purple = purely tech
Red (pink??) = a mix of tech and behaviour

"There is nothing to be afraid of at all.......they won't be major change to our lifestyles", on the red wedge #UKCarbonBudget
UK will need a huge amount of (mostly private) investment in new zero carbon assets, but the savings from not buying fossil fuels eventually cancel that out.

"Any notion that we can't afford to tackle climate change is clearly nonsense" #ukcarbonbudget
"The challenge is not to rely on a pandemic to cut emissions. The key is to drive changes that last"

CC @AngusTaylorMP #ukcarbonbudget
"We're hitting a million heat pump installations by 2030", in addition to nearly 100% of new car sales being electric (small amount of hybrids) #ukcarbonbudget, w/ 30TWh of H2 produced.

Zero carbon elec by 2035 (just like the US). No new sales of gas boilers by 2033
"The crucial point here is that this is all genuinely feasible......but it is also genuinely challenging" #UKcarbonbduget @ChiefExecCCC
"Gas is not acting as a bridge fuel. It's a fossil fuel and we need to move away from it" #UKcarbondget
Nice comparison of emissions vs temps. The decisions made to cause the problem have mattered - the decisions made to stop it matter too.

#ukcarbonbudget
A familiar accent from @pilitaclark during the Q&A session.... #ukcarbonbudget https://t.co/faxRj5KF8x
"If you take the time to guide people through this, they're really supportive of action" on how to integrate behaviour change into net zero. Can't help but think of toxic UK media outlets and how easily they could ruin all that. #UKCarbonBudget
Aus media and conservatives used a "the government is coming to take your car" narrative in 2019 on efficiency standards and it definitely helped them win an election #UKCarbonBudget
A really interesting point from @ChiefExecCCC - the hard, empirical pathway (spreadsheets) and the qualitative, consultation-led pathway (climate assemblies, etc) both end up in really similar places. #UKCarbonBudget
Lord Deben literally having an air-sourced heat pump installed during the call #UKCarbonBudget
He's got biomass backup #UKCarbonBudget
On heat pumps and the suggestion to phase out gas boilers in thirteen years - these are two headline describing precisely the same piece of news:

#UKCarbonBudget
"While its great to hear commitments to net zero.....the path by which we get there is crucial. It's the accumulated CO2 emissions in the atmosphere that are changing the climate.......they must have a tough intermediate target. The 2030 NDCs are crucial"

#UKCarbonBudget
By 2030, the UK won't be building any more new unabated gas plants (that should surely be.....now, right?), under the CCC's balanced pathway scenario #UKCarbonBudget
UK shifting energy from oil+gas into electricity+hydrogen ends up with a total *lower* amount of energy consumption, because electricity is just so much more efficient.

Also see: @GriffithSaul's @rewiringamerica work!

Or: https://t.co/BYvbPTPX6e #UKCarbonBudget

More from Climate change

I don't have time to make this detailed, but here's a little thread about the world's first major politically-charged blackout that was blamed on renewables, in South Australia, in 2016............

On September 28, 2016, an unprecedented tropical storm progressed rapidly across South Australia. Truly - this thing was unusual. The sky folded in on itself. It tore towns to bits.


Australia's @climatecouncil pointed out that the storm was so unusual at least partly due to the influence of climate change, and that this is due to get worse.

https://t.co/76ekkfJpR8


I'm going to use brief snippets from my book to fill this out! The storm's primary impact on the grid was the destruction of several major transmission lines. When I say destruction - I mean they snapped like twigs.


Here's what happened in the following seconds:

- A voltage spike from the line falls
- Wind turbines automatically shut off due to software settings that trigger shutdown during a spike
- The interconnector to Vic tried to compensate, failed and died
- All of SA blacked out

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A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.