A Huge Mistake: Paying People to Use Clean Energy
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ต.ค. 2021
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Video written by Adam Chase
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As an Econ grad I can confirm people like having more money than less money. I did my thesis statement on it.
That's y capitalism thrives and socialism sucks
I am not being sarcastic or anything, did you really do that? If yes, did it need to be done?? Isn't that a given?!! Are you trolling???
@@Mkayou you could have not said that but you did anyway
@@Mkayou So you don’t want money?
@@Mkayou what does this have to do with anything?
That Northen Irish accent was one of the worst things I've ever heard. I love it.
Yeah it was awful
It's perfect 🤣🤣
And I love that he used the word slags.
Which means whores 😂
the way he pronounced banjaxed
It was shockingly bad. The northern Irish accent is one of the best in the world but there are about 50 distinct accents in such a small country it's crazy
It's impressive how consultants managed to screw things up on such a grand scale when the correct answer was (and usually is) just to copy the thing that worked.
But how do you justify paying your friend who owns the consulting company!?
Copying thoughtlessly seems to have been part of the problem.
Buddy, you just described politics.
As an NI citizen I think it was intentionally badly planned so as to allow the leading party’s voter base to profit from it. Kind of like a piggy bank to withdraw from UK taxpayer money. Knowing this political party it is not surprising as they routinely use morally questionable tactics. The whole situation was so incredibly bad the partner political party they were working with just could not put up with it and effectively shut down the country’s government as a result. There were other issues but this was the final straw that broke everything.
The Ariane 5 rocket would like to have a word with you
"An obscure babylonian concept known as math" 🤣
@felicia has some math for ya
I’m from Northern Ireland and that accent was horribly offensive. I’d report Sam to the RA but I need to go switch on the heating in my abandoned shed, so simply don’t have the time
Ha!
This reminds me of the story when the British government started paying Indians for killing cobras. That ended up incentivizing people to breed cobras for the bounty money.
You forgot the kicker!
Realizing their mistake they ended the program, so all the breeders released their cobras.
The cobra effect…
Holy crap I really didn't expect the Cash for Ash scheme to be covered on this channel. Also seeing Arlene Foster in a tricolour air balloon is something I never though I'd see😅
Well, by insisting on the hardest Brexit possible she did more for Irish unification than anyone else in the last 30 years...
Between her and Boris u may well see a united Ireland a independent Scotland and a Welsh push and a properly skint and suffering England while we rake in the money from the renewable incentives
@@nlpnt The DUP is so incompetent, and they STILL aren't playing fair after the election. So much for Good Friday
I've never heard someone speak with such an elegant Northern Irish accent before! Well done Sam
@@feliciaalexis______5339 bot
Um, nah, it doesn't sound Irish at all, and I'd know, living in Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
"Elegant Northern Irish accent"? Well, that's a tad oxymoronic.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 My default when trying to sound Northern Irish is a hybrid of (southern) Irish and Pirate. Needless to say, that offends people from both sides of the Irish border and pirates as well.
@@Dave_Sisson We in the west country part of Southern England talk like pirates.
Can I just put the addendum that this scandal collapsed the government for almost exactly THREE YEARS STRAIGHT, and that Arlene Foster somehow didn’t lose her job over this and only lost it in mid-2021 (thanks to an entirely more conventional leadership coup)
And I thought America was bad
Not to mention that MPs and MLA's still got paid during those three years.
But hey, at least our health service, education and public infrastructure are all okay right? Right 😅?
Me: sees my homeland is on HAI
Also me 20 seconds later: sees my homeland is now united against HAI and his crimes against accents
Listen up. You need to stop wasting biomass just for money you clearly are a hippocrote helping the enviorment just to be wasteful and hurt the enviorment more😡
@@insectbite1714 cope
@@insectbite1714 you are annoying as your name
@@tigerfun8629 I am saying what this TH-cam video said
@@bobcat_named_bob I am saying what this TH-cam video said
Sam: expecting comments about intentional DBZ mistakes.
Also Sam: depicting Arlene Foster riding an Irish-coloured hot air balloon.
Nice colour.
**Fictionalization*
Also Sam: make everyone confused.
Yes, my favourite colour is also 'Irish'
Sam had better hope that the DUP never finds out.
Most shocking part of the video was seeing Arlene in a balloon with a tricolour pattern on it
Ye its really jarring
Was HAI just getting in one last dig there, I wonder...
The most shocking thing for me is that there were consequences for the people that fucked everything up.
As an Irish person, watching this is surreal for many reasons. HAI is doing a video about Ireland? Does Sam know what a Northern accent even sounds like? But then like two minutes later he said "Craic" which I've never heard in an American accent, and when coupled with it being on this channel all in such a short period full of reeling (and a lot of weed tbh) - this has become an experience.
He also has a video on Ireland from 18 April 2019, from that one time they made drugs legal for 24 hours by accident
Sam Denby is from Washington D.C., but he went to college in Edinburgh Scotland.
Yes I understand Ireland and Scotland are separate places, but he may have met some real Irish while at school.
Best wishes from Indiana.
He does a lot of videos about the UK.
Well maybe you want to watch this American say What's the Craic: th-cam.com/video/KIYbwX57x6E/w-d-xo.html
It’s cringe af to me
Arlene Foster in a tri-colour balloon. You’re alright after all Sam
I bater enjineer than you...
Does it make up for the game show he made you do?
Ha "Brian", show yourself
.....
Their first mistake was not making you a consultant.
The footage of cliffs and sea labeled in narration "Northern Ireland" just before the London houses of Parliament are of Mizen Head, the furthest place in Ireland from Northern Ireland.
I expected nothing less.
Well technically the furthest south of the Republic, there may be a point further west into Kerry further from the north.
@@NirateGoel Malin Head to Mizen Head is widely regarded as the longest point to point in Ireland.
@@hunterBoaz6 and Malin head is not in Northern Ireland
@@lizardlegend42 an Malin head is also in the republic.
We love the ol’ cash for ash debacle.
@fax That sounds worse than Sam's Irish accent.
That's also what it's called when Sean Connery hires a sex worker.
The funniest part was that a lot of users didn't even burn the pellets they just stored them in warehouses and got paid more for them than they cost to buy.
I mean, at least they didn't burn them for nothing
At least better than emitting CO2 without needing the heat.
I did wonder what is there to stop you buying a bag of wood pellets and just keep on selling it in your family, in a big circle?
As a Northern Irish person, that Northern Irish Accent made my ears spontaneously catch flame. 10/10
I worked on the wood pellet boilers over here, it was crazy in its height, there was a worker in a car dealership sacked after turning the boiler off in the summer. Loads of buildings with the heat on and doors open to run in the summer
Ah, RHI. The source of endless entertainment for NI twitter for years. Imagine thinking farmers wouldn't find out about this money making scheme 😂
Lived here my whole life and never even heard of it ahah
@@Yamezzzz dude! It closed Stormont for 3 years and dominated headlines almost as much as Brexit, how in earth didn't you hear about it?
@@lizardlegend42 That's not what closed Stormont, that dominated the headlines, but not the RHI
That's the thing. They didn't think farmers wouldn't find out. They just didn't think enough about the whole thing.
@@Yamezzzz Nah mate, RHI is famously the straw that broke the camel's back in power sharing. It might not have caused the years of squabbling that followed but it was the kick that let it get back to that point.
I feel like the weirdest part in all this is incentivising burning wood pellets in the first place. While it is renewable and (over decades) neutral carbon-wise, it's also absolutely terrible in terms of air quality. It also isn't sustainable if vast amounts of people start using it because trees take up a lot of space and grow slowly. In terms of encouraging long term infrastructure development, it's simply a terrible direction to push people in compared to, say, electric.
While this is true, I don't know how good an idea electric heating is in Northern Ireland from an ecological point of view. It's not prone for either hydro power or solar. Maybe wind, most of it offshore.
Wood pellets are underrated imo. Provided that are sustainably sourced, they are effective and carbon neutral. Air quality can be an issue but particulate matter from wood pellets is negligible when they are used correctly.
Dude, I apologize but you are incorrect. Proper wood burning has virtually no effect on air quality as the only thing released is a tiny amount of carbon dioxide and water vapor. Please note I'm talking about properly calculated, stoichiometric burning (which reaches up to 98.8% efficiency) not an open fireplace.
cant beat wood heating. felling trees and cutting up firewood and bringint inside the house and starting the fire every day
@@dillonvandergriff4124 Interesting, that goes against what I'd read about particulate matter. Do you have a source for that? Do wood pellet boilers typically use "stoiciometric burning"?
"What does the scouter say about his power level?"
"It's... AN OUTRAGE FOR THE TAXPAYER!"
"WHAT?! An outrage for the taxpayer? There's no way that can be right!"
as someone who lives in northern ireland i can confirm that accent is accurate
I thought he legit brought in a voice actor from a Ballymena estate it was so accurate.
That Arlene Foster animation was certainly something!!!
I'll not tell her about the colours on the balloon if you don't.
@@sharonsloan That was my favourite part of the video! I love it when two or three seemingly tiny details get overlooked, and result in something like that!
BTW, did people love her until they learnt just how incompetent she was?
@@StrangerHappened Arlene Foster has never inspired love in anyone.
HAI has really upped the stock image game.
I just know Real Engineering would be quaking in his boots when hears that northern irish accent.
Real Engineering is from south
@@Choon-
Being in the south doesn’t mean you don’t know what the northern Irish accent sounds like.
@@matmat__ does preclude you from understanding them tho 😉
Gave me stomach ulsters
@@user-lv8dn8gw9z LOL no it doesn't! Quite a few counties in the Republic of Ireland literally have a very similar accent to the standard Northern Irish ones, and a lot more live near the border and have family in the North!
Not sure if Arlene Foster in a hot air balloon decorated with the flag of the *REPUBLIC OF IRELAND* was an oversight or trolling, but it will certainly draw some reaction on here.
Trolling. That's another country Sam can't visit.
You know what would've been a great joke??? Showing Iron Man to be 39% of the Avengers and Hawkeye to be 0.4% 🤣🤣🤣
For Hawkeyes sake, I hope he never reads this comment, that's way to brutal.
Slow Mo MMA
He might go back to being Ronin.
Just wait until November 24th and we will see
When I saw the title, I was positive this was going to be on the Kyoto Protocol.
It was the same issue just on a much larger scale
I thought it could be like the Spanish case where farmers started switching to "sun farming" and producing energy instead of food (aka corn industry in the US)
I love the matter-of-fact way in which you describe an incredible series of increased bureaucratic bungling, all the way up to a government collapsing because of it. Your narrative style is so fun to listen to.
Burning wood pellets is such a renewable solution! The height of scientific innovation! (perhaps subsidizing downhole heat exchangers and green or efficiently produced electricity would have been better).
yes, this point seems to have been lost in the video... biofuels are really not clean energy, even if they're technically "renewable". maybe more renewable than coal, gas or oil, but still essentially dirty carbon fuel that you burn for heat. subsidising this was a bad idea to even begin with...
Reminds me of the time when the British tried to pay people to kill cobras (to control the large population of cobras) in India... Yeah, they just started breeding them!
I think it is actually closer to the USA's subsidies on corn.
Neat video but it's important to note that wood pellets should *not* be considered a renewable or sustainable fuel source given current logging practices and lack of accountability in the lumber industry. Also the fact that it's still, yknow, *burning* shit, which does inevitably release carbon.
The cobra effect is too complicated for government bureaucrats to understand
i was just about to comment that this sounds exactly like the Indian Cobra Bounty Story
I was born and live in Belfast, never knew about this. I missed my chance to get free money :(
Eh???? That's genuinely impressive you didn't hear about it. I was getting sick of it on the news every bloody day a while back
Same
Don't worry there is plenty of more opportunity to rip off the taxpayer if you go into politics.
It would have depended where in Belfast you come from, only certain types of people were supposed to get the money……
I look forward to the corrections episode where the balloon should have been red, white, and blue instead of orange, white, and green. As her party uses those colours and are aligned with Britain.
Also "act the maggot" is not a saying I've ever heard used in Northern Ireland. I've heard it used in Ireland but rarely outside of the southwest of the country.
Ya our Dublin teachers said it a lot, haven't heard it used outside the Pale though.
I'm from the North West, and I heard it plenty growing up, including from people from Fermanagh.
I think acting the maggot is island wide.
Born and raised in Ireland. Never heard it once until I moved to Northern Ireland.
There was a teacher in my primary school in Belfast who loved that expression.
That "Northern Irish accent" should be a crime against humanity. WTF was that 😂😭😭
Apparently this guy never heard of the Geneva convention.
Everyone: "It's over 9000!!"
Japanese Viewers: "actually it's over 8000."
_Source: season 1 Episode 28, "Goku's Arrival" __19:56__. Japanese version only._
How dare you shatter my entire belief system of 15 years!
Mind blown 🤯
Beat me to it ;)
It's also 8000 in the English translation of the manga, and in pretty much every translation *but* English of the anime and associated media.
Nine thousand just sounds better in English though, so that error is forgivable.
Here in Brazil they paid people for catching rats, what they didn't expect was that people would farm rats and sell them as if they were catch. (That was back 1800's)
Thats the most obvios thing people would do
What you measure is what you get, so be sure to only measure what you want.
When you measure something else, you create an incentive to create that, and then you get less of what you actually wanted.
If Brazil wanted less rats, then the incentive should be in the form of not finding any rats. It could be a fine for finding them or a bonus if they go long enough without ever seeing one.
Exact same thing happened in British-ruled India in the 1930’s only with snakes. Cue lots of entrepreneurial snake-farming. Guess what happened to all the snakes when the authorities finally caught on to what was happening? Glorious freedom beckons!
I didn’t expect something from my wee country on this channel but you should’ve looked at the colours of Arlene Ballon - she should be in Red, white and blue coloured ballon as she is a unionist.
Humour and HAI have a complicated relationship
I lived in the UK during the time this story was breaking. Friends in Northern Ireland told me about people heating abandon barns. Genius, but terrible 😂 It was nice to hear the details of this issue. Thanks for the good content!
Foster learning logic skills? I don't think he knows exactly what kind of woman he's dealing with. Lol.
In fairness, logic seems to have escaped a great many people in NI...
From what I could gleam this is similar to the recycling industry in that though it may be good for environmental activism, in term of making a profit it is horrendous
This is my favorite channel on TH-cam!
Best explanation of this scandal I’ve yet encountered. Seriously, reading the natural “Heating Subsidies” headline of this scandal does not come close to communicating the severity of the fuck up.
The idea of using biomass as an energy source is just plain stupid. it is kind of like cutting the top off the blanket and sewing it to the bottom of the blanket. Where it get you? Basically nowhere. 'Nowhere does not equal improvement'.
I agree. It is a shame that half as interesting calls biomass "clean energy" even though it is worse than fossil fuels it wastes so many of earth's non-renewable resources!!!!
You guys do realise that wood is carbon neutral when sustainably sourced, right?
I remember reading about this on BBC News. Sam explained this way better!
Government bureaucracy at work. Every single government program is this on a small scale. Accidentally discouraging the use of the thing it's trying to promote, or wastes taxpayer money, or doesn't do anything.
"... a renewable source, especially from wood pellet-fuelled biomass generators" this is already where they made a huge mistake
Next video on Wendover Productions:
The Logistics of Paying People to Use Clean Energy (ngl I kinda want to see that)
Can't wait to see how this channel gets more popular than the original
Love that u r just going with mistakes now
Half as interesting should be banned from youtubw
I think we need to request the Wendover guy to try that accent so we can compare
A Dragn Ball Z fan will actually say, " IT'S OVER 9000!!!"
@Half as Interesting Don't know if you know or don't know, but the hot air baloon in 5:23 is of the colours of the tricolour of Ireland (Republic of) and not of Northern Ireland, which Arlene Foster was First Minister of, which would be white and red.
I worked for a Northern Irish renewable energy company in 2016/17... it was a crazy time!
Gives a new meaning to "keep her lit" ;)
@@WhatALoadOfTosca The irony of the type that would say that were the ones doing it literally!
@@stuartbest95 lol
I love how Sam casually drops British swear words into videos whenever he makes one about Ireland or the UK.
hahahaha this is the best representation of northern ireland ive seen in my life, thank you so much sam from half as interesting!
I love the fact that the story is about a European debacle yet at the four minute 15 mark of the video he’s showing in American application being filled out with month, day, year as well as the state and phone area codes
"Underwent a terrible bout of Forgot to do That". I died 😂
Governments? Being inefficient? Colour me shocked
Over 10,000? It's over 9,000. I don't even like DBZ and I know that. Was this a deliberate error to increase engagement? If so, it worked on me.
it's a joke. this is still half as interesting they live on making bad/terrible jokes
@@sirBrouwer I know it's a joke, but he got the joke wrong unless I'm missing something.
@@phaedrus000 making the joke wrong was the joke in it self. Notice that he often deliberately.
It's like a parent who deliberately messes up a joke or frase to get there children riled up.
It's worse. The original in Japanese is 8000. The original wrong translation stuck around for the meme though
5:45 Do you push the blue button or the red?
How do you unscramble this riddle?
I love that TH-cam auto closed captions puts "daddy" instead of DETI, throughout the whole video, much more entertaining thinking he is calling it daddy.
as a NI resident...
yeah that was funny
Probably bigger mistake is thinking wood pellets are a renewable or clean source of energy.
I like this format compared to previous formats
They could have just fixed this whole thing by subsidizing the perches of more efficient heaters. Since a lot of people generally only care about the upfront cost of a solution, not the running costs.
For home heating, heat pumps generally beats any other solution in the long term. But a heat pump costs anywhere from 50-200% more than a wood/gas fired boiler of similar heat output. Then there is the electric boilers that rely on resistive heating, a laughably inefficient method of heating that some people swear by. Though, a heat pump tends to have a resistive heater as a backup.
Oh fun, I though Belgium was the only crazy country. That said in Belgium the renewable saga is even worse
lmao i've lived 80% my life in NI and 20% in Belgium. I was living in Belgium when NI overtook Belgium's record for the longest time a country doesn't have a government lol
@@Yamezzzz so ur saying is all it takes is an energy crisis for our current US administration to shut down indefinitely? Looks like we're not far behind.
Well no one can beat Belgium. But we will watch our Southern neighbour fascinated.
@@Yamezzzz with the caveat that the reason it could work so long is the opposite.
for Belgium the lower level government's still functioned. Where for NI as part of the UK it still had the UK level that still functioned.
here in the Netherlands we are trying to beat both records with the problem that the country just does not function with out a government.
@@OveranalyzingEverything Nah not at all, that's only what Sam said because this is a very poorly researched video and that's not what happened. So don't worry mate. What happened over here pretty much couldn't happen in any other country apart from maybe a country like Israel or Georgia way in the future.
Ah yes Northern Ireland
*The North of Ireland / Northern Ireland / Ireland / United Kingdom
BTW this wasnt mentioned in the video but most of the people that had been making use of this subsidy under the radar where senior figures of the Arlene Fosters party the DUP.
You made a video about my country. Thank you. We are never noticed
NI is quite often noticed. True the reason is less rosy. But they are quite often mentioned on at least Dutch news as a head liner news item.
I will never get over the fact that Brits see wood pellets as a renewable resource.
Well, I suppose they are if you don't mind waiting 20 years for the trees to grow back...
@@fartingfury If you're willing to wait long enough then petroleum could be considered renewable... may be here for a while
@@ELUnderwood Touché 😀
The rule of unintended consequences is always there whenever governments try to "help"
Very much this
Agreed
Agreed
Agreed.
The ads transition is so smooth
"Let me copy your homework"
"Okay, but change some stuff so it's not identical"
Wtf !?!! I haven't seen a single second of this yet but freaked tf out that he made a video about Northern Ireland, not just in the thumbnail but my city in the title. :O
I'm scared to watch though because there's probably a load of ignorant and wrong shit, which always happens when foreigners talk about the most overlooked and unknown part of all the UK.
Northern Ireland is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Every corner is so different. I love this place.
I can't say for other countries but NI is not really overlooked at all. it's quite often a head line here in the news.
the most overlooked place with in the UK has to be Pitcairn. Even by the UK it's often forgotten that it is there.
@@Barabyk People here never appreciate it until they leave, and the rest of the country (and world) never appreciates it because nobody wants to come here lol
Despite amazing sites in every corner, the hills and stairway to heaven in Fermanagh, the whole of the north coast, Giant's Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede, Dunluce Castle, Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the UK, the Mournes, and the fact that staying in Belfast isn't as shit or dangerous as people think it would be.
@@sirBrouwer Pitcairn isn't in the UK dude...
But if it was it'd probably be the least overlooked per capita since it's literally just 40 people. My village has 2000 people but I bet nobody has heard of it.
@@Yamezzzz well most people even with in the same nation won't know most villages with in. but people outside of the UK are pretty much aware of the area that is NI. and more then enough will know that Belfast does exist. they might not know much about it besides that it is somewhere with in the UK.
I will assume that when I talk about the city Goes it will not say much to people outside the Netherlands. they might have heard of Zeeland in general.
I never knew Northern Irish people had Scottish accents
While that certainly wasn't a Scottish or Northern Irish accent by any stretch of the imagination lol, yeah NI accents borrow heavily from Scottish ones. Mostly due to the Ulster plantations in the 1600s and the large influx of Scottish planters into the region. The predominant dialect if the region is referred to as "Ulster Scots", as in a subsect of the Scots dialect from Ulster.
@@lizardlegend42 I'm from NI mate. It was sarcasm
@@mjennings061 sorry, hard to tell sometimes 😅
Absolutely love your voice, Sam
I was smoking a bowl ov chronic when you said the Babylonian math joke 😂
Blew the contents all over!
That was damn funny.
An obscure Babylonian concept known as 'math' LOL
politicians 'must' not know logic, it is most probably in the small prints of the definition of politician... :(
Never been this early for a Half as Interesting video before!
0:13 this was surprising 😆
Wonder how many tries he had to go through to get that Irish accent down so great? And to be able to do it without laughing... priceless...
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Pls the hot air balloon is the type of comedy I expect from you 🤣
Mad to see a yt channel i am subscribed to actually even mention Northern Ireland
Another reason not to go to Northern Ireland
there are SO MANY
There are none
This was meant to be tongue in cheek ._.
@@pingu255 this video alone is a good reason not to go that and the fact that they use confusing metric
Yup, affordable costs of living, no shortages, being in the UK and Common Market (for now at least)? Some of the most scenic places are literally 15-20 minutes away from Belfast? Dublin is just 2 hours by car at easy pace? Clean air, three airports (not counting Enniskillen and Ards) and some of the most friendly people.
THIS is what why the brits wouldnt let us run our own counry :(
The brits did the same thing with cobra population control.
Experts, bureaucrats, and politicians can't beat the free market at doing what's really good, not just what's good for themselves.
The “It’s over 10000” joke killed me.
I can tell that someone is holding Sam at gunpoint when he did that fake British Accent
This channel's video source has become literally 99% B-Roll footage. They're not even trying
tbf I think it’s always been that. they’ve never tried very hard with this channel
Hey mate love your vids
3:48 did... did he say 10?! I literally had to pause the video, get up and grab a glass of water in order to calm down after that.
Farming outrage for engagement
Northern Ireland is where English people go to see where their tax's are spent
Three things contributed to this debacle-
1. It was a Government idea.
2. Consultants were brought in by the Government.
3. It was Northern Ireland.
It so garring to see a channel as big as HAI cover this wee topic
5:32 tfw youre king is the only piece that has been captured but you continue playing chess anyway