Carbon Bollocks and NPower

[ARWadsworth]

that saved the world. And for the first time ever I agree with the Green Party.

Adam

[The Natural Philosopher]

Much more telling is Lithuania being forced to TOTALLY CLOSE a nuclear plant 'because its the same type as chernobyl' before being allowed to join the EU, despite the fact that it could easily have been made safe enough to run till the new one was built.

Thus adding instantly billions of tons of CO2 to the EU totals.

[Tim Streater]

Why? This was government and regulation bollocks. Npower just did what saved them several million quid. It's the same sort of official bollocks that's forcing us to have bio-fuel, even though that will be grown at the expense of food and in some cases of the rain-forest.

[Tim Streater]

Could you elaborate on the measures you're thinking of? I mean, I could imagine that a containment building could have been added but I'm not sure if that's what you're referring to.

Wikipedia has an interesting article on the Chernobyl incident and the design flaws in the reactor type (RBMK-1000) in use there.

[John Rumm]

They will be forced to buy their power from outside the EU, so it won't effect the totals (for the EU). So that is ok then....

[Tim W]

Tim Streater wibbled on Saturday 02 January 2010 18:07

Why don't we make home grown bio diesel? The UK is pretty good at hosting the sort of plants that produce suitable oils. Or are we really using all our arable land for food production/grazing?

[Bruce]

That's like Britain's manufacturers taking production facilities from the UK and making their goods in the far east instead. The result is something like a 20% drop in CO2 emissions, and NuLabour are patting themselves on the back for this "achievement".

But the real cost of exporting manufacturing production is that the goods are made in factories that are powered by China's grossly polluting coal fired power stations and shipped to the UK with ships that belch CO2 along with some really toxic nasties. Apparently, the overall change in Britain's CO2 emissions if this Chinese malarkey is taken into account is an *increase* of 28%.

But that's OK, because emissions from Chinese factories and the ships do not contribute to the UK's Kyoto target.

[Bruce]

No, we're using it to build houses and retail parks on.

We import over 70% of our food.

[Tim Streater]

Probably because there wouldn't be enough land, even if we grew nothing else, to cater for all our fuel use. I don't have any good figures to back that up, however.

[Dave Liquorice]

be unused."

Surprised it's that low. I might be using one or two of the free CFLs that I've been sent over the years. The rest are sat in the cupboard unused, they probably will be used at some point. Mind you the ones I have weren'y "unsolicited" I had to ask for them so they won't count in these figures...

[Andrew Gabriel]

The government stopped the practice after their research showed most of the lamps mailed out would never be used, but eventually just thrown out. The power ratings that were mailed out (I got 8W and 11W) were too dim to be used as replacements in most cases, being equivalent to only 30W or 40W bulbs. For many people, this would have been their first time using these lamps, and the experience will have been a very poor first impression. If they had mailed out some 20-25W ones, these could have been genuinely useful, and actually converted more people to use CFLs, but the whole thing back-fired in a thoroughly predictable way.

I notice Wickes have some on offer at 3 for 49p, again sponsored by one of the energy suppliers (I forget which).

[The Natural Philosopher]

it takes nearly as much diesel to make the fertilizer, harvest the oil seed and plant it, and process it, and transport it to the garage..as you get at the end of it..

And you would need about 50 times the area currently under agriculture to get near UK demand.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I do. I calculated something like 40 acres would grow enough for me for a year.

That's just driving the car 7000 miles a year. Never mind the tesco lorries and staying warm.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I only go by the engineers on the spot:

[andrew]

No it doesn't, in fact osr isn't too bad to get a liquid fuel, it beats having 1/5 of the arable area under cultivation for fodder for horses.

In terms of just thermal efficiency wood harvesting is pretty good but there's a lot more utility in a litre of diesel than 6kg of freshly harvested wood.

Probably, there's about 18 million ha of farm land and about 25% of this is arable we might be just about self sufficient for food if we maximise crops for direct human consumption AND continue to use fossil fuels and fossil derived fertiliser.

Where's a lamb when you need one?

AJH

[terry]

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Watching a BBC programme recently one statement, about our sun, was along the lines of "More energy in one second etc. than ever MADE BY MANKIND"!

It suddenly struck me that we (mankind) have never MADE anything.

What we humans have done and still do is to change/alter things to our use.

No matter whether it is some fairly recently (10 to 100 years) grown wood turned into charcoal or furniture or 10 million year old fossils which became oil, coal or gas. Or plastic or .............. parts for motor cars etc.

Just about anything we humans do to 'produce' energy is to change something originally manufactured from sunlight!

Then we ingeniously alter waht we have dug up, by melting, refining, separating stuff out of the ground often using prodigious amounts of energy to do so.

Even when it comes to solar, wind, or energy from flowing water from rain or snow from high ground, the sun was involved. And if it were not for the sun all the water on our planet would be frozen solid so there would presumably be no tidal action to harness either.

It's very humbling thought. Wonder what my descendants will be left with a few generations hence; a polluted overpopulated planet? No 1000 year old trees, oceans higher than now thus decreased land masses, significant weather changes (regardless of who or what is responsible).

Ah well maybe some of them will be growing edible bamboo or orchids in Antarctica? And finally using power efficiently and effectively from the sun/and or nuclear?

Hopefully all the best for 2010 and ensuing centuries!

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:

Whoops. They seem to have vapourised.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Tim W saying something like:

If all the arable land in the UK was turned over to producing rape for biodiesel, it would supply about 10% of the UK's needs.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes we have. We have made a lot of SHIT!!

[Tim Lamb]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

I suppose re-using cooking oils is deserving of a better press as most of the energy investment has already been made.

Also oil seed rape is normally only grown once in a 5 course crop rotation: usually as a precursor to Wheat. Permanent cropping would require major developments in disease and pest control.

I understand the Americans are diverting some of their Maize to ethanol production, much to the consternation of the Mexican food industry:-)

regards