On Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:56:30 -0700 (PDT) someone who may be jives11 wrote this:-
Unless you live in a Passivhaus or Earthship I doubt it, unless you have a very high hot water demand for some reason like nursing someone.
If you want to reduce these footprints then the first thing to do is the thing which is often overlooked, make sure the insulation is as good as practical. Only after doing that should you consider "producing" energy.
has the bits to add solar heating to an existing hot water cylinder. The cylinder is heated via a heater which replaces the immersion heater. Including delivery and VAT £955.
If you want more capacity replace the existing cylinder with a solar one. Don't be tempted by the idea of adding a pre-heating cylinder. Even if there is enough space alongside the existing cylinder it is still a 1970s bodge.
Which proves bugger all. They are comparing figures that they are guessing at.
Do you not realise that climate change is now an industry? Have a look in the jobs section of the Guardian, every local & county authority & government department has an environmental team, FFS Hull even has an "environment crime unit". If they didn't sex up the alledged problem they would all lose their cushy jobs & protected pensions.
Thus spake Mary Fisher ( snipped-for-privacy@zetnet.co.uk) unto the assembled multitudes:
My neighbour across the road had two solar water heating panels installed last Feb, and he too reports a massive decrease in his gas bill. The funny thing was that British Gas called him to query why his gas bill was suddenly so low... and they had installed the panels in the first place!
On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:27:00 GMT someone who may be "The Medway Handyman" wrote this:-
Ah, proof by assertion.
There is no guessing about ice cores. When one drills down into the ice the cores which come back are a scientific record of the atmosphere going back in time
Yawn.
I note that you did not answer the question I posed.
On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:26:18 GMT someone who may be EricP wrote this:-
So, when you look at the graph at you think that the jury is still out?
Perhaps you will answer the question I posed. If you think you know more about the weather than the Meteorological Office then perhaps you could explain the basis for your knowing more than them.
A while ago it was The Hole In The Ozone Layer that was going to cause chaos panic & disorder. The planet was doomed. Last I heard it was closing, then opening, then closing, then healed - all based on ecobollox scientific evidence. Millions were spent worrying about that, but now its global warming.
Have you not read the articles contesting the methods used to obtain the figures? Of course not, it would weaken your argument.
Wearing wholewheat dungarees doesn't make greenwash true. Its a gigantic myth.
Everything on that page is correct, except for the last two sentences, for which there is a lack of any evidence (on that page or elsewhere). Actually, that page admits something which most of the CO2-is-going- to-kill-us lobby try to dismiss -- the fact that we know well that CO2 levels change as a result of global temperature changes. Evidence for the reverse effect has not been found, in spite of being hypothesised and searched for for well over 100 years now. Actually, the hypothesis has been steadily watered down over the 100+ years as scientific observations have steadily shown it to be increasingly untrue. We are now up to the point where we can prove something of the order of 70-80% of the greenhouse effect is caused by water vapour, methane, and ozone, (water vapour being by far the largest) and we still hypothsise that the remainer is caused by CO2 as we have no other explaination, and this is still plausible. The sticking point is that atmospheric heating has not yet been shown to be in the right places for CO2 alone to be a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect.
That page uses a common technique for misrepresenting science. It starts with a set of quite well proven facts which establishes a sense of credibility with the reader (which works both for readers who do understand the science and those who don't). Having gained the trust of the reader, it then presents as factual something for which it has failed to establish a proof, in the hope that the reader won't notice the leap from credible science into the dark. Sadly, many readers will fall for it. As a qualified physicist, I certainly don't. It may turn out at the end of the day that a proof is established, but to present something as factual when there is no proof is just misleading and dishonest, and there's far too much of that about in the climate change debate.
Bear in mind that in many countries now, you can only get government research funding in this area if you intend to enhance the proof of human-induced global warming and impending catastrophe. It's seen as politically unacceptable to fund research which attempts to disprove this theory, and such groups have found their funding dry up. This of course means that there is little if any genuinely independent research in this area still going on, and supposing for a moment that human-induced global warming and impending doom is a myth, there's little chance of it being debunked in the present political climate.
Let's suppose global warming is reality. It really doesn't matter what the cause of it is. It might be man-made, but there is no prospect whatsoever of stopping that - we can't tell the developing world that we've already had the good times so they can't. There are of course good reasons to be economical with use of fuel which are nothing to do with CO2 emissions, but relate to finite supplies, dependency on unstable political regimes, etc. It might be that global warming is not man-made, in which case nothing we could do in theory (even if never in practice) will make any difference. In either case, our efforts would be much better spent working out how to live with global warming.
Lastly, there's the possibility that global warming itself is a myth. It hasn't happened during the past 7 years (which is a bit of a bummer if you are intent on claiming it's related to CO2 emissions, which have never been higher). However, being a physicist, I should point out that 7-8 years is rather short to establish any meaningful trend, and secondly, our ability to actually measure the earth's temperature over any long historical period accurately enough to spot trends of the order of a degree is so close to zero as to be swamped by error bars.
So to sum up, I'll say it's very hard to get well written unbiased information on climate change. It really is up to you to scrutanise what you find and question its integrity. Unfortunately, many people just don't have the scientific training or background knowledge to do that, and are hence easily mislead.
I'll mention a book which recently grabbed my attention. Economics is something which has normally got me bored before you finish saying the word. However, I found Nigel Lawson's book on climate change from an economist's view of both the science and economic issues really fascinating and riveting. Trouble is, when I put it down after reading the first 3rd of it, so did the rest of my family, and I haven't yet got it back to finish reading it! I don't agree with everything he says, but his views are extremely well put and well worth reading, and I find his experience with the economic dishonesty surrounding climate change matches by own with the scientific dishonesty around the subject.
Oh well, seems like I'm halfway through writing my own book after all that. That's what comes of a rainy summer Sunday (all due to global warming, no doubt).
There has never been such a strong consensus on any single scientific issue in the history of science.
The jury is *not* still out - it delivered its unanimous verdict some years ago, and the latest research shows ever-worsening impacts.
However, an extremely tiny number of naysayers (many of whom are funded by oil companies and the US military-industrial complex) are given disproportionate column inches and airtime by selfish people who will find any excuse not to accept any change in their lifestyles or, in the case of business, their headlong rush to make a fast buck before the seas rise to flood the Maldives, Seychelles, Bangladesh and East Anglia, and the Mediterranean countries all turn to desert.
Of course Nigel Lawson says it isn't so, but what does he know? He knows f*ck all about the climate, just as he knew f*ck all about economics and was recognised as probably the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer of the 20th century, if not ever. He is an expert in nothing except selfish consumption and private profiteering.
On the subject of climate change, for all the sense he makes, you might as well ask his daughter, Nigella. Or Delia Smith, perhaps.
I think climate change denial should be made a capital offence. Lawson to the gallows! (Nigel, that is. I do love Nigella's recipes, not that I can remember any!)
This is fine *except* that almost all boilers won't accept water preheated to any great degree (i.e. more than 25C or so) without damage to the cold water input side. And even then, almost all of them don't modulate well enough to cope with the higher temps you could potentially get from even a UK preheater.
The boiler is still feeding the secondary in the cylinder it always did in exactly the same way. It's just that when it gets topped up as you use hot water the input water is a lot warmer than it used to be!
Now if you had a combi boiler (puts on hard hat) this might be an issue
Have you read Andrew Gabriel's eloquent & rational post?
And Greenwash is unbiased? How do you think these peple get funding for their 'research'? By proposing studies to support the myth, not deny it and risk alienating their peer groups, losing funding & their cushy jobs.
Then of course the marketing men jump on the same bandwagon, all claiming 'green' products in the hope of selling a few more cars/toasters/toilet cleaner/whatever.
Greenwash has generated an entire industry based on bad science being used to change public perceptions.
Then the politicians see it as a vote catcher and the rolling ball gathers more momentum momentum.
You've been reading far too much science fiction. Will the Thames freeze over again like it did in 1607 & 1813? Will we have avalances in Sussex again like 1836? Was the 2007 summer the wettest ever or was that in 1912?
When the weather man can forecast tomorrows weather with accuracy for a whole week, I will take more notice, until then my mind is still open and I would rather take notice of scientists who have decades of experience but no axes to grind with getting funding.
Anyway, what makes you competent to decide you are right? Produce the research you have based your considered opinion on. Until then, respect the rights of others to be totally sceptical. If you can't. kindly piss off.
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