Heated Argument Awaits -

[Evil Sid]

10 hours ago, Observer II said:

CO2 ?    Plant more trees and suck it up !  😉

The latest idea is to chop down trees and let the land return to bog-land as that stores more co2 than the trees do.

[Bill]

I hear what you say Con and agree that a lot of the historical science has some big question marks attached to it. Interestingly (or not) I used to work designing systems for age dating using carbon isotopes and I always found it amazing that having produced highly accurate equipment, the interpretation of the data by the scientists varied wildly. I think though from what we can see, it’s safe to say that there have been significant changes in the past but there’s not hard evidence as to the effects it created at the time, so all that side of things is pure guess work.

As I said before, forget about the statistical stuff and conspiracy theories and focus instead on what we can see happening within our own lifetime. As a gardener, I see several plants that wouldn’t normally ever survive the winter now making it through and more widely we can see changes in agricultural activity indicating a gradual change in our climate. Our wildlife knows nothing about conspiracies and yet we see consistent movement as their habitat changes.

It’s all incredibly slow though and here in our temperate zone the effect is negligible but in areas of the planet where people exist on the margins, it can result in hardships and mass migration. So (and Observer take note) if things don’t change we could ultimately see vast populations seeking to move from the threatened regions, and while this probably wont affect us that much during our lifetimes, it will certainly affect our future generations.

 

Bill 😊

[Davy51]

If these deserts are causing hardship & migration why can't the excess water from climate change's rising sea levels be used to irrigate these wastelands & make them bountiful ? If the will is there it can happen , but these eco warriors never seem to grasp that solution.

[asperity]

Climate change isn't always bad (although the doomsayers would have you believe it's always a disaster). Take the greening of the Sahel as one example. Because of increased rainfall in the area, the Sahel (the southern fringe of the Sahara) has become greener and more crops are being grown there as a result. Is this because of man-made climate change? No, it's a gradual change in global climate due to many natural causes including changes in the Earth's orbit, changes in the energy emitted by the Sun, changes in ocean currents etc etc. In the UK the climate has been getting warmer since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid 19th century (not many SUVs cluttering the roads back then!) This explains why Bill's back garden is getting tropical 😉

[Observer II]

Bill, already noted -  all the factors that make living in certain regions untenable are in play, and drove our earliest ancestors to colonise every corner of the planet; the problem is population levels are now a million times higher, so such movements will inevitably bring chaos and war. It's a s**t sandwich and all future generations are going to have to take a bite.   💀

[Bill]

Thanks for the first laugh of the day Obs. I had one of them sandwiches yesterday 😊

Yep it’s a big long term problem that need sorting but ideally without going stupid. But as I said earlier there are so many benefits from the actions being taken that benefit us all. I doubt the biggest sceptic on the planet could deny that the air we breath is cleaner now than it’s ever been and that people are living longer as a result. So much of the drive to reduce CO2 levels results in a benefit to our society so even if it doesn’t stop any warming, it still gets my vote.

There’s a gillion good ideas that could help and as Davy rightly says, we just need to be willing to make some small personal sacrifices in order to address the bigger issues. However, it was a bit sad to see from that report the other day that 25% of the UK population was so anti everything to do with global warming that they would not support anything to do with it. Furthermore, 70% thought it wouldn’t have any effect on them and would welcome it being a tad warmer.  

So if these numbers are to believed then it looks like there’s little chance that the public will be prepared to do anything to bring about significant changes unless of course and we all had a Eureka moment and became eco-warriors.  

 

Bill 😊

[asperity]

The air we breathe is cleaner than it's ever been Bill? Really? Cleaner than it was 200 years ago perhaps but what about 500 years ago, 1000 years ago? There's this idea people seem to have that we humans suddenly appeared on earth within the lifetimes of their great grandparents rather than a couple of hundred thousand years ago.

[asperity]

Nice bit of Global Warming in Europe today:

[Observer II]

Well the spoilt middle class kids were out in London, breaking the windows of a Bank in the name of "Extinction Rebellion"; so no doubt producing replacement glass should add to our CO2 levels;  these clueless kids are going to have a rough time taking a bite of that sandwich.   Notice that the youngsters aren't signed up to the eco-dream either, they all want a car when they reach 17.      

[Davy51]

I suppose we really are in a catch 22 situation. We can all be persuaded for a moment to tip our hats to reversing so called human induced climate change but does anybody really intend to give up their mod cons & comparatively luxurious lifestyles brought about by modern living ? Few & far between methinks.

I see there was a tree hugger on the news today objecting to HS2 & occupying the trees of an ancient woodland. Needless to say , police & paramedics who could have been doing something useful had to be in attendance.

[Bill]

Blimey Asp, you are an argumentative sod. 😊 What the air quality was like a thousand years ago is completely unknow and totally academic. What I’m talking about and I expect you know is the changes we’ve all witnessed in the course of our own lifetimes.

Anyway, Davy you’re dead right, people wont give up things unless there’s a strong incentive for them to change such as increasing the price. We’ve known about how polluting diesel cars are and yet the son in law has just bought a new second hand one because it was going cheap. Some say it’s a selfish, but I say it’s just natural for people to act in this way and appealing to their better judgment tends to get you nowhere.

I don’t know what the answer is, because even if we manage to hit the zero emission target, it’d have almost no effect just as long as the heavy polluters of the world carry on doing what they do.

 

Bill 😊

[asperity]

Someone has to keep you on your toes Bill 😉🤣🤣

[Bill]

I'd have given up drinking long ago Asp if it wasn't for you.

 

Bill

[asperity]

Cheers 🍺

[Bill]

I’ve just spent the morning reading up about heat pumps and come to the conclusion that neither this nor straight forward insulation will be the best route to follow. Even the cheapest and least efficient heat pumps seem to be about two or three times more expensive than a gas combi boiler and reading several user reports the savings are minimal.

So many of the claims about huge heat pump savings are made in comparison with inefficient or expensive forms of heating such as oil and electricity but when compared to gas it’s not so attractive. Changing from the gas systems that most of us have makes the payback time is so long that only an eco-warrior would be stupid enough to consider it so it’s just never going to happen.

So it's just gas or electric and we could just say bugger it and just go for better insulated homes. This’d be cheaper and paybacks would be quicker irrespective of the fuel used and we’d have had to do this anyway if we went down the heat pump route. The down side of this though is that the vast majority of us would still continue burning gas because it’s the cheaper option but also the thing we're trying to get rid of.

The only way I can see this being able to work and at the same time reduce emissions is to make electrical heating cheaper to use than gas. Now there’s a challenge.

 

Bill 😊

[Confused52]

5 hours ago, Bill said:

I’ve just spent the morning reading up about heat pumps and come to the conclusion that neither this nor straight forward insulation will be the best route to follow. Even the cheapest and least efficient heat pumps seem to be about two or three times more expensive than a gas combi boiler and reading several user reports the savings are minimal.

So many of the claims about huge heat pump savings are made in comparison with inefficient or expensive forms of heating such as oil and electricity but when compared to gas it’s not so attractive. Changing from the gas systems that most of us have makes the payback time is so long that only an eco-warrior would be stupid enough to consider it so it’s just never going to happen.

So it's just gas or electric and we could just say bugger it and just go for better insulated homes. This’d be cheaper and paybacks would be quicker irrespective of the fuel used and we’d have had to do this anyway if we went down the heat pump route. The down side of this though is that the vast majority of us would still continue burning gas because it’s the cheaper option but also the thing we're trying to get rid of.

The only way I can see this being able to work and at the same time reduce emissions is to make electrical heating cheaper to use than gas. Now there’s a challenge.

 

Bill 😊

The elephant in the room remains that there is insufficient reliable electricity generation for the transfer of additional demand to electricity from oil and gas. Wind power is not reliable, ask Stallard!

[asperity]

The answer would appear to be gas fired power stations using hydrogen, produced by electrolysis - the electricity presumably supplied by the gas fired power stations. Perpetual energy at last!!

[Bill]

Yep certainly is a tricky one while people want the cheap heating and don’t see a reason to change. We managed to move from dirty coal to cleaner gas but that probably had more to do with convenience than cost saving but there’s nothing quite like that between gas and electric.

So here’s my best theory. Rather than insulation grants that people ignore because they can live without the hassle, apply the grant to a renewing a worn-out gas boiler with a new electric combi boiler. People would go for it if it saved them dipping into their pockets for a new gas boiler and the short-term saving would go some way to offset the long-term costs.

Nobodies been forced to do anything they didn’t want to and the government get their CO2 reduction but here’s the best bit. To minimise the increased cost of heating, there’s now a real incentive to insulate the house better to bring it into line with a gas system. Again, nobodies forced to do this but now it makes sense to the user where before they weren’t bothered.

Overall, nobody has paid any more money as both methods cost exactly the same. Had the grant been used just for insulation though, many wouldn’t bother and just keep using gas.

Now all that’s needed is to work out where to get the extra electricity from. Maybe an auxiliary diesel generator in the back garden. 😊

 

Bill 😊

[Confused52]

21 minutes ago, Bill said:

 

Now all that’s needed is to work out where to get the extra electricity from. Maybe an auxiliary diesel generator in the back garden. 😊

 

Bill 😊

Seems Asp has the answer, just another perpetual motion machine because we don't need the second law of thermodynamics as it just gets in the way!

[Observer II]

Hydro - sorted.    

[asperity]

11 hours ago, Bill said:

Now all that’s needed is to work out where to get the extra electricity from. Maybe an auxiliary diesel generator in the back garden. 😊

 

Bill 😊

They're miles ahead of you Bill:

http://www.powerhire.uk.com/generator-power-package-commissions-national-grid-stor-sites/

When the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining just switch on a few hundred diesel powered generators (they are painted green so that's okay).

[Bill]

Well, there are other ways of looking at things. For example, if people changed to electric heating, that would give us an excess of gas which could be used to generate the extra electricity needed. Ok it’s still burning gas but burning it at source allows the carbon to be captured which we can’t do on individual gas boilers. It’s not a perfect solution, but it shouldn’t use any more gas than now, it meets all the environmental goals and has minimal impact the individual so what’s not to like?

Even if we could do this though, we’d probably still fall short when demand is high, but fortunately electricity can be stored in a number of ways and if we could create more storage, we could lessen the chance of failure. Pumped hydro has shown itself to be effective but expensive with limited locations where it can be done. A lower tech solution using multiple wagons full of rocks towed up an incline then released to generate energy seems to have merits and here in the UK we have plenty of good sloping hills.

If we were starting from scratch, it’d probably be a lot easier, but we have to work with what we’ve got and while the engines still running so to speak.

 

Bill 😊

[Observer II]

We have an abundance of energy potential via hydro-electric schemes; whether by damming rivers or estuaries driving turbines, or constructing wave farms.  A bonus would be the possibilty of controlling flooding in various parts of the UK.    

[asperity]

The thing is Obs all those ideas have been looked at and trialled and have all come up wanting.

[Bill]

The problem with Hydro Obs is that they’re costly and take a long time to build and even longer to get through all the approvals, and in any case, most of the optimum places to build them have already been used. Ones like Woolston weir can generate a little but in reality, they’re not much more than token efforts, a bit like the council’s silly little windmill.   

What I don’t understand is if the government want us all to look at stuff like heat pumps because of their efficiency, then why doesn’t it create a nationalised heat pump production capability here in the UK rather than us importing expensive stuff from the far east. Making them here and at cost might go against government thinking but it’d be logical and good for the whole country. I suppose the same could be argued for solar panels, they’re all made overseas and are too expensive despite the fact that they’re just made from a bit of sand.

 

Bill 😊