Renewable Energy
Turbo Mini Forums

aarrgghh were all dooomed!
Cant we put a big lid on a volcano and use the heat off that to make some electricity. Sure some nutter can do it.

Im with stevie on the make the most and enjoy it approach.

Don't get me wrong, i'm all for saving energy where it is simple and practical. The problem is that all these so called carbon reducing schemes are infact just producing more CO2 anyway. Take for example the tax on older cars that have a higher CO2 emissions. Fact is that you could run that 'damaging' car for another ten years and it would still not produce anywhere near as much CO2 as it does to recycle and build a new car that replaces it. Its just the scheming bastards that would like you to think its better so feel obliged to buy a new car, and pay the tax that goes with it

we've had this discussion before

Doesn't really matter what we use, the earth is doing much worse on it's own:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40316649/ns/us...n/#.TuQP_d2YNM4

The exact same generators used at Heysham had a spectacular failure early in their design life at Drax power station in the 1970s. The fire was a fair bit worse than that wind turbine.

How many MW hours have been lost in the last decade due to faults with AGRs that required numerous reactors to be shut down for checks?

Windscale? That was a big learning curve.

I have nothing against nuclear, but to say there have never been failures on the important stuff in the nuclear industry is stretching it a little.

I did type out a detailed answer to everything above, but decided it was too long and no-one would read it.

So for anyone interested, try this instead.

http://www.struanstevenson.com/media/speec...pe_of_scotland/

Obviously it's only one side of the arguement but, to the best of my knowledge, the facts/figures are all correct.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

9.85 @ 145mph
202mph standing mile
speed didn't kill me, but taxation probably will

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

I for one cannot understand why businesses are allowed to flood light their buildings all through the night. If everyone in the UK turned off all the totally un necessary lighting during the small hours of the morning, the savings would be massive. I don't know what its like anywhere else in the UK, but up this way the motorway lighting is switched off after midnight.

Now the question you have to ask is whether people switched things off during the night, thinking that they were doing their bit for the envirnoment, or, whether they just cannot afford it. I wouldn't be surprised that it was the latter most of the time. Basically those who can afford to pay the fuel bill, will use it as they please. That has to stop. Its not complicated, its not difficult, and how many people would really notice that the lights were switched off during the midnight hours?

I doubt it would make much difference at night.

Power stations cannot simply just shut down and restart in the morning. So there needs to be a drain all the time.

I'm sure some could be saved, but probably not huge amounts.

And plenty of people are out and about during the night. Whether legitimate workers or criminals.

Hard to say whether darkness would help criminals, or it's easier for them as they can see what they are stealing easier

9.85 @ 145mph
202mph standing mile
speed didn't kill me, but taxation probably will

About the constant drain, it is so right that Switzerland buys french electricity when it is cheap (being nuclear power, you don't turn it off easily), uses it to power water pump, fill up their dam and when frenchs requires electricity, sells it back (water goes down the pump wich is nothing but a generator) to France with a fair profit.

Now, what could be a global CO2 saving is turned into profit because that is the way society works : profit.

In my book, limiting profits (not deleting) in favor of CO2 gains and global peace is the way to go.
I for one doesn't want revolution but it is bloody time for evolution !

Rusty by nature

I want cheaper petrol !

9.85 @ 145mph
202mph standing mile
speed didn't kill me, but taxation probably will

Good in theory, my bloody car would probably overheat there lol

9.85 @ 145mph
202mph standing mile
speed didn't kill me, but taxation probably will

Everything overheats there. Drag racing might strictly be a nightime event.

Air conditioning is probibly their largest energy consumer. sort of ever increasing circles. Its hot 'because' of 'global warming', so burn more oil to produce more electric to drive the air conditioning therby contributing to global warming meaning it gets hotter, more air conditioning, more electric, more global warming...........

Were all doooooooommmeeeeddddd

Sod it im gonna go make a mountain hide out and live in there before we either freeze or boil.

9.85 @ 145mph
202mph standing mile
speed didn't kill me, but taxation probably will

Stevie, i'm probibly the biggest skeptic there is, but what does concern me is the damage to the ozone layer. That's still getting bigger, and I'm fair skinned!

Put simply, global warming is a current day fact.

Sure, there have been ice ages in the past, but what is hapening now is current.

Massive use of fossil fuels means massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

You won't find too many of our ancestors used fossil fuel to the extent we do.

So it's a new "evolution" as far as the planet is concerned and one that is happening over a very short period of time (<100 years since the car was invented ???) so should be short term or trivial in the bigger picture.

But it's not.

Temperature rise, water level rises, weather activity/intensity, it's all there to see for anyone who wants to open their eyes.



And all this becuase I posted a link to a failed wind turbine.....

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

There is no doubt it is warming up. There is little doubt there is more CO2 in the atmosphere. Largely down to the population explosion

If you watch Time Team etc. It seems many areas of sea were once land. Even the English channel, and only a few thousand years ago, maybe even less..

So the sea has always been rising, and pretty quickly it seems.
Not helped by the millions of square miles of land governments "reclaim" on their shores every year.
All that displaced sea water has to go somewhere ? Never hear anyone complaining about that.

But it would also seem that land rises too ? Or why the hell are virtually all archeoligical digs buried under a few feet of earth etc ? Land must have been a right few feet lower down in years gone by. And not just in one or two places. Everywhere !

9.85 @ 145mph
202mph standing mile
speed didn't kill me, but taxation probably will

Anyone heard about the Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth found in Montana, 67 million years old, 67 million years, just puts things in perspective dont you think?

Interesting link.

But I'm not convinced that measuring CO2 using ice cores and atmospheric data are comparable, there's a fudge factor in there somewhere, which could be the wrong type of fudge. and 1/2 a million years, that's hardly representative of the life of the planet is it?

I suspect that is as far back as they can go as that's as much ice as there is, what happened before this? was it very warm for instance, owing to high CO2? who knows? no-one, that's who.

Fastest 998 mini in the world? 13.05 1/4 mile 106mph

This is an extremely well put together piece with many good links to take the subject as far as you want

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

Interesting to know that Victorian/post Victorian scientists were already considering human impact on our climate

This graph comes from 'effectively' the US coal lobby , they use fossil plant stomata data to discredit ice core samples as being too inaccurate and fluctuating to be considered valid data .

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill...es/image354.gif

what they failed to draw attention to in the associated article is the near vertical spike in the graph which corresponds to the last 100 years or so [industrial age]
and which exactly matches the ice core samples -

9.85 @ 145mph
202mph standing mile
speed didn't kill me, but taxation probably will