General Forum

Re: Earth hour

rayfenwick — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:06:58 GMT

burantek:

hmmm... i love 2cv's, and to tie all this together...

forget the "color/styling choices made" -but i love this.

Me too, and we're back OT

Re: Earth hour

rayfenwick — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:03:49 GMT

bayerische:

Is that a fruit?

No, I'm getting married!

Re: Earth hour

Puncher — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:02:37 GMT

j0hnbarker:

Mr10Percent:

Antarctic ice-shelf’s etc…

Sorry 10% - your professional background may well be beyond reproach, but if you can't use an apostrophe correctly, I'll have to take your advice with a pinch of salt I'm afraid.

- you can't argue with cold, hard reason!

Re: Earth hour

j0hnbarker — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:13:03 GMT

Mr10Percent:

Antarctic ice-shelf’s etc…

Sorry 10% - your professional background may well be beyond reproach, but if you can't use an apostrophe correctly, I'll have to take your advice with a pinch of salt I'm afraid.

Re: Earth hour

Puncher — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:59:34 GMT

This was a particularly revealing episode of Horizon, in which there's an interview with (I believe) an Australian scientist who lays out a timeline for renewable sources and the real need for nuclear (hopefully fusion) reactors - the numbers are really quite worrying

Re: Earth hour

Mr10Percent — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:06:23 GMT

Well this is fun isn’t it? Missed this one as it looked to be a bore of a topic. How wrong could I have been?

I’ll chuck-in my counter-opinion for free here as everyone else seems to have done. Take it or leave it. It is emotive and to be frank, I don’t really care about anyone-else’s opinion as we all have to live with our own views one-way or another.

As someone who is educated and practiced in the earth-sciences (metal extraction to be specific) for the last +20 years and with a substantial grounding in Geology here goes:-

1. Taking the last couple of million years (Pliocene) we (the planet) have been in and out of ice-ages every 20,000 or so. Were smack bang in the middle of an interglacial. It could get warmer, it could also get colder. Over the whole geological timeframe, it is likely that the earth is significantly cooler today than it has been over the last 350 million years (pre carboniferous). We may never know for sure as these are only inferred measurements – like today’s measurements of CO2 in Antarctic ice-shelf’s etc…

2. The carbon we burn has had to have come from somewhere. It was once in all likelihood on the planets surface as an organic form at some point before it got locked up in the oceans, coral reefs, coal seams etc... CO2 levels geologically MUST have been significantly higher than they are today (normal carbon cycling, decomposition, fires etc..) for that carbon to be locked-up.

Inference to CO2 levels of today, the last 50,000 or last 500,000 years are not necessarily a guide to actual CO2 levels over the history of the planet. Today could be a blip, a low or indeed a phenomenon caused by man in a general downward trend over geological time.

3. People have become emotive about carbon-footprints, etc… Unfortunately it has become a fashionable topic, dumbed-down and mis-directed. We have in the main gone from doing nothing (bad) to doing something (which may be worse) in the name of carbon-foot print reduction. We are in my opinion wasting money on dead-end technologies.

A point in case (and something very very close to me…) may be the development of high-efficiency electrical motors (wind-turbines, sea-ducks, super-conducting magnets etc..).

These are green right? Err well no!

Well first to make high efficiency motors we need rare-earth elements. Lots of rare earth (lanthanides) and as the name suggests – they are rare. That means huge mining, processing, refining costs and subsequent power bills (electricity and lots and lots of diesel for those huge CAT 977’s hauling the raped dirt from the mine to the mud factory. It means, we have to mine more copper, more iron, more zinc and more aluminium (75% of REE’s come from refining these primary metals) which in turn means we need more economy to consume more of these metals, which means more power and so on ad-infinitum to produce a limited supply of REE’s. A circular argument!!!

Another example – a rare earth metal that's critically important to our society is neodymium. GM and Sumitomo developed the neodymium iron boron alloy for permanent magnets, which is the basis of all modern electric motors because it allows small motors with the highest possible power density.

Neodymium total world production is less than 20,000 tons. That may sound like a lot but it is tiny. And the fact is that a single wind turbine electric generator producing 1 megawatt of electricity requires one ton of neodymium. Now to power the USA – arguably the largest energy consumer, (nominally 1,000 gigawatts of power), a 1 million tonnes of neodymium will be required which at current world production, that would take around 50 years to manufacture. – And that is if there were no other uses for neodymium. It clearly this isn't going to happen.

Simply put, we will be out of REE’s well before were out of oil.

Another fact is that China has an estimated 90% of all REE resources. We are doomed if we rely on the Arabs for oil, we doomed if we rely on the Chinese for REE’s. Clearly, it won’t be allowed to happen.

We could do solar but I’m guessing most of us don’t have the space or the daylight to power-up our B&O each night.

4. The solution for me is two fold:-

First, divert all these false-start green technology funds into advanced nuclear power generation, fusion/plasma technologies like ITER, Tokamak etc… It is the only way I can see we can make appropriate power with base-load capacity to suit industrial and developing nations we have today. We need the carbon sources at least for our plastics. I need the oil for my (future) Aston Martin as an electric one just wont sound right. (sic).

Second. I think the collective world theocracies need to come to the party and start planning (family planning that is) with the big guy in the sky (which ever flavour you prefer) and start reducing our planets population from 7billion to perhaps 3.

Then we can all blaze-away our BV4-103’s safe in the knowledge that we will all be able to afford one (same circulation of money, less of us), the power will be free (ish) and wont black-out every time the wind drops, the sun goes in or that we don’t have to rape mother-earth looking for imaginary rare-earth metals that aren’t really there.

Personally, I think we should have switched all our electrical appliances on during earth hour. It would have resulted in power overloads and potential black-outs. It may have indicated to a Government or two that we are not happy living on the knife edge of a centralised energy system ill-capable of safely suppling our needs of cheap, clean and sufficient energy and that they need to pull their finger out by building some next generation power stations rather than subbing the problem to the individual to stick a token windmill on top of their roof.

Rant Over.

10%

Re: Earth hour

burantek — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:57:16 GMT

hmmm... i love 2cv's, and to tie all this together...

forget the "color/styling choices made" -but i love this.

Re: Earth hour

bayerische — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:17:20 GMT

rayfenwick:

In my defence I'm more au fait with Citroens...

Is that a fruit?

Re: Earth hour

rayfenwick — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:43:01 GMT

beocool:

rayfenwick:

My local MP was John Prescott, and how I really appreciated "two jags" telling me to use public transport when I've seen his missus chauffered to the chemists practically opposite their Hull residence in a 4 litre v12 Jaguar.....with the engine left running whilst she was inside, of course.

I don't want to spoil the fun, but there is no such thing as a 4 litre V12 Jaguar. 4 litre Jag engines are either inline-6 or V8. V12 Jags are 5.3 or 6.0 litre. Sorry, just can't help myself.

You're quite right. It's a 4litre 6. The other one (which hasn't been there for a while...) was a 6 litre 12. In my defence I'm more au fait with Citroens...

Re: Earth hour

Henri — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:18:03 GMT

beodude:
Ok Henri, I'll try to explain very simply why gas concentration causes the planet to heat up so maybe even you can understand!!

I haven't got a problem understanding the (highly abused and mispresented) theory behind the global warming scam. While some of the phenomenons described as a cause are technically correct and very well known, their application in this context is seriously flawed. As I mentioned earlier, coming from a scientific/academic background, oversimplifying this will miss the point by miles.

For anyone without in-depth technical knowledge of the subject, here's one article that'll explain the basics in laymans terms, scientifically: http://brneurosci.org/co2.html .

Not quite as simple as barbequing a bottle of carbon dioxide with an IR-lamp, though...

Re: Earth hour

XavierItzmann — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 06:58:36 GMT

jldmelb:

I think that deliberately trying to be a knob doesn't do anybody any favours mate.

Sorry, didn't mean to insult anyone's religion. After all, the United Nations declared last week that it is a human rights violation to defame people's religion.

Tell you what, I took the train to work yesterday. Saved over 51 cents when compared to the fuel my car uses over the 6-mile trip.

Have I atoned enough for the sin of leaving all my 21 lights on at full power for 7 hours on Saturday evening?

Re: Earth hour

pedrompinto — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 06:19:09 GMT

Here in Portugal it was quite well announced. I didn't do it, i find it rather silly; we can speak about the matter but is not a thing that would make any impact; what is needed is some real government measures to stop climate changed.

Re: Earth hour

Puncher — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:57:05 GMT

.............and it makes them brainer too!

Re: Earth hour

benjnz — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:47:35 GMT

Oh let me think, I no longer have a car so zero emissions there

Changed all my bulbs to CFL

Compost all the kitchen waste

Planted veggy garden & fruit trees to reduce my dependance on items trucked to supermarkets

Changed the outside garden lights to solar powered

OH and now its autumn the cats are helping by reducing CO2 output by refusing to move and now just sleeping all day and night

Puncher:

On a positive note, can I ask what long term action folk have taken to help the situation? Lets start with -

What car are you now driving (engine size etc.)? If nothing else we can preserve what's left of the earth's fossil fuels!

We can use a 5 Door Ford Fiesta ECOnetic as a benchmark

1.6-litre TDCi Duratorq diesel with diesel particulate filter

CO₂: 98 g/km
Annual vehicle excise duty: £0

Fuel efficiency (combined cycle): 76.3 mpg

Re: Earth hour

beodude — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:30:54 GMT

Henri:

beodude:
Henri, forget about weather phenomenons, the fact is the ratio of gasses trapped in the ice bubbles is definitive proof of what the atmosphere was like hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Considering that only "proof" that gas concentration (partial pressure) has virtually anything to do with atmospheric phenomenons is in man-made, highly speculative calculation formulas. Along with the fact that the astronomy has yet to discover one single planet - among billions known - that has warmed at all during any significant period of time. Planet earth is not a supernova.

As a pseudoscientific scam this climate change hysteria is simply ingenious - all "proof" is so vague and claims so well marketed that finding scientific evidence to support or contradict it is impossible. A religion, nothing more, nothing less, and we're in the middle of its worldwide inquisition as we speak.

Ok Henri, I'll try to explain very simply why gas concentration causes the planet to heat up so maybe even you can understand!!

The most basic experiment that has been carried out:

1. Fill a transparent bottle with CO2 and seal it.

2. seal a transparent bottle with air in it.

3. expose both to sunlight for the same time period.

4. check the temperature of each.

Result: the bottle filled with CO2 is several degrees warmer than the one with air in it.

Conclusion: The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere changes the earth's temperature.

ie more CO2 in the atmosphere means the earth will be warmer than if there is less CO2.