Home Page
   Articles
       links
About Us    
Traders        
Recipes            
Latest Articles
Interesting front page from "The Express"
Page 1, 2, 3  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Downsizer Forum Index -> Energy Efficiency and Construction/Major Projects
Author 
 Message
Penny Outskirts



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 23385
Location: Planet, not on the....
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 10:28 am    Post subject: Interesting front page from "The Express" Reply with quote
    

https://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/187749

JohnB



Joined: 09 Jul 2005
Posts: 685
Location: Beautiful sunny West Wales!
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 10:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

The vast majority of climate scientists think man made climate change is happening, and insurance companies and the US military are concerned about peak oil. Would the energy companies be destroying vast areas of Canada, digging huge open cast coal mines in South Wales and doing risky drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, if there wasn't a bit of an energy supply problem?

Badger



Joined: 26 Mar 2009
Posts: 27

PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 10:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Typical Express spin on a story combined with a spot of fearmongering..

I always find the "comments" more informative - things like:

Quote:
BIN THE ECO LOONS

First we should burn what we dont need - let's start by burning the eco-loons.

For years these useless fools have bombarded us with their "green" drivel, everything from the global warming myth to chicanes and speed cameras - all to pander to their mistaken beliefs.

Britain needs to recommission any remaining coal fired power stations as a short term move, and then to build several nuclear stations.

As for the eco-loons. If you want to live in a cave then do so - but dont try to impose your muddled mistaken beliefs on the rest of us.

Penny Outskirts



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 23385
Location: Planet, not on the....
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 10:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Quote:


...."As for the eco-loons. If you want to live in a cave then do so - but dont try to impose your muddled mistaken beliefs on the rest of us."


Trouble is, we're not allowed to live in a cave for more than 28 days a year

JohnB



Joined: 09 Jul 2005
Posts: 685
Location: Beautiful sunny West Wales!
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 10:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Penny wrote:
Trouble is, we're not allowed to live in a cave for more than 28 days a year

Unless you own 13 of them on different plots of land, and move on every 28 days .

vegplot



Joined: 19 Apr 2007
Posts: 21301
Location: Bethesda, Gwynedd
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 10:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Penny wrote:
Quote:


...."As for the eco-loons. If you want to live in a cave then do so - but dont try to impose your muddled mistaken beliefs on the rest of us."


Trouble is, we're not allowed to live in a cave for more than 28 days a year


I feel you have a valid point. Allowing people to live non conventional lives can result in less reliance on centralised infrastructure such as power generation. It may not be a great deal in the sum total but lots of small savings, improvements in efficiency and pockets of decentralised energy generation can made a huge difference.

Duckhead



Joined: 24 Oct 2009
Posts: 2069
Location: Up the hill, Italy
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 11:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

[quote="Penny"]
Quote:


Trouble is, we're not allowed to live in a cave for more than 28 days a year


Well done again Penny I do smile when you find another opportunity.

Rob R



Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 12:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Quote:
Britain needs to recommission any remaining coal fired power stations as a short term move, and then to build several nuclear stations.

As for the eco-loons. If you want to live in a cave then do so - but dont try to impose your muddled mistaken beliefs on the rest of us.


I think it is the imposition of nuclear (or coal) industry upon other people who take no part in it that is the biggest barrier. The biggest opposition to wind turbines is an aesthetic one, the kind of opposition that one day will become regret if they were to be taken away. The biggest opposition to coal/nuclear is the emissions- the kind of things that years later people will still be paying for, be it checking/culling your sheep for radiation or losing animals that have ingested particulates. It's all very well being sorry for pollution, and the greater population may benefit from cheap power but they never pay back the saving to preserve what they destroy. And when what they destroy is irreplaceable, no amount of savings can make up for it.

Over consumption is such a simple idea that you have to be either very selfish or be very muddled not to appreciate it.

Penny Outskirts



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 23385
Location: Planet, not on the....
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 1:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

sfolati wrote:
Penny wrote:


Trouble is, we're not allowed to live in a cave for more than 28 days a year


Well done again Penny I do smile when you find another opportunity.


Single minded - me

Mutton



Joined: 09 May 2009
Posts: 1508

PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 4:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

I'm afraid that I disagree that the biggest opposition to wind farms is the aesthetic one. It might be why the majority of people object to them to start with, but once you learn about

1. No storage on the National Grid
2. The wind isn't blowing somewhere all the time - a windless high pressure system can sit across the whole country.
3. The power stations that are turned ON when the wind blows to ensure that when the wind suddenly drops there isn't a crash in the grid.
4. The volume of steel and concrete used in the foundations.
5. That re-powering to larger turbines involves a whole new set of larger foundations.
6. The lifespan is only twenty years at best.

Then they don't look nearly as green as at first sight.

I am a supporter of sustainable living, of massively reducing usage, of finding ways to produce energy sustainably. But wind farms are not sustainable - they take too much resources for far too little return.

Nuclear power - it is far safer than Chernobyl. The power station there was poorly designed and worse maintained. Nothing like that has ever been allowed in the UK. France by the way, produces 80% of its electricity by nuclear power. I've not heard of any problems.
Spain by contrast has embraced wind power, and last winter had to turn off some wind turbines over night as they were over-producing compared to the demand and so destabilising the grid.

toggle



Joined: 30 Dec 2006
Posts: 11622
Location: truro
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 4:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Mutton wrote:

Nuclear power - it is far safer than Chernobyl. The power station there was poorly designed and worse maintained. Nothing like that has ever been allowed in the UK. .


we don't have a perfect record in nuclear safety. how many incidents of accidents and leaks have happened at selafield/windscale now?

a lot of our testing and monitoring has been from our own f-ups.


the norweigans should be able to tell us more about that, we're affecting them as well

OP



Joined: 28 Jul 2006
Posts: 4661
Location: Yorkshire
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 4:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Quote:
"The country is going to have to make a choice whether to go along with green ideas of renewable generation or go back to coal and nuclear power.”

I think that is a perfectly valid point to make. One of the interesting aspects of this debate is that if your focus is reducing our impact on the climate then nuclear power has to be a serious contender - but many of those advocating the importance of reducing carbon emissions also seem to have a slightly illogical dislike of nuclear power. That's likely to be quite a barrier to progress because if you remove that option then you are left with a raft of other technologies - like wind power - which don't seem to be scalable, and that weakens the whole case for moving away from fossil fuels.

Mutton



Joined: 09 May 2009
Posts: 1508

PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 4:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

toggle wrote:
Mutton wrote:

Nuclear power - it is far safer than Chernobyl. The power station there was poorly designed and worse maintained. Nothing like that has ever been allowed in the UK. .


we don't have a perfect record in nuclear safety. how many incidents of accidents and leaks have happened at selafield/windscale now?

a lot of our testing and monitoring has been from our own f-ups.


the norweigans should be able to tell us more about that, we're affecting them as well


Last I'd heard of Sellafied was the oopsie plume in the 1970s. Do you have more detailed data?

toggle



Joined: 30 Dec 2006
Posts: 11622
Location: truro
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 4:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

https://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/31/sellafield-hse-nuclear-radioactive

https://www.yourindustrynews.com/thorp+nuclear+plant+may+close+for+years_32737.html

https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/may/09/environment.nuclearindustry

both the irish and norweigan gvts have serious concerns about the levels of radioactivity in seawater and hence fish stocks.


one of the main issues with the site is the constant renaming of parts of it to break the link in the public mind with previous safety issues. it does make it harder to understand what is going on. calder hall, seascale, magnox reprocessing, thorp reprcessing, windscale and sellafield are some of the names to look out for.

Suer, a lot of what is going on now isn't electric production, but we can't run a safe nuclear industry unless we can clean up after it safely. French designed reactors (iirc, they do use a distinctly different design with a better safety record) are only part of the story. If we cannot handle waste material without f-ing it up, we can't build reactors.

Part of the problem at the selafield site is the scale, it is taking other people's waste as well as our own. I think the more they try to handle, the greater the chance of a f-up. I think perhaps that some other countries have better safety records than we do because they allowed us to deal with the waste.

OP



Joined: 28 Jul 2006
Posts: 4661
Location: Yorkshire
PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 10 5:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

toggle wrote:
If we cannot handle waste material without f-ing it up, we can't build reactors.

That is one of the criteria when examing options for energy generation. Another is that it generates sufficient energy for our needs. Fossil fuels appear to fail on your criteria, as it looks like we can't handle the waste material (i.e. CO2). A lot of the alternative technologies appear to fail on the criteria of actually creating enough energy to make them viable - although in fairness there is a lot of further development potential. Nuclear power is clearly capable of meeting energy demands and appears safer than fossil fuels in terms of overall environmental impact, though it still has some impact - but as with other alternative energies, there is potential to make it much better.

Post new topic   Reply to topic    Downsizer Forum Index -> Energy Efficiency and Construction/Major Projects All times are GMT
Page 1, 2, 3  Next
Page 1 of 3
View Latest Posts View Latest Posts

 

Archive
Powered by php-BB © 2001, 2005 php-BB Group
Style by marsjupiter.com, released under GNU (GNU/GPL) license.
Copyright © 2004 marsjupiter.com