Off Topic Climate change

It seems a bit pointless banning diesel and petrol cars, when your neighbours are pumping loads of fumes into the atmosphere. China, India , and Gerrnany. So what is the point???

 

As you say, if is an exceedingly diffict subject to distill into a paragraph or two. Impossible actually.

But we do know that Romans came here and planted their grapes, harvested them and made wine without wondering if if would all work. Even up here they did it! Maybe that neans nothing. In the middle ages and on it was quite the thing for Lords of the Manor to grow grapes, though the thing never quite caught on as no one really knew how to make the wine properly. But you wouldn't attempt it here now as outside the south west it isn't warm enough.

But nothing is easy to prove. The often quoted Greenland Ice Core stats are meant to be a tell all. They show us as living in a time colder than at almost any time in human habitation of the earth. But maybe they are un- reliable .

I'm not sure it is possible to fully know, and there is a stat to prove everything if seems. But I'm not comfortable with governments everywhere basing trillions worth of policy on what can't be absolutely proved. This just attracts racketeering. .

 

It depends on who you are. When I see Sunak, or Starmer, or Johnson, or Blair driving electric cars and relying on heat pumps as their sole heating method, I'll listen.

 

Yeah, that 0.6 degree difference is considered to be sufficient to make viticulture possible, although I believe it was fairly sporadic. Incidentally, do you have a link to info about Roman vineyards in the NE? The furthest north that I can find are Northants and Lincs.

 

The fact is that hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians are starving and living in poverty atm, they want that to change and will drive up carbon emissions.

The UK is only 2% of the problem...

The weather is the weather as it were, burning fossil fuels to the climate, is like steroids are to humans, ie you end up with wetter wets, drier drys and hotter hots.
Wars have always driven migration, climate change is going to have am even bigger impact.

Imho we urgently ( not happing atm, lip service only) to switch to Wind solar and nuclear (fission?). ASAP.
If we don't my grandchildren will curse our generation.

 

Just to show what a minefield global climate change is, it appears a sudden cut in the maximum allowed sulphur levels for shipping fuel in 2020 has incredibly led to an increase in solar radiation, which is then absorbed by the oceans along the worlds busiest shipping routes . This is because the sulphur emissions have actually been helping to reflect the amount of solar radiation from the stratosphere.

https://www.reuters.com/business/en...-global-energy-transition-maguire-2023-03-10/

 

I’m more bothered about nuclear war finishing us off, and I believe we’re well on the way to Armageddon!!

Bart

 

No I don't have a link actually. Something I read once in a book about wine ages ago. . Possibly wrong I suppose. Mind, you wouldn't want to try growing grapes in Lincoln either now mind!

 

My boss had a vineyard in Scunthorpe so there shouldn’t be a problem with Lincolnshire.

 

Fission has been " thirty years away" for fifty years mind! They have made tentative steps recently, but even the most optimistic predictions still say twenty or thirty years.

Wind is definitely a big thing here . The biggest, second biggest and third biggest offshore farms in the world are all or soon will be off the UK coastline, and will be exporting excess capacity to Europe in significant amounts by 2030. But you can't store electricity, so much more needs to done to solve this problem.

The best of them seems to be cryogenic storage. This is now being done commercially and we should be doing much more of it. They basically freeze the air, using off peak power, then release it when needed which powers turbines. Google " Highview Power" if you're interested. Very promising and very doable right here.

Solar has a role too. There is actually a cable being installed atm from Morocco to the South West of England which will provide very significant amounts of electricity. They are basically turning uninhabitable desert into solar farms. A second cable is planned.

These and other things are happening apace, but right now, to ignore or abandon natural gas is insane. It is abundant, relatively clean and will get cheaper if it is left alone. Even the IPCC have said that gas will be beeded for the next sixty years at least, and oil similar.

 

George Carlin nailed this 15 years ago in his own inimitable way

 

I think solar will overtake wind once the storage capacity allows it. Wind is just too impactful on everything around it. If you're talking a thousand foot turbine (they're coming) an top of a two thousand foot hill, it's in everyone's back yard in a twenty mile radius.

One of the counties where I work are already making noises about being at saturation point.

 

A number of years ago they were doing a wind farm at sea off Yorkshire. At the time it was having tallest turbines of the time , I can’t remember wether it was 100 or 200, but from their figures , I calculated that 200 such farms would power all uk houses ( not shops, factories etc)
With a lot of sea around us , doesn’t seem to have been progressed much

 

Offshore wave power is another one. Constant power. technology is getting there (prototype are here and working), and that should take off. And is a lot less impactful on local environment than other hydro power including near shore wave

 

The geothermal project next to the SoL looks promising.

“Sunderland City Council planners have backed exploratory drilling at the site of the former Wearmouth Colliery, near the Stadium of Light.

If the scheme ultimately proves viable, naturally heated water would be distributed to nearby properties via a network of underground pipes.

The council said harnessing geothermal energy could help cut people's bills.

The pilot scheme approved by the council's planning and highways committee will investigate whether mine workings can be accessed by borehole drilling.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-65191284.amp

 

Geothermal could be massive in the UK



https://www.edengeothermal.com/abou...ws,for deep geothermal electricity generation.

 

Yeah I agree, be interesting to see the outcome of the planned tests at Wearmouth Colliery

https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/sund...geothermal-exploration-in-wearmouth-colliery/

 

It’s the most pressing situation that the world is facing, but the greed of the super rich who have a vested interest in keeping fossil fuels probably means it is already too late to avoid catastrophic change in the not too distant future.

 

No doubt it will all come to a head just as we are about to Premiership champions.

 

I wouldnt worry about that mate. The AI robots are coming to exterminate us all first.