Global Warming

Just want to hear peoples view on our dying planet... and having to pay for it all, renewable fuels, all that stuff.....

Discuss

My thinking is that we need to be responsible for our carbon footprint yadda yadaa but it isnt fair to tax the hell out of us when the other big economies like the US China and Russia are far worse offenders without any or little comeback.

Heard a statistic the other day that China has a coal powered power station come online every 7 - 10 day and each one is much more pooluting than Drax. Scarey stuff!!!! If you look at Sweden and other Scandanavian countries and their attitude to energy effieciency I think we should go down that road and use new technologies to improve the amount of energy used, with triple glazing compulsory on new builds etc.

I was listening to Radio 4 yesterday and they had a Professor emeritus of Virginia University Environment studies and he was saying that global warming is actually good. We all know that the earth cycles in temperature, and that during the medieval times you could grow vines in yorkshire and that crops actually started failing when it strated going colder again! Interesting point of view I thought.

Read 'State of Fear' by Chriton (sp?). Have to check out his references, but it's an interesting read I must admit.

As for global warming - I'm on the fence. I try to be energy efficient - as much from the what do we do when the petrol pumps run dry as anything else, and also why not use as much wind / wave power as possible...

[timwilky]

Originally Posted by furrybean

My thinking is that we need to be responsible for our carbon footprint yadda yadaa but it isnt fair to tax the hell out of us when the other big economies like the US China and Russia are far worse offenders without any or little comeback.

Heard a statistic the other day that China has a coal powered power station come online every 7 - 10 day and each one is much more pooluting than Drax. Scarey stuff!!!! If you look at Sweden and other Scandanavian countries and their attitude to energy effieciency I think we should go down that road and use new technologies to improve the amount of energy used, with triple glazing compulsory on new builds etc.

Considering I work for the company that has provided over 25% of the worlds installed base, and have personally worked on a number of power plants in China. I would like to defend our record.

We treat pollution seriously and have developed a number of technologies to reduce Nox and sulphur emissions. We design to the same high standards irrespective of location and have entered into a number of technology transfer agreement with Chinese companies to enable them to produce energy as cleanly as practical. New more efficient cleaner power plant should be encouraged. Scare mongering unsubstantiated allegations that certain countries are installing dirty power plants are simply not true.

I have also worked on 2 nuclear plants in China, at Daya Bay and Ling Ao in Guang Dong province, the design and controls are of european design. would you seriously want to encourage the Chinese authorities to develop home grown nuclear plant as a "Cleaner" alternative.

China is also building huge hydroelectric solutions at the 3 gorges project. Not only will it provide a huge amount of electricity and finally control the Yangtze river. but typical environmentalists they then condemn this clean energy project.

Originally Posted by timwilky

China is also building huge hydroelectric solutions at the 3 gorges project. Not only will it provide a huge amount of electricity and finally control the Yangtze river. but typical environmentalists they then condemn this clean energy project.

Whilst I can understand some of their concerns (same as damning any river), I must admit I love when people start being green and the extremist tree huggers then start to complain about the green alternative *they* (for the most part before I get flamed ) wanted in the first place.

There are a lot of environmentalists complaining about wind power and tidal power in Holland complaining about noise, damaging the view, slicing and dicing birds, and electrocuting fish when out in the open sea.

Just what power source are we allowed to use?

Originally Posted by timwilky

Considering I work for the company that has provided over 25% of the worlds installed base, and have personally worked on a number of power plants in China. I would like to defend our record.

We treat pollution seriously and have developed a number of technologies to reduce Nox and sulphur emissions. We design to the same high standards irrespective of location and have entered into a number of technology transfer agreement with Chinese companies to enable them to produce energy as cleanly as practical. New more efficient cleaner power plant should be encouraged. Scare mongering unsubstantiated allegations that certain countries are installing dirty power plants are simply not true.

I have also worked on 2 nuclear plants in China, at Daya Bay and Ling Ao in Guang Dong province, the design and controls are of european design. would you seriously want to encourage the Chinese authorities to develop home grown nuclear plant as a "Cleaner" alternative.

China is also building huge hydroelectric solutions at the 3 gorges project. Not only will it provide a huge amount of electricity and finally control the Yangtze river. but typical environmentalists they then condemn this clean energy project.

This comes across as very hypocritical as I work in the Lime Industry which is one of the heaviest producers of CO2 but we monitor our dust particle, SOX and NOX emissions very carefully. Speaking to an engineer from ABB who do the emissions monitoring he gave an example of coming back from South American plants where they arent so stringent. We monitor dust to 40ppm. When he was in S. America they didnt take any notice unless the emissions rose above 4000 and they aren't have to take any action at that level either.

I was also reading about the emphasis on environmental factors in China was strong in the major districts like Shang hai but once you ventured out into the provinces all the emphasis was on rapid growth and industrialization and bonuses werent exactly paid out for cleaner option

We're ****ed

Nothing we do as the UK will make any difference - we account for under 2% of the global CO2 output, so banning cars or whatever isn't going to make any difference. If we completely shut down our entire economy and produced no greenhouse gases, the Chinese would make up the difference in 13 months
Yep, their economy, and with that the production of greenhouse gases, is growing at the rate of our entire output approx every year.

So anything we do is going to have no effect - but watch out for lots of 'consumption' based taxes coming our way - we already have some of the most expensive petrol prices in the world (how much does Uncle Sam pay for a gallon ?), congestion charges in central London (soon to be expanded), congestion charges coming for the M25, airport taxes, etc, etc. What will all these tax receipts be used for - I doubt Mr Blair is going to reduce the overall tax burden, so these extra measures will be used as a stick to beat us naughty consumers

It would only work if the entire world adopts the same measures, and there is fat chance of that happening


Still, look on the bright side - at least we'll have some good riding weather for a few years

Originally Posted by Mr Toad

Still, look on the bright side - at least we'll have some good riding weather for a few years

Have you got a waterproof bike that floats?
Nah. I think... I think that it is almost impossible to know what is going to happen.
Too many variables.
For instance, if you get enough iron into the pacific, you will get a massive algal bloom. This will grab tons of CO2, and then sink.
If you can get the iron...


I would lean towards your first point though. Ie, We're Fooked. In a big way. Honestly... I am not even sure if that's a bad thing. Humans are *******s.

Bedtime my friends.

Originally Posted by Mr Toad

We're f*cked

Nothing we do as the UK will make any difference - we account for under 2% of the global CO2 output, so banning cars or whatever isn't going to make any difference. If we completely shut down our entire economy and produced no greenhouse gases, the Chinese would make up the difference in 13 months
Yep, their economy, and with that the production of greenhouse gases, is growing at the rate of our entire output approx every year.

So anything we do is going to have no effect - but watch out for lots of 'consumption' based taxes coming our way - we already have some of the most expensive petrol prices in the world (how much does Uncle Sam pay for a gallon ?), congestion charges in central London (soon to be expanded), congestion charges coming for the M25, airport taxes, etc, etc. What will all these tax receipts be used for - I doubt Mr Blair is going to reduce the overall tax burden, so these extra measures will be used as a stick to beat us naughty consumers

It would only work if the entire world adopts the same measures, and there is fat chance of that happening


Still, look on the bright side - at least we'll have some good riding weather for a few years

Well said, If good ol' Tone tried to push the Kyoto agreement etc to the counties that need to curb their output instead of taxing us even more heavily than we do at the moment. I'm not anti the developing countries getting their chance at boosting their economies but they must do it in a conscientious manner to the environment