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Post by cuttydyer on Sept 13, 2013 13:28:07 GMT
Looks like my local "zero-carbon eco-school" is going to be closed for repairs to roof leaks only three years after it was opened. The children are currently taking lessons in tents setup with in the grounds; the repairs have been estimated to take up to 2 years to complete. Devon County Council have threatened that it may sue the architects of the £7 million Primary School. Local resident Tania Mountney, whose son attends the school, said: "There's been leaking there ever since it opened. "Last year we could see the roof was starting to warp." She added: "I went to a parents' lunch and you could see these large patches of mould. My ex-partner is a builder and he couldn't understand how it could get that bad." The school building it replaced was Victorian and only started to leak after approximately 150 years of service. Link: www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Acclaimed-eco-school-forced-shut-classrooms-years/story-19789593-detail/story.html
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Post by cuttydyer on Oct 7, 2013 15:51:29 GMT
The Telegraph reports: "Britain's electricity safety buffer is at the lowest since 2007 and a cold winter could see an energy supply crunch."The risk of blackouts this winter will be higher than it has been for almost a decade, National Grid warned on Monday. The Grid said reserve supplies of electricity will be wafer thin after a dramatic fall in the amount of coal-based power plants operating across the UK. And it warned it may have to issue NISMs – warnings to industry to bring mothballed plant into action or increase generation to cope. National Grid expert Chris Train said that in a cold winter, the UK's electricity "margin" or safety buffer will be just 5 per cent, almost half last year's level and the lowest since early in 2007. He told an industry conference this morning: "Things will be tighter than they have been historically." He insisted it was wrong to say Britain faced blackouts and that he was confident extra energy would flow from the Continent if the country risked a supply shortage. He would not comment on the likelihood manufacturers may be forced to cut back on their electricity or gas use at times of peak demand. But the forecast will only heighten fears of the supply crunch Britain faces as older power plant reach the end of their life before a fleet of new more environmentally friendly capacity can be built. The Grid's own analysis shows the availability of coal fired plant has fallen almost 20pc since last winter to 20.3Gw. This fall comes at a time coal prices are dropping, making the fuel far cheaper to use. In June, industry regulator Ofgem warned there could be energy shortages in the middle of the decade as the Uk had failed to build enough new wind farms and power stations. It said the risk of future blackouts had trebled. Link: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10360751/Blackout-risk-this-winter-highest-in-a-decade-warns-National-Grid.html
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Post by nautonnier on Oct 7, 2013 17:31:42 GMT
With the new 'smart meters' that have been rolled out throughout the UK, it should be possible to ensure that the Palace of Westminster (the House of Commons and House of Lords) the Treasury and all the offices of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, plus every politician's home (and second home) would have their power cut if there was an energy shortage an a power cut anywhere in the country. This would be an interesting lesson for them if mid debate black screen. There is no other way to get the seriousness of the position through to these people.
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Post by cuttydyer on Oct 8, 2013 7:27:01 GMT
With the new 'smart meters' that have been rolled out throughout the UK, it should be possible to ensure that the Palace of Westminster (the House of Commons and House of Lords) the Treasury and all the offices of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, plus every politician's home (and second home) would have their power cut if there was an energy shortage an a power cut anywhere in the country. This would be an interesting lesson for them if mid debate black screen. There is no other way to get the seriousness of the position through to these people. I fear the effect that a harsh & prolonged UK winter would have on the fragile economic "recovery"; in the event that selective black-outs are necessary, industry would be at the top of the list.
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Post by cuttydyer on Oct 8, 2013 11:50:23 GMT
In today's Telegraph Dr Bjorn Lomborg (professor at the Copenhagen Business School) writes: Keep calm and save the EarthApocalyptic rhetoric about climate change is blinding us to reality, argues Bjorn Lomborg Extracts: "Bad news sells – that’s why we hear so much of it. But it can leave us with a panicked sense that the world is full of problems that urgently need to be fixed. And panic is rarely a good basis for smart policy. Today, MPs on the House of Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee have released a report arguing that the UK needs its strong climate policies, otherwise we will face “dangerous destabilisation of the global climate”. Yet such scary statements simply underpin expensive policies that offer little benefit." "The reality is that, by 2020, the cost of promised climate policies to the UK economy will be £21 billion annually. The net effect over the century – after spending more than £1.5 trillion – will be to reduce temperature rises by a pitiful 0.005C. Compare this to increased shale gas production, which would generate more than £6 billion annually in tax revenues, and reduce carbon emissions by about 10 times more than the current plan." Link: www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10362717/Keep-calm-and-save-the-Earth.html
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Post by nautonnier on Oct 8, 2013 13:27:15 GMT
In today's Telegraph Dr Bjorn Lomborg (professor at the Copenhagen Business School) writes: Keep calm and save the EarthApocalyptic rhetoric about climate change is blinding us to reality, argues Bjorn Lomborg Extracts: "Bad news sells – that’s why we hear so much of it. But it can leave us with a panicked sense that the world is full of problems that urgently need to be fixed. And panic is rarely a good basis for smart policy. Today, MPs on the House of Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee have released a report arguing that the UK needs its strong climate policies, otherwise we will face “dangerous destabilisation of the global climate”. Yet such scary statements simply underpin expensive policies that offer little benefit." "The reality is that, by 2020, the cost of promised climate policies to the UK economy will be £21 billion annually. The net effect over the century – after spending more than £1.5 trillion – will be to reduce temperature rises by a pitiful 0.005C. Compare this to increased shale gas production, which would generate more than £6 billion annually in tax revenues, and reduce carbon emissions by about 10 times more than the current plan." Link: www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10362717/Keep-calm-and-save-the-Earth.htmlInteresting picture - at the height of the Medieval Warm Period which was hotter than the 20th century warming and lasted centuries London did not flood and Amsterdam was founded as a fishing village at the end of the MWP at sea level where it is today. These continual claims of sea level rise are totally misleading.
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Post by trbixler on Oct 18, 2013 12:31:48 GMT
Plug it in save the planet. Spend that pork. Why just the other day I saw a volt with its plugin hatch open and I wondered if it was leaking! I bet Obamacare will look like a GM Volt and lose $49,000 per vehicle sold. "Plug-Ins Account For Less Than Half of 1% of Auto Sales This Year" "(CNSNews.com) – After the federal government spent billions of dollars on federal tax credits and subsidies to promote all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, they accounted for less than half of one percent of the 11.7 million light vehicles purchased in the U.S. during the last nine months. In his 2011 “State of the Union” address, President Obama predicted that the U.S. would “become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” and backed up his prediction with $2.4 billion in federal grants to companies that produce lithium-ion batteries to power them. But with 14 months to go, sales of the two top-selling plug-in cars are running far behind the president’s expectations. And despite receiving $99.8 million in stimulus funds, electric charging station manufacturer Ecotality filed for bankruptcy last month." link
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Post by nautonnier on Oct 18, 2013 12:49:59 GMT
Imagine the political control over a populace with electric cars and smart meters.
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Post by trbixler on Oct 22, 2013 23:00:17 GMT
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Post by trbixler on Nov 13, 2013 2:54:12 GMT
"The secret, dirty cost of Obama's green power push" " CORYDON, Iowa (AP) - The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply. Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield. It wasn't supposed to be this way. With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. And when President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country "stronger, cleaner and more secure."" "But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today. As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found. Five million acres of land set aside for conservation - more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined - have vanished on Obama's watch." link
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Post by trbixler on Nov 15, 2013 2:22:41 GMT
Kill those pesky birds! Or Fry in the sky and die! "Solar Panels Frying Birds Along Major Migration Path" "It happens that many of California's solar plants are, the article claims, in the path of "the four major north-to-south trajectories for migratory birds" called "the Pacific Flyway." Birds are dying in one of two ways. In some cases, they imagine the shining solar panels to be bodies of water and dive straight into them. There they die when they smash into the panels from the sky. Others "feel the wrath of the harnessed sunlight." The ultra polished solar mirrors bounce sunrays strong enough to burn the feathers off birds that quickly crash to the ground, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of the fowl dying as a result of their unfortunate flight paths over solar facilities are birds protected by the federal government under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. " link
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Post by nautonnier on Nov 21, 2013 21:08:23 GMT
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Post by sigurdur on Nov 24, 2013 17:02:51 GMT
www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/24/solar-energy-is-dominated-by-waste.aspxThe numbers are in and the verdict is out: Much of the money that governments spend subsidizing solar energy is wasted. So argues author and Copenhagen Consensus Center director Dr. Bjorn Lomborg in the pages of The Wall Street Journal earlier this week. He points out that Spain, for example, spent more money subsidizing its conversion to solar power than the country spent on its entire system of higher education last year, and that here in the U.S, we spent $14 billion subsidizing renewable energies in 2010 -- $16.5 billion if you count nuclear energy. That was more than four times the $4 billion spent on tax breaks for the entire, more energy-rich, fossil-fuels industry. All of which may be true, but we're not talking about wasted tax dollars, today. Today, we're talking about waste, period.
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Post by karlox on Nov 25, 2013 9:36:22 GMT
www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/24/solar-energy-is-dominated-by-waste.aspxThe numbers are in and the verdict is out: Much of the money that governments spend subsidizing solar energy is wasted. So argues author and Copenhagen Consensus Center director Dr. Bjorn Lomborg in the pages of The Wall Street Journal earlier this week. He points out that Spain, for example, spent more money subsidizing its conversion to solar power than the country spent on its entire system of higher education last year, and that here in the U.S, we spent $14 billion subsidizing renewable energies in 2010 -- $16.5 billion if you count nuclear energy. That was more than four times the $4 billion spent on tax breaks for the entire, more energy-rich, fossil-fuels industry. All of which may be true, but we're not talking about wasted tax dollars, today. Today, we're talking about waste, period. Spain was mainly subsidizing small to medium solar farms, so it was very profitable to invest on them for selling production at a guaranteed minimum prize. Same time wind-farms took our landscapes. Eolic enery is currently most important power supply, though as our grid is not well connected with France and rest of Europe -letting thus Portugal and Spain´s grid isolated- we have an excess of power potential when wind blows, or an urgent need to icrease production in our brand-new gaz-burning combined cycle units for calm winds periods. Current government changed all this solar regulations and is not following previous ontact with solar producers, who now blame the government for breaking a legal contract... Meantime a new energy bill will start penalizing with taxes and grid connection fares private family solar projects. Enery companies will be allowed to break into my home in case they suspect I may have an un-declared solar installation, and may get millionaire fines for this... So basically they are doing everything the other way right... this link illustrates Spain´s energy production and share (nuke, hydrolic, wind, solar, coal etc) in real time: link(notice how big is eolic energy share depicted in green)
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Post by karlox on Nov 25, 2013 9:41:40 GMT
www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/24/solar-energy-is-dominated-by-waste.aspxThe numbers are in and the verdict is out: Much of the money that governments spend subsidizing solar energy is wasted. So argues author and Copenhagen Consensus Center director Dr. Bjorn Lomborg in the pages of The Wall Street Journal earlier this week. He points out that Spain, for example, spent more money subsidizing its conversion to solar power than the country spent on its entire system of higher education last year, and that here in the U.S, we spent $14 billion subsidizing renewable energies in 2010 -- $16.5 billion if you count nuclear energy. That was more than four times the $4 billion spent on tax breaks for the entire, more energy-rich, fossil-fuels industry. All of which may be true, but we're not talking about wasted tax dollars, today. Today, we're talking about waste, period. Spain was mainly subsidizing small to medium solar farms, so it was very profitable to invest on them for selling production at a guaranteed minimum prize. Same time wind-farms took our landscapes. Eolic enery is currently most important power supply, though as our grid is not well connected with France and rest of Europe -letting thus Portugal and Spain´s grid isolated- we have an excess of power potential when wind blows, or an urgent need to icrease production in our brand-new gaz-burning combined cycle units for calm winds periods. Current government changed all this solar regulations and is not following previous contract signed with solar producers, who now blame the government for breaking a legal contract and asking for Judiciary protection. Meantime a new energy bill will start penalizing with taxes and grid connection fares all private family solar installations. Power companies will be allowed to break into my home in case they suspect I may have an un-declared solar installation, and may get millionaire fines for this... So basically they are doing everything upside-down the other way round... this link illustrates Spain´s energy production and share (nuke, hydrolic, wind, solar, coal etc) in real time: link(notice how big is eolic energy share depicted in green)
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