Another Smart Meter thread.

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

GeoThermal would mostly fit though there would need to be be pipework to push the water down to the hot rocks but there are relatively few places where this is economic.

[Anonymous]

Posted by Frances IoM on 12/11/2022 12:50:56:

Putin was at first looked on as one who could bring some stability to the post 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union

Not the way I remember it …. ex KGB, old guard and a serious future problem.

At least on this side of the pond.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Posted by Frances IoM on 12/11/2022 23:47:46:
GeoThermal would mostly fit though there would need to be be pipework to push the water down to the hot rocks but there are relatively few places where this is economic.

But to make geothermal work they have to hydraulically fracture the rocks to let the hot water percolate. I'll go and wash my mouth out

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by blowlamp on 12/11/2022 23:25:40:

I actually couldn't care less that LNG is a fossill fuel, but with all the hysteria surrounding the use of fossil fuels, I thought I'd point out the hypocrisy.

…

Using terms like hysteria and hypocrisy show that Martin has already made up his mind so there's little point in explaining why he's wrong.

The human mind has two different ways of making sense of the world. One side is emotional and facts don't matter to it much: gut feel provides quick answers, no matter if they're wrong! The other is rational, which is hard work because we have to collect, filter and assess facts and evidence.

Rational thought doesn't lead to quick or comfortable answers, because the real world is complicated and nasty. Rational thought expects to get stuff wrong, and works painfully to correct mistakes. Unlike emotional thinking, rational thinkers know they might be wrong.

Emotional analysis is useful because it's quick. Attacked by a bear, it's necessary to decide what to do about it in a flash, and not to dither on ethical considerations. But provided there's time to think, rational analysis gets much better answers, perhaps deciding the best way to deal with bears is to build a fence, bury waste food, and make spears.

In other posts Martin has said he doesn't trust Authorities or the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. I conclude his view is emotional because that position requires him to ignore a great deal of evidence. Martin requires us to believe he's as likely to get the right answer as experts. Sorry Martin, but I have no faith in that.

It's hard to counter emotional beliefs. Patiently putting a lot of effort into explaining where the logic went wrong only results in the painful discovery that emotional thinkers don't care about logic. Mere facts are water off a duck's back when beliefs are emotional.

One way is to counter emotional positions is by fielding equally emotional alternatives, in hope the recipient will realise emotional thinking must be supported by more than imagination. In that vein, I assure Martin the world is being manipulated by a secret conspiracy of Women's Book Clubs. The International Sisterhood's goal is to emasculate men with woke. By banning fossil fuels males will have to stay at home and have their spirits crushed. Males who don't toe the line will be made into Beef Burgers immediately, and all males by age 40. Electric cars are just a way of fooling us into thinking escape is possible, but look out – they only travel 20 miles before the battery goes flat.

My challenge to Martin is to prove the WBC conspiracy doesn't exist. Nothing he says will convince me, because I know in my heart that it's all true…

Dave

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

That's a helluva imagination you got there Dave, but again, no hard facts, just another wall of made up waffle.

Martin.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

What worries me is that THEY are probably having same level of discussion as this ^^^

THEY being the people who have the power, but perhaps not the wit, to determine what will be done.

As I have mentioned twice already, the voice of well-informed reason seems to be incomprehensible to them.

.

MichaelG.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 13/11/2022 17:23:43:

What worries me is that THEY are probably having same level of discussion as this ^^^

THEY being the people who have the power, but perhaps not the wit, to determine what will be done.

As I have mentioned twice already, the voice of well-informed reason seems to be incomprehensible to them.

.

MichaelG.

I couldn't agree more.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

This is getting abusive, time for everyone to calm down.

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

Posted by blowlamp on 12/11/2022 23:25:40:

Maybe you can give an example of genuinely clean/green technology that doesn't start & end its story 'at the tailpipe', but rather starts at the beginning and concludes at the recycling centre.

​

I don't know why you're challenging myself and SOD to give examples of "waste valorisation" in particular, but in no particular order:

• RenewELP Wilton International, Redcar: Hydrothermal decomposition of post-consumer plastics which are unsuitable for mechanical recycling, to produce a naptha-like hydrocarbon blend which is then fed to another plant on the Wilton complex to replace "Fossil" petrochemicals.
• Recycling Technologies, Swindon: Similar premis to RenewELP (plastics waste to useful chemicals) but a different technology, have been focused on minturising the process into modular containers, so it can be installed at any site which needs the chemical feedstocks it produces, to recycle local plastic waste there.
• OCO Technologies, Leeds, Brandon, & Avonmouth: First commercial implementation of a technology using carbon dioxide from flue-gas to treat incinerator bottom ash and hazardous wastes from metal refining to produce a synthetic limestone material and insulated building blocks
• Carbon8, Projects Worldwide: Technology licencing company behind the technology used by OCO Technologies, run by the two University of Greenwich Professors who developed the technology, when I was last chatting to them they had been working on making the technology applicable to waste from Cement Kilns and Oil Refineries, to open up additional places where they can set up self-contained carbon capture units to reduce or eliminate emissions, whilst making useful products. I believe they've run successful trial plants with several steel mills in Germany and three cement kilns over two different continents.
• Croda, Ditton: Croda generally is ahead of the curve on "green" products because their original and core business is based on oleochemicals (plant and animal derived hydrocarbon chemistry). Specifically at Ditton, they have closed down an older plant which processed fishmeal at high temperatures to produce oils which were then used in high pressure reactions with hazardous chemicals, and pioneered new bioreactor technology to allow them to scale up to producing the same products as the old plant at near enough room temperature, by bacterial fermentation of flour milling waste followed by purification using a closed loop so even waste-water production is minimised.

I could go on but I would be starting to get into projects which aren't fully in the public domain, or where I've signed NDA's but it's been some time so I'm not clear what the exact line between "Stuff we've used in PR so it's fine to repeat" and "Commercially Confidential or Material Non-Public Information" is with it.

​​

Posted by blowlamp on 12/11/2022 23:25:40:

The point is that if one really believes the terror stories that we're destroying the planet in that '1 minute to midnight' kind of way, then all fossil fuel use should be ended now. The fact that 'Carbon Credits' are traded by corporations and the wealthy should tell you all you need to know with regard to how seriously they take this 'crisis'.

You've made a very sensible insightful point and a very silly one side by side here…

​

The first part of that paragraph is the bit i find silly, (and I think you know that you're using a reductio ad absurdum fallacy to imply we should simply do nothing), because:

"The point is that if one really believes the terror stories that we're destroying the planet in that '1 minute to midnight' kind of way, then all fossil fuel use should be ended now."

With all the specific language around climate removed can be paraphrased to:

"If one believes that there is a pending crisis which will put the future of humanity at risk in the next 50 years if we don't start to make meaningful changes towards averting it now… Then one should immediately flip a switch which will bring civilisation crashing down around us, but also stop the other crisis from happening 50 years hence"

We have to have a managed transition, to avoid social impacts of a similar order of magnitude to those threatened by global warming in the future, right now; that's not hypocrisy, just common sense.

​

However, I do agree (and a lot of green lobbyists and serious thinkers on decarbonisation would as well) that carbon credits are liable to exploitation and manipulation like any other tradable instrument, and are less effective than more straightforward measures like a direct tax on emissions.

There's definitely a lack of political will to act on something more straightforward which would reduce the ways to reduce the cost, and opportunities for green carpet-bagging.

Edited By Jelly on 13/11/2022 19:30:51

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

[Continued from above due to character limit]

Posted by blowlamp on 12/11/2022 23:25:40:

I actually couldn't care less that LNG is a fossill fuel, but with all the hysteria surrounding the use of fossil fuels, I thought I'd point out the hypocrisy. Does it matter to you that coal & oil are fossil fuels? I see that you mention this gas is normally flared, so how does that fit in with big business keeping emissions down?

With regards to flaring, they're businesses, which exist to make money and will do whatever is most profitable.

I think the practice of flaring gas is wasteful and hard to justify on a moral or technical level (although if the gas is coming up anyway, better that it is flared than just released as Methane with 10x greater global warming potential), but my opinions aren't going to change anything about the cold hard cash element which drives these businesses.

This is especially so because many of the producers (outside the USA) who are still actively flaring are State Oil Companies in low-middle income countries, which ALWAYS have a desperate need to maximise oil revenues, because they're propping up the economy of a whole country on their own.

​

More generally I must say that I don't understand what this supposed hypocrisy you keep referring to is meant to be; if you have something to say, say it rather than dancing around the point.

​

Posted by blowlamp on 12/11/2022 23:25:40:

The truth is that much of this gas is fracked, not flared, in the USA and it's only commercially viable to sell now that Russian gas has been removed from the loop, thus leaving much of Europe energy scarce.

It's true that there is significant shale-gas (and shale-oil) production in the US especially in the Permian, and it has been somewhat vulnerable to price fluctuations, but it's definitely not "only commercially viable to sell because of Russia".

Shale gas is part of the story of how the US has managed to suppress gas prices locally relative to other markets, whilst the widespread commercial failures of operators (which was focused on the Permian basin area again) was the result of a lot of small "mom and pop" E&P operators seeing an opportunity to grow by drilling new wells, and over-leveraging their businesses with high cost finance, with no financial cushion in place to account for a potential decline in demand; then experiencing a huge drop in demand due to the Pandemic.

​

In any case in this kind of context "Fracked" is something of a meaningless term… almost every active offshore well on the UKCS and in the Norwegian Sector will either have been fracked already, or will be fracked in its lifetime…

It's a process with nearly 40 years under it's belt, which was entirely uncontroversial for most of that time until a small number of greedy people started doing it inappropriately close to important groundwater aquifers to make ever smaller onshore wells viable.

The problem with fracking was never the process itself, but a combination of greed, inadequate regulation, worse enforcement, absent corporate ethics, and below par geological work.

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