Coal being phased out

[Oven ManParticipant @ovenman]

Posted by Russell Eberhardt on 21/02/2020 16:57:53:

Is it right to use land to produce biofuels when over 800 million people in the world are going hungry?

Russell

The move to biofuels is a good example of the law of unintended consequenses.

[David NobleParticipant @davidnoble71990]

Just to throw a little wood on the fire! I thought that I recently heard that a new coal mine has been given planning permission in Cumbria.

David

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Well put, Dave. The days of the old fogey energy luddites are numbered. Twenty years and most will be dead. Greta Thunberg is of the generation who will likely take over the mess that the last generations have made. Her generation are simply looking ahead and not liking what will happen if nothing is done about the situation.

Who is right – Trump or Thunberg – will be sorted out in the next few years. I think know it will be Greta, not luddite trump.

Investment world-wide is being withdrawn from new coal projects, China is building far more renewable energy generators than anywhere else in the planet – they now know about wearing face masks because of airborne particulates. Even Australians want their government to stop sticking their heads in the sand – they have had their ‘wake up call’ just recently – and stop new coal investment.

Even in the US, most states are quietly ignoring trump and building renewable replacements for coal fired electricity.

Climate change/global warming is just the latest and largest of the messes that humans have inflicted on themselves or the planet. Think DDT, foot and mouth, pesticide toxicity, nuclear accidents and a host of others. Just look at the destruction of habitats, loss of species, etc – all caused by human activity.

[Chris Evans 6Participant @chrisevans6]

Meanwhile power stations will be burning coal to produce our electricity. To kiln dry our wood, I just keep mine for years. It warms me many times, when cutting/splitting and stacking. Oh then I burn it.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

It seems that people whinging about climate change get much more airtime than the youngsters who come up innovative solutions to environment and climate problems. In the last 50-60 years that I have been paying attention there have been many warnings from science that have been overturned at a later date. I do feel slightly wary about the claims and counterclaims regarding climate change. Nature may well be up to the task of saving the planet but maybe humans will be eliminated for messing up this beautiful planet. In the man versus nature battle I will put my money on nature. Species loss has always happened before man arrived and made his presence felt. The end of the earth will be when the sun goes out, I doubt that mans activities will kill the planet but may change things somewhat.

Mike

[An OtherParticipant @another21905]

I must admit I read this thread, and was left wondering if it all makes any difference – where I live (somewhere in Europe), 90% of the populace burns wood for ALL heating. The wood is sourced from naturally grown forests, mostly oak and ash – when did you last see a naturally grown oak forest? There is NO replanting scheme, and although estimates vary, most of the wood is illegally cut – a huge proportion is taken by Austrian and Hungarian companies who export the wood illegally, after paying the appropriate kickbacks to local councils – this is all well-documented in the press and internet, and several reporters and investigators have been killed investigating this business – to make matters worse, these thieves only take the trunks – they remove all extraneous branches and the upper parts of trunks, and leave them to rot. I am sure I will receive comments rubbishing this – they will be wrong, it does happen, and there is no reputable authority here doing anything about it.

The remaining 10% of the population burns imported natural gas, at ever increasing prices.

A very small amount of coal is available, and perhaps it is as well only a small amount is available. If left outside to get wet, it develops a yellow powdery coat – I'm no chemist, but I have to wonder if this is sulphur. It certainly stinks of sulphur when it is burned.

So as you can imagine, the airborne pollution on a cold day has to be smelled to be believed, so its hard to believe that a small number of people using environmentally unfriendly heating systems in the UK will make much difference.

Apropos electric cars – can anyone explain clearly why generating electricity remotely and piping it to the vehicle is environmentally friendly? You will still use either fossil fuel burning or nuclear power stations to develop the amount of power needed for all the electric cars, yet society is gradually turning against both these methods of generation – or is it a case of 'out of sight, out of mind'?

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Dave asks “How many of us could afford to drive an internal combustion car if fuel cost ?10 a litre” – my 15yr old small Smart will with reasonable driving care do 15miles a litre (I get 10miles on hilly IoM over short distances) – here in SE England I can pay well over ?1 a mile for standing room only on an electric Railway journey of around 25miles – catch is the roads are equally crowded and parking costs prohibitive otherwise who would use the train.

[vintage engineerParticipant @vintageengineer]

There is no such thing as smokeless coal, they are just hiding the smoke and burning wood only releases the CO2 that the tree absorbed whilst growing. I shall continue to burn logs and coal!

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

As Neil has said it is only house coal that is being phased out Anthracite and Steam Coal should still be available.

Also according to old copies of ME artificial alternatives were regularly being recommended to modellers, particularly in the US.

Edited By Nick Clarke 3 on 21/02/2020 20:27:55

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

Duplicate post

Edited By Nick Clarke 3 on 21/02/2020 20:27:33

[Phil WhitleyParticipant @philwhitley94135]

Just to correct a few misconceptions here,

CO2 is heavier than air, it does not get to the upper atmosphere.

CO2 is at present 0.04% of the atmosphere, which is less than it has been for most of the last 10,000 years, At 180ppm, plants start to die off.

The claimed rise in temperature since 1900 is between 0.6 and 1.2 degrees depending on who you read.

More CO2 helps agriculture, it is pumped into commercial greenhouses at 1000ppm, and the plants use less water.

We have not had more hot days, and no one is willing to explain how global warming can produce cold days.

The planet is not hotter that it has ever been, this happened globally in the 1930's and it was much hotter during the medieval warm period (qv), and much colder during the little ice age (qv), which ended about 1860.

By any metric, in any area you choose, there is actually less extreme weather, and it is WEATHER, not climate.

The climate has always changed, there has been 40 deg of warming between now and the last ice age.

Nils-Axel Morner (qv) has just resigned from the IPCC where he was head of the sea level commitee, after submitting a report to the IPCC which they rejected. The report shows that sea level has been rising in a linear fashion all around Europe at the rate of about 1mm per year for at least the last fifty years, and that there is no rise at all in the pacific.

At the end of the last ice age, over a 10,00 year period, sea level rose over 400 feet.

We have been studying the polar ice caps since at least the mid 1800's and it is known that the amount of ice is cyclical with defined maximums and minimums The ice at both the poles has not gone beyond the minimum at any time. The ice at the north pole is floating sea ice, if it were all to melt, sea level would go down, as water expands when it freezes, and it therefore displaces more water than it actually contains. The numbers of polar bear have increased rapidly over the last 7 years, they do not live on the ice, they go onto the ice to hunt, and they have been very succesful, the more seal, the more polar bears.

Acidification of the seas? NOT POSSIBLE the sea floor consists of the alkaline remains of millions of years worth of sea creatures who turned CO2 into calcium and is deposited in layers thousands of feet thick. This acts as an acidification buffer, and it would have to be all dissolved before the alkalinity could change.

All this is factual simple physics, and taken from recorded data, and can be checked by anyone with a computer. Stop reading the headlines and start checking the facts. The global warming scam is beginning to unravel itself. In the tropical rain forests of the precambrian period, when there was the greatest explosion of life ever, and species became more numerous and diverse than ever before, the geological record tells us that atmospheric CO2 was at about 7000ppm. As far as plant life is concerned 400ppm is virtually starvation level. the planet has greened since the rise in CO2, even in semi desert areas. It could be seen as foolish for carbon based life forms, which is what all life on earth is, to mess around with the amount of available carbon.

[CHARLES lipscombeParticipant @charleslipscombe16059]

I have deep reservations about much that is said and reported on global warming. The current and often left-wing attitude to anyone that does not believe in global warming is that you are not just wrong, you are bad as well. Just try getting university grant these days to produce evidence against global warming. On the other hand you could easily be forced out of your university job because you hold the "wrong" views

As a confirmed cynic I note that while there is great attention paid to saving the planet through getting rid of items like plastic cups but total silence on the destruction of the amazon forest and the indonesian/borneo rainforests. The amazon is said to produce 16% of the worlds oxygen – worth bothering about? Or is this aspect of global warming just too difficult to deal with?

A look at the world atlas reveals the whole global warming hoax – there are much bigger land areas in the north of the planet than in most of the areas now popular for human habitation. If the planet does warm to any great extent the human population will just migrate to what are currently the frozen north parts of the planet.

Chas

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

To the last two posters, you wouldn't show your bare arses and balls in public. Please desist from showing your ignorance in public as well.

[Barnabas TaylorParticipant @barnabastaylor89961]

Posted by CHARLES lipscombe on 21/02/2020 22:54:53:

As a confirmed cynic I note that while there is great attention paid to saving the planet through getting rid of items like plastic cups but total silence on the destruction of the amazon forest and the indonesian/borneo rainforests. The amazon is said to produce 16% of the worlds oxygen – worth bothering about? Or is this aspect of global warming just too difficult to deal with?

A look at the world atlas reveals the whole global warming hoax – there are much bigger land areas in the north of the planet than in most of the areas now popular for human habitation. If the planet does warm to any great extent the human population will just migrate to what are currently the frozen north parts of the planet.

Chas

There is a great deal of fuss about the rain forest, it is just that the media is focussing on the fires and floods for the next few weeks.

The greatest threat from global warming is not the migration, it is the starvation. Currently, most of the worlds food is produced in a fairly narrow band of land either side of the equator. when this land heats up and becomes unsuitable for crops, the world will starve. The land that will be 'unlocked' by the warming is very low in the nutrients and minerals needed to grow food crops and will not be able to produce nearly the quantities we will need. Not to mention, the complete lack of infrastructure to house all the displaced people.

Climate change is not a hoax, it is a working theory and so it is often changed to suit the new data. That doesn't mean it isn't happening. We do not know if we are to blame for it but I would rather try to change society to consume less and become friendlier in the hope it reverses these dangerous trends. Would you rather be living comfortably in the future or fighting for survival while the 'hippies' say "I told you so"?

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Posted by fizzy on 21/02/2020 16:26:40:

Pendle Steam Boilers are developing an ell electric stationary steam boiler at the moment….doubt it will save the planet though!

Way back in the 30's I think (no I don't remember!) there was an article in ME about an electrically heated boiler, insulated electrode down the connected to live, boiler shell connected to neutral and away you go. I think it had an isolation transformer, but still sounds a bit dodgy. One of the electrical engineers at work reckoned that when they were out on site they would hammer 2 nails through a piece of wood, connect to the mains and use it for making tea

[Colin WhittakerParticipant @colinwhittaker20544]

Just to correct a few misconceptions here? Really?

** CO2 is heavier than air, it does not get to the upper atmosphere.

Ozone is heavier than air yet it loiters in the upper atmosphere providing ultraviolet radiation protection but that can't be happening?. CO2 is miscible in air so with a windless atmosphere, gravity would see a greater concentration at lower altitudes. It is a higher order problem of computational fluid mechanics to determine the altitudes where the CO2 ends up being distributed after agitation by the wind and weather.

High altitude CO2 is emitted by airplanes in a non trivial manner! And why does CO2 matter? Because it stops infra red heat radiation from the earth. That heat is trapped pretty much the same irrespective of the CO2 altitude.

** CO2 is at present 0.04% of the atmosphere, which is less than it has been for most of the last 10,000 years, At 180ppm, plants start to die off.
Wildly wrong (and the 180 ppm is the lower limit for plants to die off).

** The claimed rise in temperature since 1900 is between 0.6 and 1.2 degrees depending on who you read.
Increasing temperature melts the ice caps causing less sunlight to be reflected, more heat to be absorbed and more melting of the ice caps. This is a positive feedback loop that makes me happy to be in my 60s but sorry for my kids.
Even worse the rising temperatures are liberating methane from frozen gas hydrates so still more positive feedback.

The earth does have some negative feedback systems that try to stabilize the climate. The one we in the UK are most familiar with is the Gulf Stream. Paradoxically the increased Polar temperatures are reducing the heat flow from the Caribbean to the UK and then the Polar regions. this means that the UK gets colder weather (at least initially) as the earth warms.

** More CO2 helps agriculture, it is pumped into commercial greenhouses at 1000ppm, and the plants use less water.

Interesting but completely irrelevant.

** We have not had more hot days, and no one is willing to explain how global warming can produce cold days.

I keep on hearing of record monthly temperatures as reported by the Met Office. Are they wrong?

Seriously? How can you have a cold day with global warming? This sounds like an utterance from Donald Trump.

** The planet is not hotter that it has ever been, this happened globally in the 1930's and it was much hotter during the medieval warm period (qv), and much colder during the little ice age (qv), which ended about 1860.

 

Where do you pull your facts from?

That's enough from me. If I continue I'll only get more upset when the posting ends up too long to be uploaded.

Best regards all, Colin

Edited By Colin Whittaker on 22/02/2020 04:31:31

Edited By Colin Whittaker on 22/02/2020 04:34:14

Edited By Colin Whittaker on 22/02/2020 04:36:39

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Well, I'll leave all this stuff to the scientists who are experts in the field. And 96 per cent of them agree that manmade global warming is a problem. (And that percentage has been confirmed by numerous studies, beyond a doubt.)

The way internet armchair experts and politicians think they know more about science than actual scientists do is laughable. Then the first time they or a family member get seriously ill, they are straight off to the doctor/hospital for the latest in scientific life-saving treatment. No arguing about the validity of science then.

 

 

Edited By Hopper on 22/02/2020 06:15:06

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

The well established temperatures and gas concentrations are derived from all sorts of scientific investigations, so*’ll leave those as gospel (the figures from the real experts).

The notion that one even needs a “blanket” of CO2 to “insulate” the Earth from loss of heat is farcical.

The way this works is that the incoming insolation from our star mostly reaches the lower atmosphere and strikes the ground. Some is reflected (some back to space) and this is caused by the angle of the incident rays and the material the sunlight strikes – low angles and snow are the main causes of rays returning to space by reflection. When snow melts, the filth that was washed out of the sky by the clouds remains on the surface, markedly ‘greying’ the surface and affecting the reflective properties of the surface. While volcanoes add a lot of trash to the atmosphere at times, so does human activity. That sorts the reflection losses.

Now to the infrared radiation. When the sunlight strikes the surface much (most?) is absorbed as heat energy. All bodies emit infra-red rays if warmer tha Absolute zero (-273 Celsius), the Earth is no different and this radiation is clearly directed towards space.

Now the catch. All and every molecule of greenhouse gas can absorb this infra ray energy and then re-transmit it in all directions. This is the important part because half those random directions are back towards the suface and half out to space at lower altitudes. Clearly the more infrared rays that are absorbed by these molecules, the more infrared is redirected back to the surface, to be re-absorbed once more. So we have a situation where all nearly all sunlight reaches the surface and warms it but a greater amount of the heat emitted by the surface is collected and ‘thrown back’ towards the surface. The historical equilibrium is changed.

Main greenhouse gases are water (yes, clouds), methane and carbon dioxide. Ozone would be a greenhouse gas as it is not a regular shaped moecule, but as it is generated from oxygen by incoming high energy radiation from the Sun. The ‘layer’ of upper atmosphere ozone only occurs near the boundary of our atmosphere with space where it is useful to prevent those high energy rays reaching us. Less ozone layer means more UV rays at the Earth’s surface.

The ozone formed at low levels – mostly by human activity – causes pollution at low altitudes. Lightning produces some ozone, apart from the human pollution. The ozone at the boundary of our atmosphere will, by virtue of altitude, emit more infrared to space than will actually strike the ground.

Methane, is yet another strong greenhouse gas and may be connected to human activity, but perhaps (I don’t know) is not an important humanity-caused problem. Methane is produced by animals and bacteria which break down organic compounds – lots by farts from herbivores. Wealth of humans is often measured in how many cattle are owned; we are omnivores and raise cattle for food – both increase the methane emitted as ‘farts’. But set against that are the diminished wild-life herbivores that roam the planet.

The big problem will arise if the methane hydrate, currently trapped at the bottom of the oceans, is released to the atmosphere – by rising temperatures. That would very quickly disrupt the ‘feedback loop’ and create a further rapid rise in global surface temperature – possibly beyond that which is tolerable by humans. Not going to happen in the next few years but could end the reign of homo sapiens in the next (few?) millenia. I know, most couldn’t care a jot about anything more distant than next week!

[jimmy bParticipant @jimmyb]

Posted by Hopper on 22/02/2020 05:58:05:

Well, I'll leave all this stuff to the scientists who are experts in the field. And 96 per cent of them agree that manmade global warming is a problem. (And that percentage has been confirmed by numerous studies, beyond a doubt.)

The way internet armchair experts and politicians think they know more about science than actual scientists do is laughable. Then the first time they or a family member get seriously ill, they are straight off to the doctor/hospital for the latest in scientific life-saving treatment. No arguing about the validity of science then.

Edited By Hopper on 22/02/2020 06:15:06

Well said!

Its the same with the armchair engineers that know more than those of us that do engineering professionally….

Jim

[Anthony KnightsParticipant @anthonyknights16741]

What happens to the smoke that is not in "smokeless"coal?

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

I remember about forty years back these same scientists were telling us that we were heading for another ice age

Roy

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Posted by roy entwistle on 22/02/2020 08:54:16:

I remember about forty years back these same scientists were telling us that we were heading for another ice age

Roy

Historically, they were completely correct. One only needs to look back in history for the geological and other cycles which indicate regular periods of cooling and warming. But human interference with natural occurrences has only happened in very recent times – basically the last millennium, but at an increasing rate since the Industrial Age took hold.

It will happen, of course, but may be delayed until after the human race has destroyed itself – then back to more ‘natural’ cycles.🙂

[Nigel McBurney 1Participant @nigelmcburney1]

The uk is going to cripple itself ,with the various bans on coal and wood burning,i/c engined cars etc and stupid knee jerk reactions from our so called leaders,scienists love it all as it gets them loads of cash for research,yet the rest of the world just carries on ,more power coal generated in asia,rest of the world burning their forests to grow "green crops" billion of wood fires for cooking. The real problem the ongoing world population explosion,consuming vast quantity of food water and material. being brutal it will continue until some natural disaster wipes out vast numbers of inhabitants.the rest of the natural world tends to balance its population,unless mankind interferes, from insects to large mammals.Nature seems to balance itself so perhaps it may eventually balance the human population.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

People need to stop being so parochial and consider the whole world-wide picture. Unsustainable practices will eventually cease – unless we continue headlong towards oblivion. Only thinking about one’s self, and no further distant than next week, is like the proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the sand.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by roy entwistle on 22/02/2020 08:54:16:

I remember about forty years back these same scientists were telling us that we were heading for another ice age

Roy

Nope.

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