It's getting hot in here!

[vikingTON]

Just now, jamamafegan said:

 

I disagree with this, I would say that humans definitely have tarnished earth to an extent. Before us ecosystems were more harmonious. Since we arrived on the scene we have exploited the earth for all its worth. It is widely believed that the megafauna that lived alongside early humans were wiped out by said humans. The creatures of the Ice Age, also wiped out by humans. The rate of which we wiped out animals so quickly leads to the conclusion that we were hunting for the thrill as well as to survive. The cave paintings depict great battles with massive beasts which were likely stories people could share with one another, a badge of honour. We became brilliant at hunting, then started cultivating the land, then the extraction of fossil fuels…and this has had consequences for the rest of the animals we share the world with.
 

 

If hunting was the principal cause of the extinction of megafauna, then Africa wouldn't have the largest surviving group of them on any continent. The hippo and rhinoceros (among others) are megafauna that didn't die out despite hundreds of thousands of years of competition with humanids. The naïve species of the Americas and Australasia are a different story. But the abrupt climate shifts both during and immediately after the last Ice Age - none of which were caused by humanity - clearly played a significant role in the reduction of megafauna groups globally.

This points to the reality - there was no inherent harmony between species before human civilisation developed. It wasn't just tens of millions of years of ecological stability, then a comet wipes out the dinosaurs, then we get another stable system until mankind finishes it off. It is a system of constant population surges and collapses and environmental changes that led to extinction of ill-equipped species.

Life on Earth is arbitrary and brutal enough in its own right regardless of whether humans were around to either observe or interfere with it.  

[SuperSaints1877]

2 minutes ago, virginton said:

Hunterston nuclear plant is about a dozen miles south of the Clyde Riviera, which made me instinctively wary of nuclear power, but it clearly has to form part of the mix. The trade-offs between no nuclear and tolerating it are clear and Germany is finding that out the hard way this year. 

We should also continue to increase wind energy (the turbines behind Greenock have had precisely none of the negative impacts the NIMBY brigade claimed), and also look to smaller-scale hydro. Greenock was powering some of its mills using the Cut 200 years ago, yet apparently it's now impossible to use hydro power for anything unless you have Norway levels of rain/elevation or the Alps. Every stupid wee village burn in the country should be driving a generator and storing that energy locally. It does not require the approval and ownership of a multinational oil conglomerate to do this. 

Out of interest what is the break even point on these wind turbines? I am very pro renewable energy. It would be great to see a breakdown of install and maintenance costs vs the return. 

We certainly should be exploiting wind, wave and hydro in this country. It’s a no brainer.

I’ve stayed away from solar at home in Scotland. Friends of ours when we lived down south installed solar panels and got a great feed in tariff, but we moved back home at that time. I think they have done really well out of it. I must ask them how much longer the panels will be viable as I’m assuming they might need replacing at some point.

A lot of new builds are now installing solar panels which is great to see. Surely someone can come up with affordable roof tiles that could be deployed for people planning on roof repairs. 

If we were to move again and had the funds I would certainly be looking at a passive house. 

 

[jamamafegan]

I was meant to post this earlier as well, these guys make brilliant videos. This is a good one about nuclear energy.

[BFTD]

There's certainly an effort being made to change the image of nuclear power - a lot of people who actually know what they're talking about making the case that nuclear was never as unsafe as events like Chernobyl and Fukushima have made people believe, and it's even safer now than it used to be. I saw a piece on Three Mile Island recently which pointed out that, despite the accident there being remembered as a disaster, there's been no abnormal increase in health issues in the local population. Despite all the (reasonable) concern about the storage of nuclear waste, apparently it takes up a remarkably small amount of space and could easily be managed for the foreseeable future of our species. Considering the urgent need for alternative sources of power, these seem like very pertinent points.

Unfortunately, none of this takes the irresponsibility of politicians into account. America still doesn't have a national site for the safe storage of nuclear waste, despite decades of promises, and the major nuclear incidents that we've had so far can all be traced back to poor management. There's nothing to indicate that governments are any more trustworthy now when it comes to regulating the setup and operation of nuclear plants. When it matters, saving money on operating costs will still take priority over safety.

As that's unlikely to change, we'll probably just have to get used to the idea that, every now and then, contamination is just going to happen, and the lower-class people who live downwind will have to live with the increased risk of cancers and birth defects. Fun.

[Newbornbairn]

1 hour ago, virginton said:

The most recent evidence points to the opposite conclusion. It was in fact dramatic climactic shifts in the very recent past - the Younger Dryas cooling; the 8.2 kiloyear event; the ending of the 'green' Sahara - that either gave early agriculturalists an edge over hunting and gathering methods, or compelled hunter-gatherers to adjust their techniques to survive. 

For example, the Sahara turning from a savannah into a giant desert - within the past 6000 years or so - made the Nile River valley the crucial food resource in north-east Africa, around which sedentary life and (much later) agriculture developed in that region. Arabia was also much wetter and more fertile in human prehistory - as this changed, the Fertile Crescent became more important as a region of viable settlement. Climate change is central to the development of civilisation, as well as its crashes (including that of the medieval Norse settlement of Greenland).

For information on this I couldn't recommend highly enough the Tides of History podcast series by Patrick Wyman, who is putting together all the most recent scholarship on the prehistory of human civilisation.

It's a question of scale. Here's the 8.2 kiloyear event -

 

That's a 3.3 degree drop over 150 years. Prior to the Holocene we're seeing huge swings. Relatively speaking it's been stable for 10,000 years and things like the desertification of the Sahara were relatively local events - albeit with huge effects on humanity.

 

The point being, this relatively stable period allowed society and civilisation to develop. Had the huge temperature changes continued, humans may well have remained at the  nomadic level with tribes flinging shite at each other. That's how fragile the ecosystem that supports us is. 

Edited July 29, 2022 by Newbornbairn

[renton]

2 hours ago, BFTD said:

There's certainly an effort being made to change the image of nuclear power - a lot of people who actually know what they're talking about making the case that nuclear was never as unsafe as events like Chernobyl and Fukushima have made people believe, and it's even safer now than it used to be. I saw a piece on Three Mile Island recently which pointed out that, despite the accident there being remembered as a disaster, there's been no abnormal increase in health issues in the local population. Despite all the (reasonable) concern about the storage of nuclear waste, apparently it takes up a remarkably small amount of space and could easily be managed for the foreseeable future of our species. Considering the urgent need for alternative sources of power, these seem like very pertinent points.

Unfortunately, none of this takes the irresponsibility of politicians into account. America still doesn't have a national site for the safe storage of nuclear waste, despite decades of promises, and the major nuclear incidents that we've had so far can all be traced back to poor management. There's nothing to indicate that governments are any more trustworthy now when it comes to regulating the setup and operation of nuclear plants. When it matters, saving money on operating costs will still take priority over safety.

As that's unlikely to change, we'll probably just have to get used to the idea that, every now and then, contamination is just going to happen, and the lower-class people who live downwind will have to live with the increased risk of cancers and birth defects. Fun.

For nuclear power, there is a lot of potential in terms of the Small Modular Reactor technology. Rolls Royce are currently in the hunt for sites in England to establish these. In truth, what RR call SMRs are not what most academics and engineers who've worked on the concept previously would define them as - the RR reactor design has a much higher thermal output than most of those previous designs.

Still though, the idea is that by applying factory manufacturing techniques to the various parts of the reactor assembly you increase the overall safety of the design since the various specifications and tolerances can be better adhered to in a factory setting with minimal variance. The relatively small thermal output means a higher safety margin from passive cooling techniques. Mass manufacturing also increases flexibility and decreases overall cost. Also means far less time spent during construction: they are quoting a 2 year setup vs. the 10 for a traditional Sizewell C type reactor.

RR also do have a good track record with this size of PWR (Pressurised Water Reactor) given it's of a scale that has been used on UK Submarines now for 50 odd years.

Against that the thermal output of each SMR is roughly a quarter of that of a Sizewell type core. So you would either need to operate 4x as many cores in one site to match Sizewell, or have a more local (the original intent of the SMR concept way back was to have a local reactor for each town) distributed reactors dotted across the country.

You would be talking about a very disruptive technology in the nuclear space, and a massive acceleration of the number of reactors available, certainly in the western world. It will require a whole new regulatory framework to enable it (https://www.castletownlaw.com/papers/a-new-regulatory-approach-for-smrs) and there will be concerns at proliferation since it will be far easier to buy reactor components in full or in part from factories.

Edited July 29, 2022 by renton

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Woke brigade.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62323048

Edited July 29, 2022 by Theroadlesstravelled

[ICTChris]

Hot today.

[Mark Connolly]

6 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Hot today.

 

[Leith Green]

1 hour ago, ICTChris said:

Hot today.

BBC weather says it feels like 29 at my gaff.

In fact it feels like the surface of the sun.

Christ knows what it must be like in London. My sis is in Bath, says it's horribly hot, day and night.

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

43 minutes ago, Leith Green said:

My sis is in Bath

P&B rules, pics or GTF.

[ICTChris]

Spent this morning at the beach, then this afternoon clearing the garden and hauling bags and bags of it to the tip. 

Absolutely roasting.

[101]

2 hours ago, ICTChris said:

Hot today.

Taps aff thread for this pish

[DA Baracus]

Far top hot today, and was far too hot yesterday. Looks like being far too hot tomorrow too.

[Stellaboz]

My app says 25 in Dundee today. 25 is prime summer weather, unlike the 33 I've had for a few days, and continue to for the foreseeable future. 

Enjoy your chilly 25.

[coprolite]

On 29/07/2022 at 10:51, SuperSaints1877 said:

Out of interest what is the break even point on these wind turbines? I am very pro renewable energy. It would be great to see a breakdown of install and maintenance costs vs the return. 

 

 

 

Somewhere between 10-50 years depending on a lot of variables, wind speed, direction, electricity price, size, location etc etc. 

George Osborne already did massive damage to investor confidence when he unlawfully scrapped a feed in tarrif for solar, meaning that government assurances on future prices are worth nothing. 

[Venti]

30 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

Far top hot today, and was far too hot yesterday. Looks like being far too hot tomorrow too.

^^^ Bobby Drake

[Empty It]

30 outside and I've agreed to play 5s. I'm a fucking idiot.

[Bairnardo]

31 minutes ago, Stellaboz said:

My app says 25 in Dundee today. 25 is prime summer weather, unlike the 33 I've had for a few days, and continue to for the foreseeable future. 

Enjoy your chilly 25.

Do you live abroad mate? Should have mentioned before now

[101]

1 hour ago, DA Baracus said:

Far top hot today, and was far too hot yesterday. Looks like being far too hot tomorrow too.

Nonsense it's glorious.