Panorama: Go green or else!

On Tue, 06 Mar 2007 20:46:08 +0000
Simon Brooke wrote:

it will
be planned or catastrophic.

The latter. There's no political will for the former.

In some ways, a dread disease taking out ninetysomething
percent of humanity could be the least painful way.
Anything else is going to involve far more serious
conflict, as scarce resources become a matter of survival.
Us softies who have always been non-violent will be the
first to go.

On a purely selfish basis, I hope that's not in my
natural lifetime. But I certainly don't expect to
enjoy the comfortable old age of today's pensioners -
including those who have suffered in the recent first
round of pensions collapse[1].

Minor analogy: look at what's happened to cod in our seas.
Scientists warned of it in the 1980s, but politicians
came to a compromise between them and the fishermen.

[1] which I predicted more than 20 years ago, though I
didn't realise it would come quite so soon[2].
Once again, it's a numbers game.
[2] But it's a good thing it came so soon: bigger bubbles
are more painful when they burst[3].
[3] And the biggest bubble of all is human population.

--
not me guv

POHB wrote:
You don't need to fly to experience foreign travel.

Too right. Every time I've been to Scotland, I got there by car [1].
And I've travelled to Wales by unicycle.

[1] As a child going on holiday I travelled by whatever means my dad
thought best, which within Great Britain invariably meant car. The one
time I've been to Scotland as an adult there were 4 of us in the car,
which was going up there whether I was in it or not.

--
Danny Colyer URL:http://www.colyer.plus.com/danny/
Reply address is valid, but that on my website is checked more often
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine

Ambrose Nankivell wrote:

Roger Merriman wrote:
Peter Clinch wrote:
Anthony Jones wrote:
Travelling on a sleeper train/coach can solve the time problem.

The fact that the train/coach often turns out significantly more expensive
is pretty ridiculous though.
The Scotrail sleeper to Euston advertises as from £19. However, any
time I've actually needed to get down to the Smoke the /actual/ price
for me when I need it is always well into 3 figures :-(

I tend to take the plane by default now. Costs a bit more than a cheap
train ticket (but not a full price one), but I can walk to the airport
at this end, London City is more accessible to my folks' home than any
of the London termini and it takes under 90 minutes to get there.

From a green standpoint I would like to take the train but it's /soooo/
much bloody hassle and time and often ludicrously expensive. I started
flying when the railways were Shut For Rebuilding a few years back after
the Hatfield crash, and it was a sufficiently positive experience that
I've carried on.

yup i find it intency anoying that at best public transport will get me
to my folks in wales from hampton in 5 hours, by car its possible to do
it under 2 1/2 hours but 3 is common. a 5 hour trip is expeptional. too
many stops and changes saddly.

It certainly doesn't look that convenient for you, but I'd have to point
out that although http://transportdirect.info agrees with your 5 hour
time for public transport (of which an hour and 20 minutes is your
getting into central London, 2 and three quarters on the main train
journey, and an hour and a bit getting from the nearest town to where
you say your parents live), it states a 3 hour 8 minute driving time for
the journey, into which you'll have to add a 20 minute break, assuming
you care about not crashing into people.

A

the 5 hours is at best and frankly is in dream land. it requires.
getting every link, and at the end leaves me with fair walk (it hasn't
taken into account the hill if i attaully have any thing to carry. try
leaving after work say 7pm as i did, i got here at 9:50pm the earlest by
public transport was a 8hr trip leaving midnight and getting there at
8pm.

this is to my folks place, futher out from abergavenny, rember out there
its not 24/7 buses don't run much past 8pm. nor do they tie into the
rail network, so quite often you have to wait a hour for the next one...

rember this is journey by car that is almost big fast roads all the way,
even on the busy M4 that is the most of it, you mostly are at 70 or so.

transportdirect gives the same as my satnav which was 2hrs 50 mins,
which oddly was correct they normally both are a good bit out.

if its a good run as this was bar a bit of rain as i neared wales, then
i don't normally stop, unless tired or need to streach legs or what not.

after 3 i do tend to stop, but under no its not normally needed.

roger

Den 2007-03-06 21:46:08 skrev Simon Brooke :

in message , Erik
Sandblom
') wrote:

Den 2007-03-06 10:51:47 skrev Nick Kew :

It's a numbers game. The underlying problem is far too many
humans on Earth,

No, the problem (or the opportunity) is what those humans do. What if
people in rich countries decide to halve their car driving and meat
eating over five years, and switch to low-energy bulbs. That would
hugely
increase the number of people Earth can sustain, and it wouldn't be very
hard.

Nick's right, in my opinion. It doesn't matter how minimal their
lifestyle,
I don't think the planet can sustain a population of 6*10^9 humans very
long. Even if we all ate nothing but brown rice and lived in unheated
homes (and, on-topic, replaced all our motor vehicles with bicycles).


I've met this opinion before. Would George Monbiot "Heat" be a good book
to learn more about it, or do you have another suggestion?

I'm optimistic about what could be achieved, given the political will. We
already have an ambition to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% to 2020.
How about a parallel goal to have renewable energy count for 30% of EU
consumption by 2020? Solar electricity is a huge opportunity for North
African export. Efficient cables could take the power to Britain with
losses of only 10%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_t..._tower_designs
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/en...957908,00.html

Erik Sandblom

--
Oil is for sissies

Mark wrote:

Did anyone see this?

I didn't even try. The problem I have with Panorama these days is
that it has gone from being a flagship documentary programme to a
sort of half hour TV "you and yours". When you add in all the
trailers and previews, I always feel I have seen it already so
actually watching it would be a half hour wasted!

Peter



--
www.amey.org.uk

I drive to the Dordogne for hols with 3 kids, 550 miles from Calais.
Don't want to fly for environmental reasons. When we arrive we hardly
use the car. Total fuel and toll costs average £200 for the last 5
years we have been. Cost for rail travel from Stoke (between Birminham
and Manchester) is £640, not inlcluding transfer at the ends, shopping
trips for food whilst in France etc. So extra cost is about £450
(including saving on ferry cost but take car derpreciation costs from
this). I would love to do this but can't afford it.

About travelling to India by alternative transport. The reason the
environmnet is in a mess is because people do things becasuse they
can. Don't travel to India etc. if it is going to harm the planet.
Just because you can doesn't make it alright.

Tips. If it yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down, Saves
buckets of water and do it even if you don't have a water meter. Don't
shower every day - anyone done a study to see if it substainable for
everyone on the planet to have a shower in their house, let alone
substainable for them to use it every day?

Work colleagues have just got back from Switzerland. The worst ski
conditions on record. Possiblley caused by people flying to go skiing.
They are flying off again soon for another ski trip! Just becasue you
can afford it doesn't make it alright.

Den 2007-03-07 10:42:41 skrev nafuk :

Tips. If it yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down, Saves
buckets of water and do it even if you don't have a water meter.


Would you say this is a local, regional or global issue?

Erik Sandblom

--
Oil is for sissies

On 7 Mar, 00:47, (Roger Merriman) wrote:
Ambrose Nankivell wrote:
Roger Merriman wrote:
Peter Clinch wrote:
Anthony Jones wrote:
Travelling on a sleeper train/coach can solve the time problem.

The fact that the train/coach often turns out significantly more expensive
is pretty ridiculous though.
The Scotrail sleeper to Euston advertises as from £19. However, any
time I've actually needed to get down to the Smoke the /actual/ price
for me when I need it is always well into 3 figures :-(

I tend to take the plane by default now. Costs a bit more than a cheap
train ticket (but not a full price one), but I can walk to the airport
at this end, London City is more accessible to my folks' home than any
of the London termini and it takes under 90 minutes to get there.

From a green standpoint I would like to take the train but it's /soooo/
much bloody hassle and time and often ludicrously expensive. I started
flying when the railways were Shut For Rebuilding a few years back after
the Hatfield crash, and it was a sufficiently positive experience that
I've carried on.

yup i find it intency anoying that at best public transport will get me
to my folks in wales from hampton in 5 hours, by car its possible to do
it under 2 1/2 hours but 3 is common. a 5 hour trip is expeptional. too
many stops and changes saddly.

It certainly doesn't look that convenient for you, but I'd have to point
out that althoughhttp://transportdirect.infoagrees with your 5 hour
time for public transport (of which an hour and 20 minutes is your
getting into central London, 2 and three quarters on the main train
journey, and an hour and a bit getting from the nearest town to where
you say your parents live), it states a 3 hour 8 minute driving time for
the journey, into which you'll have to add a 20 minute break, assuming
you care about not crashing into people.

A

the 5 hours is at best and frankly is in dream land. it requires.
getting every link, and at the end leaves me with fair walk (it hasn't
taken into account the hill if i attaully have any thing to carry. try
leaving after work say 7pm as i did, i got here at 9:50pm the earlest by
public transport was a 8hr trip leaving midnight and getting there at
8pm.

this is to my folks place, futher out from abergavenny, rember out there
its not 24/7 buses don't run much past 8pm. nor do they tie into the
rail network, so quite often you have to wait a hour for the next one...

rember this is journey by car that is almost big fast roads all the way,
even on the busy M4 that is the most of it, you mostly are at 70 or so.

transportdirect gives the same as my satnav which was 2hrs 50 mins,
which oddly was correct they normally both are a good bit out.

if its a good run as this was bar a bit of rain as i neared wales, then
i don't normally stop, unless tired or need to streach legs or what not.

after 3 i do tend to stop, but under no its not normally needed.

roger- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Where my idea of an orbital railway (along the M25) would come in
useful. No need to head into Central London just to the boundary of
the M25 and then catch your subsequent train after taking the orbital
route to make the link, which should be frequent enough.

If that would cut say an hour off the travel time it would already
reduce the 5 hours to 4, making it more tolerable (given that the car
journey is around 3½ with the stop).

If you were able to carry your bike on all legs of the journey you
wouldn't even have a walk at either end. Get a battery-assisted bike
if the hill is too much for you but it's still a lot greener than
driving.

in message , Erik Sandblom
') wrote:

I'm optimistic about what could be achieved, given the political will. We
already have an ambition to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% to 2020.
How about a parallel goal to have renewable energy count for 30% of EU
consumption by 2020? Solar electricity is a huge opportunity for North
African export. Efficient cables could take the power to Britain with
losses of only 10%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_t..._tower_designs
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/en...957908,00.html

This is all, in my opinion, probably irrelevant. Yes, you can extract a
great deal of usable energy from solar, wind, wave, etc.

However, cutting greenhouse gasses by 30% may well be ****ing in the wind.
At some point in the warming of the globe the sea level starts to rise.
Most current arable land (where we grow food) is low lying. Also, as
temperatures rise, the temperate bands (in which much of our food grows)
shift towards the poles, and as they shift the actual usable land area
decreases. Also, carbon dioxide is extracted from the atmosphere at least
partly by being locked up in forests, and major areas of forest will be
badly affected by rising temperatures - the Amazon and Congo rain forests,
for example, may become savannah. Also, large quantities of methane are
trapped under permafrost, and may be released as the permafrost melts.

I don't have figures for any of this. People who do have figures don't
agree with one another. A lot of it is speculative - we simply don't know.

Buy my impression is that cutting human CO2 output by 30% or even 100% may
be too little too late. Processes have been set in motion which may be or
may become self-sustaining - it takes very little methane release, for
example, to cause more warming which in turn causes more methane release,
and as forests die the carbon that was stored in them is returned to the
atmosphere, again causing more warming leading to more forest death.

And it isn't as if global warming was the only problem, or even necessarily
the most significant. The collapse of biodiversity, the introduction of
new synthetic pollutants into the environment, the desertification of the
seas may all in the long term prove more significant in their impacts on
sustainable population than warming.

I know this is all very depressing. I'm simply glad I don't have children.
But the people who do have children and still behave as if the future of
the planet was not their problem really anger me.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

Den 2007-03-07 14:04:08 skrev Simon Brooke :

in message , Erik
Sandblom
') wrote:

I'm optimistic about what could be achieved, given the political will.
We
already have an ambition to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% to 2020.
How about a parallel goal to have renewable energy count for 30% of EU
consumption by 2020? Solar electricity is a huge opportunity for North
African export. Efficient cables could take the power to Britain with
losses of only 10%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_t..._tower_designs
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/en...957908,00.html

This is all, in my opinion, probably irrelevant. Yes, you can extract a
great deal of usable energy from solar, wind, wave, etc.

However, cutting greenhouse gasses by 30% may well be ****ing in the
wind.


Yes it may, and a climate feedback loop is a very real possibility.


But the people who do have children and still behave as if thefuture of
the planet was not their problem really anger me.


Which leads me to assert that we can reduce CO2 emissions by more than 30%
_without much strain_. Let's say the big emitters are electricity,
heating, agriculture and transport. If brown electricity could be replaced
by green solar as above, and wind power, those emissions could fall by
half. The other areas could be halved by building more passive houses [1],
eating less meat, flying less, driving less, and using more green fuels.
So there we have CO2 reductions of 50% in whatever time it takes to roll
out the African solar power as mentioned above. Say ten years.

People then talk of economic upheaval, but people already change careers
several times in their lives. Market liberalisation, global trade and
outsourcing mean that most industries are already in constant upheaval.
Fewer aviation and auto jobs will simply translate into way more rail and
cycle industry jobs, as well as fantastic new industries like IT which we
haven't dreamed of yet.

Erik Sandblom

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house

--
Oil is for sissies