Climate Change

Windmills don't help climate change.

 

That is one of the reasons I'm trying to change myself, as it is a lot easier than convincing others. I honestly can't see how taking this and other issues onboard and tweaking my life to some extent will do me any harm?
Small simple changes in everyday life of individuals can go a long way.
We need to start somewhere..

 

Pretty much correct. Same with Solar. Like any moving machinery, they start to deteriorate as soon as they are used*, and need replacing in part or in full after 15-25 years (depending on how well they were made) due to efficiency drop off, and therefore more materials need to be mined/shipped/made.

The king of the hill is still Nuclear, as it's still one of the cleanest methods of power. But like diesel engines, the government heard it off a guy on the internet they were bad/dirty, so don't like building new ones.

* Improvements are being made with every generation of windmill/solar panel.

 

I worked for a couple of years for Nuclear Power, at Hartlepool power station,the thing that worried me was, why there weren't any birds around the site, as it's on the coast you would expect to see seagulls but they all kept well away from the place, it makes you wonder if they know more than us.
PS It's now French owned and we know how much they hate us.

 

I have that function on my car and I have a little button on the dash to switch it off. Only downside is that you have to turn it off every time you start the car as it re-sets itself once you stop the engine.
Wessa

 

Ok let’s throw a couple more maybe issues here.
1) we have to now install condensing boilers in our country, has anyone conducted a scientific study into what damage to the environment is caused by all the acidic water being introduced to the water table?
2) wind farms, has any scientific study been conducted to determine what nature firstly produced the wind for that the said farms use.
Then after the farms have spent the usefulness of the wind produced, what does nature do to combat the the distribution of pollen and other factors that rely on wind.
3) Geo thermal which is an up and coming energy source, the core of our planet controls itself with the occasional volcanic eruption.
What happens when we remove a huge amount of heat from our core.

I’m not saying these are all contributors to our really strange weather conditions we seem to be suffering from over the last few years but maybe the V8 is not totally to blame!

Food for thought?

 

But that’s the same thing I’m talking about earlier.

Newtons law, every action has an equal an opposite reaction.

It doesn’t matter whatever you look at, your tidal power.

You remove the effects of the waves, what happens instead, hydropower from blocking a river with reservoir, what did that river do before it was blocked..

Fuck it I’m still gonna run my V8 until I can’t anymore.

The future is only two ways electricity powered by nuclear or hydrogen, that’s it!!!!

 

Deep shit happens. The planet loses it's magnetic field then loses it's
atmosphere. No surviving that.

 

Exactly, Newtons law.
Whatever we do we’re boloxed, harsh but true the greenies always have an answer without reprocussion but there’s always a reaction to whatever we do

 

Our coastline is packed with tidal races. From the Pentland Firth to Corryvreckan and between every Hebridean Isle via Strangford to the Solent.
Nor should we be too timid about nuclear. Unlike Japan we are geologically stable and have plenty of disused coal mines in which to safely store and remotely monitor spent fuel. In the popular imagination it shrieks Hiroshima but is better thought of a giant steaming kettle for driving generating turbines.
It is no accident tsunami is a Japanese word. Coastal locations provide cooling water - the Fukushima error was a 10m sea wall being breached by a 13m wave and knocking out the emergency cooling system - everything else worked perfectly. Stunningly the possibility had been foreseen over 3 yrs earlier based on evaluation of an 1896 tsunami.

False economy? The last ‘biggie’ to hit the UK was about 20m in 6100BC when a chunk of Norway slid down and slapped E Scotland with something that would have taken out most coastal habitation from Newcastle to Lerwick......which puts a well protected power station into context.........albeit the North Sea was then a boggy delta of the Rhine and its tributaries the Meuse, Thames etc.

 

Great question, and similar to one I've been thinking about asking. I think it is the whole big picture we need to be concerned about. Climate change is real, and it is something we need to be taking action on to limit or reverse the human impact. Will it make a difference if I give up my motorbikes? A drop in the ocean, but the ocean is just a lot of drops. Maybe if we all do something, but I suspect it needs to come from governments to drive the required changes. I don't think, as individuals, we have the motivation or that nearly enough of us care a fig.

I'm lucky enough to have a good sized garden, and have planted 11 trees, 3 of which are pretty big now (birch, ash and a conifer), with an oak not far behind. A small attempt to slightly offset my footprint. But in that time, neighbours have cut down trees and hedges, and concreted over their ground to park more cars, so I've basically been pissing in the wind. My drop in the ocean has been evaporated.

But it's the whole attitude of screw you that I think snuffs out any hope I have (I'm by nature a pessimist anyway). I cycle quite a lot, and that's when it really hits me what people think about the environment. The tons and tons of rubbish that lies in the verges, hedges and ditchs of our countryside roads beggars belief. Go to a beauty spot after the families have gone home from their day out, and you'll see how much they've cared. Taken their selfies and left their wrappers and bags, cans, plastic bottles and (too literally) throw-away barbecues.

So there is a huge education required about the environment; the air, the sea, the rivers, countryside and wildlife. All of it. If people care about the small stuff; the litter, leaving less of a stain, making their footprint smaller, their impact a little less. Maybe these tiny little drops will start to add up. But I'm not hopeful.

 

Geo-thermal power doesn't get anywhere near close enough to the core of the planet. It just utilises the relatively constant temperatures (10-16 degrees) near the surface (10's of metres at most).

It's possible the ground temperature may be affected locally if it's over utilised, but there is no way we could affect the actual temperature of the earth's core. We really are that insignificant to the planet itself (everything dep below our feet). Drill deep enough, the rock becomes soup, drills melt, and would be just too hot to use in any significant way.

None of the renewables that we have are an answer on their own. It's got to be a mixture of them all. None of which are great. Though it should be noted that solar does have the potential to deliver 100% of the worlds power needs, the problem is with efficiency of panels, infrastructure and storage.

Fun fact: Hydro power is the most efficient power generator, at up to 90% efficiency. Nuclear is also about 90%, Fossil fuels can only get to 50% at best, solar panels at 25%, wind turbine about 40% in ideal conditions.

As for the problem with nuclear, we don't actually need to use uranium. There is an alternative, thorium, but nobody wanted to use it because it couldn't be weaponised. It's cleaner, less waste, and safer to use. But weapons make money (as a note, reactor uranium is up to 10% enriched, weapons grade uranium is about 85-95% enriched).

If they ever sort of sustainable Fusion power, then we're sorted, as it uses an isotope of water, and there is no nasty waste.

 

Actually a bit deeper and a bit hotter (but still nowhere near the core ). We have a "Hot Rocks" project down here that's been on and off for years and recently restarted - Hot Rocks

Also just off Hayle there's the "Wave Hub" to enable wave/tidal experiments to take place (basically an under-water socket), but has been embarrassingly under utilised (yet to have anything plugged in AFAIK)

 

I may ‘well’ no pun intended be wrong but I’m sure there are many geo thermal wells going down a few kilometres,
Now when they become ever more hungry for heat power that may become tens of kilometres down.

All my point was, whatever we take from nature it seems to pay us back badly, only my thoughts, not proven science

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/06/dri...-first-deep-geothermal-electricity-plant.html

 

It was not a racist post, just a point of view of many people, but if you are offended I'm sorry and will delete them.

 

just curious, at what depth would the core start to dissipate heat?. 10k has been mentioned as a possible drill depth now, and would it be 1 well at ? Depth Or 10 wells at? Depth.

I’m really curious as the only real safe, with the least effect to the environment that I’ve looked at seems to be Hydrogen fuel cells.

 

The simple answer is......it depends. The Earth’s mantle has various hot spots along the edges of tectonic plates or like Iceland (.below) where there is a hot outflow.


This is not the same as Heat Recovery where you bury water pipes a couple of metres down where solar radiation (not geothermal) keeps things a constant few degrees above variable surface temperature and pre-heats your water supply thereby saving fuel costs.