Properly used, wood is a reasonable source of heat. It's a renewable resource that is carbon neutral and good seasoned firewood burns pretty clean in a modern sealed wood stove. The nasty smoke often associated with fireplaces is often due to burning green wood, scraps of lumber that are painted or treated, or other random garbage. A lot of people simply don't know any better.
Burning wood ?
I was in a hotel in France that burned wood for their heating and showers, they used aprox. one tree per two days.
That tree took 40-60 years to grow.
Do the math. Unless you find trees that grow substantial amounts of wood within a few years it is not a really good alternative.
Burning wood ?
I was in a hotel in France that burned wood for their heating and showers, they used aprox. one tree per two days.
That tree took 40-60 years to grow.
Do the math. Unless you find trees that grow substantial amounts of wood within a few years it is not a really good alternative.
The other point is that many cities in the UK are gearing up to ban domestic wood heaters (and/or closely specify what fuel can be burnt in them) due to the particulate pollution they emit. Such pollution from coal fires in the 1940s/50s caused the infamous "pea souper" fogs which killed thousands, and lead to the introduction of "smokeless coal".
Burning wood ?
I was in a hotel in France that burned wood for their heating and showers, they used aprox. one tree per two days.
That tree took 40-60 years to grow.
Do the math. Unless you find trees that grow substantial amounts of wood within a few years it is not a really good alternative.
How much natural gas does it take to heat a comparable hotel and how long did that take to form?
Burning wood ?
I was in a hotel in France that burned wood for their heating and showers, they used aprox. one tree per two days.
That tree took 40-60 years to grow.
Do the math. Unless you find trees that grow substantial amounts of wood within a few years it is not a really good alternative.
$4k catalysation system needed to clean the air
Everywhere on earth within an hour, yeah right.
I flew yesterday, checkin required to arrive two hours early:
Checkin, luggage checkin, customs, wait, boarding at gate entering plane: 2 hours 15 minutes
Flight took 3 hours 15 minutes
Checkout wait for luggage to arrive, bags, customs, airport: 1 hour
So efficiency 50% wait time and protocol total three hours, flight time three hours total 6 hours.
Yes, that is IS' and Al quaida's greatest accomplishment: make flying a long and tedious process.
This is something that has bothered me all along. Al Quaida unequivocally won, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in causing tremendous disruption, fear, and an overall great reduction in our personal freedoms. The few thousand people killed on 9/11 were but a drop in the proverbial bucket. The buildings and airplanes can be replaced, the economic cost directly from the attack was minimal in the grand scheme of things.
The freedom is gone forever, the disruption and inconvenience will have lasting costs through the foreseeable future, the changes referred to as the "post-9/11 world" are permanent and the costs of the resulting wars in both money and lives absolutely dwarfs the attack. Yet people seem completely blind to this and absolutely oblivious to the fact that the only effective fight against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized and continue on with life as usual. Ignore the bully and eventually they will give up, because a fight is precisely what they want.
BTW, daily highs often don't get above freezing in the winter, and two feet of frost will penetrate the ground, though global warming has changed that. I don't think we got more than 6" of frost these past few winters.
Global warming caused my lawn to be deep freezed well beyond 1m last 4 seasons and almost 1.5m of snow and cold as hell for weeks! Season 5 it rained at Christmas!
Global warming caused my lawn to be deep freezed well beyond 1m last 4 seasons and almost 1.5m of snow and cold as hell for weeks! Season 5 it rained at Christmas!Conspiracy theorists love to use this silly argument, but really "global warming" would more correctly be called "global climate shift". The average temperature of the earth is indeed rising, the polar ice is melting and sea levels are rising, this is well documented and easily measured. The fact that the temperature in your tiny little corner of the earth has been lower recently says nothing to contradict this. It is only a data point that conveniently supports your existing confirmation bias.
Conspiracy theorists love to use this silly argument, but really "global warming" would more correctly be called "global climate shift". The average temperature of the earth is indeed rising, the polar ice is melting and sea levels are rising, this is well documented and easily measured. The fact that the temperature in your tiny little corner of the earth has been lower recently says nothing to contradict this. It is only a data point that conveniently supports your existing confirmation bias.
Well, we can agree to differ on climate change, but also to agree that oil is an incredibly useful substance and that we need to leave some for future generations. That's why I think we should put more effort into advanced nuclear engineering. We know that safer and less polluting forms of nuclear energy are possible, and may not even be all that difficult to engineer. The factors holding us back on this are the inertia of the financial backers, who want to only build tried and tested (but unsafe and polluting) designs like the PWR. Also, the religion-like obsession of the Greens with wind energy, in spite of its self-evident limitations.
As said we'd only need to divert a small part of the money stream out of these massive enterprises to test out a LFTR, and I think once we had one working that would be the turning point and the money would start flowing into that sector, bigtime. Once accomplished, market forces will do the rest and LFTR becomes the world standard power source, except perhaps for regions with ample hydro or geothermal resources.
Nuclear is a good option but LFTR is still 30 to 40 years away from commercial deployment
Nuclear is a good option but LFTR is still 30 to 40 years away from commercial deploymentNuclear is a very dirty and unsustainable option.
Also, 30-40 Years away translates as "not feasible with current technology" :
https://www.xkcd.com/678/
"It has not been conclusively proven impossible" -> Only 25 Years
Yes. Engineers like to talk about nuclear because on paper, it is very enticing. But in reality, the economic and political hurdles are too great - in part due to safety and long term toxicity issues. Because of this it is gradually fading out in the West.