Before anyone starts nagging about the detrimental effects of the cement...Had I used CHB`s and concrete posts,that would have consumed a good few ton more than I used. The wall is really just,scaffold pole, glass,air and a relatively small amount of cement. Very light weight..Yet strong and like me....CHEAP.
No I won't pull you up on that, concrete is an extremely useful material and there are not really any better alternatives, plus the scale it is used at worldwide dwarfs what you are doing. The real CO2 issues are in its production as the by-product of burning irreplaceable resources namely oil and coal. We need a world that does not rely on combustion, it is achievable and has tremendous paybacks not least of which would be the severe reduction in world influence of the middle east and Russia, plus the enormous payback of cleaner air. No one is saying that every CO2 generating industry has to be eliminated, that's never going to happen, but burning hydrocarbons could be eliminated, even if we did it is too late to forestall the worst effects of what we have already burned, it's no longer about maintaining the status quo it's about limiting the damage.
I agree with that,but I`m not convinced that world leadership overall does. At least not in the way it levies,taxes and punishes the population with it`s guilt trip strategy. We have already discussed Solar..Instead of the UK Government encouraging people to become independent,they are about to remove the benefits of grid tie. An about turn in the WRONG direction and doesn't make sense going forward does it? Before, they tempted us with the carrot and stick method..They have now removed the carrot and are just using the stick. If you want to see how the people will react,look no further than whats happening in France..
Perhaps you would be happier returning to the stone age and living in a cave, without a campfire of course.
After one or 4 of our soiree`s,the depositable bottles pile up.. Where we live,you can`t just take them back and get your money refunded. Most of the wine,vodka bottles used for the wall were collected and delivered here by local restaurants,resorts that have no other alternative. This is another problem.. ALL bottles really should have deposit value but they do not. That means they are not cleaned and re used and that`s why I get them delivered to my house for free. I have a feeling that it`s cheaper for breweries and distilleries to make or buy a new bottle then to sterilize and reuse it.
Coal - specifically coke - is used to make cement in a continuous streaming chemical reduction processes whereby hot coke is mixed with coarsely-milled limestone in a constantly rotating kiln through which air is blown to ensure a high temperature - and to remove the waste products. Or at least that was the method employed during my father's time with Blue Circle as a works manager and ending us as a director . Oil would be totally unsuitable for this process and actually doesn't contain sufficient carbon. I agree with you in that we need to drastically reduce our reliance on carboniferous fuels and mineral oil in particular; we also need to plant many more trees worldwide to help offset CO and CO2 emissions. But mad schemes like banning livestock or planting huge wind farms are just a tad OTT in my view.
When I worked for Scottish Power (SSEB) we had about 7 or 8 gigawatt (GW) of generation capacity in Scotland that included Torness and Hunterston AGR Nuclear stations and the likes of the Longannet coal station which were all in the gigawatt or higher range, most of that was exported as we only consumed about 2 or 2.5 GW, now although Scottish Power is not the operator of all of Scotland's generation capacity we now have over 5 GW wind capacity in Scotland as of 2015 and we have pumped storage in Cruachan to help store some excess capacity, I expect we are still exporting a lot of that power to England through the interconnect that we were building when I worked for them. The company has announced that it is going 100% wind power something I would never have imagined 30 years ago. Switching to wind has created new well paid jobs, my nephew works on these turbines all over the country (England as well) he's been very lucky to get into that line of work. Using wind in the UK makes a lot of sense.
Regarding CO2 and cement I am well aware of the connection, my point was perhaps not clear the second sentence was not a statement about cement or concrete but about problems with CO2 itself and the primary largest man made sources of it, cement/concrete only accounts for about 5% of total world CO2 emissions, compared to burning coal and oil it's tiny.
I've made the point on here many many times that I view the potential loss of our advanced technological civilisation as an utter catastrophe, no power == no modern technology, and having a little bit of power is not enough there is a critical point in terms of global generation capacity below which we won't be able to do much of what we currently do now. Further, loss of access to resources or overconsumption of critical resources like certain rare earth elements will also render much of our modern technological world unsustainable. Climate change is just one of many reasons to stop wasting hydrocarbon resources through combustion. I don't believe that all solutions to these issues have to be 'green' in the traditional environmental sense, but I'm not going to object to 'green' solutions where they can help make a huge difference. I would still use nuclear, modern designs, not the old crappy cheap American PWR designs and I would still love to see Thorium reactors properly developed, but I still pin some hope on Fusion but it is probably still quite far away despite all the promising noises in recent years. In the meantime we have real problems that need to be fixed we can't just pray that fusion will make everything alright because it will definitely arrive too late.
It's a great industry, in the past you needed maintenance for power stations a lot of those jobs are gone but at least these new ones are replacing some of them.
"People may have to be moved away from high-risk areas as climate change makes flooding more likely and more severe in the UK, the government has said." Gove Environment Minister https://www.theguardian.com/environ...reat-people-moved-michael-gove-climate-change
The thing is Keith we already missed the boat, everything now is just damage limitation, we still need to do it though.
When you get to exploiting tar sands, you are to coin a phrase getting close to the bottom of the barrel, it's not so many more steps to the point where it costs as much to extract as it is actually worth.