David Hansen wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:32:13 +0100 someone who may be The Natural
Philosopher wrote this:-

Especially since contraction and convergence features in the article
quite significantly.

Nice try. However, in the 13MB download from
http://www.withouthotair.com, which is the book we are discussing,
it is only mentioned once. That one mention is, "If we subscribe to
the idea of ‘contraction and convergence’, which means that all
countries aim eventually to have equal per-capita emissions, then
Britain needs to get down from its current 11 or so tons of CO2 per
year per person to roughly 1 ton per year per person by 2050. This
is such a deep cut, I suggest the best way to think about it is ‘no
more fossil fuels’."


I haven't read it, but a quick skim has already raised some points.
I wonder how those who have promoted this book will react to the
following extract from it?

"Mythconceptions

"'There is no point in my switching off lights, TVs, and phone
chargers during the winter. The 'wasted' energy they put out
heats my home, so it’s not wasted.'

"True for a few people, and only during the winter. False for most.
If your house is being heated by electricity through ordinary bar
fires or blower heaters then, yes, it’s much the same as heating the
house with any electricity-wasting appliances. But if you are in
this situation, you should change the way you heat your house.
Electricity is high-grade energy, and heat is low-grade energy. It’s
a waste to turn electricity into heat. Heaters called air-source
heat pumps or ground-source heat pumps can deliver 3 or 4 units of
heat for every unit of electricity consumed. They work like
back-to-front refrigerators, pumping heat into your house
from the outside air.

For the rest, whose homes are heated by fossil fuels or biofuels,
it’s a good idea to avoid using electrical gadgets as a heat source
for your home – at least for as long as our electricity is mainly
generated from fossil fuels. The point is, if you use electricity
from an ordinary fossil power station, more than half of the energy
from the fossil fuel goes sadly up the cooling tower. Of the energy
that gets turned into electricity, about 8% is lost in the
transmission system. If you burn the fossil fuel in your
home, more of the energy goes directly into making hot air for you."




I have already pointed that out to the author: that if electric heating
from non fossil is the least carbon way to heat, saving electricity that
generates heat is less relevant.

His points, that in fact heatpumps are even better, and that
inadvertently gernerating heat which may *not* be where you want it,
when you want it, is valid: we agree to differ on this.

Its not a huge pont though.

As he says. a lot of littles make a little.

A complete switch to CFL bulbs probably saves far less than e.g. cutting
out one bath a week or somesuch or just going to Tescos once a
forthinght instead of twice a week.