There seems to be a lot of promotion at the moment of socalled green
techs that have little or no hope of meeting expectations. At the same
time, technologies that actually do pay their way are not even
mentioned in government publications.

Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical, or perhaps not cynical enough... lets
spin this one and just see what happens. Lets say the govt wants to
back the interests of big businesses, including power generators. To
achieve this one needs to discredit green tech in the public eye. How
better to do that than to promote assorted dead ducks and let the
critics rip into them all over the country. This achieves 3 political
objectives in one go:
1. power companies will support and vote for you
2. consumers will too, as they think youre being green and trying your
best to promote green tech
3. the almost credible face of green techs today will be knocked back
by several years, thus mass adoption of money saving home gen techs wil
not occur. This is 'good' because if it did occur, massive tax income
losses would follow, and job losses in generation and distribution.
Both of these would make govt fiscal policy look a lot less succesful.

Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.


NT

wrote in message
ups.com...
....
Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.

I think it is like ripping up cast iron railings in WW2: It wasn't any real
use, but it made people feel involved.

Colin Bignell

wrote:
There seems to be a lot of promotion at the moment of socalled green
techs that have little or no hope of meeting expectations. At the same
time, technologies that actually do pay their way are not even
mentioned in government publications.

Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical, or perhaps not cynical enough... lets
spin this one and just see what happens. Lets say the govt wants to
back the interests of big businesses, including power generators. To
achieve this one needs to discredit green tech in the public eye. How
better to do that than to promote assorted dead ducks and let the
critics rip into them all over the country. This achieves 3 political
objectives in one go:
1. power companies will support and vote for you
2. consumers will too, as they think youre being green and trying your
best to promote green tech
3. the almost credible face of green techs today will be knocked back
by several years, thus mass adoption of money saving home gen techs wil
not occur. This is 'good' because if it did occur, massive tax income
losses would follow, and job losses in generation and distribution.
Both of these would make govt fiscal policy look a lot less succesful.

Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.


NT

Sounds like a good script for Bremner, Bird and Fortune (Channel 4, 8pm,
Saturday), where Fortune plays the hapless 'green' government minister
trying to defend wind turbines and other pseudo green scams, and Bird plays
the bemused interviewer. I really do wonder about domestic rubbish
recycling. I needed a respirator the other day when the chap in front of me
at the bottle bank set off in his diesel Range Rover, pumping black smoke
from the exhaust, after he put a few newspapers and bottles in the bins. In
my area we used to have a once weekly collection of our domestic rubbish.
Then the council introduced boxes for recycling paper, cans and bottles, but
that needs a separate lorry to collect these. Then the council introduced
bags for garden waste, but that needs a separate lorry to collect these. My
understanding is that 3 massive diesel-engined lorries are 3 times more
environmentally damaging than one. They certainly make 3 times more noise.
The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with recycling?

On 2006-10-27 00:13:09 +0100, said:

There seems to be a lot of promotion at the moment of socalled green
techs that have little or no hope of meeting expectations. At the same
time, technologies that actually do pay their way are not even
mentioned in government publications.

Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical, or perhaps not cynical enough... lets
spin this one and just see what happens. Lets say the govt wants to
back the interests of big businesses, including power generators. To
achieve this one needs to discredit green tech in the public eye. How
better to do that than to promote assorted dead ducks and let the
critics rip into them all over the country. This achieves 3 political
objectives in one go:
1. power companies will support and vote for you
2. consumers will too, as they think youre being green and trying your
best to promote green tech
3. the almost credible face of green techs today will be knocked back
by several years, thus mass adoption of money saving home gen techs wil
not occur. This is 'good' because if it did occur, massive tax income
losses would follow, and job losses in generation and distribution.
Both of these would make govt fiscal policy look a lot less succesful.

Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.

NT

This is an interesting conspiracy theory but unlikely in practice. I
think that the reality is much more simple. Suppliers of consumer
paraphernalia for allegedly green purposes making money from the
gullible.

"Codswallop" wrote in message
...
....
The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with recycling?

The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

Colin Bignell

nightjar wrote:
"Codswallop" wrote in message
...

The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with recycling?

The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

Colin Bignell

Something I've not yet figured out a sensible answer to: why dont
'they' dump rubble into the sea by the shore in a big u shape, and fill
the area with mixed landfill rubbish. No landfill used up, and in time
it will be more land for what is a high price land country.


NT

Andy Hall wrote:
On 2006-10-27 00:13:09 +0100, said:

There seems to be a lot of promotion at the moment of socalled green
techs that have little or no hope of meeting expectations. At the same
time, technologies that actually do pay their way are not even
mentioned in government publications.

Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical, or perhaps not cynical enough... lets
spin this one and just see what happens. Lets say the govt wants to
back the interests of big businesses, including power generators. To
achieve this one needs to discredit green tech in the public eye. How
better to do that than to promote assorted dead ducks and let the
critics rip into them all over the country. This achieves 3 political
objectives in one go:
1. power companies will support and vote for you
2. consumers will too, as they think youre being green and trying your
best to promote green tech
3. the almost credible face of green techs today will be knocked back
by several years, thus mass adoption of money saving home gen techs wil
not occur. This is 'good' because if it did occur, massive tax income
losses would follow, and job losses in generation and distribution.
Both of these would make govt fiscal policy look a lot less succesful.

Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.

This is an interesting conspiracy theory but unlikely in practice. I
think that the reality is much more simple. Suppliers of consumer
paraphernalia for allegedly green purposes making money from the
gullible.

It cant be a conspiracy theory, because only one person caries out the
plan. No conspiracy is involved.

If what you propose is true, our government must be gullible and
lacking in an expert to advise them. How likely is a national
government to be in that position?

Oh, I forgot point 4: the real take up of green techs which reduce tax
income will happen later during another government party's term,
leaving them with less tax money to spend.


NT

"nightjar .uk.com" nightjar@insert my surname here wrote in message
news

"Codswallop" wrote in message
...
...
The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with
recycling?

The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

Colin Bignell

Perhaps Codswallop could bury his own waste in his garden, then he wouldn't
feel bad about supporting a useless system.

As for the OP , not all pv is useless even in England. We keep our caravan
leisure battery topped up with a small pv panel which cost £10, it's been
well worth having.

And I'll bang on about our solar water heater again: we've had no obvious
sun for days, it's been close to freezing at night and we've had a lot of
rain. The water in the cylinder this morning, even though water has been
drawn off during those days, was 30C. That's a tankful which didn't need
heating for the first 30C for me to have a bath.

There's a move to make things better, it's slow but it's working.

The first i.c.e. vehicles were noisy, smelly, thirsty and uncomfortable and
seen by some asa toys for the rich. Improvements happened, they will with
green technology too.

Mary

Mary Fisher wrote:

And I'll bang on about our solar water heater again: we've had no obvious
sun for days, it's been close to freezing at night and we've had a lot of
rain. The water in the cylinder this morning, even though water has been
drawn off during those days, was 30C. That's a tankful which didn't need
heating for the first 30C for me to have a bath.

That's the sort of thing that gives the green movement a bad name.

You're not gaining a whole 30 degrees, nor anything like that. The
water that comes from your supply (whether it's from your own well or
a mains supply) is almost certainly well above zero degrees. It's most
likely in the 10 to 20 degrees range I would think here in the UK.

--
Chris Green

"Mary Fisher" wrote:
Perhaps Codswallop could bury his own waste in his garden, then he
wouldn't feel bad about supporting a useless system.
rest sniped
Mary

I don't know what prompted such a nasty response. I didn't write anything to
offend you.

wrote:
There seems to be a lot of promotion at the moment of socalled green
techs that have little or no hope of meeting expectations. At the same
time, technologies that actually do pay their way are not even
mentioned in government publications.

Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical, or perhaps not cynical enough... lets
spin this one and just see what happens. Lets say the govt wants to
back the interests of big businesses, including power generators. To
achieve this one needs to discredit green tech in the public eye. How
better to do that than to promote assorted dead ducks and let the
critics rip into them all over the country. This achieves 3 political
objectives in one go:
1. power companies will support and vote for you
2. consumers will too, as they think youre being green and trying your
best to promote green tech
3. the almost credible face of green techs today will be knocked back
by several years, thus mass adoption of money saving home gen techs wil
not occur. This is 'good' because if it did occur, massive tax income
losses would follow, and job losses in generation and distribution.
Both of these would make govt fiscal policy look a lot less succesful.

Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.


Not sure the govt. are that clever actually.


Add to the list
The 'electric cars without non fossil fuel energy generation' myth.
The 'boil half a kettle' myth.
The 'use low energy lamps' myth.
The 'tax the car, not the fuel' myth.
The 'standby' myth.

etc. etc.

If the govt really wanted us to reduce fossil fuel usage the answer is
simple.

- tax the fuel.
- give tax breaks to companies employing home workers.
- eliminate 90% of traffic calming, traffic lights, and
pedestrianisation stuff and low cars to actually move along without
being halted all the time.
- spend as much money per capita on a railway infrastructure as they do
on roads. And make it as free to the railway operators as the roads are
to the truckers.
- spend as much money on bringing really high speed internet to
everyone, as they do on bringing roads there. (whilst laying railway
tracks, lay optical fibres at bugger all opportunity cost)
- build 20 nuclear power stations
- remove all taxes from biofuels

The let peoples own cost benefit analysis sort it all out.







NT

nightjar nightjar@ wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...
...
Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.

I think it is like ripping up cast iron railings in WW2: It wasn't any real
use, but it made people feel involved.


And Al suacepans. Useless for aircraft as quality of the alloy was
wrong, but Land Rover used it to make cars afterwards.

Colin Bignell

nightjar nightjar@ wrote:
"Codswallop" wrote in message
...
...
The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with recycling?

The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

And yet the east coast is falling into the sea because of lack of
material to pile into landfill.


Colin Bignell

wrote:
nightjar wrote:
"Codswallop" wrote in message
...

The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with recycling?

The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

Colin Bignell

Something I've not yet figured out a sensible answer to: why dont
'they' dump rubble into the sea by the shore in a big u shape, and fill
the area with mixed landfill rubbish. No landfill used up, and in time
it will be more land for what is a high price land country.


Exactly.

Make it a nature reserve.

NT

Mary Fisher wrote:
"nightjar .uk.com" nightjar@insert my surname here wrote in message
news
"Codswallop" wrote in message
...
...
The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with
recycling?
The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

Colin Bignell

Perhaps Codswallop could bury his own waste in his garden, then he wouldn't
feel bad about supporting a useless system.

As for the OP , not all pv is useless even in England. We keep our caravan
leisure battery topped up with a small pv panel which cost £10, it's been
well worth having.

And I'll bang on about our solar water heater again: we've had no obvious
sun for days, it's been close to freezing at night and we've had a lot of
rain. The water in the cylinder this morning, even though water has been
drawn off during those days, was 30C. That's a tankful which didn't need
heating for the first 30C for me to have a bath.


If you do the calculations on hot water usage, its frankly peanuts.

When I kill our oil fired aga in the summer, our oil consumption is
frankly not measurable over the whole summer, just heating the water.

The aga itself makes it measurable, but its in winter when the heating
is on that we really burn the oil.

There's a move to make things better, it's slow but it's working.

The first i.c.e. vehicles were noisy, smelly, thirsty and uncomfortable and
seen by some asa toys for the rich. Improvements happened, they will with
green technology too.

The answer to green issues is not really technology, its lifestyle.

To use less fuel the answer is simple. Use less fuel.


Mary

Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.

The biggest scam is hybrid cars, which don't pollute significantly less than
normal ones, but do have a huge pile of polluting lead acid batteries to
dispose of every 50,000 miles.

When we bought our second car, we bought a Peugeot 107. Approximately the
same g/km as a Toyota Prius, but it actually achieves its fuel economy
figures in real life, and there isn't huge amounts of battery waste to
dispose of during the lifecycle, and costs less than half. (OK, the Prius
has an extra seat and a slightly bigger boot, but it does look like a dog's
dinner).

Christian.

wrote:
There seems to be a lot of promotion at the moment of socalled green
techs that have little or no hope of meeting expectations. At the
same time, technologies that actually do pay their way are not even
mentioned in government publications.

Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical, or perhaps not cynical enough... lets
spin this one and just see what happens. Lets say the govt wants to
back the interests of big businesses, including power generators. To
achieve this one needs to discredit green tech in the public eye. How
better to do that than to promote assorted dead ducks and let the
critics rip into them all over the country. This achieves 3 political
objectives in one go:
1. power companies will support and vote for you
2. consumers will too, as they think youre being green and trying your
best to promote green tech
3. the almost credible face of green techs today will be knocked back
by several years, thus mass adoption of money saving home gen techs
wil not occur. This is 'good' because if it did occur, massive tax
income losses would follow, and job losses in generation and
distribution. Both of these would make govt fiscal policy look a lot
less succesful.

Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.


NT

It's all a load of ****.

We wouldn't make a slightest bit of difference no matter what we do
personally, when countries like USA ignore the issue completely.
this coupled with China and India's new found wealth and therefore demand
for cars, and remember their combined population is almost ten times the
population of the USA and 40 times that of the UK, so me sticking a toy
windmill on my roof isn't going to make a blind bit of difference..no, the
only reason 'issues' like this are highlighted in the first place is so that
they can tax them to death at a later date, they couldn't give a flying f*ck
about the planet or anything else,they are interested in money, and now that
tobacco tax has disappeared due to huge scale smuggling and the relaxation
of customs etc, a large hole needs filling, cue the new 'tobacco' namely,
fuel.

It's been suggested today that new taxes are to be introduced to stop binge
drinking, again, it's another cash cow set up by the government, drinking
has never been any different nor unruly behaviour any worse or better than
it is today, it's just 'convenient' to tax the hell out of it now under the
guise of cutting out binge drinking related shenanigans, we all know it
won't make a blind bit of difference there neither, but at least the govt
will make a few extra billion a year out of it....here's a tip: - next time
you see an 'issue' being highlighted on the news and political parties
getting excited about it, expect a huge tax to follow, it never fails.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
nightjar nightjar@ wrote:
"Codswallop" wrote in message
...
...
The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with
recycling?

The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

And yet the east coast is falling into the sea because of lack of material
to pile into landfill.

I think the word you missed out in front of material is 'suitable'. Domestic
rubbish is not a particularly useful landfill material to stop erosion.

Colin Bignell

"Phil L" wrote in message
.uk...
....
It's been suggested today that new taxes are to be introduced to stop
binge drinking, again, it's another cash cow set up by the government,
drinking has never been any different nor unruly behaviour any worse or
better than it is today,...

I disagree. In my youth, we went out to have a drink, preferably without
getting drunk, because of the after-effects. Today the aim of many is simply
getting drunk. I spent five years in Glasgow as a young man and saw only one
act of violence, despite frequenting the city centre most weekends. Today,
there are many ordinary town centres that I would avoid at night.

Colin Bignell

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
snip

Add to the list
The 'electric cars without non fossil fuel energy generation' myth.

Well - it's not a myth, it's just not implemented yet, it's
theoretically possible to run an electric car from 100% nuclear, or
for hydrogen thermally generated from nuclear.
Not near term admittedly.

The 'boil half a kettle' myth.

This isn't really a myth.
If you have an extra cup of water in the kettle, it goes cold 3 times
a day, that's boiling 300l of water, or about 3 quid.
If you boil an extra litre, it's 12.


The 'use low energy lamps' myth.

Well - unless you use electricity to heat your house, it does lead
to a significan net reduction in power use, at least 100W for me.

The 'standby' myth.

It's a small part of it.
I'd not be surprised if when adding up all the crap I've got on standby
to hit 100W.
(VCRs, sky box, DTTV box, computer, ...)

If the govt really wanted us to reduce fossil fuel usage the answer is
simple.

Not really, but it is unpopular.

- tax the fuel.

This is an option to reduce usage - it will hurt the economy somewhat
though, as you'd probably need to put petrol at around 5 pounds a litre
to get really significant reductions.

- give tax breaks to companies employing home workers.
snip
- build 20 nuclear power stations

This would be a very short term solution - about 20 are going offline in
a couple of decades.

More like 400 (of similar capacity to existing ones), to totally replace
fossil fuels in all but transport applications.

- remove all taxes from biofuels

Biodiesel production directly makes food more expensive in many areas,
by creating yet another 'export only' crop.

The let peoples own cost benefit analysis sort it all out.

Ian Stirling wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
snip
Add to the list
The 'electric cars without non fossil fuel energy generation' myth.

Well - it's not a myth, it's just not implemented yet, it's
theoretically possible to run an electric car from 100% nuclear, or
for hydrogen thermally generated from nuclear.
Not near term admittedly.

The 'boil half a kettle' myth.

This isn't really a myth.
If you have an extra cup of water in the kettle, it goes cold 3 times
a day, that's boiling 300l of water, or about 3 quid.
If you boil an extra litre, it's 12.

and about £6 off your heating bill. More probably.

£6 is certainly irrelevant in terms of a heating bill here of around
£2000 a year at todays prices..about 6000 liters. Our combined mileage
is about 10000. say 400 liters of diesel. Of course tax and insurance
adds up to far more than the cost of the diesel.



The 'use low energy lamps' myth.

Well - unless you use electricity to heat your house, it does lead
to a significan net reduction in power use, at least 100W for me.


100W? again, big deal. Simply take one less shower a week?

The 'standby' myth.

It's a small part of it.
I'd not be surprised if when adding up all the crap I've got on standby
to hit 100W.
(VCRs, sky box, DTTV box, computer, ...)


Take another less shower a week, or turn the house stat down 0.01 degrees C.

If the govt really wanted us to reduce fossil fuel usage the answer is
simple.

Not really, but it is unpopular.

- tax the fuel.

This is an option to reduce usage - it will hurt the economy somewhat
though, as you'd probably need to put petrol at around 5 pounds a litre
to get really significant reductions.

I think not. At current prices we have certainly found that order online
and pay carriage charges is far more cost effective than driving to a shop.

- give tax breaks to companies employing home workers.
snip
- build 20 nuclear power stations

This would be a very short term solution - about 20 are going offline in
a couple of decades.


Indee. Then build another 20.

More like 400 (of similar capacity to existing ones), to totally replace
fossil fuels in all but transport applications.


Or bigger ones.

- remove all taxes from biofuels

Biodiesel production directly makes food more expensive in many areas,
by creating yet another 'export only' crop.

So let them eat cake. we need exportable crops anyway.

The let peoples own cost benefit analysis sort it all out.

On 2006-10-27 09:10:27 +0100, said:

nightjar wrote:
"Codswallop" wrote in message
...

The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with recycling?

The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

Colin Bignell

Something I've not yet figured out a sensible answer to: why dont
'they' dump rubble into the sea by the shore in a big u shape, and fill
the area with mixed landfill rubbish. No landfill used up, and in time
it will be more land for what is a high price land country.


NT

They have. It's called the Netherlands.

On 2006-10-27 09:15:57 +0100, said:



If what you propose is true, our government must be gullible and
lacking in an expert to advise them. How likely is a national
government to be in that position?

Fairly, I would say. Believing your own bull**** is the first step to that.



Oh, I forgot point 4: the real take up of green techs which reduce tax
income will happen later during another government party's term,
leaving them with less tax money to spend.

Except that most really believe they are invincible.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
snip
Add to the list
The 'electric cars without non fossil fuel energy generation' myth.

Well - it's not a myth, it's just not implemented yet, it's
theoretically possible to run an electric car from 100% nuclear, or
for hydrogen thermally generated from nuclear.
Not near term admittedly.

The 'boil half a kettle' myth.

This isn't really a myth.
If you have an extra cup of water in the kettle, it goes cold 3 times
a day, that's boiling 300l of water, or about 3 quid.
If you boil an extra litre, it's 12.

and about ?6 off your heating bill. More probably.

Umm, no.
Here, the heating does not run for 1/2 the year.
And electricity is 3 times the price of gas.
So, 50p-2 pounds, depending if it's the 1 cup, or 1l.

snip
It's a small part of it.
I'd not be surprised if when adding up all the crap I've got on standby
to hit 100W.
(VCRs, sky box, DTTV box, computer, ...)

Take another less shower a week, or turn the house stat down 0.01 degrees C.

And if you're already cutting back as much as possible on those?
snip
snip
- build 20 nuclear power stations

This would be a very short term solution - about 20 are going offline in
a couple of decades.


Indee. Then build another 20.

More like 400 (of similar capacity to existing ones), to totally replace
fossil fuels in all but transport applications.


Or bigger ones.

- remove all taxes from biofuels

Biodiesel production directly makes food more expensive in many areas,
by creating yet another 'export only' crop.

So let them eat cake. we need exportable crops anyway.

Biodiesel crops are not really economic in the UK.
The best current biodiesel crop is (palm oil), which is grown primarily
in very poor areas of the tropics, where it often displaces much more
valuable habitat.
And it increases food prices for those that can't afford it.

The let peoples own cost benefit analysis sort it all out.

On 27 Oct 2006 21:56:23 GMT, Huge wrote:


The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

I sugest you look out of the train windows the next time your St.Pancras
to Sheffield Midland Mainline is passing through Stuartby in North
Beds. You can tell where you are because of the brick kiln chimneys,
the awful smell emitted therefrom and ... the *huge* holes in the
ground where the brick clay used to be before it became Wimpey housing
estates.

My house 150 miles north was built of LBC "Heather" bricks.

I used to comfort myself in the thought that I could see the chimneys
of the brick kilns from the M1. They seem to have gone now.

The "running out of landfill" tosh is a load of rubbish. *Huge* slag
hills have been moved, landscaped, and redeveloped all over the North
of England.

Landfilling of quarries and opencast mines could provide plenty of
landfill, trouble is sometimes there are more lucrative options, such
as creating leisure facilities such as caravan sites around an
artificial lake.

The government (EU ?) doesn't let the market find it's own level, it
just taxes landfill.

DG

nightjar wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
nightjar nightjar@ wrote:
"Codswallop" wrote in message
...

The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with
recycling?

The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

And yet the east coast is falling into the sea because of lack of material
to pile into landfill.

I think the word you missed out in front of material is 'suitable'. Domestic
rubbish is not a particularly useful landfill material to stop erosion.

Big piles of rubble is, and thats not in short supply, and currently
gets landfilled.

Now, why pile the rubble against the shore when it can be piled up
10/50/100 yards out, and the area infilled with garbage. The garbage is
topped with something heavier to prevent plastic film floating about,
perhaps a layer of smaller sieved rubble. Decay may reduce the garbage
level, possibly permitting another round of dumping, and the decayed
soil will help stick everything together. Sow seed of sal****er
tolerant species and the roots lock it all together, and you have the
beginning of permanent new land. In time it would become stable secure
farming land. This would make it possible to build right up to what is
now the edge of the land.

Instead of all those landfills costing money in land value, no land is
used, and land is gained at the end.


NT

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:

There seems to be a lot of promotion at the moment of socalled green
techs that have little or no hope of meeting expectations. At the same
time, technologies that actually do pay their way are not even
mentioned in government publications.

Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical, or perhaps not cynical enough... lets
spin this one and just see what happens. Lets say the govt wants to
back the interests of big businesses, including power generators. To
achieve this one needs to discredit green tech in the public eye. How
better to do that than to promote assorted dead ducks and let the
critics rip into them all over the country. This achieves 3 political
objectives in one go:
1. power companies will support and vote for you
2. consumers will too, as they think youre being green and trying your
best to promote green tech
3. the almost credible face of green techs today will be knocked back
by several years, thus mass adoption of money saving home gen techs wil
not occur. This is 'good' because if it did occur, massive tax income
losses would follow, and job losses in generation and distribution.
Both of these would make govt fiscal policy look a lot less succesful.

Windmills on houses are now being promoted, despite being one of the
deadest ducks we've seen yet. Solar PV has long been hyped, despite
never coming close to payoff, while solarthermal space heating is
consistently avoided. etc.

Not sure the govt. are that clever actually.


Add to the list
The 'electric cars without non fossil fuel energy generation' myth.
The 'boil half a kettle' myth.
The 'use low energy lamps' myth.
The 'tax the car, not the fuel' myth.
The 'standby' myth.

etc. etc.

Those are all small steps that cost the govt nothing, and make people
feel involved in the solution, and make them think the govt is at least
trying. Theyre also a way to put across the message that its not the
govt that needs to act, but the people. None of that strikes me as govt
stupidity.


If the govt really wanted us to reduce fossil fuel usage the answer is
simple.

- tax the fuel.

that would hit the economy hard. Not a good idea.

- give tax breaks to companies employing home workers.

trouble is virtually no-one employs home workers. Its one of those
things that needs to take off somehow, but no employer wants it.
Perhaps some research on that would be beneficial, and make hm govt
look good. Your tax break idea might help it get going, and might
provide private companies a reason to figure it all out..

- eliminate 90% of traffic calming, traffic lights, and
pedestrianisation stuff and low cars to actually move along without
being halted all the time.

would take more pedestrians off the road and into cars, fuel use would
go up, especially with more congestion. I'm no fan of nannyish
pedestrianisation choking traffic flow, but eliminating all of it wont
help.

- spend as much money per capita on a railway infrastructure as they do
on roads. And make it as free to the railway operators as the roads are
to the truckers.

Nothing is free. Either we pay the service provider for it or we pay
tax which pays for it. Youre suggesting a huge spend the is it
really economically advantageous? And are railways the best bet today?
For most loads I suspect not. Since the govt spends so much on roads
and so little on rail, I guess they think the same.

- spend as much money on bringing really high speed internet to
everyone, as they do on bringing roads there.

Would be nice. But again who will pay? Its way cheaper to let the
private marketplace do it all.

(whilst laying railway
tracks, lay optical fibres at bugger all opportunity cost)

I think thats not an option, as fibre cable is so fragile. There has
been much trouble with putting it in new developments because of this.

We could get more speed & bandwidth by parallelling technologies. Phone
wires, power lines, rf, satellite, laser link, microwave link, & fibre
in situations suitable for it.

With only half the population netted it would be possible to use
neighbouring phone & power lines too for more capacity. Say you had a
village of 100 houses, new wiring for a vilage is pricey, sat is too
costly. With updated exchange technology, most of the bandwidth of all
those 100 lines would be available, without interfering with anyone's
normal phone service. At least some of that bandwidth could be made
available to each household. 100x56k = 5.6M shared by 50 houses. If ave
8 are online at once, and each is passing data on ave 1/4 the time,
thats ave thruput of 2.8M each, peak 5.6M, just using phonelines. Add
broadband over power line for more bandwidth... the point is its doable
without laying anything. That thruput is enough to make work
applications work (even 56k is usable for basic quality
teleconferencing).

There are issues with the assumptions in the above, but the point is
we're not short of wires, we're short on people wiling to pay the cost
to upgrade the equipment.


- build 20 nuclear power stations

I hope so. It wont make energy cheap though. A lot of what we have will
keep going long past its sell by date, the end of life dates have never
been realistic for nuke here.


- remove all taxes from biofuels

Biofuels cost more and displace more valuable food crops. This doesnt
seem to me a positive move.


There are ways to cut energy use without losing out, but theyre
different to the above imho, and there is quite a bit of disagreement
on the details.

Cars are pointlessly overpowered, and a serious purchase time mpg tax
would improve that.
The perceived issues with low energy bulbs are simple to resolve.
Cart lanes would dramatically congestion and fuel use in towns.
Extending grants from cavity walls to also include solid walls would
help bring heating energy use down.
Taxing air flight fuel use would reduce journeys and encourage
maximisation of fuel efficiency to a limited extent.
A govt backed research project on solar space heating would test and
publicise its utility and payback.
Introducing a clear binbag scheme for reusables would reduce landfill
costs, increase reuse, and make those less well off better off. (People
would be permitted to take items from clear binbags, and they would be
disposed of as normal on collection day. A few clear bags would be
issued with each roll of black bags.)
A paper statement supplied with new houses stating what opportunity was
present for fitment of various energy saving devices would generate
buyer awareness and possibly preference.


When people with no lack of resources and expertise at their
fingertips, eg governments, act dumb, sometimes they are, and sometimes
theyre acting dumb. I dont see how we can really know which in this
case.


NT

"Huge" wrote in message
...
On 2006-10-27, nightjar nightjar@ wrote:

"Codswallop" wrote in message
...
...
The logic of this escapes me. Is there really any net gain with
recycling?

The main driving force has been the lack of landfill sites to dump things
into.

I sugest you look out of the train windows the next time your St.Pancras
to Sheffield Midland Mainline is passing through Stuartby in North
Beds. You can tell where you are because of the brick kiln chimneys,
the awful smell emitted therefrom and ... the *huge* holes in the
ground where the brick clay used to be before it became Wimpey housing
estates.

Unfortunately, not every hole in the ground meets the requirements for use
as a domestic waste tip. Factors such as the leaching of waste products into
local ground water make many of them unsuitable. Currently approved sites
could be full within the next six years.

Colin Bignell

On 2006-10-28 03:14:51 +0100, said:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:


Add to the list
The 'electric cars without non fossil fuel energy generation' myth.
The 'boil half a kettle' myth.
The 'use low energy lamps' myth.
The 'tax the car, not the fuel' myth.
The 'standby' myth.

etc. etc.

Those are all small steps that cost the govt nothing, and make people
feel involved in the solution, and make them think the govt is at least
trying. Theyre also a way to put across the message that its not the
govt that needs to act, but the people. None of that strikes me as govt
stupidity.

It's all the typical sound bite stuff which is glib and easy to say and
slippery shoulders to the next person.



- give tax breaks to companies employing home workers.

trouble is virtually no-one employs home workers. Its one of those
things that needs to take off somehow, but no employer wants it.

That's nonsense. While still not widespread, it appeals to employers
once they figure out that

- there is a reduction in cost of office space
- there is not long term commitment on office space so no issues of it
being a problem to acquire or a millstone as the workforce size flexes
up and down
- with people given objectives rather than hours of work with bonuses
for achievement and over achievement, more likely to put in the effort
to make it happen.

More than anything, it is a cultural issue in companies with the old
fashioned belief that employees need to be seen in the office for them
to be "known to be working". Of course this is nonsense. There are
people who attend the office daily and fill their time with meetings
and looking busy but actually achieve very little. If they were to be
measured on objectives and outcome rather than hours and location
worked, the results would be better anyway.

I haven't worked in an office permanently for more than 10 years.
Either it has been home working or occasionally hot desk use in larger
companies.

It's mainly a matter of culture


Perhaps some research on that would be beneficial, and make hm govt
look good.

It really doesn't need any more research.

Your tax break idea might help it get going, and might
provide private companies a reason to figure it all out..

Tax breaks for both companies and individuals would be beneficial, and
allowing individuals to claim for use of space at home for work use
without incurring a tax penalty.



- spend as much money on bringing really high speed internet to
everyone, as they do on bringing roads there.

Would be nice. But again who will pay? Its way cheaper to let the
private marketplace do it all.

(whilst laying railway
tracks, lay optical fibres at bugger all opportunity cost)

I think thats not an option, as fibre cable is so fragile. There has
been much trouble with putting it in new developments because of this.

That's not technology, simply incompetence. There are countries
such as Sweden and Denmark where FTTH (fibre to the home) is provided
in cities and even towns of quite modest size. 100Mbit is quite
typical with the links being used for integrated services such as video
on demand as opposed to nearly on demand.


We could get more speed & bandwidth by parallelling technologies. Phone
wires, power lines, rf, satellite, laser link, microwave link, & fibre
in situations suitable for it.

That isn't a good solution in general because a lot of applications do
not tolerate well packets being delivered over widely differing links
in terms of latency, symmetry and bandwidth.
For example, satellite downlink and PSTN uplink.


With only half the population netted it would be possible to use
neighbouring phone & power lines too for more capacity. Say you had a
village of 100 houses, new wiring for a vilage is pricey, sat is too
costly.

That and not very suitable apart from broadcast services.

With updated exchange technology, most of the bandwidth of all
those 100 lines would be available, without interfering with anyone's
normal phone service. At least some of that bandwidth could be made
available to each household. 100x56k = 5.6M shared by 50 houses. If ave
8 are online at once, and each is passing data on ave 1/4 the time,
thats ave thruput of 2.8M each, peak 5.6M, just using phonelines. Add
broadband over power line for more bandwidth... the point is its doable
without laying anything. That thruput is enough to make work
applications work (even 56k is usable for basic quality
teleconferencing).

This isn't very useful for a number of applications especially voice
and video, which is where
the money is for the providers.


There are issues with the assumptions in the above, but the point is
we're not short of wires, we're short on people wiling to pay the cost
to upgrade the equipment.


That depends on the availability of products and services that
customers are willing to buy.

Andy Hall wrote:
On 2006-10-28 03:14:51 +0100, said:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:


Add to the list
The 'electric cars without non fossil fuel energy generation' myth.
The 'boil half a kettle' myth.
The 'use low energy lamps' myth.
The 'tax the car, not the fuel' myth.
The 'standby' myth.

etc. etc.

Those are all small steps that cost the govt nothing, and make people
feel involved in the solution, and make them think the govt is at least
trying. Theyre also a way to put across the message that its not the
govt that needs to act, but the people. None of that strikes me as govt
stupidity.

It's all the typical sound bite stuff which is glib and easy to say and
slippery shoulders to the next person.



- give tax breaks to companies employing home workers.

trouble is virtually no-one employs home workers. Its one of those
things that needs to take off somehow, but no employer wants it.

That's nonsense. While still not widespread, it appeals to employers
once they figure out that

- there is a reduction in cost of office space
- there is not long term commitment on office space so no issues of it
being a problem to acquire or a millstone as the workforce size flexes
up and down
- with people given objectives rather than hours of work with bonuses
for achievement and over achievement, more likely to put in the effort
to make it happen.


The big downside is it actually requires managers who actually mange,
rather than going around being important and having 'meetings'

I.e. work needs to be assessed, split up, parceled out and monitored.

instead of castigating employees who simply come in 10 minutes late, the
managers have to learn how to manage.

In todays climate this is an almost insuperable task.

More than anything, it is a cultural issue in companies with the old
fashioned belief that employees need to be seen in the office for them
to be "known to be working". Of course this is nonsense. There are
people who attend the office daily and fill their time with meetings and
looking busy but actually achieve very little. If they were to be
measured on objectives and outcome rather than hours and location
worked, the results would be better anyway.

I haven't worked in an office permanently for more than 10 years.
Either it has been home working or occasionally hot desk use in larger
companies.

It's mainly a matter of culture

Yus, and it needs a bit more airtime and a lot of attitude adjustment to
make it work.



Perhaps some research on that would be beneficial, and make hm govt
look good.

It really doesn't need any more research.

Your tax break idea might help it get going, and might
provide private companies a reason to figure it all out..

Tax breaks for both companies and individuals would be beneficial, and
allowing individuals to claim for use of space at home for work use
without incurring a tax penalty.

Yes. There are also inusrance implications, and security implications.




- spend as much money on bringing really high speed internet to
everyone, as they do on bringing roads there.

Would be nice. But again who will pay? Its way cheaper to let the
private marketplace do it all.

(whilst laying railway
tracks, lay optical fibres at bugger all opportunity cost)

I think thats not an option, as fibre cable is so fragile. There has
been much trouble with putting it in new developments because of this.

That's not technology, simply incompetence. There are countries such
as Sweden and Denmark where FTTH (fibre to the home) is provided in
cities and even towns of quite modest size. 100Mbit is quite typical
with the links being used for integrated services such as video on
demand as opposed to nearly on demand.


Optical cable is not fragile, and it is used as the major backbone for
all data communications over a certain bandwidth, Railtrack already has
thousands of miles of fibre laid alongside its tracks, but is inept at
marketing it. Compare energis, who laid a grid over the neutral lines
of the national grid and sold it as data channeling.

Optical fibre is the backbone of the world data networks, running under
the atlantic and so on. Microwave is not as good, bandwidth wise, by a
large factor. Its used really because the whole problem with physical
links is getting permission to lay the stuff. Microwabve links are
relatively cheap to install, but they suffer drop outs and low bandwidth.



We could get more speed & bandwidth by parallelling technologies. Phone
wires, power lines, rf, satellite, laser link, microwave link, & fibre
in situations suitable for it.

That isn't a good solution in general because a lot of applications do
not tolerate well packets being delivered over widely differing links in
terms of latency, symmetry and bandwidth.
For example, satellite downlink and PSTN uplink.

Indeed. No one today would lay telephone wires if starting from scratch.
DSL is a bodge - a clever bodge - to leverage existing twisted pair
installations.



With only half the population netted it would be possible to use
neighbouring phone & power lines too for more capacity. Say you had a
village of 100 houses, new wiring for a vilage is pricey, sat is too
costly.

That and not very suitable apart from broadcast services.

With updated exchange technology, most of the bandwidth of all
those 100 lines would be available, without interfering with anyone's
normal phone service. At least some of that bandwidth could be made
available to each household. 100x56k = 5.6M shared by 50 houses. If ave
8 are online at once, and each is passing data on ave 1/4 the time,
thats ave thruput of 2.8M each, peak 5.6M, just using phonelines. Add
broadband over power line for more bandwidth... the point is its doable
without laying anything. That thruput is enough to make work
applications work (even 56k is usable for basic quality
teleconferencing).

This isn't very useful for a number of applications especially voice and
video, which is where
the money is for the providers.


There are issues with the assumptions in the above, but the point is
we're not short of wires, we're short on people wiling to pay the cost
to upgrade the equipment.


That depends on the availability of products and services that customers
are willing to buy.

"Codswallop" wrote in message
...
"Mary Fisher" wrote:
Perhaps Codswallop could bury his own waste in his garden, then he
wouldn't feel bad about supporting a useless system.
rest sniped
Mary

I don't know what prompted such a nasty response. I didn't write anything
to offend you.

That wasn't nasty!

Mary

"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...

Umm, no.
Here, the heating does not run for 1/2 the year.

You mean it does run for half the year?

Ours hasn't even come on yet ... mind you (getting out fingers) yes, it
might well be partially on for six months. We don't use the timer (we don't
have regular lives), instead the thermostat is set to 10C. It certainly
isn't on often.

It's gas fired. As is our kettle - Spouse's grandma's kettle (I keep seeing
them in 'antique' shops, mind you I see a lot of things we use in those
shops).

The kettle is the thing I feel most wasteful about, rather the gas it uses.
But I hate electric 'jug' kettles.

Mary

Mary Fisher wrote:

"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...

Umm, no.
Here, the heating does not run for 1/2 the year.

You mean it does run for half the year?

Ours hasn't even come on yet ... mind you (getting out fingers) yes, it
might well be partially on for six months. We don't use the timer (we don't
have regular lives), instead the thermostat is set to 10C. It certainly
isn't on often.
snip
The kettle is the thing I feel most wasteful about, rather the gas it uses.
But I hate electric 'jug' kettles.

May I ask why?
I quite like my current one, it boils half a cup of water just fine, and
very rapidly.

In message , nightjar
wrote

"Phil L" wrote in message
o.uk...
...
It's been suggested today that new taxes are to be introduced to stop
binge drinking, again, it's another cash cow set up by the government,
drinking has never been any different nor unruly behaviour any worse or
better than it is today,...

I disagree. In my youth, we went out to have a drink, preferably without
getting drunk, because of the after-effects. Today the aim of many is simply
getting drunk. I spent five years in Glasgow as a young man and saw only one
act of violence, despite frequenting the city centre most weekends. Today,
there are many ordinary town centres that I would avoid at night.


In 30 years of drinking I've only seen a couple of instances of violence
in, or outside the pubs I frequented - many of which would never have
been classified as 'family pubs'. The average pub, and it's customers,
is no different today than it was 30 years ago. However I don't frequent
pubs that cater for 500/1000 customers a night.

There are tens of millions of people who drink each week who are not
part of the problem yet we are all being tarred with the same brush.

--
Alan
news2006 {at} amac {dot} f2s {dot} com

"Alan" wrote in message
...
In message , nightjar
wrote

"Phil L" wrote in message
. co.uk...
...
It's been suggested today that new taxes are to be introduced to stop
binge drinking, again, it's another cash cow set up by the government,
drinking has never been any different nor unruly behaviour any worse or
better than it is today,...

I disagree. In my youth, we went out to have a drink, preferably without
getting drunk, because of the after-effects. Today the aim of many is
simply
getting drunk. I spent five years in Glasgow as a young man and saw only
one
act of violence, despite frequenting the city centre most weekends. Today,
there are many ordinary town centres that I would avoid at night.


In 30 years of drinking I've only seen a couple of instances of violence
in, or outside the pubs I frequented - many of which would never have been
classified as 'family pubs'. The average pub,

'average' - aye, there's the rub. Not all pubs, by definition, are average.

Mary

"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...
Mary Fisher wrote:

"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...

Umm, no.
Here, the heating does not run for 1/2 the year.

You mean it does run for half the year?

Ours hasn't even come on yet ... mind you (getting out fingers) yes, it
might well be partially on for six months. We don't use the timer (we
don't
have regular lives), instead the thermostat is set to 10C. It certainly
isn't on often.
snip
The kettle is the thing I feel most wasteful about, rather the gas it
uses.
But I hate electric 'jug' kettles.

May I ask why?

I think they're ugly and they need counter space, which is very short in our
kitchen. And there's something very satisfying about lifting a real kettle
and tilting it, it's a ritual. Then there's the taking off the lid and
replacing it, very satisfying. If it furs up the lime just scales off, it
needs no treatment. There's no thermostat but if it boils dry it comes to no
harm, it simply, eventually, glows (it happened once). It doesn't need a
power point, there's no trailing lead - I hadn't thought of all these
drawbacks before now :-)

Mainly it's that we have ours. Over the years we've had lots of different
electric kettles. Every time a 'child' has left home to go to university or
whatever s/he has helped him/herself to the latest kettle. After the fifth
and last went and left us kettle-less Spouse remembered his Grandma's
kettle, which had been on the hearth for many years, and we used it. There's
no point in getting rid of it while it works, that would be wasteful.

I quite like my current one, it boils half a cup of water just fine, and
very rapidly.

So does my copper kettle :-)

Not that I often have to boil half a cup, usualy the smallest amount is two
cups.

Mary

"nightjar .uk.com" nightjar@insert my surname here wrote in message
...

I disagree. In my youth, we went out to have a drink, preferably without
getting drunk, because of the after-effects. Today the aim of many is
simply getting drunk. I spent five years in Glasgow as a young man and saw
only one act of violence, despite frequenting the city centre most
weekends. Today, there are many ordinary town centres that I would avoid
at night.

I reckon you're wrong on at least half of that : going out to "get
bladdered" or equivalent has been going on for ages. IME it didn't lead to
violence though. (oh what a sheltered life I lead :-) )

cheers,
clive

Mary Fisher wrote:
"Alan" wrote in message
...
In message , nightjar
wrote

"Phil L" wrote in message
.uk...
...
It's been suggested today that new taxes are to be introduced to
stop binge drinking, again, it's another cash cow set up by the
government, drinking has never been any different nor unruly
behaviour any worse or better than it is today,...

I disagree. In my youth, we went out to have a drink, preferably
without getting drunk, because of the after-effects. Today the aim
of many is simply
getting drunk. I spent five years in Glasgow as a young man and saw
only one
act of violence, despite frequenting the city centre most weekends.
Today, there are many ordinary town centres that I would avoid at
night.

In 30 years of drinking I've only seen a couple of instances of
violence in, or outside the pubs I frequented - many of which would
never have been classified as 'family pubs'. The average pub,

'average' - aye, there's the rub. Not all pubs, by definition, are
average.
Mary

You can say that about everything, the word average means, well, average! -
an average town centre pub/bar is much the same anywhere in the country and
I've visited a lot of town centres on Fri and Sat nights, I've also visited
a lot of country pubs and these are (on average) all virtually the same too.

Derek ^ wrote:

The "running out of landfill" tosh is a load of rubbish. *Huge* slag
hills have been moved, landscaped, and redeveloped all over the North
of England.

Landfilling of quarries and opencast mines could provide plenty of
landfill, trouble is sometimes there are more lucrative options, such
as creating leisure facilities such as caravan sites around an
artificial lake.

The government (EU ?) doesn't let the market find it's own level, it
just taxes landfill.

The voice of reason Derek! We had a huge cement (and we need cement) quarry
near Northfleet for many years until it became uneconomic. Now its called
Bluewater. At Cuxton we had another - that's now going to become "a unique
housing environment" or something.


--
Dave
The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

On Sat, 28 Oct 2006 19:36:42 UTC, "The Medway Handyman"
wrote:

The voice of reason Derek! We had a huge cement (and we need cement) quarry
near Northfleet for many years until it became uneconomic. Now its called
Bluewater. At Cuxton we had another - that's now going to become "a unique
housing environment" or something.

I find it difficult to differentiate Bluewater from landfill....!

--
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