Global warming, anyone?

you know? said:

I entirely agree. I seem to recall that we used to have some of the best
alternative energy boffins on the planet a few years back, I hope they
haven't all buggered off to Sweden in the mean time.

The other problem is that nobody can pronoounce Machynllech...

I was there last week. It was amazing to see their solar PV roof with 180
standard sized panels. We are getting six for our installation but then
there's only two of us.

Colin

Simon Brooke said:

learned this lesson by now: nuclear power produces huge quantities of
grotesquely toxic materials which we have simply no way of rendering
safe, or of containing safely.

No, you're confused. Coal-fired power stations produce huge
quantitites of grotesquely toxic materials which we have simply no way
of rendering safe. Nuclear produces very tiny quantities of even more
toxic materials. Which is better is far from teh clear-cut case you
make out.

regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|

On 15 Sep 2004 09:44:05 GMT, "Arthur Clune" <[email hidden]> ()

Quoted message said:

"njf>badger<" <"njf>badger <"@soton.ac.uk> wrote:

: Try it here, it's even worse!

Here? Soton = Brum? I always assumed Brom was cheap (that's is
of course now strictly a relative term). This is a real question
BTW - I'm curious.

A two-up two-down railway terrace is £120,000 in York now. And
that's not in a posh bit of town either.

When we abandoned Southampton (Soton) in January, a 2-up, 2-down
terrace in a [censored] area, (Shirley Warren, if anyone knows it.) was
going for £150,000 -180,000. I'm a uni-based researcher, my wife's a
nurse. A bank wouldn't even loan us that amount, assuming we could get
a 100% mortgage. Sheer madness. So, we left. Economic migrants, you
could call us.

--
Matt K.
"The rain, it raineth on the Just and the Unjust fella. But
chiefly on the Just because the Unjust steals the Just's
umbrella."

Whingin' Pom <[email hidden]> wrote:

: When we abandoned Southampton (Soton) in January,

Ah. I'd got confused there. Dunno why I thought Soton was in
brum.

: a 2-up, 2-down
: terrace in a [censored] area, (Shirley Warren, if anyone knows it.) was
: going for £150,000 -180,000. I'm a uni-based researcher, my wife's a
: nurse. A bank wouldn't even loan us that amount, assuming we could get
: a 100% mortgage. Sheer madness. So, we left. Economic migrants, you
: could call us.

That is worse than York. I'm impressed.

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune PGP/GPG Key: http://www.clune.org/pubkey.txt
"Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

When we abandoned Southampton (Soton) in January, a 2-up, 2-down
terrace in a [censored] area, (Shirley Warren, if anyone knows it.) was
going for £150,000 -180,000. I'm a uni-based researcher, my wife's a
nurse. A bank wouldn't even loan us that amount, assuming we could get
a 100% mortgage. Sheer madness. So, we left. Economic migrants, you
could call us.

Pah. Single bedroom flats where I live can easily fetch just shy of
£100,000. Two bedroom flats in a similar area are going for offers over
£120,000. A colleague's recent flat buying experience reveals that flats
are routinely fetching 30%+ over the offers price, with some actually
going as far as 50% over.

Sorry folks... its a gonna crash!

Jon

Arthur Clune said:

Whingin' Pom <[email hidden]> wrote:

: When we abandoned Southampton (Soton) in January,

Ah. I'd got confused there. Dunno why I thought Soton was in
brum.

aston.ac.uk ?

Colin

In article <[email hidden]>,

Arthur Clune said:

I'm still not happy with nuclear power. Not only is their no sensible
thing to do with the waste but it's only economic because it's very
heavily subsidised.

If you imposed the same environmental standards on coal, oil or gas
as we do on nuclear, it wouldn't be cheaper. Nor comparable.
It wouldn't be possible at ten times the cost of nuclear. Nor 100 times.
It simply wouldn't be possible at all.

That's why they don't put a value on our most serious pollution.

--
Nick Kew

Colin Blackburn said:

Arthur Clune said:

Whingin' Pom <[email hidden]> wrote:

: When we abandoned Southampton (Soton) in January,

Ah. I'd got confused there. Dunno why I thought Soton was in
brum.

aston.ac.uk ?

Sutton Coldfield?

--
Keith Willoughby http://flat222.org/keith/
"And the people who were choked by the reek of sties
did not get the bacon"
-- JB Priestley

Ian Smith said:

Coal-fired power stations produce huge
quantitites of grotesquely toxic materials which we have simply no way
of rendering safe. Nuclear produces very tiny quantities of even more
toxic materials. Which is better is far from teh clear-cut case you
make out.

Absolutely. As long as you don't try to turn it into weapons (a dirty
process, I'm told) it is possible to treat nuclear waste relatively cleanly
(by comparison with other industrial processes); encapsulation in glass and
putting it into one of those deep dark holes where Welshmen used to work is
always an option.

My problem with nuclear energy is not the waste during operation, it's what
you do with the massively greater quantities of low-grade contaminated
materials when the power station reaches the end of its useful life, and how
you ensure that Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are not replicated. Both of
these problems seem to me to be a long way from being comprehensively
answered.

A clapped-out coal fired power station is, after all, just scrap iron for
the blast furnaces.

The real answer is to use less energy to start with, a process which
engineers call "efficiency" and Leftpondians seem to think will lead to the
end of civilisation as we know it.

But of course I am able to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of a renewable
energy project - I like to see wind turbines and dams (and I absolutely love
Dinorwig), they give me hope for the future, whereas some people think they
represent the end of civilisation as we know it.

I wonder if they are closet Leftpondians?

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

Arthur Clune said:

Indeed. However, at least until/if prices go back to some sane
multiple of earning it doesn't hurt to recognise that for many
people it is currently cheaper to run a car and commute in a
long distance.

Because we have all been conditioned to place no value on our time :-)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

Just zis Guy, you know? <[email hidden]> wrote:

: Because we have all been conditioned to place no value on our time :-)

If you have a young kid and the options are

a) live in too small house with short commute
b) live in house large enough for kid to have own room but a 40 min
commute

what are most people going to do?

It's a perfectly rational decision. Not one I'd make, but it's perfectly
justifable.

--
Arthur Clune PGP/GPG Key: http://www.clune.org/pubkey.txt
"Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

Quoted message said:

Get together for a team meeting once a week of once a
fortnight as appropriate, and work from home the rest.

Glad it works for you, Simon. It works for me too. Alas, not enough employers
are not willing to give up control of workers on premises to allow people to
work from home that way.

Cheers, helen s

--This is an invalid email address to avoid spam--
to get correct one remove fame & fortune
h*$el*$$e*nd**$o$ts**i*$*$m*m$o*n*s@$*a$o*l.c**$om$

--Due to financial crisis the light at the end of the tunnel is switched off--

Just zis Guy said:

Absolutely. As long as you don't try to turn it into weapons (a dirty
process, I'm told) it is possible to treat nuclear waste relatively cleanly
(by comparison with other industrial processes); encapsulation in glass and
putting it into one of those deep dark holes where Welshmen used to work is
always an option.

Not actually that simple, as it turns out. One of my undergrad modules
in Geology was suitable strata for radiocative waste burial. It's nasty
stuff, so you need to avoid anything that will move, anything that will
significantly erode downwards in the next 100K years or so, anything
under the water table (and anything likely to come into the water table
in the next 100K years or so), anything that won't dissipate heat well,
and probably a pile of other stuff I've forgotten over the intervening
years. In short, there is nowhere in the UK that actually qualifies for
"best practice" high grade waste disposal.

For lesser waste you may wish to google on Dounraey and Explosion to see
what lovely stuff it is and how much we can trust our highly skilled and
experienced friends in the nuclear industry to keep it all under control.

Quoted message said:

The real answer is to use less energy to start with, a process which
engineers call "efficiency" and Leftpondians seem to think will lead to the
end of civilisation as we know it.

But of course I am able to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of a renewable
energy project - I like to see wind turbines and dams (and I absolutely love
Dinorwig), they give me hope for the future, whereas some people think they
represent the end of civilisation as we know it.

The real problem with the above is an awful lot of people see the
existence of the latter as an excuse not to bother with the former.
Given a choice of lots of renewable energy sources or just not bothering
to waste the electricity they generate, the second option is actually
much "greener", and much of the opposition to them comes from people
like David Bellamy who aren't saying renewables are bad but that people
are missing the point.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Arthur Clune said:

On another note, I think more people like working in the office than
is normally thought as well. Many people might like the idea of one day
a week at home, but more than that and I think lots of people find it
isolating.

I really find these sort of stories very very hard to believe. My
employer (when I was in the UK) is basically progressive and
employee-friendly, in comparison with most commercial sector work (I can
say things like that now I'm not a union rep). But working at home? It's
a struggle. And that's despite the job being at least 95% computer
programming, reading and writing papers. I could easily spend several
days in a row literally without talking to anyone except perhaps one
colleague who I sometimes work with - and since she's married to me, we
could certainly be at home instead!

At a senior enough level, it happens. But for anyone in the low to
mid-ranking grades, it is rare for it to be allowed.

Hands up all those who would rather spend more time in the office than
they currently do...

James
--
If I have seen further than others, it is
by treading on the toes of giants.
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/julesandjames/home/

Nick Kew said:

Suddenly I see an unlikely possibility of voting for the monster
raving tory party again.

Oh come off it, the peak oil crash, thermohaline circulation switch-off,
super-storms and 80m of sea level rise isn't _that_ serious...

James
--
If I have seen further than others, it is
by treading on the toes of giants.
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/julesandjames/home/

Jon Senior said:

Sorry folks... its a gonna crash!

Yippeee! House with garage, here we come!

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

Arthur Clune said:

a) live in too small house with short commute
b) live in house large enough for kid to have own room but a 40 min
commute

40 minutes gets me to Didcot from reading by train :-)

Half an hour or more from one side of Reading to the other.

I think it's going to be closer to an hour for those who live in cheap
houses...

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden]
says...

Quoted message said:

Jon Senior said:

Sorry folks... its a gonna crash!

Yippeee! House with garage, here we come!

House would be nice. There's something distinctly futile about renting,
but there isn't a cat-in-hell's chance of my buying property anywhere
within the city limits. I could look to get a property in the
surrounding countryside, which would be nice, but impractical, or a top-
floor flat in the city (not a good choice of areas) which would require
"extensive renovation"!

Great!

Jon

Just zis Guy, you know? <[email hidden]> wrote:

: 40 minutes gets me to Didcot from reading by train :-)

: I think it's going to be closer to an hour for those who live in cheap
: houses...

Move up north then instead of Reading.

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune PGP/GPG Key: http://www.clune.org/pubkey.txt
"Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

"Just zis Guy, you know?" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Apparently Rev. Blair has been pontificating on the issue of global
warming. I wonder if green transport will fihure in his plans?

Probably a precursor to increasing motoring taxes, usually is. I e-mailed
one of the global warming experts when they were on BBC R5, asking what
caused all of the several kilometres of ice over N. Europe to melt around
10000 years ago, "er... er....well.."

--
Simon M.