Millions for defense, but not one cent for survival

Government investment in nuclear missiles : £20 billion


Government investment in hybrid/green/electric cars : £20 million

Energy Costs

The cost of cleaning up after the last generation of nuclear power plants could rise as high as £73bn. This has to be paid by the taxpayer. The next generation of nuclear power plants has already been approved. The government has decided our future is nuclear.

The cost of completing the national grid so it runs all the way from Scotland to Southern England and then onto France is about £4bn, which includes wind farms in Scotland. The idea is we could be a net exporter of energy within a generation. Britain is blessed with amazing wind and wave energy resources. We also have a commitment to cut our greenhouse gases and increase the proportion of our energy from renewable sources. That process has started but most serious proposals are stuck in the planning process and very few make it through.

Here is my plan;

1) Approve a mix of big and small projects
2) Streamline the planning process and be biased toward green energy schemes
3) Add incentives for communities that host wind farms
4) Allow any user to sell energy back to the grid at a fair price; feed in tariffs

Above all just do SOMETHING and do it NOW. The Germans are far in front of us

Carbon footprint of football matches

It's music festival season and there has been much comment about the carbon footprint of such events. Many tens of thousands of people travelling many miles to attend surely do create a lot of CO2 (and pollution, which seems to have been pushed down the pecking order of things to worry about by greenhouse gases). Events like glastonbury have made a certain number of tickets available only to those who travel there by bus. Bands like Radiohead are only playing at venues with good public transport links.

All very good. But... The last round of premier league football matches was attended by about 365'000 people. There are 38 such rounds in a season which adds up to just under 14 million people per year attending matches. The Championship (the second most highly attended football league in the world) gets about 5 million attendees a year if last weekend is anything to go by (bear in mind it is end of season which attracts more fans but weigh this against declining attendance figures across football). A lot of football fans don't travel far to the match but some fans travel a long way (Man Utd fans). Even so, we are talking a good proportion of 20 million people are travelling to football matches each year. This must dwarf the music festivals in terms of CO2 generated.

Favourite poll result of the week; 15% of Americans think Barak Obama is a muslim.

The Lie

Bush claims there should be no emission restrictions because China and India would reject the idea outright.

But China and India accept mandatory cuts, they just disagree with everyone else how the system should work.

Live Earth

Live Earth was supposed to raise awareness for green issues and climate change. Madonna urged the audience to jump up and down to change the world. This from a woman with investments in some of the most polluting companies in the US. I have a real problem with wealthy musicians telling me to fly/drive less and recycle more. A touring band generates a vast amount of CO2 and waste. The concert has not been well received. TV viewing figures were very low in the UK and there were complaints about the sound quality in the stadium and the clips that were shown on TV attracted more complaints for the songs that weren't shown than the swearing. I'm glad I didn't go. It seemed to be about neither music nor the environment.

Floods

South Yorkshire has been devastated by flash floods and there are many dead and homeless people. Worst of all I heard speculation that the environment agency sacrificied the village of Toll Bar to spare Doncaster Town centre. No-one lives on the ground floor in Doncaster town centre. Oh well, I'm sure the insurance companies see it as the lesser (cheaper) of two evils.

Global Warming

Last night the environment secretary David Miliband was on Newsnight to explain the future CO2 reduction targets set out by the government of the UK. Asked if emissions trading would go ahead he explained that it could happen that one country might buy spare emissions from another but that this was OK because it doesn't matter if a tonne of CO2 is emitted here or there. How does the minister know this for sure? Has he studied global airflow patterns and concluded that CO2 dispersal does not depend upon the release location? Is he certain that there are no special release locations which might lead to pockets or bands of high CO2 density in crucial areas of the upper atmosphere?

This is the sort of hand waving science that derails the global warming argument. The document published in February by the IGPCC showed that the climate is changing and it considered many factors that might be helping/causing this process, one of which was CO2 emissions caused by human activity. There could be many reasons why the climate is changing (such as changes in the sun) and they all need to be considered objectively. Politicians need to let the scientists check everything and gather as much data as is needed before they come down on either side. There are those who believe that there is a conspiracy to hold back the economies of developing nations such as China and India by restricting their emissions. Others believe evidence is suppressed or not considered. When scientific data becomes a political football for liberals/capitalists then objectivity is suppressed.

Energy usage

I was given a gadget that will measure the energy use of my electrical appliances and help work out their monetary costs

Kettle 2890 W
Computer 130 W
Toaster 1010 W
Phone charger 0.002 W
Dishwasher 600 W
Big TV 110 W
Small TV 42 W (21 W standby)

Which means that £1 ($1.90) gets me

178 cups of tea (2 cups per boil, 800 ml water)
80 hours computer time
255 slices toasted bread
32000 charges of my phone
9 dishwasher loads (2 hrs per load)
100 hrs big TV
250 hrs small TV

I started a new job today.