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Neither me Joseph ....... 'hoax wise' I don't know but scientific evidence seem to prove it isn't a hoax. Having said that - if we wish to pursue the non fossil fuel strategy, I feel fracking must be given a real chance as panels and wind turbines can only do so much. Come in Altypie ............ surely it is not beyond the realms of possibility to really go for hydro electric power? The technology is there as it is relatively a simple principle. We have an abundance of rivers and and the water is reclaimed to the best of my knowledge (??)Originally Posted by JoePass
What are your views?
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Great analogy! So Forest say 'Sorry, Notts, but we now need both our players back for a promotion charge. I know they're the heart of your team but we offered you the chance to be part of a co-operative venture and you turned it down so go scratch'.
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And here lies proof that you don't have to die in order to become a fossil.
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So then we "borrow" players from elsewhere, buy some better players or develop our own......it's called Free Trade, Free Enterprise or Free Movement, call it what you want, the key word is FREE.....Notts would never be Free of Forest....just as the UK was never Free of the autocrats in Brussels, and even when we want lo be Free again they start inventing a stack of penalties to teach everyone a lesson.....the Co-operative EU don't like Freedom.
I defer to Tony Benn of Labour on this subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQY2CHx4d3U
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Yes, Henry Ford et al faced equal criticism. And they came up with the solution you mentioned.
I think in this day and age we could probably quite easily take that up a notch and get a technical solution.
A vehicle approaching buzzer warning? Perhaps induction loop based? Or even play your music very loud when you drive.
Certainly it is not beyond the wit of man to come up with a simple solution, you just need a tiny bit of imagination.
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The combustion engine is out of date and has no place in the 21st Century. Having it in our cars means we continue to pollute our streets and cities and the emissions affect countless life’s all over the world.
The move to fully electric vehicles should be one of the major advances in car ownership of this Century.
The next step is the generation of electric itself and making this cleaner and greener by using renewable technologies as much as possible.
Here in the UK we are not blessed with the greatest amount of direct sunlight (as in no cloud) however we have lots of coastline and windy conditions at sea so off shore wind farms are key to this growth. Also Hydroelectric but for our rivers and waterways that’s where Water Companies and Electricity Companies will need to join forces to put the investment into these technologies.
With the reduction in tax collected from Petrol and Diesel vehicles that Electric vehicles would bring I’d expect road tax to increase dramatically and/or congestion charges and city road taxes to increase as well as toll roads. I can’t see how any government could suffer such a loss in income that fossil fuels like diesel and petrol bring in without obtaining it from the motorist in other ways.
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Fracking:
One objection sometimes raised to fracking is that it causes earthquakes. This article about Oklahoma discusses that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesco.../#c411ad6d68e9
Research says fracking can produce earthquakes but most are small and the vast majority you’ll never even feel. It’s not the actual fracking operation itself that causes the quakes but the large volume of water reinjected into deeper geology. Most fracking ops cannot induce earthquakes because the fracking either doesn’t push enough water back into the deep geology or there simply aren’t vulnerable faults nearby that can be activated. The earthquake risk is not zero but it sometimes gets overstated by those with an agenda. Why worry about a side effect of earthquakes, even those you can feel, when the consequence of them is absolutely nothing?
Another interesting point from the article: “the fracking craze is responsible for the dramatic drop in carbon emissions in America because it has provided enough gas at cheap prices for natural gas to replace coal. Our emissions are now at a 27-year low.”
Canada Oil Sands have the world’s 3rd largest reserves much of which can be got at with cheap open mining. Agreeing on an environmentally & politically acceptable extraction method there is another thing though.
Hydro:
In terms of Hydro-Power, the consequences aren't all positive. Often poorer communities are ordered out of their homes, with little compensation (depending on where in the world it's built), natural habitat is drowned and sometimes we get the geology wrong with disastrous consequences – the Vaiont Dam is a famous dam disaster : http://www.environmentandsociety.org...ide-vajont-dam
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So in one fell swoop you (and the government) have ruled out the potential of hydrogen fueled vehicles, further development of natural gas engines and even the possibility that additives or technology would render petrol/diesel clean.
One of the most damaging causes of pollution has been a previous government's push for diesel, a problem they were well aware of as also was any thermodynamic engineer http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41985715
And in the unlikely event that there will be enough electricity production to cater for our society (we're perilously close to limits now and don't let watts of green blind you into the megawatt requirements) then you can be sure that's where the tax shortfalls will be made up.
Finally, and to be clear, I am not anti-green. I don't regard destruction of orang-utang habitats for palm oil as being green, I don't regard flooding valleys and destroying communities and habitats as being green, I don't regard altering the whole ecology of estuaries as being green, and those bloody bird-slicing windmills all over our lovely countryside, aren't green either. The government should merely state their targets for pollution levels without stipulating what technologies they wish innovation to follow. If the answer, when all factors are considered, ends up being a green production of electricity then all well and good but don't preclude all other technologies, that should not be their job.
If you are aware of Electric Mountain (if not look it up) it can produce approximately 1800MW (1800000 kw) of power for about 6 hours and then uses off-peak power to replenish the top reservoir. An obvious green solution would be to use solar power to push the water back up. Rough estimates are that the whole of Wales would have to be covered in solar panels and there to be a sunny day to do this. And Electric Mountain is just there to cover sudden loads like cups of tea during a popular TV program break. That's to put the scale of the issue into perspective and now we want to put a few million cars on overnight charge as well!
Don Quixote and tilting and windmills come to mind and I won't be around to see the folly of it all. Oh, unless nuclear gets full backing of course and then we'll be rocking.
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Thank you Alty, a good read which alters my views somewhat. Tar sand is out of the question here in the U.K although I am aware of the Canadian operations as my old company supplied a large mobile Sizer to break down the overburden on a surface mining operation around Fort McMurray. Therefore my current thoughts.
Fracking: Still to carry on with exploratory drilling in the U.K. but also to evaluate carefully before any production starts.
Hydro: On any engineering project the best calculations can go wrong but if costs were favourable and the end product more reliable, we don't have to excavate and create dams. Just my conjecture, but for example - design a horizontal revolving apparatus turned by a rivers current to rotate the turbines required. No wildlife threatened and communities stay where they are. Sounds easy doesn't it but no doubt may not have the " umph " that a vertical force of water created by a dam gives.
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Have a look at the Beeston scheme on the Trent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeston_Hydro
Not sure why there aren't more of them, maybe there are? Still pretty small scale and ecological issues.
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