Monday 25 April 2011

Politicians and their muddled thinking.

When will green thinking become unified, we cannot put aside our good farmland for nature projects whilst we rely on imports. It’s not fair that we hurtle towards the 80% emissions cuts whilst we chow down on Brazilian beef cooked in a Chinese oven with French electricity. LDV and Rover will add to these carbon savings, but in their place we have unemployment and hundreds of failing subsidiary businesses that depended on their custom. We must see new jobs created in green industries in the UK; there must be jobs. If we build a solar panel in England and it is 5% less efficient and 5% more money than the German one then, that is fine it is British and will get better in time.

Interference with farming annoys me; British farms should be producing more food WHY? So we don’t have to IMPORT everything. 90% of apples are foreign, beef from brazil, lamb from New Zealand, and we are flooding good farm land for marsh warblers, and fencing off streams to increase bio diversity, does any one stop to think of the container ship laboring through heavy seas from the southern hemisphere, laden with low welfare standard meat, burning heavy marine oils as it does so?

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Carbon Accounting and Emisssions Factors. Whats that?

Carbon Accounting: As I understand it this is the umbrella term for embodied carbon and operational carbon. It depends on what project you are building as to which is the most important consideration. For a pumping station you may which to consider lavishing you budget on some efficient pumps, as you operational carbon use will be high otherwise, in comparison spending an unnecessary amount on low carbon building materials will only save small amounts, so it is more efficient use of money, in terms of carbon (and in the case money) to put you budget in to efficient pumps. A store shed on the other hand will have low operational carbon, so green building materials may be a viable option here.

Emissions Factors: These are the basis of all carbon accounting; they tell you how damaging a process is in term of emissions per unit volume. It is important to use a standardized Emissions factors set, and a presume this is why, DEFRA have released a booklet (downloadable) with lots of emissions factors in it. However, so emissions factors are still on the drawing board, SWW get some of theirs from research groups.

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Friday 8 April 2011

Evolution = Less Efficiency

What do we really need? (Based on Maslow Hierarchy)

-Water (3 liters a day)
-Food (1500 calories a day)
-Shelter (A tent and some animal firs)

What do we think we need?

-Water (100 liters a day) – (19/01/10: Not counting embodied water in products)
-Food (Three Meals, Hot Drinks, Snacks – 2500 calories a day and more)
-Shelter (Three bedroom semi detached)

. . . . . .and

2 Cars
Annual Holiday
Education
An over lavish Christmas etc etc etc

So the bottom line is that most people their lives about as far away from being sustainable, as you could possibly imagine, and I suppose (to get back on track) people’s needs drive industry to provide what it does.

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Friday 1 April 2011

Carbon payback scheme areOK?

Although carbon pay back schemes it brought about a decrease in growth for developing countries, that LDCs (Lesser Developed Countries) really still benefited from all of the technology of MDCs and and such there should not be complaints, we polluted our environment and the globe, and that's a shame but it lead to development, and LDCs get the benefits of this development, some might say that people in LDCs for example Botswana want to live a simple life and not to ruin the country by westernising it, but they probably drives a 4x4.

I have met a number of communists in my time, all who say "I'm a communist at heart". . . . they all live in big houses. Stick them in a tiny flat eating lard a cabbage, in Moscow in 1960, and then see if they want to be a communist, its the red wine moment as some call it. . . . .wouldn't it be nice if the world was cadbury.

The fact is people want. They want cars fridges, a nice house with a blender and something to put in that blender, these wants will never stop, so lets get less people on the planet. I think the one child policy in china is a bit harsh as be an only child may have negative psychological affects, a two child policy would stabilise the population and possibly reduce it slowly as some couples would choose to have one, the Chinese guys found it very strange that we get paid for having kids in this country. We have just had our fist child and we get £160 a month from the government and and tax breaks, now that's not a lot to my wife and I but, for a mother who is on social benefit or a low income family it is an incentive to have more kids, fact, this needs to stop. Also these lower social economic groups are generally less well educated, and large families put strain on parenting time which can only lead to social decline.

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Which is the greenest car?