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Climate Emergency

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  • edited February 17
    R0TW said:
    Dansk_Red said:
    It will only take one really cold winter and power outages become a reality,  for people to turn on whoever is running the country, if everybody truly believed in  climate emergency we would all vote for the Greens.     
    Without wishing to get political. I think the name “Greens” is not truly reflective of just what a shambles of policies they have. The overarching “Green” credentials is for me lost in the other crap they want.
    Well the political comment didn’t last long.
    Like others on here, you just can’t help yourselves.
    Green Party - The party that preports to be about green issues. 
    Reform Party - The party that denies man made climate change and will scrap net zero.
    I agree neither have anything to do with the climate emergency 
  • edited February 17
    Fuck knows, I vote reform so am no way as intelligent as you.
    I will just bow to whatever you say, as you are always correct,

    I do think that areas that have high levels of lightning strikes should investigate harvesting that form of energy.
    Places like Florida for example.
    A couple of harvested strikes would see off anything a farm of wind turbines could generate.
    The problem with this being the large instantaneous power supply.

    Seeing that we can now send power down a Cat5 cable to boil a kettle (and more), perhaps there may a solution in the future to do the reverse of this? Still, what do I know.
  • AI’s take


    Lightning strikes are a fascinating natural phenomenon that carry immense energy, but harnessing them as a reliable form of energy is highly impractical for several reasons. Here's an overview of lightning as a potential energy source and the challenges involved:

    ### Energy in Lightning
    - A single lightning bolt can carry **up to 1 billion joules of energy** (roughly equivalent to 280 kWh), which is enough to power a typical household for about a week.
    - The energy is released in a very short time (milliseconds), resulting in an extremely high power output (up to 1 trillion watts).

    ### Challenges of Harnessing Lightning
    1. **Unpredictability**: Lightning strikes are random and sporadic, making it impossible to predict when and where they will occur.
    2. **Short Duration**: The energy is released in a fraction of a second, requiring technology capable of capturing and storing it almost instantaneously.
    3. **High Voltage and Current**: Lightning carries extremely high voltage (millions of volts) and current (tens of thousands of amps), which would require specialized and expensive equipment to handle safely.
    4. **Infrastructure Costs**: Building a system to capture lightning would require widespread infrastructure in areas prone to lightning strikes, which are often remote or impractical for energy distribution.
    5. **Low Frequency**: Even in regions with frequent thunderstorms, the total energy from lightning over a year is relatively small compared to other renewable energy sources like solar or wind.

    ### Theoretical Possibilities
    While harnessing lightning directly is not feasible, researchers have explored ways to capture atmospheric electricity or use lightning's energy indirectly. For example:
    - **Atmospheric Energy Harvesting**: Some experiments have attempted to capture the electrical charge in the atmosphere, though this is still in the experimental stage.
    - **Energy Storage**: Advanced capacitors or supercapacitors could theoretically store the energy from a lightning strike, but current technology is not efficient enough for practical use.

    ### Conclusion
    While lightning is a powerful natural phenomenon, its unpredictability, short duration, and the technical challenges of capturing and storing its energy make it an impractical source of renewable energy. Instead, focus remains on more reliable and scalable renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and hydroelectric power.

  • Gulp
    Comments like this annoy me - designed to belittle people for daring to have an alternate opinion.
    Feel free to be annoyed. It’s your right.
  • Back on topic and apologies for steering it sideways.

    AI Overview


    The latest climate change news includes record-breaking temperatures, rising sea levels, and melting ice sheets. 
    Temperature
    • 2024 was the warmest year on record, with an average temperature 1.47°C higher than the pre-industrial average 
    2023 was the warmest year on record, 1.35°C higher than the pre-industrial average The past decade has seen the 10 warmest years on record 
    Sea level rise 
    • Glaciers and ice sheets are melting faster than ever, causing sea levels to rise
    • Almost two-thirds of cities with populations over five million are at risk of sea level rise
    Ocean acidification 
    • Oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the air, making them less alkaline
    • This process, called ocean acidification, can harm marine organisms like coral and plankton
    Paris Agreement
    • The Paris Agreement calls for limiting global warming to "well below" 2°C, and ideally to 1.5°C 
    2024 was the first year to average more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels 
  • One of my schools projects (65years ago) was to draw a map of Great Britain if sea levels rose by 50ft due to Artic ice melting, so someone saw it as a problem back then. Always regret losing all my school stuff during various moves. The top of the west stand at the valley may just about be visable 😀 😃 
  • Gulp
    Comments like this annoy me - designed to belittle people for daring to have an alternate opinion.
    Feel free to be annoyed. It’s your right.
    Gulp
  • Here’s another one for you to gulp on.
    How about using London deep tube network as a means of harvesting heat energy for everything above it?
    How about walkways that harvest energy from those walking on it?
    I am on a roll now.
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  • R0TW said:
    Here’s another one for you to gulp on.
    How about using London deep tube network as a means of harvesting heat energy for everything above it?
    How about walkways that harvest energy from those walking on it?
    I am on a roll now.
    I’m not aware of those possibilities but if they could fly why not. It’s going to need thinking outside the box. 👍
  • R0TW said:
    Here’s another one for you to gulp on.
    How about using London deep tube network as a means of harvesting heat energy for everything above it?
    How about walkways that harvest energy from those walking on it?
    I am on a roll now.
    Both ludicrous suggestions because of the miniscule energy harvested in comparison with the effort and costs needed to generate it. Same reason every time a cyclist is demonstrated generating watts on a static bike it's suggested that this is somehow harvested and that they can 'power their house'. The amount of machinery and energy involved in converting that energy into a usable form usually outweighs the energy expended to create it.
  • Solar Valley alert..! 

    Link 
  • Ok, oh wise one.
    The recent developments at stations like Bank and Elizabeth Line couldn’t have utilised a location that never drops below 17 degrees to benefit the constructions above? Why do heat pumps have bores deep into the ground, in order to dramatically improve efficiency. Don’t crossover this and your daily cycle.
    The whole irony being that LU spend an absolute fortune trying to cool the underground network.
    Stand near a vent shaft at ground level and you can feel the heat dissipated from trains moving through tunnels beneath.

    This should have been a mandatory requirement of big business who subsidised the EL construction by having a free run of constructing what they wanted above. 
  • R0TW said:
    Here’s another one for you to gulp on.
    How about using London deep tube network as a means of harvesting heat energy for everything above it?
    How about walkways that harvest energy from those walking on it?
    I am on a roll now.
    Both ludicrous suggestions because of the miniscule energy harvested in comparison with the effort and costs needed to generate it. Same reason every time a cyclist is demonstrated generating watts on a static bike it's suggested that this is somehow harvested and that they can 'power their house'. The amount of machinery and energy involved in converting that energy into a usable form usually outweighs the energy expended to create it.
    Neither of these suggestions are ludicrous.  But they're both marginally profitable and would take decades to pay back the investment.  

    Underground heat recovery systems have been successfully deployed in Boise, Idaho and Drammen, in Norway.  London already has an example in the Northern Line, in Islington. Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting in Pedestrian Walkways ("walkways that harvest energy from those walking on it") have been deployed in Toulouse, Masdar City, UAE and, again in London, in high footfall areas at the Olympic Park in 2012.  
  • edited February 17
    The thing is, when you have/had a blank canvas, they would have been more profitable than trying to retrofit, which as you rightly comment, would take decades to recover.

  • Regarding heat pumps, I think they will become more efficient as engineering improves.
    I remember when LED lighting first appeared on the scene, everyone thought it was great.
    It was actually very poor with light level rendering, glare etc being appalling.
    You had manufacturers quoting mean time failures of 50k hours, yet the products were less than 6 months old.
    If you take a look around LU premises you can see early examples (Green Park) and what is currently installed on the EL.
    No comparison.
    Likewise, I think in the next 10 years, ASHP will be the go to domestic energy source for hot water/heating.
    Unfortunately, not just yet.
    I guess the same will apply to energy storage (batteries).
    So in short, stamping out of fossil fuel at this moment in time is not the solution IMO.

    At present Neasden Depot is undergoing a major upheaval with the use of electricity replacing gas.
    The upgrade of power supplies and cost of solar is mind blowing.
  • I wouldn't want to see any ideas completely abandoned because they seem 'ludicrous' now. Most of the technology we have now would have been thought of as ludicrous at some point in the past. Much of it, not very long ago at all. Ideas that currently seem too difficult and/or too expensive at the moment may prove to be winners in the future, so it's important that we don't forget them completely even if they aren't currently our priorities. 

    That said, we don't have time to wait on the climate issue. It's therefore important that there is major investment in workable solutions right now, even if the technology will be cheaper in ten years time. Ultimately, if there aren't any early adopters prepared to pay premium rates, there won't be the development into these products and the prices won't drop. Someone's got to bite the bullet before we all get shot.
  • Having read the last 500 posts I'm still of the opinion. 


    Palace are cunts 
  •  Having  read the last 500 posts 
    I'm still of the opinion 


    Palace are cunts 
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  • Chizz said:
    R0TW said:
    Here’s another one for you to gulp on.
    How about using London deep tube network as a means of harvesting heat energy for everything above it?
    How about walkways that harvest energy from those walking on it?
    I am on a roll now.
    Both ludicrous suggestions because of the miniscule energy harvested in comparison with the effort and costs needed to generate it. Same reason every time a cyclist is demonstrated generating watts on a static bike it's suggested that this is somehow harvested and that they can 'power their house'. The amount of machinery and energy involved in converting that energy into a usable form usually outweighs the energy expended to create it.
    Neither of these suggestions are ludicrous.  But they're both marginally profitable and would take decades to pay back the investment.  

    Underground heat recovery systems have been successfully deployed in Boise, Idaho and Drammen, in Norway.  London already has an example in the Northern Line, in Islington. Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting in Pedestrian Walkways ("walkways that harvest energy from those walking on it") have been deployed in Toulouse, Masdar City, UAE and, again in London, in high footfall areas at the Olympic Park in 2012.  
    They're ludicrous given existing alternatives are far, far more beneficial, and would take a fraction of the costs and effort to implement. Money would be better spent diverted to existing technology than to something that would take aeons to show any really, tangible benefit - it's fiddling while Rome burns. 
  • R0TW said:
    Ok, oh wise one.
    The recent developments at stations like Bank and Elizabeth Line couldn’t have utilised a location that never drops below 17 degrees to benefit the constructions above? Why do heat pumps have bores deep into the ground, in order to dramatically improve efficiency. Don’t crossover this and your daily cycle.
    The whole irony being that LU spend an absolute fortune trying to cool the underground network.
    Stand near a vent shaft at ground level and you can feel the heat dissipated from trains moving through tunnels beneath.

    This should have been a mandatory requirement of big business who subsidised the EL construction by having a free run of constructing what they wanted above. 
    What has any of that got to do with retrofitting heat pump technology to the underground and using it in a widespread manner, or using the minute amount of heat generated from people on walkways for any meaningful purpose?

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