Britain Set For First Coal-Free Day Since Industrial Revolution (theguardian.com) 206
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The UK is set to have its first ever working day without coal power generation since the Industrial Revolution, according to the National Grid. The control room tweeted the predicted milestone on Friday, adding that it is also set to be the first 24-hour coal-free period in Britain. The UK has had shorter coal-free periods in 2016, as gas and renewables such as wind and solar play an increasing role in the power mix. The longest continuous period until now was 19 hours -- first achieved on a weekend last May, and matched on Thursday. Hannah Martin, head of energy at Greenpeace UK, said: "The first day without coal in Britain since the Industrial Revolution marks a watershed in the energy transition. A decade ago, a day without coal would have been unimaginable, and in 10 years' time our energy system will have radically transformed again." Britain became the first country to use coal for electricity when Thomas Edison opened the Holborn Viaduct power station in London in 1882. It was reported in the Observer at the time that "a hundred weight of coal properly used will yield 50 horse power for an hour." And that each horse power "will supply at least a light equivalent to 150 candles."
19th and 20th century powerhouse (Score:5, Insightful)
Britain's rise in the mid-19th century was due to coal. And major cities in the UK are still present around strategic coal fields. Moving away from coal is inevitable, but the British economy benefited greatly from this dirty energy source. And the West is currently denying those benefits to the third world, isn't it convenient that coal is bad now that the first world has exhausted theirs and no longer needs it. But the natural resource is plentiful in Africa, India and China and every step is being taken to prevent them from using it. Maybe Britain would be less full of shit if they started contributing to building of the infrastructure of Africa, if they are so keen on denying them the use of coal power. Solar panels have a very large capital expense, they are cheap in the long run, but they are not feasible for running industry in poor countries.
Re:19th and 20th century powerhouse (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As of 2014 China had 23% of total electricity generated by renewables:
http://www.iea.org/statistics/... [iea.org]
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If everywhere had as much hydro available as Norway, most of the world would be at 99% renewables.
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No matter how much solar you use, it can't compare to using that much solar plus hydro.
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Again, even if you use all these new methods, it won't beat using all these new methods plus hydro.
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If they had an order of magnitude more people, it would still be less than 1%.
36% Read your link. They buy nuclear from Sweden (Score:5, Informative)
I see you didn't bother to read your own link before posting an extremely obvious too-good-to-be-true claim.
Let me copy-paste from our own link:
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the average electricity consumption mix of a Norwegian household was 36% renewable.[4]
As per the European Union's 2009 Renewables Directive (later added in the EEA Agreement), Norway has established a national goal for renewable energy - 67.5% of gross final consumption
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So 36% of what they *use* is renewable. What they *produce* is hydro and wind. Where do they get the electricity the use? They buy nuclear-generated electricity from Sweden.
Does that mean they don't use fossil fuels? Well no, transportation and everything is still fossil fuels, but their *electricity* doesn't come from fossil fuels. It comes from Sweden's nuclear plants amd Norway's mountains by way of hydro.
Hydro IS great in places with lots of mountains far from people. When you put your hydro upstream from populations, you eventually get Banqiao (200,000 dead, 11 million displaced). So don't do that. But where you've got lots of mountains and no towns downstream, hydro is great. It's not powering 99% of Norway, though. 36%, according to your link.
Re:36% Read your link. They buy nuclear from Swede (Score:4, Informative)
The link to the source for your 36% on the wikipedia page is dead, but anyway, Norway is producing more clean electricity than they consume (https://www.ssb.no/en/energi-og-industri/statistikker/energiregn/aar-forelopige/2015-05-06?fane=tabell&sort=nummer&tabell=226241). Whether they sell their clean electricity abroad for others to use or they use the clean electricity themselves doesn't make a shitload of difference. The net effect is the same. Are you splitting hairs or am I missing a valid point here?
If you include transport, heating, etc, the picture is as you point out, a bit different. But even then, the majority comes from renewables.
OP was clearly talking about electricity.
Why there is an important difference (Score:3)
> Whether they sell their clean electricity abroad for others to use or they use the clean electricity themselves doesn't make a shitload of difference. The net effect is the same. Are you splitting hairs or am I missing a valid point here?
You may be "missing a valid point" because I didn't explicitly say it. That is, there IS a difference, an important difference, but I didn't say what the difference is.
On a small scale, perhaps an individual, the net effect would indeed be the same. On a broad scale,
Perhaps unlikely, like nuclear catastrophe (Score:2)
A major dam failure may be unlikely in Norway, and as seen at Banqiao and elsewhere it can be a MAJOR catastrophe. Why mention unlikely risks? Norway gets the electricity it uses from three sources - wind, hydro, and nuclear. A nuclear catastrophe is similarly unlikely, but its certainly something people bring up! Actually nuclear catastrophe is quite a bit less likely - the type of nuclear accident they are afraid of has NEVER happened. (Chernobyl killed 38 people, and decades later probably shortened t
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Chernobyl killed far more than 38 people.
I suggest to read a bit up on it.
They used recruits to clean up, directly after the fire. Hundreds of thousands of them died over the next years, ten thousands a few weeks later already.
The total death toll is estimated good above one million poeple.
So says greenpeace, the WHO, 'Doctors without frontiers' (not sure how they are called in english) and plenty of others of oranizations involved in that matter.
I witnessed thousands of dead during the weeks when they stil
WHO says fewer than 50, 4,000. Doctors W/O "dozens (Score:2)
> So says greenpeace, the WHO, 'Doctors without frontiers
Let me copy-paste from WHO (World Health organization) for you:
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A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.
As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster
--
http://www.who.int/mediacentre... [who.int]
The only mention I found on the Do
See also United Nations report (Score:2)
Btw the United Nations report is also pretty thorough, if you'd like to have a read. The UN conclusions are very close the WHO numbers.
Pretty much only Greenpeace sticks to their original estimates, despite them being very obviously wrong at this point. They projected by now, radiation would have killed more cleanup workers than the total who have died from all sources combined. In other words, even if we counted workers who died in car accidents decades later as Chernobyl victims, there are STILL too many
A video of a Greenpeace counter (Score:2)
Here's a video of Greenpeace reporting the death toll for you:
https://youtu.be/uBxMPqxJGqI [youtu.be]
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Most workers who worked in cleaning up are dead.
German TV teams over the last 20 years regularily visit survivours and interview them.
Basically all survivours tell us: only very few are still alife. Most of them don't have a living comrade anymore.
The clean up personal was around 650,000 people if I recal correctly. Over 90% of them are dead now. Keep in mind: that where 17 - 20 year old boys when they did the cleaning up. If most of them are dead now, it hardly can be contributed to 'car accidents' or smok
WHO and many other sources (Score:2)
> Your numbers for Chernobyl are retardedly optimistic - I have no clue where you got them
Check *any* source not paid for an extremist anti-nuclear group. There was a lot of variation in projections back in the late 1980s, estimating how it might effect cancer rates in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Now pretty much everyone is roughly in agreement. The World Health Organization did one well-known study. See Sovacool for other references. Since it's been 30 years, experts no longer need to debate about p
Re:WHO and many other sources (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually we don't know how many cases of what ever cancer there has been.
The numbers are locked down and not public.
However about 20,000 children where treated in Germany for Thyroid Cancer ...
Re:36% Read your link. They buy nuclear from Swede (Score:4, Informative)
The 36% number comes from the Guarantees of Origin scam. It's an economic system which disconnects the production and consumption of energy from the buying and selling of it. It basically allows renewable energy to produce double the amount of clean conscience, for the same amount of clean energy:
Also, I suspect that the "67.5% of gross final consumption" includes stuff like gas for vehicles, wood for heating, etc, not just electricity, which makes it meaningless in this discussion.
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When you put your hydro upstream from populations, you eventually get Banqiao (200,000 dead, 11 million displaced).
Are you saying all dams eventually fail?
Some won't last forever (Score:2)
> Are you saying all dams eventually fail?
Well, do you think do you think all 40 or so dams in Norway will be intact 2,000 years from now? Lake Homs in Syria might still be there, but it's a pretty good bet Norway will have some more failures - they have before, just as the US has. If they make a habit of building dams upstream of cities, it's a pretty good bet some failures will wipe out cities. Niagara failed at Schoellkopf power station. If a major failure at Niagara that happened today, with the n
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99% of Norways coastline is fjords. And they only have 5 million people on a land size that 2.5x times of the UK. Half the population live in Oslo, Stavenger, Bergen and Trondheim.
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Given the land mass of Africa, most of it being empty desert, they have infinite potential for solar power (aside from being underneath migratory routes for birds).
West Virginia? (Score:1)
Re: 19th and 20th century powerhouse (Score:1)
Maybe Britain would be less full of shit if they started contributing to building of the infrastructure of Africa,
They already build the Cairo to Capetown line. You're welcome, you ungrateful little shit.
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You are either a shill or a troll to offer 19th century solutions to 21st+ century problems when they have obviously had long term negative effects on us all.
China is the number 1 user of coal, and they have recently shut down 103 coal plants [nytimes.com], while investing $600 billion into solar power.
That 'developing nation' America is the 2nd largest user of coal, and is ignoring the future while promising to bring coal back from the dead. Solar will produce hundreds of thousands of jobs, compared to the 6,000 or so c
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It's only cheaper when we ignore the output of the plant, which is more carbon in the air. And it's only cheaper *now*, but the cost-down property of coal is nil, while the cost-down property of solar is still being explored. Which means that solar can keep becoming cheaper for a while, and coal will likely become more expensive.
Re:19th and 20th century powerhouse (Score:4, Insightful)
For this argument to be compelling, you have to demonstrate that there was no alternative to coal. That doesn't seem to be the case, it was just the cheapest and most readily available option at the time.
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What alternative do you suggest there was ? Wood is a very limited resource, and peat was running out.
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The coal free generation period is due to no new coal fired plants being built for years and not due to the Tories being "green".
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We're talking about 19th century.
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It's funny you dismiss hydro so quickly. There are many potential large hydro sites with very low levelized cost of energy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the governments in Africa think hydro is a great option, and that's where a lot of development is currently going. To quote from an International Energy Agency report in 2016 (Boosting the Power Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa: China's Involvement):
"Renewable sources account for 56% of total capacity added by Chinese projects between 2010 and 2020, includi
Re:19th and 20th century powerhouse (Score:5, Insightful)
now that the first world has exhausted theirs and no longer needs it.
Most of the world's coal exports are from developed countries, notably Australia, USA and Russia.
You are twisting facts to your political agenda.
Maybe Britain would be less full of shit if they started contributing to building of the infrastructure of Africa,
Britain build a great deal of Africa's infrastructure. Unfortunately most of it has fallen into neglect and decay since independence.
Re:19th and 20th century powerhouse (Score:5, Insightful)
Solar panels have a very large capital expense
Not really. With solar panels you can start small. Even a single panel can provide a few hundred watts in the African sun. That's enough to run some small equipment that you can use to manufacture stuff, and slowly build up. Try that with coal.
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I can't use coal to heat the forge for the metal for a boiler that will produce the coal-fired steam that will drive my 24/7 electric generator?
I kind of think that sounds like the industrial revolution in a single sentence.
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The ability of a solar panel to scale downwards to individual use cases is a nice feature of it
That was the whole point. OP argued that solar requires a bigger up-front investment than coal, which is clearly not true.
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So the plan is to intermittently run a few pieces of machinery in some savanna when it isn't raining or dark?
Cloud cover reduces the amount of solar power generated by up to 25%. Being close to the equator, the day/night cycle is a lot more consistent, so you can plan your power usage or charge a battery.
Or maybe instead they can go to any of the industrial centers in Africa, hook their machinery up to a power grid (powered by WHO CARES, it comes outta the wall), and actually do something sane.
Drawing power lines and constructing a power grid is expensive as Hell. Which is why solar power is so interesting: The solar panels could be on your roof, compared to a power plant 10 miles (or more) down the road.
The ability of a solar panel to scale downwards to individual use cases is a nice feature of it. But it doesn't stand to change a status quo like "put your industry next to the other industries" in America, and it sure won't in Africa either.
Most industry operates during the day time where solar panels produce energy. There has also been a
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Re:19th and 20th century powerhouse (Score:5, Insightful)
"Britain's rise in the mid-19th century was due to coal. And major cities in the UK are still present around strategic coal fields."
It's kinda cute that you think any 'major city' in GB was built in the 19th century.
Which Koch brother are you?
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any 'major city' in GB was built in the 19th century.
All the little villages that were close to natural resources or advantageously located were the ones that developed into major cities. The move from the countryside and an agrarian life to a city and an industrial life is what made those cities "major".
So yes, the OP was correct, indirectly.
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Perhaps if Africa had held smarter people, they would have had a "mid-19th century" boom in coal... but they didn't, England did, so there is that...
We are now in the 21st century, yet much of Africa might as well still be in the 19th, that isn't Britain's fault...
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Partly it is.
They killed the local aristocrats.
Divided the continent up into arbitrary 'countries', ignoring ethnics and langugaes etc.
In the end, like all colonization projects, they withdrew. Most of tfhe wars there are the direct fault of the withdrawing european colonization projects.
Look on a damn map. No border in Africa is 'natural' or comes from a 'normal development' of the people living there.
Camarun e.g. is even divided in an english speaking and an french speaking part.
The countires under the fo
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And remind me again why the Africans didn't do this to the Europeans?
Why exactly did Africa not invade Europe, instead of the other way around?
Oh, that's right, because they are dumb as rocks, or they would have dug themselves out and built a nation of modern civilization. Even today, they can't get their act together.
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Africans at that time were not as technological advanced.
That is all.
Calling other people dumb, based on their origin, is not only racist, it is plain stupid.
Even today, they can't get their act together.
Some regions go very well in Africa. Not everything is like Sudan or Somalia.
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And yet a continent that's larger than Europe, has more people than Europe, etc did not manage to either fight the Europeans off or hold its own. A place where humanity came from so it's not like the issue was they weren't there long enough to develop. Compare Sub-Saharan Africa to China or to even the Americas. It's all kind of lame really.
I don't blame the Europeans for Africa's backwardness. I think it's more due to parasites like malaria and sleeping sickness sapping people's productivity overall.
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And the West is currently denying those benefits to the third world, isn't it convenient that coal is bad now that the first world has exhausted theirs and no longer needs it.
The first world has not exhausted anything. Technology has moved on. We found out that what we do actually has an impact beyond a 100m radius from where we discharge pollution.
If the east wants to use coal then they should put up with 70 year old cars, give up computers and do everything else that goes with not moving with the times. No one is denying the 3rd world energy, far from it. Companies are actively looking at providing the technology and R&D that was performed in the west to the 3rd world. But
Won't someone please think of the... (Score:2)
...anthracite in the UK?!
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The capital expense for solar is significantly lower than coal - and it is much quicker to build. If you start building a coal plant and a solar plant of equal capacity at the same time -the solar plant will be done in 2 years, the coal plant is a minimum of 7 and 10 is more common. The solar plant will also cost a fraction. Every coal plant in Africa was built by the government - most solar plants were privately funded (because it's a much more sensible investment for a private investor).
And of course, sol
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Solar panels have a very large capital expense, they are cheap in the long run, but they are not feasible for running industry in poor countries.
Raw, ready-to-mount, single-crystal panels are down to $0.50/watt now, in pallets of ten at about 350 watts each, and have good lifetimes. Even adding the control electronics and batteries for nighttime and bad weather power, and replacing the batteries periodically, that's cheaper than building and running coal plants and their distribution infrastructure (even a
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Bad health caused by sooth and smog makes you poor too, as does the other negative impacts burning coal has on the environment. Coal has tremendous hidden costs, but them being hidden doesn't mean you get to pretend they are non-existent.
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Britain has around 200years worth of coal underground (at 1980's usage levels) and that's where most of it will stay.
Much of it is a much higher grade than the Lignite that is being used in Power Stations in some countries. Lignite is a bigger polluter tonne for tonne than Anthracite.
How about imports? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen this story posted on environmental sites touting this as a success. But it's really just no coal on the island... when electricity imports should also be considered (there are interconnections between continental Europe, and also Ireland). And then there's the other big coal user: steel. A lot of British steel has left the island; it's just produced elsewhere and imported.
So good for British air-breathers, but it's not exactly green energy transformation as some may believe.
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but it's not exactly green energy transformation
As fun as it is to shit on the achievement of others, the interconnects account for less than 10% of the UK's energy usage. Yesterday they accounted to closer to 6% as they started shedding interconnect load too. The French HVDC interconnect accounted for 5% of energy consumption in the UK. At the same time French coal generation was a whopping 0.700GW out of the total 54GW or about 1.3%.
The other interconnector goes to Rotterdam. I can't find stats on the Dutch grid but it consists of 14% coal as installed
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Sorry my mistake. errr. Screw the UK and their twisted ways :)
Still uses gas (Score:4, Informative)
The UK is still using LNG for electricity.
I really don't understand why people bought the idea that LNG is a good thing.
It's still fossile!
On top of this, nuclear power is in the cross hairs despite having close to the lowest CO2 emission of all types.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#2014_IPCC.2C_Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources/ [wikipedia.org]
It's also the only thing we can run 24/7 without sending wast amount of CO2 into the air.
In short scrap all "renewable" hippie-power and go all nuclear with hydro as regulating power (or buy from your neighbors)
(That said, hydro isn't the best thing either for local ecosystems)
Re:Still uses gas (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not /just/ about CO2, however. LNG is still fossil, yes, but given a choice between the two I'd rather have it over coal any day lest we continue to spew heavy metals, particulate matter, and other toxins into the air by continuing to burn coal.
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On top of this, nuclear power is in the cross hairs despite having close to the lowest CO2 emission of all types.
Maybe if the pro-nuke people hadn't made such a mess (21 serious incidents in Sellafield, for instance, including a major leak that wasn't detected for 9 months), the public opinion would have been more favourable.
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But it's ye olde fossile in ye olde Brittania :)
Wast amounts saved but mutates wascally wabbits!
Seriously nukes were not even considered worth it by Reagan, Thatcher, Bush etc so even the "conservatives" don't like it and the private sector will not touch it without a lot of government money sweetening the deal. It's no longer a serious option for large scale electricity generation unless some s
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I really don't understand why people bought the idea that LNG is a good thing.
Because it has a significantly smaller portion of the CO2 emissions compared to coal. Because it has an almost non-existant portion of particulate emissions compared to coal. Because it has massively reduced NOx emissions compared to coal. Because it has zero of the toxic coal ash waste issues compared to coal.
If we could replace all the Coal plants with LNG tomorrow, the world would be far better of.
Re:Still uses gas (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do people think of nuclear power as "clean" power? The waste lasts for hundreds of thousands of years, far longer than any co2 we produce. Its the same human mentality that got us into this mess, externalities not being considered for an immediate gain in the moment. (in this case possibly dumping waste on hundreds of generations into the future)
Zero waste is solar, tidal, geothermal, wind and water. The only way forward. Nuclear was a horrible mis-step by humanity and the problems will be easily visible to all in one hundred years. Especially if we have zero waste fusion developed in the next century. All your arguments will seem rather quaint, i hope.
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Yeah? What's the half-life of CO2? Would you be happy living on Venus?
The radioactive waste that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years isn't particularly dangerous due to its radioactivity (as heavy metals, it's chemically more dangerous). The volume of waste is not horribly difficult to deal with if we could actually do that instead of cutting corners and basing our decisions on profits and hysteria.
Solar, tidal, geothermal, wind and water may directly produce little waste, but they each also have envir
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Solar? Water pollution with solvents on silicon wafer manufacturing.
Geothermal? Earthquakes induced by water injection.
Wind? Need rare-earth electromagnets.
Dams? Think of the fish.
Like you said everything has drawbacks. It's a matter of choosing the best solution for the case in question.
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I guess you are mixing up LNG with NG, or CH4? ... that would not make any sense at all.
I doubt there is any poser plant that used LNG
Re:Many examples, if you remember history (Score:5, Informative)
Complete and utter fucking bullshit kid. Go ask your dad instead of making shit up. The plastic bags were a shitload cheaper, around an order of magnitude, than paper ones and that was the reason.
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I think there is some truth to both of those versions of events, in that plastic bags were considered both more environmentally friendly and they cheaper when they were introduced. The problems of plastic bags not decomposing wasn't yet a known issue when they were first being introduced in the 70s, and at the time, it took about 1/4 of the energy to produce a plastic bag as a paper one, so it seemed like an environmental win at the time. But while the adoption of plastic bags may have been supported by e
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No, the simple answer was the reason and not some weird illuminati conspiracy theory about environmentalists with vast amounts of political power controlling everything from the shadows.
It was known, (especially in areas where they relied on tourists visiting beaches) but ignored for financial reasons. It's not "history" to me.
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No, the simple answer was the reason and not some weird illuminati conspiracy theory about environmentalists with vast amounts of political power controlling everything from the shadows.
My point was that at the time, some people did consider plastic bags more environmentally friendly.
It was known, (especially in areas where they relied on tourists visiting beaches) but ignored for financial reasons. It's not "history" to me.
If you say so, though I'm not sure how people would have known that plastic bags would be a trash nightmare before they were in common use.
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Really? Did you meet one of those people? I certainly never did.
Also what is being argued here is not "some people" but a major motivation, which really makes zero sense IMHO. It smacks of pure revisionism and trying to blame the "other" for the very thing that the "other" warned people about, an oft used and somewhat pathetic trick used by political animals used to attempt to discredit a group they do not l
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Complete and utter fucking bullshit kid. Go ask your dad instead of making shit up. The plastic bags were a shitload cheaper, around an order of magnitude, than paper ones and that was the reason.
I'm old enough to remember when plastic bags became mainstream. Not only were they cheaper, they were stronger, moisture resistant, and had handles so you could carry more than one at once.
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It was yesterday (Score:2)
blast-from-the-past dept
Apt. It happened yesterday.
Credit nuclear plus fake carbon accounting (Score:2)
The UK is 18.5% nuclear, which helps, and it also imports 5% of its power from France. The giant coal plant at Drax in Yorkshire was converted to burn American wood pellets, which makes this hellmouth count as a renewable source under the European carbon accounting rules. Set up an artificial accounting system of any kind, and human nature dictates that tit will be scammed.
Renewables have not been notably successful at making Britain sunnier.
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How is that fake carbon accounting? Wood is a renewable resource. Certainly it's not ideal to burn wood for power but at least it isn't adding additional CO2 to the air like fossil fuels.
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Wood is carbon neutral, sort of, if you don't count having to haul it across the Atlantic from the southern US in diesel-powered ships, but trees could be used to take carbon out of circulation for much longer periods of time.
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Wood burning causes shittons of air pollution. It's even worse than coal. Anthracite coal, for example, is marvelously clean in comparison.
It's rather bogus to ship wood pellets across the Atlantic to burn when there's anthracite coal in England.
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Set up an artificial accounting system of any kind, and human nature dictates that tit will be scammed.
Errr biomass is carbon neutral, produces less toxic flyash, and is renewable. It's not just powerplants switch to it. All sorts of systems are changing including small home heating systems.
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In this context, a technology that is not renewable but produces no carbon beats one that is renewable but produces carbon.
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The small home wood heating systems are toxic to everyone near by so that won't be lasting long. Studies are showing that moderate levels of PM2.5 smog is a major health problem and excessively deadly
Wood isn't 100% renewable in most cases. If you remove a bunch of trees, there is a very good chance that the total mass of trees that grow back will be smaller. In places with heavy deforestation, the amount of trees that can grow back may only be 50% of what was logged in the 1st round.
Trees are delicatel
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The small home wood heating systems are toxic to everyone near
You may want to do more research. The PM2.5 emissions that are coming under scrutiny are the result of fireplaces and wood block based heating systems. Small integrated biomass pellet fed heating systems which are steadily increasing in use and are all the rage to save the world right now have 90% less PM10 emissions than traditional wood heating systems and 98% less PM2.5 emissions. It's comparable with natural gas except without the closed CO2 cycle.
Not all biomass involved setting a tree on fire in your
That's because coal is rapidly being phased out (Score:3)
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However Trump has promised to bring those coal mining jobs back and make Wales great again!
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However Trump has promised to bring those coal mining jobs back and make Wales great again!
You misheard Trump because what he said was he was going to, "make whaling great again". It fits in perfectly with his eco-destruction agenda and he wants to give miners the job of extracting all the valuable gems that encrusted on every whale belly which he learned from watching a very serious documentary... animated by Disney.
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He's going to bring back the whale oil industry.
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What they didn't say is that gas, nuclear, and hydro made up almost all generation on this day, wind and solar just a small amount.
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Coming next : Removing dirty Nuke energy.
and Carthage must be destroyed. (Score:3)
Too bad the colonies across the pond are now run by a muppet.
Yeah, and Carthage must be destroyed, too.
Your side lost. Five and a half months ago. Isn't it time you got over it?
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... and lives of those involved in the production.
Song now playing in my head*: "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm Carbon Neutral"
(to the tune of Monty Pythons "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK" for those who didn't get it. Which is OK.)
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now run by a muppet.
WTF are you talking about? The Muppets have a much better platform than our current 'leadership'.
He probably meant a Feeble [wikipedia.org], but then again most people wouldn't get that reference....
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Solar is the least expensive source of power, and saddling developing nations with the high cost of coal power (in addition to the pollution) only benefits the first world companies that want to get paid to build mines and power plants.
https://qz.com/871907/2016-was-the-year-solar-panels-finally-became-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-just-wait-for-2017/
Even Britain knows solar is a loser, which is why almost none of their power comes from solar.
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Even Britain knows solar is a loser, which is why almost none of their power comes from solar.
Somewhat true, but misleading. The percentage of renewable energy (mostly solar and wind) is increasing, but the increase mostly comes from wind and because coal is rapidly disappearing as an energy source. Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
For a developing country that has more sun than the UK the tradeoff is likely to be different, of course.
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https://www.ft.com/content/fb2... [ft.com]
https://cleantechnica.com/2016... [cleantechnica.com]
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