Disko Bay Expedition

3 Comments

1. English Bob

   Posted Saturday 4 Oct at 17:58 | Permalink

   Did you forget to mention all your foreign holidays you hypocrite?

2. Tom James

   Posted Thursday 18 Dec at 04:34 | Permalink

   Nice one English Bob, that’s constructive. I think you’ll find we’re all hypocrites with this in some way. But the best way of dealing with it probably isn’t standing up and pointing at each other
   SHE EATS MEAT I’VE SEEN HER
   HE LEFT HIS HEATING ON BY ACCIDENT IN MARCH

   Everyone’s going to have to change their habits, habits which we’ve been told are harmless, and easy, and glamorous, and our ‘right’. Why not have two holidays a year? Why not drive to work? You deserve it. Why not get these dairy-lee disposables: it’s easier than cheese! Why not buy this new gel washing liquid, in its own pointless plastic pouch?

   It’s going to take some time, and we might have to even think about the whole point of our society (ECONOMY ALERT BUY MORE STUFF SAVE WOOLWORTHS BUY DISPOSABLE FLOOR MOPS SINGLE USE ITS EASY). But this sort of journey is only going to help people see. I say we all start thinking of new ways to buy, sell, grow and live. And maybe, just maybe, ask the government to do something too, to stop people who don’t give a shit from getting away with it.

   Better than just being snide.

3. Nick Cook

   Posted Monday 6 Dec at 11:43 | Permalink

   Marcus, as a counterpoint to Cape Farewell you might consider a trip to the Sahara Desert and consider the fact that the current entire world’s energy use is equivalent to the sun’s energy shining on 0.6% of the Sahara! Put another way, the world receives approximately 10,000 times more energy from the sun than we use. To paraphrase the brilliant engineer Buckminster Fuller “there is no energy crisis, just a crisis of ignorance”, and I tend to agree with him.
   Changing what we do is only one approach to the problem, the other part is how we do things, the bottom line is we need to cut our carbon emissions but this doesn’t necessarily equate to not driving a 4×4, we just need a low carbon version of it. If you say to people you can carry on doing what you’re doing just use this gadget instead of the one you’re using at the moment, it basically does the same thing but you will not be killing the planet and it won’t cost you any more, climate change would disappear overnight, metaphorically speaking. The role of scientists and engineers in the solution to the problem I believe is to come up with planet friendly ways of doing things without Joe Public having to make drastic changes to their lifestyle.
   A classic example of this, mentioned in David McKay’s book “Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, free to download at http://www.withouthotair.com“, is the standby function on televisions. Firstly, the amount of energy used by TV is on standby is very small compared to the size the problem we have to solve and secondly, there is no reason why the TVs could not have been designed with standby that consumes at least 1000 times less power than they did/do [#1], all it would take and was a few bob extra spent on standby circuit making standby power consumption totally insignificant, so the real problem isn’t standby it is the way it is done.
   Don’t get me wrong, we do need to reduce our energy demand but mainly because this gives us a faster route to achieving zero fossil carbon energy, i.e. the less RE power plants (no Marcus not churches, Renewable Energy, the new RE ) we have two build a faster will reach our target. Put simply, fundamentally we do not have a shortage of renewable energy just the means to harvest economically at the moment but I’m sure not too far away from this goal, the main thing holding us up is human nature not science.
   However with the current population size and growth rate the real challenge will be finding enough food and water.

   #1 I know this is correct because as a Electronics design/development engineer I have actually developed circuits operating the same principles as a TV remote which achieved these levels of power consumption.