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| [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, [6], 7, 8, 9, 10 ] |
| Subject: ha | |
Author: Dave (UK) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 22:46:13 12/01/04 Wed In reply to: Ed Harris (Venezia) 's message, "Wat skort daar? At least my country's above sea level." on 22:13:18 12/01/04 Wed You have just given me some ideas... Right, I'm off to Antarctica with a pneumatic drill and a blow-torch... (evil laugh) [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: that's an odd thing for a Venetian to be saying... | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 02:53:24 12/02/04 Thu [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> Subject: Mercifully I live on the second floor | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 10:35:27 12/02/04 Thu Ah, Benelux, Venice, Nauru, Norfolk... they'll all be under water in 50 years, so enjoy them while they last. www.savevenice.org - the ultimate triumph of optimism over what John Cleese once deecribed as the "bleedin' obvious". [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Sea Levels | |
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Author: David (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:08:15 12/02/04 Thu This just serves as an example of how much damage the US is doing to the world while it selfishly refuses to ratify the Kyoto protocol. As you point out, many of our brothers and sisters in the Commonwealth will be underwater because of the US's selfish actions. I wish Australia could follow the lead of the UK, Canada and New Zealand and ratify Kyoto, even if this means giving up our large coal industry and many people losing their jobs, in the long term we should be investing in nuclear and renewable energy rather than polluting fossil fuels. Ironically though, without ratifying the protocol, Australia is actually doing better than most countries who have ratified it as we are actually meeting our requirements in CO2 emmisions originally agreed to. One thing I actually respect Tony Blair for is his stance on climate change, even if the UK has some way to go to meet its targets. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Quite so, but... | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:58:48 12/02/04 Thu Alas, with Mr Blair a lot of it is just posturing, since he won't go the whole way and build a load of nuclear plants, which, as a side effect, produce only steam. The word 'nuclear' is considered too controvertial, so what we get are a load of useless windfarms and tidal power stations which just about light a 30 watt light bulb. Berlusconi has exactly the right idea - fossil fuels are unpopular, and so would be building nuclear power stations all over Tuscany, so what he does is to use the energy budget to subsidise buying nuclear-generated electricty from France! No Italian particularly cares if the French endanger their lives, so everyone's a winner: Berlusconi's got the green thumbs up, the Italian countryside can be devoted to growing wine and goats, and the French get fat energy contracts. Still, I am not in favour of a similar solution here. We should have more nuclear power stations of our own. What, after all, are Birmingham and Liverpool for, if not to tear down and turn into a series of nuclear power plants? [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Future Power | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:24:53 12/02/04 Thu oh, the person who invents a power plant that runs on liberal hot air will be very rich indeed. I agree that nuclear power is the future (fusion rather than fission). However,tidal power has some enormous potential with our rugged coastline and vast sea lochs. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Tidal power | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:46:05 12/02/04 Thu I think that this tidal power thing applies to Scotland more than England. Already, I believe, the Orkneys are powered completely by a tidal station. Also, with all the fast rivers etc in Scotland, all of the Outer Isles are hydro-electric. England is more of a problem. Not only is there less wind, fewer fast rivers on account of the lack of hills, absence of sea-lochs, etc., but also it takes a lot more energy to meet the needs of fifty million people than scattered rural communities in the Highlands. Already, the vast hydro-electric plant at Lake Vyrnwy in Wales supplies Liverpool, but can't even produce all the energy needed for just that single city. As for nuclear fusion, does that actually work? I read about that once, and it seems to me that the inherent danger in mucking around with it is that there is an extreme likelihood that a small plant in Essex could turn much of western Europe into a smouldering crater. Never mind Chernobyl: look at Yucatan! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Fusion | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:48:58 12/02/04 Thu Fusion power is perfectly safe. After all, the Sun has been functioning perfectly for 5 Billion years. There is a current international project under way to build the world’s largest fusion research reactor. The project has been delayed due to political wrangling over where the site should be. The current contenders are Japan and France. As you can imagine, the Americans have been weighing in heavily towards the Japanese, but the EU have threatened to undermine the project if France does not win, by developing their own reactor. Either way, it looks as though one will be built in France, so if it does blow up, it might not be such a bad thing. www.iter.org [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: If you get a chance... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 18:14:03 12/02/04 Thu ...and indeed, if you are interested, go and visit the Hydro-electric scheme at Ben Cruachan, near Loch Awe. Here, they have hollowed out the mountain Dr. Evil style, and built the power station inside in an enormous cavern. It is very impressive, and does look like something from a bond film, with a long tunnel ride followed by lots of people running around in boiler suits. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Scotland's hydro | |
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Author: Paddy (Scotland) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 18:58:26 12/02/04 Thu I agree that the dams are very impressive although their generators are now ageing somewhat. I think that hydro is clearly the nicest kind of energy followed by nuclear. There are a lot of nutters who think that coal and other fossil fuels should be banned, but nuclear cannot cope with surges to the grid, such as peak time demand. New coal-burning technology actually releases laughably low emmissions into the atmosphere (the rest is kept and used to create useful, non-harmful products). This and improvements to the grid system will substantially reduce pollution. British skills in building nuclear reactors are actually far in advance of those of France. However this information is kept as a guarded secret in the MOD and will not be released to the Atomic Power chaps since they are not civil servants and Foreigners might be able to buy the company and somehow get the technology. We are therefore in the ironic situation whereby our submarines run like a dream and each of our nuclear power stations is a one-off design, increasing costs. The French nuclear power stations have been built following evolutionary steps with substantial cross-referencing with military experiences and are far more efficient than their British counterparts even though their military nuclear generators, being modified civilian jobs, are dreadful even compared with Russia's. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Fusion | |
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Author: Paddy (Scotland) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 18:36:01 12/02/04 Thu There is a consortium of developed countries pooling their resources to research fusion power http://www.iter.org/ A lot of pioneering research took place in England just after the war. Personally I am glad that it will be situated in France or Japan rather than in the U.K., just in case of a minor thermonuclear accident. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Nuclear Decommissioning and the EU | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 22:08:56 12/02/04 Thu As we have been talking of nuclear power today, I see that the good old European Commissioners are getting their oar in again. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a government agency, has taken on some of BNFL’s debts, in a deal to provide for the safe decommissioning of Britain’s nuclear plants, including Sellafield. Far from this being a helpful gesture from the Government (who after all created these establishements) in order to prevent the need for BNFL to dismantle Sellafield piecemeal, whilst disposing nuclear material in the Irish Sea, our friends in Brussels regard this as an illegal state subsidy. Consequently, they are launching an investigation. Don’t you just love the European Commission, that great Tower of Bable that serves as the retirement home for Europe’s unelectable, criminal, and otherwise discredited politicians turned political appointees, who join an Alice-in-Euroland institution where they can fester in their fraudulent ways - blissfully except from notions of responsibility and accountability, until the days when they collect their gargantuan Euro-pensions? Is it not galling that someone like Kinnock, who had received the altogether unambiguous verdict of the British electorate, should go on to represent his country at a continental level, earning more than the elected Prime Minister? Is it not laughable, were it not so tragic, that Peter Mandelson, a man sacked from the Cabinet not once, but twice, should be rewarded by such inanity, with the governance of EU trade? Are serious questions not raised, when Jacques Barrot, a man who was convicted in 2000 of embezzling £2.5 million pounds from the French Government, takes his place at the table of Europe’s corrupt elite, while the man who brought his past to the fore is threatened with prosecution? Perhaps most tragic of all however, is Chris Patten, former loyal servant of the empire, reduced to a political stooge, after choosing to serve in the sea of political pygmies. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: I suggest they launch another investigation... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 22:12:56 12/02/04 Thu into why the European Court of Auditors have not signed off the Commission's accounts for the tenth year running... [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |