The Dormouse That Roared

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Stand by. In the year 2014 You'll all be familiar with this of course, so bear with us whilst we go over some old ground, and we'll see if we can piece a story together, starting with 154 pages of information about using North American woody biomass for electricity generation in the UK. Like all good thrillers, the real story doesn't start here, but we'll have flashbacks, when the screen goes wavy in front of your eyes, to fill in what happened before this. The key words here though are woody biomass. Let's begin. This document was written by real scientists. Now we only have three lifelines, so we're hoping that one of them is to phone a famous scientist friend as many times as we need to. Don't worry, we'll be turning the first page over next, and your patience will be rewarded.

This is a power station. It's called that because the nice people that run it are able to exert a lot of power in Europe, and in lots of countries, in order to achieve their dreams. Power. People that have power always want more of it, and despite everybody living on the same planet they don't care about the air that you and your children breathe, or the dangerous heating of our planet. We think they must have a special bit set aside where the impacts on planetary existence by climate change won't be felt. We wish them well. Perhaps they don't believe that human induced climate change is real, or not their fault. In that sense, it doesn't matter whose fault it is, because we haven't got time to make them sit on the naughty step. We have to get busy pointing out that anyone who gets a mandate to transport fossil fuels about 5,000 miles, or 8,000 km, across the world from the USA needs a bit of a good talking too. The weird thing is that the people who ...

Inspired by those who are not singing from the hymn sheets being handed out. If we start with around 70% of carbon emissions being produced from burning fossil fuels: electricity generation heating & cooling buildings vehicles. Despite what governments have done, are doing, say they are doing or say they are going to do, it is happening anyway. Electricity Generation Renewables like solar and wind, together with hydroelectric and tidal or wave where appropriate, are an obvious choice. The elements that are really needed as well though are electricity storage (for when the sun doesn't shine, or the wind doesn't blow) and a smart grid, to take power from where it is generated to where it is needed, with minimal loss. Without storage, electricity is currently not normally generated for obvious reasons, and also makes a case for a false justification for on demand fossil based electricity generation from coal, gas, nuclear and biomass. Building Heating & Co...

This is an open and ongoing question because nobody knows, but it must still be asked, and asked again. This article is a mish mash of information, mainly because by accident or design, the status and direction of travel for the UK electricity grid is bewildering. It is perfectly feasible to eliminate fossil fuel power stations, probably in the order coal, then biomass, then gas, as a combination of renewable energy, electricity storage and smart grid technologies are installed. Unfortunately this is compromised by government policies, desires to extract the very last drops of fossil fuels from around the UK's coasts, poor incentives, and all the rest of the Heath Robinson set of cranks and levers that result in time passing by with much huff and puff. Fortunately the renewable sector has realised that costs coming down, improving technology, and an expanding skills base means they can really just get on with getting on with the job. And don't worry, the government will...

Imagine. Imagine we had people that understood psychology, marketing, engineering, geology, physics, chemistry, biology, arts, geography, etc all committed to reducing the impacts of # ClimateBreakdown by talking, questioning & acting. Imagine we are all in this together. #ZeroCarbon2025

Dr Craig McClain (https://twitter.com/DrCraigMc) explains climate change in 15 graphs from 2015, and don't forget the twitter hashtag #climategraphs: http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/09/a-story-of-climate-change-told-in-15-graphs/

Reading about the electricity generation in Germany for 2018 of 542TWh got us thinking about how that compares with the UK, and the rest of the world, as it all relates to how much resource we are using and the load on the world. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom : For 2014 (and we will have to find some later data): electricity generation for the UK was 335.0 TWh total energy used from all sources was 2,249 TWh (equivalent to 193.4 million tonnes of oil, or 1381 million barrels of oil) total energy used per capita was 34.82 MWh (3 tonnes of oil equivalent) electricity demand was 34.42 GW on average, and if we multiply that by the number of hours in a year (365.25*24=8766) we get 301.7 TWh Conversion rates: 1 tonne of oil = 7.143 barrels of oil 1 barrel of oil = 0.14 tonne of oil

This is one of many topics that would not have been on the list of things to find out about before being prompted by climate breakdown. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4549 The first part of this audio and transcript from 2016 meant a quick foray into the world of carbon-14 and carbon-12. When cosmic particles like protons, alpha particles, etc enter the earth's atmosphere, they occasionally collide with atoms to produce neutrons that can then collide with nitrogen-14 atoms (78% of atmosphere) to produce carbon-14 atoms, which are one of the isotopes of carbon. Carbon-14 atoms have 6 protons and 8 neutrons as opposed to carbon-12 atoms which have 6 protons and 6 neutrons. Carbon-14 atoms are radioactive, with a half-life of about 5730 years. Their rate of creation varies over time, but can be calibrated using fossil tree rings, stalactites, stalagmites, etc. The ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 atoms can be measured, and with calibration, can be used to say how old an organi...

This is a holding text at the moment. Hopefully more facts will arrive soon. As far as we can tell, there are no feedback signals from the National Grid about reducing demand or delaying demand in order to reduce demand in the long term or avoid having to increase carbon intensity by firing up a gas plant or coal plant or oil plant to satisfy demand. Some website provide a red amber green signal for when carbon intensity is high so that consumers might make decisions about switching appliances on later, but frankly this is not going to be enough. What is really needed is a strong feedback system direct from the National Grid that gives feedback on carbon intensity forecasting e.g. at 5pm the news that, between 8-10pm this evening we will be switching on fossil fuel electricity generation unless your demand reduces by 10% or whatever. Here are two examples of third party feedback. Although the ecotricity one looks fancier, we think the second one is a better signal, RED, g...

For us, the journey of discovery into the world of fossil fuels started with coal. This is what happens when you realise that climate breakdown is real, and you have to get involved. You have to start somewhere. So the first question about natural gas is why is it called natural? Natural gas is a fossil fuel which contains methane and other substances. Methane is involved in multiple ways: it is burned as part of natural gas to make electricity with CO2 and other greenhouse gases as by products there has been an increase in the use of natural gas to power electricity generation as way to transition from coal (so from the worst fossil fuel to a less worse fossil fuel) it is stored in permafrost which is being released with global warming, and is one of the potential tipping points https://www.sciencealert.com/the-arctic-permafrost-is-melting-strange-thermokarst-lakes-climate-change-abrupt-melting methane in the atmosphere is a short lived but very powerful greenhouse gas met...

From https://www.worldcoal.com/power/23112015/uk-move-away-from-coal-is-wishful-thinking-3193/

This is part of the German coal story. It's a story of surface #greenwash in which many words of hope and ambition are expressed at the political level. Only when the layers are peeled back, much like the open cast mining for brown lignite coal, does the truth start to be revealed. The story of the protest can be found here: https://hambachforest.org/ This story is what got us thinking about how we perceive messages and pass them on, because news also emerged about the last deep coal mine in Germany being closed down. We have had a deep reluctance to pass on messages of good news because we don't want to make people think it's all going well and they can relax. Here's a perfect example. It's probably economics being played out, rather than the efforts to save the planet from an existential crisis. Politicians are very adept at bending their words to meet the needs of audiences with multiple, different expectations, and in this case there are great opportu...