When Wind Turbines Spoil The View

The other day I was watching a programme about the effect that wind turbines were having on people living in the country. There was a woman on it who could see a number of turbines on the hills behind her house.

She was obviously unhappy about them. One of her comments particularly struck me: "All I wanted was for things to stay the same".

I can sympathise with her. People move to the country for peace and quiet, a change of pace, long walks in the countryside, and beautiful scenary. And here they are dumping a bunch of turbines on her favourite view. Even a town-dweller like me can see how sad that is.

You could say it was the modern world rearing it's ugly head in the old world but it's a lot more than that. This is more than a new housing estate being built next door, cuts to local bus services, or outsiders buying up half the village as weekend cottages, to name just a few of the many pressures on country life.

In a way it's actually about trying to help preserve the countryside (along with the rest of the planet) as best we can in the face of the growing threat of climate change. Make no mistake about it, when that starts to bite, the countryside will be changed beyond all recognition.

That might be scant consolation to people like that poor woman but, to quote from a film called the Leopard "if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change".

Safer Nuclear Power?

In an earlier post, I made a case for using more nuclear.

The basic argument was: We need to dramatically cut our carbon emissions and intermittent renewables like solar, wind, tidal and wave are not going to be sufficient. We need more 'base-load' to replace the thousands of coal and gas fired stations and the only real choice is nuclear.

The trouble is, nuclear stations can be dangerous when they go wrong (ask the Japanese), have a reputation for being expensive to build and run, and then there's all that radioactive waste when they finish their useful lives.

So, basically, nuclear power is the lesser of two evils. After all, future generations wouldn't thank us for leaving them with an uninhabitable world just because we didn't want to leave them with a whole load of nuclear waste to deal with.

The good news is that there's a type of nuclear reactor that considerably reduces most of these problems:

Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs)

IFRs extract way more energy (95%) from their fuel than the traditional reactors (5%). They therefore need considerably less fuel and the radioactive life of the resulting waste is a few centuries rather than tens of thousands of years.

IFRs can use the waste, including plutonium, from existing reactors as their fuel source. Turning a problem into an asset.

The combination of increased efficiency and the use of existing waste means that nuclear reactors have enough fuel available for centuries.

These reactors run at lower pressures so there's considerably less chance of explosions.

Crucially, if the cooling system fails for some reason, the higher temperatures have the effect shutting down the reactor, meaning no melt-downs.

Reduced risk of explosions and no melt-downs means that IFRs are cheaper to build.

Finally, the radioactive material is relatively difficult to weaponise and, since IFR waste never leaves the site, it can't be stolen/diverted by terrorists.

So, they're cheaper to build, they're a lot safer, they can run off nuclear waste, and they have enough fuel available for centuries to come. Nuclear power looks a whole lot more attractive.

Here's a blog entry from George Monbiot on IFRs. He's an environmentalist and journalist for the Guardian newspaper.

More about Integral Fast Reactors.

Buying A Solar Panel: Part 9

We've just received our first quaterly payment for the solar panels: £190.

At first I was pretty disappointed but after talking to our energy providers, I realised that both the FIT and the export payments are based on the amount of energy you actually generate in a quarter.

In our case, we generated 425 kW (it was only Winter!) so the calculation is 425 x 0.433 = £184.02 (FIT) plus 212.5 units (50% of the actual units) x 0.031 = £6.59 (Export).

Next quarter should be way more, We've already generated 300 kW in less than a month.

Book Review: Six Degrees by Mark Lynas

Six Degrees: Our Future On A Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas.
Published by Harper Perennial. 346 pages. Price £8.99

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the global temperature is set to rise by between 1 and 6 degrees C by 2100 (Depending on how seriously we take the threat of climate change).

But what would 6 degrees (or, for that matter, 1 or 2) actually mean for us? Mark Lynas, a UK based environmentalist, author, and journalist, attempts to answer that question having trawled through many of the available scientific papers on the subject.

He devotes one chapter to each degree of warming, and concludes the book with a chapter called Choosing Our Future. By contrast to it's source material, the book itself is very accessible, reading a bit like a globe-trotting travelogue, as it shows you what the effects of global warming will have for different regions of the world.

As you might expect, the book does get a bit grim. By the time, you get to the end of 6th chapter you are left in no doubt that the planet would be in a hell of a mess by 2100 if we hit 6 C. In fact, for those who comfort themselves with the fact that Man may wipe itself out with climate change but Life will eventually recover, this provides no comfort at all: The pace of change will be too much for most plants and animals to adapt to - Evolution takes a lot longer than a century.

Something else that becomes clear is that we definitely don't want to pass the 2 degree mark. The reason for that is that it would risk runaway warming due to the various tipping points it could trigger. This would inevitably take us to the dreaded 6 degrees anyway. Maybe this is why the world's governments have  agreed to a 2 degree limit?

If you're interested in what climate change will do, how soon we'll feel the effects, and who will be effected, this is the book for you. The science is largely based on climate models (which have generally been tested against historical climate records) and geological evidence, so it's not just speculation.

It's well written but, as I've suggested, it's a difficult read for anyone who cares about their kids' future. I give it 8 out of 10.

Global Weirding

When most people think about global warming, they probably imagine it to be a barely noticeable process where we gradually move to a warmer world somewhere in the distant future.

Surely the most it would mean for us is that we'd have to get a stronger factor suntan cream, and some new summer clothing, or maybe an air-con unit some day?

Things aren't so simple though. You see, climate scientists say all that extra heat in the atmosphere is going to throw the planet's climate off-balance.

They say this will mean unpredictable weather, with a greater number of extreme events, weather records falling with increasing frequency, and wild swings between one extreme and another. Some have called this "Global Weirding" because the weather  just gets plain weird as it tries to find a new equilibrium.

Expect droughts to become more common and go on for longer; more, monsoon-like downpours and flash-flooding; more unseasonal weather; and increasingly nastier hurricanes.

Any of this sound familiar to you? It should do, because things seem to have been getting weird already. Even here in Britain we've had a strange time of it lately: 18 months of below average rainfall (Leading to drought orders and hosepipe bans before this Summer even begins); a heatwave late last September followed by very mild Autumn/Winter temperatures until February, which turned very nasty for 4 weeks (reminiscent of last year's exceptionally cold Winter); followed by one of our sunniest ever March's. A March that finished with a 'heat-wave' (Temperatures hitting 25C), which flipped immediately into widespread snow! What's that all about?

Yes, I know we've always had abnormal weather from time to time but it's getting to the point where the abnormal is becoming normal. If that's the case, then Global Weirding is well and truly with us.


Update: April turned out to be the wettest in over a century with double the average rainfall (At least it's ended the drought for some counties..). It was also cool, with a lower average temperature than March! And, until the last couple of days, May has been equally cold, several degrees below the average. Now we're having a heatwave! 8 months of weirdness, not including the drought. British weather has never been what you'd call reliable but this is ridiculous.