PowerSwitch

Dropping in here after quite a few months absent... I don't get much time free for reading and responding on forums these days, but this is the one that I do still come back to and read every so often. The longevity of it is impressive, given where it started back in 2004 with just a few of us. And ...

I think i'm going to stop watching the news before i become permanently worried sick. Inflation at 10.1% and predicted to peak early 2023, evermore increases in gas price projections, small businesses closing up shop. I find myself getting seriously concerned for people who either can't prepare or ...

Various tiles off roofs in central Rye, roof ripped off holiday accommodation at Pontins in Camber, and we had a few trees down in our woods that we cleared from footpaths. More alarming is there are still some people without power and water in the rural areas around here - and they've been off sinc...

I think for Putin/Russia this was all about the new pipeline, and now they've made it clear. But even if it came online right away, I guess the low gas storage levels in Europe would mean prices would not come down much? And there are also questions about how much gas Russia actually has spare to ex...

Dungeness B is shut down now, which I expect you knew. Not a bad thing, given it's built on a temporary bank of shingle sticking out into the English Channel.

I'd go for option 2 as well. COVID has been like an earthquake hitting a building that was already a bit wobbly. Without it things might have carried on with slow decline for a while, but so much has been shaken up now that the process has been accelerated. There was also a year of pretty much no pr...

There is another way to produce carbon dioxide for the food industry without any direct reliance on fossil fuels. Until relatively recently, most prepared carbon dioxide was produced by Distillers PLC, a noted manufacturer of distilled spirits. It is not the actual distillation that produces the ca...

I agree with you completely there, Chris. It's showing up as a problem in Europe and the US as well and could be a symptom of economic breakdown. It feels to me like there's a lot of stuff fraying at the edges now. Shortages of various materials and components across the world, gas issues across Eu...

It made me wonder where the CO2 will come from when fossil fuels are (eventually) no longer in use? Will this be the market for direct air capture, not to sequester the CO2 but to sell it for food use? Or maybe we'll be eating less meat and there'll be less demand by then?

I miss the old days, when this thread was filled with people posting and discussing useful information... Every time I dip back in now it seems to have gone up to a new level of arguing over opinions, when none of us have any meaningful influence over what actually happens.

Absolutely, the UK lockdown has been a disaster. FAR greater social and economic cost, for less positive health impact than many other countries. Had we locked down earlier (2 weeks would have done it), and more robustly/smarter (isolating all arrivals for 14 days, not releasing covid +ve patients ...

According to this testing survey, 1 in 400 people in the UK were infected with virus in the two weeks to 10 May, so about 148,000. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52662066 I know some people here have spent time modelling the figures, so can anyone translate that into how many people might have ac...

So, BoE thinks we're heading for the steepest drop in GDP for over 300 years. And I think that assumes that lockdown is relaxed over a 4-month period starting in June, that similar relaxation happens globally, and there's no second wave. A bit optimistic perhaps? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-...

I've only skimmed this, but it's very interesting. It shows that historically pandemics have resulted in reduced returns on investment/land for many years afterwards and also resulted in rises in real wages. War, on the other hand, boosts returns for investors. https://www.nber.org/papers/w26934.pdf

I'd wondered if this would happen, as the weather warms up: https://www.newpower.info/2020/04/national-grid-depressed-demand-in-summer-due-to-covid-19-a-challenge-to-system-stability/ Low electricity demand in the summer could present a challenge to managing the electricity system, system operator N...