Crash Watcher: Major chance Europeans will starve after 2030

[stumuzz]

Inasmuch as if you live in an uninsulated overheated house in England and, instead, use a little aviation fuel to go to an unheated house in the Canaries for the winter, well, of course, it's a no-brainer. But that's a special case, not generally applicable, and other actions even in that special case would be better.

How many cubes of wood do you use in winter?

[stumuzz]

Interesting thread Stumuzz. Some of the figures didn't sound realistic to me so I've had a look.

A 747 with 500 people on it can do 100mpg per person, so a 1000 mile trip south and then 1000 back equals 20 gallons per person.

From experience, an oil fired heating system in a modern house with some insulation can use 60 gallons through winter, although this includes hot water.

So, 3 people in a modern house breaks even with the jet-setters, plus they save on hot water and all the energy used in maintaining the Jet, airport, house in Spain etc etc.

Those figures seem about right, so for 2 people it sounds a goer?

[Little John]

Interesting thread Stumuzz. Some of the figures didn't sound realistic to me so I've had a look.

A 747 with 500 people on it can do 100mpg per person, so a 1000 mile trip south and then 1000 back equals 20 gallons per person.

From experience, an oil fired heating system in a modern house with some insulation can use 60 gallons through winter, although this includes hot water.

So, 3 people in a modern house breaks even with the jet-setters, plus they save on hot water and all the energy used in maintaining the Jet, airport, house in Spain etc etc.

Those figures seem about right, so for 2 people it sounds a goer?

Yes, but bear in mind that is a comparison between flying to a sunnier climate and oil powered heating for the winter. I suspect the numbers wouldn't look as rosy when comparing with gas, though you still may break even.

Also, whilst I appreciate you are making the case as a point of principle, we both know it couldn't scale up because where would all the Spaniards or Italians (who we would be displacing) go? In other words, it could only work for a few people who had access to a rent/mortgage free house in the warmer country. Even if we were to employ the system you alluded to earlier where people from the UK could get people from Finland to come and occupy their house, and so service the mortgage/rent while they were away, so that the UK people could then afford to pay rent on a property in Spain, this still leaves the problem of who would service the mortgage/rent of the Finlanders? In any event, even assuming the Finlander was in a position to take part in such a scheme, why would he not simply cut the middle man out (the UK citizen) and go straight to Spain himself?

[stumuzz]

Simple.

Tomorrow morning I fly to Tenerife for two weeks for the Santa Cruz carnival.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_o ... e_Tenerife

Unbelievably, as a million or so people will turn up for this from all over the world the place I will be staying in will be a 1K apartment complex with about 15% of the apartments occupied. The accommodation is there and built and empty in winter.

[Tarrel]

A lot of this debate is based around marginal fuel usage (e.g. taking account of the mpg of the aircraft per person). Using CW's numbers, that 747 flying 1000 miles south and back is using 10,000 gallons of fuel. Without the demand from people wanting to fly south, it wouldn't make the trip. 10,000 gallons saved. So, by making the decision to fly south, one is contributing to keeping that aircraft flying, and having a direct impact on whether 10,000 gallons of fuel gets used or not.

[biffvernon]

Inasmuch as if you live in an uninsulated overheated house in England and, instead, use a little aviation fuel to go to an unheated house in the Canaries for the winter, well, of course, it's a no-brainer. But that's a special case, not generally applicable, and other actions even in that special case would be better.

How many cubes of wood do you use in winter?

Dunno, we buy it by the tonne rather than by volume.

[stumuzz]

A lot of this debate is based around marginal fuel usage (e.g. taking account of the mpg of the aircraft per person). Using CW's numbers, that 747 flying 1000 miles south and back is using 10,000 gallons of fuel. Without the demand from people wanting to fly south, it wouldn't make the trip. 10,000 gallons saved. So, by making the decision to fly south, one is contributing to keeping that aircraft flying, and having a direct impact on whether 10,000 gallons of fuel gets used or not.

I accept what you say.

However, the proposition was it could be a good thing to use the 10,000 gallons if 15,000 gallons are saved, by reduced heating, less food miles etc.

[stumuzz]

Inasmuch as if you live in an uninsulated overheated house in England and, instead, use a little aviation fuel to go to an unheated house in the Canaries for the winter, well, of course, it's a no-brainer. But that's a special case, not generally applicable, and other actions even in that special case would be better.

How many cubes of wood do you use in winter?

Dunno, we buy it by the tonne rather than by volume.

So how many tonnes?

[RenewableCandy]

Getting back to my original example, it has to be said that Chateau RenewableMaman is an incredibly inefficient machine, having 4 bedrooms for two octagenarians who need to be, well, quite warm.

I think the moral of the whole tale is, really, to try and avoid living in a place where it would pay to bail out for the winter!

The process of moving from one place to another to follow favourable conditions may have medical benefits but it also has a social cost: one may not feel "grounded" in either place (there were no nearby friends in the Italian resort, for example) and one may, in the event of some type of infrastructure failure, end up temporarily or permanently stranded.

Plus there's no bloody way* you'd get me to Finland for the summer: I'd be eaten alive by mozzies and probably end up ill.


* short of hostage-taking, of course

[biffvernon]

How many cubes of wood do you use in winter?

Dunno, we buy it by the tonne rather than by volume.

So how many tonnes?

Not all tonnes are equal. We get through about 7 tonnes per year, but it is delivered a bit wetter than when we burn it a year later. We use it as the only heating, bar a bit of electric water heating and bottle gas cooking, in our large 18th century solid wall farmhouse. Some is also taken away to be the only heating for one of our daughters' small extremely well insulated house and part of the heating, along with some gas central heating of our other daughter's Victorian terraced house in town.

Our wood is mostly sawmill and joinery off-cuts, so waste wood. It's probably best to consider most firewood as waste wood, a by-product of the construction and joinery industries. Only a small proportion of a tree is suitable for the high value timber required by these industries. The rest has to be burnt to get rid of it.

We should of course grow more timber and use more timber in the construction and joinery industries instead of using other, less sustainable, materials. This would, in turn, produce a bigger surplus of firewood.

[Catweazle]

Interesting thread Stumuzz. Some of the figures didn't sound realistic to me so I've had a look.

A 747 with 500 people on it can do 100mpg per person, so a 1000 mile trip south and then 1000 back equals 20 gallons per person.

From experience, an oil fired heating system in a modern house with some insulation can use 60 gallons through winter, although this includes hot water.

So, 3 people in a modern house breaks even with the jet-setters, plus they save on hot water and all the energy used in maintaining the Jet, airport, house in Spain etc etc.

Those figures seem about right, so for 2 people it sounds a goer?

Well, if you add in transfers to and from the airport ( 4 trips ) it's probably a close thing, just considering fossil fuel use for the actual transport.

Adding in everything else, the heating and lighting of the airport, the fuel used to get the airport staff to work etc., etc, , I think it's probably not a great plan.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

A lot of this debate is based around marginal fuel usage (e.g. taking account of the mpg of the aircraft per person). Using CW's numbers, that 747 flying 1000 miles south and back is using 10,000 gallons of fuel. Without the demand from people wanting to fly south, it wouldn't make the trip. 10,000 gallons saved. So, by making the decision to fly south, one is contributing to keeping that aircraft flying, and having a direct impact on whether 10,000 gallons of fuel gets used or not.

10,000 gallons of aviation fuel saved but then all those ex-passengers have to heat their homes so the carbon balance is not quite so simple.

I think some people are unable to admit the plausibility of this because it forces them to question their beliefs.

Everything everyone else does is bad...everything I do is good.

[adam2]

The figures for aviation fuel used are probably unduly optimistic.
If large numbers of people fly in one direction, towards the sun, at the start of winter then aircraft flying in the other direction will be almost empty, but still burning a lot of fuel.
Many aircraft are delayed in the air or diverted and therefore burn more fuel than might be expected from calculations based on the straight line distance.

[vtsnowedin]

Interesting thread Stumuzz. Some of the figures didn't sound realistic to me so I've had a look.

A 747 with 500 people on it can do 100mpg per person, so a 1000 mile trip south and then 1000 back equals 20 gallons per person.

From experience, an oil fired heating system in a modern house with some insulation [b]can use 60 gallons through winter, [/b]although this includes hot water.

So, 3 people in a modern house breaks even with the jet-setters, plus they save on hot water and all the energy used in maintaining the Jet, airport, house in Spain etc etc.

I'm having a hard time getting my head around that figure. Less then two pickup tanks of fuel for the whole winter? Why is it even a topic of discussion. Where I live many houses go through five gallons or more each cold night. Houses average 850 gallons of heating oil per winter and many houses like mine use zero so the top users use much more.
http://vermontfuel.com/5docpage_files/V ... 0Fuels.pdf

[Tarrel]

Interesting thread Stumuzz. Some of the figures didn't sound realistic to me so I've had a look.

A 747 with 500 people on it can do 100mpg per person, so a 1000 mile trip south and then 1000 back equals 20 gallons per person.

From experience, an oil fired heating system in a modern house with some insulation [b]can use 60 gallons through winter, [/b]although this includes hot water.

So, 3 people in a modern house breaks even with the jet-setters, plus they save on hot water and all the energy used in maintaining the Jet, airport, house in Spain etc etc.

I'm having a hard time getting my head around that figure. Less then two pickup tanks of fuel for the whole winter? Why is it even a topic of discussion. Where I live many houses go through five gallons or more each cold night. Houses average 850 gallons of heating oil per winter and many houses like mine use zero so the top users use much more.
http://vermontfuel.com/5docpage_files/V ... 0Fuels.pdf

850 gallons (US) is about 3400 litres. We'd be using that and more if we hadn't switched to wood fuel. (Northern Scotland).