That would apply if you were also charged £1,000,000 for the privilege Wally, and the streets were knee deep in rubbish! Underlying this is the fact that the "Climate Change" movement is fairly scientifically unsound, and not accepted at all in China or Russia and hardly in India, so we cannot make any difference anyway. Try reading "Watts up with that" where you will see some relevant scientific material being discussed.
There is broad scientific consensus on the validity of climate change, Anthony Watt notwithstanding.
China's installed renewable energy capacity is 378GW (over 4x the UK's total generating capacity); it represents about 1/4 of their total capacity, and is growing fast. The Chinese are taking renewables very seriously.
I am aware that it is a skeptic site but it includes the reference to the source document. Most of China's 'renewable' energy is from hydro which has limited posibilities for expansion (and other environmental consequences). Most of China's primary energy is from coal.
The UK leads with the proportion of wind and solar.
This Wikipedia entry Renewable energy in China shows that china's non-hydro renewable generation went from negligible in 2008 to 50GWh in 2017 (that's equivalent to about 57GW on average). Hence why I said its growing fast.
The term "broad scientific consensus" is meaningless nonsense Wally, there is a broad scientific consensus that electrons travel at the speed of light in conductors, but this is clearly wrong and there is no proof of it at all!
That is a useful bit of data Roger, and as you say China has a lot of Hydro, but very few more sites for big dams. It is also opening one new coal station a week, which many consider to be rather less than green.
Well, it's always possible to dismiss any scientific knowledge if you try hard enough. "Scientific consensus on a spherical earth? Twaddle! I have a link to a web site by a geographer no less who shows very clearly that the Earth is flat!
Wally, ‘Well, it's always possible to dismiss any scientific knowledge if you try hard enough’ The AGW group are very good at this. If the science doesn’t agree with you use hype and scaremongering. I wrote this piece in response to ‘The Engineer’ poll on language and the climate which was based on the Guardian Editor’s instruction to ‘Hype Up’ climate change. As expected it did not pass the moderators. I have tried to use the best sources I could find ( In this forum I can directly include the pictures) www.theengineer.co.uk/.../ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The climate has changed, is changing, and will continue to change with or without us. What do we actually know? The longest directly measured temperature series is the Central England series held by the UK Met office: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
If you look at the chart, the temperature rose by more than 1.5°C between about 1700 and 1730. The temperature rose around 1°C between about 1975 and 2000. Were both of these man made? Were both of them natural? How do the climate models explain the rise in the 1700s. The longest measured CO2 series is from Mauna Loa: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html This is always shown with an offset zero. It is a fairly trivial task to import the raw data and draw a ‘normal’ graph starting at zero. Much less scary.
What do we see on these graphs? Firstly the various temperature series are in reasonable agreement. Secondly they only go back to 1900. If you look at the Central England series quite a lot happened before then. There is also a significant difference between the north and south hemispheres. For the northern hemisphere there is somewhat dubious attempt to show an increasing rate of temperature rise by starting from a cool spell in the 1970s. Does anything look scary enough to justify all this ‘Climate Emergency’ language? The next graphs comes from the IPCC AR5 Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis: http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/hartmann13agu_U22A_final.pdf
On page 18 it shows the model outputs in red with a confidence band. Measured temperatures are black. The measure temperatures are always below the model and are starting to leave the confidence band. It also records the reduction in the rate of warming after 1998. Is reality scary or is it just the models? The IPCC uses four scenarios, RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. RCP8.5 is the worst case and it has been suggested it could be difficult to dig coal fast enough to achieve it. Most of the scaremongering is based on this scenario. RCP6.0 is around business as usual, RCP4.5 is if an effort is made to reduce CO2 emissions and RCP2.6 is an unlikely best case. This is shown graphically in this article: https://judithcurry.com/2019/01/28/reassessing-the-rcps/ Figure 4 shows it quite well.
So does Climate Change deserve scary language? In my view no. What is important is reduction in the use of finite resources, reduction in change of land use and sustainable use of natural resources such as fish.
It would be a more convincing direction of travel if we could first manage to finish electrifying the railways ...
Which made me think.
Large numbers of people drive to railway stations where they leave their cars parked all day, so let's electrify station car parks.
I doubt that many people drive more than 10 miles to a station, so that's a 20 mile round trip which uses 4 kWh @ 5 mi/kWh. 4 kWh over 8 hours = 0.5 kW, which requires about 2 A per car.
Who pays? A premium of 10 p/kWh would generate a revenue of 40 p/day or about £100/year (250 weekdays). If that is not enough, add a little to the price of the parking spaces; or perhaps add it anyway and pretend that the electricity is free. ?
It doesn't solve the overall problem, but it would contribute.
Wally, the science you may find interesting to look for is that which shows that the CO2 level in the atmosphere actually causes warming. Lord Christopher Monckton has been very involved in this, and you may like to watch him on you tube. In fact the data shows that temperature [i]leads[/i] CO2 level, which is not the correct cause / effect relationship. You will need to look at some statistical data analysis, but it is not difficult.
Chris I find your calculation curious in that you suggest an electricity consumption for an electric car which is tiny. 4kWh per 5 miles is optimistic if there are any hills, wind, acceleration or whatever on the route. Charging at stations may be a good idea, but at train pricing rates probably unaffordable.
The whole thing about trains is that they are assumed to be cheap to use, but they are impossibly expensive except perhaps on commuter season tickets. I recently thought to go by train from Bristol to London, and 2 second class tickets at peak time were nearly £400. I would have to stand the whole way, because there were no seats unless I went 1st Class, which was £600. The electricity for the trip might cost £120, for all 500 passengers! When I was a lad they brought in the 125 trains which did the trip in just over an hour non-stop. It now takes the best part of 2 hours because the full trains stop several times for significant periods. They are just electrifying this line which is costing a huge amount of money because all the bridges are too low for the power lines, which is causing havoc as they are changed. Needless to say I went by car for about £50!
