SteamyTea

Some will. They are the ones that still think GW is just weather.

More water than sulphur for a change. Environment 2022 Tonga eruption means we may hit 1.5°C of global warming earlier The massive eruption of a Tongan volcano in January 2022 has made it more likely that we will exceed 1.5°C of global warming within the next five years, but the effect will disappear by 2035 12 January 2023 Listen to this article By Kate Ravilious A cloud of ash erupting from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on 15 January 2022, photographed by a satellite NOAA/Alamy Stock Photo The chances of temporarily exceeding 1.5°C of global warming within the next five years have increased markedly due to the spectacular eruption of an underwater volcano in Tonga in January 2022. The explosive Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai event was the most powerful of the 21st century so far. Large eruptions are usually dominated by sulphur dioxide emissions, which cause climate cooling, but the Tonga one was very unusual because it released a lot of water vapour – a powerful greenhouse gas. Satellite measurements indicate that it increased the water vapour content of the stratosphere by 10 to 15 per cent. This is expected to cause temporary global warming. Stuart Jenkins at the University of Oxford and his colleagues estimated how the extra water vapour would change the balance of incoming and outgoing energy in the atmosphere. They then simulated the resulting temperature anomaly until 2035 under two scenarios: one in which carbon emissions continue on their current trajectory and one with ambitious climate mitigation policies. They found that on the current emissions trajectory, the Tonga eruption will produce a small and short-lived warming effect, increasing the chance from 50 to 57 per cent of at least one of the next five years reaching 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. In the ambitious climate mitigation scenario, the chances of one of the next five years exceeding 1.5°C rises from 60 to 67 per cent. That’s because aerosol particles from human air pollution reflect radiation and currently help to slow the pace of warming, but ambitious mitigation policies cut emissions of all pollutants quickly, resulting in faster rates of warming in the short term. Read more: The first breach of 1.5°C will be a temporary but devastating failure The 2015 Paris Agreement set a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Exceeding this in a coming year wouldn’t mean we have failed to meet this objective, Jenkins points out. “Whilst Tonga may increase our chances of seeing a 1.5°C year in the near term, it is a natural influence on the climate system and doesn’t contribute to our measures of success or failure in the Paris Agreement,” he says. The research also shows that the Tonga effect will have disappeared by 2035. “This is a timely study and demonstrates that we can relatively quickly estimate the impact that a volcanic eruption will have on surface temperature,” says Anja Schmidt at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. “Even though most volcanic eruptions cool the Earth’s surface, this study demonstrates that only rapid and rigorous reductions in anthropogenic emissions will substantially decrease the risk of exceeding very dangerous levels of warming. We can’t rely on the short-term cooling effect of most volcanoes to save us from the impacts global warming will have.” Journal reference: Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01568-2 Sign up to our free Fix the Planet newsletter to get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox, every Thursday

I think the plants will do that on their own. Thing is, do we really want to show how horrible we were. History is an odd thing. We have romantic notions about Henry 8th, mainly for breaking away from the Catholic Church, but he was a complete bastard that killed his wives. The thing about transitioning to RE, us that we will see the benefits right away.

Easy. Been done years ago. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2007/06/sending-secret/amp

Yes they do, and so do pets, with ownership at endemic levels in the UK. If the energy source for manufacture is as low emissions as it can possibly be, then the problem becomes smaller. It also has to be remembered that the planet, our one and only home, needs a certain amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. 250ppm is considered a sensible level, 420ppm is not. Now some people think that a slow, gradual, warming of the planet is not a problem. It is, if you take the anthropogenic view, and I think we should, that if we are to survive as a species, then we need to have predicable weather, and weather is affected by the climate. The alternative to this is that we can quickly move people around the planet so that the most basic industry, agriculture, can take place in the most suitable places. Well good luck on that happening. The Ukraine is a vast agricultural region, the next region, because of climate change, may well be Russia. Do you want to deal with them for your food supplies, or change something now i.e. reduce the risk of variable weather, by investing in the major cause of climate change? It really is bonkers that we have a planning system that stops the country 'doing the right thing'. During the pandemic, AZ I think it was, build a factory outside Oxford to manufacture vaccines. They did this without planning permission, but hoped because of the national emergency it would be granted. As you say ( @MikeSharp01) if a solar farm takes 6 years planning, just think how much energy that could have produced. It is 360 Ha, 3.6 km2, or 0.00148% of England's land area.

Yes, but when you hear, constantly, that a heat pump only works in a well insulated house all context is lost. Most people would not have any idea if their house is well insulated or not, all they know is that it 'costs a lot to heat' and 'it is cold'. Then they generally don't know how much it costs or actually how cold it is. There are too many vague statements, that are presented as fact. Then ask someone to do a bit of work, like read the meter every day, and they get the huff. So energy must be too cheap if someone can't open a door and read a meter.

@ToughButterCup is the man about cat flaps. The nearest you will get is a passivhaus one, there is a good link between insulation for thermal and sound. http://www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/PetWalk.jpg

I don't really understand that, the impression given is that Heat Pumps CAN only work if the building is well insulated, and if it is not, then you must carry on with local combustion i.e. gas or oil. Everyone should be looking to improve the insulation and airtightness levels, regardless of their thoughts about the heating technology. As you say though.

Or emissions. What we need is a Deep Thought to answer to give the answer to how safe wood burners in the home are. Deep Thought Deep Thought is a computer that was created by a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent species of beings (whose three-dimensional protrusions into our universe are ordinary white mice) to come up with the Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Deep Thought is the size of a small city. When, after seven and a half million years of calculation, the answer finally turns out to be 42, Deep Thought admonishes Loonquawl and Phouchg (the receivers of the Ultimate Answer) that "[she] checked it very thoroughly, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you is that you've never actually known what the question was." Deep Thought does not know the ultimate question to Life, the Universe and Everything, but offers to design an even more powerful computer, Earth, to calculate it. After ten million years of calculation, the Earth is destroyed by Vogons five minutes before the computation is complete.

Yes I suppose they are, they are the nuts, bolts, washer and pins, of the electronics world.

I learn a lesson like that when doing my apprenticeship. I was learning to be a toolmaker and a fitter asked me to change something, move a tapped whole to make fitting easier. When the design engineer found out he went ballistic at me, pointed out that he was the engineer and the fitter was just a lazy, gobby twat. Me, being me, asked the design engineer to show me the problem, which he eventually did and it all made sense (new tapped hole ended very close to the very high pressure hydraulic channel). So designers have to communicate with everyone that is involved. Which is what is really happening on Buildhub, we all chip in and hopefully a few decent solutions come out in the wash.

Lost me at the second line of the fifth paragraph. But it is good to play with things and see what happens.

42 years ago when I studied Automotive Engineering, we were offered a choice of modules, one was Vehicle Electronic Systems. None of us picked that option, much to the relief of the lecture who admitted later that he knew little about it. Chatting to an old colleague at my old college, he now teaches a course about servicing and repairing EVs. Has been doing it for about a decade. Eco-Drive has been around about 20 years. http://www.eco-drive.co.uk/ The guy who set it up used to run around in a little Peugeot 106 Electrique, he could get from Penzance to Truro in it.

Nancy Reagan did. Mystic Meg was a journalist, no magical powers at all. Russel Grant, who I met once in a restaurant, is an actor. He was so large he took up one side of a table for 4. He was eating the same pizza as me, a La Mamma.

Nott as good as I can.

Well you said

So paying the 'engineers', a greater, or lesser, amount of money would not make any difference then, they would still do a crap job.

So no problem paying the MCS to have a connected PV system. Or a plumber to fix a leaky tap. Where I agree is that some products and services are underpriced, and other are overprices. Frequently it has nothing to do with supply and demand, more to do with customer ignorance and an ability to say 'no'.

There are a lot of 'deep greens' that think we should, and other biomass. They are the ones that did not study science, but quote it a lot.

For the climate, not much. There would still be environmental problems, mainly conservation of nature, but that is a problem we will always have. I did work out how much heating of the atmosphere our current global energy use would increase it by, pretty sure I posted it up. I can't be bothered to find it though.

It is the burning of hydrocarbons that is the main global problem. The secondary problem is the geo politics. If energy was as expensive as many claim, why are there so many cars, and large cars, on our roads? I just filled up with diesel at £1.69/litre, roughly 16p/kWh. Am now having a coffee, it has 0.021 kWh of energy, cost £2.95. £140/kWh. I really am a (expletive deleted) for buying it.

Yes, but the emissions will be a lot lower. Small emissions are easier to clean up, why there is all this talk of turning a third of the planet's surface area back into wilderness. Many plastics can be made from non fossil fuel sources, cellulose is one, polyurethane is another. Smelting iron (and other common ores) predominately requires thermal energy, that can come from RE. Change common ore to virgin steel requires physics and chemistry, so can probably become much more efficient. There is an old joke about the metallurgist professor knowing the difference between the common ore and the virgin steel in his lectures.

I didn't know we had Tory donors on these forums It is cheap, so cheap that we throw it out the windows of our homes, drive 500 metres to a takeaway, where they have a 100 kW range burning most of the day, and an extractor to suck all the air out the building at a rate of tonnes/hour. A Big Mac costs £5/kWh (2.3kJ and £3.19). Now that is value.

It really comes down to the general publics ignorance and gullibility. It is what politicians and journalists rely on, it allows them to pull the wool over people's eyes. When it comes to deploying RE, it is not the technology, or the power companies, it is our hopeless planning system, that is what has to change.

What happen?