UKC

I have been receiving a few emails and FB prompts that Cumbria is open for business, and presumably wanting people to go.
Yes its terrible, we should help etc
However this is a climate event, and a good chance that CO2 could have something to do with it, so is encouraging people to drive to the Lakes and burn CO2 the best response?
I believe we really do need to rethink our life styles, and that may mean, no trips to the Lakes, no Sports trips to kaly , meat once a week or a month, have to work within a certain radius of home, fuel at £2 (or whatever it takes to stop us using it) a litre, less stuff.

In reply to Reggie Perrin:
In the short term lots of folk driving to the lakes will make no odds to the global climate.

In the longer term you are correct, we should rethink our activities, or at least the means by which we facilitate them.

Perhaps for regions like the lakes that means making greener holidays more affordable/accessible - mostly that's down to better public transport provision I think. Reopen shap halt, rail link to Keswick, etc etc.

In reply to Dr.S at work:

Was discussing this at work. Problem with a rail link to Keswick is they built the A66 on top of the old route.

In reply to Ridge:

http://www.keswickrailway.com/id24.html

Someone's already on to it - most of the old route still there it seems.

In reply to Reggie Perrin:

You are conflating two things: whether you should travel to Cumbria in these particular circumstances, and whether you should be travelling and generally overusing energy on a regular basis.

Any reaction to climate changes is about balancing the (apparently) conflicting demands of economic prosperity and protection of the environment (that is the core of the argument in Paris). In this specific micro-case, given the economic situation of those who have been flooded, there is a very good case that those overide the environmental issues. So GO.

In reply to Reggie Perrin:

A trip to the Lakes isn't as bad as flying somewhere.

In reply to Reggie Perrin:

Or you could only have one child per family. That'd make more difference than all the random, un researched, feel good pap you list.

In reply to wintertree:
Hush, you are not allowed to mention the real, massive and massively intractable problem, catastrophic human population growth, especially in those countries least suited to cope with it.

You'll be saying that mass immigration, particularly from third-world Islamic hell-holes, is not an unmixed, unqualified good thing next, especially when they carry their medieval, tribal and barbaric attitudes and cultures with them, then all the Guardianistas will turn on you like a pack of ravening wolves.

In reply to Simon4:

This is because political correctness is the new religion and let all unbelievers be burned at the stake. Disagreement with PC norms is not allowed.

In reply to Simon4:


For somebody who is critical of the left and Guardian readers because of tribalism.....

In reply to Postmanpat:


http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/

You might find this (and the overall concept) interesting.

UKC Disclaimer: Anybody who is profoundly sceptical would likely be best off contacting the Foundation themselves after thoroughly looking into the concept and comments from business leaders and economists too.

In reply to wintertree:


Did the chinese not get a bit of stick for this?

In reply to Reggie Perrin:
They changed their minds too, and it's been found that it effects how risk averse children grow up to be and things (ie more so - looking at trends).

In reply to LakesWinter:


Of course, which is why yours and Simon's comments have been deleted and you have both been taken away for re-education. Alternatively, you could just be full of shit!

In reply to Reggie Perrin:
Guadianista leftie, yes thats me. Oddly this week I heard a word in a new context. People talk of left and right, and liberal politics, and I always wondered what was the opposite to liberal. Now this was in relation to the global political structure, and they used Liberal meaning that all countries will get along obeying rules with organisations such as the UN leading the way. And Realist, meaning that countries will use power and default to self interest. (its a bit more complex than that, but thats the jist).
So actually I would call myself a Realist, the poo is hitting the fan, in Keswick, vanuatu, typhoons in the phillipines, wildfires in Australia, so we should be doing something and that will mean changing how we live on a personal level. However another approach, which seems popuplar, is carry on as normal. I live in a wealthy country that will be able to mitigate the effects of climate in my life time, and the real death and destruction will happen after I am dead or in foreign countries, so as long as we have borders strong enough to keep out the refugees, Im alright Jack

In reply to Reggie Perrin:

You'll offset your vehicle CO2 emissions by turning off your heating at home for the time you're away.
Get up to The Lakes!

In reply to Reggie Perrin:

despite what is being said about "open for business" (a nauseating slogan we hear everytime there are any problems here, would rather hear open for visitors) it is a real pain getting about at the moment with so many major routes still closed. Don't know about open for business but at the moment the appeal is for second home owners to let displaced families use the accommodation.

In reply to Dr.S at work:
They could start by looking at the railway timetable in order to make it feasible to do a weekend break after work from the South East to Cumbria by train. Presently it isn't, you can only get as far as Oxenholme.

In reply to marsbar:

Sort of depends. Flying on a modern aircraft with all seats taken is equivalent roughly to driving in a family car on your own. Yes, it's not great, but it's not as bad as some think. What makes it worse is that you wouldn't get in your 1.6 litre Vauxhall Astra and drive it to New York.

In reply to Reggie Perrin:

Much better to drive to the lakes than a flyaway holiday

In reply to Neil Williams:
I agree in part.

Perversely a public transport weekend hit to the highlands is far easier from the south of England than a similar one to the lakes, that makes little sense.

But I think we also need to accept some change in our pattern of behaviour - maybe you do need to take a half day holiday in order to get the weekend away?

In reply to Dr.S at work:


But unless cars are to be banned, people won't think like that, because you *can* do it by car. So the alternatives will, if they want the business, have to think the same.

In reply to Simon4:

Are there any topics into which you can't shoehorn your hatred of Islam?

In reply to Neil Williams:


They can't even get the Carlise-Barrow line to run at sensible times to get people to work and back, then they shut down in the early evening so you can't have a night out. I wish you luck

In reply to Neil Williams:

It cost me £4.40 for a bus from Ambleside to the Roberston Lamb hut in Lansdale, and if there had been 4 a Taxi would have made sense, and I wondered if a £1 or £2 per night surcharge on all accommodation in the Lakes Hotels B/B S/C Climbing huts, Camping and for this all buses in the Lakes are free of charge, just a thought.

In reply to Timmd:



Don't you find that website irritating? Very poor navigation and lots of jargon filled gobbledygook. Somebody needs to rewrite it all in plain English because the ideas deserve a hearing.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Well it seems I can do what I like as I didn't have children. So I get the allowance for them too.

In reply to Andy Hardy:

:-D lcb

In reply to marsbar:


Never mind the children you, (and me), didn't have. (Er..obviously we didn't not have them together...um..moving swiftly on).

There's several potential generations worth of carbon credit out there that we're entitled to. I'm off to burn a polar bear in the garden on a pyre of exotic rainforest trees.

In reply to Reggie Perrin:


Bus services were deregulated in 1985, so cheap public transport in places like the Lakes or linked up services that benefit other parts of the local economy are not easy to achieve. I don't know much about the transport executive function in Cumbria, but I would be surprised if any more than a few services were subsidised.

In reply to wintertree:

One child per family would cause huge, unresolvable social problems in a generation. So it's not as simple as that.

In reply to Lusk:
Get a modern smart thermostat like a Tado and you won't even need to remember to do it, it'll do it for you every time you go out. Brilliant (money saving and pollution saving) device.

In reply to Reggie Perrin:

That approach, a tourist tax to pay for a free public transport ticket, is very common to the point of being near enough universal in Switzerland, and I would certainly consider it a good idea, though improvements to the network would also be needed, I would say.

In reply to Ridge:

I don't know if the times will suit, but there are service improvements coming on that line on the next Northern Rail franchise.

In reply to XXXX:


I agree, but the current model is completely unsustainable. We really need a managed decine in population without ending up with a population of OAPs. The current Ponzi scheme approach, constantly increasing the number of people to service an elderly population, followed by needing even more people to service them once they themselves age, is madness.

In reply to Ridge:

While it isn't achieving the decline, what is happening is that pensions are moving from Ponzi style final salary schemes to individual-based investment ones, so there has been a significant change of that kind. But to change fully takes a number of generations.

In reply to Reggie Perrin:

This is the opposite of when 'foot and mouth' was about and they wanted us to stay away?
Incoming.

In reply to marsbar:

Demonstrating my age / ignorance but I have to ask. What does lcb mean?

In reply to Neil Williams:


Pensions, while relevant, are still a bit of a side show. It's the numbers required to support a large elderly population. Immigration is a short term fix, but immigrants aren't like Peter Pan. They have kids, age, and ultimately add to the problem. I'm intrigued how Japan is trying to manage this.

In reply to Ridge:

Correction, it's the numbers to support a large sick population rather than elderly population.

In reply to Ridge:

In most of the developed world, populations are constant, excluding immigration. Interested to see figures showing otherwise.

In reply to XXXX:


Erm...

In other words, we are reliant on a constantly growing population. Methods of acheiving that may vary.

In reply to Orgsm:


Isn't there a fairly close correlation between the two?

In reply to Ridge:


Nope

In reply to Reggie Perrin:





The good you can do by going to the Lakes now and spending your money easily outweighs the bad you do by going on a roadtrip for the weekend, and I say that as someone who believes that everybody should be ditching the car and getting on their bike as often as possible.

In reply to Simon4:

What do you make of Hans Roslings evidence-based arguments about population growth?

youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg&


Why are you blathering on about how much you hate muslims again?



Edit: this is a better, more important clip of Hans:

http://tinyurl.com/ncwz7sd

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Thanks Jon. Really interesting stuff. My only concern is that it seems to be built on the premise that you can have 11 billion people living a 'western', (watching my terminology now ), standard of living on this planet. Not sure if that's feasible without wars for already scarce resources.

In reply to Ridge:


I guess that 100 years ago you'd have said it was impossible to have 7bn people living on the planet full stop, yet they do. I don't think we'll get to 11bn living decent lives by burning all the carbon we can find in the ground, we'll need to change what resources we need. I don't think there's insufficient space to grow enough food, or insufficient water or anything like that, it's just that at the moment it's all very badly organised.

In reply to Ridge:


Not sure if it's on that Rosling talk or another where he addresses that question. He argues, albeit relatively briefly, that we could easily produce enough food for 11bn and that we could use resources much more efficiently (from memory)

In reply to Postmanpat:


I agree it could be more accessible.

In reply to Trevers:

there's always this

http://www.cumbriafoundation.org/ways-to-give-new/cumbria-flood-appeal-2015

In reply to Timmd:




Business leaders and economists don't have a very good track record at generating stable economies, do they?

Life requires an increase in entropy. That is not and never can be regenerative or circular. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a fool or a damned liar. An economy is nothing if not an embodiment and sharing of the consequences of life. To many grand ideas and big words and you can fall out of touch with the base reality you exist within and build upon.

In reply to wintertree:
It might not lead to a wholesale change in the economies...you probably can't predict the future any better than economists or business leaders , but it's (in a seedling form) already starting to happen, with companies which sold carpets to businesses switching to renting them out instead, so that once they're too worn to be presentable, they're taken back again and the materials are recycled back into fresh and new carpets, it's about changing the use of (finite) resources.

The CEO of B&Q has commented that he sees a shift happening towards renting, too, and there's a UN group which is looking into how to adopt an alternative economic model which doesn't result in resources having a single use or being recycled 'downwards' before being thrown away.

I don't know where entropy fits into all that?

In reply to Timmd:

Are you a fool or a damned liar?

In reply to wintertree:


And you accused me up thread of coming out with pap.

In reply to Timmd:


No economy can be closed.

You are conflating two unrelated things - financing models (ownership vs leasing) and increasing recycling. The later does not need the former, it needs to be economically viable.

Still it makes nice soundbites. The emperors new clothes comes to economics.

In reply to wintertree:


What was your point about entropy?

The two things can be complimentary (like in the example of the company which sells carpets to business), and increased recycling can take place where it become less viable to not reuse resources, from changes to the regulations which businesses have to adhere to.

http://www.unece.org/unece/search?q=circular+economy&op=Search

The UN seem to think it's worth taking seriously...

In reply to Timmd:


That it has to increase for life to continue, and that therefore no economy can be closed or circular.

In reply to Ridge:

No they didn't. Look at a map - most the disused track bed is still there.

Davie

In reply to DR:



My bad, it's the Keswick to West Coast bit the A66 is on. It'll need a new bridge or two, and it'll remove a very popular footpath/cycleway, but it looks doable. Also need a new location for the station

In reply to Dr.S at work:


The cost of holidays in the Lakes will only ever be demand driven due to the popularity of the Lakes. I am sure there will be some offering eco-friendly holidays but you can guarantee they will be aimed at the concerned middle classes.

The Lakes isn't so inaccessible. There are good connections from the West Coast Mainline to Windermere and despite there being a reasonable good bus service from there to Keswick / Coniston, it is frightfully expensive and stops running around tea time which isn't much use if you land in Windermere at 8pm.

In reply to ByEek:
Yeah, Stagecoach do a reasonably good job with very little subsidy. The problem is that a weekend away is only feasible from elsewhere in the North West unless you take half a day off work, which means people drive, and once the car is there people will use it.

I have wondered if, given the terrible congestion, it might be a location where a Congestion Charge, with reduced or zero rates for locals, would do well. Money could be used to improve the bus service further, and fewer cars would naturally improve it. If it didn't need to be paid if your car was left parked, it would catch those who drove there as well.

But it would require designing the bus service properly for the kind of user you get.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Hasn't some sort of visitor tax / congestion charge been considered for the Lakes before? I find such measures rather cynical though. They price out the less well off where as those with more money aren't bothered one way or the other. Meanwhile, the local councils see it as a cash cow that keeps on giving. A bit like the National Trust Langdale campsite.

In reply to balmybaldwin:


Has anyone actually done the math on that contention? There are obviously a huge amount of variables such as the distances involved, size of plane/car, number of passengers etc, but with the trend towards bigger and bigger planes carrying up to 500 or even 600 passengers the difference must be narrowing.

Another factor of course is the oceans, unless you go by boat with it's added time factor, flying is the only option for long haul.

I'm not saying flying is wrong just questioning if it is as big a polluter per passenger per mile as is often alleged when compared with other forms of fossil fuel propulsion?

In reply to Trangia:


I think it is still pretty inefficient in terms of fuel spent. It is also only the long haul routes that are seeing the 1970's Jumbo retired in favour of the more efficient Airbus 380 and Dreamliner and even they aren't that efficient. I believe they burn through fuel measured in tonnes per hour i.e. 747 is around 10 tonnes per hour, 777 is around 7 tonnes per hour and smaller 320s at 5.5 tonnes per hour.

I believe the car with four passengers is still the most efficient means of fossil fuel burning transport.

In reply to ByEek:


Yes, you are I believe right there. Rail in particular is often not as good as people think, particularly modern high-power diesel trains, made heavier by strict crashworthiness requirements that don't apply even vaguely as strictly to buses and coaches (another very efficient user of fossil fuels, particularly given their typical low speed). It is no coincidence that the Pendolino that was catapulted into the air then into a field at Greyrigg remained near enough intact (though I believe was written off) - but that kind of strength can't be light.

This means that while people complain about the cost of group travel by rail, it isn't a priority to encourage this by way of subsidy for environmental reasons - the single travellers are the environmental and congestion priority.

As for air, a modern aircraft (as I mentioned above) is roughly equivalent in emissions terms to driving an average family car with a single occupant, which isn't great but isn't terrible either. The problem with air is the large distances it enables. It'd be just as bad if you drove your Vauxhall Astra (or Skoda Octavia, for that matter) several thousand miles.

In reply to Trangia:




It's not about whether it is a bigger polluter per passenger mile - It's about biggest polluter per passenger.

Otherwise it's like saying you should by 100,000 tomatoes because it works out cheaper than to buy one on its own - it only makes sense if you must have 100,000 tomatoes

Holidays by definition are not necessities and going aboard is certainly not a necessity. If everyone in the UK holidayed within the UK instead of getting on a plane it would make a significant difference

In reply to ByEek:

The super-rich will always do what they like, so it really isn't worth worrying about that. To most other people, charging *something* serves as a significant dissuasion over charging *nothing*. Look how much effect the "bag tax" has had, even with people for whom about 30p added to a weekly shop for carrier bags would make no difference - or indeed how many turds you will see all over the track at Manchester Piccadilly, put there by people who won't pay the same sum to use the station toilets.

(I'm broadly in support of charging for both of those things - bags for environmental reasons, station bogs because it demonstrably reduces vandalism - again having to pay 30p to go in and vandalise the bogs does serve to dissuade)

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Indeed, but if they do go to the South of France (say), it really isn't worth nitpicking about whether they fly or drive, as the difference is not as marked as many think. Probably even less marked on common holiday airlines like the orange and blue mobs, because they cram the seats in pretty tightly and their aircraft are relatively new.

Long haul is a big problem, but far more people go on holiday to Europe than they do long-haul.

In reply to Neil Williams:


Agreed. But perhaps the success of the bag tax is partially the knowledge that the money isn't going into government coffers. Drivers are regularly tapped up by the tax man to pay for all manner of non-road related expenditures. I just feel there must be smarter ways of dissuading driving rather than to simply tax drivers even more.

In reply to ByEek:

I'm not sure it is - I think it's simply that people realise that bags cost money, so they choose not to take them. Where the money goes is only relevant where the majority choose to buy them - and my observation is that they are choosing to re-use or bring their own in droves.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Yeah. The bag tax thing is a bit of a weird one. 5p is enough to really change the way people do things and even prompt some to steal a trolley rather than pay 5p. But driving is a bit different. Whether it be exorbitant parking charges, tolls or general taxation, drivers seem resigned to being charged through the nose.

In reply to ByEek:

I certainly do plan journeys to avoid excessive parking charges. The problem with other costs is that most of them (even fuel) are hard to attribute directly to a journey.

I have wondered if home electricity consumption would be cut if pre-pay meters were mandatory with a maximum sale of quite a low sum, for instance. I know fuel is pre-pay, but most cars have big tanks so it's just a case of "a big bill once a week".

In reply to balmybaldwin:

>

It would make a significant difference to countries like say Nepal whose economies depend on tourism where their customers arrive virtually 99% on planes.

I agree with you that we need to tackle these problems but apparent solutions create other problems and are not always as straightforward as you are suggesting.

Which brings us full circle back to the OP.

In reply to Lusk:



and pray that we don't get a record cold snap to burst all your pipes whilst you are away..........

In reply to Trangia:


No need to worry about that, just set your thermostat to 5 or 10 degrees, and if it gets cold enough to burst your pipes it'll prevent it.

FWIW, now I have the Tado, I can look at a graph of the temperature in my house while I'm away. I've never seen it go below about 14 degrees, though to be fair it is a terrace so is warmed from both sides. (I wonder if when I'm away my neighbours' fuel bills increase?)

In reply to wintertree:

You're possibly missing that it's the use of resources which is a circular?

Have you had a decent read through the information on the UN's website?

In reply to Timmd:


Resource usage can NOT be circular. The increase of entropy sees to that. A source of low entropy has to be converted to a source of higher entropy to do anything useful. Resource use can not be circular. One raw material can be recovered at the cost of another raw material but it is not "circular" as there is always a conversion of low entropy to high entropy.

All the emperor's new clothes boil down to (1) recycling materials through the use of low carbon energy and (2) alternative financing models of (1). For some reason the two are always conflated and presented together as something radical.

Even talking about recycling materials is an over-simplification. Almost everything is eventually recycled depending upon the timescale one looks at. What they really mean is shortening the recycling process, e.g. taking water from a city sewer and putting it back into the water supply rather than letting it recycle via the planetary scale biosphere.

The barrier to shortening the recycling chains without polluting the environment is not the concept of recycling. It is not the funding model. It is the absolute cost. Funding models do not drive cost, energy requirements drive cost. This can be attacked in two ways (a) improved recycling technology and (b) lower cost energy.

Lower cost energy is a very dicey thing for the world. The wealth and prosperity that would be enabled by energy at 1/10th of the current cost could achieve very different outcomes. For example 10x the current population with current living standards and a total environmental impact similar to the present time, or the current population size with its current lifestyle but 1/10th of the environmental impact, or the current population size crapping all over the whole planet as self-piloted family aircraft become ubiquitous.

In reply to wintertree:


On the scale of the universe, yes. But we have a lot of incoming "free" energy from the sun, so that isn't true at the scale of the earth because it is not an isolated system.

In reply to MG:


That's like saying we have a lot of "free" energy from fossil fuels. It's just there, just like the sun, right? Certainly there's enough for an awfully long time. There's enough transuranics to power the world for over a 1000 years, is that "free"?

Harvesting sunlight as our primary energy source has large costs. If it didn't, people would be turning a tidy profit using it to recycle all sorts of things that are expensive to extract from the earth.

Solar-PV is getting rapidly cheaper. Grid scale storage, balancing and distribution technologies are not, and are themselves quite resource heavy.

I don't think solar will ever deliver radically different energy prices to the current systems - less carbon yes, but not a transformative drop in energy prices. That awaits something else.

The fact remains that a "circular" economy still demands a massive increase in entropy, and that demands lots of energy conversion ("generation"). The primary limit to this is the energy conversion not public education or financing models. Where there is money to be made doing these things, they are being done.

Vastly cheaper energy would enable much tighter resource reuse and also decouple the generation of food from agriculture, allowing a lot of the planet to be retuned to a pre-farming biosphere.

In reply to wintertree:


No, the point is that our thermodynamic system is the earth (for now at least) but there isn't a fixed amount of energy in it, so your claims about entropy don't apply. Fossil fuels are finite, although somewhat ironically I suppose they increase the amount of incoming energy!

In reply to wintertree:







Not sure what you mean by asking if fossil fuels / fissile elements are "free"? They're free in the sense that the energy we can receive from reducing them outweights the energy spent on the process. They're free in the sense that if you only pay a process cost and sell the energy you make a profit. They're a complete clusterf(*&k waste of money if you take into account the effects on the biosphere as part of the cost model.

Harvesting solar does have a large cost. But I think you're using the rational market model as the basis for your argument that "if you could make a profit doing it, people would". It's well established that every market humans have come up with has suffered from flaws of human thinking. I think solar is good enough as it is now to disrupt the market, but there are other factors involved such as fossil fuel subsidies and cronyism that will prevent this from happening quickly.
As I've mentioned in another thread - using HVDC and the southern fringes of Europe/Africa/Asia as generation points, a large power distribution network could be developed that provides high-level power for 14-20 hours a day to Eurasia could be developed. Existing technologies such as molten salt storage could increase that to 24 hours a day. There are no major technological issues, only political.

Your claim that a "circular" economy would generate a massive increase in entropy is not correct in the context of the Earth alone. It is quite possible for the entropy of the solar system to increase, but the entropy of Earth to decrease. This is usually what is meant by using the sun's energy on Earth, we are massively increasing the entropy of the solar.

In reply to SenzuBean:


If you say so. I've run the numbers and it's not really that simple.


No, my claim is that we need to increase entropy, and the more "circular" the economy, the more so. I claim that this needs energy and that the limiting factor is the cost of the energy, not it's origin or the funding model.