British Homes Have Air Conditioning ?

Today, 20th July, started cold with a little mizzle in the air. My sister and her husband came to stay for a few days and we were talking about aircon. It turns out that two of my nephews are both aircon enginners, and both have aircon in their homes. Another sister phoned to wish me happy birthday, she was out with a third sister enjoying (?) 40 heat in or around Hemel Hempstead. I don't know what the temp was here in Cornwall, but it was nearly cool enough to put a cardie on. (I didn't). A small silent chep to run aircon does sound nice.

People in this country often build houses in flood zones, gambling that the rare 100 year flood will not happen during their lifetime.

And of course we often have those 100 year floods, which wash all the houses away.

And they say "Who is goning to pay for all this damage", and the answer is "The fools who built their houses in the flood zones", but the goverment generally steps in and pays, and that money comes from the taxes of folks who were wise enough to not build in flood zones.

Earthquake zones are another thing in some places here, as well as tornadoes.

We have a lot of tornadoes in this region, and I live somewhat in a tornado alley.

Most rural folks who live in the two states west of Tennessee have fallout shelters underground.

You can see them next to almost every house.

And we have the New Madrid fault zone around here, which is where the Mississippi River flowed backwards in the 1800's during a big event, and created Reelfoot lake.

Witnesses at the time are said to have saved themselves by jumping on top of fallen trees, so as to not fall into the cracks which opened in the ground.

Most don't realize that the New Madrid fault zone in TN/AR is the worst zone in this country, and has a seismic rating worse than even California.

We do have earthquakes here, but not very often. When we have the big one here, much of my city will experience liquifaction, and slide off into the Mississippi River, which is why I live far from the river.

Seems like Mother Nature is not working in our favor.

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Edited By PatJ on 20/07/2022 17:24:59

To move away from platitudes for a moment, there is unequivocal evidence that the earth is warming at an unprecedented speed, and human activity is the prinicpal cause.

The studies that I have seen that prove climate change, and climate warming were intentionally rigged, and the data cherrypicked.

The actual data that I have seen shows the earth has had much hotter temperatures than now, and the data shows that humans have a minor impact on the earth's atmosphere.

One set of proof data intentionally stopped at a certain date, because the data from earlier times disproves their narative.

I have heard that sun spots and other natural phenomena are what really drive atmospheric changes.

Obviously opinions vary, and folks will be convinced that their position is the correct one.

I too believed the climate change narrative until I saw the jimmied data.

Nobody should have to rig their proof in order to prove their point.

The climate change "proof" does not hold up to rigid scientific scrutiny, at least the proof I have seen, and I have studied this topic a lot.

The graphs show much hotter periods than we are experiencing now.

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Edited By PatJ on 21/07/2022 01:43:04

There is a good article that was published recently about the first scientist to raise the alarm about global warming, and he held a symposium out in California, in order to inform the world of the grave danger.

One of the attendees was Al Gore, and Al picked up the global warming torch, and made a huge industry out of it, where he became filthy rich.

Al Gore's carbon footprint in the earth is probably as large as GB's.

From the internet, referring to Al Gore's house (he has more than one, and a multitude of large SUV's too):

This impressive 10,070-square-foot estate near Nashville, Tennessee, was in the news recently as it was reported as having more than 21 times more energy than the average U.S. household. The 20-room mansion in upscale Belle Meade used 230,889 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity during the past 12 months. Or roughly 21.4 times more than the 10,812 kWh a year used up by the typical American household. The report also claimed that the 33 solar panels installed on Mr. Gore’s home produced only 5.7 percent of the energy his home consumed in the past year.

Al Gore managed to earn a net worth of $300 Million.

Al Gore runs a global warming racket.

He predicted years ago that all the coastal cities would be 10 feet underwater in 2020.

And the person who originally held the first global warming symposium in California (the one who taught Al Gore) has now come out and said that the hype is overblown, and he is not certain at all that man has an impact on global warming.

There is far from a concensus on this topic, in spite of what you may hear in the media.

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The earth's climate does appear to move in cycles (As do sunspot with the problems that they cause on terrestial communications)

In the 1700s, the winters were so cold that the Thames froze and fairs were held on the ice.

So, accepting that man's activities do cause warming, may be what we are presently experiencing is the other part of the cycle?

We shall not live long enough tom know, but our great great great grandchildren may find out.

Howard

On the contrary, there is overwhelming consensus where consensus matters, i.e. among climate scientists:

**LINK**

Edited By PatJ on 21/07/2022 11:50:13

Edited By Frances IoM on 21/07/2022 12:13:58

Re your comparison (Pat), it is surprising just where places with very different climates, are, relatively to each other by latitude.

The British Isles' moderately high latitudes are level with many regions extremely cold in Winter but hot in Summers. The difference is by our surrounding sea, the NE corner of the Atlantic, so mild "maritime" temperate climate.

Much of that is from the North Atlantic Drift as I believe the Gulf Stream is now called; also keeping the Norwegian coast largely ice-free. We are also influenced by the extent of land not far from our Eastern and Southern coasts; giving us cold, dry Easterly winds in Winter, and sometimes areas of hot air from the South in Summer. As we've just seen.

Also, continents tend to have greater spans of climate than do islands, with wider temperature extremes.

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The typical response to climate in British housing developed over the centuries as:

- Steeply-pitched roofs, shedding rain and snow easily.

- Open coal fires in most rooms, until well into the 20C - and making homes very draughty.

- The "range" : open fireplace between integral water-heating tank, and an oven. Their modern equivalent is the oil- or gas- fired Aga or Rayburn.

- In the 20C: central-heating, circulating water through a "boiler" using coal/coke, gas or oil. Many were "back boilers", forming the back of an open fireplace; with a central flue controlled by a damper.

- Central-heating systems with "indirect" heating tanks for the hot tap water. The tank contains a coiled tube carrying the central-heating water, heating the surrounding water topped up from a header tank often in the roof space above the hot tank. An electric immersion-heater with thermostat, augments the heat-exchanger; especially when the central-heating is off anyway.

- Solid-fuel fires now usually are just "features"; replaced typically by a gas-fired "combination boiler". This both heats the closed-circuit central-heating water; and by separate, mains-fed heat exchanger, the hot-tap water on demand, no storage. (Some homes use electrically-heated "instant" showers).

- Future? The UK government hopes for all-electric homes, with air-source heat-pumps (also needing indirect hot tank with immersion-heater), and battery-car chargers. Possible for new homes, not for vast numbers of existing ones. Hydrogen? The manufacturers are already making new boilers easily adjusted from fully natural-gas to blend and eventually, only hydrogen.

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The boiler is rarely in a "basement". It is fairly compact, usually in the kitchen or a utility-room. (Mine is on the kitchen wall above the work-top, a very common practice.)

Most UK homes have no basement, but a few exploit a slope for useable space below the ground floor. Many 18-19C town houses were built with cellars, providing coal stores fed through an external hatch. The occupants had to lug buckets of coal up the internal stairs to the fireplaces.

..

The other big 20C developments were:

- Insulating the loft, the home's largest heat loser. Some houses also have their external brick wall cavities filled with plastic foam insulation.

- Double glazing. The single-layer windows were the second biggest heat drain. Very cold Winter countries typically use triple-glazing.

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I do not know if any homes in the UK use circulated hot-air heating, American style. Some might, but it is rare.

Most British homes have mains water and electricity - a few remote rural ones have private water bore-holes. However, unlike in towns, they commonly use overhead electricity lines vulnerable to storm damage possibly taking some days to restore if widespread and the roads are blocked.

Many rural homes have no gas mains so use oil or LPG.

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The allegedly-bucolic "off-grid" existence? "Grid" here describes the primary, interconnected distribution systems of electricity and gas, and to some extent water. The suppliers use "network" for the end systems.

.....

Time will tell if right or wrong on climate change (not "global warming" though that temperature rise indicates the vast accumulation of heat). It needs governments to be guided by scientists and engineers, but without the ugly politicising and money-grubbing with which it has become too widely larded.

Nor can it solved in only a few years, despite strident campaigns. Or without risking consequences perhaps not yet realised.

'

Natural climate cycles occur, by forces far more than mere 11-year sunspot cycles. No-one denies that; nor suggests that ripples like the Roman warmer, and 18C cooler, episodes cover it all. The major cycles are so slow in our terms, it is easy to cite ripples. Scientific consensus is that "we" are over-riding what ought be very slow overall but ripply, warming. Nature does not use mathematical regularity, but leaves traces of larger pictures over longer times.

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What is happening now was predicted about 100 years ago!

The scientists could use only contemporary population and coal consumption; putting their danger point far enough ahead to ignore, or to label "pending". We were "taming" Nature then; not being part of it but not right good for it.

(Reported in ME some time ago, last year maybe, after somebody found a Press cutting about it.)

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Who mentioned "earthquakes" ? Not strictly relevant here; but earthquakes are very common in Britain. Most are too small to be noticeable but show on seismographs.

It does seem to me that there has been a change since the days of my childhood, say 70 or so years ago. Where are the snowfalls of my childhood?

I'm not old enough to remember the 1947 winter, but I have seen a set of photographs from then. I certainly remember 1954 (walking part way to school because the road was blocked): the 1962/63 winter (as a telephone linesman more or less on top of the Pennines where most of the side roads were blocked): and sometime in the '80's when in order to get to Stone for a training course, I firstly cadged a lift to the city centre (no buses), and then being told by particular British Rail employees to get on that train and get off wherever and then see about another train (timetables were all abandoned apparently). That journey, normally say 2 hours took 7 hours!

But I also remember sledging for weeks on end, or so it seemed: seeing a large 6 wheel drive lorry pushing a large V snow plough through the village, local farmers being paid by the council to plough the roads to keep them open. And a local hill, so blocked with snow that it had two JCB type units, one at each end and a gang of men in the middle to clear it.

But today, well the last significant snow I remember was the winter of 1995/96 when the temperature 7 miles away on the coast dropped so low that the hydraulic fluid in the lifeboats turned to mush and caused many thousands of pounds worth of damage. Of course, there has been the odd day or two when there has been some snow, but nothing that caused major shutdown of the country. Except for those people who found themselves unable to cope with the bad weather because they had no previous experience.

So is it global warming? Or is it just a natural phenomenon going in cycles? I don't know, but I will admit to a certain amount of scepticism when we get certain people shouting the odds and pushing their own agenda. I tend to think, "Just what, if anything, do these people actually know?" Probably the best comment I remember from quite a few years ago was when a certain lady member of the local Green party was spouting the odds, and in a letter to the local paper, someone said "Is this the same lady whose husband drives a rather large Volvo!" There was more to it, but it (not the letter, but what the lady was saying) so smacked of do as I say, not as I and my husband do!

One point that I well remember from the '70's, and that was that the then scientific opinion was that we were heading for an iceage. So what happened?

Cheers, from someone who readily admits that he doesn't know,

Peter G. Shaw

Similar for me Robert. A split unit mainly for heating in my workshop/man-cave, and another for cooling one room in the house.

Aircon has a reputation for great cost - this is not so if you do not aim for 16 deg C, but instead aim for, say, 22-24 deg C which is adequate for me.

I can't argue about climate change except to say it's not a bad idea to clean up a bit and to have a long term target. On the way I think we should realise it is not a sin to dig up some more coal in the short term to ease the journey. In modern parlance, it does not have to be a binary choice. I note politicians became interested only when they realised it is a good way of raising tax revenue.

Wasn't that the threat of a 'Nuclear Winter' if WW3 happened ?

Maybe you don't remember the 2010 winter??

We had over 3 months of snow and ice in Edinburgh, everything ground to a halt, every night was minus 5 to minus 10 and I thought my crappy wooden windows were going to fall apart

But the media "forgets" about those things because they don't fit the agenda

The Irish Republic had 3 snowploughs in the entire country lol

It basically started 24 November and finished in March, I remember it well because I was driving in it almost every day. January onwards was suspension smashing ice potholes all over the place because the thick snow had turned into solid ice, it was a heck of a winter

Edited By Ady1 on 21/07/2022 14:40:20

I take the view that if climate change/global warming is happening then anything we can do to slow it down is a good thing. It's fast changes that cause the most upheaval.

Martin C

What proof is this Pat? There are a lot of denial websites making a counter-case that seems clear and simple, but their reasoning is suspect. You mention sunspots as an alternative cause, but they are much studied and definitely not causing global warming.

The mainstream consensus isn't based on a simple analysis. It comes from a mass of data from many different sources. The data is noisy, but the trends all point the same way, and - so far - none of them contradict the consensus. No convincing counter-evidence has appeared in the last 30 years. The consensus is unproven, but the probability humanity is responsible for overheating the planet is higher than alternative explanations.

For example, there's no correlation between the build up of heat on earth and either sunspots or the amount of heat output by the sun. As both have been measured for about 200 years, the hypothesis is easily disproven. Conversely, predictions based on the correlation between green-house gases and planetary heating work convincingly better than random chance. Maths that correctly predicts future effects has to be taken seriously, even if the answer is unwelcome.

Another approach is to ask what the consequences of getting it wrong are:

• If carrying on regardless causes the Climate Catastrophe, then civilisation as we know it will end. For example, the American Dream turns into a much reduced ability to feed the population, an massive influx of people from South America, plus a similar movement of Americans heading North. Canadian agriculture might benefit from global warming whilst the mid-west dries out causing Americans to migrate North. The Canadians will have to build a wall! North America is just an example; changing water supply, food shortages, or rising sea-levels will create regional flash points everywhere. No one is safe. Might seem unthinkable, but remember all previous civilisations have collapsed, usually because something natural or man-made forced the neighbours to move en-masse. Given what we know today, carrying regardless is without doubt an extremely dangerous gamble.
• The penality for not burning fossil fuels is a dip in wealth generation that technology should be able to ameliorate. In the long run clean renewable energy is both achievable and potentially cheaper. However, should it be found that fossil fuels weren't the cause of global warming, then they're still available! The physical assets are still there. Despite the risk of a dip causing major problems, this is the low-risk option.

People's unwillingness to surrender some of what they already have in this lifetime versus an unholy mess for succeeding generations.

As technical solutions take time to develop, the sooner the better. My main concern is it's already too late! Rather than bite the bullet, most of us have wasted this century and more allowing the situation to grow, perhaps hoping it's a temporary glitch or that something will turn up. I fear dithering has left us all in the lurch. We're in Business Class enjoying champagne, canapés, and a good film, unaware the pilot is worried he hasn't enough fuel left to land safely. Some won't believe it even when he tells us we've got 30 minutes left to ring relatives and say goodbye. After all, what do experts know?

Dave

Ady1,

After the reminder I do have a very vague recollection of it, but nothing really serious. Of course, this could be as much to do with it not having too much effect on me. Or perhaps the effect where I live wasn't that bad, although I do remember two wintry incidents: one was when a choral concert I was taking part in was cancelled due to bad weather; two, allowing my then car, a Focus Diesel, chug it's way up a moderate slope in 2nd gear without any sign of slip, and then up a steeper slope again on tickover in 2nd, but slipping all the while yet still making progress. That car was owned from 2009 to 2013 which would fit your date.

Other than the above, I have no recollection of any bad weather in 2010. That's not to say there wasn't an - just that it didn't register with me.

Hope this explains why I didn't mention it.

Bob Unitt 1,

I do remember talk of a Nuclear Winter, but not in that context. But of course, that was 50 years ago and memories do fade.

Cheers,

Peter G. Shaw

BBC2 9pm tonight, How Esso tried to cover up climate change. Fairly successfully from reading some of the preceding posts

My daughter got to go on a tour of Europe a few years ago.

GB, Netherlands, Germany, France, etc.

I get to work, and she gets to have a life and tour the world.

If I had a free ticket to anywhere in the world, I would make a beeline to the nearest GB museum of technology, and they would have to drag me out with ropes.

I don't think we really have anything analogous to the technology museums in the UK.

I know of one gentleman who runs the Soule museum in Meridian Mississippi, and he did tour the museums in the UK, and was inspired to start his own museum here.

The Soule facility is where the Speedy Twin steam engine was manufactured, and luckily the factory and foundry were pretty much saved intact when they stopped operation.

In the engine assembly area, the tables are full of Speedy Twin parts.

The assembly process just stopped one day, as if some sort of Vesuvius event happend.

I have dreams of sitting in quaint GB hub in some little village, having a rousing discussion about climate change with a bunch of chaps, and then in the end, hoisting the beer mug, toasting "to climate change", and then drinking ourselves under the table.

That is my idea of the "Good Life".

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Edited By PatJ on 21/07/2022 21:29:20