Heating Your Greenhouse in Europe This Winter

[CG100]

Actually, Methane gas heatings may have up to theoretically 111% efficiency

That would asume no chimney/flue gases.
Nothing legal would be allowed to be unvented - some heat will always be lost up the flue and combustion requires introduction of new air (oxygen), even if supplied direct to the burner rather from the greenhouse itself.

I suppose you could get close to a real 100% by running the flue pipe around any greenhouse, or even use an intercooler - flue/supply gas heat-exchanger - so that the gas that eventually exited was very close to greenhouse temperature, or even below, but the extended flue would probably have major problems with condensation/corrosion and any inter-cooler would have to be (very) large. None of it an engineering dream when it would all have to rely on convection and/or chimney/pitot effect.

[David Pilling]

NL banned export of cucumbers a few months back

Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark –
Broccoli for the Parson, cucumber for the Clerk.
Legumes for a lady; lettuce for a spy,
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!

[Bern]

I read a book several years ago titled: "The Long Emergency."  It dealt with subjects like peak oil and other future shock type events that will confront humanity in the near future. The author has also used the term techo-narcissism to describe the responses he got while giving talks on his book at corporations in Silicon Valley.  There's an energy crisis?  No problem.  We'll use technology to fix it - some kind of IT or AI.  A farcical example of techno-narcissism would be that you could download the Greenhouse Heating App from Google Play to your cellphone, and when you activate it, voila! - your greenhouse heating issues are resolved.

I'm not recommending the book, but I do commend the phrase "The Long Emergency."  All of us now are living during it.

I wonder if shortly there will be an App to increase the cucumber supply from the NL?

[David Pilling]

I always liked the line that the stone age did not end when they ran out of stone. A lot of oil/gas/coal is going to be left in the ground.

But the idea that times are going to be more difficult - the long emergency - everyone can agree with. For example after 40 years inflation is back. After 10 years interest rates have gone up. It's all happened before but a lot of people have not experienced it.

Reversion to the mean if you like.

Computers can help with many things, but they can't lay bricks.

There are a lot of real world problems much more difficult to solve than the ones that made  fortunes in the era of dot-com.

[Martin Bohnet]

Trouble is a lot of fossile energies  - and also nuclear power - are still very convenient and cheap, because you don't pay for all the follow up costs. and funnily, natural and artificial intelligences tend to make the same mistakes - learning  globally wrong behaviour from local short term benefits - my favourite example is the AI that was praised for recognizing horses in pictures - until someone looked at the identification "heat map" and spotted the watermark from the horse farm providing the photos. Likewise, any eating disorder is learned, e.g. by rewarding children with sweets.

And there's  a lot of unconscious learning as well - ever wondered why gold seems to be universally valued in our species? OK, it was an early cultural miracle - a metal which doesn't change over time, but let's face it, the technical value is mediocre to say the least - a few non-corroding contacts, some minor catalytic uses (in which it is usually inferior to platinum, palladium and ruthenium), that's all. Personally I'm convinced: a lot of the gold hype is the result of children's stories about precious gold treasures guarded by trolls, dragons and mad kings. Just another mis-programming we'd better overcome. Could reduce the Mercury poisoning of many rivers as a start. Similar arguments go for Diamonds - technical uses are bigger, but all "cutting edge" diamonds you need can be synthesized, no need for dangerous mining exposing workers to Asbestos etc.

Technical solutions can help, but humanity needs to overcome wrong impulses. Oops, there we are back at the Russia problem.... Imperalism, yay!

[David Pilling]

humanity needs to overcome wrong impulses

"In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again."

[Bern]

[In the most recent journal of The Austrian (Vol. 8, No. 5), a publication of the Mises Institute, author Alex Epstein was interviewed about his book: Fossil Future - Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas - Not Less.  There were some very interesting quotes in this article and another one in the same journal.  Here are just a few.  Bern.]

"Since 1980, the percentage of humanity living on less than $2 a day has gone from 42 percent to under 10 percent today.  This wondrous development is the result of increasing and expanding productivity, which is driven by the increasing and expanding use of fossil-fueled machine labor and the enormous amount of mental labor it frees up.  But there is still far more progress to me had.....  Expanding fossil fuel use will enable everyone, especially the world's poorest people, to become more productive and prosperous. AE."

[The World Population Clock is currently reading 7.98 billion people. So, something on the order of 800 million people are living on the purchasing parity equivalent of $2 a day or less.  This is an appalling statistic IMO. Bern.]

"By our standards, the world is extremely poor, including energy poor, and one point I make in the book is that there are 6 billion people in the world who by our standards use a totally inadequate amount of energy, less electricity than one of our refrigerators use.  We live in a world that is energy deprived, and then you learn that fossil fuels provide 80 percent of that energy and their use is still growing, particularly in parts of the world that care most about low cost reliable energy.  It is insane to talk about phasing them out rapidly. AE."

"There are something like 3 billion people on Earth that don't consume energy.  Aren't we being neocolonialists in the West if we try to thrust our anti-fossil fuel mentality on them? JD."

[Good points all of them.  Reading statements such as these helps me gain some perspective on the current energy situation people face in America and Europe this winter. Bern.]

"William Nordhaus, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the economics of climate change, is arguable the top economist in this area.  His own model shows the 1.5 degree Centigrade cap on global warming would be so economically destructive it would be better if governments did nothing. RM.]

[Hmmm....... Comments anyone? Bern.]

[David Pilling]

Hi Bern - interesting points and ones we don't hear often.

I imagine the conventional reply is that the poor will suffer most from changing climate, that the well off can afford to move to net zero and will then be able to make the technology cheaper. Maybe it is fair that the wealthy use less energy.

This week's British Prime Minister is getting criticised for not going to COP27, the implication being that his presence would make a difference. In fact not only is the UK's energy use insignificant, the future use of fossil fuels is beyond the control of the West. China and Russia will do what they want, including exporting to poorer countries, which will welcome cheap energy.

On a brighter note, half the UK's electricity came from renewable power sources yesterday, and seemingly much more is on the way.

(a somewhat warm and windy day).

We have protests here... people gluing themselves to things, chucking soup in art galleries. Some of these protesters have been revealed to not be following their own advice. It doesn't matter, if you protest you're saving humanity regardless of living in a house with no insulation etc. If the protests are just anti-growth, anti-wealth remains to be seen.

The point being there is hardship developing due to the costs of fuel - any link between net-zero and this is studiously avoided by the media. The general population is overwhelmingly in favor of net-zero. They're also in favor of someone else paying their energy bills.

We can tax the oil companies to pay the bills - except taxing Mr Putin may be problematic.

Coming soon, putting the oil companies out of business, which would leave poorer countries doing their own thing, again out of control of the rich.

Europe seems further down the net-zero road than the USA, which may be why we're paying such high prices and fearing Winter. Mr Biden is at COP27. What happens today over here, happens tomorrow over there.

[CG100]

"There are something like 3 billion people on Earth that don't consume energy. 


No-one in this world consumes no energy.

[David Pilling]

Our World in Data offers:

"About 3 billion people in the world do not have access to modern energy sources for cooking and heating their homes"

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-poverty-air-pollution

Others offer 940 million without electricity.

[CG100]

Where any energy is gained from is totally and utterly irrelevant, and the original quote made no mention of source, just that people did not consume energy.

Vast numbers of people across Africa and Asia cook using charcoal - better than using methane or propane, or even electricity? If the electricity was generated from solar, wind, wave, nuclear......................

How many people use no steel in their lives? How many people use no industrially-produced anything? Essentially none. It matters not that they personally did not make the steel or whatever - they are consuming energy second-hand.

Taking pedantry to the extreme, how many people eat/consume/utilise only what they or someone else produces within walking distance, with no industrial inputs and using only home-produced seed etc.? Unless they barter, even the money involved will have taken large amounts of energy to produce.

[Bern]

Good points all.  The Long Emergency continues. 

I'm reminded of a quote from the late social critic and comedian George Carlin.  " When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." He became very pessimistic as he got older and he became something of a misanthrope.  But it is a cute quote.  I wonder what he would say about COP27 and the protests in the UK.  And there's plenty of front row seats in other countries now.

During an earlier energy crisis when Uncle Sam reduced the highway speed limits to 55mph to save gasoline,  the country singer Willie Nelson had a bumper sticker that read: "Willie says it's all jive, drive 85."

There will be a big fight over going to net-zero in the USA.  It will be very ugly.

[CG100]

There will be a big fight over going to net-zero in the USA.  It will be very ugly.

Amen

The biggest over-simplification and understatement that I have ever seen/read? Quite probably.

[David Pilling]

I hear the USA only has 25 days diesel left, so not net-zero, just zero.

"
And ask yourself 'What would Willie do?'
He stands up for what is right and he cares about the world
He ran a tour bus on vegetable oil
He understood that everything revolves around a farmer
And maybe that's why he grows his own marijuana
And yeah he can be reckless, he's spent a lot of cash
Don't even mention the IRS
"

[Bern]

Amen

The biggest over-simplification and understatement that I have ever seen/read? Quite probably.

Understatement and irony my specialties.....   Sarcasm not so much.

Zero diesel fuel in 25 days?  There will be a major hiccup in the Long Emergency on this side of the pond.