Heating Your Greenhouse in Europe This Winter

[MarkMazer]

"at appropriate temperature before it drops even more at night."  We keep the greenhouse here "frost free"... AKA... thermostat at 35F/1C. Tropicals spend the winter in the house... disasters have occured.

setting its thermostat so it just comes on at the appropriate temperature before it drops even more at night. T

[David Pilling]

David... We use propane gas to heat the greenhouse. The last delivery worked out to $.11 USD per KWH and factoring in the heater efficiency, $.13 USD or about 10.7 pence sterling per KWH.

Interesting, not much different to UK. Bottled gas to my surprise is about the same price, but plus carriage which can be as much as the gas.

Next winter is the problem. Europe is now dependent on LNG, the UK has done a deal with the USA and the Qataris have said that maybe the EU should stop being critical now it is reliant on them for energy.

LNG is more expensive and does more damage to the environment but is politically acceptable whilst extracting gas from the North Sea or from fraking is not.

[Martin Bohnet]

LNG is more expensive and does more damage to the environment but is politically acceptable whilst extracting gas from the North Sea or from fraking is not.

Ah, the joy of acceptable damage elswhere. like Lithium in the Atacama. Or Gold almost everywhere it is still mined (I think I mentioned before how pointless that stuff is and how humanity should move away from collecting glitter with little practical use).

But its true about the mid term perspective - and as a gay man I'm even less thrilled to depend on Quatar and other emirates - not that Russia is less of a problem from that perspective. So how much gas can be made from foul biomass? And will even I with my panic to drop a 10th of a Kelvin outside think about a heat pump?

[Bern]

The winter solstice arrived today. I associate winter with clear night skies and a good view of the stars and constellations. Here's a poem to commemorate the onset of winter.

  Canis Major
  Robert Frost (1874-1963)

    The great Overdog,
    That heavenly beast
    With a star in one eye,
    Gives a leap in the east.

    He dances upright
    All the way to the west
    And never once drops
    On his forefeet to rest.

    I'm a poor underdog,
    But tonight I will bark
    With the great Overdog
    That romps through the dark.

[MarkMazer]

 "glitter with little practical use"

A small amount of gold is used in almost every sophisticated electronic device and is widely used in the aerospace and glass and medical industries.

[Bern]

The big freeze in the USA will begin tonight and continue for at least 4 nights.  Here's what tonight will look like.

[Bern]

"glitter with little practical use"

A small amount of gold is used in almost every sophisticated electronic device and is widely used in the aerospace and glass and medical industries.

"Money is gold. Everything else is debt."

(Apparently a quote or approximation by J.P. Morgan.)

[Martin Bohnet]

"glitter with little practical use"

A small amount of gold is used in almost every sophisticated electronic device and is widely used in the aerospace and glass and medical industries.

"Money is gold. Everything else is debt."

(Apparently a quote or approximation by J.P. Morgan.)

Gold is almost always a compromise - silver is the better thermal and electric conductor, Platinum, Palladium and Ruthenium are better catalysts for most applications. In favor of gold is of course the resistance to corroding. But compared to the abundance of the element it is far overprized because of all the cultural burden and that ridiculous notion of the crisis-resistant value. In any crisis I'd prefer something edible or an energy source.

Money, as the over-estimation of gold, may one day be irrelevant, though it may still take a few generations to have a post-scarcity society and a united planet. And maybe we can get there without the eugenic wars by stopping to tell our children gold was so important that mythical creatures like dragons have to guard it. If you want to tell a child about the stuff, try King Midas' tale.

[David Pilling]

"Money is gold. Everything else is debt."

Great quote. Perhaps gold stands for physical assets.

Seemingly Donald Trump was keen on returning to the gold standard.

"central banks globally bought 399 tonnes of gold in the third quarter of 2022, by far the most ever in a single three-month period"

I have no bling, but I recall in the 60s there was a legal limit on how much gold one could own in the UK. Google tells me there were restrictions in the USA too (from 1933 to 1974).

[David Pilling]

Canis Major

Every dog has his day, but the dog days are of Summer, when Sirius the dog star and brightest in the constellation Canis Major rises.

[CG100]

A small amount of gold is used in almost every sophisticated electronic device and is widely used in the aerospace and glass and medical industries.

Gold is everywhere in electronics - a few years ago now, but UK TV showed a report from a factory on mainland W Europe (Belgium?), where they crushed old mobile phones and recovered metals from them. They were crushing a lot of phones, but were reclaiming an awful lot of gold.

Try the search on YouTube -  gold from mobile phones

[Bern]

The big freeze advances today. There will be several more days of this before it moderates.  Here is the map of tonight's low temperatures.

Dangerously Cold Temperatures and Blizzard Conditions for Central U.S.; Heavy Rain and High Winds for the East

[Bern]

I have no bling, but I recall in the 60s there was a legal limit on how much gold one could own in the UK. Google tells me there were restrictions in the USA too (from 1933 to 1974).

Roosevelt issued an executive decree outlawing the ownership of gold in 1933, ostensibly to deal with the depression. The Bretton Woods agreement post WWII maintained somewhat the gold standard for foreign balance of payments. This lasted until 1971 when Nixon stopped foreign countries, primarily the UK at the time, from redeeming US obligations for gold. Again, ostensibly for dealing with inflation and the financing of the Vietnam war.  Ford signed congressional legislation allowing US citizens to own gold again in 1974.

Nixon's actions to end the gold redemptions of the Bretton Woods agreement allowed the FED to inflate, seemingly with impunity, thus creating the many boom and bust cycles we've endured since then.  The latest metastasis of this cycle we are now experiencing as inflation and the everything bubble in stocks, bonds, and housing. 

Most bankers always think that debt is wealth.  I think JP Morgan was correct: "Money is gold. Everything else is debt."

[CG100]

The US "big freeze" looks very like a UK normal winter north-south, and so far looks like what we had 1-2 weeks ago - -10 to -15 in Scotland, -3 or slightly lower in the south.

The variation that the UK sees is how long any one cold spell lasts, and when, and if it repeats in any one winter.

[Bern]

Every dog has his day, but the dog days are of Summer, when Sirius the dog star and brightest in the constellation Canis Major rises.

Alas, my intentions were good.  And it is a nice poem.