Incandescent with rage...

A mailing this week from Lightbulbs Direct (my source of the otherwise unobtainable halogen bulb that I like to have in the uplighter, as well as whatever supplies of traditional light bulbs are still available) confirms that the EU have gone ahead with their threat to ban incandescent light bulbs. Such bulbs (the cloudy sort first) will start to become unobtainable from September (or rather before that, since most of us will panic buy whatever stocks can be supplied before that time). Clear ones may be around for a bit longer but eventually they'll be ruled out too.

Why are we to be deprived of the right to light? Presumably in the interests of saving CO2.

I wonder whether they've actually calculated the saving of CO2 correctly, though. The thing is, an incandescent light bulb produces both light and heat. A flourescent tube produces more light and less heat. The amount of energy put in (watts of electricity) is the same amount of energy as comes out (light and heat). Less energy in, less energy out. More energy in, more energy out.

If you use incendescent bulbs in a room that you are also heating, you will need less heating to keep the room warm than you will if you use a flourescent bulb. So in the winter, nothing is lost if you use an incandescent bulb in a room that is also heated by electricity. Your electricity usage will not go up or down by changing your light bulb.

Perhaps you heat your house by gas, and light it by electricity. Then your electricity usage will go down and your gas usage will go up if you change to cooler bulbs. But now, is this a good thing? It won't be saving CO2 if your gas and your electricity are both causing CO2 to be burnt off.

There is a risk (increasing as more of us join Green tariff electricity) that your electricity was actually coming from a renewable resource, wind power or solar or water or something, and not causing any CO2 emissions at all. So your incandescent bulb was giving you light and heat at no cost to the environment. Then the gas is worse than the electricity. In that case you are doing more damage to the environment by fitting the low wattage bulbs and adding heat from the gas fired heating instead.

So the only occasions on which you will assist the environment by going for the horrid low wattage bulbs is if the light is out doors, if the light is in a room you are not intending to heat or which tends to be too hot already, or if you are burning the light in the summer. But those are a tiny proportion of the occasions for switching on a light, and can be solved if we are all taught to fit a low watt light bulb in a room we never use or in outdoor fittings, and if buildings are built with adequate natural light so that no lighting is needed in the daytime, particularly on summer days. It can't be necessary to make incandescent bulbs illegal to achieve that!

And what about those of us who will have to resort to reading by candle light or gas or oil lamps, since we can't stand the flashing light of the flourescent lighting?

You don't think it flickers? Try this experiment. Sit in a room lit by a flourescent light, and try taking a picture with a digital camera (e.g. the one built into your computer if you have one). Now you'll see. That's why it's so uncomfortable to read by and why it makes you tired and brings on a headache.

My thanks to Bob De Wolf for pointing out how simple the physics of this is, and how dotty the policy is as a result.

Summer Holidays

This year we decided not to go anywhere far away that required air travel, so we took a few days in Wales. The trick is to set out in the expectation that it will be a gloomy wet week, cold and very windy, with cloud on the hills or even in the valleys. Then if you have even one brief sunny interval, or a momentary clear patch with good views from the top of a mountain, you come home thinking how fortunate you've been.

Strictly speaking a car would not have been necessary for the first part of our holiday, since the place we were staying would have arranged for us to be collected from the nearest station. But for the last day we had to go to Lampeter. Interestingly, we discovered from an old map in Aberystwyth museum (one of the places where we whiled away a few hours of a wet day) that the railway used to go to Lampeter, along with a great many other places, in days gone by. How vastly life would be improved now if that were still so!

In any case, taking a car enabled us to take wellies, walking boots, umbrellas, waterproof trousers and a mountain of books to read, all of which were very useful. At least, I took wellies, despite Robin's reluctance, and was very glad of them.

Apparently, according to CO2Balance.com, if we'd gone by train, the carbon emissions for a simple return journey from Cambridge to Morfa Mawddach and back, would have been 102 kg (51 kg per person). It seems to me odd that it's doubled if two of us travel, since the train would have run anyway even with just one of us... But I suppose you have to divide the total emissions of the train by the passengers it carries. That would make it a bigger total the fewer people were carried, not twice the amount when you carry twice as many people. Ho hum.

As it was we went by car, and according to Cloud Amber, the same simple return journey in the model of car that we hired and with two of us travelling, would typically have emitted 52.1 kg per person, a total of 104.2kg for the two of us. This is not much more than the emissions for the train journey, probably because the route by car is a bit shorter.

So I think in this case, I shall not list this particular journey as one of my guilty secrets, although doubtless we did a few extra miles by car on the little outings to wet and windy places during the holiday, which otherwise we would have had to do on foot (or maybe just not do them and read more books instead. Reading books seems to be a low carbon occupation, particularly if the books are second hand and there is enough daylight to read by).

Price of fuel protests

So we have three problems: (1) Petrol costs a lot; (2) The roads are congested because too many people are driving too many cars to too many places for no good reason; (3) there is a problem with carbon emissions and climate change which could be quite serious.

Does it seriously seem to be worthwhile trying to solve these problems by increasing the production of oil so as to bring the price down? Indeed, when you think about it, is item number one one of the problems? Or is it rather the solution to the other two things, which really are problems?

My guilty secrets

I've just used something like 500 kg of CO2 as a passenger on an aeroplane to Athens and back. Oops.
Just back from a trip that combined professional work and a holiday, in Greece. The travel was organised by a travel agent in Greece. You sort of think that when the place is four hours away by air, you need to fly because the train travel would be too long and complicated. But I think that's not really true. We were put to shame by one of the participants on the course we were teaching on (a summer school for classics teachers) who had travelled out by train.
Well, at least we managed the work and the holiday on just one set of return flights. But still, none would be better than one.
Now I've discovered the most wonderful web site which tells you how to get to anywhere without using a flight, and how to book trains and ferries instead. It's at The man in seat 61 (I'll add the link to my list of links on this blog).
Perhaps I should think again about my trip to Toronto in the autumn?

Carbon offsetting again

I spent last weekend at the Joint Session (a major UK philosophical conference with about 250 delegates). It was hosted at a rather unpleasant campus which seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to the surface of the moon—or particularly the moon as it would look if covered in a maze of rectangular concrete buildings—, on the edge of Bristol, currently known as UWE, though in days gone by it was called Bristol Poly. It's not a place I am keen to see again in my lifetime. As a colleague pointed out, if they'd done the abbreviation properly the University of the West of England would be known as University of the WOE.

We weren't originally supposed to be at the University of WOE, but at the real University of Bristol, which might have been better aesthetically, and certainly would have landed us in a more desirable urban environment (as it was, the only things within walking distance were Hewlett Packard's works and, I gather, some examples of the edge of the city retail park with its B&Q and so on). But thanks to Bristol University and its building programme, the conference had been relocated at rather short notice.

But the point of this post is not the place we were in, but the process of getting there. This is what they said on the conference information:

Directions to the UWE Frenchay Campus are available at www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_directions.shtml. Note that the nearest train station is Bristol Parkway rather than Bristol Temple Meads.

The Philosophy Department at the University of Bristol operates a carbon off-set scheme. Any delegates wishing to minimize the environmental impact of their conference travel are requested to contact Finn Spicer: finn.spicer@bristol.ac.uk

Now when unpacked as a guide to how to get to Bristol this seems to me to say the following:

We assume that you will typically be coming by car. You'll need directions for how to get there which can be found on the web site mentioned. Some people prefer to come by train, but we don't specially recommend that. Bristol Parkway is nearer than Bristol Temple Meads, but it's not really very near and not really very convenient. We don't see much difference in environmental impact between coming by car and coming by train, and since we now run a carbon offsetting scheme, there's really no need to use the train or to worry at all about the impact of driving, as long as you're prepared to pay a few pence for someone else to do the tiresome bit of being green on your behalf, so you might as well drive, use the free parking on campus and just send us a bit of money to salve your conscience (if you have any: we're proud that we do have a conscience as you can see).

Now it seems to me that what they should have said is the following:

Although there is free parking on campus, we strongly urge you to consider travelling by train rather than by car. Bristol Parkway, with high speed trains from London, Didcot and South Wales, is only a five minute bus ride from campus and there are plenty of taxis to be had. Train travel accounts for far fewer carbon emissions than road travel, and your train journey will assist the Bristol University Philosophy Department's attempt to become carbon neutral in all its activities. Contributions to the carbon offsetting scheme can be made by contacting ... but such contributions should not be regarded as a substitute for a low carbon lifestyle.

I hope one would say something like that even if train travel were quite a lot more difficult than it was in this case.

Lychees again

By the way, the lychees came from Madagascar. In case you'd forgotten Madagascar is a large island some way off the west of Africa, with an amazing variety of otherwise unknown species of animals.
According to the World Bank 70% of the Malagasy live on less than $1 per day so one might try to justify buying their produce on the grounds that it helps.
Unfortunately I suspect in my case quite a bit of the 99p for the lychees went to Tescos profits, and some must have paid for the transport even if that was underpriced and didn't include any carbon taxes. Quite likely there's some agent who buys the stuff for Tescos too. So how much of my 99p got to the person who grew and picked the fruit? Alas, rather little. Perhaps a penny?

Hot house peppers

Have you noticed that all the salad vegetables that are in the shops, especially in the winter, are always from Holland (except when they're from Spain)?

Last Spring I went to the Green Grocers in Norwich, which prides itself on supplying local produce, and was distressed to discover that it was stocking virtually nothing from Norfolk, or even from the UK. But there was plenty of produce from Holland.

So I asked the man in the shop why it was that we could only get tomatoes, lettuces, cucumbers and peppers from Holland, given that the weather in Holland is no warmer than here or, if anything, less warm. The answer was interesting: it's because Holland has virtually unlimited supplies of cheap natural gas with which they heat their greenhouses and thereby produce bland tasteless salad vegetables throughout the year, which still cost not very much even after they've been shipped over by sea and distributed by road transport. So even if we went in for growing stuff under glass in the UK, we'd struggle to compete with their prices, because the cost of the heating would be too high. It's not surprising that Norfolk growers don't offer produce grown in artificially heated conditions.

The carbon footprint you make by buying such produce is far from small, evidently. But for some reason the price does not reflect the huge quantity of fossil fuel that is being consumed to provide it at the wrong seasons of the year, and to distribute it to places miles away across the North Sea. Why is that?

Presumably the answer is that whereas we in the UK have already squandered all our North Sea oil and gas by distributing it at prices that were unrealistically low, Holland is still living in that profligate era. They are burning up their legacy, and producing tomatoes for which we are paying not nearly enough—nothing like what that fuel is really costing us and the world So we eat them carelessly, winter and summer alike, even though they are produced by burning up what small amount remains of the North Sea's gas and oil supplies. It doesn't strike us that they are costing the earth.

It seems to me that the squandering of scarce fossil fuel resources should be taxed to give some real sense of the cost of such produce. Because, once we've used up that fuel then not only are the wars for control of the oil fields in other parts of the world going to get worse, but we're all going to be at the mercy of that European gas pipeline from Russia. And it's fairly pointless worrying about global warming, and polishing your halo by offsetting the carbon emissions, if before global warming has a chance to get a hold we've all killed each other in the competition for possession of ever scarcer oil and gas supplies.

It's a bit like being under siege, with enough food and fuel for two weeks, but then feasting recklessly for ten days. Then, on the eleventh day, finding there's nothing left we shall fight each other to death over two mouldy crusts.

Indulgences

Wasn't the sale of indulgences something like this?

You pay someone so that you can sin without yourself having to do any uncomfortable penances.

And the someone who sells the indulgences? What's in it for them?

Offsetting carbon emissions

Here's one way of seeing how it stinks:

Say you've got some migrant child labourers on your farm, who work for no pay and are not free to leave, though you do provide them with some board and lodging. Someone points out that you're using slaves.
That gives you pause for thought. You didn't think you really approved of slave-owning. You don’t think people should really be treated like that; it's exploitation; but it's extremely convenient and the children do work hard. You can't really bring yourself to give it up; in fact you pretty well depend upon it for making a profit. To salve your conscience you send some money to Amnesty International, trusting that they will use it to alleviate the lot of some people who are in trouble somewhere. But you go on exploiting the child slaves. But now you don't worry about that, because you've offset their suffering against the relief of some suffering in some other unjust regime. As long as the total amount of human suffering is not increased by your activities, the world is no worse a place due to your participation in the exploitation of child labour, is it?

Now suppose you fancy a fur coat but someone explains to you that the fur is obtained from animals of an endangered species who are trapped in the wild and then caged, living a miserable life before being slaughtered in large numbers to make your coat. You don't much care for the practice, but you really fancy that coat. So you give a donation to the world wildlife fund, to offset the cruelty to the animals that went to make your fur coat. After all, you're very wealthy so this is no hardship. Then you don't have to worry your conscience about them any more. As long as the sum total of cruelty to animals is no greater for what you've done, it's alright to support the cruel practices involved in making the fur coat, isn't it? You wouldn't want to have to give up the pleasure of being seen in a smart fur coat. That would be too much to ask.

Now suppose you habitually book a holiday in Florida or Australia, to get away from it all, but someone points out that the flights are contributing to the damage to the environment and anyone who believes in carbon reduction should cut their flying to a minimum. You are committed to the importance of carbon reduction. You don't believe in exploiting the earth's resources to extinction. But you really enjoy your holidays.
So you give some money to a tree-planting scheme, to offset the damage caused by the fuel of your aircraft. After all, you're quite wealthy so this is no hardship. Now you don't have to worry about what you're doing to the environment any more. As long as the carbon emissions are no greater as a result of your actions, it's fine to take as many long haul flights and drive your gas-guzzling car and use as much heating as you like, and so on for all the rest, isn't it? You wouldn’t want to have to give up the expensive holidays to save the earth would you? That would be too much to ask.

What does it mean to be green?

Surely it means both cutting your carbon emissions and contributing funds to assist with carbon reduction projects, not congratulating yourself on your virtue because you're clean when you're not.
This offsetting racket stinks.