bluenosewrx

iTrader: (2)

Three words for us if it's true.

We are Fuc*ed.

Comments please.

Mac.

Gutmann pug

it will be repeated tomorrow

dpb

Lioux brother........

involuntary mutations the way forward....... ..........

pslewis

Tomorrow NEVER comes!!!!

Pete

imlach

Great programme. Shame that is in a timeslot on Ch4 that many would never see.

Everyone on here know my views. Cut down general consumption & usage of everything....NOW! Trouble is, everyone sees their own usage as necessary, yet insignificant in contributing to global problems.

I've always thought nuclear was the best solution in the short term. India & China's bursting economies will be the downfall of the planet.

unclebuck

I was a great programme. I didn't know that Louie has an older and wiser brother and he told it like it was. I agree that everyone should be made to sit and watch it, especially those that drive expensive SUVs take frequent foreign holidays and love all manner of unrequired gadgets like plasma TVs.

However what really frightened me is that our friend Tony Blair has made the pledge that 'we' will cut carbon emissions by 60% within however long it was. This target is clearly unobtainable unless we go back to living like those who did in the 19th Century -as shown by the Machynlleth Centre for Alterative Technology.

http://www.cat.org.uk/index.tmpl?refer=index&init=1

So what *must be* in the pipeline for the thrird term will be more radical reforms than any of us has imagined, far more draconian than anything discussed on here yet.

Either it's that or he's talking crap. If it's the latter then we are being systematically lied to on all matters of the environment. Surely it's time to 'get real' take off the green mask and impliment a sensible programme of nuclear power station development throughout the developed world.

papascooby

it was sensationalist tosh

i can't beleive how far up their own ***** some of these people are

friends of the earth - like the earth gives a ****. for allwe know the earth wants to be a mass of boiling seas as poisinous gases so it doesn't get laughed at by the other planets anymore

apart from being factually incorrect all over the place it was hardly an impartial and well rounded doc was it?

the earth's temparature has been changing for millions of years and has been hotter in the past than 'global warming' will ever make it.

oooooo everyone's gonna get new cars!!! panic! it make take the carbon produced by the worlds cars up to 1% of all the carbon produced.

i could go on but i can't be arsed

boomer

I'm with papascooby on this one!

The program (er, fake-rue) decided what is what before it even started "investigating", and just kept on repeating things that supported it's (his) arguement and sarcastically dismissed all other viewpoints.

Scary stuff about Chernobyl though

Still, this is the future according to the fake one!!!

mb

hades

Didn't see the programme, but some of the developed world is already very strong in nuclear power - France, USA, increasingly various parts of Asia for example. IIRC, at least one new "standard off the shelf" 1000MW Presurised Water Reactor design was approved by the relevant US authorities in 2004, the rights are owned by a company that has very strong links with the UK. There are other designs being looked at across the world, again there is some UK involvement in at least one other I can think of.

The barrier to nuclear build in this country is short term profit (CCGT gas stations are most econominal in the short run) and political. No politician presently sees an openly pro nuclear stance as winning votes if people don't like you for your other policies, but it could be a vote loser with the anti-nuclear lobby. Give it 5-10 years, they'll be forced to "come out"

Petem95

Although nuclear is pretty much the only realistic way forward, they presented it in a bad light. They said history shows us nuclear is a bad move, yet the technology was in its infancy then, and is now much safer and more sophisticated.

The latest nuclear designs by companies such as Westinghouse are fantastic (makers of the AP1000) with unbelievable safety levels.

Also people assume nuclear reactors are verging on out-of-control, but the truth is the opposite. The only real problem is waste management.

logiclee

That and the price of electricity generated from Nuclear stations is nearly three times that of Gas and Coal fired stations. As well as the nuclear industry receiving hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidy from the tax payers.

Cheers
Lee

Geezer

The Xmas lectures from the Royal Institute touched on this. Basically it said that all the the radioactiev waste produced by the UK since the 1950s amounted to no more than a small detached house.

The deaths that had resulted from nuclear accidents were neglible.

Gloabl warming will kill millions of people.

They did say that the earth is going thru a natural warming, but the difference this time is that we are contributing moe CO2 than the planet can cope with.

When the concentration reaches 500 parts per million, it is beyond our ability to rein it in. It is currently 380 ppm and increases by about 2 a year. Do the maths.

Wave power and wind power cannot provide our power needs. Only coal/gas or nuclear can. The first 2 are causing problems, so nuclear is the only way to go.

Still, enjoy the mild winters while we can

Geezer

imlach

The other thing with nuclear is that it makes countries less dependent on others for power.

For instance, the UK is increasingly dependent on other countries for gas etc. We are now moving to more & more gas power stations in the UK. If the supplying countries become unstable, where does that leave us?

The other fantastic point was that of rising sea levels. As seen recently in the tsunami, hundreds of thousands can be made homeless temporarily.
A rising sea level makes people homeless permanently causing massive population shift - and quite probably population shift into neighbouring countries - some of which currently don't get on and would not want a huge refugee intake. This could make the asian sub-continent an even more volatile place to be.....

Remember, most major cities grew up near ports....therefore the majority are at sea level. Hmm....sea level rises by 5m, and we've submerged most of the world's major cities. Is that going to go unnoticed

Qutie how anyone can be so naive to think that man is having no effect on the planet given how much we have ****ed about with it in the last hundred years!

Global consumption of natural resources is at an all time high. We're dicking with nature. The ecosystem of the planet can't be expected to support the MASSIVE change we've imposed on it in the last century. Something has to give.

imlach

Power is still incredibly cheap. ie, I suspect very few of us think of the financial cost of leaving a few more lights on than we should, or using the tumble dryer on a dry & windy day, or leaving your PC switched on 24/7.

Even at 3 times the cost, many of us would still be wasteful. It'd still be cheap in relative terms.

logiclee

I agree, but think of all the fuss that's been made over the recent 15-20% increases. What Government would remain in power if it announced an increase of 250% in electricity prices as well as a massive increase in tax payer subsidy to the nuclear industry.
Only alternative would be to nationalise the Electricity market again and increase taxes same as the French. How would that sit with the general public?
While ever the USA sits with low tax on fuel and cheap energy prices no UK government is going to put itself in a position where it gets voted out at the next election.

Cheers
Lee

imlach

The future energy needs of the planet needs to become an apolitical issue. Sadly, that seems a massive impossibility given global politics revolves around energy supply (oil, gas, and also the territories of energy resources).

However, at a national level, something as important as the Kyoto agreement, DOES need to become apolitical.

When it comes to remaining in power or not, the fragile egos of MPs should not be influencing the future of the planet. The reality is that it does

Petem95

Thanks to the anti-nuclear lobby preventing us from building more nuclear plants, we now import loads of nuclear power from France. Their power stations have lower safety levels than ours, and theyre mostly on the coast just across the channel from us anyway - well done UK anti nuclear lobby....

Sounds about right for the amount of high-level nuclear waste. Currently about 40 cubic meters of high level waste is produced each year in the UK.

logiclee

The only function of a government is to remain in power and whilever the USA is happy to consume obscene amounts of gas and oil anything the UK does is almost insignificant and would almost certainly spell the end for whichever party was in power.
The biggest mistake the UK made was 20 years ago when the dash for gas started and the UK's natural gas reserves were wasted on electricity generation.
Most people are pinning there hopes on Wind power. If all the plans for windfarms for the next ten years are excepted they will just about keep up demand for increased energy and will not displace any current generation capacity.
It's far easier for the Government to attack industry and motorists than to look at the generation issues to meet it's CO2 target.

Cheers
Lee

logiclee

Pete,

I don't have much to do with the Nuclear side of generation and don't have too many concerns about safety. What I do know is the Nuclear industry could never compete on an open market.
Would you suggest bringing electricity generation under Goverment control or a private company running it receiving massive subsidies from the tax payer?

Cheers
Lee

Petem95

The main reason nuclear needs to be subsidised now is that theres currently very cheap gas generated power available, however this will be short lived. When wholesale electricity prices rise again, nuclear will become more viable. Also if the government are realistic about meeting the Kyoto requirements theyre probably going to have to go for a new nuclear build programme, which I believe will go ahead in the near future.

Its also worth noting that nuclear used to be very profitable in its early days, and vast sums of money were put aside to pay for future clean up. Over the years the government has dipped into this fund. Now as everything is anti-nuclear all you hear about is how the government are having to spend x millions on cleaning up old decommissioned nuclear plants, when really the money for this would have been there if the government hadnt taken it.

Bubba po

Corner.

john banks

Still not sure I believe in global warming as a real rather than invented phenomenon which is over-analysing normal fluctuations that we haven't been measuring for long enough to know the real patterns over thousands of years, never looked into it in detail, and not sure I'd just hoover up the notion it even exists just because it has been popularised. This programme didn't even try pseudoscience, just hysterical gibberish as far as I could tell? Any quality evidence or is it just a political football?

imlach

I can see what you are saying John, and it is a fact that the sun is hotting up over time.....25% hotter today than it was when life on earth began....

...but surely you can't deny the fact that man has changed the planet MASSIVELY in the last century. Deforestation, man-made changes to water use/flow, huge changes in what we emit into the atmosphere, reduction of natural resources, etc etc.

john banks

Agreed we need some environmental manners and care, but I just have a gut feeling (as I say not properly researched it) that the doomsday scenarios and blamed causes may be inaccurate, hypothetical, over extrapolated, disproportioned tosh. Need to read up on it some time and decide, but it seems most people just accept it as a given.

DarkStar66

I kind of agree with John on this.

I think we under estimate the Earths ability to compensate for enviromental imbalances. Take the theory of how the dinosaurs were wiped out when a giant meteorite hit the Gulf of Mexico and threw up thousands of tons of earth and ash into the atmosphere. Apparently the debris covered the sun around most of the world and caused a permanent winter for many years. Yet lots of plants and creatures survived and everything went back to normal. And who knows what else has happend in the last 3 billion years?

Of course the difference now is that we are creating a steadly increasing problem rather than a one off disaster. So I think we need to do something to cut our carbon emmisions if only to compensate for what India and China will be pumping out soon. Although, I think China is already one of the worst polluters in the world, so a few million cars won't make that much difference.

hades

And yet, despite their heavy reliance on fossil fuels, there are a number of major US utilities running various nuclear reactors. The big difference at the moment is that the nuclear industry is very tightly regulated (e.g. normal coffee from Sainsburys is more radioactive than a lot of low level active waste leaving power stations!) and has to pay for all the environmental implications of everything it produces, waste, demolition to green field site etc. Fossil fuels stations don't contribute anything towards dealing with any damage they may be dong to the environment.

However, noted at the moment, CCGT (gas) power stations are the most profitable to operate in the UK. Wait 10-20 years for the gas to start running out, that will change. Whilst I'd like to believe that wind etc could fill the gap, the numbers at the moment are a very long way from stacking up

As Pete also mentioned, the tax payer has already set aside the cost of decommissioning several times over - out of profits in the early days of nuclear, out of fossil fuel levies, out of privatising bits of the power industry, as well as plain taxes. With the new climate in the nuclear industry, the present belief is that sites will be decommissioned much cheaper and faster, and the apparent cost will fall.

Having said that, I can't disagree with JB's comments. My parents tell me that in the 60s, there was a lot of worry about the coming of the next ice-age! Whilst I don't think the CO2 emmissions can be doing the planet any good, I'm not convinced that anyone truly understands the implications.

logiclee

You won't have to wait 10-20 years for the UK gas supplies to run out, 5 to 10 is a closer estimate. As I said earlier if every renawable planning proposal is approved for the next ten year it will only keep up with the increase in demand. We are indeed in a pickle.

Generators who use fossil fueled fire stations are currently under a number of restrictions and taxes, there is the CCL (Climate Control Levy), the NFFO (Non Fossil Fuel Obligation) and the proposed LCPD (Large Combustion Plant Directive). All of which puts a heavy financial burden on fossil fuel generators and cost the consumer around 0.2p per kWh.

At present coal fired stations are providing the cheapest generated electricity which is why we currently burn 15million tons of UK coal and a further 30million tons of imported coal. Trouble is the UK plants are 35 years old and spew out loads of CO2 and other pollutents.
Only a few have scrubbers and none have CO2 extraction and storage facilities. At present that would be the most effective way to meet 2008 Kyoto levels.

No Government is going to committ billions into a vote loosing Nuclear program at present.
In the medium term all I can see is the UK being dependant on large gas pipelines from the Eastern Block Countries as well as increased reliance on expensive imported coal from countries where 1000's of miners die every year.

Just watch the fuel bills rocket.

Cheers
Lee

dpb

Well according to my g.father who was a government scientist its all bull and the carbon dioxide should be taken up by all the diatoms in the oceans the world over - But how then can the melting icefields be explained .?...................or is that jus one big lie as well.?........