HadCRUT and other datasets

[Eeyore]

Developable? It has been in production for forty years and ongoing
plans (inaugurated BEFORE the recent oil price spike) are already
increasing production to Middle East levels.

How fast can it increase production and by how much ?

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

More efficient use of the energy we've got is a sensible idea, though
scarcely yours - you are welcome to try to copyright a cliche but I
don't like your chances of success. The problem is that as far as
house insulation goes, the low hanging fruit has already been plucked.

Complete rubbish. Almost every home in the UK and I'm sure in the US is significantly
under-insulated.

Tale loft/attic insulation for example. Mnay people think a few inches (typically 4 ") of
fibreglass, rockwool etc is adequate. Current UK guidelines suggest between 10 and 12
inches and *** it's cheap *** and easy to fit.

I have been myself working on a relatively inexpensive electronic central heating control
system intended mostly to reduce wasted heating in unoccupied rooms (with many other
features too like proportional control).


Graham

 

[Rich Webb]

Replacing the bulk of the U.K. housing stock with super-insulated
houses is a good idea, but it would take longer than one cold winter,
and you'd have to invest a lot of energy in ripping down the old
houses and putting up the new ones.

Uhuh. What's been missing from all of the 1950's visions of the 21st
century (other than commuting to work in your private jetcar)?

Domes! Giant domes over all of the cities.

;-)

 

[bill.sloman@ieee.org]

Moore's Law relies on die shrinks.

This is something of an over-simplification. Reducing the dimensions
of the features of an integrated circuit isn't trivial and can only
get you so far. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-k

PV Solar energy relies on the collecting area. Which doesn't shrink for a
given energy input.

Just how stupid can you be to see that Moore's Law does not even remotely
operate here.

One approach to making photovoltaic cells cheaper is to use
concentrators to focus sunlight onto small photovoltaic cells; tigher
focussing requires better optics and better tracking to keep the focal
spot on the cell, and bettter heat sinking to keep the cell from
getting too hot. This process does match your over-simplified idea of
how Moore's Law works.

I can't believe how you can realistically call your self any form of
'scientist'. Even a bright kid ought to be able to see the 2 things are
utterly different.

A bright kid could make that mistake. Somebody who knew something
about the range of the technologies that were and are being developed
to keep Moore's Law running for a few more years - as I do, albeit it
at a fairly superficial level - would appreciate that there is a
similar sort of technological exploration going on aimed at developing
cheaper photovoltaic cells that can be produced and deployed in high
volumes.

Most of the people claiming to be able to make cheap solar cells in
high volume are deceiving themselves and their investors, but the same
sort of thing happened regularly as the integrated circuit developed -
I once ran a project that built a cheap ultrasound scanner around a
64k charge-coupled serial memory, which turned out to have been a very
poor choice of memory device - but every now and them one of them is
for real.

 

[bill.sloman@ieee.org]

Complete rubbish. Almost every home in the UK and I'm sure in the US is significantly
under-insulated.

Tale loft/attic insulation for example. Mnay people think a few inches (typically 4 ") of
fibreglass, rockwool etc is adequate. Current UK guidelines suggest between 10 and 12
inches and *** it's cheap *** and easy to fit.

I have been myself working on a relatively inexpensive electronic central heating control
system intended mostly to reduce wasted heating in unoccupied rooms (with many other
features too like proportional control).

Graham

 

[bill.sloman@ieee.org]

Complete rubbish. Almost every home in the UK and I'm sure in the US is significantly
under-insulated.

Tale loft/attic insulation for example. Mnay people think a few inches (typically 4 ") of
fibreglass, rockwool etc is adequate. Current UK guidelines suggest between 10 and 12
inches and *** it's cheap *** and easy to fit.

When we bought our house in Cambridge, I did the heat loss
calculations, and figured that 6" (150mm) of fibre glass in the roof
was doing as much as was worth doing. The bulk of the heat was getting
out through the walls and the windows. Double-glazing would have
helped, but we had sash windows, and they can't usually take the extra
weight of double-glazing (though there is a narrowish double-glazed
sash window in a house in Brighton for which I built two new sliding
sashes - incorporating spring balances - to accomodate double-glass,
which worked fine).

Gas must have got quite a lot more expensive to justify another 4" to
6" (100 to 150mm) of glass fibre, which puts you deep into diminishing
returns, and saves very little extra energy

I have been myself working on a relatively inexpensive electronic central heating control
system intended mostly to reduce wasted heating in unoccupied rooms (with many other
features too like proportional control).

We've always used thermostatic valves to save heating unoccupied rooms
- it doesn't do that much good because there isn't much insulation
between rooms. Our current house combines this with a central heating
controller that controls the temperature of the circulating water on
the basis of the outside temperature - I had a long discussion about
this with the plumber/central-heating engineer in Dutch when they
installed the system and it works well, and we burn less gas than the
previous owner to, but it is still a big, oldish (1936) house and we
pay a lot to keep it warm.

Back in 1983 I bought a Honeywell electronic thermostatic valve
(powered by a battery) to control the temperature in our bedroom as a
function of the time of day. It worked well for many years.

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

<snip>

You mean there's a published paper on global warming that does NOT
mention CO2?

Yes, there are. Would you like a cite or two? Or will you just take
my word on it?

Even those that blame bovine flatulence, cosmic rays,
rotting vegetation behind dams, ocean methane hydrates, carbonated
drinks, volcanoes, and municipal waste management practices, mention
CO2. I ran through the first 10 hits for this year and found that all
of them mentioned CO2 in some manner.

No, they don't all do that. I guess I'll cite just one for you that
I've got here and read a while back. You can extrapolate from there:

"Estimation of steric sea level variations from combined
GRACE and Jason-1 data", A. Lombard, D. Garcia, G. Ramillien, A.
Cazenave, R. Biancale, J.M. Lemoine, F. Flechtner, R. Schmidt, M.
Ishii

Incidentally, read your own line. You didn't say read all the papers
on CO2. You said that Graham should read all the papers on the topic,
starting with Rasool & Schnieder's 1971 paper on CO2.

I think that Graham should read the papers that apply to subjects he
goes on about as though he knows something.

If the point isn't clear to you, I'll make it explicitly clear. If
one is permitted to be selective about the scientific facts they
consider, they could quite reasonably conclude that the Earth is flat.
One cannot just pick and choose. That's not how science knowledge is
fairly discussed. Graham hasn't even moved from the starting line,
yet. He needs to take a comprehensive view and to do that, he will
actually need to read with understanding the bulk of the science
knowledge on the subject he's interested in. Simple, really.

Subsequent papers on the topic might not involve CO2.
Indeed.

Why just CO2? Isn't methane production an equal problem? Also, let's
not forget about the number one greenhouse gas, water vapour.

Do you have ANY clues, at all? That you even mention H2O tells me you
have not even the most basic knowledge of discernment on the subject.

Even Graham, I think, has had his head banged up one side on H2O. So
although he may not apprehend the details fully, he probably at least
knows enough not to bring in that subject with those who _do_ know
something. Though, I suppose, if he were being disingenuous and
speaking to an audience who does not have a clue, he might do so.

You tell me... what makes H2O different from CO2 in this context?

Jon

 

[Richard Henry]

Uhuh. What's been missing from all of the 1950's visions of the 21st
century (other than commuting to work in your private jetcar)?

Domes! Giant domes over all of the cities.

The dome developers quit because of the flying car problem.

The flying car developers quit because of the dome problem.

 

[Eeyore]

Replacing the bulk of the U.K. housing stock with super-insulated
houses is a good idea, but it would take longer than one cold winter,
and you'd have to invest a lot of energy in ripping down the old
houses and putting up the new ones.

Who said you had to rip down all the old houses.

Have you NO imagination.

Graham

 

[bill.sloman@ieee.org]

Who said you had to rip down all the old houses.

Have you NO imagination.

Unfortunately for Eeyore's latest daft scheme, his vivid and
unconstrained imagination has confused the benefits you can get by
building a super-insulated house from scratch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superinsulation

and the much less impressive benefits you can get by putting extra
layers of fibre-glass under the roof of your house.

What Eeyore originally posted was an unsolicited testimonial for the
benfits "of installation super insulation in all homes, offfices etc "
which is to say he'd let his imagination off the leash, as he is prone
to.

My own imagination is weighed down by a mass of factual knowledge,
but I've got a couple of patents, so presumably it isn't completely
crippled by the load.

 

[bill.sloman@ieee.org]

Old-fashioned thinking.


Cavity walls can be injected.

Creating a damp problem, more often than not. The air inside a
centrally heated house is warmer than the air outside, and contains
more water vapour. You need an impermeable membrane in the cavity to
prevent the inside air depositing condensation inside the walls, and
the only way to get that right is to remove and rebuild half the wall.

Yes they are available and have been for at least ten years.

You may be able to buy them, but they aren't cheap and fitting them is
somewhat more of a performance than unrolling a fibre-glass blanket,
with more scope for things to go wrong.

Those are government recommendations AIUI. The stuff is CHEAP remember ?



So how often do you turn them on and off and how accurate are they  ?


A few degrees difference is all it takes to save say 20-30%

Of the heat flux through the external wall of the unoccupied room,
which isn't all that much of your total heat flux.

Heat flow is roughly proportional to temperature difference - if you
keep your inhabited rooms at 20C when it is 0C outside, the
uninhabited rooms would have to get down to 16C to save 20%, 14C to
save 30%. There's usually a lot more poorly insulated internal wall,
floor and ceiling to conduct heat into an unoccupied room than there
is external wall to conduct it out.

My idea is a vast extension of that principle.

It would need wireless links to get anywhere, and that doesn't help
your battery life.

 

[Eeyore]

Unfortunately for Eeyore's latest daft scheme, his vivid and
unconstrained imagination has confused the benefits you can get by
building a super-insulated house from scratch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superinsulation

and the much less impressive benefits you can get by putting extra
layers of fibre-glass under the roof of your house.

What Eeyore originally posted was an unsolicited testimonial for the
benfits "of installation super insulation in all homes, offfices etc "
which is to say he'd let his imagination off the leash, as he is prone
to.

I posted no such thing you outright LIAR. You're selectively snipping.

Some simple numbers here.
http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/home_improvements/home_insulation_glazing/loft_insulation/

" If you currently have no loft insulation and you install the recommended
270mm depth you could save around £155 a year on your heating bills and
around1 tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.

[ my note - many houses over about 20 years old have quite inadequate
insualtion]

If everyone in the UK topped up their loft insulation to 270mm, around £560m
would be saved each year. That's enough money to pay the annual fuel bills of
around 530,000 families."


Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Of the heat flux through the external wall of the unoccupied room,
which isn't all that much of your total heat flux.

Heat flow is roughly proportional to temperature difference - if you
keep your inhabited rooms at 20C when it is 0C outside, the
uninhabited rooms would have to get down to 16C to save 20%, 14C to
save 30%.

And those are perfectly adequate 'fall-back' temps for an automated system.

When it's warmer outside, the savings are larger still.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

It would need wireless links to get anywhere, and that doesn't help
your battery life.

Who said anything about batteries and/or wireless.

Graham

 

[bill.sloman@ieee.org]

I posted no such thing you outright LIAR. You're selectively snipping.

Here is the whole text of your post in this thread dated 11 June 18:39

"Not developable fast enough.

So what do yiou have against my infinitely more sensible idea of
installation super
insulation in all homes, offfices etc ? Which addresses energy use AT
SOURCE.


Graham"

The additional text doesn't strike me as adding anything useful to the
message, and certainly doesn't justify your claim that I'm a liar. If
anything, the boot is on the other foot.

Some simple numbers here.http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/home_improvements/home_insulation...

" If you currently have no loft insulation and you install the recommended
270mm depth you could save around £155 a year on your heating bills and
around1 tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.

[ my note - many houses over about 20 years old have quite inadequate
insualtion]

If everyone in the UK topped up their loft insulation to 270mm, around £560m
would be saved each year. That's enough money to pay the annual fuel billsof
around 530,000 families."

If you currently have no loft insulation - which is rare - you could
do almost as well with 150mm, as discussed in more detail by Martin
Brown. This really isn't "super insulation" which is a term you
latched onto but clearly don't understand and don't want to
understand.

 

[Eeyore]

Eeyore wrote:
bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
Replacing the bulk of the U.K. housing stock with super-insulated
houses is a good idea, but it would take longer than one cold winter,
and you'd have to invest a lot of energy in ripping down the old
houses and putting up the new ones.
Who said you had to rip down all the old houses.

Have you NO imagination.
Unfortunately for Eeyore's latest daft scheme, his vivid and
unconstrained imagination has confused the benefits you can get by
building a super-insulated house from scratch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superinsulation

and the much less impressive benefits you can get by putting extra
layers of fibre-glass under the roof of your house.

What Eeyore originally posted was an unsolicited testimonial for the
benfits "of installation super insulation in all homes, offfices etc "
which is to say he'd let his imagination off the leash, as he is prone
to.

I posted no such thing you outright LIAR. You're selectively snipping.

Some simple numbers here.
http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/home_improvements/home_insulation_glazing/loft_insulation/

" If you currently have no loft insulation and you install the recommended
270mm depth you could save around £155 a year on your heating bills and
around1 tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.

[ my note - many houses over about 20 years old have quite inadequate
insualtion]

Although this is true you should also note from the same website that if
you already have 50mm or more of loft insulation then topping it up to
the arbitrary government recommended 270mm including full installation
costs will have a payback time in excess of 10 years.

It says 50-270mm of existing insulation doesn't it ?

That's clealry an over simplification. Even so, 10 years beats almost everything by far.

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/home_improvements/home_insulation_glazing/loft_insulation/

50-270 saves £45 / year, costs £500 installed so payback is 11 years.

Therefore it can only be justified as a measure to prevent global
warming since it is clearly not economically viable.

NOT economically viable ?

Using REAL economics it beats PV solar in payback time by a factor of at least SIX - AND needs no
maintenance.

How you managed to turn a virtue into some imagined failing is quite beyond me.

The payback figures are better for DIY installation at 4 years for the
50-270mm upgrade. My loft is mostly 200mm with a mirror finish radiation
barrier (and I have no intention of adding 70mm for the miniscule
additional savings that would bring). The warm spot nearest the main
fireplace is insulated to 400mm using all the offcuts.

I will leave it as an excercise to the reader to figure out the savings
for going from 200mm to 270mm.

You obviously have up to date state-of-the-art insulation. With the UK housing stock going back many
100s of years I doubt you're entirely typical.

NB LCD self stick telltale thermometers for electronics thermal testing
are excellent for finding the warm spots where heat leaks out.

Extra lagging on the hot water tank is another quick win.

Not having a hot water tank is an even better win with water heating on demand quite possibly, never
mind the space it liberates. Heating all that water every single day for single people is moderately
daft.

Possibly true, but if you include the installation costs you can only
justify doing it to avoid unnecessary CO2 emissions if you believe in
AGW. It makes no economic sense to pay an installer £500 to top up from
50mm to 270mm if you can never make a profit on the deal (assuming
economic payback in 5 years to justify investment). OK you might get a
grant but the money is used on something that makes no economic sense.

£500 is a 'way over the top' installation fee IMO derived by bureacrats but the extra employment it
could generate for low-skilled people who are otherwise unelpoyable in the UK may be no bad thing.

If you don't believe in CO2 induced AGW you cannot advocate this policy
to top up all loft insulation to 270mm - the payback time is too long.

It's faster acting to reduce CO2 emissions than almost anthing else. And my thinking behind it is no
so much CO2 which is still unproven IMO but simply one of energy security.


Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Here is the whole text of your post in this thread dated 11 June 18:39

"Not developable fast enough.

So what do yiou have against my infinitely more sensible idea of
installation super insulation in all homes, offfices etc ? Which addresses energy use AT
SOURCE.

Graham"

Super insulation of all NEW buildings of course ! The building materials industry is getting ever
better and better at it. latest I heard was ultra low-mass building block.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

If you currently have no loft insulation - which is rare - you could
do almost as well with 150mm, as discussed in more detail by Martin
Brown. This really isn't "super insulation" which is a term you
latched onto

Super insualtion is for new build. There's 25 million OLD homes here that need help too.

but clearly don't understand and don't want to understand.

The recommendation is 270mm not 150mm. I'm sure even your feeble braij can do simple thermal
resistivity calcuations.

In a couple of years time I'm sure it'll be thicker still as energy prices go up.

Graham

 

[bill.sloman@ieee.org]

Super insualtion is for new build. There's 25 million OLD homes here that need help too.


The recommendation is 270mm not 150mm. I'm sure even your feeble braij can do simple thermal
resistivity calcuations.

How can you do electronic engineering if you can't?

In a couple of years time I'm sure it'll be thicker still as energy prices go up.

Ever heard the phrase "diminishing returns"? The amount of heat
getting through your loft insulation is inversely proportional to the
thickess of the insulation, and worrying about the last few
millimetres of extra thickness isn't all that clever. Installing extra
insulation doesn't make all that much sense if the payback period is
longer than seven years, which is the average length of time that
people spend in the same house in the U.K.

 

[JSprocket]

The recommendation is 270mm not 150mm.

I'm pretty sure that these changes in the building standards are first
to look as though they care and are doing something, and second to
create work for another generation of hamfisted builders. Of course home
insulation is important, but bureaucrats are always keen to gold plate
the standards, as long as someone else is paying. Witness (witless?) IEE
regs Part 4.

JS