William Bowie
Recent activity
Comments (3)
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Comment on: Transport Scotland tenders for £230M PFI Borders railway
A ridiculous scheme. A single line track with deisel trains costing an estimated £300 million to move an average of just 4000 passengers per day. The bus fare Edin - Gala is about a fiver The INTEREST alone on £300 million will be more than the cost of the bus. That together with the notion that the railway will support 500 jobs, suggets this a political gesture. If the Scottish Government is intent on de-carbonising transport why are they planning a railway that will be producing CO2 long after 2050 when railways should be CO2 free?
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Comment on: Benn: Engineers need to remedy changing climate
I have just had lunch with a friend whose grandfather came from Cumbria. The old man's diary recalls floods over a century ago Climate Change AKA Global Warming AKA CO2 has nothing to do with the current floods. Extreme weather events are not increased by the current warming. - rather the opposite (see Florida University). It is the weather. Just the weather How anyone can reasonably say that man's influence on climate is harmful after reading how the CRU and NASA have been massaging the figures to fabricate data to show inflated warming when there is only slight warming? We need to step back and look at the facts. We need to debate coolly whether man's influence on climate is:- a) significant and b) whether we can do anything about it. I think Bellamy and Barrett got it just about right (see proceedings May 2007) - "if we burn all the known fossil fuel we will put up global temperature just 1.5C". This will do us no harm. Let us attack real problems that engineers can tackle, like clean water for the third world! Before anyone takes me to task please explain why the IPCC AR4 temperature chart that shows +3.2C at 560 ppm also shows +1.5C at today's 385 ppm when the actual figure is +0.6 C . This is just 40% of the IPCC estimate. We have been conned. It is time to ignore the Alarmists.
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Comment on: Government plays-down energy blackout predictions
The dithering by all major parties has placed the UK in a position where the future is likely to be plagued by "Brown outs". The Government says that we will lose 20% of our electrical capacity by 2015. Both EDF and E.On estimate larger closures. Replacement of the old plant will be difficult. Apparently in Oct 2008, the EU's Environment Committee ruled that any new fossil fuel plant must produce less that half a kg of CO2 per kWHr. This rules out conventional technology and effectively makes carbon capture essential (doubling the cost of power). Nuclear has a long lead time and wind is intermittent and according to E.On needs 90% back-up from conventional plants to guarantee base load. Thus the alternatives would seem to be that we renege on our promises to reduce CO2 or sit shivering in the dark, The matter is not helped by the idealist "green" activists that seem to have taken over policy (including at the NCE) , who promote their fundamentalist views over the quieter, saner voices of the rational majority. Greenpeace is doing more harm to he UK than the Taliban.
