Domestic Carbon usage Benchmarks?

[Nemesis]

There’s a programme on BBC2 tomorrow (Wednesday, 24 January) from 8pm-9.30pm entitled “Should I really give up flying” which might be of interest to you. For details, see: http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/flying/default.stm.

(Sorry - too late for that I know...)



While you’re clicking online, there’s also a new petition on the Downing Street website calling on the Prime Minister to require Cabinet Ministers and those in public leadership to estimate and disclose the total annual CO2 emissions associated with their activities and lifestyle – their personal ‘carbon cloud’ at:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/carbonclouds/



You might also want to calculate your own carbon footprint – for example using the one at http://specials.uk.msn.com/carbonemissionsestimator.



And as long as you’re online, have you signed the petition against the expansion of Stansted beyond 25 million passengers a year yet? If not, do it now at: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Stansted/



The Campaign Team

Stop Stansted Expansion

info@stopstanstedexpansion.com

http://www.stopstanstedexpansion.com

01279 870558



“Our Community – Our Responsibility”

 

[biffvernon]

It's a curious and largely unappreciated fact that restrictions in air travel will have no effect on climate change. Oil not used for aviation will be used elsewhere. Oil production is supply driven not demand driven. The producers are pumping at maximum capacity and will continue to do so as we pass 'Peak Oil' and descend the depletion curve.

From the climate's sake, ensuring that coal is not used as a substitute for oil is the important thing. O'Leary is right when he points out that APD is a regressive tax and uses the environment to raise taxes. This taxation will do nothing to reduce CO2 emisions.

I am, of course, completely opposed to aviation expansion, but for reasons other than climate change. Principally that oil's use in agriculture is too important for it to be squandered on flying to the sun but of course this issue for this forum is the destruction of period properties when more runways are built.

Peak Oil and Climate Change is an article that elaborates on my position.

 

[Flyfisher]

There was a report on You & Yours today about Silverjet launching a low cost business-class service from Luton to Newark (NY) for £999.

Apart from wondering if this heralds a new boost to the aviation market (the service levels seemed very good and much cheaper than Virgin's Upper Class equivalent) I was suprised to hear their MD (I think it was) state that they were aiming to be the first carbon-neutral airline and they were actively talking to carbon-offsetting organisations (can't remember their name) to make this happen.

Is this really a practical proposition or just marketing spin?

 

[Nemesis]

'Only' £999? Gosh. Good of 'em.

 

[Flyfisher]

Well, it's a lot cheaper than the £2500+ for a Virgin Upper Class flight . . .

 

[Nemesis]

Glad I'm of the Lower Orders then.

It's a silly amount of money - and it's time that first and second class (on railways too) was done away with.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RAfirst.htm

 

[wobs]

There’s a programme on BBC2 tomorrow (Wednesday, 24 January) from 8pm-9.30pm entitled “Should I really give up flying” which might be of interest to you. For details, see: http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/flying/default.stm.

(Sorry - too late for that I know...)

Saw it, and was interesting, if not drawn out.

However, the obvious highlight was having Brian Blessed on TV again. Marvellous.

 

[Flyfisher]

Hang on Nemesis, I thought you'd be in favour of high prices for air travel. Wouldn't £1000 for every flight help to reduce 'the aviation problem' ?

Anyway, very few people pay for their own business class tickets; that's why they can be so ridiculously high.

 

[Flyfisher]

However, the obvious highlight was having Brian Blessed on TV again. Marvellous.

. . . just before flying off somewhere to climb another mountain, no doubt :wink:

 

[Nemesis]

Actually I suggest that a large number of us pay through the nose for those tickets.

 

[Flyfisher]

If you mean consumers and taxpayers then, yes, I agree . . . we're the ones who ultimately pay for everything.

 

[Penners]

Let's not forget the contribution that garden plants make to carbon fixing. OK - it's modest, but every little helps. And so long as you don't garden with machinery, the equation comes out on the plus side...

...unless of course you drove to the garden centre. In which case my proposition crumbles to dust.

 

[biffvernon]

don't garden with machinery

OK, who still has a push-mower?

The Old Lawnmower Club

 

[Nemesis]

I have two.

There is a Lawnmower Museum at Southport...

 

[middi]

Flyfisher, I have heard all sorts of feeble excuses why people shirk gardening duties, you have come up with a winner.

One can actually justify it to oneself without the guilty feeling of having to justify it to the other half or observers with long noses.

:wink:

 

[Penners]

OK, who still has a push-mower?

I'm proud to say that I did a full engineeering apprenticeship with Ransomes Sims & Jefferies in Ipswich, some 45 years ago. Ransomes were the first company in the world to mass produce lawn mowers - the "Buddings Patent", that Edwin Budding developed from a machine for shaving the nap of cloth.

Budding was quoted in advertisements of the day as saying: "Gentlemen will find in my machine a healthy and worthwhile exercise."

If you've ever pushed a Buddings Patent (as I have), you'll know that he should have added "...if it doesn't kill them"!

 

[Flyfisher]

Budding was quoted in advertisements of the day as saying: "Gentlemen will find in my machine a healthy and worthwhile exercise."

Surely a Gentleman would have his gardener do the pushing? :wink:

 

[Penners]

No, Budding was very specific about publicising his machine as a gentleman's activity. I think he was a kind of early "Mr Motivator"!

Early woodcut illustrations of the mower in use showed it being pushed by a chap wearing a top hat, waistcoat and cravat. But the bounder had removed his jacket.

Clearly standards were falling, even in those days.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Its a small world - I also did some apprentice training at Ransomes in Ipswich in the holidays while studying engineering at University. I was staying at the YMCA and remember seeing the fall of the Calaghan government there on the telly (so it must have been 1979?).

 

[Nigel Watts]

First results from my son's weekly survey of energy use in the Watts household: a horrifying third of tonne (nearly) of CO2 just from domestic gas and electricity, and this was after he had turned down the thermostats.

Electricity - 47.6 kgCO2
Gas - 280.6 kgCO2

Total - 328.2 kgCO2

I have now adjusted the clock on the boiler so that the heating and hot water come on for a shorter time duringthe day.