[kreuzberger]

EDASD

[MisterMuncher]

Heard a panellist on Gardener's Question Time advocating pissing on your compost heap many years ago. He recommended waiting until after dark if your garden is overlooked.

It also softens leather (Milligan S; "Adolf Hitler, My Part In His Downfall")

It's good stuff, piss.

There's a couple of chapters of Neal Stephenson's "The Baroque Cycle" relating to the various uses and properties of the ould golden river, including making wootz steel and gunpowder, both of which are relatively* plot important. Mind you, given it's 5,000 pages of crazy, crazy shit, it should have been more of a surprise if it didn't.


*Yeah. He does love a good digression, does our Neal. I think I learned more about orbital dynamics and spacecraft from reading SevenEves than any physics class I ever had

[kreuzberger]

From the Rishi thread;

With many of the big hitters pulling out, COP26 looks like becoming the commonwealth games of conferences.

There must be a concern fear that, with no coalitions or consensus positions having been built or even primed ahead of Glasgow, COP26 will spiral down towards abject failure and demonstrable accusations of the hosts' incompetence and lack of interest. While HMG allows itself to be needlessly diverted in the pursuit of turkey-pluckers and trade wars, the entire event looks like a homespun disaster in the making.

Brenda, herself, has been taped, expressing frustration at not having definitive confirmations as to who is coming. Or, as she would no doubt put it, a "guest list" and all that that entails when you are head of state.

Quite obviously, China wants nothing to do with it. Why would they when they can spend 21/22 making huge announcements and signalling global leadership? (Diverting the gaze from the plight of HK and the Uighurs is a win-double.)

Moreover, the USA needs to make a decision; run with yesterday's squabbling vandals in Westminster or build a consensus for tomorrow with serious, willing, and able global partners?

In two weeks' time we'll see.

[The Weeping Angel]

Meanwhile

[mattomac]

Suppose it’s all small fry, feels a bit like the 2 day testing changes, Snapps announced it like people are supposed to kiss their feet.

[Boiler]

Meanwhile

"Slashing the cost of heat pumps" - errr....

https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2014/ ... advantages

Air to water heat pump costs usually start from £7,000 and go up to £18,000, while ground source heat pump costs can reach up to £45,000. The running costs of heat pumps depend on your household, its insulation properties and size.

I think I'll be sticking with more clothes/blankets and a small (but effective) electric convector.

[Cyclist]

I wonder how many Piers Corbyn types believe it is perfectly normal to leave home at 6.30 on a late October morning and stroll up the street in a polo shirt?

In my experience it hasn't been up until 2021.

[Nigredo]

It's still cold inside their fridge so global warming remains fake to them

[Oboogie]

I wonder how many Piers Corbyn types believe it is perfectly normal to leave home at 6.30 on a late October morning and stroll up the street in a polo shirt?

In my experience it hasn't been up until 2021.

When I don't need to be 'respectable', my default is still shorts and sandals as it has been since late March.

[Bones McCoy]

The more I hear about heat pumps, the less I think they're the answer, new builds excepted.

Operating at moderate temperatures where underfloor, or specialised radiators are required.
Translation: Replace your radiators, piping, and maybe also your floor.

Require a good sized warm water tank.
Sacrifice a significant sized cupboard or turn a box-room inot a cupboard if you live in a small flat.

Knock yourself out if you can afford one of those executive new builds with the system installed at build time.
If not the installation and reinstatement costs may dwarf the estimated 12 grand for an air system or the 27 for an underground one.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

My neighbour in France had a ground system put in when she had some other heavy building work done. I think it cost her about €14k all in, new radiators, the lot.

She reckons it will pay her back (she was previously on oil heating).

[Bones McCoy]

My neighbour in France had a ground system put in when she had some other heavy building work done. I think it cost her about €14k all in, new radiators, the lot.

She reckons it will pay her back (she was previously on oil heating).

I can imagine it will pay off if ...

If you can afford the outlay up front.
If you can find the space in your existing home for the additional volume of the system.

Many years ago I was involved in commissioning a datacentre over in the evil EU.
Their cooling system for the air handlers ran off a ground system.
I'd imagine this was a pretty hefty industrial setup, the contractors were talking about a 40 metre deep borehole.

The building was pretty massive through, so no problems with extra volume.
Some said it was the fifth largest datacentre in Europe at the time.
(Nobody knows who was counting, or what parameters they used to determine largest).

It would be small fry today with all the Amazon and Azure cloud sites.

[Nigredo]

The more I hear about heat pumps, the less I think they're the answer, new builds excepted.

Operating at moderate temperatures where underfloor, or specialised radiators are required.
Translation: Replace your radiators, piping, and maybe also your floor.

Require a good sized warm water tank.
Sacrifice a significant sized cupboard or turn a box-room inot a cupboard if you live in a small flat.

Knock yourself out if you can afford one of those executive new builds with the system installed at build time.
If not the installation and reinstatement costs may dwarf the estimated 12 grand for an air system or the 27 for an underground one.

The technology is very much in its infancy. And largely a token move until we generate all of our electricity from renewables.

A more immediate and useful solution would be retrofitting homes to be energy efficient so people don't have to switch their heating on that often in the first place. But developers and building managers have basically zero incentive to implement such a costly measure so dwellings will continue to be drafty and damp and occupants will choose between cooking dinner or a half hour blast with the electric blanket.

[kreuzberger]

My heating bills, square meter for square meter, are still considerably less than when I left The Island some sixteen years ago. If only there was some determination to insulate Britain.

[Abernathy]

This is barely believable. The same group of shysters and con-merchants that inflicted Brexit on the country now wants to pull off the same trick again, this time by stirring up opposition to net carbon-zero measures and putting all climate change mitigation measures in the UK on hold until there is a referendum on erm, whether we really want to try to save the human race or not.

A referendum. Another amazingly complex question reduced to a binary yes/no response and subject to another campaign of lies, this time on a matter on which there has been a settled scientific consensus for about 60 or 70 years.
I hope we learned lessons from the Brexit referendum.

This cannot be allowed to happen.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-m ... Bv-oyTe9co

[Andy McDandy]

"You wanna be a fackin' hippy, yeah? Tie dyed poof! Or do ya wanna be a normal bloke? Do what the fack you want? Then tick here!"

[Boiler]

This is barely believable. The same group of shysters and con-merchants that inflicted Brexit on the country now wants to pull off the same trick again, this time by stirring up opposition to net carbon-zero measures and putting all climate change mitigation measures in the UK on hold until there is a referendum on erm, whether we really want to try to save the human race or not.

A referendum. Another amazingly complex question reduced to a binary yes/no response and subject to another campaign of lies, this time on a matter on which there has been a settled scientific consensus for about 60 or 70 years.
I hope we learned lessons from the Brexit referendum.

This cannot be allowed to happen.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-m ... Bv-oyTe9co

"We've had enough of experts"

Yes, I saw that earlier, linked on from a Tweet on another matter on here.

I am firmly of the opinion now that referendums should NEVER be allowed again in the UK: we have a representative democracy so it should be up to free votes amongst our elected representatives to decide such things. Attlee and Thatcher were bang on the money about referendums.

I know this sounds incredibly patronising, but I think a large chunk of the British Public has demonstrated that it is incapable of looking impartially at such matters and is also far too easily swayed by the media.

[Cyclist]

This is insane.

I was going to write about a bunch of evil scumbags politicising the most important issue on the planet for their own gain, but words have just failed me.

This has gone beyond illegal bendy bananas and being hanged for selling apples by the pahnd. This is truly evil, in that it affects everyone on this planet, and time is running so short there is no time to waste fucking about. And these cunts are reducing it to an issue of politics? Opening another front in their pathetic little culture war?

I despair of what this country has become, and the self-serving, stupid, stupid, cunts who have been allowed to set the agenda.

[davidjay]

This is barely believable. The same group of shysters and con-merchants that inflicted Brexit on the country now wants to pull off the same trick again, this time by stirring up opposition to net carbon-zero measures and putting all climate change mitigation measures in the UK on hold until there is a referendum on erm, whether we really want to try to save the human race or not.

A referendum. Another amazingly complex question reduced to a binary yes/no response and subject to another campaign of lies, this time on a matter on which there has been a settled scientific consensus for about 60 or 70 years.
I hope we learned lessons from the Brexit referendum.

This cannot be allowed to happen.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-m ... Bv-oyTe9co

"We've had enough of experts"

Yes, I saw that earlier, linked on from a Tweet on another matter on here.

I am firmly of the opinion now that referendums should NEVER be allowed again in the UK: we have a representative democracy so it should be up to free votes amongst our elected representatives to decide such things. Attlee and Thatcher were bang on the money about referendums.

I know this sounds incredibly patronising, but I think a large chunk of the British Public has demonstrated that it is incapable of looking impartially at such matters and is also far too easily swayed by the media.

It's not patronising, it's the truth. They are stupid. They are incapable of thinking for themselves. They are influenced by the infantile nonsense churned out by neo-con media owners.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Isn't this another Farage/Dark Money project?