Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

The last of the interceptors

Theres a History of the interceptor and a lego version[0] but thats not what I’m wanting to talk about…I’m worried. I’ve been reading some things lately about whats happening in the world and thinking about them and they are worrying me.

Firstly, I don’t know whether anyone else has heard about the possibilities of power cuts over the upcoming winter? Basically the natural gas supply has been shrinking for a while now and its looking likely there isn’t going to be enough to feed our homes and power stations with the gas we want to use. Of course, this might just be scaremongering to push the future contract prices up but if the supply has been dwindling then maybe it doesn’t happen this year, maybe not next, but sooner or later it will happen. How are we, those of us who dwell in these rabbit hutches, going to cope without heat?

Then there was some American dude talking about hybrid cars, and how they’re actually not an environmental play but rather a performance enhancement. Now I’m not sure thats true – one of the most significant things about hybrids is the ability to use regenerative braking, turning your speed back into electricity when you’re slowing down. Right now they’re not very efficient but if you can reclaim half that energy you’re going to be getting a decent improvement over a normal friction braking system (theres also an observation that the regenerative brakes won’t suffer performance problems when heavily used, since they don’t heat up in the same way – though some of the non-regenerative electrical brake systems will have different properties under heavy usage, though I suspect they get better at stopping you rather than worse).

So this drove me to thinking about a couple of other questions – the energy cost of making a new car is around 1/3 the total lifetime energy cost, is this still true for hybrids? If so, this suggests that it is more efficient to continue using existing cars for longer rather than encourage a switch sooner. Though there are other factors to take into account – pollution and safety among others.

Next the SUV secondary market in the States is crashing, they’re starting to notice petrol prices rising and switching to cheaper-to-run cars.

Then I was thinking about slavery. There is a lot of racial tension remaining in this world, largely generated by what was the slave culture many years ago. And I wondered how some of the people in places we currently consider ‘sources of cheap labour’ will view their position in the world in, say, 100 years time. Are we creating another timebomb?

Finally, there seems to be a lot religious tension around at the moment, I don’t remember it being so prevalent when I was younger. So, has my view of it changed? Or are some of the things going on in the world at the moment being framed in terms of religious tension, when before they were described in other ways?

[0] And the ATeam, and cthulu


Categories: Memories.

/ 14 Comments

14 comments

  1. scifilittlemy

    A colleague of mine’s partner works for a big electricity transmission company in the Midlands and she’s mentioned that we’re on a knife edge. It was less to do with running out of gas (though the UK is mainly powered by gas) and more to do with poor infrastructure.

    I have only heard about gas in a climate change context. We have exceeded out Kyoto targets, not because we have improved efficiency or using better technology but because we have switched away from coal to gas (gas was cheaper). As we import most of our gas from the continent where the price is linked to oil, the cost of electricity is about to rise substantially. Don’t know whether that helps?

    Reply
    • neilh

      Not sure it helps, as such, but I suppose increasing prices will get people to notice.

      There are climate change impacts but they’re longer term – thats not nearly so much of a problem if we have a decent cold snap and half the population freeze to death.

      Reply
    • cally_tmk

      There was an interesting article in the IEE Review back in March about more efficient electricity generation from coal. You may be able to see more about it on their website (The Right Stuff). On the other hand, you may not, as their site is apparently suffering from a ‘malfunction’ at the moment.

      Reply
      • neilh

        And it still is, some I’m guessing its a bit more permanent than the page suggests. Theres a lot more efficiency we could get from things, local wind generators on the roof of our houses would seem like a good place to start – we put up with satellite dishes we can put up with a turbine I’m sure.

        Reply
          • neilh

            Looks interesting – I’ll read it properly later. My viewpoint is that right now its not too much of a big deal since there is fairly abundant, cheap electricity. Sometime (fairly soon) in the future that isn’t going to be the case and I’d like to be at least a bit self sufficient (not that my landlord would let me attach such to my rented box).

          • cally_tmk

            Partial self-sufficiency

            Tricky one, this, since (as I understand it) most ‘partial’ solutions rely on you being grid-connected, and will actually cut out if the mains supply fails.
            You could stock up on candles and woolly jumpers, or just invite lots of friends to stay (it’s estimated that a person produces a similar amount of heat to a 100W light bulb, so 10 or 20 should be quite effective! Though it could get expensive if they all expect you to feed and water them…)

          • neilh

            Re: Partial self-sufficiency

            But that cut-out can be jerry-rigged around, I’m sure, should circumstances make it necessary.

  3. neilh

    Yeah, hybrid is a somewhat overloaded term. Regenerative brakes aren’t much use without having electric drive of some kind – you’re not likely to be able to make petrol from the energy you can reclaim. That said, I guess you could get hydrogen for fuel cells. Not that I really know much about it.

    I think the figure quoted includes the construction of all the car parts as well as bringing them together to make a whole car (its from a study of the Vancouver urban transport system so might be a little biased against cars). Of course there is a raw material impact, too, but essentially that isn’t dreadfully high – quite a lot of the materials in cars now could be reclaimed from cars being scrapped as part of the replacement cycle.

    Besides we are still essentially resource rich at the moment, energy is our crunch point.

    Reply
  5. cally_tmk

    Finally, there seems to be a lot religious tension around at the moment, I don’t remember it being so prevalent when I was younger.

    Hmmm, guess you’re a bit too young to remember the crusades ;-) Seriously though, I wonder if a lot of what people refer to as ‘racial tension’ and ‘religious tension’ would be better described as ‘cultural tension’? And are you thinking of what’s happening within the UK, or on an international level?

    Reply
    • neilh

      The crusades are a bit hazy these days, but I seem to remember it being generally unpleasent.

      Yes, cultural tension is probably a good description – everyone seems to have started talking about muslim and being bad, both internal to this country and internationally. Feels bad.

      Reply
  6. neilh

    It all seems to come back to two things – people want to spend less and corporations want you to spend more….on their things. So what happens? People spend less on taxes, and on cheap import goods and use the money they save there to buy a shiny beamer.

    Reply

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