Prices of the electricity we use to charge

[Peter.Bridge]

I've NEVER seen 4 quoted anywhere

I had just googled it and this was the first result

Heat Pump vs Boiler Comparison Guide (2024)

When it comes to efficiency, there's only one winner, and that's the heat pump. A boiler, however, is usually cheaper than a heat pump. View our full comparison.

www.boilerguide.co.uk

.

My Mum and my sister both have heat pumps (installed in the last year) - both seem happy - can't remember any fan noise - will listen out next time I'm there

 

[Peter.Bridge]

Look at the scale on the left hand side Lenny........

I challenge you to walk into two rooms, one at 18c and one at 19.5 degrees and tell the difference.

The mean temperature of the UK year round is just over 9c. It used to be 8c, So what, It is still bloody cold.

effect of temperature rise :

Summary for Policymakers — Global Warming of 1.5 ºC

www.ipcc.ch

https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-3/

 

[Ghost1951]

The problems we have are ENTIRELY caused by too many people.

Here is what the world is like where you get away from them. I am going walking here today.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

Thats one of my favourite places - some great cycle routes

 

[Ghost1951]

Thats one of my favourite places - some great cycle routes

Yes - I agree. I've been coming here since the early 1970s and now I live four miles south of the southern end of the forest. Two hundred and fifty square miles of forest and 150 million trees. Next to no people.

If you explore these forests, you find amazing places in them. Old fortified houses from the time of the Border Reivers, strange waterfalls and crags and hopefully soon, the Eurasian Lynx and wild cat. The two animals mentioned are I hope soon to be re-introduced there. Half of England's Red Squirrels are in this forest area. I took this photo a fe weeks ago while wandering in trackless forest. There is no phone coverage in most of it and there was certainly none where I took this photo. I should remind myself that I am not in my thirties any more. I was thinking while i was here, 'If I broke my ankle here, my remains would not be found for years. To be honest, I fully intend when I get something horrible, just to disappear into this wilderness and die under the trees. There is something pretty cool about just rotting to bones under the sky. Far better than having your relatives spend a fortune to have you boxed up and disposed of.

 

[lenny]

I fully intend when I get something horrible, just to disappear into this wilderness and die under the trees

"'I heard a very deep growl' - The search for the elusive Hartlepool Puma"

https://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/people/i-heard-a-very-deep-growl-the-search-for-the-elusive-hartlepool-puma-3965627

 

[Ghost1951]

Here is another image of it from the web. It is called Jerry's Lynne and is on the Chirdon Burn , a tributary of the River North Tyne. By the way - all the river water around here is this amber ale colour. It is caused by the fact that it has seeped out of hundreds of sq kilometres of sphagnum moss, peat bog, and forest and carries the colouration of the peat. I had a heck of a job explaining peat bogs and moss to my French niece when she came to stay here. She was amazed that the stream which runs past my house was the colour of 'beer'.

 

[saneagle]

I have heat pump at my house in France for the first time last winter. There are quite a few issues with getting more heat out of the pump. On very cold days, ice forms around the pump. The extra noise is not too bad but I am still looking for ways of reducing it. The house was heated with electricity before. The overall saving on my electricity bill is about 60%. Still worth the effort.

How much would you have saved if you kept the old system and simply turned down the heating to the level you have now?

Electric heating is very expensive. How much would you have saved if you had fitted a gas boiler?

 

[Woosh]

How much would you have saved if you kept the old system and simply turned down the heating to the level you have now?

Electric heating is very expensive. How much would you have saved if you had fitted a gas boiler?

We didn't use the house much in the last 25 years, so electric heating was fine. I don't have town gas where I am, so it's out of the equation. If gas was available, natural gaz costs about half per kwH (9p/kwH), the cost would be similar to heat pump except heat would be instantaneous.

 

[Ghost1951]

"'I heard a very deep growl' - The search for the elusive Hartlepool Puma"

https://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/people/i-heard-a-very-deep-growl-the-search-for-the-elusive-hartlepool-puma-3965627

Its is very difficult to accurately size an animal like a cat when you suddenly see it in an unfamiliar remote setting. I've spent countless leisure hours during my adult life prowling settings like the ones I have posted in photographs. I am well versed in stalking field craft and can move quietly, and wait long periods before moving again if I am wanting to see wildlife. I have many times got withing ten meters of wild roe deer which are very shy of people. I've seen dozens and dozens of them, and foxes and hares, badgers and adders. I would love to see a real European wild cat, I never have, let alone a puma. I actually went looking for wild cats. Never a sign, and I am talking about tracks and droppings too.

I don't think people are making up these sightings. I think they saw feral cats or even farm cats out hunting. If you are in a wild setting, it can be hard without normal reference points to work out how far something is from you, and it is easy to get the scale wrong and think the cat you saw is much larger than it is. I've seen cats in the forest, and thought, 'Bloody hell... it's a big cat,' and then looked again and realised it is closer than I thought and an ordinary cat.

I've seen Pine Martens in the woods up here and proper wild polecats - not escaped ferrets, though there has been some hybridisation so some ferrets look like polecats. If there really were large wild cats wandering the forests - given the time i have spent in them, I think I would have seen them by now.

On the bright side, there are some plans to release lynx up here and European Wild cats. They are native fauna and belonged here until the people got rid of them. I look forward to it, but animals like that are VERY shy of people, so the average walker is not going to see them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_lynx_reintroduction_in_Great_Britain

Northumberland 'right place' for lynx, say wildlife groups

Wildlife groups say Northumberland could support a population, as an exhibition gets under way.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[lenny]

Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic'

A biofriendly new material made from barley starch blended with fiber from sugarbeet waste—a strong material that turns into compost should it end up in nature—has been created at the University of Copenhagen. In the long term, the researchers hope that their invention can help put the brakes on...

phys.org

 

[lenny]

Physicists Accidentally Found a New Way to Represent Pi

Our favorite mathematical constant, pi (π), describing the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter, has taken on new meaning.

www.sciencealert.com

 

[lenny]

Astronomers think they’ve figured out how and when Jupiter’s Red Spot formed

Astronomers concluded it is not the same and that Cassini’s spot disappeared in 1708.

arstechnica.com

 

[lenny]

"By 2034, global energy consumption by data centers is expected to top 1,580 TWh, about as much as is used by all of India."

AI Is Wreaking Havoc on Global Power Systems

New artificial intelligence data centers are coming online so fast that the electricity demand is straining global power grids and threatening clean energy goals.

www.bloomberg.com

 

[lenny]

Starliner Deorbit Slips Again As NASA Launches Full Review

The extended stay merited an “agency-level” review of Starliner’s departure “to document the agency’s formal acceptance of proceeding as planned.”

payloadspace.com

 

[lenny]

A black hole of inexplicable mass

Using the space telescope JWST, astronomers have examined one of the most distant known black holes in the universe. Their observations provide a glimpse of the growth of black holes in the early universe, less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Surprisingly, the early black hole in...

www.mpg.de

A black hole of inexplicable mass: JWST observations reveal a mature quasar at cosmic dawn

The James Webb Space Telescope observed a galaxy in a particularly young stage of the universe. Looking back into the past, it became clear that the light from the galaxy called J1120+0641 took almost as long to reach Earth as the universe has taken to develop to the present day. It is...

phys.org

 

[lenny]

Powering Planes With Microwaves Is Not the Craziest Idea

If you don’t mind massive ground antennas and fried birds, that is

spectrum.ieee.org

 

[lenny]

Significant energy source found under US-Mexico border

Researchers have found a geothermal energy source underneath the Texas-Mexico border that could revitalize the rural area.

www.newsnationnow.com

 

[lenny]

Researchers find wave activity on Titan may be strong enough to erode the coastlines of lakes and seas

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is the only other planetary body in the solar system that currently hosts active rivers, lakes, and seas. These otherworldly river systems are thought to be filled with liquid methane and ethane that flows into wide lakes and seas, some as large as the Great Lakes...

phys.org

 

[lenny]

"Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. A year later, nearly half of participants had housing."

Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. A year later, nearly half of participants said they had housing.

Participants in Denver's basic-income program reported having more-secure housing, though results were similar in the trial and control groups.

www.businessinsider.com