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Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

Jordinho said:
Things move quickly in a ketamine fueled world.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1874587515270967348

Simply tweaking the twitter algorithms to fill everyone's feed with crap isn't moving the needle fast enough, he's now directly supporting the most right wing, fascist parties around Europe. He'd burn down the world if it gave him money and influence.
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Interestingly he is going around banning accounts for free speech now, even as far as that parody account for Sandford Police who responded "no" to his Free Tommy Robinson post, banned, despite if being hilarious

So it genuinely intrigues me that people jump to his defence and claim he is an advocate for free speech and a martyr for good, its clearly much more sinister than that
 
Kompakted said:
www.theguardian.com

UK government hires ‘nudge unit’ to help dispel heat pump myths

Behaviour experts say misinformation shared in media and by other stakeholders is impeding uptake
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Just reading this, thought I'd share my own experience of looking into a heat pump boiler. Our current gas boiler is coming to the end of its life and having swapped my gas guzzler for an EV at the beginning of last year (2024) I thought I'd look into getting a heat pump.

We live in a modern (built in 2014) semi detached, with 12 radiators in total. Nothing too excessive or unusual.

We were quoted £13,000 for installation, which with a £7,000 government grant meant we'd pay £6K. For comparison purposes, we've been quoted £1,800 for an ultra efficient gas boiler replacement.

The real killers for me in terms of the viability of heat pump boilers were: we needed a 2m (high) by 3m (wide) by 2m (depth) space on an external wall to the house for the actual heat pump unit. Now actually this wasn't the real killer for us because we've got a large garden and we could have accommodated it but it works have been a bloody eye-sore and still taken up a fare chunk of land....but the absolute killer was we needed a 2m by 1m water cylinder inside the house. That's a huge water cylinder and we didn't have a suitable space for it so they said the only option would be for us to get a quote to convert the void in our roof into a loft strong enough to accommodate it and once done they could then install it. But even then they said they'd struggle to get the cylinder up the stairs into the loft area and so theyd need to get their technicians to arrange a second site visit and even if they green lighted it as possible we'd likely be quoted additional installation costs over and above the £13K and the cost (and stress and mess) of the roof void/loft conversion. At that point we abandoned the entire exercise.

So I don't agree that there's misinformation about heat pump boilers. From my own experience they are going to be completely impractical and overpriced for a lot of people and properties in this country.

Wasn't a killer for me either but the government trying to say news articles stating that heat pumps work less well in the cold are misinfornstion is in itself misinformstion. Heat pumps work by ingesting air and heating it. When the source air is colder that process is obviously less efficient. It's just a fact. I actually already have a heat pump tumble dryer and it's not as efficient at drying in winter as in summer meaning we sometimes have to put it on a second cycle for large loads. That's because the air it is ingesting to start it's heating process is colder and so the resulting heat the clothes are subjected to is also therefore colder.

And that's from someone that genuinely wanted one to be greener.
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This is the problem, there's too much pushing of these and other areas like EV's when the supporting infrastructure and technology hasn't caught up yet unless you're one of the privileged few. I think most people agree that going green to some degree is the future (me included and I voted green last election). If you polled the public then going greener would poll very highly but more needs to be done around awareness, installation, maintenance and acknowledge that they might not be right for your house. There's other options of solar panels etc to de-carbonise.

I love the idea of a heat pump and EV but think the technology and infrastructure is at least 3 but probably 5 years away from being where it needs to be for wider adoption. I think the public feels like that as well.
 
P.D. said:
This is the problem, there's too much pushing of these and other areas like EV's when the supporting infrastructure and technology hasn't caught up yet unless you're one of the privileged few. I think most people agree that going green to some degree is the future (me included and I voted green last election). If you polled the public then going greener would poll very highly but more needs to be done around awareness, installation, maintenance and acknowledge that they might not be right for your house. There's other options of solar panels etc to de-carbonise.

I love the idea of a heat pump and EV but think the technology and infrastructure is at least 3 but probably 5 years away from being where it needs to be for wider adoption. I think the public feels like that as well.
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Polling is pointless, people say what they think they should.
When they are asked to pay for it it's a different story.
 
P.D. said:
This is the problem, there's too much pushing of these and other areas like EV's when the supporting infrastructure and technology hasn't caught up yet unless you're one of the privileged few. I think most people agree that going green to some degree is the future (me included and I voted green last election). If you polled the public then going greener would poll very highly but more needs to be done around awareness, installation, maintenance and acknowledge that they might not be right for your house. There's other options of solar panels etc to de-carbonise.

I love the idea of a heat pump and EV but think the technology and infrastructure is at least 3 but probably 5 years away from being where it needs to be for wider adoption. I think the public feels like that as well.
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I think with EVs the tech is there and the infrastructure is getting there.

I drive an EV now and I've taken it up to Scotland and back no problem. Pretty much every service station on the A1/M1 has a rank of 300kw chargers now. Fully charged mine at Durham services in about 20 minutes. And it costs about £3 to charge at home on an overnight tariff. Solid state batteries and more ultra-rapid chargers will accelerate it. In terms of price, the first generation EVs are coming onto the second hand market in numbers now.
 
glasgowspur said:
Polling is pointless, people say what they think they should.
When they are asked to pay for it it's a different story.
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100%, they did a poll recently where everyone wanted to be greener then they said would you cut down on flying to help and they all said no. Same everywhere, people don't want to change their behaviour. Extends to housing being built in their area as well.
 
Kompakted said:
I think with EVs the tech is there and the infrastructure is getting there.

I drive an EV now and I've taken it up to Scotland and back no problem. Pretty much every service station on the A1/M1 has a rank of 300kw chargers now. Fully charged mine at Durham services in about 20 minutes. And it costs about £3 to charge at home on an overnight tariff. Solid state batteries and more ultra-rapid chargers will accelerate it. In terms of price, the first generation EVs are coming onto the second hand market in numbers now.
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I think the ranges will get better, insurance costs are still pretty high. Installation costs for home chargers will get lower, there will probably be a more common standard for chargers (USB C equivalent), more public chargers etc. It's definitely getting there and more advanced than heat pumps but I think we'll see much bigger advances in the next few years. I'd likely get a plug in hybrid now if I was going to change cars.
 
P.D. said:
100%, they did a poll recently where everyone wanted to be greener then they said would you cut down on flying to help and they all said no. Same everywhere, people don't want to change their behaviour. Extends to housing being built in their area as well.
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It's the same with everything,
Better NHS, yes, taxes need to up, Er no,
Independence yes, you'll be £1000 pa worse, fudge off,
Green energy yes, bills will go up, stuff that.

There's a reason we vote in private.
 
glasgowspur said:
It's the same with everything,
Better NHS, yes, taxes need to up, Er no,
Independence yes, you'll be £1000 pa worse, fudge off,
Green energy yes, bills will go up, stuff that.

There's a reason we vote in private.
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Problem is the government aren't honest about all these things. Really to get to net zero it probably needs people to only take 2 flights a year, move to EVs, heat pumps, solar panels, less meat etc but no government is going to deliver that message and the general population wouldn't accept it or be willing to pay for it. Also not to bring the EU debate into it but if we were still in it then freedom of movement isn't really compatible with net zero.
 
P.D. said:
100%, they did a poll recently where everyone wanted to be greener then they said would you cut down on flying to help and they all said no. Same everywhere, people don't want to change their behaviour. Extends to housing being built in their area as well.
Click to expand...
I get that to some extent, thats natural human nature, for people to generally get on board with stuff it needs to be cheaper and or more efficient.

Where its odd for me is how advancement in how we live is seen as some massive conspiracy, we were always going to have to transition to cleaner living and find alternatives, for that to turn into some massive denial by some is just odd.
 
Grays_1890 said:
I get that to some extent, thats natural human nature, for people to generally get on board with stuff it needs to be cheaper and or more efficient.

Where its odd for me is how advancement in how we live is seen as some massive conspiracy, we were always going to have to transition to cleaner living and find alternatives, for that to turn into some massive denial by some is just odd.
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People generally don't like change and especially when it costs them money. I think a lot of this would be easier to manage if living standards were going up, right now people are just surviving so anything receives a backlash. In better economic times it would be much easier to put these things in place.
 
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