The 2018 blog post hiatus

​There has been some speculation that the recent lack of blog posts is evidence that low energy building is not happening. ​I'd like to take this opportunity to state that this is simply not true.

W​e do not yet know all the reasons for this hiatus in blog posts, but low energy buildings is certainly continuing. Also there is no doubt that low energy buildings are man-made.

It would be unwise to make any predictions about the exact return and future frequency of blog posts.

In the meantime, you can make full use of the labels or search function. If you're thinking of building your own house, you may want to start here:

Ten top tips if you're thinking of building a house

Who's going to build it?

Two-by-four or zairai koho?

Part 3.14159265... How much do you need to know?

Paying for it

What exactly do you need to know about heat?

Glossary of English and Japanese terms

Are renewables helping gas burn, or is gasoline stopping electricity going to cars?

First they ignore you
Then they say you're stupid
Then they say you're wrong
Then they say you have an interesting idea
Then they say they thought so all along

"You have enough electricity to power all the cars in the country if you stop refining gasoline." According to Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk via green transportation. "You take an average of 5 kilowatt hours to refine one gallon of gasoline, something like the Model S can go 20 miles on 5 kilowatt hours."

We often hear complaints about renewable energy not really being renewable, because it uses some fossil fuels to produce the materials. It's interesting to note that the petrol that goes into cars is actually using electricity.

As usually things are much more complicated than it seems. Advocates of renewable energy see a future with 100% renewable energy. Skeptics see the energy costs of producing renewable infrastructure, and the source of that energy, and claim that the march to renewables will produce more carbon emissions so we are better off burning fossil fuels directly.

Some of the nuclear lobby, meanwhile, attack renewables and claim they are just being used as greenwash for the fossil fuel industry, which wants to be there when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining. In fact there are many common interests of the nuclear industry and renewable industry. One is electrification. Also, they can also both benefit from increased capacitance in the system: renewable energy because the production is unreliable and may not meet or match peaks in consumption; nuclear for exactly the opposite reason that production is constant and energy storage will mean demand can be met with less plant.

It's very unlikely that burning fossil fuels will lead to a fossil-fuel free future, unless you are cynically hoping that the only realistic fossil-free future is one where they have all been burnt. As a technological development, electrification makes renewables possible since the energy is easy to convert and transfer over large distances. The internal combustion engine has a much more limited diet.

Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes  is a 2015 paper by Mark Z. Jacobson, Mark A. Delucchi, Mary A. Cameron, and Bethany A. Frew from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, and the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

They claim that existing technologies can be used to get the US onto 100% renewable power. The paper has some critics, of course.

This podcast from Science Vs asks whether 100% renewable energy is possible, and features Jacobson and Delucchi as well as some of their critics and more neutral observers. The answer is not exactly yes, and they point out a few areas will be very tricky to get onto renewables, such as iron smelting. But they suggest it's a pretty good direction to think about moving in.

In the conclusion, the podcast suggested people may need to change the way they live, using energy depending on how much is being generated. Use the air conditioning when the sun is shining. Do the washing when the wind is blowing. It's easy to see some logic there. It may be more tricky if people are expected to switch off the heating when there has not been much sunshine, since that's known as winter in several places.

It's interesting to note that at no point did the podcast mention efficiency. Increases in efficiency do not rely on people's behaviour. Also they are cumulative and compounding, so a seven-percent annual improvement in efficiency means half the energy use in ten years. This is certainly a high level of improvement, but the predictions of most of the renewable skeptics assume efficiency improvement of zero. This is also true of fossil fuel advocates and the nuclear industry, whose forecasts are consistently based on increased consumption of energy, and whose forecasts are consistently wrong,. Since they are in the business of selling energy, increased consumptions is in their best interests, and it's not at all surprising that it gets into their forecasts. If I was running a bakery I'd be hoping to increase my sales, and if I was planning for fewer customers in the future, I should probably be taking an early retirement, or at least changing my profession. Even in the paper by Jacobson et al., future energy production is based on the predictions of the IEA, International Energy Agency, who have been predicting the end of solar power growth for fifteen years.

Graphs of words show Climate Change is still increasing, while Global Warming has stabilised

According to this graph from Google Ngram, Climate change is still increasing. Ngram measures how often words are used in our language by counting occurrences in a huge swath of publications that have been digitised. This is a form of corpus linguistics, a field of study that goes back to Vedic scholars counting the occurrences of different sounds in Sansrkit holy texts. Arabic scholars also studied the Koran, and back in 1230 Hugo de Saint Cher made a concordance of the Bible, noting where and how often each word appeared in the holy book. Computers have made this a lot easier, and Corpus Linguistics has really taken off since the 1960s.
Ngram opens that door to anyone interested in what people have been writing, and we can see here that climate change, global warming and greenhouse effect all steadily increased until the mid 1980s, where they received a bit of boost. Global warming used to be more commonly used than climate change, but slowed and then plateaued in the early 1990s, slighly increasing since. At about the same time use of the phrase "greenhouse effect" peaked.

A climate denier may be tempted to interpret this as the greenhouse effect peaking in 1992 and decreasing since, and evidence that the data for climate change and global warming have been tampered with by NASA.

My interpretation is that discussion of this topic became increasingly important from the 1970s, initially led by discussion of the greenhouse effect. This is the method by which global warming was
happening, and reliable historical temperature data began to become available from this time.

By the end of the 1980s the discussion of how global warming happened was more or less decided, and we didn't need to talk about the greenhouse effect so much. I suspect discussion of "round earth" peaked shortly into the age of discovery when returning ships removed any serious doubt about the shape of the planet.

Global warming and climate change were discussed equally, and largely synonymously until 1992. It's not clear why this happened, but in 2002 a Republican party memo by Frank Lunz recommended that the term "climate change" was used rather than "global warming", which people found frightening. It seems that George W Bush did respond to the calls to "stop global warming" by not using the phrase any more. This is not exactly what people wanted! (See also Guardian, 4th March 2003).

A more detailed linguistic investigation by Dr. Martin Döring of the Institute for Geography at the University of Hamburg into perceptions of regional climate change in North Frisia found: "six prevailing conceptual metaphors: Climate change is an enemy, preventing climate change is fight/war, climate change is punishment for human sins, climate change is overheating/heat, climate change is hot air/hoax and climate change is eco-dictatorship."

Those of us who want to "fight" climate change need to take account of the last idea: climate change as eco-dictatorship. For some people this may be overwhelming, for examples libertarians who make up the right wing of the US Republican Party, for whom denial of climate change is perhaps primarily a rejection of government intervention.

A plastic bottle house and other stories

​I've always had a problem throwing things away. A lot of people see an empty bottle and think it needs throwing in the bin. I think what a fantastic piece of engineering it is, how many possible uses it could have, and how long its life could be. So I found this article from the Guardian about buildings made of plastic bottles particularly interesting.

​In other news, here's an examination from the Zeitgeist Is Changing blog debunking the "wind farms kill birds" meme. It puts fossil fuel power stations fifteen times more dangerous to birds than wind farms. 

And this article from the Guardian about a Green-powered boat preparing for a round-the-world voyage has been sitting in my drafts folder since September.

This is supposed to be following on the coat tails of Solar Impulse, which set several aviation records and was a genuine testament to the state of renewable energy and a gauntlet thrown down for bigger and better air craft to follow.

But this green boat is not going to come anywhere close. For a start any claim to be the first zero-carbon circumnavigation of the globe ignores at least five hundred years of wind-powered journeys starting with Magellan. And even then, most of the places he travelled were already inhabited, and the natives had not arrived there by jumbo jet.

There is a claim that this will be the first round the world trip using renewable energy and hydrogen fuel. And it will probably be the last. Hydrogen is a ridiculous way to store renewable energy. As we have seen in EROI, solar power is just becoming a viable source of power in terms of the energy it will generate over the lifetime of an installation compared with the amount of energy needed to install it. Electrolysis is a great way to produce hydrogen... in your bedroom. As a commercial process, it is very energy intensive.

The comments below newspaper articles are usually full of profanity, insanity, and complaints but these comments contained a lot more insight than the article itself.

What percentage of climate denial is driven by fossil fuels?

Although some people claim denial of climate change is not happening, there is a clear consensus among scientists that denial is real, and that it presents severe and long-lasting risks to humanity. There is also a clear consensus that a large proportion of this denial has come from fossil fuel industry emissions.

Actually just a drained rice field in late summer

Some claim that the observed climate change denial is due to other sources, for example scientific research. However, it is difficult to find evidence of understanding of the scientific process within these claims. This is an important markers that we would expect to see if climate change denial actually had anything to do with science.

"But how much of the climate change denial we see recently can be attributed the fossil fuel industry?"

This is a question than often confuses scientists, since it is obvious that if there were no fossil fuel industry, there would be negligible anthropogenic climate change, and no denial. However, it is helpful to look more closely at this question. 

Winter, in case you forgot how it looked

Climate change denial is a complex phenomenon, and it is often difficult to separate primary causes from secondary and tertiary feedback. For example fossil-fuel generated denial can have a knock-on effect on coverage in the scientifically illiterate media and in right-wing blog posts. These can act as amplifiers, so a single fossil-fuel source that leaks into the media can result in thousands of pages on the internet, each of which can generate hundreds of comments.  

Reduction in fossil fuel industry-generated denial is an essential step to stopping denial. However, many of these secondary and tertiary effects are likely to continue long after the fossil-fuel industry has stopped the emission of denial.

Denial has other drivers including extreme libertarianism, religious dogmatism, contrarianism, and people just being stupid. While fossil industry denial is the biggest driver, some of these other forms can be much more potent. For example, libertarian denial can activate a broad spectrum of people skeptical about the power of government. 

There is also a strong danger of irreversible denial tipping points. Once people have denied scientific method and the media, they may permanently lose a reasoned understanding of the world they live in. This will not only make them pose a greater risk to the environment, but may also put them at a greater risk from an environment that will change around them because of their actions and in spite of their words. 

Clearly the fossil fuel industry must put in place policies and procedures to reduce denial, with a timeline for reaching zero denial. However, this will not be sufficient on its own, and we must also be wary of other sources of denial. 

Reasons to be skeptical about climate change - or not

Six months ago when I was collecting suggestions for debate proposals in a class of second-year university science students, I had to politely reject one about global warming being caused by humans. I asked the class for a show of hands, and nobody was against this. "We can't really debate this," I had to tell them. "Nobody disagrees that global warming is caused by humans."

  

Since then, the climate change debate has reared its ugly head again. But it's not so much about whether climate change is true, or what can be done about it. It's more like a punch up between the protagonists in Fight Club. On one side the argument is that the science is irrelevant. On the other side, it is that politicians don't understand science. Debate is not really happening because the two sides are not engaging. One side is attacking "climate deniers" and the other is attacking "climate warmists". Nobody identifies themselves with these titles. 

Below are a few of the kinds of arguments that you'll hear, and what is wrong with them. 

Cherry picking of data 

"My grandfather smoked 20 cigarettes a day, drank, ate meat and lived to 95"

Ok, maybe he did, but my grandfather smoked, drank, ate meat and died at the age of 46. Neither of these proves anything about the connection between lifestyle and longevity, any more than rolling a dice once and getting a 1 will tell you what is on the other sides, how many sides the dice has, whether it's loaded, or what will happen on the next roll.

Climate science requires long and broad sets of data to find whether it's getting warmer or not. One swallow does not make a summer, and one snowball does not mean that global warming is a lie. The butterfly you saw in February is not proof that the world is getting warmer, but it is evidence, and taken with all the other evidence, it becomes very difficult to deny. See this list of climate monitoring groups that say the world is not getting warmer. 

Expecting scientists to be 100% sure

"There's a big black bear coming to kill you!"

"No, I think you'll find it's just a really dark shade of brown"

The reality with science is that nobody is ever 100% sure. Scientists often show how sure they are with a "p" followed by a percentage. That percentage is the probability that the results they saw were the result of a coincidence. Predictions should always have ranges, and in fact one problem between the media and the scientists who have tried to communicate with media is that these ranges are often left out.

So for example you get stories like Heat-related deaths will rise 257% by 2050 because of climate change. Not 256%, not 258%, but 257%! The original paper says "around 257%" in the abstract, and the actual paper no doubt gives margins of error. Unfortunately the actual science is protected by a pay wall, so we can't easily get it. We can get this headline, which will almost certainly be wrong, and access will be completely free to blog posts saying that scientists got it wrong again. 

Next time, please write something like: "Heat-related deaths to increase two and a half times by 2050...".   

There's an article here from the Max Planck institute saying there is a 1.7±0.5 mm per year rise in sea levels over the 20th century. That's a huge margin of error, but note that even the lower level means the sea rose over 120 mm in a hundred years. In their wildest dreams the sea level did not fall. 

Turning arguments against you

"No you're a big fat idiot"

People seeking to attack the climate science will often turn arguments around. 

For example:

Oil companies have been accused of a conspiracy to cover up global warming -> Scientists are accused of a conspiracy by the renewable energy industry to create climate science

The media were accused of taking information out of context from Climategate emails immediately before Copenhagen Climate Talks that helped sink any agreement there -> NOAA scientists were recently accused of speeding global warming data to publication immediately before Paris Climate Talks to create agreement

Right wing politicians have political objections to climate change and have attacked the science ->  Scientists are accused of politicising the science.  

Strategically what is happening here is a takeover of the rhetoric. The intention is that when we hear "climate change" and "conspiracy", instead of thinking of the well-documented conspiracies by oil executives to promote junk science, people will be duped into imagining some a group of communists who have got together to create climate science.

Accusations of hypocrisy

"If you ... you cannot be an environmentalist"

Where the "..." could be any of a number of things that have an impact on the environment, for example have children, drive a car, fly, use a computer, cook food, or breathe.

This is first of all an ad hominem attack, where things have turned from attacking arguments to attacking the person arguing. These kinds of attacks happen on both sides of tribal conflicts, and do not help. The establishment loves accusing idealists of hypocrisy, although ironically they often fail to see hypocrisy in themselves.

This kind of argument puts excessive restraints on who can be classified an environmentalist, which gives an excuse for many people to do nothing. It also seeks to create a gap between environmentalists and everyone else, making it more difficult for people to take environmental positions.

And these arguments often miss the point of environmentalism. For all but a lunatic fringe, environmentalism is not really about saving the planet. It is about making sure the planet can save us. For example, it is an admirable choice to not have children since population is a multiplier of environmental damage, but the whole point of environmentalism is to make a planet where our children, and their children can survive. 

Environmentalists are not all soppy romantics desperate to save cute furry animals and to hug trees. They are pragmatists who appreciate that all our food, fresh water and clean air come from complex ecosystems that have developed over millions of years, and that may not be able to survive the sudden changes we are imposing. The people who tell us everything will be fine are the wishy-washy idealists.

The reality is that we are a complex species living in a complex environment, and there are no simple solutions, but the first step is being honest. 

David Mackay for science adviser!

The so-called president of the United States has been very slow to appoint a science adviser. This may simply be because he just doesn't care about science. His mission is in changing people's perception of America, not actually changing anything in the real world.

If this isn't worrying enough, a more sinister reason may be that it is difficult to find a credible science adviser who will deny the climate and keep the fossil fueled forces behind the White House happy. He seems to be looking at William Happer now, a physicist who apparently says climate change is great. It's difficult to imagine somebody more on-target.

The argument that climate change will bring more advantages than disadvantages is a bit difficult to maintain, although it may be tenable. He also claims that predictions of warming were exaggerated, although when you look at Jim Hansen's work from 1988, the predictions have been very close.

Happer also appears on this list of 300 "scientists" telling trump to burn the climate, carefully analysed by the Guardian's John Abraham.

I think David Mackay would make a great science adviser. Not only is he able to put things in simple terms, but he also has a good grasp of the reality of our energy problem, and realistic suggestions about what we can do.

Here is his TED talk:

Creating an Ecosystem of doubt

The more interesting questions are why, and how, people are trying to stop us from believing that climate change is happening and was almost certainly caused by us. As well as the different stages of climate denial, there are different levels of deniers, and different motivations for denial. Some people are just trying to be annoying.

The first thing to say is that it is really easy to persuade people the climate science is fake. In many ways our brains are determined not to believe in it. Millennia of evolution have trained us to respond well to some threats, for example our fight or flight instincts are particularly well honed. We are not so good at coping with non-immediate threats, and our minds are usually bad at calculating low-level risk. If humans were good at working out probabilities we probably wouldn't have any casinos. 

"Don't they look funny out in the snow with their thick coats?"

At the same time we have a strong reaction to change, and a confirmation bias. We desperately want to believe that we can carry on as we are because things are going to stay more or less the same, and we will pounce on any evidence that supports this, and ignore information that suggests otherwise.

Also we suffer from loss aversion. Given the choice of gaining 100 quid or not losing 100 quid, we are much more scared of losing than happy to gain. In our psychology a bird in the hand really is worth two in the bush. Tackling climate change is often perceived as a personal loss, because a reduction in quantity of carbon suggests a reduction in the quality of our carbon-enriched lifestyles. In fact doing nothing about climate change threatens to be a personal loss for many people, but, see above, the losses won't come till later, and it may be someone else who is losing.

So, climate deniers have got a pretty easy job. Human psychology is on their side.

Next, in some parts of the world at least, climate change has become a political issue. This means we also have group mentality to deal with. The reasoning works something like this: Al Gore believes in Global Warming, Al Gore is blue, I am red, therefore Al Gore is wrong. This does not happen exclusively in the US, but the issue has been polarised to a large extent there. I've never been a fan of UK arch-conservative Margaret Thatcher, but unlike 97% of politicians she was a scientist, and she quickly understood the threat posed by climate change, and persuaded world leaders including George Bush senior to get behind the Kyoto Protocol back in the 1990s. Atmospheric carbon levels have been increasing steadily since then, but political action has not. 

So how do people attack climate change? 

Later I will give specific details of what people say, but the first question is which culture they are coming from. The idea of climate change comes from science, and that field has its own ground rules. They are different, for example, to religion or the law. Christianity has absolute truth that cannot be proved but needs faith to be believed. The law seeks truth beyond a shadow of doubt, and often there are two sides who must both try to prove that they are right. Science is not really concerned with truth, or being right, but in setting up hypotheses and trying to prove them wrong. 

Maths has proofs but is not really a science. Once something is mathematically proven it will be true for ever. Two plus two will always be four. If you are an engineer, and the twos are both large values then two plus two can be five, but I don't want to bring engineers into this.

The hard sciences of physics and chemistry have theories that can be experimentally shown to not be wrong. 

The theories in softer sciences, like biology, cannot always be shown to be true by experiment. For example, we cannot make an experiment to prove that evolution is happening in the same way that we can prove Newton's laws of motion. Theories are tested by observation, and if the observed facts obey the theory then it cannot be dismissed. Climate science is similar. We cannot go back to the 18th century, un-invent the steam engine and run the last couple of centuries without any anthropogenic carbon emissions.

And you'd probably believe he's walking on water.

So anyone attacking the theories of climate change from a religious perspective may be missing the point. They may also be attacking the very idea that the universe is controlled by theories that humans can divine, and that humans are capable of influencing any part of the divine universe. They may also be doing this from the pulpit, in positions of power over their communities.

People coming from a legalistic perspective may think that there are two sides in the case, that industrial civilisation is in the dock, and somebody has to find a shadow of doubt in the science. If someone was up on murder charges, and we were deciding whether to send them to the electric chair, then it may be reasonable to expect us to be 100% sure. This is not the case here, and many views of climate change predict that death penalties are already being handed out as people in power refuse to accept it is happening, and use that as an excuse to do nothing about our carbon emissions. The reality with climate science is that nobody is 100% sure that climate change is happening and is manmade, but they are very close to 100% sure, and there are no other theories that match the observed facts. 

Exactly the same applies to smoking causing cancer, or driving without a seat belt causing road death. And this leads nicely to another group of climate deniers who would also argue that we should do nothing about smoking or seat belts either. They don't want governments to legislate. They are not necessarily against the science, and may not like smoking, and may put seat belts on when they drive, but they have an ideological objection to governments telling people what to do. One way to stop the government legislating is to attack the climate science. 

So we have religious motivations for denying climate change, and political motivations from extreme libertarians. The legal profession is well equipped to deny climate science, but as a profession they usually do not act unless they are being paid. 

I wonder where the money is coming from? 

Notes and Further Reading

The US Environment Protection Agency still has some great scientific information on climate change. 

Verbal Warming: Labels in the Climate Debate. New York Times: 17th February, 2015

The Pope has called for action on climate change, which has been ignored by many. Protestants may have considered this to be a papist plot, and catholics on the right may have ignored this in favour of the rhetoric of their political allies. Guardian 24th October, 2016

Leaders of Islam, perhaps a much greener religion than Christianity, have produced a statement calling for action on climate change: Islamic Climate Declaration dot org

Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway

(By the way, the second photo was a result of lucky timing on the shutter, and photoshopping out the diving board.)

Playing around with the facts: Oil addiction

I found An America First Energy Plan on the new White House website and wondered what it would look like if they were talking about addictive drugs:

An America First Drugs Plan

Drugs are an essential part of American life and a staple of the world economy. The Trump Administration is committed to drug policies that lower costs for hardworking Americans and maximize the use of American resources, freeing us from dependence on foreign drugs.

For too long, we've been held back by burdensome regulations on our drug industry. President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule. Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.

Sound drug policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic drug reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the crack cocaine and crystal meth revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped grass and meth reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own. We will use the revenues from drug production to rebuild our roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure. Less expensive drugs will be a big boost to American agriculture, as well.

The Trump Administration is also committed to clean heroin technology, and to reviving America's heroin industry, which has been hurting for too long.

In addition to being good for our economy, boosting domestic drug production is in America's national security interest. President Trump is committed to achieving drug independence from the Mexican cartels and any nations hostile to our interests. At the same time, we will work with our South American allies to develop a positive drug relationship as part of our anti-terrorism strategy.

Lastly, our need for drugs must go hand-in-hand with responsible stewardship of the environment. Protecting clean air and clean water, conserving our natural habitats, and preserving our natural reserves and resources will remain a high priority. President Trump will refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water.

A brighter future depends on drug policies that stimulate our economy, ensure our security, and protect our health. Under the Trump Administration's drug policies, that future can become a reality.

(I changed the following words: energy, coal, shale oil, natural gas, OPEC. Can you spot them?

Do they know what they are talking about? Questions to ask your architect

Are you looking for someone to build a low energy house? Are you worried that they don't know what they are talking about. You probably should be! Here are some questions you can ask to find out. Check their answers with the handy key below, and find out whether you're in safe hands, or whether you should think twice about letting them build a kennel for your pet husky. 

1. I'm interested in Passive House. Can you build one?

a) I can build anything! 

b) Oh yes, passive solar. That's when you just use energy from the sun to heat the house.

c) I've heard of Passive House, but I'm not exactly sure what you need. I'll find out.

d) Yes, I'd really like to build a Passive House.

2. We're thinking about the layout of the house and wondering where to put the bathroom.

a) Oh, you can put it anywhere.

b) It should be on the South side of the house so the sun will get in through the windows and keep it warm.

c) It should be on the North side of the house because it'll be warm anyway and doesn't need south-facing windows.

d) The important thing is to keep hot water pipes as short as possible. You should try to keep the bathroom, kitchen and washing machine close to each other or in the room immediately above or below, and have the hot water source near. 

German scam!

3. These high performance windows seem really expensive, are they worth it? 

a) No, they're a German scam.

b) Yes [aside] I'm being paid by percentage.

c) No, you can just add more insulation in the walls.

d) I know they are expensive, but yes, they usually are worth it for the lower levels of heat loss and higher levels of comfort, unless you want to live in a cave!

4. For the ventilation system, which do you think is better, heat recovery ventilation or energy recovery ventilation? Heat recovery ventilation transfers the heat of outgoing air into the incoming air, while energy recovery ventilation also transfers the humidity.

a) Ventilation? What do you want that for? If you want fresh air, you can just open a window.

b) The best ones are made by the company we always use.

c) People here usually have energy recovery.

d) That's a good question. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. 

Yes, inside

5. I see a lot of houses around here with the hot water tank outside. Wouldn't it be better to put it inside? 

a) Boiler inside? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. That's a good one!

b) We always put the boiler outside. There's no space inside, and it will make the house too hot in the summer.

c) That's an interesting idea. Those things do lose a lot of heat, and it gets pretty cold here in the winter.

d) Yes, I know. I think that's because people are still following building practices from before the invention of air conditioning and insulation and hark back to a time when people didn't live long enough to die of cold in poorly-built houses. 

6. How much more expensive will it be to make a low energy house?

a) It'll be really expensive. We make really good houses already and there's no point in spending more money on this nonsense. 

b) It won't make any difference to the cost.

c) I'm not sure, we'd have to work out what extra time and materials are involved, then calculate the extra price. 

d) It'll probably put between 5 and 20 percent on your budget. Keeping costs down is a big challenge which the building trade really needs to work on. But the extra costs will pay for themselves within a few years in lower heating costs, and you'll have a more comfortable, healthier house that should last longer, so it's a price well worth paying. 

Answer key: 

Mostly a): Keep looking! The building trade is well known for its conservatism and you seem to have found a perfect example.

Mostly b): He (probably a he) doesn't really know what he's talking about, and probably doesn't realise. Or perhaps he assumes you know nothing, and is eagerly waiting to separate you and your money.

Mostly c): They don't have a lot of experience with low-energy building, but sound willing to find out and may be a good person to work with.

Mostly d): This sounds like a great person to build a low energy house. 

Lesson 11, Part II: Cultural Differences

I started off talking about my original goal, which was to build a house that would produce rather than consume energy. This meant a low energy house with some potential for electricity generation. It meant insulation, shading in the summer, and solar gain in the winter.

The fact that I was from the UK also meant that I had to deal with, or come to terms with, difference in building culture. In the UK people like old houses while in Japan they like new houses. So in the UK if they want a new house they sell up and move, while in Japan they knock down and rebuild. This comes down to a fundamental difference: in the UK the value is in the buildings, so houses are capital, while in Japan the value is in the land so the houses are consumable.

"Were you born in a barn?" - untranslatable and now largely obsolete expression

In the UK central heating is pretty much standard, while in Japan it is a recent luxury. Boilers are inside in the UK, where their lost heat will contribute to the house's heating. In Japan they are usually outside where they will take up no floor space. Insulation has recently been used more in Japan, while it is compulsory and often financially supported in the UK. I even heard a story of somewhere they had been giving grants for people to insulate their lofts, but they found some people weren't taking them up because they had so much junk up there that they didn't have time or energy to go up and clear out. So they started paying people to clear up their lofts.

There are other differences in design and construction. Stone and brick are the traditional building materials in the UK while wood is used in Japan. Design seems to start with the whole building in the UK while in Japan it often seems that rooms are being assembled into a house. Building standards are strict in the UK and more lax in Japan, except in the area of earthquakes, which are frequent in Japan, but unusual in the UK.

The climate is quite different with hot humid summers and cold dry winters in Japan, but cooler drier summers in the UK and milder damper winters. Of course, in both places the humidity remains between 0% and 100%, and the same laws of science apply. Also similar in the two countries is the floor area per person—around 35 square metres—in spite of Japan's reputation for rabbit hutches and the image of UK stately homes. The heating load over the year is similar, at least between Matsumoto and Manchester. Okinawa is much warmer than anywhere in the UK and Hokkaido much colder, and London needs more heating than Tokyo so the climate at the median population is warmer in Japan.

I think in both countries people want as much floor space as possible for as little budget. They want to be warm in winter and cool in summer. Nobody wants any condensation, ever. Everyone wants low running costs and a long building life. I suspect in both countries people get exasperated by architects and the biggest culture difference is probably between those who build houses and those who pay for them and then live in them.

I went through my list of alarming expressions.

風通しはいい kaze tohshi wa ii

translation: The wind goes through it nicely.

This phrase is beloved of building marketers, and rolls off the tongues of architects as if it is the redeeming feature of any respectable house. But getting a good through draft is not going to do much good if it's 35 degrees outside. Or if it's minus 10. Or if it's not windy. And I may not want the wind blowing in during hay fever season when the air is filled with pollen from the thousands of trees covering the mountains near by. At some times of year, a through draft may be nice, but those are the times of year when living in a tent is pleasant, and you don't really need a house.

季節感が有る kisetsu kan ga aru

translation: You get a good sense of the seasons.

This sounds to me like an excuse for it being hot in the house when it's hot outside, or cold when it's cold outside. Like you need your house to remind you of this. In fact I think the job of a house is precisely the opposite, and the environment inside should be within that rather narrow range of comfort that the our tropical origins defined for us. What are you going to do next, make a house that leaks water on our heads when it's raining? If I want to know what season it is, I'll look out of the window, thank you very much.

我慢してください gaman shite kudasai
translation: Just put up with it. 

This is the twenty first century. We've had permanent research bases in Antartica since 1903, and the international space station has been manned since 1998. It shouldn't be so difficult to make a house here that will put up with me. 

日本は… nihon wa
translation: Japan is... or Japan has... or Japan does...

Whatever Japan is, has or does, this usually sounds like either racism or jingoism, thinly veiled and often subconscious. It is often some "tradition" that was in fact a temporary measure brought out during some war, or imposed under occupation afterwards. 

There's a quote from Billy Connolly, "there's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes."

I have a modification: there's no such thing as a bad climate, just the wrong building.

In the midst of this battle of ideals I came across the Passivhaus standard, and it made my goal possible.

See part III.

Early adopters

You may already be familiar with Bernal's ladder, which refers to the way new ideas are received. According to the twentieth century crystallographer, as reported in Nigel Calder's Magic Universe: A Grand Tour of Modern Science, each new idea goes through four stages. First, it can't be right. Then, it might be right but it's not important. Next, it might be important but it's not original. Finally it is what people have thought all along.

At a slight tangent to this, here is a look at the people who adopt a new technology. We are familiar with labels such as "early adopter" and "late adopter". Here are the kinds of people who may adopt a technology, with a tentative order:

• Nutters
• Idealists
• People who can do maths
• Big businesses
• The majority of the population
• Stubborn reactionaries

The first people to use technology are the mad scientists. For example Alexander Graham Bell made the first phone call and Albert Hofmann took the first dose of LSD. Hot on their tails you get people who have irrational and idealistic reasons for using technology. 

Sooner or later, if an idea is to succeed, it will be for economic reasons. Edison's bulbs took over from candles because they produced more light and less incendiary damage per unit of cost. Generators and electric wiring cost more than chandeliers and ladders, but in the longer term candles cost a lot more than coal. People who are good at mathematics would realise this sooner than others. Some people are not good at mathematics, and many more believe they are not good at mathematics. Initially this was because most people could not go to school and did not have the opportunity to study maths. More recently it is because maths is used in schools to discriminate between different students, and a majority are persuaded that they are no good at the subject so that education systems can devote their limited resources to a smaller group. 

In addition, political biases can influence mathematical ability, as reported here. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." There may be two competing mathematical calculations; if the first one is somebody else's money, the one in your pay packet will probably take precedence.

Big businesses often have few people who can do mathematics. Promotion to positions of power more likely depends on interpersonal skills and verbal skills. But once the mathematicians have won their case over the politicians who are in charge, these businesses will take advantage of new technology. Once they have done this, and their own media activities kick in, the masses will adopt the technology. They may have not choice. Whether or not people have adopted LEDs for their homes, they will likely have them in their fridges and cars if they have bought a recent model.

Finally all that are left are the stubborn reactionaries.

What if we were talking about cocaine, rather than coal?

Australian prime minister Malcolm seems-like-Jesus-after-the-last-guy Turnbull has just decided to keep shipping coal, and ignore suggestions to stop digging any new mines. (World's largest coal exporter) Australia takes over 400 million tonnes of coal out of the ground each year, exporting over 300 billion tonnes and earning AS$37 billion last year.  

Let's pretend this was the president of Columbia talking about cocaine and re-analyse his arguments. 

You may think it's flippant to compare coal to cocaine but there are a few important similarities. First, they are both addictive. Coal creates dependencies. Once you build those power stations, you need to feed the habit. You can try putting other stuff in there instead, but it just doesn't give the same kick. Switch it off, and all those connections down stream will hit serious lows, and you'll get cravings and yearnings. Actually this is sounding more like heroin. 

Second, coal, like cocaine, will increase your productivity. It will give you extra power.

Third, coal, like cocaine, is a highly profitable item that can only be produced in certain parts of the world.

So let's translate a few of Turnbull's arguments and see how they sound. Words with an asterisk have been change.

***

"If *Columbia stopped exporting *cocaine, the countries to which we export it would buy it from somewhere else ... there is absolutely quite a lot of *cocaine around ... so if *Columbia were to stop all of its *cocaine exports it would not reduce *drug use one iota. In fact, arguably it would increase ... because our *cocaine, by and large, is cleaner than the *cocaine in many other countries."

He points out: "*Cocaine is a very important part...the largest single part of the global *drug mix and likely to remain that way for a very long time. "

He also uses the moral argument, which basically goes along the lines that we have been using *cocaine, it has helped us get where we are, so it would be unfair to deprive the rest of the world. As his predecessor said, *cocaine is "good for humanity".

"You have to remember that *drug poverty is one of the big limits on global development in terms of achieving all of the development goals, alleviating hunger and promoting prosperity right around the world – *drugs are an absolute critical ingredient. So *cocaine will play a big part in that."

He goes on that it's "important to take the ideology out - just approach it in a very clear-eyed, cool-headed, rational way".

*Farmers, *cartel bosses and other people involved in the *cocaine industry are applauding his decision.

Reading what he says, I don't think Turnbull even really believes this. He's just being pressured by people in the right wing of his party, and the billions of dollars income from exports. 

He'd much rather see people just surviving on sunlight. And I'm sure people in Australia would be able to help show them how to do that!

***

Read more
in the Guardian

Sydney Morning Herald 

Australian financial review

Notes:

Cocaine is not actually the same as coal in a couple of crucial ways:

1. Cocaine comes from plants, and is therefore a renewable source. Exporting a lump of cocaine this year does not stop you from exporting it next year.

2. Using cocaine has impacts on the users, but these are mostly confined to the user, and perhaps those in the immediate vicinity. As well as producing local pollution, coal leads to global warming, so has global consequences. You can safely export cocaine, and if you're not doing any of it yourself, there will be few ill effects. Coal, on the other hand, will affect your climate, wherever in the world it is burnt, and if you export it, people will burn it. I mean, they're not using it for rock gardens, are they!
3. It's difficult to get precise figures, but Columbia probably earns around US$4 billion from cocaine exports. Around a tenth of what Australia gets for coal. Somewhere around 200 tonnes is exported, although it's very difficult to know how much, because it seems to fall off the boat. This is less than a millionth of Australia's coal exports. Something the Australian government should seriously consider. Or start exporting whatever drugs they're taking!

It's all about power

Someone just drew my attention to a ridiculous blog post, suggesting  that cutting support for solar power may be in some way rational. Then I realised that I'd written the blog post. Evidently too hastily.

My correspondent had been inundated with phone calls from companies selling solar panels. I can believe this since during the short week while I was in the UK visiting friends and family, even I got phone calls from companies selling solar panels. 

My correspondent "finally relented and let the most sensible-sounding of the bunch come and do a free survey. He took measurements, fed figures into his laptop and shook his head sadly - 'it wouldn't be worth it', he said, apologised for taking my time, and left. His visit turned out to be worth it though, as it meant I could tell subsequent cold callers that I'd had a survey and it wouldn't be worth it."

I could have told him it wouldn't be worth it: he lives in a terrace running north-south, so the roofs are pointing East or West. You would think they could work this out before the cold-calls and sending out the surveyor. The fact that they can't suggests to me that they are assuming that every house is suitable for more panels and the least sensible of the bunch may have told him some. Or that cold-calling is incredibly cheap and being outsourced to sweat shops of low-paid workers, so thirty phone call are cheaper than one look at a map with a compass.  

Onto the more important question of why, oh why, the Tories are cutting money to solar.

I look at the numbers and see that right now a nuclear power station will produce more Watts to the pound than a solar panel will. It's certainly changing and there will a point when electricity from the solar panel will be cheaper. At some point it may even be worth putting them on roofs of terraces facing East and West, high up in the northern hemisphere. We will only get to this point if panels continue to be produced, economies of scale are realised, and techniques are made more efficient, both in production and installation. So we do need to support solar if we want a low-carbon, non nuclear future. 

This may be a very different way to how the government is looking at it. They have a choice between continuing on the solar road, or promising to pay a few billion pounds to one or two large companies, linked to the government of what will probably be the largest and most powerful economy over the next hundred years. Also a military force that The solar road will also end up with a lot of money going to China, but to several smaller companies, which are not always lucrative long term, (see bankruptcy of Suntech). 

As far as global warming is concerned, nuclear and solar are both low carbon. Nuclear is arguably lower. 

As far as cost is concerned nuclear and solar both have high initial cost and relatively low running costs. Arguably nuclear is cheaper. 

As for who pays, in both cases these costs are going to go on electricity bills. 

Who profits? Locally a nuclear power plant will create relatively fewer jobs for a relatively small number of companies, some of these jobs will be highly skilled. Solar power will create relatively more jobs for a much larger number of companies, many self employed and probably fewer highly skilled. 

In terms of big business, profits for solar will go to a larger number of companies, many in China. Profits for the nuclear plant will go to China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN), China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), and Electricite de France (EDF).

As far as supporting nuclear technology, which also keeps us in that elite club of countries with weapons of mass destruction, solar panels are completely rubbish. 

Historical aside

On 6th August, 1945, the first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hitoshima by the US and Britain. 

On 8th August, 1945, the London Charter (AKA Nuremburg charter) was signed, setting out how war-crimes would be punished. 

On 9th August, 1945, the very next day, another nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Doesn't history love irony!

Death squads, chemical weapons, biological weapons: all war crimes. Nuclear weapons? No comment.

Maybe this has got nothing to do with electricity generation. Maybe nuclear power has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. They certainly seemed to be connected when it was North Korea and Iran. 

Isn't this a pretty power station! Would you like to live underneath it? I'm much happier living underneath a solar power station. 

It's in Somerset. Quite a long way from London. People used to think Battersea was a long way from London.

More biased information from Greenpeace available here.

More biased information from the Times available here.

Guardian: Solar power in crisis

An elaborate article on solar in the Guardian from 20th October here:

Solar power in crisis: 'My panels generate enough power for two loads of washing'

A somewhat misleading title: how is panels generating enough power for two loads of washing a crisis?

The article is heavy on anecdotal details of consumers, suppliers and crystal-ball gazers. It even gives a few column inches to batteries, which are a clear challenge for an energy infrastructure based increasingly on variable supply. But it is somewhat lacking in deeper analysis of the actual topic in the title. It just seems to go on: Why, oh why, is the government trying to strangle this business?

Someone in the comments has done the relatively straightforward sums. Someone is paying four grand for your panels. There are a million houses out there with panels so far. That's costing people in Britain 4 billion pounds. Another 6 million houses and it's the same cost as the proposed new power station you call the most extensive object on earth.

The comments also mention that most of this subsidy is going towards Chinese businesses that are making the panels. Not that I have any objection to UK electricity buyers subsidising our comrades, although objections could reasonably be made.

This seems an interesting test case for the system of free market enterprise. What is happening is that the government is giving away bits of money, some in the form of grants, and some in drip-feed cash into the future.

There has been a mad rush for grants and an explosion of entrepreneurs setting out to install the panels. Some no doubt have done a fine job. Others sell panels for roofs that are not well suited to solar power, some delivering less than optimal installations.

I'm sure there are a lot of roofs that should have several more panels than were installed, and some that should not have any.

And if the government is going to pull the plug on subsidies, the solar installation industry will shrink. It's still going to make sense to some people to add panels without any subsidy, but for most people a financial incentive is needed to make the long-term investment for long-term savings.
It's a bit of a gold rush, so a lot of the people in the industry have only just arrived, and will head straight for the next gold-rush. The fly-by-night operations will vanish into the sunset, generating electricity in neither of those metaphors.

It would be good to see more rational subsidies, looking at where energy is used and where the best yields will come from. Couldn't they cap the amount of solar subsidies, and award them to the most worthy causes? For example prioritising arrays on south-facing terraces would provide energy where there are people. Installing panels in isolated areas may be a good way of reducing transmission power, but will really only be effective if local energy usage is synced with energy generation, and if there is some local storage. Otherwise there are going to be line losses both as energy is sent there in times of need and as it is sent back when generation is high.

If this is our energy infrastructure, then it needs some kind of long-term plan. The roads and railways were not built by letting people put down their own hard core or sleepers and rails and then giving them a few pennies each time somebody went past over the next ten years.

They don't half write some nonsense about solar

This was going to be titled: "Solar has become the most efficient way to generate electricity"

Solar has now taken over as the most efficient way of generating power.

This happened now. Right now. At the precise second you read this sentence. Or this one. Or at the time I wrote it. Or at least sometime this week. Or this year. Or maybe next year.

Of course you can't really give a precise time, any more than you can decide the precise point where the economy changes from bust to boom, or exactly which sip of drink was too much the day before a hangover.

Also, there is no single way to determine whether solar is more efficient than other ways of generating power. If you look at the cost of a power plant per unit of energy coming out of it, then solar is certainly a lot more expensive than options such as coal or uranium. However, if you look at the cost of the energy at the point of use--for example your house--then solar is often cheaper, since the electricity is there where you need it, and you don't have to pay for the line costs. As well as the availability of sunlight, this depends on the cost of electricity, the cost of panels, and any subsidies, which are all local factors. And you probably should not include subsidies if you want to really know whether solar is cheaper, but then you should probably adjust for the subsidies that coal, oil, gas and uranium get.

And even though solar in many places is cheaper where you need it, it may not be there when you need it, since solar panels are less efficient if it's cloudy, and even less efficient if it's dark.
The Japan Renewable Energy Foundation seems to be quite positive about solar. Although they may be as biased as people on the other side whose heads are stuck in oil barrels.

Reuters has an article from June 25th with the ambiguous title "Japan to stop inefficient coal-fired power plants being built" which in fact is about Japan's plans to build efficient coal-fired power stations.

There seems to be a lot of confusion over solar in the press, especially in the Japan Times. I think the wind is changing right now, so the weathercocks are all spinning aimlessly and pointing in different directions.

According to Reneweconomy.com.au, Deutsche Bank claims there will be grid parity by 2017 in 80% of world markets. Wikipedia has a good page on grid parity, which mentions Matsumoto as an example, and shows that is is already here. This backs up the evidence I have on my electricity bills.

Meanwhile global coal production has been increasing at least since James Watt put the first steam engine at the top of a coal mine to pump water out, and since Fukushima Japan was helping this trend, so it's distinctly possible there are big contracts for importing coal, with big backhanders for Abe and his mates. Business as usual, or is it? Another factoid I heard recently was that coal uses more land than solar for generating electricity. 

A dead link

Chronically aware of my lack of posts in the first half of 2015, I've been thinking about adding links to other interesting websites, in the interest of at least posting something.

Instead of that, here is a link that you may not want to visit. It pretends to recommend ideas for recycling and repurposing, and there are one or two interesting ideas, but a lot of them are fairly ridiculous. Some ideas are using things that are not really rubbish. For example they find various uses for bulldog clips. I have never seen cause for throwing bulldog clips away, since they have several uses. The only situation you'd want to throw one away is if it was broken or had a part missing, but in all the ideas here, they need to work properly. 

Some of these don't look like you would need or want them. Would you really want an old bicycle as a basin stand? 

One of them I have tried and tested: producing guitar picks from old credit cards. In the picture, they seem to use a very fancy pick cutter, which I imagine would cost a few hundred times more than a pick. I used a pair of scissors. 

The site calls this "upcycling", which wikipedia defines as "the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value."

http://twistedsifter.com/2012/06/creative-ways-to-repurpose-reuse-and-upcycle-old-things/

A lot of the ideas may be more usefully called "downcycling", since they are converting perfectly good materials and useful products into uses for which they may be less suited, and which will use more envrionmental resources.

Put your ear to a Shell and what do you hear?

Just been reading a speech by Ben van Beurden calling for the oil industry to be less aloof and more assertive. Not sure whether to become more complacent about this, or switch my view of the oil industry from exasperation to fear. I couldn't make it to the actual speech as it was for the International Petroleum Week dinner for the Energy Institute and they didn't invite me. 

The general tone seems to be one of business as usual: let's keep meeting increasing demand for oil and let's keep searching for more oil. There are suggestions about capturing carbon from power stations, apparently removing up to 90% CO2 with CCS technology, and switching from coal to gas. If I can compare this with the tobacco industry, this is a bit like adding filters and switching to low-tar. 

As Upton Sinclair said, it's impossible to make somebody believe something if his salary depends upon him not believing it. We're not likely to get the oil industry suggesting we use less oil any more than we could expect the tobacco industry to encourage people to give up smoking.

A couple of specific things he talks about grated a little. One was the idea of them delivering energy to the poor of the world, in the interest of human rights. Of course this makes complete sense if you're in the fossil fuel industry. But if you are living in a village with no electricity, would you prefer solar panels, windmills, or generators and a long term commitment to buy oil for them? 

He also said "provoking a sudden death of fossil fuels isn’t a plausible plan."

The idea of the death of fossil fuels is really interesting. For a start they're already dead. They're fossils, right? And second, aren't they less dead left in the ground than taken out and burnt?

"In the meantime, however, the world’s energy needs will underpin the use of fossil fuels for decades to come. "

I love the way the grammar of this statement seems to put using fossil fuels as the priority, and world energy needs as something that help this along.

Another interesting piece of information here: "production from oil fields typically declines at a rate of at least 5% a year." No suggestion that they should be reducing their output by 5% a year so that these oil fields will last for ever.

At the same time, Shell is investing and researching heavily into renewables, for example using oil rig technology to build platforms for offshore windfarms. 

They are still a few billion years behind on solar energy though, relying on sunshine from the paleozoic period.

Starting to feel slightly warm in the White House

Barack Obama arrived on the Normandy beeches last week, a few days after pushing through legislation that could clean up US energy. The White house has so far been slow to realise we are in a green house, but are the Americans going to rush in and save the day, just as they did back in 1944?

There is certainly going to be a fight. The President of the most powerful country in the world has some executive powers, as does the Environmental Protection Agency, formed by unsung hero Richard Nixon. So their plan doesn't have to go through the republican-led democratic chambers, but it may have to get past an army of lawyers. 

This building still as yet unaffected by climate change - must be well insulated. at least from science

The more interesting part of the political environment where this is playing out comes in the curious bedfellows of the right: Christian fundamentalists and oil barons. 

Politics is very difficult to understand, even when it's local, but the way it often works in big parties is that you get fringes that hold the balance of power. With the Republicans, the religious right hold a lot of votes. The oil industry hold a lot of the money.

I should also mention the tobacco industry.

For several years, tobacco was fighting to save it's reputation from allegations that it caused cancer. The strategy of the industry was two-fold. First, support scientific studies that disprove the links between smoking and cancer, also known as junk science. And second, attack the scientific basis that means it is possible to prove something random and probablistic like cancer comes from smoking. 

This same tactic became very useful in the global warming "debate". Money has been spent so effectively debunking the science behind climate change, that some people actually believe climate change itself is a conspiracy. They believe that secret organisations are funding the research to topple the western economies.

Again, there is a strong anti-science element to this. To some extent this comes down to epistemology. In hard sciences, like physics and chemistry, we can usually set up experiments that will pretty much prove or disprove our theories. We can't do this with the climate. There's no way to go back and stop the industrial revolution to see if that would make a cooler planet. We can certainly carry on experimenting by burning fossil fuels, but we don't have a control group, so there is nothing to compare our results against. 

But what does this have to do with religion? Why on earth would the religious right be jumping into bed with oil company executives? Doesn't the bible warn us of the rich and powerful? Isn't there something just un-christian about making money by selling poison to people? And wasn't the eleventh commandment, thou shalt not pollute they neighbour's groundwater supply?

The only possible link I can find is connected with this anti-science. Similar to the science of climate change, biology and geology have some elements that cannot simply be proved by experiments in the lab. For example it's impossible to go back in time, from generation to generation, to see whether evolution really did happen, and whether we have common ancestors among the apes, and going further back still throughout all life on earth.

There has certainly been a backlash against evolution among the religious fundamentalists, and I don't think this is a recent thing. At the Scopes Monkey Trial back in 1925 the State of Tennessee found John Scopes guilty of teaching evolution and fined him $100. In fact it probably goes back to the time of Darwin himself, when religious enclaves across the United States were shielded from the kind of debate that took place in more secular areas, and could see the theory of evolution for what it is: an affront to the very foundation of Christian belief. If only America had been colonised before Galileo, there may still be swathes of North America where people believe the earth revolves around the sun.

So basically this is how it works:

God hates science;

The oil industry hates science (except when they need it to get the oil out of the ground);

So the oil industry loves God (your enemy's enemy is your friend). 

I may, of course, be completely missing the point. 

Also, watch out Barack, what does that say on your badge? In God we trust?

Carpets and air conditioners

Spent Saturday morning cleaning the room for the kids' after-school club. Part of this annual ritual is replacing the carpet. Last year we took the old carpet up to reveal the tatami mats below. I wasn't sure what was going to happen to this carpet, wondering perhaps if it was going to be beaten and then put back on the floor. A new one appeared and the old one was taken away. It turns out this happens every year.

Carpets are not that expensive, but they're certainly not free. Tatami mats are expensive, so it may make financial sense to protect them.

It's difficult to make sense of it in terms of ecological accounting and oil economics. Tatami is a low-carbon agricultural product that is completely recyclable. It is basically woven straw. Traditionally when they are worn out, they are taken out into the fields where they will draw insects away from crops, or they could be left on soil before planting to keep the weeds down.

Anyway, they present a part of a cycle that leaves a light tyre-print on the planet.

Carpets, on the other hand, are usually an amalgamation of materials that are far less friendly. Many are synthetic, with acrylic fibres glued onto a plastic backing. The fibres are all short and not much use for recycling into other textiles, even if they could be separated from the rest of the materials.

"Where are we going to throw this away?" somebody asked. Good question! Probably not into recyclables.

And don't even let me get on to the air conditioner.