80 cyclists power family home - channel 1 right now!

Worrying about the total efficiency of the bicycle power station is missing the point. It was a stunt, designed to get people thinking. Energy efficiency can be a very dry topic, but somehow they made leaving the fridge door open into a moment of high drama.

Worrying about the total efficiency of the bicycle power station is missing the point. It was a stunt, designed to get people thinking. Energy efficiency can be a very dry topic, but somehow they made leaving the fridge door open into a moment of high drama.

indeed. Such a publicity stunt works in that it takes something that is invisible to the average person (electricity and gas) and turns the amount of invisible energy used into something you can see that works on a human or personable level.

I missed the show but will probably watch it when I get the opportunity. Yes, it is dry! But bicycle power stations aren't the way to go - wind turbines, wave power and reusing and reducing waste is what should be done.

Anyone going to The Wave tomorrow?

Now now we all love santa and hes a fat bloke would you burn him?

9 calories in each gram of fat - that should keep us toasty this winter!

On a serious note, the most worrying thing is that even if climate change isn't being accelerated by man or is a hoax like many people believe, then there's still the fact that oil will run out eventually. This can't be argued and can been seen as a seperate issue to climate change, but most people lump them together and blank it out of their minds as they don't see anything happening. I think the projected figure is around 2050? What are we going to do then when this happens - when the modern world derives most of its products from oil, and uses the energy from it to manufacture them!? We need alternative sources of energy and now, it's actually pretty scary.

Yes. http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c1/page_5.shtml

(personally, i find even the possibility of having already triggered enough positive feedbacks to make a major climate state change unavoidable scarier than the collapse of consumerism and a few gigadeaths. Especially seeing as how the sun is hotter than when things of similar magnitude happened in the deep past, so there are no guarantees that this one won't go all the way to Venus-like heat death.)

So frightening, let's just hope that the Copenhagen talks go to plan and we get actual substantial cuts in fossil fuel usage. This seems highly unlikely though.

Thanks for the link to that article moth, I'll give it a read when I'm a bit less tired!

Ha! Joseph, obviously the show wasn't about actually using pedal power. It was an illustration; a metaphor.
As for Copenhagen, if it all goes to plan, we're still fucked! Even if every country really does make the changes they are proposing
Many are giving far too many years to make such changes, and none of it will be enough.
The great point you made was that regardless of "climate change" we're running out of our current form of energy.
End of.
According to most rseearchers though none of the wind, solar, or water energy producers that have so far been invented will do the job either. Plus Nuclear is still too unstable.
Many of those who have gone down the rabbit hole of energy usage and followed the numbers believe that only Nuclear Fission (not the current Fusion) will do the job to keep up our current energy use.
But the science is under funded. South Korea is the current leader in advancing it.
Combine this with the fact that this is only covering "current usage and the population of the world is not only getting bigger but the consumption is expanding as countries develop.

What is needed is a huge halt on population increases, people not only need to stop replacement level breeding but actually reduce the population by not having kids or having only one per couple.
Then "developed countries" need to fully fund the developing worlds but only fund low energy building ("LED lights-only cities, etc) and introduce sanctions on countries who are developing in non-energy efficient ways. Basically tell less-developed cities "do as I say not as I do"m
Then the so-called "developed cities" need to slow down the energy crisis by building all that water, sun and wind stuff they like to use in sound bites, while also funding nuclear energy studies (again fission not fusion). These countries also have to enforce energy limits on all their citizens.
Next public transport needs to be the norm and there needs to be no such thing as a privately owned car. Solar/electric car shares could maybe be possible.
But above all, the number one thing all humans need to do immediately is stop eating meat. This is no longer a lifestyle choice. The current meat industry is more harmful as far as carbon emissions as our military or car industries. This would halt most of the destruction of the rainforests (which of course eat carbo dioxide) and will cancel out the destruction of grazing land and the transportation of meat products and animals.

If you want an easy answer to "what can I do to slow climate change?" It's become vegetarian.

I'm already vegan ;) :D

Went to The Wave today with my university, was great! But it's just a huge shift in the conscience of mass society which is necessary. For people to just realise the eventual causes of their actions.

surely it would be more efficient to just kill all the fatties and burn their fat corpses for fuel?

solves the food production problem as well. and probably house pricing. the kebab industry would be fucked, though (there's probably a cabal of kebab industry lobbyists loitering around Parliament already, poisoning the minds of our honest pollies).

Thanks Tim