Radderz’ Randomness

History of BST

In 1916, During world war I, the official dates for British Summer Time were set by parliament. BST offered the benefit of an extra hour of sunlight during the evening, saving valuable energy through the reduction of demand in electric lighting - among other benefits too.

Normally, BST is +1 hour to GMT through the summer months within the UK. During the second world war however, BDST (British Double Summer Time) existed, which is +2 hours. This put us in line with central Europe, but again had benefits of saving energy while resources were low.

Plan to Change BST

If we can introduce BDST for the war, surely we could do exactly the same to reduce our carbon emissions? In fact, we could actually make a version of BST to be +3-4 GMT (Call it, Energy Saving British Summer Time)

In effect, a change to this degree would mean we would wake up just after dawn (8am ESBST will be 4am GMT), go to work 9-5 (5am-1pm GMT), and spend the evening with a warm sunlight, with it finally setting around midnight - 1am (depending the time of summer).

Social Factors

If we think about it, having the evening with sunlight will reduce certain types of crime, and bring a feeling of living in a safer atmosphere during the what would have been hours of darkness. When people start to leave clubs for example, they will leave during dusk rather then when it is completely dark. ‘Dark streets’ will feel lighter and safer during the evening, and people’s attitudes to them will change.

It will also aid cases of depression, having visible sunlight all day long. It will certainly lighten up people’s attitudes; when they come home from work, and after eating, they can spend more time outside, avoiding indoor activities such as mindless TV or computer usage. In the same vain, it could help the economy, as people in the evening would be more inclined to spend their time out and about. Social events/activities will increase, evening concerts/arts will be more appealing. All in all, this will be a very positive thing.

Energy Savings

By moving the clocks forward one hour during the summer periods, everyone throughout the country uses one hour less electricity for powering lights per day. Lets work out a rough estimate on how much energy we will save on lighting alone:

(Note that this estimate could be slightly on the high side, but we’re not going to take into account the vast amount of power lost through transmission lines)

We know from the 2001 census that there are 21,660,000 occupied residential households.

Lets estimate that the average household uses 3 60watt light bulbs for 3 hours a day. This will equal 0.54kwh per day, or 113.4kWh for the 7 months (210 days).

Now, if we multiply this by the number of households, we get 2,456,244MWh, which will be the equivalent of removing an evil Coal or gas power plant?

This is only lighting. If people start watching less TV in the evenings, there will be additional savings from this, possibly of the equivelent nature.

Enviromental Enviromental, Silly Conventions

How much carbon do you pollute in a year? 10-20 Tons? How much of this has been justified by being produced from the atmosphere directly, rather then from using carbon stores? Unsure what this means? Think saving the environment by reducing CO2 pollution means giving up power, turning off your lights when not in use, walking instead of driving? No, it’s about carbon justification, enabling you to still do all these things without having to give anything up. It’s about taking what you need out before using it, saving up enough carbon before you spend it. (A bit like making savings for something instead of borrowing money that you never repay, except it’s so much harder to repay the damage in nature)

These documents are aimed at informing people how to become completely self dependent and responsible for their own carbon usage in such a way to aim for a net 0 Tons increase of Carbon into the atmosphere, and hopeful in the long term plan for a negative gain and reverse some of the global warming damage already occurred by replacing some of the carbon storage.

What is Net Carbon Usage?

The natural carbon cycle works a bit like this; Plants/Trees grow by taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and separating the carbon atoms from the oxygen atoms to produce sugar and realise oxygen. It gets the energy to do this via the sun. Animals then come along and eat the carbon now in the vegetation, and use the oxygen in the air to realise the power that the plants stored in the first place, thus realising carbon dioxide CO2. It’s a complete cycle with a net pollution of zero, meaning so long as we can eat, we are not realising more CO2 into the atmosphere then what we had before we grew the food. In fact, we don’t use all of this energy – And what about the food we don’t eat. Well, that biodegrades, which realises CO2, and goodness into the soil. Sooner or later it will end up back in the atmosphere. A very small amount however may go into carbon storage, such as an oil reserve, coal stems, natural gas pockets etc.

Over unimaginable years, the earth’s carbon levels in the atmosphere have stabilised. There was an awful lot of carbon in the early days, perhaps the cause of ice ages. Now that we have a nice stable amount of carbon in the atmosphere, it seems that using the carbon stores and releasing them into the atmosphere is having a dramatic effect on the system. We are in effect spending the carbon that has been stored in order to create our stable environment in return for energy; like foreign debts without the ability to ever repay them. When extra carbon is released into the atmosphere, the consequences are the effect of a blanket over the earth, hence the greenhouse effect and global warming.

The average person in the world is releasing a net 15 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Our atmosphere is used to an equilibrium of 0 tons for every living thing. This is a shocking amount, especially as we have the capability now to reduce this amount to a near zero net, with relative ease. The more people that start to do this, the quicker technology will evolve in this direction, creating a standard for everyone.

Hard work? Not really, you just have to be aware of how these things work, and how much things cost to the environment. If it’s part of a cycle, then there is no cost involved. For example if you burn a tree as fuel, the carbon has already been gathered by the tree, and now is simply being released back into the atmosphere to release the energy stored within, resulting in a net zero.

Reversing Global Warming

Growing more trees won’t simply solve this problem. The carbon from these trees need to go into storage, and replaced with new trees. A forest only reduces carbon from the atmosphere while it is still young and growing. As it becomes an old forest, trees die and rot, releasing carbon back into the cycle, and new trees take their place in this cycle. It acts as carbon storage in it’s own right, but does not help replace the quality of the atmosphere once it has fully grown. To do this, the carbon needs to go into storage, ideally the trees will become coal over time, but we can’t really wait for this. By cutting the trees down, and using their wood for things, we are in effect storing the carbon for a purpose. Wooden buildings act as a temporary storage, so does wooden furniture/doors etc, but over time these will decay too, and in reality really don’t equate to much. There unfortunately seems no easy solution to naturally reduces these levels if we ever need to reverse the damage that has been caused, so maybe we should start paying a bit more responsibility to what we are doing in hope that this day will never come if we are able to slow the process quick enough.

Enviromental Enviromental