France hasn't much coal. It has nuclear power stations and the expertise and manufacturing capacity to go with it. So it's keen on nuclear. Unfortunately it has a lot of nuclear waste as well. And a lot of decommissioning to do, and pay for. Hence Sarkozy being Brown's bestest friend. Even if there isn't any money to put up the new plant there's the English dumping grounds for contaminated waste - (and Scottish too if Brown finds a way to wrench environment control back from the Scottish Government). And the cost can be spread around at least as far as England, game to borrow lots of money to make a very few jobs.
So it was worth the kisses and the smiles but now the German Chancellor has put her foot down on the global warming, as well as the massive borrowing, scams. In the mass-circulation tabloid Bild Mrs Merkel said she will not approve any European Union climate rules "that endanger jobs or investments in Germany." Poland's joined in too. They're going with coal, and the French are providing the clean coal technology so President Sarkozy is not going to put the kibosh on that. Bye bye climate change agenda, going the same way as spending our way out of economic collapse.
At least there is lots of coal and some old miners who could teach the unemployed how to mine it in the United Kingdom.
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Opening our deep coal mines will be beyond the capacity of private resources I fear; they're flooded, there is no safe access, the ways and adits are collapsing. Until oil goes to $200 and stays there, it won't be worthwhile.
However opencast is another matter; lower grade coal, for sure, but cheap and quick to access. And if Putin turns off the gas, millions of homes like mine can still burn it ....
I love a real fire. Used to make the fire in the morning when I was a kid. And the flames are better than TV. Then the silent glow, with unpredicable shifts as the coals settle down. A meditation.
That is what the Poles (and the Germans) are thinking as well, R. Cheap, quick to access,lower grade but there are advances in technology that are not being invested in enough. The failure of the United States to participate in CO2 reduction programmes invalidates all the arguments for Europe to be putting such programmes as the priority.
There are enormous quantities of open cast mining coal accessible across the world, very cheaply, even if we decided not to mine our own coal; why do we hear only abut CO2 emissions and nuclear power rather than clean coal technical development?
S, that kind of fire needs the deep mine coal Raedwald has just said is inaccessible now. It's a coke boiler for you.
On one hand a little local financial difficulty, on the other the end of humans on earth. Aren't we losing sight of the ball, again?
People are buying wood burners like mad around here.
All very well until everyone does it.
Luckily our winters are milder, our houses better insulated and our clothes have better thermal properties.
My little family plays pass-the-cat as we watch Strictly Come Dancing.
In London I'm only allowed to burn 'smokeless coal' but wait until dusk to chuck a log on the fire - believe it or not, the evidence the council need for a prosecution under the Clean Air Act is derived from a graduated colour card held up to compare the shade of smoke coming from your chimney. They can only gather evidence during daylight hours.
We have a small wood fire burning on the kitchen fireplace all autumn, winter and early spring. The cats would spend all their time snoozing in one corner (big fireplace) and getting them out for a walk in the garden was worse than raking out the boiler.
It's surprising how much can be cooked over a few red embers on a bed of hot ash - toast, roast vegetables like peppers and aubergines, grilled meat, beans (that's why the pots are rounded underneath I found, they're buried in the ashes overnight while the beans cook very slowly). It's very neat too, no pans and the oil is added, fresh and unfried, afterwards. Can't do chips though.
The US may have failed to participate in CO2 [emission] reduction programs, but it has in fact reduced emissions - unlike all the posers in Europe who talk the talk but can't deliver anything.
And btw all, can we please note that Co2 emissions have been rising steadily all the time but since about 1998 there has been no warming at all and the current year has actually seen cooling.
Can we just get that into our heads?
This result means that the whole Anthropogenic Global Warming this is complete and utter nonsense.
It's a religion, devised to increase the power of its priesthood and make us all pay tribute to them. Don't fall for it.
12.44 I have the highest regard for what many states in the United States are doing. And considerably less for the green propaganda put out by some member states of the European Union. We are as one in doubting much of the 'scientific' data on climate change and its causes.
It is regrettable, infinitely regrettable that political and highly dubious agendas have been hitched on to our longstanding care and concern for the planet - like centuries old; think of the dismay expressed in Daniel Deronda for the ugliness wrought by coal mining, the sadness at the loss of silence in Keats, the revulsion at the grosser aspects of rapid urbanisation in too many novels (actually, writings), to mention.
The pretence that if awareness is not expressed in a pseudo scientific (or even genuinely scientific) mode it is not valid, is part of the political bullying engaged in by the climate change, global apparatchiks.
My point is that we have always cared for our surroundings, immediate and further afield, and that this greeniness is all another doubly destructive scam, in that there is and has always been cause for concern at how we alter our world.
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