Road salt from Peru

 

This has been an exceptionally cold winter for most of the British Isles. Britain is not very good at coping with heavy snowfalls; it does not have many snowploughs and very few vehicles have snow tyres. The traditional British response to snow is to grit the roads (or as many of them as can be gritted with inadequate equipment) with a mixture of salt and grit. This mixture works by lowering the freezing point of ice on the roads. A ten percent salt solution prevents water freezing until the temperature is less than -6 Celsius; if you double the salt content the water will not freeze until a temperature of -16 Celsius is reached, and this is usually enough to cope with the worst of British winters. If temperatures fall below -26 Celsius salt makes no difference and will not prevent ice forming.

Property is robbery

The various measures by which governments are cutting down on their spending without decreasing the taxes that they collect (and in most cases by increasing the taxes that they collect) are easily explained but the explanation is hard to swallow. Taxpayers are assured that previous governments have spent so much more than they have collected that it will be necessary to repay some of the borrowing that they have incurred in order to avoid economic disaster.

The rationale of bankers’ bonuses – is there one?

It is hard for me to understand the rationale of bankers receiving bonuses. Apparently they get the bonus because they have done a good job. On the face of this the rationale seems sound but when I think about it, it makes no sense to me.

January Morning.

It is a calm and warm Saturday in London and I should rest. I have no horse, there is no snow, no woods, but there are trees. I can hear birdsong from birds who sit on the leafless tree tops. Across London there is a high mist, and although I know that outside my cocoon there is noise and business, today is made for rest, just like the trees rest now. They wait for the earth’s season to bring more light, bright light before they burst into producing fresh leaves in Spring. Me, I shall rest, but only until tomorrow. I have complex promises to keep, and time will only make the keeping of my promises harder.

 

The benefits of the Deepwater Horizon leaks

In the United States a report blames BP, Transocean and Haliburton for the great environmental disaster that started in the Gulf of México in April 2010. Locally in Louisiana the people also blame the federal Government, whose duty was to regulate the activities of those who drill for oil, and whose regulation clearly failed. Regardless of where the blame lies, the environmental consequences that are specific to this Deepwater Horizon oil leak may not be known for many years.

The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow…

December 2010 was the coldest December that the United Kingdom’s Met Office records have recorded in the past one hundred years. The United Kingdom is position on the Western edge of a continental shelf and its uncertain weather is caused by its location being a place where different weather systems meet. For the most part warm and wet westerly winds prevail, but in December these winds were diverted by an area of high pressure from the North which brought snow to almost every part of the country. December was about a degree Celsius colder than the previous recorded December, which was in 1981.

What a lot of rubbish!

The most important public health initiatives have not been in the field of medicine, as important as discoveries like antibiotics have been, but have occurred in the areas which are far less technical; the provision of clean water and a good and efficient system of waste disposal. Sewers have brought immense public health benefits as have the regular collection of household rubbish.

The most common reason for condensing boiler breakdowns – loss of pressure

Probably the most common reason for a condensing boiler to fail to provide heat is due to loss of pressure. The heating circuit on most condensing boilers is a sealed circuit. It is usually pressurised to one bar. Most condensing boilers are designed to stop providing heat if the pressure in the sealed heating circuit drops below half a bar, so it is important to maintain the system pressure if you want to have heat.

When the party has to stop

Ultimately all financial crises are caused by greed. The rich want to become richer, and so they indulge in financial speculations that are aimed to increase their wealth for the minimum amount of work. The banks want to become richer, so they indulge in fractional lending, where they leverage their lending on the basis of what the market will lend to them, rather than on the deposits they have from customers. The poor want to become richer and demand services and money which has to be paid by the rich to some extent but by the people who are neither rich nor poor to a greater extent. Democracy is merely the least bad system of government and so the electorate votes for politicians who promise to spend money on them. The politicians spend money that they have not raised in taxes.

Economic prosperity depends upon environmental protection

The second day of the New Year is a good time to take stock of the old year. We celebrate the New Year arriving, but do we ever celebrate the old year that has passed? There has not been much to celebrate in the old year, as far as the environment is concerned.  Nations have been too distracted by economic problems to concentrate on the long term, and they regard the protection of our planet as a long term issue, rather than as an issue that must be addressed now.