Winter 2010 UK - Burn the oils and keep warm, but for how long?

Roll back to the year 1980. Had you been old enough, you would remember all the programmes telling us how advanced the year 2000 would be. From flying cars to ultra efficient homes, the year 2000 was to be a great technological leap from the good old 80's.

Step forward 10 years FURTHER, 2010.

Get the car moving. Buy some Diesel, it was drilled from under the ground, brought to your local service station in a gas guzzling lorry (Diesel) and taken to the forecourt. You picked it up and paid you cash, you'll drive away in your Diesel burning car, all the way home. Litre is 1.30 in many forecourts right now. Lets say you get 31 Miles to the Gallon in your car right now, a common mileage in 4x4's an large cars, that'll be 13 Miles per Litre then, hardly much forward from 1980!

Lets get home, its cold out this winter. Close your front door, hopefully its a double glazed one, surely not one like the 80's. You'll be inside your nice warm home, what's it heated with?

If you're house is heated by electricity, chances are they plucked some coal from under the ground, stuck it in a big burner and burned it to generate your electricity. If your home is heated by gas, they sucked some gas out of the ground and burned it. If you're houses is heated by oil (Diesel) then you'll have received the diesel in another lorry run on more Diesel, you'll have a system which burns it, the fumes and plenty of heat will be pumped outside of your house into the local atmosphere, whilst the "Good heat" moves around your home until it eventually escapes out of all the cracks and orifices that even modern homes have in them. If you have a high ceiling, the heat will linger up there for a while where you cant get to it (Get heated by it).

The electric that is generated in your home may be powered by non fossil sources (Well, Nuclear is sort of, its from under the ground again), Nuclear fission may happen in a big power station not so close to homes in case it blows, and the remaining "spent fuel" is sent into buildings for your children and grand children to deal with later, no need to worry about it right now since you wont be here when i has eventually to be dealt with. The electricity in your home may be powered by solar or wind power, although pretty primitive right now and made from mined metals, there isn't much to say about this since this is what the year 2010 should more have looked like in the 80's.

We're a fossil burning nation, our government is not bold enough to make sure that every new (And existing) home is equipped fully with solar panels and 1 turbine per home. We're sitting chucking anything we can into our burners to make our electricity and keep warm, boy if this winter gets bad a small percentage will be burning their kitchen tables and the likes, you never know!

If the winters get worse, we're likely to need more and more fossil stuff to burn, we'll be going about our homes in t-shirts because we're so warm, after all the heating is burning at full steam to make the house warm. We wont think of turning it all down a wee bit and putting on a jersey, a thicker pair of socks.

Let our children and grand children deal with our laziness and non-boldness!

Aaron Sneddon

www.aaronsneddon.co.uk

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