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IanD

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Posts posted by IanD

  1. 35 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

    Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

    I completely agree that whether you *like* a particular beer or not -- be it 6X or Citra-heavy IPAs -- is purely a matter of subjective opinion, and everyone's tastes quite rightly differ.

     

    Whether the beer is well kept and in good condition is much more objective, and the times I've been to the Anchor it was clearly neither of these -- and I wasn't the only person who thought so, it was just plain poor, and certainly didn't taste anything like a *good* pint of 6X.

     

    Unless they've changed the recipe so that it's sour and stale-tasting, which seems unlikely... 😉

  2. 10 minutes ago, Goliath said:

    You just have to be rude, don’t ya.

     

    But hey, I’m happy and glad you won’t be drinking in the Anchor,

    I can happily drink my lovely 6x knowing you ain’t going to walk through the door.


    put me back on your ignore list will you?

     

    I wasn't being rude --- you were being smug and superior and having a dig at people you know little about... 😞

     

    By all means carry on drinking your "lovely 6X", free of the worry that neither me or any of my beer-loving musician friends will disturb you -- we'll be playing in pubs with decent beer instead, like we were this weekend (in London), and last weekend (in Sussex), and the weekend before (in Sheffield)... 🙂

  3. 13 minutes ago, Goliath said:

     

    Those who have visited the pub once on their flying tour of the system just don’t get the Anchor.

    Those taking a more leisurely approach who’ve been able to spend time getting to know the locals, drinking til past 1am while listening to musicians who have dropped in on the off chance, those boaters will know the wonders of that pub.

     

    Imagine someone else got their hands on the Anchor it’d end up like that utterly dreadful place at the bottom of Tardibigge.

    Or that awful Anchor on the Staff and Worcester. Soulless places.

     

     

    Nobody's saying the Anchor isn't a great unspoiled characterful pub, in contrast to many other pubs on the canals.

     

    But every time I've been there -- as confirmed by various other people on multiple occasions -- the beer has been well below par, in contrast to many other pubs on the canals.

     

    So I do get it -- it's a great pub, with often poor beer. You may like that, but other people -- me included -- think that the first function of a pub is to provide good beer... 😉

     

    P.S. Also been in many other relaxed pubs on the canals (and off them) with late drinking and music sessions, very often being one of the people providing said music -- so perhaps your feeling of superiority is less than justified... 😉

    • Greenie 1
  4. 18 hours ago, Ray T said:

    Out of touch now, left BT in 2009.

    For trunk and Junction cables which were installed in 2km lengths the whole 2km had to be replaced if one section was damaged.

    I assume that if a fibre drop wire is damaged only the drop wire will need replacing. If it is a pole smash or a DSLAM, pronounced DEE-slam, (Digital subscriber line access multiplexer) is wrecked a lot more expensive.

     

    Digital subscriber line access multiplexer - Wikipedia

     

    I don't know how Openreach deal with fibre re-splicing in the network, but in equipment it's easy and commonplace nowadays.

  5. 35 minutes ago, Jo_ said:

    Aqua Narrowboats are superb (acquanarrowboats.co.uk). They say get in touch for longer hires. A lot of boaters around us have boats built by them and they have a hire fleet but sponsored co-owned boats. Well worth an explore since they would meet your requirements in terms of layout and size, hire base at Barton Marina and the boats are all recent builds. Justin Hudson-Oldroyd is the MD and a great guy.

    I'd second that recommendation, the boat we hired from Aqua a couple of years ago was excellent, and well-equipped for a long-term hire.

    • Greenie 1
  6. 26 minutes ago, peterboat said:

    As I pointed out palm trees are useless in comparison to the rainforest so why bother? The end results would be our early demise, the rainforest also help stabilise climate change palm trees do the opposite 

    https://www.zsl.org/news-and-events/news/palm-oil-and-climate-change

    Are you really so unable to understand how this works? That site that you linked to -- like many others with the same agenda -- looks at the negative side of palm oil (which is bad, don't get me wrong!) but doesn't look at what happens if you *don't* grow it and burn fossil fuels instead.

     

    In the palm oil vs. rainforest argument the issue is that the overall net CO2 effect of burning dino-diesel is worse than biofuels, including palm oil, even if rainforest is cut down to grow it. The negative effect of the CO2 emitted by burning diesel instead of the HVO that would be made from the palm oil is worse than the positive CO2 effect of having the rainforest there. None of which is a good reason to cut down rainforests to plant palm oil given the other downsides, but CO2 emission is the biggest probloem faced by mankind... 😞

     

    There's no excuse for companies trying to pretend that their biofuel is ecologically wonderful and trying to cover up what the feedstock is -- for example, pretending it's "100% renewable" -- and that's what the site you quoted is rightly complaining about. Many of the claims about the environmental impact of biofuels (including HVO) being "90% lower" are just plain lies, because they're ignoring the downsides of production. But even is the saving is only 50% -- in other words the CO2 burden is 5x higher than they claim -- this is still 2x better than burning fossil fuels.

     

    17 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

     

    Algae is already producing a direct Diesel replacement, the problem being that the power required to do so exceeds what you 'get out', so until there is an abundance of (say) wind power (and of course the windy-makers are never turned off are they !) it is unlikely to become available as a bulk production fuel

     

    Algae fuel - Wikipedia

     

    Green diesel[edit]

    Main article: Biodiesel production

    Algae can be used to produce 'green diesel' (also known as renewable diesel, hydrotreating vegetable oil[52] or hydrogen-derived renewable diesel)[53] through a hydrotreating refinery process that breaks molecules down into shorter hydrocarbon chains used in diesel engines.[52][54] It has the same chemical properties as petroleum-based diesel[52] meaning that it does not require new engines, pipelines or infrastructure to distribute and use. It has yet to be produced at a cost that is competitive with petroleum.[53] While hydrotreating is currently the most common pathway to produce fuel-like hydrocarbons via decarboxylation/decarbonylation, there is an alternative process offering a number of important advantages over hydrotreating. In this regard, the work of Crocker et al.[55] and Lercher et al.[56] is particularly noteworthy. For oil refining, research is underway for catalytic conversion of renewable fuels by decarboxylation.[57] As the oxygen is present in crude oil at rather low levels, of the order of 0.5%, deoxygenation in petroleum refining is not of much concern, and no catalysts are specifically formulated for oxygenates hydrotreating. Hence, one of the critical technical challenges to make the hydrodeoxygenation of algae oil process economically feasible is related to the research and development of effective catalysts.[58][59]

     

    The same problem as a lot of other schemes -- they work if you have unlimited renewable energy, but we don't.

     

    Comparison purely on cost is another problem, because it's difficult to make any synthetic fuel from any source that's as cheap as digging up dino-juice. If there was a proper CO2 tariff attached to fuels to reflect their environmental cost then this could be very different, but Big Oil (and the politicians it owns) really don't want this to happen for obvious reasons... 😞

  7. 13 minutes ago, StephenA said:

    what we need is some way of turning duckweed and all the other things that clog canals into fuel..... At the moment CRT use alien weevils to eat it but......

     

    Or even some way of taking nitrogen rich water, growing algae in it and converting that into fuel.

    Algae being used as a biofuel feedstock is being heavily investigated, especially because it odesn't compete with crops or mean cutting down rainforests.

     

    Does need an awful lot of water area and sun though, which kind or rules it out for the UK canals... 😉

  8. 3 minutes ago, Iain_S said:

    Bit of double counting there! Burning palm oil is, at very best, carbon neutral, so net effect is negative, as the bit of rain forest that was felled is no longer absorbing CO2

    That's not how it works -- if the palm oil is used to make HVO which replaces diesel, this "saved CO2" dominates the calculation, even including the rainforest having gone (which is a Bad Thing). No double counting needed 🙂

  9. 2 minutes ago, StephenA said:

    what we need is some way of turning duckweed and all the other things that clog canals into fuel..... At the moment CRT use alien weevils to eat it but......

    How about the output from composting toilets? 😉

  10. 20 minutes ago, peterboat said:

    No it's a total disaster! As I proved, it's an EU link and really a 80% loss of of the world's ability to convert carbon dioxide to air means we are finished rapidly, just so people can continue without change for a couple of years before they are extinct? Not the brightest of ideas is it?

    Peter, apart from your meaningless word salad in bold, you don't seem to understand how the carbon cycle works...

     

    Trees take up CO2 from the atmosphere, keep the carbon locked away (until they die and rot...), and put the oxygen back into the atmosphere, so they act as a carbon sink. It's why they're a great idea, as well as the wildlife/ecosystem benefits.

     

    So cutting them down looks stupid -- and is if done to farm beef -- but you need to look at what happens then when used for biofuel. Growing palm oil to make HVO is one of the highest-yielding energy crops, which is why it's done. The HVO yield from this -- if it replaces dino-diesel -- reduces net CO2 emissions by more than the rainforest did. So if you ignore the ecosystem/wildlife issue -- which I'm not saying we should, these are *really* important! -- then as far as the planet is concerned HVO is better than dino-diesel.

     

    Of course not cutting down the rainforests or competing with food crops would be great -- but to avoid this, what's your proposed solution for end uses which can't make use of renewable energy?

     

    Saying "ooh, this is really bad!" without either looking at the consequences of doing/not doing it or having any proposed alternative is not making an argument, it's just shouting into a megaphone to get attention.

     

    Please don't come back and say "we should all drive/fly less/go vegan/eat less meat/have fewer children" because this isn't an either/or case -- of course we should do what we can to reduce resource use, but also try and reduce the harm done by what resources we do use.

     

    And to put it simply, continuing to dig up and burn vast amounts of fossil fuel stored 300M years ago is pretty much the worst possible option, almost *anything* -- including HVO -- is better than this.

     

    14 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

    Science, properly, is about making an hypothesis, conducting and experiment to measure/verify the hypothesis and then reporting the process so that it can be independently replicated and peer reviewed.

     

    The problem with matters such as climate change is that such an experiment is not feasible - we can't destroy the world and then see what happens!

     

    Consequently we cannot really progress much beyond the hypothesis stage, however 'reasonable' the hypothesis may be and consistent with our established data. This is what scientists do not science.

     

    Remember that in general, scientific experiment is based on a null hypothesis: experiments/observations/measurements can refute an hypothesis they cannot prove it. Remember Popper: no amount of white swans proves that all swans are white but a single black swan will disprove it.

     

     

    There are also many things in science which cannot be directly measured/reproduced/tested experimentally but that are (almost...) universally accepted as scientifically accurate.

     

    Anthropogenic climate change is one of these; the evidence for it is overwhelming, and even the oil compnies have known about it (but hidden the evidence) for over 50 years.

  11. 51 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

    Is that a fact, or just your opinion?

    My opinion, of course... 😉

     

    But @MartynG is steadfastly ignoring the elephant in the room which is CO2 emissions and keeps playing the "think of the rainforests!" card -- which is of course true in itself, like the CMers "think of the children!", but being similarly economical with the truth as far as the real argument is concerned... 😞

     

    All the reputable analyses show that biofuel from crops -- including palm oil -- is not great because of competition with food and rainforests, but that it's still better than burning fossil fuels.

     

    HVO from waste (limited quantities) is much better, and renewables are much better still and where the big effort shopuld be concentrated -- but for several reasons this isn't a solution for niche cases like boats on the inland waterways, so here HVO is the least bad solution -- preferably made locally from waste oil.

     

    Those are the facts, not my opinion... 😉

  12. 2 minutes ago, MartynG said:

    Similarly my message is not getting through to you.

    Yeah -- but mine is based on facts, and yours is based on opinions. Sadly many people nowadays don't believe in facts/experts any more, and think their opinions trump facts... 😞

  13. 10 minutes ago, MartynG said:

    Clearly you do not.

     

    Once a rain forest is lost it is gone forever. Cutting  down rain forest simply to grow crops for fuel is not sustainable. 

    In fact growing crops only to make fuel is not sustainable regardless of the location. We cant have energy crops competing  for land against food crops.

    Using the otherwise waste or by products from crops to make HVO for example is however sustainable and acceptable.

     

    The use of alternatives to fossil  fuels must progress but not at the expense of cutting down rain forests  to grow crops only to make HVO.

     

    In the meantime it is better to keep using diesel until alternative sustainable energy sources take over .

    You may have noticed that is what is happening , very slowly.

     

    I never said it was sustainable, I said it was bad -- but still less bad than burning diesel.

     

    Having energy crops competing against food crops is bad -- but still less bad than burning diesel.

     

    It's not better to keep using diesel.

     

    Of all the things we can do, carrying on burning fossil fuels like diesel is the worst. Almost anything else is better, including HVO -- but some things are better than others.

     

    Is the message getting through? 😉

     

    (I suspect not...)

     

    5 minutes ago, peterboat said:

    I said much earlier that HVO produced from waste oils was good, I also said it's best use is farming and building where it cant be electrified. For transport it's a none starter, we can't produce enough clearly froved by palm oils being used for it. In reality for the amount inland boaters use they should be able to cover our use. Of course gin palaces use our yearly supplies in one trip out! So maybe not them 

    All of which is exactly what I said, so I'm glad we agree... 🙂

  14. 2 hours ago, Loddon said:

    The minimum recommended distance to view a 55"TV from  is 7ft.

    Viewing it across a narrow boat is obviously out.

    If you put it across the boat so you can get far enough away then you will be left with a gap of about 18" to squeeze through every time you want to pass by.

     

    Think a smaller TV might be a better idea.🤔😂

     

     

    If the OP is considering streaming-only TV (like me) then another option is a "smart monitor" designed for this (no antenna or tuner), which are also designed to be usable with a laptop or phones, and include streaming software and apps -- like this 4k 32" one...

     

    https://www.samsung.com/uk/business/monitors/high-resolution/smart-m7-32-inch-smart-tv-experience-ls32bm700upxxu/

     

     

    On 15/04/2023 at 20:46, Paul C said:

    EE certainly seem the best. Its a shame that so few* MVNOs use them. It seems to be foreign and charity ones or other non-run-of-the-mill.

     

    I did a bunch of tests last trip, however I was limited by the availability of free SIMs which could be sent out to me before they required activation or buying a data package/plan. The thought being, I could take a bunch of SIMs and if I struggled with the two networks I'd chosen - Giffgaff (O2) and  Voxi (Vodaphone) - I could choose to activate a third, different one, for a month. Out of the list of 26 network providers I found, only 5 were able to send out a free SIM before commitment of money. Most being on Vodaphone.

     

    Interestingly, the Three SIM (phone contract, not data specific contract which they do) became disabled once put into the mifi device, I never got to the bottom of that though it might be deliberate behaviour.

     

    *NOW PAYG, CMLink, Ecotalk, 1pmobile, popit mobile, The phone co-op, Utility Warehouse, Vectone mobile.

    Beware that many of the EE MVNOs/resellers don't have any or only partial access to the full EE network, expecially the lower-frequency bands used for coverage in rural areas.

     

    1pmobile do and are the best bet for on/off use if you're not on the boat full-time; for liveaboards a SIM from Scancom is cheaper, an unlimited one is about £12pcm (£240 until 8/1/25) via Amazon:

     

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/EE-Unlimited-Data-Sim-Preloaded/dp/B09W1NYQFS?

  15. 1 hour ago, peterboat said:

    You are way off the mark palm trees are useless in comparison to the rain forest and alter the climate totally 

     

    Screenshot_20230508-100058_Google.jpg

    OK, unlike you I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong 🙂

     

    Like I said, HVO from crops -- especailly thousands of miles away, palm oil included -- is not a good option for when you have no choice other than burning liquid fuel, HVO from local waste oil is much better. And "cutting down rainforests" to grow this is a bad idea.

     

    But even given this (because it's not made from 100% rainforest palm oil) HVO is still better than burning fossil diesel. That's what all the studies show.

     

    Going on about rainforests and HVO is like saying that wind turbines should be banned because they kill lots of birds, while ignoring the fact that cats kill about a thousand times more -- it's appealing to emotions, not the big picture and actual facts.

     

    Even if palm oil locks up less CO2 than rainforests which is obviously a bad thing, the CO2 saved by burning HVO instead of diesel more than makes up for this.

     

    So saying "this is bad for the climate totally" is simply scientific illiteracy... 😉

    26 minutes ago, MartynG said:

    Yes

    Ian D doesn't understand that concept .

    I understand that concept perfectly well, bacuase rising CO2 levels are the biggest single threat to life on earth, and CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuel are by far the biggest cause of this.

     

    Your first answer of "yes" shows that you don't.... 😞

  16. 9 hours ago, peterboat said:

    The science says you are wrong they say the rainforests are to important to decimate further. I think we are between the devil and the deep blue sea! Stopping burning stuff is our only option HVO from palm oil isn't an option 

    <sigh> the science says that I'm right, because unlike you I actually went and read it... 😉

     

    Yes the rainforests are one of "the lungs of the planet" because they act as a carbon sink, as well as a valuable wild life ecosystem.

     

    Replacing them with palm oil does destroy the ecosystem (boo!), but the palm oil trees abosrb more carbon (hooray!) which is then used instead of diesel.

     

    So from the C02 point of view the net effect is positive -- but very negative for wild life.

     

    Stopping burning stuff is of course the best option, but if you have to carry on burning something sometimes diesel is the worst option.

     

    Do you really not get this?

    1 minute ago, MartynG said:

    Your conclusion from your alleged facts is not a sound conclusion

    Destroying rain forest is simply not an option

     

    Read the facts -- real ones, not alleged.

  17. Just now, peterboat said:

    You are forgetting that the rainforest is the biggest carbon sink on the planet, if it goes so do we. So HVO won't save us it will accelerate our demise

    No I'm not forgetting that, because it's obvious. What you're forgetting is that rising CO2 levels will kill off far more rainforests than palm oil unless we do something to reduce emissions, and in particular burning fossil fuels.

     

    If you actually went and investigated the facts -- taking everything into account -- instead of just repeatedly posting your opinion then this might become obvious... 😉

     

    You seem to think I'm saying that HVO made from crops (including palm oil) is a good thing -- no I'm not, renewables and HVO from waste are obviously better. But fossil diesel is worse still... 😞

  18. 1 hour ago, MartynG said:

     

    Giving up diesel but not HVO made from palm oil is  like your analogous to choosing  to keep smoking and give up drinking.

     

     

     

    Rubbish

    Palm oi is at best a temporary  short term fix .

    Plus once the rain forest is destroyed it can never be restored  so palm oil is not sustainable.

    Plus  the rain forest produces the Oxygen we breathe. So snuff it out and snuff out animal life .

    Nor is using fossil fuel sustainable .

     

    Other  genuinely sustainable fuel sources must become more advanced like electricity from nuclear , solar , wid coupled with battery storage to iron  out variables in supply and demand.

     

    Nobody's disputing that renewables are the best option -- and HVO made from waste oil is the next best thing -- but you're simply ignoring the facts if you think that burning fossil diesel is less bad than burning HVO made from palm oil... 😞

    1 minute ago, peterboat said:

    Yes because it's not sustainable, destroying people's and animals homes plus the lungs of the world which can't be replaced is the worst of all outcomes. HVO could be used to power essential farm equipment and heavy building machinery that cannot be electric but transport is not sustainable on our current supplies of waste oils.

    As I said, HVO -- especially from waste oil -- is suitable for niche markets like canal boats, not for mass markets like cars.

     

    HVO made from crop sources like palm oil is not good, but is still better than burning fossil diesel -- or do you think that the CO2 from doing this somehow doesn't matter?

  19. 35 minutes ago, peterboat said:

    Unfortunately, an environmental group proved that virgin palm oil was being used in the Finish companies HVO in the Netherlands, it was coming in from Singapore, Crown oils sources its HVO from them. As I said our waste oils are being used in our own fuels in a lot of cases. I think until it can be certain that HVO is from waste oils, its use should be stopped. BPs, Esso and other oil companies involvement is never good and is generally totally untrustworthy 

    Except that you're rejecting the (available) good in favour of the (unattainable) perfect -- as @MtB points out, HVO from palm oil is still better than fossil diesel...

  20. 2 hours ago, dmr said:

     

    The supplier that I have dealt with does provide documentation stating the fuel is renewable, and as long as HVO is a niche market that sounds reasonable, but obviously HVO can not come close to meeting the current total demand for fuel.

     

    I am happy to pay a premium for HVO even though this is currently a lot more that the often quoted 10-15%. However if I also have to pay 100% propulsion rather than 60:40 (or whatever) then it really isn't viable.

    HVO is a good solution for the small niche markets where batteries recharged from renewable energy don't work, such as canal boats and classic cars -- or Alan wanting to drive 500 miles non-stop while towing a trailer weighing several tons with a vehicle costing a couple of grand... 😉

     

    It's not a solution for the big markets like cars, where EVs are a far better solution for most people -- at least, when the cost of secondhand ones drops enough.

     

    But even for the niche markets the fuel cost premium over diesel needs to be small enough that people will use it, which isn't currently the case for boats... 😞

  21. 15 minutes ago, M_JG said:

     

    What the heck are banging on about then?

     

    That was the precise point Peter was making, which I've already said.

     

     

    So maybe you could let Peter respond, instead of attacking me (on his behalf) as you so *love* doing... 😉

     

    Going for a G&T and a curry now, so any further response will be ignored anyway... 🙂

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