It is the 200th anniversary of the death of Edward Jenner, who is credited with the birth of vaccination.
He was a student of St George’s medical school, which has named a major science block after him. When the Medical Research Council and Glaxo decided to jointly fund a national vaccine institute to focus on vaccine research, it was named the Jenner Institute and built in Compton before moving to Oxford.
It is worth looking at his role in the development of vaccines as it was not related to his background.
He did the definitive challenge experiment following the observations of many others. The idea of protecting against smallpox, which was a mutilating infectious disease, with a tiny dose injected under the skin from a sufferer may have been around for many centuries, although it is clearly documented from the 1400s onwards. It was first brought to the U.K. in 1721 by Lady Mary Montague, who had observed the practice in Turkey and wanted to protect her children. However, the man who brought it to Jenner’s attention was a Mr. Jesty, a farmer who made the observation that none of his milk maids ever contracted smallpox although they did all get infected with cowpox, which was a very mild disease.
Mr. Jesty decided, in 1774, to test the hypothesis that cowpox could protect against smallpox by variolating or injecting a small amount of cowpox under the skin of his family and children, none of whom developed smallpox. This was an amazing first as he used an attenuated, similar and less toxic agent to induce a protective immune response against the highly infective and dangerous mutilating virus.
This approach was to be adopted by the father of laboratory developed vaccines, Louis Pasteur, who attenuated several agents by passaging them through cell culture. This was the process used by Calmette and Guerin to develop the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis at the turn of the 20th century.
Jenner’s contribution was to do the same thing, using cowpox, to a young boy called James Phipps, and then inject live smallpox as a challenge. Fortunately, the boy did not contract the disease and this major trial of one(!) was widely broadcast due to Jenner’s eminence as a Fellow of the Royal Society for studies on bird behaviour. Its effect was confirmed and eventually taken up by Napoleon and the USA.
This approach was eventually to lead to the total eradication of smallpox by 1980. Louis Pasteur was the first to make laboratory-derived vaccines, passaging agents through cultures and using the effect of attenuation mentioned above. His first was a vaccine to prevent a cholera-like diarrhoea in chickens, and he developed many agents against diseases such as anthrax and developed a vaccine for rabies to be given post-exposure.
The technology used to develop flu vaccines following the great Spanish flu of 1918-19 (which actually started in a fort in Kansas in the USA) centred around inactivated viruses, which also formed the basis of the first polio vaccine by Jonas Salk. The so-called Spanish flu infected around 500 million people and killed 25-50 million, most of whom were fit adults and not the elderly, who were most at risk to later flu endemics. It was therefore an obvious target for vaccination. It is worth noting that many trials of two million people were conducted and no conclusion regarding effectiveness could be confirmed.
The knowledge gained, however, was effective against another worldwide scourge: polio. It is worth noting that this vaccine did not prevent transmission, unlike the later, more sophisticated, attenuated oral vaccine of Sabin, which eventually became the worldwide vaccine and is highly effective. The problem with developing flu vaccines was evident when scientists became aware of different strains and the fact that they frequently changed, so that a vaccine needed to be strain specific.
It is beyond the scope of this article to go into any detail on this, but instead to highlight a lesson learned from the famous flu outbreak in 1976 at another American military establishment, Fort Dix, when 13 soldiers became very ill (one died) and it rapidly spread amongst the population.
The U.S. Government rapidly trialled a specific vaccine (four types from four different organisations) and immunised over 40 million people. Very observant clinicians noted a small increase in the numbers of people suffering from rare neurological conditions such as Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS)and myelitis, and wondered if this was related to the vaccine. This led to intensive monitoring, which confirmed that there was a three- to seven- fold increase in GBS in the weeks following the vaccine.
By the time this was established, the flu epidemic was dying out and a decision made to abandon the vaccine programme as it was clearly doing more harm than good. Fast forward to Covid, which unlike the previous flu outbreaks has ended up killing people with an average age of death higher than from other conditions. We have a vaccine programme which was rushed through with emergency powers that is being pushed on the population in the form of repeated boosters, even though the virus which the vaccines are aimed at no longer exists and has been replaced by more infectious but milder variants.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has been associated with so many clotting and cardiac issues that it has been quietly withdrawn and the mRNA vaccines are clearly causing an excess of cardiac and clotting issues too, as highlighted by Dr. Aseem Malhotra.
Where are the monitors and regulators assessing this today?
I am sure that the 1976 FDA and regulators would have concluded the obvious, in that there are far more deaths and injuries from the vaccine programme than the vaccines are ever likely to prevent from any new Covid variant. So why are we continuing with what some have called the biggest piece of mass criminal negligence since the thalidomide programme?
Ever since I raised the alarm that the boosters are preceding relapses of stable cancers and the occurrences of new B cell-based cancers such as lymphomas I have been contacted daily by doctors from far and wide who are seeing the same but not being listened to.
A short history of vaccines highlights the tremendous good that has been done for humanity with their development. However, the failure to monitor the Covid vaccine adverse effects and deaths risks undoing all that good work and tarring all vaccines with the same brush.
Dr. Angus Dalgleish is an expert in immunology and Professor of Oncology at University of London.
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Translation: ideas springing from governments (advised by their chosen, not-at-all corrupt and always most well-meaning experts) are always of marginal benefit, at best.
are always to transfer money from taxpayers to people connected to the government (who’ll stealthily hand some back to the malfeasant decision maker WHEN they leave office)
I just drove home from the gym (I know – why didn’t I jog and save the planet?) and caught a bit of a radio programme in which a heat-pump ‘expert’ assured the gormless presenter that it was pretty much nip-and-tuck now between heat pumps and gas boilers.
Some of the twaddle spouted (but not questioned) included:
It was nose-to-tail specious nonsense and the presenter asked a couple of ‘tough’ questions, which were dismissed airily as nothing to worry our pretty heads about.
It looks like the authorities have told the Nudge Unit to get everyone used to ‘heat pump good, boiler bad’ propaganda in preparation for the Great Reset (on New Ice Age, as it will come to be known).
It’s like these people think you will plug in your heat pump in and it will run on fairy dust.
Heat pumps work even better during power cuts, when they’ll be pumping away to save us all from the same fate as Atlantis and Lemuria. They’re magic.
Today some climate change stopper loons blocked petrol stations at motorway service stations on the M25. Personally I don’t buy fuel at motorway service stations, unless coffee counts, but these types had better make sure they stay out of my way. There is a strong temptation to take the attitude “Emergency? I’ll show you a ****ing emergency!”
That is what they are pretending.
Propaganda distortion and lies – UK Mass Media 2022!
I had my gas boiler for my 4bed 1930s house replaced last year. Total supply and fit cost was £3000. The boiler has a 10 year cover.
Last week I had a 3.5kW heat pump installed for my garage-office conversion. It only heats/cools a 15′ x 9′ space and cost nearly 2k for supply and install. The heat pump only has a 5year warranty and requires an annual service that currently costs £110.
Heat pumps don’t require an annual service — do you get someone to service your fridge once a year?
You don’t need an annual service for a gas boiler either – despite what the guy selling you the service says.
The guy honouring (or not honouring) the warranty might have differing views.
Do you know what a boiler service entails?
You do if it’s a rental.
No. You have to have a gas safety check (CP12). You don’t need to have a “service”.
Oh, did you not want that warranty, sir?
A fridge isn’t required to operate outdoors.
Of course heat pumps need servicing, just like any other mechanical device. Circulating fluid levels need to be checked, the air movement fan needs to be cleaned of dirt and any debris, bearings on moving part need to be assessed etc.
Servicing is a preventative precaution, or don’t you bother servicing your car – or your bicycle.
I heard that shite too. Unbefeckinlievable.
If I had a choice, I’d have a gas boiler, and dump our ASHP.
I work with a twit like that, bad news is always wrapped in lots of positive sounding narrative, constant groans when I point out the obvious numerous pitfalls.
im all for efficiency, grinds my gears when someone is trying to pull the wool over my eyes.
Here in the US, we call these things mini splits and we generally think of them as a nice upgrade to window air conditioners. In fact, they are mostly just regarded as more efficient cooling devices that are easier to install than central air. I just had them installed and we are also using them in a couple of locations as replacements for previously installed resistance based electric heaters. We still use gas for the main portion of our house because it is cheaper for heating when it is much below freezing. We also have a wood stove.
All that is to say that I’m confused why this site feels the need to attack mini splits.
The gas-based heating here in UK will be banned, along with wood stoves, in order to achieve Net Zero. Much housing stock will be substantially underheated because of poor insulation standards that would be difficult or expensive to upgrade. People will be colder inside their homes while paying more for their heating.
Apart from that, we have nothing against mini splits.
Were your government to ban your gas heating and wood stove, you’d be in the same position (but less confused, so it’s not all bad).
Maybe it will change but at the moment I am not aware of any plans to ban wood burners. New wood burners will have to meet higher standards as will biomass boilers;
https://www.love-logs.com/blogs/log-burners/are-log-burners-being-banned-a-simple-guide-to-the-defra-clean-air-strategy-for-anyone-who-owns-a-log-burner-or-open-fireplace#:~:text=The%20good%20news%20is%20that,and%20what's%20going%20to%20change.
Burning wood is theoretically sustainable and green but doubtless the thinking on this could change.
Burning wood creates incredibly toxic gases imagine even a small town of 20,000 all with wood burners. Nightmare when you have still conditions and the smoke hugs the ground. Burning wood produces around a third more co2 per heat unit than coal. Coal fired power stations had become incredibly clean, removing almost all toxic gases. Co2 is colourless, oderless and inert. It can’t harm you. It is the food for every plant on the planet. Remember that time when co2 was 10 or 20x current levels and all life on earth died? No, neither do I. Trees rot or trees burn. This idea about them being some co2 sink is total nonsense.
Co2 is colourless, oderless and inert. It can’t halm you.
So those comments about the harm through breathing excess CO2 by wearing masks were rubbish! More seriously, no one is proposing CO2 levels will rise high enough to be poisonous – only that they will create a very difficult climate.
Remember that time when co2 was 10 or 20x current levels and all life on earth died?
The last time CO2 levels were 10 x the current levels was the Ordovician about 500 million years ago. The sun was about 4% dimmer and most of the earth’s landmasses were combined in one supercontinent which moved about and finally settled at the South Pole. Climate conditions that are completely incomparable to the present.
Catastrophic Man Made Global Warming theory stipulates that CO2 is not just one variable of many that controls the climate; nor does it say that it the most important. What it does say is that it is THE driver of climate. More co2 = warmer, less co2 = cooler. Nothing, like water vapour/clouds is included in the computer models. The theory (and it is just a theory) is therefore not falsifiable, and thus it is not science. As I’m sure you are aware the geological record shows no correlation between co2 and temperature. The theory that CO2 is bad now, compared to when earth had masses of volcanic activity, which was “natural co2”, because it is man made is nonsense. Please also note that permanent ice, such as at the massive continent of Antarctica, is actually very unusual. The earth has been totally ice free more often over the last 4 billion years than not. Runaway global warming has been due next year for the last 35 years. Heat humans and other animals can adapt to, an ice age they cannot.
Hard to make the argument for Net Zero water, or an H20 tax – or I should say hydrogen tax as these charlatans cannot speak in whole molecules.
What it does say is that it is THE driver of climate. More co2 = warmer, less co2 = cooler.
Where did you read that? As explained in many places such as this IPCC report, CO2 is one of many climate forcings some anthropogenic and some natural. It is one of the most important over the timescales that interest us (10s to 100s of year) but even then not the only one. Over longer timescales factors such as the strength of the sun and the configuration of the land masses become massively important.
Nothing, like water vapour/clouds is included in the computer models.
I think you may be out of date. Water vapour has been included in climate models for a long time. Clouds have also been included but they are very difficult to model although recent models have been getting to grips with more detail.
As I’m sure you are aware the geological record shows no correlation between co2 and temperature.
It is not quite that simple. Over relevant timescales the correlation is good. Over 100s of millions of years other factors dominate.
“Over hundreds of millions of years”...so let’s just wait and see shall we?
I don’t understand your point. Correlation doesn’t work over timescales of hundreds of millions of years, it does work over timescales that interest us.
BwaaaHaHaHaHa.
Correlation suddenly ceases to exist unless it suits your argument.
Honestly, how do you people get through the day. You are all congenitally dim.
Warmer temperatures lead to increased CO2 as its released from slightly warmer oceans. Cold water retains more gas, warmer water releases it. Presumably that’s the correlation, with changes in CO2 following changes in temperatures.
It is true that warmer temperatures lead to an outgassing of CO2 if the water is saturated. However,
a) the water may not be saturated
b) an increase in the partial pressure of CO2 will increase the saturation level
More pragmatically – do you really think all those scientists poring over the relationship between CO2 and temperature had not allowed for something so basic?
Where is the credible, empirical, peer reviewed scientific study which demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that atmospheric CO2 is responsible for a warming planet?
I’ll save you the bother, there are none.
Read the article again, carefully this time. It’s claiming that the already ludicrous computer models aren’t running as hot as they would like them so have decided to use clouds to make them hotter. They haven’t actually found any more heat, they are just saying it’s going to be worse than it already isn’t according to GIGO.
Like many other fanciful, profitable, scientific endeavours they are utterly wasting their time as it is impossible to assess what effects clouds have as we don’t have the ability to assess them second by second. Quite apart from anything else the data crunching required is simply impossible to acquire right now.
The concept is so unbelievably childish it could only be published in Scientific American.
Point me to something disastrous that has befallen mankind over the last 50 years of this tripe. Certainly not extreme weather as even the hysterical IPCC tell us there is little to no evidence extreme weather is any worse than it ever was.
As for your link to the IPCC document it begins:
A foregone conclusion then, despite there being no credible, empirical, peer reviewed scientific studies demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that atmospheric CO2 is responsible for a warming planet.
I really don’t know how you alarmists get through life. You lack the fundamental ability to question anything.
Where is the credible, empirical, peer reviewed scientific study which demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that atmospheric CO2 is responsible for a warming planet?
That challenge comes up from time to time. The trouble is the weasel words “credible” and “reasonable doubt” as your criteria for what is credible and reasonable are likely to be different from mainstream science. There is no lack of peer reviewed scientific studies showing that:
Even established sceptics such as Spencer accept that. His dispute is not the principle but the degree – how much does atmospheric CO2 warm the planet.
These are terms used every day across the legal profession, across the entire civilised world, you clown. They are standards to be achieved, not dismissed, yet you childishly describe them as “weasel words”.
Mainstream science depends on credibility, it absolutely relies on the concept of reasonable doubt because rarely is there absolute certainty of anything, so the balance of probability must be invoked which is, in other words, reasonable doubt.
Atmosphere of Mars – 95% Carbon Dioxide. (space.com)
Temperature of Mars – averaging about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius). (space.com)
Atmosphere of Venus – The atmosphere of Venus is made up almost completely of carbon dioxide (space.com)
Temperature of Venus – The average temperature on Venus is 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius) (space.com)
Just to be clear. In light of your statement:
Atmospheric greenhouse gases are a climate forcing factor that warms planets
Would you like to add anything further, other than the usual drivel about distance from the sun/size/orbit or any other “weasel words”?
Drivel. You people are lunatics. This world has never been a better place and useful idiots like you are screwing it up for everyone because you are being suckered by climate politics, supporting climate business, to make loadsa money for the fat controllers whilst the rest of us pay for it all.
How stupid can you be……..??????
The fact remains that both credible and reasonable (and therefore reasonable doubt) are subjective words subject to your rather emotional interpretation.
Re Mars and Venus.
The concentration of CO2 is not the point. What matters is how much CO2 is in the atmosphere. Both Venus and Mars have atmospheres that are almost entirely CO2 but Mars has hardly any atmosphere while Venus has a lot. I did a quick calculation based on atmospheric pressure and the relative mass of the planets and Venus has about 2000 times more atmosphere than Mars which means 2000 times more CO2.
Quite why you consider factors such as strength, orbit and distance from the Sun to be drivel I don’t understand. Are you saying they don’t influence temperature?
The fact remains, you can’t provide the science and just waffle a load of bollox as usual to cover for the fact there is none.
You’re so sad you can’t even admit to yourself there is no evidence.
The killer question is: How much CO2 should there be in the atmosphere? What is the ideal level? Nobody knows. Nobody can know because it has fluctuated albeit within a trend of general reduction since the dawn of creation. Since life-forms sucked most of the CO2 out of the atmosphere and turned the carbon into rocks over the passage of time. If I were a plant I think I’d like it to be around 2000 parts per million (0.2%).
Read the article again, carefully this time. It’s claiming that the already ludicrous computer models aren’t running as hot as they would like them so have decided to use clouds to make them hotter. They haven’t actually found any more heat, they are just saying it’s going to be worse than it already isn’t according to GIGO.
I suggest you read what I have written. My only point was that models do incorporate clouds. I didn’t say anything about what the models predicted as a result or whether their predictions were reasonable or whether they “found more heat or not”. That was all stuff you made up.
However, if you do read the paper you will see that the hotter forecasts were a surprise result. In other words they did not use clouds to make the forecasts hotter. Rather the forecasts were coming out hotter and when they studied the models to find out why it was because of the clouds. So how about calming down on the insults and spending that energy reading the material carefully?
A fine example of “weasel words”. A pathetic attempt to wriggle out what you were determined to demonstrate, that clouds were a significant factor in warming.
Which they undoubtedly are, as Tyndall observed, that water vapour is the most significant greenhouse gas of them all, but we have as much of a clue about it as we do of CO2.
What paper, precisely?
Your final paragraph – absolute drivel as usual. These are computer models you moron. It’s GIGO, Bullshit In, Bullshit Out – BIBO!
Fifty years of nothing. Absolutely nothing catastrophic has harmed the planet climatologically speaking, other than its greened substantially.
And we’re expected to tolerate another 50 years of your Bullshit?
Grow up!
A ‘model’ is a representation of the real world; it is not the real world
A model projecting a future is guesswork and bullshit which has been demonstrably wrong since the 70’s.
You seem to have a problem reading what I have written. I will try to be as clear as possible but there are limits.
A pathetic attempt to wriggle out what you were determined to demonstrate, that clouds were a significant factor in warming.
I never attempted to demonstrate that clouds are a significant factor in global warming. In fact I am not sure they are. The paper which we have both been referring to provides some evidence that they are but it is only one paper and it is only commenting on why recent models show more warming so it is hardly overwhelming evidence (nor do the authors suggest it is overwhelming evidence). If you read what I have written, as opposed to what you think I meant, then you will see the only reason I referred to that paper was to show that models do in fact take into account clouds.
water vapour is the most significant greenhouse gas of them all, but we have as much of a clue about it as we do of CO2.
That is not in dispute. Without water vapour the greenhouse effect of CO2 would be quite small – but the water vapour increases with temperature and thus provides positive feedback. However, the greenhouse effect of water vapour is not the same as affect of clouds.
However, I think it is time to draw a line under this debate.
Simply because you cannot produce the evidence the world requires.
What evidence. There is none in that ARTICLE. It is not a “paper”. Learn to understand the difference.
You are hysterical, ignorant fakes, all of you.
I remember that super-continent moving around, it made standing up without falling over difficult.
I wonder who on here can guess where ‘Great Britain’ was when its coal measures were being formed?
Give a few more years and Aberystwyth will be over where Osaka is today.
I wonder who on here can guess where ‘Great Britain’ was when its coal measures were being formed?
According to this it was just South of the equator (minus Scotland which joined us later.)
Seems to be a very sensible comment !
Indeed so. The current warm inter-glacial is just 11,700 years old. The next glaciation should be along in approximately 87,000 years or 29,000 years depending on which particular Milankovitch cycle is the dominant one. Now THAT’s climate change.
Why has it been UK government policy since 1997 to rapidly increase the population through mass immigration of people from countries with lower, often much lower, per-capita levels of emissions if the planet is facing a climate catastrophe?
The current government seems to be trying to achieve record levels: dinghy men; Ukrainians and “Ukrainians”; easier for Hong Kongers to achieve residence; reduction in the minimum wages that need to be offered; much higher immigration from India as part of a trade deal; probably others we don’t yet know about.
Their actions contradict their claims.
Loos like they have been bribed to completely ” take down” the UK – now where would the money come from?
The CO2 climate change evidence is under serious scientific review in spite of attempts by the usual Fanatics to close down and seal the debate.
None of the doomsday predictions made in the 70s have come true and the current projections are highly suspect -pure speculation – “Climate Change” is already a heavily invested industry – like Vaccine manufacture- seeking to justify itself and make money by exploiting fear.
The Earth’s climate has always been changing over millions of years there is no evidence whatever that anything can be done about it except learn to live with it.
The CO2 climate change evidence is under serious scientific review
What aspects are under review by whom?
None of the doomsday predictions made in the 70s have come true
A 50-Year-Old Global Warming Forecast That Still Holds Up
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/
Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions
Below are the 41 failed doomsday, eco-pocalyptic predictions (with links):
1. 1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
2. 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
3. 1970: Ice Age By 2000
4. 1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
5. 1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
6. 1972: New Ice Age By 2070
7. 1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
8. 1974: Another Ice Age?
9. 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life (data and graph)
10. 1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent
11. 1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes (additional link)
12. 1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend (additional link)
13. 1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in 1990s
14. 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
15. 1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they’re not)
16. 1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000
17. 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it’s not)
18. 2000: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is
19. 2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy
20. 2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024
21. 2008: Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018
22. 2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013
23. 2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World
24. 2009: UK Prime Minister Says 50 Days to ‘Save The Planet From Catastrophe’
25. 2009: Climate Genius Al Gore Moves 2013 Prediction of Ice-Free Arctic to 2014
26. 2013: Arctic Ice-Free by 2015 (additional link)
27. 2014: Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’
28. 1968: Overpopulation Will Spread Worldwide
29. 1970: World Will Use Up All its Natural Resources
30. 1966: Oil Gone in Ten Years
31. 1972: Oil Depleted in 20 Years
32. 1977: Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 1990s
33. 1980: Peak Oil In 2000
34. 1996: Peak Oil in 2020
35. 2002: Peak Oil in 2010
36. 2006: Super Hurricanes!
37. 2005 : Manhattan Underwater by 2015
38. 1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985
39. 1970: Nitrogen buildup Will Make All Land Unusable
40. 1970: Decaying Pollution Will Kill all the Fish
41. 1970s: Killer Bees!
Sadly most of the examples seem to be behind a paywall so it is not possible to see what the prediction actually was or who made it. However, I agree there were and continue to be a lot of wrong predictions about various environmental disasters. The media have always been fond of disaster stories as it sells well. It is not all limited to environmental matters.
There are far fewer predictions by competent scientists in a formal setting (they are as inclined as anyone to shoot their mouth off for dramatic purposes in informal contexts e.g Kary Mullins on using PCR for diagnosis).
What, this?
Pretty safe prediction to make in 1972 as he dies in 2001. He’s not around to se his predictions, like Wadham’s did, fail.
Hardly the most difficult thing to guess as we were, and still are, emerging from an ice age.
The planet is 70% oceans, for which there are 4,000 Argo floats to determine temperatures taken once every 10 days. That’s around 90,000 square Km for each float, about the size of Ireland.
Utter nonsense. You people are fantasists.
Not if it was coincident with restricted oxygen and contamination on the mask of god knows what. People wearing filthy medical masks, which are supposed to be replaced every 20 minutes in a relatively sterile environment, for days. Hauling them out from their dirty pockets and manky handbags.
Strangely enough, life on earth didn’t expire because of extreme weather or any other nonsense you loons associate with atmospheric CO2 when it was far higher.
Do some arithmetic. Assuming atmospheric CO2 causes warming (just for a fleeting moment) then mankind’s contribution to the atmosphere would take 25,000 years to raise temperatures on earth by 2ºC.
And judging by the utter nonsense spouted about CO2, even were the sun 4% dimmer, 10x the current levels of CO2 would have made up for it.
In fact, 10x is a conservative figure, atmospheric CO2 has been much higher than that.
I can confirm that when I asked my husband where he kept his supply of black disposable face masks, he responded that he didn’t have a supply, he only had one that he’d been wearing on and off in petrol stations and supermarkets for 18 months!
I burned a lot of old furniture wood on my fireplace over Christmas. The smoke hugged the ground and killed everybody in my street. I only survived because I wore three masks and stayed inside the house the whole time reading garbage on Twitter. I was so pleased to have terrifying nightmares when I was asleep, every night for a month, because the waking nightmare of having a nice fire in my grate for a few days was so traumatic.
Yes, I like the sardonic humour but imagine 30 million log burners in the UK. Of course it will be less than that, peasants in tower blocks won’t have them. From what I’ve researched old furniture is a somewhat limited resource.
Humans have burned wood for thousands of years – modern stoves use kiln dried seasoned wood with virtually moisture content which is cleaner and does not produce the exaggerated toxic gas nightmare you describe .
Wood chips burned in power stations in huge quantity create far greater emission levels than wood burners . As it is the UK contributes just 1% to so called Greenhouse Gas emissions -worry about Chinese Coal Fired power stations and leave wood burners alone!
This is yet another inner-city Wokist driven Virtue Campaign against country life.
Close down your ubiquitous Pizza ovens first!
Excellent point. I blame Jamie Oliver.
We’ll be off next week with our trailer to collect birch logs, already cut to size, and we’ll have to buy them. For the past 15 years we’ve been cutting down trees from my partner’s forests 50 miles from home, and for 4 years cutting down trees around my workplace 17 miles from home – a small bus garage surrounded by a forest that belonged to the company. Garage sold a year ago, and forest felled in 2 days, so that source of firewood has gone!
About £50 for a cubic metre of birch logs of 30cm length. We’d prefer to find ‘cheaper’ by having lengths of trees dropped off in our yard, but then, of course, there are hours of cutting them up, and all that petrol and oil for the chainsaw…
Probably the cheapest and nicest way to keep a house warm. Involves some work loading boxes and carrying them to the fireplace.
Here’s a book worth a glance – some people make this logs lark a serious hobby.
This is a bit like what we have – we built 2 ‘wood cages’ – we had a go at measuring them and reckon they’re about 6 cubic metres each, and that one will see us through a winter (fire/stove going once a day). And now we’re filling our empty ‘boathouse’ (boat sold) with logs and estimated that will hold about 16 cubic metres.
Usually around +24C inside our house, even when it’s minus 30 outside.
Have you planted one for every one you have cut down?
Wood emits CO2 plus other nasty stuff. That CO2 has exactly the same effect as from gas or coal.
Absorbed by trees? That takes up to 80 years, but 50% of fossil fuel emissions are removed from the atmosphere into the seas and by plants within 12 months.
CO2 in not “nasty stuff” – you have been lied to again!
How long does it take to grow a tree, and how long does it take to burn one.
Let me think, for just a nanosecond……..
Every tree that isn’t burnt grows a tiny bit more based on the CO2 released by the ones that do burn. Plants grow faster in the presence of higher concentrations of CO2. You should consider thinking about it for more than a nanosecond before commenting
In other words, a higher atmospheric CO2 content is a good thing.
Lord save us all from these morons.
In the UK electricity is at least 28 pence per kWh (35 cents) which is 4 times the price of natural gas. No heat pump is going to get you 4x efficiency. In the winter solar in the UK is useless (we live at 50 to 60 degrees North) and wind can die for weeks on end. The vast majority of UK homes have a direct natural gas supply. Instead, the proposal is to use more and more natural gas, convert it in power stations to expensive electricity, transmit it down power lines losing more energy, and power an expensive heat pump that many can’t even afford to buy. We rarely have a/c in homes so dual use heat and cooling isn’t really a consideration.
Because it is the philosophy of this website to criticise not just the idea of climate change, but also any possible attempt to mitigate the damage.
Similarly, members reject not just covid lockdowns, but also any conceivable alternative action that might make them unnecessary (ie vaccines).
It is an entirely negative, backward looking approach to live, nostalgic for an alleged golden age when men were men and women were women, and it was ok to leave your door open with the heating on.
We don’t criticise the idea of climate change. We acknowledge climate change as FACT.
It’s the manmade climate change brigade which deny climate change, pretending that there is a “perfect climate” which we must somehow maintain. And you’ve fallen for it, F
iungal.Very good point well made!
Why are you even here?
I agree that we should do more to combat mankind’s emissions, including CO2.
For a start it would involve less money being given to dodgy countries that then use it for dodgy purposes (eg, the entire middle-east).
The main problem I have with the UK’s crusade on CO2 is that it won’t make the slightest difference — all of our reduction in fossil fuel usage will merely reduce demand slightly, with consequential movements in prices which will increase supply in most of the other countries in the world (that don’t care much about the West’s mission in this regard) so that the demand once again meets supply.
If they wanted to actually reduce emissions they’d arrange for increased import taxes on goods supplied by countries with a manufacturing base supplied by high CO2 sources — this would then change the dynamic towards more sustainable (re CO2) production/manufacturing. But they won’t do that as that’s being ‘nasty to poor people’ and doesn’t allow self-righteous westerners to feel good about their ‘green’ actions.
Combat? We should be pumping carbon back into the carbon based biosphere as fast as we can. 400ppm is still desperately denuded.
Yes – it needs coordinated world action. But it’s incredibly hard to get the world to act as one.
Whatever we do in the UK is dwarfed by China, for example.
However, if no one does anything, then nothing happens. A degree of coordination has already taken place. Energy reduction have been accepted by most countries.
Yes, many of them will be broken, but you have to start somewhere.
It’s not popular view on this website, but hey. Most of them seem to be old enough to play a gamble they won’t pay the price for.
Co-ordinated world action. What, you mean like a global dictatorship?
Unfortunately that probably wouldn’t solve the situation anyway, as dictators are on average not the most forward thinking people
Do you somehow imagine the Chinese and Indian’s don’t have scientists who also assess a changing climate?
Clearly, they are not worried about atmospheric CO2, for very good reason.
But they are worried, especially the Chinese. They’re very aware of environmental problems.
However, Xi needs growth to stay in power. While Modi and India are still in an intense nationalistic/anti colonialism trend.
They feel they should be allowed to bring their entire populations up to western style energy usage. And you can see their point. Trouble is, that’s a f**k of a lot of people.
I guess that’s why they are building more coal fired power stations than the rest of the world combined. Not to mention funding them in other countries.
No, they believe they are entitled to use the self same resources to drag their country from poverty the west did. Energy is a means to an end, not the end itself.
The really clever thing about the Chinese, which we rarely hear, is that they are also building more nuclear power stations than the rest of the world combined. When their coal fired plants begin decommissioning around, say, 2070 they will be entirely nuclear powered.
Inscrutable Chinese.
Spare me your utter stupidity.
“Why won’t people here accept the problems that are necessary in order to impose my solutions?”
The common attitude on this website is overwhelmingly negative, unproductive, and self pitying. I have no idea about you personally, it’s a generalisation.
The last place you’d go to for a solution is the Daily Sceptic.
It’s just that we don’t believe the problem exists, Fingal. Why should we accept a “solution” for a nonexistent problem? It’s like Hitler demanding the German population accept his “solution” for the “problem” of Jews, non-Aryans, homosexuals, gypsies, and anyone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Let’s hope you and your kind aren’t as successful fighting your Kampf.
Well of course, I realise that. But the majority think otherwise so we are where we are.
If we follow your advice, and you’re wrong, we’re all dead.
But if the majority are right, and we follow their advice, you’re still not a loser because you get to change your mind based on actual events.
So you’re in a win-win situation! Cheer up.
The majority are so stupid and gullible that they’ve let themselves be repeatedly injected with experimental gunk produced by crooks out of fear of a disease that poses a trivial threat to most of them.
But we’re not where we are because of their views, are we? This is top down imposition.
I think you could easily argue the opposite – that it’s bottom up pressure on the elite.
Only by abandoning reason and evidence.
Yet you are here. And if I may say so, your posts seem overwhelmingly negative, unproductive and self-pitying. I mean, I have no idea about you personally, but you come across that way.
The WHO reported in 2015 that by 2050 120,000,000 people in developing nations would be dead from inhaling smoke from burning dung and wood over open fires for heating and cooking.
Whilst you people restrict these countries from addressing that problem by burning fossil fuels to provide cheap, reliable electricity to them, this will not stop.
This is the disaster the climate scam is causing. Not your fanciful idea that the world will be a worse place tomorrow than it is today.
But you’ll just shrug off these deaths but the blood of over 20,000,000 people dead since 2015 is on your hands, not mine.
The left creates a problem, then creates another problem to solve the first problem.
I’m not sure I agree, although sometimes the scepticism could be spread with a trowel.
I think the point made by others, that the UK contributes 1% of the 4% contribution made by personkind, added to the unlikelihood of the major contributors (US, China and India) doing their bit, suggests to many that we will make ourselves poorer and less comfortable while having no effect on ‘climate change’.
If anyone can give me some convincing counter-arguments as to how the UK really will save the planet, I’ll be happy to reconsider my prejudices.
And, of course, that 1% would be reduced partly by emitters relocating.
The UK by itself can’t save the planet.
No country by itself can do that.
But it’s reasonable to suggest that we should be among the leaders.
And when the rest of the world observes the results – people becoming colder and poorer with zero effect on the temperature -they’re going to clamour to follow our example?
Lots of countries are going at roughy the same pace.
It can be an economic disadvantage not to keep up with green technology. For example, the car industry has gone though an amazing shift.
More expensive cars with shorter ranges is, I admit, an amazing shift.
Yes – although they also reduced fumes down to zero in one leap, thus beating everything petrol cars have managed in over 100 years.
If you completely ignore the entirety of the car and battery production process and how the electricity is produced and are so stupid that you think carbon dioxide is the work of the Devil.
Have a guess at what the estimated cost to America would be to achieve NetZero.
$400Tn dollars.
You people really have no idea what you’re talking about. Typical left wing idealism.
The climate ALWAYS changes. Always has, always will.
The so-called damage is highly debatable. People and the environment do better warmer condition, not in colder ones, and plants grow better in higher atmospheric CO2.
You can certainly make a good case for mitigating environmental damage, but covering the land with solar and wind farms isnt it.
‘.. use gas for the main portion of our house…’. That’s why!
Here they won’t be used for a bit of extra cooling, they will replace gas central heating which will be banned after 2030.
If you want to understand the criticism, next Winter disconnect your gas heating, and use one mini-split to heat the whole house then get back to us next year with how you got on.
You don’t see to understand the pure insanity of what Gove and Johnson have proposed for the UK – we are in ” total take down’ mode”
The sun doesn’t shine enough and the wind doesn’t blow enough to run any part of this permanently damp country. Most UK houses do not have space for “Heat Pumps” even if they could be afforded and worked as claimed !
Our only reasonable option is to fight hard to overturn all this insane nonsense before it is too late! However as both our main political parties are now one and voting doesn’t count as politicians once in Government now lie about everything our future looks very grim.
Currently we have an unstable, self-serving, narcissistic Maverick in Downing Street with ‘Emergency Power’ currently seeking open military confrontation with Russia!
What are our chances?
WM, it’s not that simple. You are probably using your mini splits mainly for cooling and direct, rather than through ducting. This article may help. https://powersaveac.com/blog/post/is-a-mini-split-the-same-as-a-heat-pump
They’re not the same as mini-splits — they’re used for single room heating/cooling.
The heat-pumps in the document are large single devices used to heat water for whole property heating and hot-water.
WM
Do you live in Alaska?
If not, I guess you are below the 49th parallel.
Here in York, we are latitude 54° North.
Makes a difference, you know.
I don’t care a monkey’s if you like your “mini split”, if it suits you.
The only thing I want to “attack” is gormless and venal arts-grad politicians insisting I follow “The Science”. The latter being the predictions of the incompetent gobshites, the politicians annoint to bolster their weird GangGreen ruinable policies.
Think “Professor Pantsdown” Ferguson or Phil Jones. And thousands more.
Policy based Evidence making at its finest.
Meanwhile, all the plebs will get to find out how their Great Grandparents survived a hard Winter. Or didn’t.
These coefficients of performance may actually be slightly worse than installations which the EST monitored 20 years ago. I seem to remember air source heat pumps having CoPs of around 2.5 then. If so, it’s not so much a learning curve but more a forgetting curve.
They simply measure the amount of electrical energy input X to get heat energy output Y from the heat exchanger. In other words it may be 1kW of electricity in to produce 3kW of heat energy out.
However just like a conventional central heating system, some of that heat will be lost from the unit, then the heat energy has to heat water, pipework and room air. How efficehtly that happens will determine total heat in and useful heat out to heat the home.
i keep seeing these heat pumps need house insulation. Why? If you have a current gas boiler with no house insulation, then if you need it with a heat pump, that says it is not as efficient.
I think an efficient heat pump to handle temperatures down to -7C will be so big, noisy and expensive that it is not going to be an easy sell. It’s like domestic solar, the installation is incapable of supplying the power requirement without constant backup from grid supply.
My understanding is that the calculation goes:
Poorly insulated home + gas heating costs = well insulated home + heat-pump electricity costs.
So go ahead and install the insulation first. If you don’t get damp issues, then consider dropping another £15K (prices are going up, not down, from a relative’s recent experience) on the reverse-fridge.
They ought to be encouraging us to install log burners instead. Especially if you are able to use wood from local sources which might otherwise be wasted. Many ‘greens’ are ignorant of the fact that dead wood releases carbon back to the atmosphere whether by decay or burning, and are carbon neutral in that they release the carbon then removed from the air in the first place. Sadiq Khan has a vendetta against them and manipulates the Sheffield university report which monitored pollution levels in the room where the log burner is used, with the stove door open, which in reality is only when filling with fresh logs.
Look up, London Smogs… respiratory disease caused by wood smoke.
No it was coal/coke smoke that cased the London smog before the clean air acts
True of the 1950s smogs, however much of the PM10 and PM20 air pollution in London now comes from retro-installed wood-burners which have been installed left, right and Chelsea ever since someone started spreading guff that wood-burning is somehow eco-feiendly.
Well, cough, or freeze.
The green future is going to look a lot like the past.
Used because the country had been denuded of trees to burn many years earlier.
Simply not true – it was coal.
It was coal, but it was being burned principally because the country had been denuded of trees many years earlier.
“Greens are ignorant ” say no more.
The future is in kiln dried wood with very low moisture content and lower levels of emission.
Khan wants to ban wood burners in London – another good reason to install more!
So surprised to hear that Khan “manipulated” a report!
How long does it take to burn a tree, and how long does it take to grow a tree?
27.8 million households in the UK, say half a tree a month in winter for each home. Say 4 months for winter, that’s 54,000,000 trees required every year. That’s around 1Bn trees over a 20 year growing period for replacement.
That’s around 20% of all the trees in the UK.
Then there’s industry.
The underlying study was carried out in 2010, so these results are no real guide to the current situation.
http://oro.open.ac.uk/31647/
This page should be withdrawn. (NB I am heat pump sceptical, but we shouldn’t use out of data data)
Has physics changed much in 12 years?
Nope, nor have heat pumps. They have been used for generations in other countries.
This “efficiency”: I take it that it’s really the Coefficient of Performance?
A true thermodynamic efficiency would allow for the (in)efficiency of generating and transmitting the electricity in the first place.
Anyway, the best use I can see for a heat pump is for the heating system in an electric car.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Teslas have multiple pumps and heat transfer and recovery systems.
They still fail in cold weather.
How wide an area does a ground-sourced heat pump draw its heat from? If a whole street has them installed, will there be enough heat to go round?
Ground source need a big area, more than the average suburban garden (especially in a row of terraced houses). I think some can be sunk vertically into the ground, but presumably that has it’s own problems.
Air source will whirr away at the side of your house (and that of your neighbours). They are Ok for background heat but would need supplementing in cold weather. They won’t get hot enough to provide hot water to a heat that would kill off bugs, so you’d need an immersion heater or some other form of water heating. Your house would also need a comprehensive insulation scheme. Not a cheap option all round
Exactly – they are for the rich with large houses and vey large gardens who ca easily afford them and stick 20 solar panels on their roofs for good measure.
Between £100k and £150k for the average house.
I costed up my 3 bedroom EOT cottage a few years ago.
Two possibilities
1) The area required is an area equal to the surface area to be heated. So for a two story house, an area 1 metre underground equal to twice the footprint of the house to accommodate a horizontal network of heat exchanger pipes. (This will be impossible for anyone without a large area of land, or a new build when the pipes can be laid before foundations are.
2) A deep shaft can be drilled for vertical heat exchange pipework.
Both require heavy equipment and are expensive.
These will be impractical in UK towns and cities.
… where most UK people live.
I only think GSHPs are realistic in the open countryside, where possibly 8-10% of people live.
Ground source is an irrelevance for the UK. Almost nobody has enough land for one, which means they’re niche, which means they are and will always be done as one-off engineering projects. If you see the low side of £50K for a quote (prices may go up) you’ll be lucky.
This gives you an idea.
I personally cant stand the way this Mr Angry gives his presentation. But almost a year ago he was one of those who was speaking out against heat pumps.
https://youtu.be/GhAKMAcmJFg
He also made a follow up video.
https://youtu.be/pFl8jcLOiP8
Snakeoil
I can comment from experience. Air/water heat pump, central heating only, in 4 bedroom farmhouse in France with tiled floors and existing underfloor water heating pipes served by an oil boiler.
The motivation for installing was the high price of oil (variable 85cents plus per litre, 1.07€ once.) and low cost French (nuclear) electricity; piped gas not available.
On that basis for an installation cost of 11 000€ (2 500€ grant) it reduced my heating costs by half. Interestingly, I was advised to keep the oil boiler to heat the water, since it was already there and there would be a cost to remove it, plus I was told it would be cheaper to heat the water with oil than than using the heat pump. The reasoning being I would have to run the heat pump all year round to heat the water as well, instead of just a few Winter months for the CH.
It worked fine on an indoor wifi thermostat (indoor temp 20C to 23C) even in temperatures down to -9C. I don’t understand in the report where the difficulty in operating it is. You switch it on, set the thermostat (timer too if you want) and leave it. No different to an ordinary boiler.
Cons. It had two big fans which make the sort of noise fans do, a constant drone and with vibration. It was outside next to the house but not on the wall. In a neighbourhood with lots of these, it will be very noisy particularly at night.
The water circulation had a filter which needed cleaning once or sometimes twice a season or it would clog and stop the unit.
On cold nights, it needed to de-ice, so it stopped and pumped water in reverse to heat the heat exchanger grill, and consequently a significant amount of water poured out of it… they need a gutter or drain under it. It takes just 5 to 10 minutes.
Compared with piped gas, there is no consumption cost benefit (assuming price of gas does not go up), if it requires insulation then that suggests the units offered are underpowered to keep size, cost, and consumption down.
Since it uses electricity, it will still emit carbon dioxide no matter how many wind mills there are, because base load will have to come from coal or gas, and be backed up by gas in spinning reserve.
It will just consume resources, emit CO2 in manufacture to replace what already works efficiently, there will be a capital cost to the consumer and no better running costs – just to serve the interests of the liars and grifters in the climate change scam.
Which part of France?
South West. Which people who only go there in Summer think is tropical and do not realise has cold Winters, no snow to speak about but very cold nights.
And the unit was big both in power output and size, about 5 feet tall, nearly 3 feet wide by 2 feet deep.
I’m all right, Jacques.
Heat pumps are for the rich with large houses and gardens chosen to survive- the poor can either freeze or be forcibly housed in Chinese style, inadequately solar heated tower-block rabbit hutches, where their daily food ration and “Vaccine Schedule” is posted through the large ” letter box”. A large TV screen will show non-stop propaganda, new regulation orders “Approved” Pornography and will advertise funeral planning schemes and of course Netflix rejects.
The Crematorium will be built next door ( for convenience).
Heat pumps are fine.
The problem is people expect them to work as well as mains gas — they won’t.
They also expect them to work well in the depths of winter — again, they’re not very good at this.
A good compromise would be to use heat pumps for the not-so-cold months and then move to ‘burning stuff’ during the coldest months (Dec-Feb) — but this won’t be sanctioned at all, even though it would result in a fair reduction in CO2 emissions.
Also, for some reason they’re incredibly expensive in the UK — how come whenever the government ‘tries to help’ by offering grants it always ends up with price gouging. At least they’re removed the VAT for people prepared to undertake the relatively simple task of installing the thing themselves.
How is a heating technology that doesn’t heat your home when you most need it to heat your home “fine”?
Simple task if you have sufficient pipework capacity, and room for the radiators required.
Underfloor heating, or replacing microbore pipework is a gut and rebuild.
And don’t forget the coming heat pump “misselling” scandal.
So twice the cost for no benefit?
If we are decarbonising electricity production with all the wonderful wind farms, why not just replace gas boilers with electric boilers? No need to change all the radiators. No need to dig up your garden or hang a big, noisy air pump on an outside wall.
OK, so maybe you couldn’t have the heating on while charging all the family’s battery powered cars but you’d probably still be warmer than with a lousy heat pump!
Because they know that the running costs would be obviously massive and they obviously would get nowhere near meeting peak demand.
I installed a heat pump into a new build “eco house” ten years ago. They are absolute rubbish. Those coefficient factors are highly ambitious but the negatives experienced were these:
If you have radiators insteD of underfloor heating, forget it because the water never gets hot enough to feed them satisfactorily
If you have a family who might enjoy the odd shower or bath, then you will soon be competing for meagre hot water supplies. Family fallout are inevitable..The systems are slow to reheat water and you need to oversize water storage to compensate
They are dammed expensive to service and repair and no one is interested in doing either.
They are electric..dugh… and where is the price of electricity going at the moment?
They break down more regularly than a gas boiler ever will and the parts are more complex and expensive
I replaced the monster after 4 years in sheer frustration. It was not a cheap brand..supposedly well used on Sweden. It could not cope with Scotland..mind you not much can these days!!
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18469/wind-solar-power-us-economy
“A Mostly Wind- and Solar-Powered U.S. Economy Is a Dangerous Fantasy
Not so if there is a rapid and massive decline in the size of the population, there are two sides to a supply and demand problem after all.
Speaking of which, have you had your latest booster?
This is the sort of setup necessary for heat pumps for hot water and underfloor heating. That doesn’t even include the pipework manifold.
I doubt most houses have the spare room to house this.
I’m really pleased with my new heat pump installation, obviously I had to move out to make room for all the cylinders but I get a warm feeling from all the virtue I’m displaying.
Of course with wind currently generating 4% and solar 6% then any heat pump is basically converting Gas to electricity, with attendant losses, to be used to power a 2x heat pump.
At 15K per installation it would take just how long to recover the cost once everything is taken into account?
Let’s hope that nobody comes up with the idea of converting heating, transport, industry … To Electrical power. Today, alone, we need 10x the ‘renewables’ just to cope with now. That’s without heat pumps and EV’s.
There are plenty of LFT kits and face masks Made in China that can be thrown on the fire, should provide enough heat to get us through next winter.
You can bet your left nut that various old Etonian scum bags are already lined up to get the massive government contracts to install this shit tech.
Good luck with any ‘heat pumps’ Made in China. Broken after 5 years.
Green energy can do a good job of supplying all the energy that is needed just so long as the demand is about 80-90% less than it is today.
Speaking of which have you had your booster yet?
Britain is a particularly poor choice for heat pumps as the Damp, just above freezing conditions mean that heat pumps will freeze up more frequently than dryer, colder climates. And ultimately there is an energy cost within the price of any thing, so the fact that these things cost many thousands to install, whilst still being reliant on electricity which is still on average 35 % generated by natural gas is complete madness. And still no sign of global warming, oh that’s right its now climate change – because the warming wasn’t happening.
“Climate Change” is the modern mantra. In reality, the climate has always changed. Maybe there is an illusion of stability over short periods of time, though.
Lower flow/return temps expected with ASHP’s and GSHP’s, and ultimately heat output from an equivalent size radiator means that you need a very highly insulated house and pretty air tight. Also works far better with underfloor heating than traditional rads. Works well if houses are built to something like Passivhaus design standards or similar. Not so well when built to the standards of most new builds in this country let alone most existing houses many of which were built late 1800’s or earlier. This government and pretty much any option for a replacement are so out of touch it’s not even funny!
Thank you.
Most pertinent point from the report….Point 8 – most households have difficulty understanding the instructions. Have been using ours for 12 years. Do not have a clue how it works, what dial to move or how to make it more ‘efficient’. Costing us an absolute fortune in electricity (eye watering). Don’t do it. They are a nightmare. I could write a book.
If we really need to replace gas heating with something, why not solar panels that would power the electric heating? I have large roof over my block of flats, it could probably help to heat a few flats, while staying in the “eco-agenda”. Problem is, no one is interested in helping to install those; I spoke with ton of dodgy companies that seem to take some government subsidies only to tell you that they can’t do anything for you and that you don’t qualify for any eco “scheme”… This energy would come literally for free, minus the initial installation cost, and maybe that’s the reason why it’s impossible..
Because they generate power at the wrong time of year for that. Since 2014 I’ve had them on my roof, and they cut down on the amount of day rate electricity demand. To get the best value, I need to be flexible about what to do, though. See a graph of the last 5 years, showing it’s monthly output (the peak rating is 1.6 kW on my house roof).
There could well be some dodgy companies in the trade, but the one I used (and use for maintenance on a parallel solar hot water system) are still active, and appear to be busy: https://www.greenshopsolar.co.uk/
My employer installed heat pumps during a re-fit of the office 2 years ago. This winter, which by any standards was mild, they had to buy fan heaters to boost the office temperature. It was too cold to work there without them.
Hate pumps or is it heat pumps? They sit alongside EVs and smart meters. Things I will never own.
An article called The Truth About Heat Pumps….
People often publish their opinion as a factual truth, when it is just an opinion.
Here is a factual truth: I have a heat pump in my home and it works just fine. My house is not cold and I enjoy hot water just like I did with a gas boiler.
This truth my not suit the political narrative of the author or many readers, but nonetheless, is stands as a stubborn truth that just won’t go away. It does tend to be the people that don’t own heat pumps, who are so keen to say that don’t work.
Not a fact but an observation – I find it odd that a publication and a readership that consider themselves Right of Centre ( I know I self identify with Conservative, Liberal anti Lockdown values) get all Socialist, anti innovation anti progress and anti free market as soon as any type of low emission tech comes along. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. But don’t tell me my heat pump does not work, because it does. Don’t tell me my EV battery won’t last 4 years, because it has already done 7 years without a problem.
I can see the angry keyboard warriors getting started now. To your keyboards luddites! Burn that Spinning Jenny! Say what you like, but my home will still remain, stubbornly, warm.
The Truth About Heat Pumps? HA! I have not heard such BS since Matt Hancock said there is no Herd Immunity without vaccines, Boris said 3 week to flatten the sombrero and putting a piece of cloth over your face stops airborne viruses. Aren’t us sceptics supposed to have a higher regard for truth? Or are we as bad as the political / media class that run this Great Country?
Heat pumps do work, if you’ve been in a CooP store or an Aldi it is likely heated by heat pumps. If you can have underfloor heating they are an excellent choice as the water temperature required is under 30°c. The down side is they are very expensive and will not last as long as a boiler. If you have a bungalow with a large garden great. Terraced house then inappropriate.