Back in the days when I was at school, we used to study a subject called ‘Human Geography’ which taught us all about mankind’s impact on the environment, in terms of the effects of creating and maintaining cities, industry and farmlands. Recently, the amused British media discovered there was an entirely new geographical subdiscipline now available to students instead, called ‘Inhuman Geography’, whose first known professor, Kathryn Yusoff, is currently employed at the (formerly) prestigious Queen Mary University of London.
Ironically, Yusoff appears to be a human herself, at least approximately so, but mocking media write-ups of her latest textbook for students, Geologic Life: Inhuman Intimacies and the Geophysics of Race, reveal she does not necessarily write like one. Her basic idea is that geology itself is racist, being linked indelibly to “white supremacy” as its earliest main theorists, like Sir Charles Lyell, were those dreaded white European Christian males of the pre-modern colonial era.
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“We don’t save a lot relative to oil and gas, but I would still recommend any house with a heat pump also gets solar panels,” he says.
The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.
I wonder if they save anything at all relative to gas?
Of course not! It’s interesting they didn’t factor in anything to do with long term maintenance and ultimately asset replacement – clearly they believed a mechanical device would simply work ‘forever’ which is naive at best. It shouldn’t be too much work to drop an oil fired boiler back in there, or gas with a propane tank setup.
Solar panels are a revenue stream “thanks” to feed-in tariffs whereby as mandated by Government, electricity retailers must pay more per kWh by a substantial margin for electricity fed-in than electricity supplied.
That’s why the economics are favourable.
We other lucky consumers pay for this by higher charges in our bills.
Mr and Mrs Watts will need megawatts if they want to keep warm.
I guess the government is already preparing a solution for them in the form of “voluntary” euthanasia.
The Inuit would use ice flows. Environmentally friendly.
Fewer ice floes in Buckinghamshire…
Mr and Mrs Watts – another fine piece of nominative determinism!
But yes an absolute unfolding nightmare.
Harsh fact of life – Conning yourself into installing a cheat pump is worse than being conned onto installing a cheat pump by state-sponsored scammers.
No substitute for a hydro-carbon powered boiler, when you take into account purchase price, cost of house-upgrading and the state-sponsored highest unit electricity price in the world.
Whilst they might not be on the gas grid, many have lpg tanks as an alternative to oil.
Still that’d be admitting you made a mistake with the heat pump in the first place…
Cause: “they did enjoy an advantageous scheme of selling the power they generated from solar panels back to the grid”
and
Effect: “the cost of electricity has soared”
The power from solar panels was of no use to the power companies, but they were forced to pay for it anyway.
Sunken cost fallacy ( trademark of government’s COVID and Nut Zero policies, to name but just two ) … Invested so much in this [scheme, technology, policy, emotive virtue ], can’t pull out now.
Solar panels will save us. And a vegan diet.
Sigh …. I am an emphatic person, but it’s being stretched awfully thinly recently … Awfully …
No comment
We just upgraded our oil boiler for less than £5k. Add a tank.
Sorted.
One day there may be millions of pensioners living in houses with failing or failed heat pumps that they cannot possibly afford either to run or replace or obtain loans to do either
I won’t be one of them. They can keep their heat pumps.
Me neither…they can shove them along with the electric vehicles!
I don’t want to see any old person struggling due to affordability to heat their home. That said, it’s hard to have sympathy with anyone who falls for this ‘saving the planet’ bo11ocks. Anyone who installs a heat pump, or solar panels, or buys an electric car because they think they’re being ‘green’ is buying one for completely false and non-existent reasons, which is where my sympathy ends.
“We had a reporter up from the local paper asking us about our solar panels and our heat pump,” recalls Mr Watts.
So since 2008 I and others have had money taken out of our pockets via taxes and via hidden charges on our energy bills to line the pockets of Mr and Mrs Watts so they can have reduced costs whilst mine and others’ go up and up.
Sympathy for them? I should co-co.