Reply to: All about house prices

[AtW]

Those I was thinking of travelled for free.
In cattle trucks.

Not sure if its a myth or something but apparently at some point nazies checked if fare dodgers can also dodge bullets. After that, apparently, incidents of fare dodging dropped to zero.

[AtW]

And the trains would run on time... very unfortunate for some...

... for train fare dodgers?

[DimPrawn]

They would have switched production of German cars to Britain, and now BMW, Mercedes and Porsche would all have gone bankrupt.

[AtW]

Schweinhund! My very point!

But the Britisch Empire would still be intact(ish), and the German Reich would probably stretch to the Pacific... lebensraum++.

Frightening thought... there but for the grace of God & all that.

I doubt that Hitler would have honoured his word in this case - if Britain made deal with him in 1940, then he'd successfully in my view invade USSR, America would not have entered the war (so they'd have no nukes), and by 1950 Hitler would have have nukes, missles, jet fighters - much improved armour that they'd copy from T34. What are the chances of him keeping his word and allowing Britain to keep the empire? I think they are pretty much zero and Churchill could easily see it.

[oracleslave]

Indeed.

If only he'd listened to the wise words of that nice Lord Halifax, we'd still have an empire...

Yes but we'd probably all speak German.

[Board Game Geek]

Why! is there some major Event on the Horizon?

I thought that was quite witty wordplay by the Divester.

[Flubster]

Why! is there some major Event on the Horizon?



IGMC

Please, let me get it for you. Your taxi is waiting outside...

[Diver]

Come Wednesday, I'm sure the planet will have plenty of energy to play with.

Why! is there some major Event on the Horizon?



IGMC

[Board Game Geek]

Come Wednesday, I'm sure the planet will have plenty of energy to play with.

[AtW]

It probably sounds low because it is low.

That's odd - I was under the impression that this country actually had very large deposits of coal, hmmm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Coal_fires

UK is not even on the list of top countries with most coal

[TimberWolf]

I could not be arsed to look for info but I think the paper wrongly estimated coal reserves being at 220 mln tons - this sounds way too low.

It probably sounds low because it is low. It was once vast but the Victorians were great at exploiting coal. They even had their own DOOMED™ mongers in their time. And they were right. Talk about Gormless selling off our Gold reserves. Incidentally the quote you provided previously may have related to world coal reserves lasting 200 years.

Check out this report, where the numbers are stated in a clearer manner:

Let’s repeat his calculation for the world as a whole. In 2006, the coal consumption rate was 6.3 Gt per year. Comparing this with reserves of 1600 Gt of coal, people often say “there’s 250 years of coal left”. But if we assume business as usual implies a growing consumption, we get a different answer. If the growth rate of coal consumption were to continue at 2% per year (which gives a reasonable fit to the data from 1930 to 2000), then all the coal would be gone in 2096. If the growth rate is 3.4% per year (the growth rate over the last decade), the end of business-as-usual is guaranteed to be before 2072. Not 250 years, but 60!
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/s...ok/tex/cft.pdf (pg 164).

[AtW]

Yeah, that must include gasification and they qualify that by saying 'at present production rates', which are quite low. I don't know much about gasification but I gather it's quite tricky. I imagine we could keep scraping away indefinitely, but even so there doesn't appear to be much left from a once massive reserve.

I could not be arsed to look for info but I think the paper wrongly estimated coal reserves being at 220 mln tons - this sounds way too low.

[TimberWolf]

From your own links: "3. The strategic importance of coal is further underlined by the fact that there are over 200 years of established coal reserves at present production rates compared with only 50 or so years for oil and gas."

Yeah, that must include gasification and they qualify that by saying 'at present production rates', which are quite low. I don't know much about gasification but I gather it's quite tricky. I imagine we could keep scraping away indefinitely, but even so there doesn't appear to be much left from a once massive reserve.

[AtW]

According to this Coal Authority report Britain has 222 million tonnes of coal reserves (3.7 tonnes for each person in the UK) and a potential for another 380 millions tonnes (another 6.3 tonnes each). Hardly massive.

From your own links: "3. The strategic importance of coal is further underlined by the fact that there are over 200 years of established coal reserves at present production rates compared with only 50 or so years for oil and gas."

[TimberWolf]

Oh add to that we no longer have a Coal Mining industry despite the fact we're sat on massive energy reserves

According to this Coal Authority report Britain has 222 million tonnes of coal reserves (3.7 tonnes for each person in the UK) and a potential for another 380 millions tonnes (another 6.3 tonnes each). Hardly massive.

We currently consume about 59 million tonnes of coal a year, of which 30 million tonnes a year is mined sustainably so that it 'can provide many years of future production at present levels'. They speak about 2050.

I knew what we had left was little (I've seen similar figures from another source) but I'm still staggered at how little coal we have left. In addition to that we may have 7 billion tonnes (116 tonnes each) in old or deep mines that might be retrieved using advanced gasification techniques, but that's more speculative and not really coal. Not sure about oil. It's true that more coal and oil could and likely will be found in the UK, but the days of massive energy reserves are probably over for us.