The good life tv comedy programme could this be done today

ceridwen

shebrett wrote: »

I've seen stuff on this too, for example to match the vitamins from the average tomato grown in the 1940's you would need to have 10 of today's tomatoes, there were other common examples, but that one stuck in my head. Probably explains why all the older relatives tell me that fruit etc isn't as sweet anymore.

Anyone know if it's possible to get seed from fruit/veg that hasn't been altered for today's market?

As I understand it - having read some of the same articles LotusEater has - the reason why food doesnt contain nearly as high a level of nutrients as it did say 50 years ago is because the goodness in the soil has been "used up" in effect and we are now trying to grow much of our food in pretty "dead" soil.

Organic farming recognises that "We feed the soil, the soil feeds the plants and the plants feed us" and duly takes steps to replenish the goodness in the soil. Conventional farming doesn't - it just takes and takes and takes - and never puts any nourishment back into the soil.

Judging by the re-run of the "Day of the Triffids" going on out in my garden currently - those plants sure do like their food (dried seaweed in my case.....) and the tomatoes, for one, that I am growing this year are positively enormous compared to previous years (where I didnt take such care to feed them regularly).

COOLTRIKERCHICK

cootambear wrote: »

OK chums, I have to call a temporary halt to my contributions (don`t all cheer). Much as I`ve enjoyed it, it has been a bit time consuming and its become an excuse to put off chores. So I wont be posting for another week (if this thread is still alive, that is).

May you have a fruitful harvest. May your apples be as rosy as felicity kendals bum cheeks.

thats the best thing you have written in the thread:rotfl:

about the apples and FK bum cheeks:T

COOLTRIKERCHICK

ginnyknit they have a few diff solar panels... etc. you would have to see which would be the best one for you, but we bought this one.. its now £7.99

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=228624

it tops up the battery in the caravan...

ginnyknit

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

ginnyknit they have a few diff solar panels... etc. you would have to see which would be the best one for you, but we bought this one.. its now £7.99

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=228624

it tops up the battery in the caravan...

Thanks for the info am off to have a look now - Im sure I can find a use for it

Ceridwen I also have a triffid thing going on with my courgettes. I pour a lot of the relatively clean washing up water into buckets outside the backdoor and drop used tea bags in (plain and herbal) and i water some of the veg with that, as for my tomato plants I use the cheapest feed as per instructions and by the look of it am going to have a bumper crop. I hate the idea of pennypinching on everything then buying expensive feed, also added some blood fish and bone early on in the season as I read that the roots are the thing you need to make strong first.

zarazara

well its pretty much the good -life in my neck of the woods. This weekend we visited a PYO farm and got various things from the allotment .spent the weekend making jam and relishes,then baking scones and cakes and pastries and making HM strawberry jelly. Today I have bottled some gooseberries and made mint sauce. This morning I picked elderflowers for champagne and cordial ,making later this afternoon. I made some picked cucumbers this morning and then harvested the last of this years rhubarb. I have a massive amount of it. Will be deciding hat to do with it later today. We are hoping to get chickens next year,meanwhile a neighbour brought me some eggs this morning. Its a good life alright.

ginnyknit

Well Zarazara that does sound like you are living the good life to the full. Sounds good to me!:)

I had a look at Maplins and saw an excellent solar phonecharger for 7.99 so am off to have a look at my local Maplins -didnt realise there was one just near where I shop in Stockport. Then I called in poundstretcher and got a shed solar light reduced to 4.99 - its now up and charging. I think the phonecharger will be good as we have to have a phone each due to Dh being disabled so we can keep in touch if I nip out or he has another carer in. I beleive phone chargers use a lot of power and even have to be unplugged or they keep working! We were near poundstretcher as I heard of a keep feedstore for my animal foods - Jolleys and I saved a bomb on my chicken, rabbit and even bird feed plus lots less petrol as its nearer.

wssla00

I found this article really interesting- this man lived almost a year without money. Very interesting!

cootambear

sorry peeps, this is a massive cutnpaste, but I`m sure you`ll agree, very relevant to the points I`ve been making.



Through the production of cheap energy, the British Isles had seen swathes of its natural environment blighted and was running short of easily accessible carbon-rich fuel. In response, the state attempted to constrain resource-use through law, and energy-efficiency measures were actively encouraged. Progressives advocated a way forward by gearing up the production and exploitation of a potent new energy-dense fuel. However, some environmental thinkers viewed the impending transition to the new low-carbon technology as quite simply an affront to nature. This was a very real national energy crisis. It took place some 400 years ago.

The lessons of the Elizabethan energy crisis (which peaked between 1570 and 1630) are relevant today as we contemplate the prospect of ‘peak oil’, ‘peak gas’, ‘peak uranium’ or whatever other bottleneck peak-energy catastrophists can muster. The most important lesson of all is that the Elizabethan energy crisis was overcome, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution to deliver a more enlightened and prosperous society than many Elizabethans could possibly have imagined.

The energy crisis which struck the British Isles was ‘peak wood’. The idea of peak wood may seem absurd from our vantage point in human history, but be assured it was taken seriously by the Elizabethans. Indeed, peak wood is no more absurd than the observation that wars were once fought over salt when it was an important preservative, instrumental in international trade, rather than the mere table condiment it is now. Technologies such as electrification or refrigeration can dramatically change our view of the value of resources that we now regard as mundane.

Wood was a hugely important resource for the Elizabethans in construction and domestic heating and as the source of charcoal for iron smelting. Of particular importance was the availability of high-quality oak for naval construction yards to ensure maritime supremacy. Indeed, resource conservation laws forbidding the felling of trees made exemption for forests within a few miles off the coast due to their strategic naval importance. Aside from a shortage of fuel for heat and material for homes and warships, the felling of trees laid waste to wide areas of the countryside. It is reported that in the hinterlands of population centres barely a single tree could be found standing. Due to its poor energy density, wood requires vast areas of forest to be felled for energy production and demonstrates the strong relationship between the environment and energy production from diffuse sources.

This relationship can be seen again today in the recent expansion of wind farms to exploit diffuse renewable energy. The growth of wind farms appears to go against a 400-year trend of increasing energy density and a continuous decoupling of energy production from the environment. Such wind farms could become a blight on our landscape if we go too far, just as the felling of trees ravaged the countryside in the past.

Fortunately for the Elizabethans, there was an alternative fuel at hand which, although known for many years, had never been seriously exploited. Coal was energy dense, transportable by sea and could generate tremendous heat for industrial processes. Although it is perhaps hard to believe, the substitution of coal for wood was the first transition to a low-carbon economy. In comparison to wood, coal is a low-carbon fuel. In wood, there are typically 10 carbon atoms for every hydrogen atom, compared to one or two hydrogen atoms per carbon atom in coal. So coal has a far better hydrogen-to-carbon ratio. That matters, because when carbon is burned, it produces carbon dioxide, widely regarded as the most important greenhouse gas in the theory of man-made climate change. When hydrogen is burned, it produces water. So, the more a fuel is made up of hydrogen rather than carbon, the ‘cleaner’ it is.

This decarbonising of energy production has continued through further transitions from coal to oil, gas (four hydrogen atoms per carbon atom) and now nuclear fission, which does not rely on burning a carbon-based fuel at all. Each new fuel has a higher energy density and lower carbon content, particularly so for carbon-free fission.

These continuous improvements in energy density have led to greater energy utility, and so greater energy use. This is human progress. The growth in the use of coal during and after the Elizabethan era, for example, led to innovations in materials to deal with the potent heat produced, while stone-built homes with glass windows produced in coal furnaces became prevalent. Efficient fired-brick chimneys were deployed to remove fumes and improve indoor air quality. While the developed world has enjoyed the overwhelmingly civilising and liberating effects of cheap energy from coal, many in the developing world are still in the wood-burning Elizabethan era, cooking indoors over open fires with appalling consequences for their health.

The similarities between the Elizabethan energy crisis and the present day are quite remarkable. As wood became scarce near population centres, there was a strong motivation to shift energy supply to energy-dense, low-carbon coal. This is the same transition that many advocate today by displacing coal from energy production using ultra-energy dense, carbon-free uranium and thorium.

Not is the technological change similar, but the reaction to it shows parallels between the former era and the present day. While the improved energy density of coal was clear to Elizabethans, there was resistance to its widespread use. Coal was seen as dirty and polluting, a fuel of last resort, while deep mining was long seen as a form of robbery from the Earth until the early sixteenth century, echoing current environmental sentiment. While wood remained plentiful, there was little incentive to mine coal. However, as practical resource limits were approached, coal became accepted. The improved energy density of coal and its ease of transport by water would lead to the marvels of the Industrial Revolution, ultimately raising standards of living and providing an escape for many from subsistence agriculture.

One of the key observations of the Elizabethan energy crisis is that the scarcity of wood precipitated a new, low-carbon energy infrastructure which delivered greater availability of cheap and ultimately cleaner energy. Present-day greens who advocate a transition to a low-carbon energy infrastructure should therefore be careful what they wish for. Global deployment of new generation-III nuclear reactors, macro-scale renewables projects, ultra-low cost solar power and (some day) fusion will certainly reduce carbon emissions, but will almost certainly increase total energy production, reduce real energy costs and lead to greater energy use in the long term. Again, this is human progress, even if it is not what many greens may hope for.

Yet another observation is that the Elizabethans did not start with a blank sheet of paper in finding an alternative to wood. They geared up an existing energy supply from a minor role in energy production to the dominant source of fuel. In turn, it is nuclear power and possibly shale gas - a fuel source that has only recently become exploitable - that are in a similar position to displace coal and oil over the coming decades. Compressed natural gas is also an excellent substitute for oil since it can be used with existing internal combustion engines; all that is required is to fit a pressurised tank to an existing car, something that is already quite commonly done. Alternatively, battery energy density will eventually approach that of hydrocarbons, allowing effective transportation through the use of clean electricity. We are not short of options when it comes to a new stage in our energy usage.

Peak energy catastrophists can always find a new stumbling block on the path to new energy sources. For example, many argue that there is only sufficient high-grade uranium to fuel a new fleet of generation-III reactors for a few decades. However, increased demand for uranium will lead to a resumption of uranium prospecting, improvements in energy-efficient fuel fabrication from lower-grade ores, spent fuel re-processing and ultra-efficient reactor designs. During the transition from wood to coal some 400 years ago, agricultural writer Arthur Standish bemoaned ‘there is no assurance how long they [coals] will last’. Much later, in 1865, economist Stanley Jevons noted that the great improvements in engine efficiency from the steam power pioneer Thomas Newcomen to the industrial innovator James Watt paradoxically led to a greater demand for coal. Again, present-day greens should be careful in calling for energy efficiency measures. They have a rather poor track record of actually reducing long-term energy use. The only effective means of reducing energy use is through socially regressive measures to engineer artificial scarcity, such as subsidies for inefficient modes of energy production. Why would we take such a backward step?

For nuclear power, the current generation of once-through light water reactors were never seen as an end point for nuclear energy, but only a beginning. We are currently using the inefficient Newcomen engines of the nuclear age, but have yet to deploy the greatly improved equivalent of the Watt engine. The Watt engines of the nuclear age will likely be generation-IV fast reactors, possibly accelerator-driven machines or even fusion-fission hybrids, each of which can improve fuel burn from less than one per cent to greater than 99 per cent, while incinerating the spent fuel (wrongly classified as waste) from our current fleet of reactors. This will create yet more energy and extend the useful life of uranium deposits into the far future. Even more important for the future will be the use of thorium as a fertile and abundant fuel which will enable nuclear energy to be generated in copious quantities for quite literally thousands of years to come.

Let’s be clear: there is no shortage of high-grade energy, only a shortage of ambition in some quarters and a retreat from the idea of human progress through technical innovation. That doesn’t mean there are no technical problems to overcome – for example, there are serious engineering challenges in building really big nuclear plants – but there are some startling ideas now being discussed about how these problems could be solved.

Whatever technologies are ultimately devised and deployed, our goal must be to generate yet more clean, low-cost energy. We will need this energy to power the developing world, deliver rapid transportation, process and store information, light our growing cities, explore new intellectual horizons in science and recycle strategic materials in ways undreamt of by today’s greens.

New sources of energy can not only replace resources that may dwindle with time, but can also provide new starting points for innovation, with many unforeseen benefits. Just as the Elizabethan switch from burning trees to burning coal helped to fire the Industrial Revolution, so an ambitious approach to energy supply could help to revolutionise society in the future.

Colin McInnes is professor of engineering science at the University of Strathclyde.

chelms38

Sadly if people grew as much as they did in their front garden it would only be pinched by the evil ones who don't care about anyone.

olly300

cootmbear your entire post is by a supporter of nuclear energy. They are basically writing that we can only rely on nuclear energy.

There as other opponents have the view that we should rely on a mixture of sources including renewable sources like wind and tidal power. In fact some opponents include nuclear power in the mix. What they are scared of is being in the situation like we are in now relying on 2 main sources of energy to power our power stations - coal and gas plus a small amount of nuclear energy.

The real issue about nuclear energy is the decommissioning costs of plants and the storage of nuclear waste as both these costs fall directly on the future tax payers.