Posts by Chris Waugh
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I'm confused by the comments on the cost of solar water heating. We installed one out here in the village and I remember it costing around 1000 yuan, about NZ$200. Still, our calculation had nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the convenience of showering at home rather than the village bathhouse - which would be year-round with the addition of an electric booster and some kind of heating in the room it's installed in. Then again, collossal market and solar is really popular here. So popular that when I was in Jinghong in Yunnan province the rooftops were forests of solar water heaters and fancy hotels advertised 24 hour hot water on big billboards by their entrances - sure, tropical climate and really sunny (Yunnan means 'south of the clouds'), but solar water heating is just as common up here in the north. But other than the comparatively tiny size of the market, I'm struggling to understand why solar water heating is apparently so incredibly expensive in NZ.
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to Richard Grevers,
India and China are capable of making highly efficient appliances which are affordable for their own middle classes
This much I can confirm.
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Counting mentions of China over the last few hours (and it really does interest me how China – at least as a metaphor – has entered the discourse in recent years):
George Darroch:
In the last 15 years wind turbines have become massive, and there’s a great amount of engineering and science behind any one structure. China is of course catching up, and the US has a reasonable industry,
Farmer Green:
It seems very obvious with the number of new coal-fired generators being built in China that atmospheric CO 2 levels are going steadily upwards ,
and:
and China is going to burn all the coal it can get.
Richard Grevers:
And there’s no need for appliance efficiency to happen only at the high end of the market, given that some of the best R&D into both energy efficiency and small scale power production is happening in the manufacturing base: India and China – which have very real incentives for conserving power, given that if you overload the system, it falls over.
And you’re all right.
For George’s “China catching up”, there has been talk for years now about investment in nuclear and renewables to wean China off coal, and I see evidence to suggest talk is backed by action. I’ve got plenty of reasons to complain about China’s truckies, but when I’m stuck at a rural intersection waiting for a truck hauling a wind turbine blade out to a wind farm I don’t complain, I sit back and admire the beauty. I’m following with interest the construction of a solar power tower (solar thermal generation, so far as I can tell) in another part of the county.
Farmer Green is correct about the coal. But that’s because China doesn’t have the renewable and nuclear capacity to replace coal yet. Yet.
And Richard is right, and not just about systems falling over, but, well, see photo for an averagely smoggy Beijing sky (and, by local standards, only an averagely filthy canal) – taken about 11am today. And it actually looks worse in real life than in the photo. Those in NZ who don’t see the need to clean up our environmental act may wish to consider what kind of environment they’d be living in if NZ had anything close to China’s population density. ETA: Or perhaps contemplate life in a place where you can buy fashionable masks for toddlers. In other words, I don't see much point in debating climate change, but bloody hell, we do need to clean up.
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Signs of spring and a sliver of slightly smoggy blue.
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Capture: Got the blues, in reply to Nora Leggs,
I didn't bother crossing mine in the end. I was going to try poking a hole in the bottom of a paper cup and using that as a pipe-y thing, having not found anything more suitable, but I wound up spending far too much time and energy swapping over the covers on the wee one's car seat so the old one could be washed. Whoever assembles those things in the factory in Germany must have fingers as thin as mine and muscles as huge as Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. Also couldn't find currants, so put raisins and blueberries instead. But who cares? The punters were happy, and the wee one loves picking the raisins and blueberries out.
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Hard News: Violence in the streets, in reply to Farmer Green,
All entertainers are public property.
Yes, but sports stars seem to be held to an entirely different standard to others. Remember the moral panic over some actor or talkshow host getting in trouble while drinking? How many TV stars are at risk of some random dickhead picking a fight with them every time they go out? Compare that with how the likes of Zac Guildford and Jesse Ryder are treated.
Telling them to get over it is not helpful. The NZ public generally needs to get over its attitude to sports stars.
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Hard News: Violence in the streets, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Armchair sleuthing is very easy, isn't it?
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Hard News: Violence in the streets, in reply to Russell Brown,
Because there’ll always be some creep who wants to have a pop at you. I don’t envy these young guys that, at all.
Me neither. I think it was about the time Jonah Lomu hit superstardom and then his melt down. It's as if sports stars are public property and nothing more than proxies for our own frustrated childhood dreams of athletic success, and therefore fair game for whatever insecurities people want to dump on them. It would be nice if we could see them for what they are - great athletes and perfectly ordinary people just like the rest of us - and treat them as such.
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Park, apartment blocks, a sky I'd like to see more of.
Signs of spring, the faintest wisps of cloud.
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But a blue sky is just that much more uplifting than a hazy grey day.
Ooooooh, yes. +10000000000000
