In this episode Holly declares that she doesn't believe in the moon and Morgan says she really likes Bees.
In this episode Holly declares that she doesn't believe in the moon and Morgan says she really likes Bees.
How far away the sun
Speaker 2:One astronomical unit.
Speaker 1:Oh, wonderful.<laugh>. Wonderful. That's the best answer. Give me it in Miles
Speaker 3:<laugh>.
Speaker 1:But I, I have like a hilariously bad memory. I have a memory so bad that people like wouldn't believe me how bad my memory is.
Speaker 2:It is fairly atrocious,
Speaker 1:Hilariously bad,
Speaker 2:But it's like endearing cuz you do remember some absolutely ridiculous things as well. Like what's the speed of gravity?
Speaker 1:9.81 meters per second square.
Speaker 2:There you go.<laugh>. So I would call it selective. I don't think it's just bad.
Speaker 1:I think, um, I think a lot of people know the speed of gravity.
Speaker 2:No they don't. It's like, it's like a, like a pop quiz that I do, especially if I start dating someone. Yeah. I have like a little bank of questions. I'm like, do you know what the speed of gravity is? I, I do like little, little checks to see how common this knowledge is.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I can, I can tell you now, most people don't know the speed of gravity.
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 3:<laugh>.
Speaker 1:I don't think that's true. I think like anybody who's like reasonably educated would know the speed of gravity.
Speaker 2:<laugh>.
Speaker 3:I
Speaker 1:Mean like if you get the average person off the street then then fair enough. But if you were to just like narrow it down to like people with degrees
Speaker 3:<laugh>, that's so ridiculous.
Speaker 2:No, no. The vast majority of people don't know the speed of gravity.
Speaker 1:How far west? The sun.
Speaker 2:One astronomical unit.
Speaker 1:Oh wonderful.<laugh>. Wonderful. That's the best answer. Give me it in miles
Speaker 3:<laugh>,
Speaker 1:Or minutes if you prefer. I'll take minutes.
Speaker 2:Isn't it like seven and a half minutes or something? I'm not sure about miles.
Speaker 1:A miles is um, 94.5 million miles. Just about 150.8 million kilometers.
Speaker 2:Have you ever seen, uh, a psychiatrist? Have you ever had a conversation with one in a professional context?
Speaker 1:I don't think they really require a lot of cybersecurity services.<laugh> talk, I work, I work with like eCommerce companies and you know, tech companies and stuff. I don't
Speaker 3:All
Speaker 2:Right. Well I hope one needs your help with cybersecurity soon.<laugh>. So we're talking about climate change technology today, which is gonna be super fun. So we've started the show notes with this really interesting quote
Speaker 1:Before I get to the court. Um, are you aware of the anthrop scene reviewed?
Speaker 2:It sounds like it relates to a period in time pro, I guess would relate to like anthropomorphism, so like human factors? Yes. So I would guess that it relates in the same way as like the tine. Yeah. Whatever those ages<laugh>, This is the, like the time of the humans.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah. So, um, the anthrop scene reviewed, it's a podcast and it's a podcast where John Green reviews aspects of Thero anthrop scene being the period centered around humans. Right? So he does a series of reviews just about like all kinds of things. Like there's one about the polio vaccine and then there's also one about a hot dog stand in Iceland and stuff like that. And he does a, a short about 10 minutes review of them and then gives them a rating out of five stars. And sometimes it's really bad things like the actual plague and sometimes it's really good things like this hot dog stand.
Speaker 2:Which plague would that be? Exactly
Speaker 1:The bubonic plague.
Speaker 2:I see. And why is the hot dog stand so good?
Speaker 1:It sounds really good hotdogs for reasonable prices. Okay, so in the anthrop scene reviewed, there's a quotation, but the quotation is we are at once far too powerful and not powerful enough being able to radically reshape the earth's climate and biodiversity, but not powerful enough to choose how we reshape it. And I think that's just true in so many ways where we have some technology that can vastly impact the, the planet. We just can't necessarily impact it positively.
Speaker 2:I think like all of the, the climate change studies that I looked at before we started recording this and when we were putting the show notes together were from sort of the 1750s onwards, um, when the bulk of like emissions and changes that have led to climate change started to occur. And I think that's probably like more of a modern phenomenon that we have the power to reshape the climate.
Speaker 1:I actually have like some difficulties with some of the terminology that, that is around this topic. Like I really don't like term global warming for example. It leads to too many straw mens and too many people like arguing the wrong point. I generally like how I think about climate change. I tend to prefer the term climate instability. Like the changes that we are making to the world is causing climate instability. That's, that's kind of like how I'm coming at this. But directly for me the difference between climate and weather is essentially the scale and amount of time that you're talking about. So when I go out for a hike, I check the weather, I don't check the climate, you know, cuz I'm looking at regional and it's a short timeline. Whereas climate would be the scale of the planet or maybe the scale of like a macro region and then over a longer period of time. So not like what is the weather like tomorrow, but how has the weather been affected over the last 50 years, for example? Is that how you think about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Similarly, um, the UN definition's actually pretty useful. It's pretty clear. Climate change refers to long term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. And they state that since the 18 hundreds human activities have been the main driver of climate change and impact to these changes referring to kind of long term trends, patterns every periods of time. And weather does refer to short term conditions within a region typically. Um, so we see more extreme weather conditions like heat waves and drought and flooding as a result of climate change.
Speaker 1:That's quite direct as well though in terms of like bringing in their definition to include human activities. Cuz I know that there's a lot of people out there that would draw the argument that climate change is real. But what they maybe don't agree with is, um, human centric climate change, right? The, the fact that our recent activities, recent being the last few hundred years are what is driving climate change. But the UN's definition, they're kind of centers around that it's human activities leading to this change. So that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Something that frustrates me whenever I see like a wide scale global humanitarian or economical or environmental cause or issue like this is people who will argue that climate change has always been a factor. It's always occurred there was an ice age and that these things happen regardless of whether we input into them or not, or whether we are a factor and that our influence actually doesn't make a difference or it's not harmful and completely disregard like the very well-established and documented studies by like scientific bodies and regulators and so on.
Speaker 1:Generally speaking though, I I don't respect those people's viewpoint enough to like really listen to it because it's like flat earth is right. It's like any, any sufficiently extreme position is indistinguishable from parody. So if somebody like genuinely tried to engage me in an argument or a debate that the flat earth was real, like I bundle all those people with like the climate change, Denis and things like that, people who believe in the moon, Ah, yeah, I bundled all together.
Speaker 2:Please, please don't say that I'm not getting into the moon today. I don't wanna do it. The moon is real.
Speaker 1:Okay, sure it is.
Speaker 3:Mm.<laugh>
Speaker 1:Let me get, let me record that again. Um, so, so I, sorry, I just, I couldn't help putting that in there. Uh, supposedly there are people out there who believe the earth is flat. I opened a all of those people together and as far as I'm concerned it, this is some in joke or some parody and I, I I've very much struggled to believe that that's their honest viewpoint.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.<affirmative>,
Speaker 2:Maybe it's like, uh, knowing the speed of gravity and you just assume that everybody has like this baseline level of common sense and that's not actually the case.
Speaker 1:There are, there are some things though where how we know it or how we proved it is actually interesting. Like the story behind it is interesting. For example, how we experimentally proved special relativity, for example, like is an interesting story because things like the speed of gravity, when we talk about the speed of gravity at 9.81 meters per second squared, we're talking about in a vacuum, right? Uhhuh, because on earth we have air resistance. And I, I think that there are some areas like that where it's important to, to pause. I think with the flat earth, the discussion actually is important that we don't just counter the flat earth rhetoric in our own heads in terms of like, Oh, these people are crazy. And obviously what they're saying is a lot of bunk. I I think people should look into that and say internally, I mean, I'm not talking about engaging flat earth as in discussion. I'm not talking about engaging flat earth as in debate. I think that is a waste of your time<laugh>. But I do think it's important that when somebody presents something, it is cool to take a moment and say, well, how do we know that that is true? How do we actually know that, um, the world is a globe? How did we measure that? When did we measure that? What's the history of that? And some of the things, especially the more recent, I guess discoveries or calculations might be a better term in terms of things like special relativity, how was it theorized and then how was it experimentally proven is a really interesting thing to look at. In the same sense that, to bring it back to climate change, I do think that people should look at the data. You have to bear in mind that the average person listening to this podcast, there may be important foundational aspects that you don't necessarily understand. And it isn't just gonna be like read one paper and that's the end of the story. But I do think there's a certain amount of benefit to going in and taking a look at the actual research in particular. I think this most specifically applies to climate technology, like the kinds of things, what we'll get into. For example, you hear this, this constant, constant rhetoric that nuclear power is dangerous. And it's like, why do you think that? Do you think that because in the seventies and eighties there were movies that told you it was, do you believe it because that was what you were told by your parents and grandparents? Or do you believe it because you have taken a look at the modern research, the recent work that's been done in that field. And the dare to presents that as an argument because I think if you got the average person on the street, if you got Joe Average and you ask them fundamental like foundational level questions about things like, um, climate change, about things like nuclear technology, about things like energy storage, I don't think the average person would know even the first thing about those things or if they did it would be maybe things that were true in the eighties or things that were true in the nineties and they're not necessarily true now. I think there's a huge amount of like common knowledge that is just like wildly inaccurate
Speaker 2:Or it's based on specific crises and events from the past like Fukushima and to Noble, that's, um, a massive factor in why people still don't see nuclear power as a, a safe option. But again, like, like you say, you've gotta look at the statistics and how frequently those kinds of events occur and like the grand scheme of things and what the cost and benefit is from like an energy perspective and like impact on the climate and all of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So there is that, but there's also like bearing in mind that that is one dare to point, and I mean directly speaking, in fact that might be a great question to ask Joe Average on the street would be to stop just the average person and say how many people died in the immediate aftermath of Cher, how many people died? And I think the answer that you would get would be tens of thousands. And the actual answer is about 30. Now, of course, we're spilling over here into a difficult discussion in terms of like the long term after effects. So the spilling of the nuclear material into the atmosphere, the fact that that was a multinational incident. Those are our valid concerns. I'm just gonna put those to one side for a second to say that I think the common knowledge would be that an explosion occurred and it killed tens of thousands of people and it's just demonstrably not true. That is not what happened, doesn't mean that it wasn't a serious incident, but I think people's mental image of a disaster as bad as T Noble is like a movie scene, not actually what happened. And equally as important to, um, what happened would be why did that happen? What were the circumstances around that, both political in terms of what was happening in the Soviet Union at the time, but also in terms of the fact that Chino had a specific kind of reactor. It was used in a specific way and that led to this disaster and there is more than one kind of nuclear reactor. Not to get that deep into the nuclear side of this discussion this early on, but there's like a lot of variables at play here. And I think that the common knowledge is, is just wildly and accurate.
Speaker 2:I think I learned about Chino at school like over a decade ago, and I remember the facts of it at the time being kind of smaller than I was expecting. And the, the major parts of the fallout were kind of like the long term effects and, and how it impacted like pregnant women and their children who lived in the area at the time, how many people developed kind of cancer and other like longer term conditions after the fact. But in the initial like disaster itself, the death toll wasn't what people would expect. I think one of the biggest factors with that, and the reason that it is such a, a scary point for everybody who is sort of semi aware of what happened is that there's such a vast area of land now that is just uninhabitable because of, of the meltdown and like lingering radiation.
Speaker 1:There are other factors as well that were important because of the political situation at the time. So one of the factors being that the Soviet Union wasn't forthcoming with the situation. You could imagine if, I guess maybe this is a little bit hopeful, but if a modern European nation had a nuclear disaster at any scale, that they would be very forthcoming to organizations like the UN and other European nations in terms of sharing what the situation on the ground is, sharing the data that they have so that we can come together as a society to address the disaster. Whereas at the time of t, they denied it for a huge amount of time, denied, uh, what had occurred, denied that damage that had occurred. Um, there was other incidents where just like this Soviet you knew wasn't forthcoming. And of course that's because it was a particular political situation at the time, but I think that does lead people to maybe just speculate and maybe some of the newspaper headlines at the time were calling dooms dare thousands of people died because they, they had no actual information to go on. So maybe there were scam mongering to some degree or maybe they were just having bad journalistic practices. You mentioned Fukushima as well. Fukushima's interesting because not only is it a more recent nuclear disaster, but it's a disaster for different reasons. It wasn't necessarily, wasn't arguably how they reactor was, uh, being utilized, but it was a natural disaster occurred and they impacted the facility. Um, but also, do you know what the death toll of Fuku was?
Speaker 2:I don't, I I can't remember if it was like six people or if it was like magnitudes higher than ble.
Speaker 1:So it, it was interesting again, because of the context, because a tsunami hit, right? So there is this significant number of fatalities directly as a result of the tsunami as a direct result of the, the nuclear incident. One person died. However, as a result of the evacuation, a little more than 2000 people, uh, have died for, for various reasons related to the evacuation and, and how difficult that that was. But yeah, not to draw too many parallels between Shob and Fukushima, but again, the death toll is like significantly lower than maybe the average person would predict.
Speaker 2:Wow, this is a very cheery start to, um, what apparently it's not gonna be a very cheery episode<laugh>. So yeah,
Speaker 1:I didn't, I didn't necessarily plant it to jump straight into nuclear. No, I didn't. It just is, it is a passion area for me and it's a passion area because, um, I, I guess I should preface this with I'm not pro nuclear, that that isn't the stance that I have. I'm not like coming on this podcast to say like how amazing this technology is. What I am is very frustrated that many of the arguments against nuclear just, uh, inaccurate. I think that there is a strong negative, a strong antinous stance that you could take. But I would like dare driven arguments not emotionally driven arguments from movies created in the late eighties. Woo, um,<laugh>. Yeah, I, I would say if we're gonna, if we're gonna throw some opinions out there, I would say that I'm pro I'm, I'm wind agnostic for a couple of reasons that that might come out. I think there's some, um, some limitations there, uh, both in terms of the technology but also societally, which frustrate me with wind.
Speaker 2:But do you like wind farms?
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan.
Speaker 2:<laugh> twin Farms.
Speaker 1:I am a big fan of twin farms. Um, but I do acknowledge that I am, I have an odd aesthetic that I like. Oh, one second. Um, can you like, let's do an intermission and, and you like, and, and to turn the audience I'll be about 15 seconds
Speaker 2:<laugh>. Okay. I am gonna take this opportunity to explain carbon offsetting while Holly's doing whatever she's doing. Um, so carbon offsetting is really cool and it's, um, improving in visibility as a branding technique at the minute. Um, there are a lot of companies, especially kind of indie startups who market their products as carbon neutral or increasingly carbon negative. Um, and what that means is that they basically contribute to carbon offsetting efforts such as like reforestation projects, um, which result in a net decrease in emissions and offsets the emissions result in from their like production transport and sale of their products. Um, so carbon neutrals that are growing brand strategy among the eco-conscious consumers and and targeting those consumers. Um, but I actually came across a really cool indie beer brand earlier this year who are carbon negative. Um, and they basically offset two tons of carbon for every time that they emit and Holly's back now. So,
Speaker 1:Hello. Sorry, I wasn't expecting to do a show and tell in this episode. Um, so do, do I like wind farms. I do like wind farms, but I do also acknowledge that I have an unusual aesthetic. Like there's, um, things that I like the look of and I like being in the natural environment that I think a lot of people would, would be against. Don't get me wrong, I'm not like pro theme parks in areas of outstanding natural beauty and things like that. Uh, that that's a hat tip to the fact that they're planning on putting a theme park in the lake district. Terrible idea. So I'm not, I'm not pro things like that, but I do like the look of wind farms in particular offshore wind. I think they look really cool. I don't, I don't mind them one bit. Um, but do you have a coffee table book?
Speaker 4:Yes, yeah, I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So like a, a book that you have in the living space of your home so that if friends come around it's something for them to like peruse whilst you met coffees or something like that. Right. My coffee table book is Concrete Siberia
Speaker 2:<laugh>,
Speaker 1:Which is, uh, photographs. It's a photography book of Soviet landscapes of the far north. And the fact that this is my coffee table book probably tells you all you need to know about my opinions in terms of whether wind farms are aesthetically pleasing or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my coffee table book is an illustrated history of demonology, so Oh
Speaker 1:Wow. All
Speaker 2:<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Two kinds of people in the world.
Speaker 1:I do like, I do like wind farms, I just think there's some limitations there. Also, solar panels are better because they don't eat birds
Speaker 2:<laugh>. Yeah, I was thinking about this actually. And like my general opinions and perspectives and feelings towards wind farms, they're not, they're not negative, but they're also not massively positive. Like I do prefer other sources of renewables. Um, because I, I grew up near a wind farm and uh, I remember all of the, kind of the petitions that were going on, the complaints from the locals at the time that were saying, you know, that it would ruin the view or it would disturb local habitats. Um, there's noise pollution to consider. It can be really disruptive to the biodiversity of local populations. But then there's, there's other things to consider as well. Like if you live in an area that frequently gets scale force winds say off a coast, which is where they frequently do put these things, then they shut off past a certain speed to make sure that they're not damaged. So I guess there's, there's a, a ceiling to how effective they are. Um, and they also rely on there being some kind of inclement weather in the first place or it being a reasonably windy day in order for them to be functional and profitable.
Speaker 1:I saw a tweet a few days ago, which just for me was like, the best example of the general population doesn't really understand the developments in terms of electricity generation technology and what it was was the fact that offshore wind is nine times cheaper than gas. Right. And they're trying to stare, this is an efficiency of offshore wind, right? It's cheap. But what really made me laugh was the fact that somebody had replied saying, Yeah, but where are they going to put them all? They should have compulsory land taking from the landowners in the uk. Like, we should take all of this land from the Tories to, you know, so that we can't have nimby people who don't want wind farms in in their backyard, in their local area. Like, and the whole time I'm reading this, I'm just like offshore<laugh>, offshore wind generation is nine times cheaper than gas.
Speaker 2:I have a question. What's a nibi
Speaker 1:Not in my backyard?
Speaker 2:<laugh>.
Speaker 1:A nibi is not in my backyard. And it is a person who is pro the use of a technology but not in their local area. So we should have wind farms, but not in the town that I live.
Speaker 2:You mentioned solar a minute ago and I've seen a couple of really interesting projects using solar power and solar panels actually. Um, I guess there's, there's new housing estates that are being developed and built, um, and can come with like solar powered roofs as standard. And then there are solar roads as well, I think I've seen, but I guess, uh, are not so useful if it's a high traffic area, widely any of this constantly, like cars backed up covering the panels. But if it was like a motorway that wasn't used very often potentially that would be really useful. And then there's projects as well where they use solar panels to cover rivers in areas of drought, which I think prevents water loss and improves like irrigation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's one of the benefits of solar, of panel technology is the fact that there's a huge number of places that you could potentially put it where the space isn't otherwise useful. I think there's some weaknesses to solar and, um, it's, it's not currently very efficient. There is things like if the panels aren't tracking, if they're just static panels, then it's less efficient than if they're tracking and those kinds of things. And, and then there's the fact that you have to cover huge areas to have actual, um, meaningful solar production. But yeah, like you said, the solar roads. I've seen an implementation where the solar technology is built into the tarmac. I've seen an implementation where the road is covered with solar. I've seen an implementation where the central reservation is covered by solar, so the road is not, but the central reservation is the idea being you could have like a, a cycle path or something down the middle and, and that is covered by panels. So the panels are not only generating power but also covering the cyclists. Yeah, there's, there's huge areas that you could put them. I think there's some weaknesses there in terms of the same, but to a lesser degree with, with wind turbines, I think there's a lot of people who don't like the look of them. There's a lot of people who wouldn't want a solar power station if you imagine like covering a large area of land with solar panels and that kind of thing. It's a lot land out there though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've seen that before. But I think there's like a lot of, not propaganda, but almost like there's a lack of understanding about the volume of like the land or the area of space that's available and what we can reasonably use that for. So say if there is a food shortage, people expect to use, um, whatever land we've got free as arable land for farming, for crops and so on. Um, and then the argument will be, you know, if you are using that for solar power, you can't use it for farming. Like a lot of that land actually you can't use for farming anyway because it's not fertile or it's just not, um, feasible. And it would take too much investment to get it into a place where you could use it for farming. Um,
Speaker 1:The, the kind of extreme position here would be like, Oh, why don't we just put solar panels in the Sahara desert? The desert is huge and it's land not otherwise being used. And it's like, yeah, on paper you have this huge area of land that's not being used, but there's still a logistics problem. You still gotta like get it there and get the engineers there and be able to then transport or store that power. So yeah, there's there's more problems than just slapping up some panels.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Gotta clean them. People gotta clean them. Yeah,
Speaker 2:I guess if you put them in the desert, they'd get dusty pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:Put them on your roof and never clean your roof. It's the same thing. You're losing efficiency, put'em on the roof of your car and then your car's filthy
Speaker 2:<laugh>. Well how how would that work though? Cause I've never seen a car with a solar panel roof.
Speaker 1:The solar panel on the roof thing is, is interesting. Iland musk go stated that one of the Teslas might get a, a solar roof and then he letter walks that back and
Speaker 2:That's out of character
Speaker 1:<laugh>. There, there are cars, there are cars out there that you can buy an ev that has a solar roof. But some of the marketing around that, some of the documentation is just like wildly misleading. The truth is you need a large area to generate power and uh, vehicles are often dirty and they're often covered, parked in garages, parked underground, those kinds of things. And the amount of actual surface area on the roof of a car, it's gonna be what, like 10 to 25 square feet. It's not, not a huge area. So the actual amount of power that you can get through that, given the actual average amount of time that vehicle would be in direct sunlight or in powerful sunlight, it's, it's minimal there. The argument being that there are other places that it is better to put solar panels than on the roof of the car. You're not gonna get a huge gain from having a solar roof, but you might get a better gain by having solar generated electricity delivered to your house that you then charge your car with. I ran some, some numbers looking at the average sunlight for the average area and the average size of the average car and, and those kinds of things. So there's a rounding error in here, but it's something in the region of one to three miles of additional range per hour that the vehicle is in the sun for. It's not, it's not a huge uh, amount. I, I worked out, again, taking in some wild averages here to charge an EV with a solar for tech about 29 days, so call it a month. So yeah, it, it would work. You, you can gain some additional range but it, it's not groundbreaking. Um, you're gonna have, you know, you would get a better effect by putting, putting panels on the roof of your house and then charging the car from the roof panels as the foster putting them on the car itself, those kinds of things. So, so I think that's the argument against, well it's two arguments. The first argument is the, the better alternatives and the second is a lot of the things that you will hear from EV companies is what we might call puffing. That's like exaggerating the circumstances for the sake of sales.
Speaker 2:That sounds really unlikely. I can't imagine anybody doing that. You say that it's about like the space then and that you've got to dedicate to a solar panel. Do you think that it would work better on like a lottery if we were looking into, uh, developing electric vehicles lorries for logistics and things? Or would that still be really inefficient?
Speaker 1:I mean it would be better but you're gonna lose you potentially, not necessarily, but potentially gonna lose some efficiency if you just like slap some off the shelf panels on the roof of a lower, you're gonna impact the aerodynamics of that vehicle. That is something that could be worked around the vehicle's then carrying additional wet cuz it's carrying the panels and the controller and those kinds of things. And it again, I think it falls into the same problem of like, yes, this is space that you could put panels, but you could just put those panels at the depot in charge of the depot. Yeah, I don't, I don't at the moment or certainly I haven't seen any data to, to suggest that vehicle mounted panels would be better than ground mounted panels in an area such as the power station and then pushing electricity of the grid or just like at the depot of the vehicle.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, that makes sense. Logic.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Especially you could imagine like an implementation could be if you have an ev charging station. So like how we currently have petrol sessions for, uh, refueling vehicles, you could have an ev charging station where the rest of that ground is just taken up by solar panels and they have effectively onsite generation of solar, you know, that is, that is gonna be more efficient than vehicles carrying their own panels. I'd love to be wrong on that and I'd love for technology to, to develop in such a way. I don't think it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2:I think big oil would assassinate us if we got anywhere near that personally.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah, that's true. But like, um, I dunno if you know this, but the, the price of electricity generated through renewables is tied to the gas price in the uk. So a lot of people are confused at the moment that their energy prices are going up because of the current situation, but they are maybe their provider is saying, Oh, we're a hundred percent renewable and they're saying, well why is our price going up? Because it's tied to the price of gas. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So yeah, there's a
Speaker 2:Yeah, economic
Speaker 1:Problem there.
Speaker 2:Provider uses a hundred percent renewables and same situation. Um, but I think you can't divorce yourself entirely from that economic situation. Um, but from a, like an ethical perspective or a personal preference perspective or whatever it is, like you can choose to go with either, um,
Speaker 1:You could, you could um, divorce yourself from that situation. But, um, that is, that is a huge hurdle and it's actually worth looking at, um, what is the potential that an average layer person could go off grid with something like solar generation and those kinds of things. And the problem isn't necessarily where, where people think it is. So you might say, well, we'll retain a grid connection and then we'll cover our house in solar panels and we'll save loads and loads of money because we're generating our own power, but we have a grid connection just in case we have a few rainy days. And you're not generating power, you have no storage capability, but the problem is you still have a standing charge, you still have a charge for being connected to the grid and removing that grid connection massively ramps up the complexity of generating power. And the reason being that a lot of the electricity use you have in the harm is, um, the volatility is huge, right? You have huge peaks. So, uh, running the lights in your home, especially if you have l e d lights and those kinds of things and you're not running them for very long because it's bright during the day, so you're only running them in the evening, those kinds of things. The actual draw from l e d lights is tiny, but then look at the draw from your cloths dryer or something like that, or your oven and it's very<laugh> peaky energy usage. So you might be able to generate a huge amount of energy, but can you store it for those periods in which you need to run a high utilization device? And that's the difficulty. And if you can't, and therefore you remain, if you have to remain on the grid, then you're paying a standing charge for that grid connection.
Speaker 2:I think I saw something similar to that once, um, from like the national grid and they basically projected the entire country's approximate use over the course of a day. And there is one specific like ad break, um, around the time of like Coronation Street or something like that. Um, and that this is pre the advent of streaming. So when everybody would kind of watch schedule TV shows and they would be specific breaks, everybody in the country pretty much who was watching this would go into the kitchen and make a cup of tea at the exact same time and it would all need to boil the cattles and there was a massive spike in demand for electricity at that exact time every evening. Um, so they had to basically figure out how to scale their needs accordingly.
Speaker 1:Do you know how we do that?
Speaker 2:I would assume it would be storage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but this is the thing, right? So, um, rapid increases in power generation is really difficult, right? Just like you can't have like a coal fired power station that's turned off 23 hours of the day. But when the coronation a brick comes on, we find the station up, we start generating electricity that's very difficult. And also as we know, power storage is very difficult, so we can't necessarily have the opposite thing where it, it is, uh, generating power but then it's s starring it. Those are both, uh, difficult problems. And the actual solution for that problem for the national grid is, um, hydroelectricity. We, we pump water up to the top of a place that's called Electric Mountain. We pump water up when electricity is cheap, so in the off peak hours, and that is electricity storage, having water a pie, and then when you need that demand and you need it quickly, you can release the water, you could drive a turbine with that. And that solves both of those problems. Power generation at short, artists and storage. And also we called it electric mountain
Speaker 2:<laugh>. Yeah, I was stuck on that part. That's all really cool. I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot. I do kind of think it's a bit weird though that there's a cost associated with these things. I'm not getting into that. Okay. We can cut that out.
Speaker 1:We can, we can I guess offhandedly mention it and then not, not get into it. So, so there are many costs that I guess we're not gonna account for in this particular situation. For example, you might make the decision that an EV is a good thing to buy because you know, you, you don't wanna be burning fossil fuels. Cool, great stance to tech building that electric vehicle is incredibly bad for the environment. So, you know, there, there's multiple stages. The the one that people usually point to as well would be what is the point of having an electric vehicle if you are charging that electric vehicle from coal fire power sessions and those kinds of things. Tho those are problems when you run the numbers that they're different problems to, you know, just running a, a petrol powered car or something like that. If we're gonna gloss over the fact that there is costs associated with this stuff, then we should at least hat tip towards it and say like, Yeah, you know what, actually building EVs is pretty awful for the environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's, it's a bigger picture really. Um, it, it's not great for the planet and there are other impacts as well. Like what do you do with the batteries once they're spent? How do you dispose of those things like that?
Speaker 1:What do we, so, uh, wind turbines have a lifespan, right? And then we have to decommission them. This is the same with everything, right? Nuclear power stations have a a lifespan. We can't recycle wind. Turine B blends. Hmm. And it's just like this is a cost that we have to think about because it isn't as simple as saying, let's shut down all of the coal fire power stations and move to 100% wind. If that was possible, if we had the battery technology to handle that, because that doesn't make the problem go away. It may reduce it, but it, it brings with it additional problems. And this, and you could, you could throw the argument at me as well. I mentioned nuclear earlier and, and how good that was. You could throw the argument at me that decommissioning and nuclear station is pretty difficult. Also, nuclear submarines, those are also hilariously difficult to decommission. If anybody wants some um, uh, exercise left for the reader, look at how many nuclear submarines have been successfully decommissioned.
Speaker 2:I think we should talk about that another time. Sounds interest. It'd be
Speaker 1:Really short. Uh, podcast. The podcast would start. We do an introductions and then we'd go none and then we play
Speaker 2:<laugh>. No, I mean there's probably other cool stuff around that that we can talk about. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Just, just a hat tip just said that there are costs we add glossing over and costs that's
Speaker 2:Acknowledged. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But I think it's about the smaller steps that individual consumers can take to either set themselves up to use renewables in the future or to improve the situation as a whole. But that doesn't really take into account the fact that the vast majority of emissions come from massive corporations, which I
Speaker 1:Guess I thought we solved this. We made McDonald's use plastic straws,<laugh>, we made it so that Morrisons and Tescos can't give me plastic bags, so we charge them a a face. So now we have paper bags or like hemp bags and canvas bags and stuff like that. And didn't that, didn't we solve everything we, we got rid of the plastic straws we're done.
Speaker 2:We, we got rid of plastic straws, which unfairly impacted disabled people. But then Kylie Jenna decided to make up for it with her three minute flights to California. But I think like the paper straws thing as an example, they still take energy to produce in time to bio adree and create emissions. They're not necessarily functional. There's been various complaints and anybody who's used them knows that they tend to melt into your drinks pretty quickly. Probably like 20 minutes into a cold drink or something. But there are so many alternatives on the market now and like being developed, so like plant based plastic alternatives that are biodegradable so that they're still accessible. And I saw something I think last year where a company trialed a new type of packaging that was actually made from P protein and it was, it was dissolvable and like food safe and everything, which is really cool. So there is work going on to address that. But like the vast majority of it is gonna be in the large volumes of waste in like the fashion industry for example and the food industry as well. Those are two massive contributors to climate change in terms of global emissions. But Kylie Jenn is definitely not helping
Speaker 1:Not, not only do some of these individual changes not help because on the grand scheme of things on the pie chart, those individual decisions are minuscule in comparison to heavy industries and things like that. But also some of the substitutions that are chosen just aren't that good. Like if you swap out single use plastic bags for say cotton top bags, the CO2 equivalent of making the cotton top bag is significant huge in comparison to making the plastic bag. It's something like, um, three and a half pounds versus 600 pounds. So of course the cotton bag is better for the environment if you use it repeatedly cuz it's not single use. And also plastic is generally bad, but just on that one metric and there is other metric. So just on that one metric, you'd have to reuse the cotton to bag 172 times to break even with the plastic bag on CO2 E.
Speaker 2:Well I, I really appreciate that exact figure because that's really useful. Every time I go to a security conference I end up leaving with like four canvas bags full of generic merch and leaflets and junk and I'm like trying not to take it now. Like if they, they have like lots of single use plastic or those little trinkets and stuff that they give you. Um, but I think I've got like six or seven canvas bags and whenever I go to the shop for something or I go out, I always make sure that there's one in my backpack. So I haven't actually used a single use plastic bag for quite a while,
Speaker 1:But if you've got like seven or eight Yeah, he's to bags and you've got to use each one. Yeah. 172 times to break even with a single plastic bag. You, you, No, no, it's more than yours. You're gonna be bequeathing those children<laugh> with, with a tag attached to'em that this one's got another 33 years of use before we break even.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, basically. Um, but I would still rather that than plastic bags, you know, like everybody had that cupboard under the sink or under the stairs or wherever it was as a kid where your mom had a couple of plastic bags full of plastic bags and they didn't get reused for shopping. They were used for something else or they would go in the bin. Ultimately, um,
Speaker 1:The the the bag of bags, the bags, the can, I can one more rent, um, before it, before I hand over the, the mic<laugh>. Um, also sometimes companies uh, replace one material within another material. So they might have a product that they sell that is wrapped in plastic and they swap that plastic out for cardboard, for example. Um, I bought some batteries recently because uh, I needed them to go into my prepper bag for my torches<laugh> and uh, so I bought um, eight AAA batteries, right Relative, you can imagine the area required for, for eight AAA batteries. The box that they came in, which granted was cardboard better than plastic, was easily like four or five times the size of the actual area required to store the batteries. Just like most of this packaging is entirely wasted.
Speaker 2:Was it Amazon per chance?
Speaker 1:If the average person thinks of a company that makes batteries? It was that company.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1:<laugh>. I'm sure other companies have terrible packaging, uh, standards as well, but they bought some batteries and then had six times more cardboard than they needed.
Speaker 2:This is something that sort of started to strike me during the pandemic actually when we were all forced to sort of rely on online shopping a lot more than usual cuz the shops were closed and you couldn't just kind of pop out somewhere. Uh, definitely not in that first stretch and everything was closed. You had to do all of your shopping online and I was getting packages that would come in these massive boxes and it was actually something quite small that I'd ordered and it was, it's just really inefficient if you think of it. Not just from wasting the packaging itself perspective, but then how many of those packages can you fit in a van because that thing that's actually really small is in a box like five or six times too big for it, which means that you then need to do more trips to deliver the same number of packages because you don't have capacity in the van. For them it's, it's really strange, like the knock on effect of these tiny things as a
Speaker 1:Whole. No, it's fine. We'll slap some solar panels in the roof of the van and we'll completely offset all of this cardboard<laugh>.
Speaker 2:Not when they have to take four trips to your house because they pretend to knock and just shove a leaflet through. Instead.
Speaker 1:I've, I've just sent you a photograph, I was so appalled at that packaging that I actually photographed
Speaker 2:<laugh>. Okay, let's have a look at this.
Speaker 1:It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:Oh that's really bad. No, they're all separated like that. Like normally they shrink wrap batteries don't they? And they'll like group them together and that's interesting.
Speaker 1:It's usually like a vacuum packaging isn't it? Yeah. Or I guess previously would've been vacuum packaging. Yeah, I, I don't know if this is maybe some EF again at their end where there is more room in this box or if they're selling an eight pack or a 16 pack, it's the same box with the different insight. Maybe that's, you know, it's an EF again at their end. But yeah, I got this box in the purse and I was just like, what a west like mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:<affirmative>. Yeah, not not great. That one on the, the delivery point though that I just made actually there's some really cool initiatives that I've seen lately. So there's a startup in London, well they're based here but they do like nationwide delivery and the logistics space and they kind of like arrival to the likes of like D P D and every and so on. And they do like package parcel delivery, but they use a hundred percent electric vehicles or cargo bikes and they're marketing themselves as a mission free. They were founded in 2020 and they've had about 2 million in funding so far. So that's pretty cool. Um, and there's efforts to produce like electric fans and delivery vehicles and things to make that sector more sustainable. But besides that I think there's a big gap in the logistics and definitely the aviation space for sustainability renewables, uh, electric vehicles and things like that.
Speaker 1:I know that aviation has some difficulties in terms of vehicle range. So like with every will in the world you might want to use an electric plan, but at the moment it can only do the shortest of short hops. You're never gonna at this stage do long haul. But yeah, I think again, we're falling into market forces here. In terms of if you're given, and you do see this sometimes, I know some fashion websites for example, have this as an option where when it comes to delivery you have like courier, courier, carbon neutral as options, but how many consumers as it stands are gonna go? Oh, carbon neutral, I should take that. That's a positive in comparison to just the um, the time for delivery. You know, it, it might be, it might be like, oh we have a carbon neutral option. It'll take three to five days to arrive. We'll get it to you on Monday or we can burn this popular life but you can have it tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Oh,<laugh>. Oh I actually haven't seen that. But it's a really interesting point. I saw something a few months ago where you pay like a flat fee every month and they offset your carbon footprint for you. So you tell them like what your dietary choices are, how often you drink, if you drive, what kind of car you've got, all of that stuff. And they calculate approximately what your carbon footprint is and then they will um, offer you a certain amount of packages. So do you want to just offset for yourself, do you want to like offset one and a half of you? Is it a family or like a couple or something like that. And then you just pay like basically the equivalent of a Netflix subscription or something and they plant a certain number of trees for you and like offset your, your carbon emissions effectively, which is a, a really cool idea. And yeah, I have seen some uh, companies that are carbon neutral or carbon negative by default, but I haven't seen that added like as an option to say like, would you like carbon offsetting or a carbon neutral delivery? That's something that I would like to see more of though for sure.
Speaker 1:It's definitely something that I've seen an an option. The funny thing is as well, I can't remember off the top of my head if it actually impacted delivery times. Um, it isn't something I've seen very often, but I have definitely seen at least one career offer carbon neutral as a, as a option.
Speaker 2:I suppose there's probably an additional cost associated with it, otherwise you would make it the default. Surely if that was something that you were committed to from like a economical risk perspective.
Speaker 1:I see this where you have the option to group deliveries as well so you have the option for get it as quickly as possible or get it in as few deliveries as possible. I always feel like that's presented as like a convenience, like oh wellno, you know, um, if you have to take a day off work to have these things delivered, then having them all come together is a benefit in, in that regard. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. But in actuality I would imagine that just logistically it's gonna be better for the environment to have one van come than, you know, three deliveries across three days.
Speaker 2:I guess it depends. Something that came up when I was looking into this was a way that is being recommended at the minute that the logistics and transport sectors reduce emissions is to have things like popup warehouses so that the stock is closer to the customers and therefore any emissions created by transporting that to them are lower. Um, if you are ordering things from several different stores or different warehouses, they've still gotta kind of transport those all to the same place to centralize that and give you it in one delivery. So I don't know if it's always gonna be more efficient. There'll probably be cases where it's more environmentally friendly, but I wouldn't make, I wouldn't like to guess given Amazon's practices that that it would, that will always be the eco-friendly choice.
Speaker 1:I think it will always have an effect. It's just as what percentage would it have an effect? Because what we're talking about here is less last mile deliveries. Mm-hmm. But yeah, the point that you're making of, well they've all gone to the warehouse and that's potentially the actual bigger proportion of that um, delivery. But uh, but yeah, the last mile can still be pretty inefficient.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you see that with like, I think a big one that's gonna link into food actually, which we should probably talk about next is there are like meal kit providers now who are marketing themselves on being lower carbon impact lower emissions than buying the same ingredients at the supermarket because you effectively have all of these, these things, these produce delivered to a supermarket, you'll go there, you'll buy identical ingredients for what's effectively the same recipe and then have to transport it all home. And if you are driving to the supermarket as well, it just adds well additional overhead to that. Whereas if you are using one of these like providers, their supply chain processes might be more sustainable or more responsible and they deliver them directly to your house and it's portioned so potentially less food waste and all of that. So that one's something to consider. I don't think there's a lot of thought that goes into the, the last mile and the impact that that has on the sustainability of something and the life cycle of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw one similar kind of problem where somebody was talking about how they only ever fill up their car halfway and the argument was that fuel is heavy. So by only filling up your car halfway, the vehicle is running more efficiently cuz it's carrying less wet. So it's a minor in convenience but it's better for the environment is the argument so to speak. And it seems in actuality when you're in the numbers that it's entirely offset by the fact that you're driving to the petrol station twice as frequently
Speaker 3:<laugh>.
Speaker 1:So yeah, sometimes people's hearts are maybe in the right place, but that's what I was talking about earlier in terms of like, I would prefer data driven arguments, you know, it's like if you're gonna take my plastic straws away from me, that's fine, I'll support that. But you know, show me the numbers,
Speaker 2:The numbers
Speaker 3:<laugh>,
Speaker 1:I wanna know how many whales, like specifically how many whales am I saving?
Speaker 2:I dunno if you're specifically saving any whales, but I would recommend that you only use a straw if you need one. That's kind of the point behind all of this, isn't it? And if you do really need one, go for a sustainable alternative instead of a plastic single use plastic straw or a paper one that's gonna melt into your drink and not be any use at all. Like if I'm at a coffee shop and I'm gonna sit inside, I don't need a paper cup with a plastic lid. Completely ridiculous. And if I'm having something delivered to my house, I don't need them to bring me the single use plastic cutlery and napkins and things, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Oh you have like the product and then the product is in a single use bag and then the single use bag is in the manufacturer's box, which is then in the courier box. It's just like you could have just dropped off in the bag<laugh>
Speaker 2:And there's stuff, some crunchy brown paper in there as well so that it's not rattling about, I've ordered food from places before and they've brought it to me in single use plastic instead of in, you know, like a cardboard container or something. And in London most things come in sustainable packaging now. So there's places that I've ordered from that I'm like, I'm probably not gonna do that again cuz I felt bad about the plastic.
Speaker 1:You just want your re uber eat driver to come around and just like give you the food. Just like, you know, you cup your hands and he just empties the fries just straight into like, I don't want any of this bad karma from this single use plastic or cardboard container for my fries. Just, you know, just give me the burger.
Speaker 2:Just put it straight into the mouth. Yeah, no, no, I don't think so. I don't think that's very good from a food hygiene perspective either. You know, there's regulations they've gotta follow.
Speaker 1:I mean food, I, I don't actually know this because like I said, most of the reading that I do is around like power generation and, and electricity storage. But I, I imagine that food, or at least the logistics of food must be one of the worst things for the climate just because in my, um, very simple mind food is heavy and they make the food far away.
Speaker 3:<laugh>
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And far away and heavy to me sounds like a lot of carbon Yeah,
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's quite a lot of carbon. There's a lot to consider realistically. Like if you think about things like fruit and vegetables, there's all of the work that goes into like growing that and farming that agriculturally. Also, the yield is never a hundred percent, Like you might have a bad crop one year, or you might have some pests or a particular fungus or something that like wipes out a good portion of what you've grown so effectively, all of the energy that you've put into growing that has been wasted, you have a lower yield and then you need to transport that, make sure that you've stored it correctly in the meantime. And also about a third of food before it even enters the supermarket supply chain is wasted because it's not uniform or they've got too much or too little of it. It's not the right size or shape. It might be like the wrong color or something like that. So things like bell peppers, if they're not one of those, you know, three recognizable colors that they're supposed to be, or if a cucu is a bit wonky or something, then it tends to be rejected and and thrown away before it even reaches the consumer, which is also really impactful because you've got effectively, like a third of your actual yield there is maybe not even usable. So you've got things like odd box and like wonky veg, which I think Aldi and a couple of other supermarkets do now, maybe Morrison's as well. They're trying to sort of mitigate that somewhat by allowing the sale of produce that would otherwise be removed from the supply chain. And so I've had a couple of odd boxes in the past and they're really cool. They come pretty much straight from the farmers. They're not like processed or anything first. And the reasons that they've supplied me with certain things are because they've been like the wrong size or shaped, they've grown too many and occasionally there were too few to meet the demand. So a supermarket or someone has ordered a certain number of something, there weren't enough available after, you know, growing those or whatever. So that contract or that order's been canceled and they've gone with a different ingredient instead. And then they've got all of this food that they've grown that they need to get rid of somehow. And something else that personally I really love is, so I don't, I don't really eat a lot of bread because I, I love by myself and bread tends to last, like a loaf of bread lasts like four or five days and I can't really eat a whole loaf of bread in four or five days.<laugh>. So I, I used to buy one of those that
Speaker 1:Can't be good for you, even if you could.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just
Speaker 1:Like if you were eating, like
Speaker 2:It's a lot of fiber
Speaker 1:Too. Love of bread a week,
Speaker 2:<laugh>, like they, they just don't last very long. And especially if you get one on like a Sunday before the supermarkets had their new delivery in, then you might have like two days, maybe three at a push to eat a loaf of bread. And so I did use to buy those little, like half loaves or I would freeze it sometimes, which I don't really like, but it preserves it a bit longer. It just means that like when you need to use it, it's, it's not very nice. So I stopped doing that because there is a, a London company again called Baker Street and they, they're incredible. They do something different in their production process and in the way that they package their food and their loaves of bread last like six or seven weeks.
Speaker 1:I think this is the second shout out that Baker Street has had on this podcast.
Speaker 2:<laugh>? No, surely
Speaker 1:Not. I think it is. I think I'm pretty sure you previously mentioned your, um, bread escapades. Oh,
Speaker 2:I dunno. Maybe they're really cool though. I do really like them. So if I buy bread, I get that particular brand of bread because then I'm not throwing away that plastic bag and most of a loaf of bread every week or so and feeling awful about it. Like I, I do feel really bad about food waste, knowing how impactful it is from a climate perspective.
Speaker 1:It's really easy to solve this problem though. Stop eating meat. Moving on.
Speaker 2:Whoa,<laugh>, controversial<laugh>. Let's get into that, Shall we?
Speaker 1:Somebody said to me that there's areas of land that we can't use for, for farming, like, uh, growing wheat and things like that so that we, so we use it for things like sheep and things like that because we can't, uh, can't grow we or similar products on that land. How true is that?
Speaker 2:I think it depends what it is that you're looking at growing and like what the conditions of that environment are because we see things now like greenhouses almost, um, for growing vegetables and fruit where they'll grow things vertically or in kind of abnormal conditions. So without soil they'll grow them purely in water or in a growing solution or something like that to improve the yield, protect them from the elements and make better use of the space. So again, the yield is increased rather than growing them outside on like a, a flat bunch of like Arab land with hedgerows that are intended to maintain the biodiversity of local populations and and so on. I think if we were more creative we would always be able to find a way to use that space.
Speaker 1:It does make me laugh when, when you have like the ways in which we have utilized awkward space or awkward land, you look at things like putting solar panels in places that we've spoken about, like at these crazy ideas of like putting solar panels in this saara desert and those kinds of things. Or, or even just like other industrial projects, it's just like, um, somebody on one hand saying, Oh we can't possibly use this land for anything other than sheep grazing. It's not ideal land. And then you're like, Oh yeah, we're gonna build the M 62 but there's a mountain in the way but don't worry, we'll just build the M 62 over the mountain and we have these, you know, huge industrial projects where like we can, we can put more air in incredibly undesirable places and it works.
Speaker 2:That one really upset me, but I think it was HS two where we were gonna build this massive like high speed train line from uh, the south all the way up into the north of England. Um, and potentially connect to Scotland as well. And it was gonna cut through this massive piece of ancient woodland. I guess 70% of the UK used to be forested and now it's such a small proportion. I'm not sure what the exact figure is, but there are so many like conservation efforts and projects to protect this land and to make sure that we maintain the biodiversity of like the populations and things that reside there. But somebody wants to make a profit<laugh> and then, you know, know like decos the northern part of the project anyway cuz who cares about northern is really tricky on that one. But I think like when you look at the carbon impact of it, so that that's site that I mentioned earlier where you can put in your like dietary preferences and whether you eat like dairy products and so on, it works out your carbon footprint for you if you are a vegetarian, it's estimated that your carbon footprint is about half that of a meat eater. So before you even consider like whether you drive or you travel more than the average person or anything like that, like it's already half the potential impact. I think the, the status if you eat a portion of meat a day, so a deck of playing card sort of sized in in each meal, um, that doubles your carbon footprint and most people eat more than that as well. I'm pretty sure you refer to that as meat overdose.
Speaker 1:I refer to heart disease as meat overdose.
Speaker 3:<laugh> ho
Speaker 2:A vegetarian and cares anyone couldn't tell
Speaker 3:<laugh>
Speaker 1:As you all will be by 2080 when we outlaw eating week
Speaker 3:<laugh>
Speaker 1:When I'm in power, things will be different.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How are you gonna win votes? People are like, I want a stick and I'm gonna have one at any cost. You know, they're not gonna, they're not gonna vote for you to be a supreme leader of the world. If you make them vegetarian,
Speaker 1:We'll make them stacks instead.
Speaker 3:<laugh>
Speaker 1:Gonna go silent green on you.
Speaker 3:<laugh>.
Speaker 2:Oh man. No, we can't get into fascism today. No, thank you. We can save that for memes.
Speaker 1:I thought you were gonna get into PreOn disease to be honest, but
Speaker 2:Okay. No, no, not that one. That, that's also kind of sketchy though. We can talk about that when we talk about, um, memes as propaganda.
Speaker 1:Okay. Oh yeah, that's a good episode. I'm looking forward to memes as propaganda.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's gonna be fun.<laugh>.
Speaker 1:So that's all good. Citizens should
Speaker 3:<laugh>,
Speaker 2:So the carbon impact of wheat versus beef, um, what, what's your guess? What do you think that is?
Speaker 3:I'd
Speaker 2:Like a guess and then you can Google it.
Speaker 1:So I don't, I dunno the carbon footprint, but, but I believe that if you grew wheat instead of beef, the end result would be an output of about 60% more food product.
Speaker 3:Hmm.
Speaker 1:Growing meat is inefficient, generally speaking, again, glossing over variables like what particular land you're using or what it's suitable for and those kinds of things. But in general, wheat production is more efficient than beef production.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. Yes, because you're cutting out a whole step whereas if you just grew whatever it is that it's, that's eating like wheat and, and made like bread or something, um, or even beer, beer is, is more efficient than
Speaker 1:We've been through this before. Beer is not a meal.
Speaker 3:<laugh>, I disagree<laugh>. Oh,
Speaker 2:I'm just saying, you know, if you replace your meat with beer it's more carbon friendly.
Speaker 3:<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Okay. Before we, before we move on then, I guess something, something that we haven't mentioned like is the use of technology around like agriculture and things like that. Right. So one of the things I really like is things like the, the use of drones to assist agriculture and those kinds of things and the efficiencies that can begin from the use of those kinds of technologies. But also something that I'm interested in since we've been talking about land usage is things like, uh, vertical crop growth
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.<affirmative>.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Um, John's is a, actually a really cool one that I was reading about earlier. So I mentioned some of the issues that farmers have with, uh, crop yields, particularly kind of, you know, growing outdoors or if there's disease or a particular, um, pest or something that's like investing their crops that year. They're starting to use drones or, or UAVs for what they're calling precision farming, which allows you to like, basically you can record in what's pretty much like 4K or eight K or whatever it's now, like these images, it was a big deal that they were like so much better resolution than satellite images, which are accurate to like about 10 meters or something. Whereas like drones will give you like sub centimeter images so you can identify issues with your crops or, or poor yield or something like that really, really quickly.
Speaker 1:Multiple, um, angles as well. Yeah. So getting, getting mm-hmm.<affirmative>, uh, multiple angles through satellites can be inefficient whereas a drone can just circle.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it, it saves you like a lot of time and money and it allows you to like, identify any issues with crops much, much earlier in the process so that you can mitigate,
Speaker 1:You distinguished that between drone and u I said drone and then you said uav. Is that an important distinction in that context?
Speaker 2:I think with drones get a bad press
Speaker 3:<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:And I think u is, uh, a bit broader as a term, so you can use, you can use them for more than people think that you can. So rather than just like recording a video of a field of crops and saying, well these look like they're healthy or this corner here is having a bit of an issue, you can use UVS for things like propagating seeds for example, or spraying pesticides and stuff like that. Whereas I think a drone or I think of a drone as being particular size and weight and potentially being limited on what it can carry, whereas UAV is like potentially have wider reaching, um, applications.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I dunno if this is my particular background, but the distinction for me, so I, I think there is a, a presumption withdrawn, like when, when you say draw and people think of like DGI mavericks and things like that. For me the distinction would be, uh, whether the vehicle autonomous or not.
Speaker 2:I also think of, um, drones in a, a more violent context typically. So I don't just think of them as like a farming application. I think of them more as an instrument of war these days. But that is a separate episode. Definitely. Anyway, that's, that's quite a big deal to use drones or uvs, however you wanna refer to it for farming, because food waste is figures vary, but they say between six and 10% of global emissions occur as a result of food waste, so about 8% on average. And that's post considering the third of food that's wasted before it even enters the like supermarket supply chain. So it's, it's quite a lot really. There was an NGO climate action group called rap, I was reading a study from them earlier and they said that about 30% of global greenhouse gases come from producing food, which is more than all commercial flights combined. So there's a couple of other industries that that food waste or food production and waste completely outweigh the emissions, like caused by those industries. So yeah, it's definitely something to be mindful of. And I think the other thing that you mentioned was vertical crop growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I just, I think, um, it's something to raises when people say like, Oh, we can't use this land for other reasons and those kinds of things. It's just like, oh well you can't, you can't grow crops on hills. I'm like, you can grow crops in absolutely can some pretty interesting places. Like you can, you know, build a mo away over amount if you want to. There's, you know, it is possible. And I think vertical crop growth is also potentially something to cono when you, when you look at uh, you know, a nation like the United Kingdom where we're a small land, there's only so much land to go around and it's, it's the same kind of hat tip towards wind generation and, and the land requirements there. It's the same with with food generation, right? There's land requirements and if you can grow crops vertically and there are land limitations, that's one way to address that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. And there are certain species or like variations of food that are actually more efficiently grown that way. I've got a friend who got into growing tomatoes recently and there's a very specific type of tomato that he's growing and there are ways of pruning tomato plants so that they will grow to improve the yield that you get from them. And most people I guess would just let them kind of grow out sideways and end up with like a little kind of tomato plant bush. But if you like attach it to like a little trellis or a support of some kind and groom it so that it grows upwards, then you end up with a higher yield of tomatoes. So in some situations it's better and the more like responsible thing to do. And there's, there's also, um, this planet guy on Instagram that I follow, I think he's like Australian and he has a couple of the same kinds of plants that I do. But again, instead of just sitting it in a pot and potentially like quite a large pot because it needs a certain volume of soil for the roots to be able to basically get as much water as they need to to the rest of the plant, he propagates it vertically. So he'll create this kind of like mossy pole type thing with like herles in the back and then a bit of soil and then some master hold onto the water and attaches it using like chicken wire basically. And these plants will grow to like 20 feet tall and normally you might be lucky for them to get to four or five feet and it's just because of the different growing techniques. So I think vertical crop growth has a lot of potential. Really, really cool. But I think there are certain areas of land that we should preserve as well. I don't think that the argument for efficiency, I think is to reduce the damage done by the demands for the human race or, or people who need specific things on the earth. It sounds a little bit green piece eco worry, but like there's all of these environments in these natural habitats that other creatures and habit that we damage with our demands. If there is an area that is occupied by, I don't know, like wild horses or goats or something like that, like they shouldn't be disturbed because we need to grow something or we wanna put solar panels somewhere, we've gotta kind of consider the impact on both sides. Like is this ultimately going to benefit us in a way that doesn't damage like the biodiversity of this area or cause other long term impacts?
Speaker 1:Oh, there's huge things as well, like how cities are bad for your mental health. Not only for the things that might immediately come to mind like pollution and vehicles and things like that, but it's just like they're also just loud and it turns out loud. It's really bad for you<laugh>
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm<affirmative>. And it's really rare that there's just like a grassy space or some trees or some like dogs that you can go and see. Like in London there's not very many burs that are dog friendly. You have to kind of live on one of the like outer boroughs I guess, or an area that has like a dedicated green space for you to be able to see anything that's not human and is alive. And that does really impact it.
Speaker 1:One more thing before we move off food as well. Was it a bad idea that we decided to increase our yield of food by putting poison on it?
Speaker 2:Ooh, this is a tricky one. Um, yeah, there, so there are certain insecticides that are harmful to natural pollinators like bees. These are a really important part of the ecosystem, very underrated in my humble opinion. And so are butterflies, butterflies are pollinators, but a lot of people don't know that. So there's certain kinds of flowers and things that you can plant for bees and for butterflies and, and other pollinators to, to benefit like the biodiversity of an ecosystem. But there are some pesticides that were banned by the EU because they were damaging to B populations. And the last I heard was that the UK were going to approve the use of those pesticides. Now that we have left the EU formally, I, I don't agree with that. I think that there's only so much that we can do to improve the efficiency of a system or to make it more eco-friendly or, or something like that. More environmentally friendly, less impactful. But if you are the mechanism that you're using to improve like the yield of your crop so that you're reducing food waste or something like that has an other intended or unintended damaging environmental consequence that is irresponsible.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm not convinced we should put proposing on our food or into our environment or into our water sources.<laugh>, one more thing. We, we mentioned worst with food, right? You said it was it a third of food is thrown out before it reaches the supermarket. Right? So there's discre losses in food production. I had a, a pair of jeans that is essentially brand new. I've worn them like three times. I motorcycled jeans. So they're like really hard wearing and I really like them and I broke the zip on them. I'm not capable of replacing a zip and practically a moron. I wanted to find, you know, a tailor or seams stress or someone in the area that could repel these jeans. Something that are essentially brand new. But I broke the zip, I found a really hard time in this area of actually doing that. And when I spoke to people about it, like, oh, how frustrating this is that I just need a zip and then otherwise these jeans are perfect. People were just like, get another pair. Right? It's only a pair of jeans and like I get the argument from like grand scheme of things. It's only a pair of jeans but like it just felt so wasteful. It is also they were, because they're motorcycle jeans, they were really expensive jeans
Speaker 2:And probably really cute as well. Mo motorcycles are really cute.
Speaker 1:Like really hard wearing like ke aligned and then just like, oh, a bar the zip and now they're ruined. Yeah. So, so what I'm, what I'm getting at here is I imagine there's a lot of just like west in other areas as well, such as fashion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the fashion industry is massive. Is huge. Oh, so we should probably talk about fast fashion here. So anybody who frequents popular kinds of social media like Instagram or TikTok or potentially YouTube will have seen influences online doing clothing halls from uh, Zara, a source boohoo, she and et cetera, where they effectively buy a whole bunch of cheap clothes and then do a bit of a show and tell like, here all my cute new outfits. Aren't they great? The problem is that these clothes are, they're cheap, they are quickly mass produced, they are poor quality and they don't last very long. So there are specific areas and companies that contribute to this massively, they end up ultimately being discarded and in landfill. They're not recycled, they're not worn very many times. There was a study that found that the fashion industry is responsible for more than 10% of global emissions every year. And the ethical consumer estimates that the average piece of clothing is only worn about 14 times before it's discarded. So really, really inefficient there. You'd worn those, those genes, those bike genes like once, maybe twice, whatever. Um, but even
Speaker 1:Not, not enough times to justify throwing them out in, in my humble yeah,
Speaker 2:<laugh>. Yeah, definitely. And it's extra difficult because from an ethical perspective, the companies like they don't pay a living wage. Typically workers, garment workers are being exploited, they're not paid a living wage, they are forced to work in unethical, unsafe, poor conditions. They're working really long hours. These clothes end up containing microplastics, which are I think suspected or proven to be carcinogens. And they also damage marine life when they ultimately end up in like the water cycle.
Speaker 1:From what I've read so far, it is just one of those like, hey, this stuff is getting literally everywhere. Mm-hmm<affirmative>, Um, that's probably bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah,
Speaker 1:I think that's where we're at with microplastics.
Speaker 2:I saw an article a few months ago where a baby had been born and there were microplastics in the baby's placenta and that was the first documented case of that ever occurring. That was kind of wild. The Environmental Protection Agency stated that in the US in 2018, 17 million tons of textile was with waste was generated and only about 2.5 million tons of that was actually recycled. So this is, it's really, it's not just from like a landfill perspective, it's the, the carbon required to create these clothes, the water required as well. I think creating cotton is a really like water intensive process. Using like dye and things like that on clothes is also really water intensive. So when you consider the areas as well that don't have access to clean water, it's really difficult for me personally to like reconcile myself with that. Like that amount of like wasted, There are alternatives to fast fashion. There are some companies that are using recycled fabrics and factory off cuts or they're creating lines using specifically repurposed and like recycled ocean plastics and things like that. And they're becoming more popular but they're often far too expensive for the average person to be able to access that. They're just not affordable. Like you think about it, especially during like the cost of living crisis, a lot of people just can't justify spending that much on a sustainable alternative that had a lower impact from a supply chain or a production perspective than like a, I dunno, a three pound t-shirt from Primark or something. They're gonna go for what they can afford and then they're gonna throw it away afterwards because you being mindful of these things is a privilege afforded to people who already have like a baseline level of wealth. And until it becomes more accessible to lower income families and ordinary people, I don't think we're gonna see a massive difference being made there. Um, but something that is like really popular among younger millennials and like Gen Z especially is like thrifting and going to charity shops and using things like Depop and I think vented is another app that you can use to like sell your old clothes basically you can do like swaps or just sell things for kind of cheaper than you would get them from a shop. And then you get something that's a bit unique that maybe your friends don't have or something because it's, it's a bit older, it's from like a previous season. It encourages us to like rewear things and to revisit like trends from the past. And I think like when I think of this, I think about slow fashion and how even in like the sixties and the fifties, people would like go and visit a tailor or a seamstress or someone and they would have them make clothes for that person. Like you, you would see a dress maker and they would make you a dress and it would last you a long time. You would look after it well you would like launder it properly and make sure that it was stored correctly and you would wear it as much as you could before you threw it away. And we don't get that now. I think, like you say like people do have this attitude of just kind of like, oh the zips broken, throw it away. Like rather than learning to repair things.
Speaker 1:I think that is one of the, on the individual side of things, one of the biggest things in terms of just like wearing the product, like if you're gonna get a product like, you know, get get wear out of it, don't just like, oh the zips gone and I'm just gonna throw it away because let's be honest, once I got sorted, that was a very simple fix and those jeans are fantastic. Um, I also saw something which I hadn't thought about previously, but it kind of made sense when it was rose to my attention. There was a outdoor clothing company that was talking about uh, the difficulty of waterproofing products and how they do it and how their uh, mechanism for waterproofing products is considered relatively old school and using like waxes and things like that which have, uh, negative performance in terms of breathability in comparison to more modern products like Gottex. And the reason that that company had done that was in their view products like gottex, although very good performance in terms of being waterproof and breathability, they consider them environmentally bad because they don't believe that they're recyclable. And I think that's just the kind of thing to consider is like not only like the number of uses that we get out a product, but as you say, like how is that product being developed? Is it being made and aware that is environmentally friendly but also is it made of things that are environmentally friendly? Like what, what materials are in use there? And like I say, once it was resume me, it's like, oh yeah, like that the materials that I used is probably something that I should think about and and learn more about and it just, I just hadn't considered it. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:<affirmative>. Yeah, I think it's, this is a really wide reaching and pervasive topic and almost anything is a climate change technology application. When you think about it, like even the number of spam emails that you get in a year and what the energy consumption is of, of the servers that are potentially being used to distribute that or something. You know,
Speaker 1:Somebody mentioned that to me yesterday. They said, um, how many times do you have to listen to a CD before you break even on the environmental impact of streaming? Cuz I hadn't considered, but it makes sense that streaming is actually very bad for the environment in comparison to the reuse of a printed material. I mean like sure story there is just like, hey, data centers like pretty awful. But yeah, they were thinking about just this idea of like, should they buy CDs versus should they stream music and, and actuality it might be the case that you might think that streaming music is better for the environment because this physical product isn't being produced. You know, especially if you consider things like vinyl.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think that's something worth considering as well, isn't it? Like personally and like anecdotally from a lot of people that I know, like I I don't know people that would listen to a handful of albums and just be happy with that. People are consistently discovering new music and like listening to new artists and branching out and you might have like, you know, dozens, tens, hundreds of albums in your repertoire or in your library or whatever you're listening to.
Speaker 1:I've gotta pull of stats for, for my chosen streaming platform<laugh>. Um, because you're like, yeah, yeah. People listen to like dozens of albums and they have this really wide range of music. Um, after the show. Let's pull the stats from mine cuz I think what we're gonna find is it, it's gonna say like, Hey you listen to like three songs on repeat. It's kind of weird.
Speaker 2:<laugh>, I think that's an ADHD thing.<laugh>. Yeah. No, but for, for real, like, um, I I have a like a really ranging music taste I guess and I listen to pretty much everything and when Spotify do that like wrapped thing at the end of the year and they tell you like which artists you listen to most and what your favorite songs were and stuff like that, that's always really fun for me and I love it but I know very well that if I bought every album that I streamed, I a wouldn't have the space for it and b wouldn't listen to them enough for me to feel that that was justifiable. So I have like a handful of records, like a record player and some vinyls and I don't buy things on vinyl unless I really, really love them and I know that I'm gonna listen to them if Spotify dies of death suddenly because it's just not worth it for me. I feel like the space that it takes up in my house for a start and then like the manufacturing impact of that are just really inefficient when I know that I'm probably gonna listen to that entire album once and then I'll listen to a different artist or a different album or something.
Speaker 1:I just feel really cold out now.<laugh> what do you mean you listen to more than three songs?
Speaker 5:<laugh>,
Speaker 2:We appreciate neuro divergence here obviously. Have you met us?
Speaker 1:This is not the podcast for how my brand works though. Is there anything we've missed? Is there anything I nowhere got to talk as much as I wanted hear about nuclear. I didn't even mention the fact that there's different reactor types. Yeah. And to ran about pebble bed reactors versus we can at IBM cares
Speaker 2:We can do a quick tail the r of new cause if you want. I'm just thinking like
Speaker 1:That's a very different
Speaker 2:Podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh, uh, one last thing since we're talking about mutes to finish off this episode. Um, when there is an incident with a nuclear weapon, uh, in particular when a nuclear weapon is uh, lost, we call those bar and arrows. The problem with that is not only has that happened, it has happened enough times that we have a term for it. And uh, if nuclear weapons in general terrify you, what should scare you even more is the fact that, uh, we don't know where six of them are.