Another lightbulb went off

And here it is. Sorry, no 'idea' inspiration this time.

Unfortuately, It also highlights a slight flaw in my advocacy for writing when you stuck it in around the edge, so you can take it back and demand a refund if the low energy is not matched by the long life.

We're talking 2 years, give or take. In the hall. Call it 2x365x5. Not quite as claimed.

Trouble is, a) I did not note where I bought it and b) if I knew do I have the receipt easily to hand.

Now rectified for the future. Receipt in special file and coded to the actual bulb.

I'll go green, but I am not funding others to profit from not delivering on their promises to help me do so.

You can be too green, apparently

I find I tick a few boxes at the end.

Are you carborexic?

While most, I am sure, are 'total', I do wonder about the enviROI of other activities some of these paragons might be, especially to get into the radar of the London luvvie set.

Not, on the whole, a lot I identify with, or seek to emulate. And hence I wonder how many are inspired or not. Beyond their mates.

CATEGORY - FOOD MILES

The topic is arising more and more. So I thought a new category was in order.

Indy - Food miles: The true cost of putting imported food on your plate

Ch 4 - Kiwi lamb and food miles

Telegraph - NEW - Sainsbury boss says 'food miles’ miss point - funny it comes out at the same time as this: Consumer giants cry foul over EU label laws

Grid and bear it

In amongst a lot of rather ill-defined, news hype and spin of late, this caught my attention:

Yes we can... build the smart grid

A sober (well, a little starry-eyed stuff creeping in) look at what can, and may not be possible to do.

Energy independence is an ideal, and one I support wholeheartedly, so long as the enviROI works out.

Let's see what actually happens. Here's hoping it works out well.

Telegraph - Barack Obama faces a daunting task on the environment

CATEGORY - Site Q&A - Search facile ity

A lot that ends up here can be viewed in light of the fact that I am using Blogger above the site to reply.

Sadly it is steam, driven and glitch-prone. But the core works OK.

One day all will be revamped. And what gets added here seamlessly integrated so as the info updated here goes in, so does the relevant section the site get updated too.

SEARCH

From Junkketeer Shedfirkler (a name with origins well worth investigating - it's OK, it's clean)

Q: "Either the keyword search only looks in very specific fields or it is generally useless! For example, I tried to find my own submitted idea (so I could direct a friend to it on the site), but none of the descriptive or main text words produced the result. Tends to bring up articles rather than ideas."

A (if more a reason than excuse, with no solution in sight for now): Not sure if it is useless. Just... next to it. What to say? It was installed when the site was built, and though many years have passed and advances have been made, we neither have the skills to improve it ourselves nor the money to pay someone who does. Sorry! One day it, and many other things that could be better, will be addressed.

From the site that says 'Rubbish need not be a dirty word'...

...to one that shares many of our visions.

Next Monday Will Be a Rubbish Q&A Day

Tracey knows stuff, and knows people. And she knows people who know stuff.

So it should be well worth it.

And if she is stumped on anything to do with reuse... she can always 'phone a friend'.

Now, what can I pose? Tricky.

When a promise isn't a commitment ......

... Or, when a commitment simply gets fudged and/or bungled?

An interesting comment piece from the Telegraph on when what is on the statute books is simply, well, bypassed. Plus, the author reckons what has happened with the fuel poverty commitment will also happen with the climate change bill.

I can hear the arguments already "errrrr, well, the 80% reduction in greenhouse gases was a target see, and we did not have the available finances to meet it, so, errrr, we haven't, errr, met it, well, as yet".

T'was ever thus!

Joined up what again?

EU law forces Sainsbury’s to ditch witches’ fingers

Is this part of the 'Love waste, love barking regulations even more' campaign?

Quote of the day - QED

As today's papers are excited about some councils removing Latin from our lingua franca...

I thought I'd share this from 21st Century Latin by linguist Sam Foster:

Calefaction muni - veniat! Colorandum pellum totum annum et via brevior ad litus!

Global warming - bring it on! An all-year tan and a shorter drive to the beach.

Gaurdian - Ave atque vale, lingua Latina - Some folk have too much time on their hands. QED.

Also just noticed a wee glitch that might employ many officers for many days if the write the funding application well enough.

'et cetera' is often abbreviated 'etc', I believe.

Now, I see possible problems with either the easily offended or Japanese communities with "and so on".

Newsnight

Daily Mail - The councils who ban Latin words because they are 'elitist and discriminatory' and confuse immigrants

Telegraph - Local council cretins ban Latin as 'elitist', pro bono publico

D'oh!

Brainy children ‘likely to vote Green’

...research suggests.

'Nuff said.

Another great new idea, from 1988

Waste not, want not

And should circumstances, or your search, fail, there is always Junkk.com to deal with the rest.

CATEGORY - CARBON CREDITS

They are coming, so best make sure we are on top of making them as enviROI+ as possible:

ARTICLES

BBC - NEW - The great carbon bazaar - Well, well, well...

Sadly, (necessary) stories like this tar possibly worthwhile and potentially useful enviROI+ projects with a very broad, long lasting brush. Frankly it seems waaaay too late to ask or expect any target-centric government or profit-centric trading entity to clean up their acts. The trust has gone. And with each imposition of such flawed systems by their very comfortable rewarded champions, the public looks like getting ever more resentful.

Indy - Concentrate the mind with carbon credits

As acknowledged: 'minus a handling fee, one assumes' '... also require substantial bureaucracy and would almost certainly be open to fraud and manipulation'. The current crop in charge do not inspire much faith that any planetary positive result will be derived whilst many job creation schemes and self-serving tax-grabs will be first in line.

Gaurdian - Carbon-credit schemes fall 30% short of projections, report claims - In a world of energy effciency, not the best % figure to note

Gaurdian - Personal carbon trading is not as simple as swiping an Oyster card - I note one Polly Toynbee, intellect-extraordinaire, is mentioned. Not in a good way.

Indy - UK’s carbon credits registry goes online

Times - NEW - The fool’s gold of carbon trading

TOG news

Yesterday I had another insight into the confusion on green issues that we all face.

En route to a meeting, I listened to the BBC radio news, with a story about our seabird population.

Not good. Seems they are in a dire state, and this can be traced back to the state of their principal food source, sand eels. And this... is due to global warming.

Oh dear.

Thing is, just 15 minutes later the DJ, Terry Wogan (somewhat of a rebellious spirit to the corporate agenda, like they don't have enough already) read out an email on this story (though without any reference to the news slot just read out) from a listener of unknown professional provenance that the sand eel reductions were nothing to do with climate, but more at the door of Danish fleets 'hoovering them up' (the term used) for animal feed and even, ironically, to be used as an alternative source of fuel.

Now, as a listener, in one quarter of an hour I had two diametrically opposite reasons provided for the fact of sand eel reductions over the airwaves and am currently none the wiser as to which is anything like the accurate one.

Now, I hate to say it, but there has to be a problem that when it comes to read any old press releases by charities that cite 'global warming', the track record of this £3.5B, multi-tens of thousand strong (analysts, researchers, etc) national broadcast entity is a bit suspect, and the net result of all this has been to cast more doubt on anything the BBC comes out with on science issues.

Newsnight

I don't design the 2012 Mascot

London 2012 Olympic mascot: Calling all entries

Dear Sir,

I hadn't realised, by virtue of not reading 'the brief' until now (the point pre-deadline I'd logged in my PC), that this was a search for an agency.

And much as a showcase in the Guardian is attractive, exposing one's brainpower to a potentially profitable property without being more certain of the rewards is unattractive.

Not likely to be a problem bearing in mind the entity involved in the real deal is a committee of worthies from an 'interestingly relevant' set of backgrounds, who don't do bland and yet came up with the whatever it is.

Hence, and rather than submit any doodles, may I instead make a suggestion?

Whatever this 'thing' is, in light of the eco-stance that will form a major part of the games, and the likely frugal, waste-sparing nature of most visitors during this period, rather than piece of useless tat Made in China that serves no function, the brief requires that in addition to being all a mascot needs to be, it is designed to do more than sit on a desk or ending up in a drawer.

Now, having set such a brief, and knowing all the potential manifestations it will need to satisfy in 2 & 3D, in the time left I can't imagine how to fulfill it.

Sorry.

But I would suggest a good start is a hole. You can use it to hang onto things, or things from.

Let the designs begin!

Rgds,

One less reason to shop...?

Has the the lucky Rabbits' foot that is Junkk.com struck again?

Well, for some.

Now, I'd be hard-pressed to say our little effort in Ross is much more than a drop in the ocean, but our local Morrison's has run out of Let's Grow vouchers.

Just popped over to get the boys' lunch, and as the cashier handed me my bill I smiled and asked for my vouchers, too.

"We've run out', she said.

'Well, what do I do to get them,' I asked.... "See the supervisor".

Oddly, I had only got a few words out before this lady was in full 'It's not my fault" mode.

They've run out, they didn't get any more and at this stage (it ends Nov. 6) there may not be any. No offer to log my receipt in case they do.

Now.... I don't know much about marketing, but that rather smacks of a bit of poor planning and rather suspect customer relations at head office.

Happy to play our part in making the scheme a success. Shame we seem unlikely to get any more vouchers, mind.

Anyway, every little bit helps. And maybe we did, a bit, too.

GOOD PACK: BAD PACK - Turkish less than delightful

From our recent hols... not the best example of packaging ever!

Boeing, Boeing..

Timeframes can be problematic.

Biofuel flying will take off in three years, says Boeing

When these guys, and celeb supporters like Richard Branson, though biofuels were the answer, few would have argued.

Now it is a new ball game.

ps: note 'Will' turns to 'Could'

My Friend's Electric... still emission free?

Just had to write to the BBC Politics Show:

Watching your pre-recorded segment on electric cars.

As I am sure 'experts' such as Mr. 'Monbeeay' [a pronunciation that I have not heard before] will confirm, I don't think it accurate to say that these efforts are 'zero' or 'emission free'.

The exhaust pipe is just in another place.

I am unsure what I am being sold here, but with the BBC selling it with their usual fine grasp of the science and commitment to looking across the issues objectively, I am pretty sure there will be a pup involved.

Now, how many fluffy reporterettes will we get serving up a blatant bit of inaccurate information in this regard before our national broadcaster gets its technical/science act together.

Gaurdian - £100m road to electric motoring ... police, post office and politicians step off the gas

Love the bit about free parking by Greenpeace. I think they might have missed the whole revenue aspect of governance. Plus the point of reduction. Maybe they all have G-Wiz' already and fancy a freebie? While it lasts.....

CATEGORY - HEATING

As a key aspect in domestic emissions (and energy costs), this deserves a break out category.

ARTICLES

Guardian - Tread lightly: Install a condenser boiler
Times - Market for eco heating keeps warming up
Times - NEW - Stoves - energy efficient heating

GRANTS

EST -

INFORMATION

DirectGov -

SUPPLIERS

charnwood.com
euroheat.co.uk
morsoe.com

More telling me what I should think

Perhaps more for El Burro Hotay, but I did not like the way this was heading...

Sarah Palin: her clothes, her shoes and her odd attitude to facts

Every Sunday I pop over to get a summary of issues on matters environmental from the major papers.

And what do I get? Quelle surprise. A rambling diatribe about an aspiring VP in a foreign election, replete with trivia and gossip.

But hey ho, I guess there is some possible relevance to be found...

'...her denial of man-made global warming was in marked contrast to John McCain's acceptance of it...'

FWIW, I thought she had expressed a view along the lines that she was not yet convinced that mankind was totally responsible for negative climate change.

A freedom of thought, and acceptance of others' right to have such a view, that some might find refreshingly less dogmatic than others who are not dependent on votes to be in a position to promote what some in certain positions are convinced is the only 'correct' view.