Still cold, still damp, still not a lot of atmospheric
movement and still bugger all solar stuff at the Castle this first day of “spring”.
Back on the antibiotics due to yet another abscess on one of
my remaining toofs, but they still refuse to yank them all out and give me
something that doesn’t hurt.
And joy of joys my old fart’s bus pass arrived by snail mail
yestermorn complete with a picture of someone I don’t recognise and an expiry
date of 2018-I should be so lucky...
Gas boilers for home heating will have to be virtually
eliminated by 2050 if the UK is to meet its carbon reduction targets and the use
of petrol and diesel engines to power cars will also need to be "much less
dominant" and replaced with electric power and biofuels, a policy meeting
in the House of Commons heard.
The conclusions are based on modelling the likely shape of
the energy sector in 2050 when greenhouse emissions will need to have fallen by
80% on 1990's level.
Professor Paul Ekins, one of the report’s authors, told MPs
and peers home heating would "have to change radically" to meet
carbon targets. Efficiency will have to be significantly improved for new and
existing buildings with heat provided by electrically driven heat pumps and
bioenergy.
District heating is another alternative, already in use in
Denmark, where household boilers are replaced by centralised neighbourhood heating
systems.
The internal combustion engine will be "much less
dominant" by 2050, Ekins said, and replaced with battery powered and fuel
cell vehicles.
Or they could use fat, carbon free teenagers like the Castle’s
heating system....
Son of a B.......aronet and alien reptile in disguise George
(I could use that rope now to hang myself) Osborne showed his non prowess at coordinated
physical activity-otherwise known as skipping, and failed miserably, just as he
is doing with the economy.
Some people never change...
Westbound traffic
on Interstate 80 is back to normal after Nevada Department of Transportation
crews used snowploughs to remove thousands of bottles of ketchup that were
strewn onto the freeway.
Sgt. Janay Sherven
with the Nevada Highway Patrol said crews put sand on the ketchup and then
cleaned up the debris.
Health officials
also will declare the spilled ketchup a loss so it can be taken to the dump.
A tractor trailer
carrying thousands of bottles of Heinz ketchup crashed on Interstate 80 near
the Robb Drive overpass this afternoon, spilling its red contents onto the
freeway and snarling traffic in the process.
That looks worse
than the bloodbath in Eastleigh-click on the link over the pic to watch the
video.
A fish farmer whose
entire stock of 22,000 carp was eaten by otters lost his £2million compensation
fight yesterday.
Brian Dodson, 60, alleged the Environment Agency had built
otter dens to get them to breed.
But a judge at Cardiff High Court
said the spread of otters in Tregarth, North Wales, was a “natural process”.
Mr Dodson has £10,000 costs. “I will
have to go bankrupt,” he said.
Scales of justice?
And finally:
Students at the
University of Maryland in the US are a step closer to claiming a sought-after
prize for a human-powered helicopter flight.
The American
Helicopter Society Sikorsky Prize was introduced in 1980 but has never been
claimed.
The students'
helicopter, the Gamera II, achieved a world record flight of 65.1 seconds in
August 2012, but failed to qualify for the lucrative prize as their craft
strayed outside the required area.
The students have
now designed a control system to overcome this hurdle, and have their sights
firmly set on the claiming the cash reward.
Gamera II weighs
32kg (71 pounds) and is powered by a combination of hand and food pedalling.
To claim the
Sikorsky prize, a helicopter must fly under human power for at least 60
seconds. The craft must also reach an altitude of three metres and remain
within a 10m square.
Named after
Russian-American aviator Igor Sikorsky, the prize offers a $250,000 (£164,000)
reward.
Qualifying flights
must be certified by a representative of the world governing body for air
sports and aeronautics world records, the FAI.
Spiffing, bet it would be much better with an engine.....
That’s it: I’m orf to
measure the spin of my black hole.
And today’s thought:
Angus
