Date: Thu Nov 23, 2006 5:37 pm. By: Andy Hall
On 2006-11-23 08:57:37 +0000, John Beardmore said:
In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-11-22 02:18:26 +0000, John Beardmore said:
In message , raden writes Feelgood factor If you insist, though you seem to using that phrase in a rather pejorative sense. I guess it feels good in the same way that social cohesion or public spirited acts do - as opposed to feeling good like simple hedonism.
The problem with that is that all but a very small proportion of people think with their pocket books first and being public spirited falls a long way down their agenda. I am not saying that this is good or bad, but in terms of achieving the objective of an improvement to the environment (in whatever scope you want to choose) it won't work if there are too small a number of adopters.
Well yes - though the reality is that the solar industry has never been busier, and fuel price trends seem to be the major contributor.
It's good to hear that there are a steady supply of suckers.
Perhaps you could send me their details - I've a great catalogue of other useless things that I could sell to them.
I can't comment for Geoff, but had it been me, I would have had pretty much the same reaction. Normally I wouldn't have looked too seriously into this stuff because it is clear that there is not a strong reason to do so at the current price point of energy. It's an issue of what do I want to spend my time doing, and to be honest, there are more important things that have to be dealt with first.
Yes - you may well be right about that, and many other households may well be in the same situation.
However, had my parents been scammed in this way, I would have had the same reaction, because the sale was made on grounds that were a long way short of being honest.
Maybe. While in my view it was overpriced by maybe a factor of two to three, I can't say if they were honest, because I don't know what they said.
If you're upset about it, you could complain to the solar trade association, the Low Carbon Buildings Program, trading standards etc.
With the exception of Trading Standards, who in the nicest possible way have their "challenges", are these organisations worthwhile? Are they completely disinterested from the subject?
The problem is that unless you are doing what you perceive to be the right thing on a sound economic basis, on the small scale you won't be in business, so it becomes academic; and on the macro scale is effectively worthless because not enough people will adopt it to make a worthwhile difference. If, OTOH, you do something close to what you are doing that does pass the economic tests, then you have the ability to potentially make a difference.
Hmmm... Some people seem to violently oppose 'incrementalism', others to feel it is the only possible way to make progress.
There is nothing wrong with incrementalism provided that it can be reasonably and realistically projected forward to make a worthwhile goal.
However, one thing I learned from an engineering education as well as the university of life is that one should look first and perhaps only on significant contributing factors to a solution, measurement, etc. In other words, if one is building a solution to address an issue or measure it and the design addresses it to a 95% level with the next 3% costing ten times as much in time/resources/whatever, then it may well be reasonable to stop at the 95% point because the result is well fit for purpose.
The converse is true in this case. There is no point in going after the 5% case, however interesting I find it or however good it makes me feel, if the 95% has been unaddressed because the task appears to be too large. The 5% will not make a difference to the eventual outcome.
I pick figures like this to emphasise the point, but in effect people are attempting to do exactly this in this context.
I just think you do whatever you can whenever you can. Depends on the opportunities that present.
The opportunities and responsibilities are in a different place. People need to think outside the box and turn their attention towards issues that actually do make a difference, not just the low hanging fruit.
even worse, you feel you're making a difference - which is what I see as being dangerous I'm well aware of the scale of the problem and my size relative to it, but relative size doesn't alter the direction in which it is sensible to go, and certainly 'following the money' doesn't do it for >>me !
Don't expect to be in business for very long then.....
:)
If everybody was like you...
Meanwhile... ...Four and a half years and counting. Yes it's a micro business, but it's been through a minimum, come out the other side and seems to be growing.
I'm not complaining, and people seem to think we are some use.
I think that there may be some ultimate value in solar panel use under the right circumstances and at a point in the future where the economics stack up more reasonably at our latitude.
For example, for many years in cities like Tel Aviv, one can look out across the roof tops and see solar panels and paraphernalia for water heating. I had one of these systems described to me and they are quite primitive - some kind of a panel on a stand (many roofs are flat) and a header tank looking like an oil drum on a stand so as to be on a level above it. I believe that there is a pump and some other storage vessel and that's about it - no insulation or anything sophisticated. Visually, these systems look dreadful, but the Israelis tend not to have aesthetics that high on their agenda. Cost wise, I believe they are about 200 U.S. dollars. However, people can meet their entire hot water needs pretty much throughout the entire year.
That's a simple and justifiable case. Here the proposition is a lot more challenging for all the reasons that the Israelis haven't or don't need to address. However, to them the value proposition is a simple economic one. Nothing more.
If everyone donated the money they would have spent on a solar heating system to a "getting rid of George bush fund" it would be money far better spent Possibly, though the example I prefer is If you had a thousand quid and wanted to save the planet, would it be better to a) install a half a solar water heater or b) break into 10 of your friends attics and insulate them ? I tell this to our clients. Especially the ones without loft insulation !
or c) keeping the money invested until the point when spending it will actually achieve something. In that sense I would rather focus effort on the abolition of inheritance tax so that future generations can actually benefit from technology that is worthwhile in the future rather than wasting money on marginal stuff today. Unfortunately, not many people think laterally either....
:) That's one way to look at it, but we are doing harm to the environment now, and prevention is generally an order of magnitude or two cheaper than mitigation.
That really depends on whether one really is making a difference with current actions.
Further, you are opting to rely on technologies that might never exist. Nobody can predict the future, and you can't buck thermodynamics. There are risks either way,
You can't buck the market either. You may remember the famous quote of Margaret Thatcher on that one.
"The first and general lesson is that if you try to buck the market, the market will buck you."
The context of course was different (the ERM), but it was not that long after that this was demonstrated, painfully to be exactly correct.
Love MT, hate her, or take the view of the curate's egg; there was never much confusion about where she stood on a given topic.
In that respect, economics are just like thermodynamics.