Woodpile

When you heat your home with a log burner I guess you will get through a lot of wood, and apparently it has to dry out so that it burns hotter and steadily? This is what’s left of a friends store and she hopes this will last for a few months. The only problem that has been found is that wood fires give off carbon Dioxide and tiny particulates.

I guess eventually we will all have to shift our energy sources. My hubby says there is a hydrogen pipe line in the north west of England and that there is talk of adding it to gas supplies and even converting them to hydrogen only in time. I know some vehicles run on hydrogen fuel cells. The emissions when hydrogen is burnt is water, the hydrogen is produced by splitting the hydrogen and oxygen from water…. A circular system? All we need is energy to create it, solar power? And safety systems to make it safe as it has a higher burning temperature.

My hubby says it has a higher calorific value and has weaker electron bonds so its easier to split the bonds between the hydrogen atoms. Anyone who saw it being lit in chemistry class will know it ignites with an explosive bang! You can’t just use hydrogen for cooking and heating on its own as it burns too hot. The cookers and boilers will probably be OK with a mixture of hydrogen and methane. If they use hydrogen only they will need modifying or replacing. But that is for the future. In the meantime I hope my friend has enough wood for the rest of the winter.

Another month

Another month, the Earth has travelled another twelfth of its orbit round the Sun. Nights have started to get a little bit longer here in the Northern Hemisphere, shorter in the Southern one, and staying about the same on the Equator.

Sunlight heats the world and now more of its heat is trapped in our atmosphere because of the Greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide and Methane emitted into the atmosphere are transparent to visible light waves but not in the infra red spectrum and they prevent heat being reflected out back into space.

I remember wonderful summers in the 1960’s, summer dresses, ice lollies. There was no hole in the ozone layer. We lived on a goldilocks planet where things were mostly comfortable. Now when you look at the graphs these years of the twentieth century have all been getting hotter, at a faster and faster rate. Stop and Think, try and help. Don’t let politicians bamboozle you with their hot air! Recycle, reuse, turn the heating down. Its up to all of us.