A voice from the grave

I have in a previous post talked of my cousin, Winifred, who died on 2 Oct. After many years of seeing her infrequently we saw her a lot in her final few weeks. I didn’t even know she was ill for a long time until I had a peculiar  phone call asking if I knew where the keys to her house were.

This phone call from a clearly harried nurse gave no information, not even a number  where I could return the call. Not getting any reply on Winfred’s phone we eventually drove over to Bedworth to find her in a sadly reduced state. Winfred had always been a rather private person and although she made light of her illness it was obvious she was seriously ill. It was from a concerned neighbour that we eventually found the cause which was cancer of the oesophagus.

As I probably said previously Winifred was a great favourite of my parents. All the ( regrettably short ) time we were able to visit her I felt they were urging us on to do whatever we could.  This was little enough. Winifred’s home in Bedworth is an inconvenient drive from our home. Gradually we found a route via the M6/M42 which made the thirty miles a little easier.

As “next-of-kin” I have been making the arrangements. This was helped by a pre paid funeral plan, professional  executors and her church friends.

Her funeral  a few days ago was as she had specified in some detail. Just beforehand I was alerted by a church friend that the local Citizens Advice Bureau was sending a large contingent. I knew Winifred was a staunch volunteer but they did her the great honour of closing so that over 20 could attend. The manager wrote a lovely tribute.

It turns out that as part of a survey the CAB had recorded Winifred talking about her life, mainly in the CAB but covering the whole. Recorded before she was ill this was a very moving listening experience.: even a little spooky to hear her voice talking about her life.  Some was new to me and some even is a bit hard to fit with what I knew or had been told.

Winifred lived in Coventry and was evacuated to stay with my parents who lived in the country. No matter how loving and caring they were this was a massive wrench for a five year old. Fortunately she made great friends with Toby their dog. She was to be a dog lover for the rest of her life.

I’m not an animal lover and because Winifred had large dogs which lived in her house we found it awkward to visit so that when we met she visited us.

Of our generation one other has died and two are severely ill. The family at the funeral was limited to Annette and myself plus a cousin-in-law who travelled down from Carlisle This is Brenda, George’s widow,  who we know well and she stayed here. We were not expecting many at the funeral and were amazed that the church counted 97 in the congregation.

Winifred is now buried alongside her parents in Canley Garden Cemetery. I learned to my surprise my maternal grandmother is also buried there. We are still clearing Winifred’s house. Among surprises is a photo of me as a little boy along with two small girls who were distant relatives and an older girl from the village. I’m sure I have never seen this before. I feel the older girl is significant, perhaps as a baby sitter or someone mother took under her wing.   Maybe I will never find out but I’m still hopeful at this time. The other small girls I can contact. They are distant relatives with whom our parents made lots of joint expeditions when we were young. They had a car relative to our motor cycle and sidecar. I thought it great on occasion to ride in their car.

Energy 4

Preceding posts on energy have taken a swift gallop through the energy issues of today and ways forward on the massive issue of climate change. There has been a vast amount of research which is continuing. Essentially this can be divided into two main types; that aimed at directly reversing or alleviating climate change and that looking at alternative sources of energy.

The very idea of directly combatting climate change is controversial. There are those who maintain that any intervention large enough to make an impact is making an experiment on the earth’s climate with possibly major side effects. Since climate change stems from one inadvertent change they argue it would be risky to attempt another. There is general agreement that the best way forward is to limit carbon dioxide emission. However there is a growing realisation that present efforts are unlikely to be sufficient.

The Paris agreement seeks to limit global temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees. It seems unlikely this will be achieved. Possible direct action includes releasing white particles high in the atmosphere to reduce the sun’s radiation. While there is god evidence this will work it doesn’t affect things like ocean acidification. This acidification is result of sea water dissolving CO2 to give a weak acid. Another possibility is to fertilise the growth of marine plankton which will grow, absorb CO2, die and sink to the bottom of the sea. In this way CO2 is buried. A most fantastic possibility is to erect a gigantic sunshade in space to reduce the input to the earth from the sun.

.All these and others have the fundamental problem of scale. Such a massive effect is necessary that it will be almost impossible to test first

There is a slight possibility that CO2 could be removed from exhaust gas and buried in such as old oil wells. This has been planned but so far has not been demonstrated. So called “clean coal” was best thought of as a political gimmick.

Turning to novel sources the most intriguing and most researched is fusion. Essentially this means duplicating the sun’s reaction in a controlled way on earth. Fusion is a nuclear reaction but should not be confused with present day atomic power stations. It is fundamentally different and would produce very little radio active waste. Many billions have and are being spent but the problems remain unsolved. There is a joke that “fusion power is thirty years away and always will be” It was first promised when I was young and mankind is very little closer now. The issue is containment of plasma at temperatures of many millions of degrees.

Wave power has excited much interest over the years. No economically feasible method has emerged from all the ducks, snakes and a whole menagerie of ideas. Slightly more promising is tidal power. Essentially a form of hydroelectricity the general idea is to fill a reservoir at high tide and let is potential energy be released through power turbines. The issue is that very few places have a sufficient tidal range although apparently the UK hosts some. Rather more obscure is to exploit the difference of temperature between the top and bottom of the ocean. A difference in temperature means a heat engine can be used The system needs  a long vertical submerged tube in the ocean.. This was much discussed in the energy crisis of the seventies but seems to be of little interest now. There is one research system in operation.

Plant photosynthesis is not very efficient but careful study of the mechanism has been yielding results. It looks at least possible that plants could be modified to give better photosynthesis by the kind of genetic engineering which has developed at such a rapid pace.

However we can readily predict that any such plant modification would produce vigorous protests. In fact the objections of well meaning but ignorant protesters will probably be the biggest obstacle to any radical change in the energy landscape. Current objections to wind turbines and fracking give a foretaste of the protests so easily aroused by any change. The existential challenge remains and such single issue groups will be another barrier to its resolution.

Energy 3

Earlier posts under this title have pointed out that energy consumption must increase despite advances in the efficiency with which energy is used. They have pointed out that fossil fuels and climate change are existential problems for mankind. Electricity is unique in its flexibility as an energy medium of transmission but the big problem with electricity is that it is difficult and expensive to store.

At present the transportation business is the second largest user of energy in society after space heating/cooling which is the largest. Various parts of transportation present their own unique features but the development focus has been on passenger cars. The technology most discussed with cars is electric vehicles.

Fundamentally there are two types of electric car, those purely driven by batteries and those which are hybrid having both a petrol and electric engines. While early on hybrids captured most of the market there has been a resurgence in pure electric cars. This surge has particularly been driven by Tesla a US manufacturer who have been very successful.

The issue with battery only cars has been range. Tesla is now selling cars with a 300 mile range and batteries which can be quickly charged. This recharging can be in tens of minutes to big fractions of the total capacity. However “range anxiety” is still a potent factor limiting all electric cars. Quick charging is not nearly as fast as filling up with petrol giving a typical petrol car a range of 400 miles plus. The anxiety over running out of charge has been compounded by the relative lack of charging facilities outside the home.

It is time to firmly lay to rest one myth. Electric cars may be pollution free at the tailpipe. However the electricity they use is supplied from the grid from multiple sources which include some renewables but often a lot of coal, oil and gas.. The overall energy equation needs to take account of the large amount of energy used in producing the car and battery.

Battery efficiency is key. The battery is certainly a lithium ion type which actually describes a range of broadly similar battery technologies. The battery is an expensive component which does not last the life of the car. Recycling of battery parts is claimed but not actually done as yet. To drive down battery production costs Tesla with Panasonic is building a big factory called the Gigafactory in the US. Batteries are getting more efficient but there is still a big need for improvement.

One important feature of most electric vehicles is regenerative braking. This means that when slowing the car turns the motor/generator putting electricity into the battery.

Hybrid electric is much more common than pure electric. There are fundamentally two types of hybrid,: parallel and serial. In the parallel both petrol engine and electric can drive the car  while in serial the wheels are always driven by the electric motor while the petrol engine charges the battery. Parallel is the most common but the best arrangement is far from agreed with many variations.

While originally hybrids only used a petrol engine to recharge the battery it is increasingly common for mains electricity to be also used for battery charging. This is the so called “plug in” hybrid. An abbreviation has come into use as PHEV which is Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle.

Incidentally the Toyota Prius, which was the first hybrid on the mass market, uses earlier battery technology earlier lithium battery technology..

Other transportation systems are being contemplated. The diesel electric locomotive is well established. Somewhat similar systems are possible for buses. The economy advantage is that the diesel engine can run in its most efficient range. In principle trucks could use a similar system although the tractive effort required is much larger.

There is interest in electric aircraft. The problem is twofold in that regenerative braking can only occur on landing but more importantly that weight is a big consideration. Hypothetical hybrids with many electric motors driven from batteries charged by a gas turbine have been suggested but not built as yet.

There are other possibilities for storing energy. One is to use a flywheel turning very fast which is spun up as the vehicle ( usually a bus ) brakes with the flywheel energy then used as the bus accelerates away from a stop

There are also possible alternative fuels. Hydrogen which is less dense than petrol and difficult to store could either power an internal combustion engine or be used in a fuel cell.  A fuel cell converts hydrogen and oxygen from the air into electricity. The big attraction is the possible generation of hydrogen on the car from petrol thus making use of the existing distribution infrastructure. No economically practicable method is known at present.

It is fair to say there is a ferment of research and development at present. Overall the electric vehicle looks to be firmly in the lead but we can expect lots of possibilities in the near future. To inject a note of caution, for all the glib talk of banning petrol and diesel fuels they are at present the economic choice and alternatives have a way to go before matching them.

Energy 2

Having discussed some general topics it is time to get to some specific issues. To recap energy use will increase as our civilisation becomes more sophisticated. Fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide and climate is changing as a result. This change in climate threatens life on the planet.

So what’s to be done? The first part of the answer is to use fossil fuels better. This means burning gas rather than coal and burning it more efficiently. It is slowly becoming clear that it is better to use electricity because even with fossil fuels burning in a power station is more efficient than in ( say) cars.. This is perhaps the place to nail the lie that electric cars are zero emission. They are at the tailpipe but if fossil fuel is burned to create the electricity then mankind benefits only from the greater efficiency of a power station over an internal combustion engine.

It is far from clear whether pure electric cars or hybrid cars ( those having both electric and internal combustion engines ) will succeed. On one hand pure electric have lower emissions and on the other battery limitations mean that pure electric are range limited.

This points to the great problem with electricity. That problem is that electricity is almost ideal as a means of energy transmission but is very difficult and expensive to store. At present our mains electricity must be generated as it is consumed.

There have been big advances in batteries in the past fifty years but even with that batteries are expensive, slow to charge and only barely meet the demands upon them. This is such a problem that in the UK we have resorted to pumped water for large scale storage. Essentially this is a reversible hydroelectric scheme. When demand is low water is pumped by electricity to a high storage reservoir. When demand is high the stored water is released through turbines generating hydroelectricity. This process inevitably loses some energy but it is the only acceptable method at present. There is some suggestion that large batteries might help and US Solar City are planning a 100MW battery in Australia.

As was said earlier all energy ultimately comes from the sun. Photosynthesis powers plants and hence has provided us with fossil fuels. However photosynthesis has a very low efficiency which means that crop based fuels will be of limited use. Crop based fuels are carbon dioxide neutral in the sense that the growing plant consumes carbon dioxide which is then returned to the atmosphere when it is burnt. The carbon necessary for all plants is taken from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Plant growth removes C02 from the atmosphere but all that C02 is returned when the plant rots.

Rather than use plants as intermediary solar electric directly turns the sun’s rays to electricity. The problem is that solar panels are not very efficient. Over the past few years prices of solar panels have fallen a lot but they are still quite expensive. However the fundamental problem is that solar panels only generate in the daytime and preferably during a sunny day.

Wind turbines have a similar problem of intermittency ie. they only generate when the wind is blowing. It is unclear whether wind or solar power is fully cost efficient compared to fossil fuel power. There are indications that wind and solar are approaching cost parity with fossil fuels after a long period when they have be subsidised by government. These subsidies were not paid by general taxation but by taking money from existing generators.

Because wind and solar are intermittent there is the question of balancing supply and demand. At present while wind and solar are a small part of total energy production this is a minor issue but as their contribution rises it is set to become a major problem. Managing the national electricity grid will become an issue.

At present the only known none carbon method of steadily generating electricity is nuclear. For well rehearsed reasons this is contentious. It is very expensive using the conventional nuclear station. It is said that “mini nukes” built on a modular basis will be cheaper but  this is a paper exercise as none have been built.

It is apparent that at least some of the supply/demand balancing will demand load shedding. In its modern form this means paying large users a fee for allowing their supply to be cut. As the UK has very little spare capacity this already happens at peak demand.

It is possible that if electric cars become widespread then batteries would only be recharged at times of low demand and there is even the suggestion that car batteries could supply at peak times. This would require complex controls but computers may make it feasible.

Energy 1

I have quite a bit to say about energy so I’ll number my posts. Energy is vitally important to civilisation. Very roughly increasing energy use and increasing civilisation are correlated. In other words as civilisation advances energy usage goes up. While it is quite possible for the amount of energy usage to decrease per unit of advance of “civilisation” I don’t think there is any instance of the absolute energy usage  decreasing which has happened historically or indeed that can be conceived for the future.

We have seen advocates of a “hair shirt” approach but they have never actually put their theories into practice. I cannot imagine going without my washing machine, my computer or keeping warm in winter. Certainly we want our civilising appliances to be as efficient as possible; our houses to be as well insulated as possible but if we are to advance our living standards then overall our energy use will rise.

The existential problem for mankind is that our existing energy sources are killing the planet. It cannot be denied that the planet is warming and the climate is changing. It has been quite visible in my lifetime with milder wetter winters. I wonder how the climate change deniers in Texas reconcile their belief with Hurricane Harvey and its effects. As hurricane frequency increases they must be ready to see the truth.

What is possibly slightly more contentious is whether man made emissions of carbon dioxide and methane are the cause. The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that they are. The counter evidence for some other cause is very thin. It seems that the climate change deniers somehow imagine a political plot. What this could be and what benefit is possible for acceptors seem to exist only in the warped minds of conspiracy theorists. It is sad that America is lumbered with a president that thinks that way.

It is possible I suppose this is part of Michael Gove’s scepticism of experts. Certainly experts aren’t always right. But in this case the evidence is all around, the climate is changing as I’ve said above quite clearly in my lifetime. It would be quite extraordinary for mankind to just sit back and hope for a miraculous change to avoid extinction.

Incidentally I have become extremely tired of the frequently trotted out “over population” by people who seem to lack an understanding of the gigantic demographic transition taking place right now. As soon as people see that their children will survive they stop having so many. The problem is now localised to Africa as everywhere else the transition is well underway. Population will increase for a while as those late to the transition have a lot of people of childbearing age. Although these will have far fewer children than their parents precisely because there are lots of them population will increase for a while.

The replacement ratio ( which keeps population stable ) is about 2.1 children per couple. Post transition the population will fall as all the indications are that modern affluent societies are below 2. In some cases far below and population fall is an issue in a few countries such as Japan now and will become a much more widespread issue in the future. The Chinese numbers are slated to fall before the end of the century.

All our energy comes from the sun, that great fusion reactor in the sky. This can be largely indirect as in wind power or the result of many millennia  as with fossil fuels. Oil , gas and coal are the result of many millennia of plants growing with energy from the sun and then dying under non rotting conditions.

In my lifetime we have gone from coal as the main energy source to a situation where it is disappearing fast. At one time Britain mined about a quarter of a million tons in the fifties to now where there is no deep mining and not much opencast.

There is a deal of sentimental twaddle talked about the loss of coal mining communities. I’m a miner’s son  and the coal miners life was extremely hard. My father always said to me “I don’t care what you do, just don’t go down the pit”.

I was very glad to to go down once just for the experience but I vowed never again. When I was young  three quarters of a million men were committed to the horrible job- not one today which I see as a huge advance.

Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith

Who is he I hear you say. He is a former Scottish academic who is a prolific writer. To a slight extent his books use his academic knowhow in ethics and law but essentially his writing is “feel-good” books in a variety of settings.

I went to see him at the “Warwick Words” literary festival. I first went to an event there several years ago- it was a poetry slam organised by Spoz Esposito. A slam is a light hearted contest in which contestants declaim their poems for no more than 3 minutes. Judges then select those felt to be best through to second round and so on until a winner is reached. The first slam I attended I was chosen as one of the judges. I thought the contributions were excellent and judging was extremely hard.. The funniest poem of the evening was read by Spoz himself while the results were tabulated. I don’t usually enjoy vulgar work but his poem was both vulgar and hilariously funny ( it concerned a driver on the motorway who urgently wants to go to the toilet ) Obviously the success or otherwise depends on the contestants and subsequent events didn’t reach the same high standard.

Born in present day Zimbabwe McCall Smith has had his biggest success with  “The No 1 ladies detective agency” series set in Botswana. The books have a great sense of place as Botswana is a country he knows well quite apart from his youth in a nearby country. In fact he founded several institutions while in Botswana on secondment to the University. The detective agency is only loosely about detective stories being mainly about the principals and their various lives. As in all his work the books are full of humorous commentary.

McCall Smith is astonishingly prolific and much of his work is in series which are extremely varied. He first achieved success with a series about German academics when he mocks their pretentiousness. A university teacher with a doctorate would be known as Herr Professor Doctor…. He has also had a series set in London about the affairs of the occupants of Corduroy Mansions. A rather similar series is set in Edinburgh in Scotland Street. This series is notable for its short chapters interweaving the lives of the flat dwellers. The structure can be most readily understood as it is written as columns in the “Scotsman” newspaper which are then collected into books.

In my opinion the star character in Scotland Street is a small boy, Bertie. Bertie longs to be a small boy like any other but his mother is determined to be achingly politically correct and despises anything gender specific. Thus he is dressed in a crushed strawberry colour corduroy bib suit when he longs to be dressed in jeans like other boys. He yearns for a Swiss Army type penknife which of course is not approved by his mother. McCall Smith has huge fun at the expense of Irene, Bertie’s mother, who seems to have just about every “right-on” opinion ever heard of.

In his talk McCall Smith mentions how Irene reacts to anything she considers detrimental. At nursery school she insists he learns to write. Thus when Bertie in a small rebellion writes on the toilet wall he is instantly identified because he is the only pupil who can write. Irene is mortified.

Totally different is the “Sunday Philosophy club” series featuring Isabel Dalhousie. Isabel is the editor of a philosophical publication on modern ethics. Although only part time and combined with being mother to a small child she takes this very seriously.  The stories, set in Edinburgh, give McCall Smith the chance to muse on various issues. The stories are fairly light hearted revolving around various puzzles in everyday life.

All of the work has one unifying feature which is that whatever the intervening incidents all works out well and culminates in a happy ending. The Warwick event was in the form of a question and answer session and he proved an affable and amusing speaker

Winifred

My cousin Winifred died a couple of days ago. As “last man standing “  ( our two surviving blood relatives are both very ill  and our in law relative isn’t much better ) I get to arrange some things. Thankfully she had a pre paid funeral plan and a professional executor.

Over the past few years I haven’t seen much of Winifred even though she lives relatively close. I had no idea she was even ill until a few weeks ago when I had a strange phone call saying she was leaving hospital and did I know where her spare key was. On deciding to investigate I found her in a sadly reduced condition.

She was reluctant to tell me what the problem was although she eventually confided in Annette that she had cancer. I was glad that we had some short time together and that we visited her in hospital the day before she died She was my parents favourite and I could hear mother urging me to do all I could.

Very vivid in her memory was the time she was evacuated during WW11 from her home in Coventry to live with my parents in the country .In fact I have a definite idea that the timing of my birth was down to the influence of Winifred on my parents. They loved having a charming 5 year old staying and I can see my mother saying damn the war lets have children now. My surviving cousin has told me that my mother wished for a girl like Winifred who was always their favourite niece. My mother never gave me the slightest hint of this, if indeed it was true.

My mother was very interested in skills like knitting and sewing and did make a slight effort to teach me but I was hopeless and she gave up quickly. I know she was pleased that Annette has a multitude of craft skills although our own children are not greatly interested. Our granddaughter Alice shows interest in art so perhaps she will develop that in later life.. Annette has also tried to interest the others so we shall see.

Winifred had interests quite different from mine, in animals and religion. It was her interest in animals that was the  reason we didn’t visit her but that she always visited us. We went with another set of cousins to visit her years ago She had a non-housetrained large dog and the ambience was quite repellent.

Through her religious beliefs she had been an active member of her local church. I must say her fellow churchgoers have been quite magnificent. Winifred lived on her own since her father died some 20 years ago and they have looked after her, accompanying on hospital visits, shopping and just being company. Unfortunately they didn’t make any contact with me and it is only in the past few weeks I have come to know some, particularly the couple who live nearby.

When my mother was pregnant with me Winifred’s mother managed to come to live temporarily in a nearby village so they were reunited there away from the horror of the Coventry bombing. Their house in Coventry was damaged in a raid but was repaired after the war.

Winfred had an aunt ( and namesake) who had a huge influence. She was herself a nurse and encouraged Winfred into the profession. Ironically Winifred with no children of her own became a midwife.

Among many poignant things left behind is her father’s soldier’s will. He was in the army all through WW11. His will left everything to his wife, my aunt Amy. He survived and lived to a good age latterly, after Amy died, sharing a house with Winifred.