AIUI the high gas prices in the UK are not due to a global short supply of gas, but naughty commercial practices by gas traders on the continent, an issue which the EU has said it will address.
Further, within 2 years the UK will have greater diversity of supply.
DG
While strictly true at the moment, there can be no doubt that energy supplies (especially the easily portable, energy-rich forms) are going to come under increasing economic and political pressure worldwide. And just as share prices include a predictive element, so do energy prices.
We're particularly to manoeuvring in the markets because of our heavy dependence upon gas generated electricity, and I'm not convinced the new Norwegian pipeline will change that position much in an increasingly complicated energy world.
The secret is diversity of energy supply, not diversity of gas supply.
Andrew McP
Bitstring , from the wonderful person Derek ^ said
Within x years the other 75% of the world's population may actually be making demands on the supplies too, instead of burning yak dung and dried bamboo shoots!
I won't even speculate whether the various nations will get their act together over global warming enough to apply a proper carbon tax ..
Not to worry. The West will get its act together and adapt its power stations to burn biomass, and then we'll be importing all that Yak dung and dried bamboo at rock bottom prices while the Third World goes into ever deeper debt paying for all their gas.
In message , Martin writes
I think thats what they do at Cern, but they have to allow for the gravitational pull from lake Geneva depending on the tide.
Lake Geneva may have seiches, but no tides.
Of course it does, unless you think its somehow immune from gravity? In which case it would have drifted off into space by now.
There's one tiny spot with no gravity and the result is a massive fountain (except at night, for some reason)..... :-)
There's no "of course" about it. Gravity alone does not cause tides.
With a natural oscillation period of 73 minutes, I hardly think Lake Geneva is going to be sympathetic (in terms of resonance) to excitations at the frequencies associated with tidal forces.
Tides are largely a resonance phenomenon, and so observed tides are not a direct result of tidal forces, which are miniscule. Naturally the waters of Lake Geneva are not immune from tidal forces, but will respond to them in a manner which is almost certainly subliminal, and certainly dwarfed by seiches, which are mainly caused by the weather, and hence, unlike tides, are difficult to predict.
I take it you were joking about the disposition of its waters being enough to affect Cern measurements, but if not, I seriously doubt whether any tiny tidal component is going to matter (in which case Cern would probably be affected by direct tidal forces too, no doubt). That a seiche effect matters I would find a bit less unbelievable.
In message , Ronald Raygun writes
According to what they told me when a physics undergrad they do take into account the level of water when doing their calculations.
They have a wry sense of humour, these lecturers, especially when in the company of gullible undergrads. Perhaps they were just testing you, hoping you'd query it.
Yes, it came up in a discussion of the accuracy (number of significant places) to which they try to measure - attempting to test Einstein's relatives to destruction.
Indeed. I said nothing about the size of the tide, merely that there was one. I am happy to see you agree.
*Technically* I must agree, but in reality I don't. It's a bit like the tree falling in a forest. If there is no-one there to hear it, does it make a noise? More specifically, if the sound is so quiet, by the time it reaches the nearest person, that he can't hear it, is there a sound in that person's location?
If the tide is so small it cannot be measured (for being swamped by larger effects from other sources), is there one in any real sense?
Yes, if you like, to both, but only in the same sense that the shockwaves made by your feet as they walk, propagate even to me hundreds of miles away, even though by the time they get here, no known measuring equipment could detect them.
ROFL... :-)
It depends if the effect is smaller than background variation.
Rough back of an envelope calculation shows a tidal effect of 0.04 cm.
:-)
I wouldn't mind a peek at your envelope, because mine makes it nearer ten times that.
Well, thats something you could notice then, you'll have to move your deckchair back !
FWIW I found a calc for one of the US Great lakes and pro-rated it.
Was it an actual "calc" or just a result? I'd be interested in the workings. As we're assuming no resonance, I presume they're using the model known as "equilibrium tide".
The average tidal tractive (sideways) force peaks at about 80 billionths of "g", and accordingly you'd expect the gradient of the lake surface to peak at 1 in 12.5 million. With the major chunk of the lake being some
55km long in an East-West direction, that gives us 4.4mm peak to peak, i.e. an amplitude of 2.2mm.The Equilibrium Tide model is, alas, not very realistic, and that's why I was wondering whether they were using some sexy refinements. If so, I'd like to make their acquaintance, because sexy is nice.
Mind you, the lake has an "appendix" at the Geneva end, which is only some 20km long, and in a North-South direction (roughly, really more like NNE-SSW). On that bit, if interaction at the narrows between the N-S and E-W effects can be disregarded, you might expect the rise and fall to be only 1.6mm peak-to-peak or 0.8mm amplitude which is getting quite close to your answer, if that answer is in terms of amplitude (difference between high and mean or mean and low levels) as opposed to range (difference between high and low).
no it was a calc
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