by John Goetz
In what seems to be a script straight from a Monty Python classic, the good folks of Santa Coloma de Gramenet in Spain seem to have found a rather novel use for the dead: as a tool in the fight against global warming.
From the TimesOnline
November 28, 2008
by Graham Keeley in Barcelona
Spanish graveyard new front in the fight against global warming
Solar panels are installed in cemetery
A graveyard in Spain has become an unlikely front in the fight against global warming, with hundreds of black panels placed on top of mausoleums providing year-round power for homes.
The 462 panels produce 124,374 kilowatts of electricity, enough to supply 60 homes for a year in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, near Barcelona. The exorbitant price of land in the densely populated satellite city inspired a solar energy company to propose using one of the last remaining available plots of land – the cemetery.
Conste-Live Energy and the local council spent three years persuading relatives of those interred and near-by residents that the unusual proposal would benefit the living without demeaning the dead. “The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors is to generate clean energy for new generations,” Esteve Serret, a company director, said.
The panels cost €720,000 (£612,500) to install and each year will keep about 62 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Mr Serret said.
“This is not much, but it will do something to help combat global warming,” said Bartomeu Muñoz, the Mayor of Santa Coloma. The glinting blue-grey panels are fixed on top of mausoleums, which in Spain hold five layers of coffins.
The panels, which face south to soak up maximum sunshine, were turned on last week after three years of planning. Santa Coloma is so densely populated that all 124,000 inhabitants live within a 4sq km area. Putting solar panels on coffins was a tough sell, said Antoni Fogué, a city councillor. “Let’s say we heard things like, ‘They’re crazy. Who do they think they are? What a lack of respect’,” he said.
City hall and cemetery officials waged a public awareness campaign to explain the worthiness of the project and the painstaking care with which it would be carried out.
Eventually they won over doubters, Mr Fogué said. The panels were erected at a low angle to be as unobtrusive as possible. “There has not been any problem because people who go to the cemetery see nothing has changed,” Mr Fogué said. “This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased.”
The cemetery holds the remains of 57,000 people. The solar panels cover less than 5 per cent of the total area. Community leaders hope to erect more panels and triple output. Santa Coloma has four solar parks, but the cemetery is the biggest and the first to attach panels to graves.
When I read this I suddenly recalled the infamous “Bring out yer dead” scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Here’s one.
The Dead Collector: That’ll be ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There’s your ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not dead.
The Dead Collector: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not.
The Dead Collector: He isn’t.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m getting better.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a moment.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations.
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Re: September 2008 CERN Cloud Analysis. Can anyone explain the findings of this September 2008 CERN Cloud analysis to a layman and what correlation, if any, it finds regarding cosmic radiation causing clouds? I know why the experiment is being done, but this initial analysis is way over my head. I don’t see that this report has been mentioned before on WUWT. If it is important, maybe it should be.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1131824/files/CERN-AB-2008-062.pdf
Nevermind. It has nothing to do with the CLOUD project at CERN.
My mistake.
Pamela Gray- “In remote rural areas, solar panels are by far the most economical.”
Indeed not. A small wind turbine is less expensive. A diesel or propane generator is by far the most economical, especially for cabins, etc that see seasonal use.
I’m not sure I’m too concerned about the “fight against global warming” but I am concerned about energy independence as a country and movement away from fossil fuels that are primarily concentrated in the unstable parts of the world. Solar panels to offset my own energy use seem like a good start. To that end I’ve become interested in an organization called One Block Off the Grid. 1BOG forms local cooperatives that share information and buying power to make residential solar installations affordable. http://1bog.org/
Will Small (09:15:38)
I am not an expert on the climate of the Antarctic Peninsula where the dramatic climate change is alleged to be taking place and threatening the Wilkins Ice Shelf but I have a few comments on your post that might offer a different perspective on the issue:
Why is it deemed unusual for floating ice shelves to develop rifts? The claim of stability for most of the last century does not impress if one views it on an appropriately longer time scale. Ice shelves have been retreating more or less since the last ice age and may continue to retreat naturally without man’s intervention until the next ice age.
Calling ice shelves “massive” is relative. Massive compared to what? You stated the ice bridge lost 772 square miles which is equivalent to less than 28 miles square. In Canada where I live, this small potatoes. Even the entire Wilkens shelf, stated to be the size Connecticut , is still small by global standards.
If the climate in the Antarctic Peninsula is warming, it is a local phenomena. The temperature on the Antarctic continent has been dropping, the ice cap growing and the sea ice around Antarctica was at a record level since 1979, so how does this fit in with AGW?
The Antarctic Peninsula divides two oceans and obviously has a maritime climate sensitive to variations ocean currents and climate phenomena. Ask yourself how multi-decadal oscillations in ocean temperatures such as the ENSO and NAO could effect climate in such an exposed location.
Your posts make us skeptics think and try to formulate our thinking. For this I thank you. On the other hand, you put us in the impossible position of trying to prove that some selected natural phenomena are not indicative of AGW. In other words, despite the primitive and flawed science that the AGW hypothesis is based on, AGW adherents assume that they have the high ground (morally, if not scientifically) and attempt to transfer the burden of proof onto the skeptics. When one considers the astronomical cost of tilting at the windmill of AGW, the burden of proof should be thrown right back to the AGW proponents with a demand for better science and less political spin.
Sure, we’re “wasting” a few dollars, here, and there; but, we’re funding some good research that Will, almost certainly, come in handy down the road. It’s kind of the way things are done in a Capitalist system. Kinda “messy,” but in the long run, effective.
Kinda. 🙂
It would seem that the collapse of massive ice shelfs is not a good sign that things are cooling wouldn’t it?
Will Small, A glacier is a process that transports ice from where it doesn’t melt to where it does melt. This is true of all glaciers at all times. It was true at the height of the last Ice Age when glaciers advanced over what are now London and New York.
Ice sheets are merely glaciers that extent over the ocean. The break up is merely part of the melting process and would occur even if the Earth’s climate were rapidly cooling.
This is not a personal attack on you, but this illustrates how the AGW proponents trade on people’s ignorance.
Now if you had evidence that the rate of icesheet breakup was accelerating that would indeed be evidence of warming. Although, warming over centuries. But I know you don’t have that evidence because nobody does. We don’t have records going back anything like far enough to determine a trend.
OT note for Will Small…..
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/obama_on_the_urgency_of_combat.html
Will, you should makes plans to be in New York March 8-10th.
http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/newyork09.html
Too clarify, as crosspatch points out, we do have proxy measurements of ice extent and hence rate of breakup. What we don’t have is sufficient direct measurements of ice extent and breakup to determine a trend.
From Will Small’s article:
So the issue here is that the ice shelf, which is the end of the glacier floating on the ocean, may eventually detach from the rest of the glacier?
How is that evidence of global warming?
Please be specific.
I do not think they are using the dead to fight AGW…., but to make some pretty good money out of the local and state funding to promote “alternative” green energies. Catalans are well known to smell money… even in the cemeteries.
crosspatch, the study you link to above, seems to say in layman’s terms – the mud beneath the glacier becomes more slippery as the pressure from the weight of ice increases.
Assuming this is true, it would cause a cycle of ice accumulation followed by rapid advance, which in turn would cause accelerated melt and breakup due more ice being pushed further into the ‘melt zone’.
BTW, ‘rapid’ in this context probably means decades.
So even if we had accurate records of ice extent and breakup going back a century, they wouldn’t tell us anything useful without knowing where we were in the above cycle, which is likely many 10’s of thousands of years long.
Philip_B (06:22:09)
“That the hydrogen, never mind the car, should magically appear from nowhere is taken for granted by the people who talk this nonsense, because their bread, milk and vegetables similarly magically appear from nowhere.”
That’s what I have been saying about this new generation.
they have no idea about what it takes to plant the seeds
and pull the food to keep up what we have. and these peps will
be the first one to cry foul when there is no food to eat.
No electric power = no fuel, no planting, no harvest, no eating.
They, these who are complaining can not see all/any of the steps in a complex system. This is why CAGW WORKS for them. we say here “can not see past there hand in front of there face” !!!
ohh mye!!!!!!
Robert Austin (12:32:04) :
“Your posts make us skeptics think and try to formulate our thinking. For this I thank you. On the other hand, you put us in the impossible position of trying to prove that some selected natural phenomena are not indicative of AGW. In other words, despite the primitive and flawed science that the AGW hypothesis is based on, AGW adherents assume that they have the high ground (morally, if not scientifically) and attempt to transfer the burden of proof onto the skeptics. When one considers the astronomical cost of tilting at the windmill of AGW, the burden of proof should be thrown right back to the AGW proponents with a demand for better science and less political spin.”
Robert – yes, that’s sorta what I was after. To try and have skeptics re-evaluate their thinking. Exactly.
Remember, I only brought this up as a counter point to the post:
“Glaciers in Norway, Alaska, growing again”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/27/glaciers-in-norway-alaska-growing-again/
where so many comments pointed out this must mean GC. I realize we’re in a circle here but if an advancing glacier means GC and a breaking ice shelf means GW, what’s what?
Is it possible that advancing and retreating glaciers mean both GW & GC, therefore these 2 observations mean nothing whatsoever?
I know some of you find me terribly annoying, but if this is Occam’s Razor than so be it.
Australia squibs on climate promise
THE Rudd Government has reneged on a commitment to present its 2020 target to cut greenhouse gases to UN climate talks that start today. The back-pedalling comes amid wrangling in cabinet over how far to go with curbing emissions
Snip
“It is the case that we said we would release the targets in December and we had indicated before Poznan,” she said. But she said it was important to postpone the announcement until she released the final version of the Government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme on December 15 – after she returned from Poland.
Until late last week Senator Wong repeatedly said the range of emissions cuts for the 2020 target would be set before she went to Poznan. “The intention is to announce, as I have said, our midterm target range prior to the Poznan negotiations. And that’s the terms, the timetable, the Government’s working on,” she said on October 2.
Snip
The chief executive of the environment group WWF, Greg Bourne, said Senator Wong would “be laughed out of Poznan” if she announced at the UN talks that Australia’s 2020 target was between 5 and 15 per cent. Asked if she was avoiding making the announcement in Poland because of the international criticism, Senator Wong said: “I am not going to comment on a hypothetical.”
I would have though that AGW was ‘hypothetical’ or am I mistaken and the word should be hypocritical or even hysterical 🙂
Long live humor! Humour, too! Great post, great pics.
“I’m not sure I’m too concerned about the “fight against global warming” but I am concerned about energy independence as a country and movement away from fossil fuels that are primarily concentrated in the unstable parts of the world”
I don’t believe this is true, based on what I’ve read. The Wyoming/Colorado oil shale deposits represent more oil than we’d use from Saudi Arabia for the next 100yrs. The number 1 country that we import oil from is Canada, which I consider to be fairly stable.
Add to that ANWR, which has no where near as much to do with preservation as Denali National Partk does, and we would easily have BEEN independent by now if the efforts to drill/recover in these locations hadn’t been frozen by our own government.
JimB
Kum Dollison (13:19:25) :
Sure, we’re “wasting” a few dollars, here, and there; but, we’re funding some good research that Will, almost certainly, come in handy down the road. It’s kind of the way things are done in a Capitalist system. Kinda “messy,” but in the long run, effective.
Kinda. 🙂
Kum,
I disagree. The last statistic on research funding that I was, and apologies, I forget where, was that we spend more money on C02 research than we do on either AIDS or Cancer research.
That’s just a single example of what this political sham has accomplished.
And as for debating science with Will…it’s a lot like playing the carnival game Whack-A-Mole. Every faulty belief or “fact” that gets knocked down never gets met with a “Oh…I see. Guess I was wrong on that one. Thanks.”. As is the case with most religious zealots, they just throw the next thing on the preprinted list or the next thing brought forward by MSM and say “But you’re wrong. What about THIS thing???”
The difference between AGWers and blind squirrels is that blind squirrels really DO find a nut once in awhile.
JimB
Will Small and others: Your post included “The [Wilkins] ice shelf had been stable for most of the past century before it began retreating in the 1990s.”
Southern Ocean SST and Antarctic LST as a whole have been dropping since the 1980s, so they are not a factor. But how would the interaction between ENSO events and the Antarctic Dipole factor into this?
– Will, I am glad that you question the GC viewpoint. I would like to point out that you have a voice here, whereas most have us have tried to voice our opinion on blogs like RC and Desmog, to no avail. I personally enjoy the discourse, some of the best entertainment and edification around. I will openly admit that I may be wrong, if you will do the same. Then we can have a open discussion of our viewpoints. -Danny Bloom, I have had the chance to vent 30 years of frustration, and I thank you. It was a bit of a shotgun blast, but there it is. Regarding your “polar cities idea”, I think it is a narrow viewpoint. Think bigger and more beneficial to all mankind. For example, the space elevator, IMHO, is the answer to humanities woes. Build 3 along the equator ( for safety and redundancy). We can go nuclear and dispose of the byproducts by flinging them into the sun (A nuclear furnace anyway). The towers are self sustaining from a consumption standpoint ( after construct of course), as the down elevator powers all other energy needs of the system. Mining would eventually been done off world, and water could be accessed from asteroids. It also eliminates the need for earth launched vehicles, which consume huge amounts of energy and pollute a great deal as well. To me, the future is very bright, because, if you know your history, we haven’t been that comfortable for very long. Our Grandparents probably remember before there was toilet paper !! The space elevator is technically not far from feasibility right now. Who knows, we may create a future that would allow for polar cities to be built, not out of desperation, but for those of us who happen to love the winter. I lived off “the grid” for 3 years in North Western Ontario. It was difficult preparing for winter, but the winters themselves were spectacular. Abundance of wildlife, no mosquitos or black flies.I am sad because you seem to have such a bleak vision of mankind’s future. The monies spent (wasted IMO) on AGW and Co2, could have gone a long way to the betterment of mankind. Hydrogen is dangerous, electric vehicles’ batteries are caustic and harmful to the environment (in the extreme). Wind has transmission and storage problems ( although I heard the idea of energy storage in the form of compressed air, even though air compression technology is still rather inefficient). So you see, just because I don’t believe what Dr. Hansen is telling us, does not mean that the future and sustainability does not concern me. I am working for the betterment of all, everyday. My vision of a healthy happy world is possible. We are still in our infancy. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. -Sorry Anthony, I don’t believe I could have gone further off topic !!!
@crosspatch (10:25:48) :
Think tsunami! how big would that be if the whole ice shelf slid into the sea at once… Now that’s alarming…
WRT the cementary – save both space and CO2! Cremate the bodies and bury the CO2 instead… (Damn the cost – turn it to dry ice and refridgerate the ground – use the solar panels to power the refridgerators).
@Will Small – new post by me on atlantic-hurricane-season-sets-records wrt to your request for “what would convince you…”.
GC. I realize we’re in a circle here but if an advancing glacier means GC and a breaking ice shelf means GW, what’s what?
I noted in the earlier thread that the glaciers that are advancing are ‘short response’, which means they are known to respond quickly to climate change – less than 10 years. These are small glaciers. The Antarctic ice shelves are very large glaciers and respond very slowly to climate change – centuries to millenia.
Small, fast response glaciers tell what has happened to the climate over the last decade or so. Very large glaciers tell us what has happened to the climate over the last few centuries to millenia.
There is no contradiction or circle.
I’ll assume, at least for now, you genuinely want to know the answer and are not trolling.
The wilkins ice shelf is melting because of volcanic activity!.
The paper ‘A recent volcanic eruption beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet’ by Hugh F Corr and David G Vaughan is published in the February edition of Nature Geosciences
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080120160720.htm
Did it ever occur to anyone that we are NOT using our oil resources because we want to use up everyone else’s first? And the world knows this, and the pressure has to be enormous what with all the debt this country is in.