Talk:2992: UK Coal

nuclear power is better in all aspects anyway 172.70.90.105 19:40, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Not true - the rabbits can't get into the radiation suits.172.70.85.62 14:11, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Here before the explanation :) 172.71.154.9 20:12, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I made an initial explanation, but it needs a lot of work still; hopefully someone with more experience editing on this wiki can improve it (this is my first explanation) MathEnthusiast (talk) 20:27, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

the sole rabbit-run coal plant was shut down in the 1990s.

Just checking, but this isn't referencing some particularly egregious, badly managed coal power plant in the U.K., is it? Fephisto (talk) 20:43, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think so; I believe it’s simply that Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant is the last UK coal plant to be shut down.

The 1990 comment in particular. 172.68.36.171 15:07, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Randal uses SI units in the formula, as every person with the tiniest bit of tech/science education would, but then gives the result in inches (3.15) instead of centimeters (8.0). Americans are weird. 162.158.110.162 20:56, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

^^ This! 172.70.90.109 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

One should not forget that the 3 inches are very unevenly distributed. Some areas on top of coal mines have sunken in much further creating new flooding risks that require continued future interventions. --172.64.236.34 21:08, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, I used to line in the north of England and road signs would say, "Road liable to subsidence." I also wonder about the year 1853. Mining was going on long before that. The industrial revolution started in the mid-eighteenth century.--141.101.98.22 07:46, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I understand that Watership Down is sometimes categorized as "children's literature", but it always catches me off guard. The Wikipedia page for it calls it an "adventure novel" and it's in the adult fiction section at my library. I'm just wondering if perhaps the explanation here should be a little less specific in its categorization of the book.Dextrous Fred (talk) 21:35, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

From the perspective of someone who lived through the 1980s Miner's Strike (not directly affected, my father worked at a steel-works, not at a pit like my friends' fathers) and then the decline of the steel manufacturing industry (which did affect my father, obviously), I have rather naturally kept a general eye on the extraction and use of coal. There still are working coal-mines (though there isn't going to be that new one, in Cumbria), and there are still uses for UK coal (enough to import to add to tht which we dig out). It's really a bit early to say that the layer of total coal dug out won't deepen slightly (very, very slightly) in the future. And coal that is dug is only loosely associated with coal which is turned into electricity, so the last coal-generator stopping seems like an oddly off-topic detail for Randall to leap into the amortised accumulation of extracted volume. 172.68.205.165 22:01, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Full conversion to US Customary Units (AKA US Bullshit Units):

(25e9 Tonnes / (1.3 kg/L * 2.4e5 km^2)) * (1000 kg / 1 Tonne) * (1 km^2 / (1000 m)^2 ) * (1 m^3 / 1000 L) * (39.37 in / 1 m ) ~= 3"

--JayTeeEll (talk) 22:57, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

He has not added the amount of "flotation" that results from the removal of all that material from the islands. Have the islands risen more than 3 inches in the crust, due to the removal? SDSpivey (talk) 23:37, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Scotland's still going up (after the last Ice-Age melt) and the south of Britain is still going down, IIRC. Which'll confuse matters. But I don't see how the component contributions to raising level (due to the digging out) could outpace the removal (due to that digging), by any significant amount. Rebound takes a while, and the effects should roughly equal out (so long as we haven't been digging too deep). 172.68.205.151 23:41, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

He doesn't mention anything about the surface height at all, though. He says that an average 3" has been dug up and burnt, but not that the country is 3" lower as a result.172.70.86.204 13:45, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Between the diagram and the text (including title-text), it looks as if he is indeed lowering the surface' from what it might have been without the extraction. 172.70.86.35 16:49, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I have a nagging feeling that although rabbit-run coal plants aren't (known to be) a thing, there must be Victorian children's books (e.g. Beatrix Potter) in which bunnies use coal scuttles or coal fires. "When Horace Hedgehog arrived, it was tea-time, so Mr Hoppy put some more coal on the fire..." BunsenH (talk) 00:36, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Funnily enough, Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter was published in 1901, the same year as Queen Victoria’s passing, which marked the end of the Victorian Era. 42.book.addict (talk) 15:39, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

UK DESNZ refers to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which is a ministerial department of the UK government. So basically that text is citing the source for the data.172.70.162.185 03:33, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

To help balance this out, should someone import coal into the formerly coal producing areas to fill in the now empty veins, or would that be selling coal to Newcastle? RegularSizedGuy (talk) 05:35, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

From the miner's strike onwards, a lot of coal was imported (particularly from (Poland) to run the coal-fired power stations since it was much cheaper, so wasn't dug out the ground in the UK. 172.70.90.105 07:51, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The formula doesn't take into account that the UK has ...changed land area over that period. Land area of the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Ireland) was 315000 km² until 1922. This changes the reading in SI units from 8 cm to 7 cm, but the rounded value in inches is unchanged, 3 in. Which explains why you call those units of his glorious majesty Imperial, I guess. --172.71.172.180 08:34, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I checked the source and it doesn't say wether production data for 1853-1922 is for the CURRENT territory of UK or includes production in the territory now belonging to Eire. Maybe we should inquire. --162.158.111.89 11:03, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't like the punctuation spatter in "The UK shut down their last coal power plant today, which means that over the course of the industrial revolution, they dug up and burned an average of 3 inches of their country." And the place I'd put a new comma might confuse others' sensibilities. Perhaps "..., which means that (over the ... revolution) they dug ...". Or just get rid of the one after revolution and accept a rather long run-on clause. Not that it's changable here, being Transcript of what's there but it's strangely off in grammatical meter and span from how I would try to say/write the same words. 172.70.85.101 10:06, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I feel like I missed the joke somewhere with this: "The volume of earth described, 0.1 nm × 240,000 km2, is equal to 24 m3. This is a humorous play on depictions of anthropomorphic rabbits in children's literature." Are these two separate statements that happened to be placed in a misleading way, or is something funny about 24 cubic meters having to do with anthropomorphic rabbits? 162.158.111.237 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)