Factoid

I love facts; Little ones, large ones. The more obscure the better. Profundity is also great too. I came across a fact, via Twitter. Twitter is a source of wonderful facts, every now and again. This fact was a jaw dropper. For what reason? Because it marks the beginning of the end of a British tradition. What, for Many years, powered the empire and its military Jewel, the Royal Navy. Both consigned to  the past in importance and influence.

It flows from this graph.


A relatively harmless looking graph. It shows where from the United Kingdom took its energy source to power its daily life of; lights, televisions, factories and heating. It drills the information down to hourly. As you can see we are 'gas' hungry with nuclear and wind following. However, why this graph is a profound graph and marks the beginning of a new era is in the time from midnight to 05:00 in the morning.

This marks the first 5 hours in British history since 1882, when the first steam powered power station was opened, that we have not burned any coal to use as power. Think about that for a moment. For every hour from that point we have always, in every single hour of every single day for 132 years burned some amount of the black rock to provide our energy. Until that is midnight of the 10/05/2016. When for the first we became coal free.


For someone who had a grandfather who spent 27 years of his life digging coal from underground and for those effects paid for it with his health in later years and ultimately his life in 2000. The area I live in is coal mining country. I'm sure 30 or 40 years ago these miners never thought they'd be a day when no coal was burnt in Britain.

Comments

Rowena said…
How very special (and a little sad)

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