Seeing red over the blue hotel’s green credentials

September 17th, 2007

Last week the Metro ran a curious little article looking at the environmental standards of some hotels. Not just any hotels, mind, but those fortunate enough to be hosting political party conferences. The “research” carried out by Royal & SunAlliance, shows that the Tories choice of hotel is the least environmentally friendly, i.e. experiences the most heat loss, as revealed by thermal imaging:

 

Crikey! Look how spicy hot it looks. Definitely suffering major heat loss. Especially when you take a look at the alternatives. Here’s the Lib Dem conference centre:

See how green it is? Like, literally green? That must mean something, right? Actually, no, it doesn’t. Because believe it or not, thermal images are monochromatic (that’s black & white to comprehensive graduates out there). Colour is only put in afterwards as a way of analysing the picture. It makes it easier for the human eye to pick out certain trends. Now, it’s possible the same colour scheme was applied to both these images, and the Lib Dem centre just happened to come out all green. But I doubt it. Even if it had, thermal images can’t be compared to eachother, because only the relative infrared reflectance / emission is measured, not absolute value. This means whilst the “hottest” part of the picture is always the brightest, this can’t be compared to another image which could have been taken at a different time of day (or year), at a different ambient temperature under different weather conditions. To phrase it another way, this article isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Tell me what the real environmental waste is…

Entry Filed under: General

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