Posts by Jellied Eel 3312 posts • joined 18 Aug 2008
A common story. BT has an infrastructure team that works with developers to get the plant in place. Problem is a lot of developers don't care, so don't bother installing the infrastructure. They are generally happy to charge ground rents, service charges etc for not providing basic services/utilities.
I believe that the Russian Empire has always drawn cannon fodder from the ethnic minorities and the poorer regions.
It's been like that ever since lords were called on by the Crown to raise the levvies. Helped fill the treasury, and prevent our ancient oligarchs from getting too powerful. War. War never changes. I think it's riskier for Ukraine given they've been doing the same thing, with several rounds of drafting & conscription. Including closing it's borders to stop men & women leaving. Well, the ones that aren't well connected anyway. It's made claims to boost it's military to 5m, which will be challenging given the way it's population has declined since it's 2014 coup.
Snowden will probably be safe because he's too valuable as a trophy.
I'm going to skip the pseudo-scientific wibble, because that's what it is.
Nope, it's the reason we've wasted trillions on 'renewables', and oddly enough, now facing an energy crisis. All of that's explained in the xkcd article. But you're going to skip the debate because you don't understand the science, and can't debate. But a simple question to get you thinking..
How exactly does CO2 cause global warming? CO2 is a very simple molecule, the physics are well understood, as are it's radiative properties. Problem is quantifying all the processes, ie convection, evaporation, conduction, advection etc etc that move energy, before CO2 even gets a look-in.
There is no point "debating" global heating deniers any more than there is "debating" flat earthers or 9/11 truthers. Just not worth the effort.
That's called a false equivalence. More social science than physics, but it seems you don't even understand that. But this is also pretty normal with faith vs reason, and one of the challenges cult de-programmers face. Also curious where or why you're using the term 'global heating' rather than the more generally accepted global warming. Is that because the warming isn't working out anywhere close to as predicted?
(I won't exactly hold my breath waiting for your reply, given you didn't understand why less pumping capacity is a BadThing(tm) on a fire engine, given one of it's main purposes is to pump water.. And if you want 'deniers', you'd be better off looking at the idiot who couldn't even set himself on fire at a tennis match, despite using highly refined fossil fuels. Perhaps he should have used a battery instead?)
Please stop saying this.
I'll try..
The way you use it makes it sound like a quasi-religious interjection. It detracts from your message.
But it's the problem. Politics has corrupted science, and vice-versa. There is no sound reason to waste an extra $300k on a fire engine that isn't really fit for purpose. But it has a political benefit, ie virtue signalling that some Vancouver public servants have wasted a lot of tax payer's money. Much as polticians around the world have wasted trillions on 'renewables', EV policies etc etc. Only now does it seem like they're starting to realise the problems, even if they're trying to blame Russia for their own insane energy policies.
Then there are the NGOs and media. So we have the various 'Rebellions' demanding changes, like banning cars, fossil fuels, and even all milk and dairy products. All in the name of 'science'. Or because they're authoritarian facists who use violence to try and promote their political ideals.
And it gets bad when these policies will cost lives, either this winter when people freeze. Or in Vancouver when they have electricity supply problems and can't recharge their EV fire engines. Especially if that means no electricity to pump mains water around to hydrants either. There's a lot of issues that don't seem to have been thought through, eg engine availability and coverage. Maybe a fire station has 2 or 3 engines so it can respond to multiple fires, or large fires. With EVs, it'll be a 2n+1 problem where extra engines are 'needed' to cover for ones that are on recharge. Which means needing more space for additional bays, which means more land, which means coverage changes.. And then the range limitations become even more critical.
Plus there's plenty of other stuff ICEs do better. So suppose they need more water. Run out a diesel pump to a handy body, and keep it running off jerry cans or a fuel bowser.. Something that isn't easily replaceable with an 'EV' solution because you're also limited by batery weight and transporting those. I guess you could have emergency diesel generators to charge the batteries to power the electric pumps.. But what's the point?
It's quieter. Yey! Yet idiot motorists already don't notice honking great emergency vehicles with lights, sirens, air horns etc. So now introducing stealth versions is worth the extra $300k?
Oh lordy, one of those.
Yup. Contains science. That contradicts dogma, so you probably won't like it.
Assuming the flat earther's numbers are real - okay, so what?
Hmm.. The author, William Kininmonth, is no bedroom blogger. As a former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre, he deserves careful and respectful attention.
Or I guess you could just call him a 'flat earther' for challenging your faith. Oddly, Kininmonth knows a LOT more about climate models than you or I. Including they way they actually model 'flat earth'. Or use inputs from flat earthers, eg-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HadCRUT
Its spatial grid boxes are 5° of latitude and longitude.
Especially as most of those grid boxes don't actually contain any real instruments, producing real data. But that's climate 'science' for you. If you don't have RealData, just make shit up, which then gets a bit recursive sometimes when historical, empirical data are 'adjusted'. But such is politics. Or just the limitations of Earth observations and climate modelling. It's kind of a wicked problem, especially if you want to do it properly. Then surface details and boundary conditions matter A LOT.. And as Kininmonth points out, that's also where most of the heat flux happens via evaporation, conduction, convection, and a teeny bit of radiation.
The first gen Tesla Roadster cost about $100k. The first car probably cost a lot more than a carriage and wasn't much good. How'd that work out long term?
With most things in life, there's wiki and XKCD-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle#First_full-scale_electric_cars
https://xkcd.com/1162/
Plus folks in the UK were used to 'revolutionary' EVs trundling around our streets with our good'ol fashioned milk floats.
Buying one early model to try out isn't "virtue signalling", it's product development and relationship building. Somebody has to do it.
Sure it is. Why buy a product that costs $300k more, and does less? But that's the 'Green Revolution' for you. We abandoned the 'Age of Sail' for the Industrial Revolution and turned Dutch windmills into quaint character homes. Now, we're 'Building Back Better', because idiots don't realise the fundamentals haven't changed. Hence why our 'investment' in 'renewables' has lead to massively more expensive electricity, and less reliability.
I don't know anything about firefighting so I don't know how significant the "pumps 40% less water" stat is, but I do live in Vancouver, and confirm it'd be fairly weird for a fire truck to have to drive 30km to a fire.
Well, I'm guessing you're not an engineer. Like this story says, firefighters pumped a lot of water to cool stuff down. If you can't deliver water, it'll take longer. And because it's a glorified milk float, it'll need battery for both motive power, and pumping. And I guess for Canadians living in Vancouver's hilly bits, it'll need to haul some water up hill. And then it'll need to haul itself back to be recharged, so you'll need more 'engines' to be able to cover multiple calls. And I guess if one of those calls is to a Vancouver grid-scale battery that's bolloxed up the grid..
But again, such is politics. Take something safety-critical, and make it more expensive, and much less reliable.
What if in the future rolling blackouts prevent electric fire trucks from going to put out green tech fire?
The future is now!
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/09/07/vancouvers-new-virtue-signalling-fire-engine-useless-but-at-least-it-wont-wake-the-neighbours-up/
Well, the new e-truck will cost $300,000 more than a comparable diesel model, pump 40 per cent less water and have such a short range (30 km) because of its enormous weight that it will have to have backup diesel power in case it runs out of juice on the way to a blaze.
Wonder if Canada's also ordering electric snowploughs?
What if Google aggregates anonymized data from anonymized apps?
I think the loophole is glaring from the statement-
Osterloh said Google made "a series of binding commitments that confirm Fitbit users' health and wellness data won't be used for Google ads and this data will be separated from other Google ads data,"
But AlphaGoo will share and sell the data to it's medical divsion, healthcare companies, insurers etc etc.
I'm guessing it's more to do with 'recall' being baked into a whole pile of Federal and State legislation from a time where a 'recall' actually meant hitting the problem with a hammer. So there's probably a pile of stuff about what manufacturers are supposed to do in the event of a safety 'recall' that hasn't caught up with OTA 'fixes'. And then there's probably a whole slew of insurance and liability stuff tied to that simple word as well.
Then again, be glad they haven't gone total recall yet. So pretty much all new vehicles get fitted with a 'black box' now, and it'd be possible to remotely disable a vehicle until the fix is in.
Until they feel real pain, nothing will happen.
No need for pain, however tempting that might be.
A simple link under exec's bios to more detailed personal information would suffice. So basically everything the data rapists collect from their 'customers' is public. Browsing, email, phone activity, search queries, medical records, realtime location data etc.
Simple really. If they don't want that data public, don't collect it.
Yup. OSI (Open Space Initiative) protocols work better.
I was briefly involved with some Interplanetary Internet stuff years ago, which mainly seemed an excuse to get Ciscos in Spaaaaace. Best part was chatting with some actual NASA engineers about the protocols already in use. Oddly enough, they were already rather effective and efficient, and so I wondered why we'd want to burden them with IP.
Now we have 'Spray and Pray', and still don't seem to think that having a telecomms-style destination octet. 1.x.x.x.x(:x)= Earth, 10.x.x.. = Moon etc. But then most of the Internet's routing problems could've been improved by copying the way telecomms did numbering well over a century ago.
I downvoted your post not out of anger nor even a major disagreement with your central point, but because you apparently do not know the meaning of "sanctuary city" and yet you used it in your argument.
AFAIK, there is no strict definition, only the way it tends to get reported. With Martha's Vineyard, it was simpler because people had handy posters welcoming migrants, minorities etc. Or there's other media history where cities/states that have identified as 'sanctuaries' have gone on record opposing immigration controls.
Problem still seems to be political, ie focusing on political point-scoring rather than actually doing something constructive to solve the problem. Which I guess then gets down to border security vs better measures to integrate migrants into communities that have the infrastructure to support them. Especially when the political stunts may backfire, ie sending Venezualan migrants fleeing socialism into Republican communities, given many migrants are more likely to be small-c conservatives. It's much the same with law & order policy given crime tends to affect minority communities rather than 'liberal' ones like the Vineyard.
Oh, and thanks for the comment. I kinda know when my posts are likely to attract downvotes, and it's a shame some of the angry thumbs can't or won't say what they object to.. Which I guess is vaguely back on topic given (anti)social media companies promoting/demoting/hiding content or comments based on 'ratios' and stuff that can easily be gamed.
Yup, it's quite sad really. So the US has gone from Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty to NIMBY-ism. Ok, so there were some.. issues along the way, like the Emergency Quota and Immigration Acts along the way, but also a Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Some aspects of history may be repeating themselves there though.
But the principle still seems sound, just complicated by a bunch of politics. Sanctuary cities want migrants, at least until they show up. Border cities have a surfeit of migrants they can't easily support. Somewhere along the way, a 'superpower' should be able to come up with a solution. History kinda provides that, so set up Ellis-style processing centres, then distribute in some reasonably fair and equitable manner. Challenge seems to be conflicts between Federal & State, and maybe a law or three.
But there are vague ambitions to re-industrialise the US, a lot of jobs Americans don't seem to want to do, and a lot of empty buildings. It's the kind of problem perhaps some socially minded billionaires could solve. Buy Detroit, make it great again. Start clearing it's derelict blocks, build affordable housing, infrastructure like schools, clinics/hospitals, tech colleges and incentives to get jobs going there. Sure, it'd take time, cost money, but it's been done before, mostly works and starts rebuilding the tax base of those cities. If not Detroit, there's still a huge amount of Federal land in the US mostly sitting idle that could be used to create 'New Towns'.
If that quote is accurate, I'm not surprised they wanted it gone as quickly as possible.
It appears to be accurate, and as you say, appears to have been someone speaking without thinking. Or possibly Freudian. Regardless, it's a bit of a mess. But I think the bigger mess is the way media and politics has become ever more polarised, despite Biden's claim that he was going to heal the divide.
It is rather unpleasent, ie illegal immigrants are being used as political pawns. But both sides have been doing that, so the Federal 'night flights' shuttling migrants from Democrat cities to Republican ones, like Florida. Politicians claim those were also without warning, but I suspect they were co-ordinated within the DHS. It has exposed hypocrisy though, eg-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62921858
Three states - Texas, Arizona and Florida - have announced initiatives to move migrants to Democratic-led ones, which they have accused of being "sanctuary" jurisdictions that fail to enforce immigration laws.
Which is curiously worded given the Bbc's previously reported as US cities declared their 'sanctuary' status. The VP declares the US borders are secure, then gets a couple of buses demonstrating they're perhaps not. The Mayor of Chicago buses her migrants out into Republican controlled suburbs without notice or warning. And then there's Martha's Vineyard, where home owners have notices welcoming all, yet can't cope with only 50 people they're supposedly welcoming. Not a good look for one of the richest, least diverse and least populated parts of the US.
They do have a small point though, ie another spox said the Vineyard is full. They don't have enough housing for their workers. Plenty of empty bedrooms and land for the wealthy though, but that's a challenge with gentrification. So their response to the 'invasion' has been to call out the National Guard, and shipping their guests to a military base. Chicago's response has been equally hypocritical. One of the largest US cities, currently de-populating claims it doesn't have the support services or infrastructure to host a few hundred migrants, but a suburb apparently can.
But such is politics. The media (and left) still seems fixated on Trump, yet De Santis is probably a much greater threat. The Dems may try running Newsom against him, which would be.. entertaining. But politicians seem increasingly out of touch. Polls say people's concerns are mainly the crime and the economy. Crime especially in a lot of Democrat controlled cities, like Chicago and NY. And some of those cities seem to want to make that problem worse. Defund the police. End 'cash bail'. I've never been a fan of the US bail system, but there are good reasons to keep (allegedly) violent offenders off the streets pending trial. But politicians are right that the US (and UK) are nations of immigrants, it's just there needs to be some form of management. Add a few hundred thousand people a year, and you need to increase housing, infrastructure and services to support those migrants, which we haven't really been doing.
Because I can easily find many examples of those on social media, and not a single one is 'orange'.
There's a great example from the invasion of Martha's Vineyard and NBC-
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2022/09/16/nbc-deletes-tweet-comparing-marthas-vineyard-migrants-trash/
“Florida Gov. DeSantis sending asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard is like ‘me taking my trash out and just driving to different areas where I live and just throwing my trash there,’ a founding member of a foundation that helps refugees says,” the tweet said.
NBC swiftly tried to delete that tweet, but hey, the Internet never forgets. Unless TPTB get more powers to moderate/censor wrongthink, of course. I prefer more practical solutions, like if I don't want to be exposed to 'extremist' thoughts, I can just ignore left/right biased media. Or commit egregious micro-agressions by citing Breitbart, because I know that'll offend Grauniad readers..
And it has, ahem, Slicing Dicing Spinning Blades of Doom right where people can put things like legs and feet.
I think there are a few more potential snags, many shared with more traditional hovercraft. Like boring old physics stuff like momentum and inertia. So ya want to make a left or right turn, and it all goes a bit sideways. Or you catch a corner of your hoverbike on something, and do a passable impression of an air hockey puck.
And if you happen to be tailgating a Tesla that finally recognises a police car, fire truck or motorbike and slams on it's anchors.. You may discovery a few issues with performing an emergency stop. Or maybe it'll have a 'Turbo' button to go vertical, in which case it'd need to clear a typical semi trailer, and ideally one that isn't stuck under a bridge.
I'd like to think that will actually happen, but...Government ;-/
It sounds like it might, but as always, there's lobbying. So 'agreeing' to a cap system in exchange for vastly inflated CfD strike prices.
The whole thing needs reform, and telecomms kind of has an example, eg-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRIC
Which focuses on cost. The 'renewables' lobby tends to gloss over that part, except when they're promoting themselves as the 'cheapest'. Which they might be, if you ignore interconnection, distribution, stand-by costs etc. Which has been the problem. If it's so cheap, why has electricity got so expensive?
But using some form of cost+ methodolgy generally works. Government says 'gimme 50GW' because Net Zero. Potential bidders can quote based on a standardised cost model. There are still.. issues when power and energy get confused, ie 50GW isn't anything close to 50GWh, but CfDs could contract based on GWh, if that's desireable. Supplier is then obligated to deliver 50GWh at the contracted price. Sure, that would mean they'd carry the cost of intermittency, but that's perhaps better than loading it onto consumers who have no real choice but to pay up. There's also no real incentive in the energy market to control or reduce costs, in fact just the opposite when those costs can be passed through and generate huge profits for the industry. Then again, the government could do something sensible, and re-nationalise the National Grid and ESO to remove those perverse incentives.
Their target strike price of $48/MWh is AFAIK higher than what the North Sea is already operating at.
That's a regulatory/market question. So the UK rigged it's market so that electricity price was based on the most expensive producer, essentially to subsidise wind power. Recently that's kinda backfired, ie gas price rises set the price for electricity now.
That's obviously lead to a massive windfall for non-gas producers like 'renewables', because their costs are unaffected by the price of gas. This is why customers on '100% renewable' contracts are currently enjoying much cheaper electricity now. No, wait, who am I kidding.. But the media, ie the clueless Bbc gloss over this when demanding windfall taxes on evil fossil fuels. Luckily it seems Truss may be slightly less clueless, and may be including the estimated £40bn or so in wind windfalls in her plans. But a lot of it gets wrapped up in this mess-
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-difference/contract-for-difference
Successful developers of renewable projects enter into a private law contract with the Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC), a government-owned company. Developers are paid a flat (indexed) rate for the electricity they produce over a 15-year period; the difference between the ‘strike price’ (a price for electricity reflecting the cost of investing in a particular low carbon technology) and the ‘reference price’ (a measure of the average market price for electricity in the GB market).
PFI at it's finest. But you can see the current subsidy rate for offshore CfD's here-
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/cfd-register/
which shows a broad spread of prices. But don't be fooled by some of the 'low' contracts, like Dogger Bank. Scammers have somethink like 3yrs before they have to enter into the CfD scheme, so although they should be charging say, £51/MWh, they can currently sell at market price and make bank. And because contracts are indexed, existing producers also self-inflate energy prices. So inflation's running at 10% due to price of gas/energy, CfD strike prices increases by 10%+ which is a genius move.
But the 'renewables' lobby is desperate to keep this gravy train rolling, and is being helped along by useful idiots like John Gummer. One current 'solution' is to rethink the CfD thing, and set a 'price cap', so around £200/MWh has been floated. If you've contracted at £51/MWh currently, this is obviously a nice lil windfall. But the 'renewables' lobby keeps telling us their product is getting ever cheaper. Market prices and mechanisms don't reflect this, but they could. So we could use benchmarking rather than crudely indexed CfDs.
Bigger problem is it still does nothing to solve the fundamental problems of 'renewables', ie intermittency, which is why we're in this mess in the first place. 'Renewables' aren't reliable, so they need back-up power, which has been gas. Oops.
I see this site has a good number of climate change deniers. Sad... really sad.
Indeed. But it's an IT site, so theoretically inhabited by folks with technical training & experience rather than PPEs. The kinds of people that can look at stuff produced by marketing or sales and think "sure, we can do that, if we can just break physics a bit".
So the kinds of people that used to be called "sceptics", until the marketing types (check who is/was behind DeSmog Blog) realised scientists were supposed to be sceptical. So we got rebranded as "deniers" instead, because it's easy to connect that to the N-thing. But they've always been better at corrupting language than understanding science. So they've declared a 'Climate Emergency'. Curious phrase, unsupported by science, but creates a sense of urgency. Act Now! Give the UN $100bn a year or the planet gets it! They even took a Swedish school drop-out and paraded her as their new messiah.
Then again-
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/08/18/1200-scientists-and-professionals-declare-there-is-no-climate-emergency/
There is no climate emergency, say the authors, who are drawn from across the world and led by the Norwegian physics Nobel Prize laureate Professor Ivar Giaever. Climate science is said to have degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science.
What does a Nobel Prize winning physicist know about 'the science'? Hasn't he listened to Al Gore? Can't he hear the trees screaming? Why hasn't he joined that other Nobel Prize winner, Obama in running for the hills to escape the rising sea levels?
Alternatively, the real deniers could be those who think the climate has never changed in the past. The mythical 'equilibrium' we've peturbed really exists, and we'll be doomed by the kinds of CO2 levels that spawned pretty much all life in the past. Well, ok, they were a whole lot higher then, but it's kinda weird the way ocean critters evolved shells and skeletons in 'acid' oceans.. isn't it? In the old days, scientists could have explained all that using chalk boards. Now communicating science relies on petrochemical products that the loony Greens and neo-Luddites are trying to ban.
While they are spreading their version of bovine excrement the USA as a whole will find it hard to move forward with greening their economy.
Green is the colour of decay. But why not cut out the middle man, and get Detroit making sail powered cars! Skip all those production, distribution & storage costs, just sail on down the road.
Most of the radiation is confined in the topmost layer of soil, so removing that and replacing it would probably make it quite habitable.
One of the neat things I saw when I visited was experiments with grasses. Simple sounding idea, let fast growing grasses absorb contaminants, mow, collect the clippings, burn them and store the ash. There's been a few experiments into biological remediation like that.
Solar activity is a constant, and always has been. The IPCC sayeth so, and devotes around 1 page to this subject. See also-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_(climate)#Water_isotopes_and_temperature_reconstruction
...where the moisture evaporated and the place where the final precipitation occurred; since ocean temperatures are relatively stable the δ value mostly reflects the temperature where precipitation occurs. Taking into account that the precipitation forms above the inversion layer, we are left with a linear relation
Which is typical for climate 'science', especially when it then goes on to wibble about calibration. But sure, there's a linear relation, if you exclude any factors that may affect O-18 to O-16 ratios, ie assuming they are, and always have been a constant in our environment. Which may be true, ie assumption that the stable isotopes were formed during stellar evolution and our planet's formation.
We pretty much handed it to them! Most western nations have busied themselves with destroying their own industries through various combinations of stupid regulations, government corruption, union corruption, general stupidity and outright malice from 'intellectuals'.
Yup. We did the same with post-WW2 Japan. Lots of technology transfer involved to modernise and industrialise Japan. They learned, we forgot, hello Sony!
Couple of stand-out moments for me were reading an article about an optics course at MIT or Caltech. No US students enrolled, almost entirely Asian. With potentially +1 Brit, but I got headhunted instead. The other has been the fate of this place-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine
Production expanded greatly in the 1960s, to supply demand for europium used in color television screens. Between 1965 and 1995, the mine supplied most of the worldwide rare-earth metals consumption.
So technology moved on, making it's phosphors less saleable, but mostly regulated into oblivion. Then our glorious leaders noticed 'rare' earths are kinda important to our technology ambitions, and sanctioning China had a bit of blowback. But such is politics, and loony activists objecting to mining to produce their EVs and iPhones. Or conveniently overlooking that that stuff is simply mined elsewhere. But there's a huge amount of useful 'rare' earths that have been left laying around in spoil heaps, because they weren't useful at the time minerals were extracted. So stuff like Thorium, which could be providing low cost, ultra low carbon energy so that EVs wouldn't be costing more to fill up than ICEs.
I don't recall any universities or atmospheric research centre sating that the world will get slightly warmer and it will be a net benefit. Funny, that.
Actually... If you read the IPCC's Annual Reports beyond their carefully crafted exec summaries (SPM), they say exactly that. WG1 tends to get the most attention because that's 'teh science', which is where most of the doom-ongers lurk. Then the Green lobby spin that as hard as they can, and clueless fskwits like the Bbc dutifully 'report the facts'., Because none of their own climate experts have any science or engineering training, so can't think through what they're being told.
So we get the dire predictions based on 'teh science', which are basically a lot of sim-science that diverges rapidly from reality. So the ice caps have long ago melted, kids don't know what snow is and Thermageddon is already here.
Or not.
But there's also-
Working Group II: Assesses vulnerability of socioeconomic and natural systems to climate change, consequences, and adaptation options.
Working Group III: Assesses options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigating climate change.
Which is where the good news tends to get buried. Which is also based on the science. So plants are made from CO2, H2O, sunlight and some soil nutrients. Increased CO2 is good for the biosphere, which is why it's pumped into real greenhouses to increase yields. Not heat them. There has been a noticeable, measurable 'greening of the Earth', which is a good thing for humanity. Same with any changes to rainfall. There will be winners, and losers. One loser is currently California's rice paddies, but that's due to exceptionally poor water management rather than 'clmate change'. Or you could just look at other potential wins. If the UK's on average 2C warmer, that's potentially 2C less off our heating bills. Ok, some of that might be offset by summer temps, but it's cold that kills, not heat.
It is interesting that China:
Is big. It's also one of the reasons why the Global Warming scam got rolling in the first place. China's been steadily transitioning from cheap labor making cuddly toys & stocking fillers to manufacturing most of our highest tech stuff. Obviously that's a competitive threat to the West, so slowing down it's economy by energy policy was seen as a GoodThing(tm).
But it hasn't exactly worked out that way, and nor has it with India and other developing nations. So we're busily virtue signalling and crippling our own economies instead. Net Zero will make zero difference to 'global' or even local weather conditions. Well, maybe EVs will increase pm2.5 pollution, but Green policies aren't meant to make sense.
So China's been busily building cheap, reliable power to try and keep up with it's demand. It's really just a simple numbers game. Figure on the usual bell curve for population distribution, and China will produce more smart people. It's been investing in it's education and high tech industries, and it's been converting from simply manufacturing Western stuff to designing it's own products. Initially, some of those designs were.. quirky, but it's quickly learning how to manufacture products to meet Western tastes.. as well as price points.
At some point Chernobyl will become habitable.
It's probably habitable now, especially if some basic precautions are taken. The IAEA's recent inspection report visited the area and has some interesting data regarding potential exposure levels for the troops that were digging trenches there.
Then again, the Zone also has a lot of scientific value given we generally try to avoid large radiation leaks. So probably worth keeping it as an SSSI.
If the goals are so hard to reach, abandon them.
The part the global warming tends to gloss over is the important part of the Paris Agreement. One being it's basically meaningless, with lots of wriggle room to make endeavors to keep the tides from coming in, temperatures below 2C etc.
The most important part is the UN's demand for $100bn a year in climate funding. Obviously that's a target worth achieving, especially for all the NGOs that already have their snouts buried deep in the Green trough. It's perhaps all this was unsuprising given a) the UN loves wasting money and b) it developed off the back of one Maurice Strong, who famously took large personal cheques whilst being part of the UN's oil for food programme. He avoided prosecution and is now dead, but there are plenty more like him who have their eyes on that prize.
Also strange the way that CO2 levels didn't drop in line with the Covid-induced industrial and economic shutdown. It's almost like there's something.. natural that dominates the carbon cycle.
Jellied eel - this has nothing to do with service/repair and disabling the machine until a bill is paid.
And yet the article says..
The FTC complaint alleged that Deere's repair business is three to six times more profitable than its agricultural machinery sales business because farmers and ranchers have to pay thousands of dollars up front for access to the Customer Service Advisor, which provides repair information but still does not enable them to perform common repairs on their own.
So you pay thousands for CAN bus access, and thousands more for 'authorised' service/repairs, and then more thousands for the GPS features..
They aren't charging fees for the software in the engine ECU or the ECUs controlling the hydraulics and the basic functions of the machine.
Computer says 'No', and work stops until the authorised Deere service rep resets the status code and invoice is paid. Alternatively, farmer used to be able to apply hammer until machine started working, and planting/harvesting could continue. Doctrine of first sale does not apply.
Alternatively, it could be a job for an API. So the 'Precision Farming' stuff could mostly be done with a laptop or smart phone. Self-driving and sensor integration could be a bit riskier, or trickier. Or not if all that's sitting on a CAN bus. If it is, then it'd create a market for the 'Precision Farming' bits, and competition in both features and price. Which is surely a GoodThing(tm). Unless you're John Deere(tm) and looking forward to growing that 10%, very high margin business.
We certainly don't talk about the technology demonstrator used in Ukraine/Russia. Well, Deere's PR people could, and did tell the world about that capability.
So come planting/harvesting season, hostile state actor/skiddie decides to brick all Deere gear in the US, EU, or wherever. Oh Deere. Or I'm guessing Deere keeps all this in the 'cloud', so it may just fall over whenever AWS or Azure has another bad day.
Both made claims and so both are on the hook for it. If either had NOT made that claim, the one or both of them would probably not be on the hook.
Wouldn't they be on different hooks though? So victim's next of kin sue Pret for contaminated product, Pret sues their supplier. Would the victim be able to pursue claims against both? Then thinking contracts could attempt to indemnify suppliers, ie code provided as-is/as-seen, or caveated with standard food lables that product may contain traces of nuts.
But something that used to be a pet hate of mine, ie sales insisting bids must be 'fully compliant', even though RFPs wanted us to take liability for things we had no control over. Also for AI, kinda curious how far that may extend, eg would it include 'AI' routines used in video games?
And Facebook/Meta, UGH! Should be blacklisted across the globe as a pile of waste attracting flies of all extremes.
I think it just needs to be balanced. But that's a wicked problem. So there's content that's illegal, ie child pornography or the nutjob in Memphis who decided to livestream a murder spree. In theory, that should be 'easy', ie we have laws defining that content. If those laws aren't sufficient, we have legislators who can update, amend or append stuff to a killfile list. Then it's how to action that legislation, so delete on report, or try and automate that process.
Where it gets a whole lot more complicated and already falls far outside s.230 protections are when it's opinions. It may get problematic when ToS already 'editorialise', ie gun channels and YT's terms of service. If those are clear, it's up to the users whether to use those services or not. But this is also where things start to get very murky, and highly politicised. So in the UK, we have various 'Rebellions' going around breaking various laws, up through anti-terrorism legislation by attacking critcal national infrastructure, or national economic and security assets. Some elements of the media seem to promote these activities.
Or, we have politicians making statements that anyone who doesn't think like them are extremists. Extremists are generally considered bad, and there's legislation that counters extremism. Or 'social' media companies who're happy to ban anyone who holds differing opinions. When they do so, they would seem to be clearly violating s.230 protections by taking an editorial stance.
There's also the boring human aspect. I'm unlikely to be radicalised or influenced by FaceMelta or Twitter because I don't use them. Both platforms have options to follow or ignore content they don't like, so why don't people exercise that choice and just ignore stuff they find objectionable? But that's something 'social' media companies could improve on. So for example YT is an utter PITA because it's 'recommendations' algorithms suck donkey balls. It's something that I'm sure the brains at Alpha could easily improve, if they just gave users some control over the categories of content they want to see, and stuff they never want to see again.
President Biden, like his predecessor and many Republicans, has voiced concern about Section 230. During his 2020 campaign, Biden told The New York Times in an interview, "...Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms." He argued the law should be undone because social media platforms knowingly disseminate falsehoods and misinformation.
I think Biden's absolutely right. More Democrats need to crack down on fake news. See Robert Telles for more information. Or see Zuck's interview with Joe Rogan where he talked about the way the FBI briefed FaceMelta on Russian misinformation involving Biden's own family. Or read the Whitehouse press secretary's comments about misinformation regarding stolen elections-
https://twitter.com/K_JeanPierre/status/810294911815847936
Stolen emails, stolen drone, stolen election .....welcome to the world of #unpresidented Trump
Or KJP again-
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-orders-biden-admin-turn-over-fauci-jean-pierre-misinformation-emails-sent-social-media-giants
A federal judge in Louisiana ruled Tuesday that the Biden administration has 21 days to turn over all relevant emails sent by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Dr. Anthony Fauci to social media platforms regarding alleged misinformation and the censorship of social media content.
But such is politics.
I think there is a valid point, ie at the moment, fake news and misinformation is decided in a fairly random way, often as opinion rather than any real 'fact checking'. And when misinformation is abused, it can have serious consequences, from doctors and scientists being 'deplatformed' and losing their jobs, right the way through to journalists being murdered. So 'social' media companies should be held more accountable when they promote fake 'fake news', as should the groups or individuals who manipulate the media to promote their version of the 'truth'.
You dont even need to put it into R&D. Just put it into renewables and there will be so much peak oversupply the R&D will pay for itself.
Peak isn't really the problem. There's been a neat example of this in California recently with their 'heat dome'. So no wind, so their windmills contribute zero. Lots of sun, so solar kinda works. But peak demand doesn't correlate with the weather, so warnings of impending blackouts. But there was some noticeable demand reduction during evening peak demand hours, probably due to people switching from grid feed to battery. Problem of course is the cost of installing any decent sized solar PV+battery system, and availability, ie if you're an apartment dweller, you don't have a roof to put panels on.
Not sure why you're frothing about net zero. It'll cause some issues for sure, but not doing it is almost certainly a worse outcome.
What is ECS? And assuming the UK does waste trillions on occasional generators instead of building nuclear plants, what would success look like? So assuming the UK hits it's decarbonisation target, what would be the effect on global temperatures?
...it's one thing to see tremendous ignorance on Facebook but this is a community of (supposedly) educated, tech-savvy people.
Indeed. But hey, I got an ad hom! But it's often also a case of classic projection. You are an educated, tech-savvy person, therefore your opinion must be correct. Even if you can't state what might be incorrect about my opinions, so resort to the good'ol ad hom attacks.
You may rightly object to my characterisation of scum sucking subsidy seekers in the 'renewables' industry, but that doesn't change the facts. They're generating collossal profits for no reason other than a fundamentally broken energy market, which is translating directly to rising inflation and economic collapse. Not to mention increasing energy poverty, and in a few weeks, will start adding to excess mortality as people freeze.
Errr, what? Western/EU/NATO "expansion" is not only voluntary, but countries *apply* to join, they aren't forced at gunpoint.
Hey, let's ask Yugoslavia about that! No, wait..
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-05/scholz-macron-seek-to-reassert-eu-role-in-serbia-kosovo-dispute
The German and French leaders deputized their respective chief foreign-policy advisers, Jens Ploetner and Emmanuel Bonne, to join the EU’s envoy on the matter, Miroslav Lajcak, in the mediation efforts.
The Balkan adversaries must show “maximum decisiveness” and a readiness to make difficult decisions, the letter said.
Serbia must recognise Kosovo, or else. Meanwhile, don't forget how the West/NATO/EU brought peace, prosperity and democracy to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan etc etc. And of course it brought cookies to 2014 Ukraine. Somewhat ironic that the Bbc gets much of it's 'news' about Ukraine from Nuland's Institute for the Promotion of War.
But such is politics. It was the EU/UK's choice to tilt at windmills. It was that choice that lead to the dependency on gas. It was the EU/UK's choice to conduct economic warfare against Russia, and ignore the UN's principles and rights to self-determination. It's the EU/UK's choice to sacrifice Ukrainians to win their war against Russia, instead of seeking a peace deal.
On the plus side, at least it looks like we're going to ignore the ecofreaks and lift the ban on fraccing, and encourage more UK oil & gas production, which long-term will have more effect on reducing Russia's energy dominance.. But that's a long overdue decision. And it'll mean if we absolutely have to, we'lll have more CH4 to convert into H2, without preserving the UK environment under glass & steel.
Hey, look on the bright side. Given the yields from this experiment, by the time we've covered all the deserts with solar panels, we probably could alter the Earth's albedo. It's one of those classic science vs engineering things. We're rather short on energy at the moment, so let's find new and exciting ways to waste it! I still think that if we want to save the planet, we should be capturing carbon, turning that into diamonds and burning those as fuel. Science is sound, economics.. much less so.
Or are you going to defend Putins expansionism and war-mongering now?
Nope, no more than I assume you're defending Western/EU/NATO expansionism. I'm simply pointing out that the EU's industrial, economic and political contraction is a direct result of a long series of insane policies. The push for H2 is just another example of this. Take a cheap, abundant resource and try to replace it with something more expensive and inferior.
That's a very strange way to spell "Vladimir Putin".
I'm.. oretty sure he wasn't the person who decided to ban Nord Stream 2. Or ban Russian oil & gas. Or even ban Keystone Xl. As for renewables scumbags, see-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/09/07/windfall-profits-for-generators-running-at-43-billion-a-year/
At a price of £382/MWh, compared to a historic price level of around £50/MWh, these generators are raking in an incredible £43 billion. It is true that some generators may have Power Purchase Agreements in place at less than current prices – but this simply means that the purchaser is making the windfall instead. Either way electricity consumers are paying the cost of this on their bills.
That's.. quite the windfall. S'funny the Bbc doesn't mention this issue. Also-
Based on my earlier calculations, the current Carbon Price of £92.65/tonne is adding £35/MWh to the cost of gas generation, and hence onto the wholesale electricity price. This translates to nearly £5 billion of windfall profit for non-gas generators.
ISTR even though nuclear power is zero carbon, they may still have to pay a carbon tax. But it explains why the 'renewables' scumbags can afford to do so much lobbying.
However the infrastructure to support this tech would also be a problem.
That's.. something of an understatement. The paper talks about how they managed to produce a few ml of H2. So it needs just a bit of scaling up. So pick a desert, cover it in solar panels. That'll need infrastructure to get panels, parts and materials in place. It'll need <something> to keep panels clean. It'll need consumables, like the sponges, acid and water. It'll need infrastructure to store, compress and maybe liquify the H2. It'll need a method to transport that H2 to market. It'll need facilities for staff.
So good'ol CH4 is generally sold by the million or billion cubic feet. How much would it cost to produce say, 100mbcf, and get that to say, Germany? How would that compare to say, CH4 produced by the UK, if our idiots in charge actually do something to allow more gas production? Which if we absolutely had to, could be cracked to turn CH4 into twice as much H2.. And don't forget the energy density of H2 is lower than CH4, so on a like-for-like energy replacement, we'd need a lot more H2.
And the Greens of course ignore all the other uses for CH4, like producing ammonia, which is an important chemical needed in huge quantities for fertiliser. Especially as those ecofreaks also want to force veganism, which reduces supply of organic fertiliser. And by banning 'chemical' fertilisers, they reduce crop yields and quality.. Which is kind of a problem given to replace meat with veg, you need a lot more quality farmland, and a way to replace all the nutrients you're removing.
On the plus side, Green's ideas of 'organic' vegan farming will end up creating more deserts.
Increased R&D into hydrogen from electricity is a great way to hedge bets.
Err.. have you looked at your electricity bill lately? We're not exactly flush with cheap electricity any more, thanks to our 'renewables' scumbags. Plus thanks to our political scumbags, we're heading for 'Net Zero', which means banning domestic gas, and converting everyone from ICEs to EVs.
Soo.. where's the market for very expensive H2? Forcing our kleptocrats and green idiots to switch from flying private jets to flying in Zeppelins again?
From a quick read through of the advertorial..
However, the melamine sponge gradually degrades in the H2SO4 solution after a week
So there'll be a bit of a consumables cost. Although they did also try with a platinum sponge, because platinum is so affordable. I guess this will permit catalytic convertor thieves to diversify, once those have solved the H2SO4 handling challenge.
But hey, it doesn't require water! Well, it kinda does given how sulphuric acid is produced. And that also kinda needs fossil fuels, which ecofreaks are trying to ban. And sulphuric acid is a popular drying agent that just loves water, but obviously that dilutes it, so it'll need a process to re-process the water, and then be electrolysed to produce a few mols of H2.
So seems like a bunch of expensive hoops to jump through to get to a point where you could electrolyse H2O. Which we're not exactly short of. But like most of these 'green' scams, it's all fine, until you look at costs, efficiency, practicality etc.
That's due diligence.
So is-
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2022/07/14/twitter-vs-musk-the-complaint/
8. Musk’s strategy is also a model of bad faith. While pretending to exercise the narrow right he has under the merger agreement to information for “consummation of the transaction,” Musk has been working furiously—albeit fruitlessly—to try to show that the company he promised to buy and not disparage has made material misrepresentations about its business to regulators and investors.
When is an mDAU not an mDAU? Find out in a few weeks...
UK has cut off European Gas supplies... That should smooth things out a bit in Europe...
Citation needed. UK gas companies have been profitting massively because the UK has LNG terminals, and most of the EU.. doesn't. So lots of money to be made landing gas here, and piping it across to the EU. Downside is we still don't have much in the way of gas storage, despite the usual demands for bribes to re-open Rough etc.
Pandering to the eco-loons, rather than taking a more scientific approach, turns out to be a huge mistake?
Certainly not the Bbc. They're still micturating in the wind. They're also still blaming Russian economic warfare, rather than admitting it was a misguided attempt by the EU, UK, US to indulge in economic warfare against Russia. Or as Credit Suisse's Zoltan Poznar put it-
"Minsky moments are triggered by excessive financial leverage, and in the context of supply chains, leverage means excessive operating leverage: in Germany, $2 trillion of value added depends on $20 billion of gas from Russia… …that’s 100-times leverage – much more than Lehman’s."
That was one way to committ economic suicide. And I can't really see a way out for Germany. Cold showers and switching off LED lights is not really going to have much impact vs Germany's total consumer and industrial demand, not just for electricity, but also raw petrochemicals. The 'nuclear' option takes time, ie building nuclear, or political will, ie authorising NordStream 2 and hoping Russia feels generous.
There are some small signs of sanity, eg the FT's reported more on potential EU energy caps with a suggestion that non-gas generation be capped at €200/MWh. This would cut the massive profits 'renewables' are generating, and still leave a healthy profit margin, even at UK CfD prices. Kinda makes sense, given the real problem is lack of gas, so coal, nuclear & renewables are profiteering. Obviously the loony Greens won't like the idea of curtailing subsidies.
Bigger challenge will be structural reforms to the energy markets so they're regulated on a cost+ basis. But there isn't much time left before the first frosts arrive.
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