Posts by JasGarnier

Parliament misled over Climategate report, says MP

PhD?

Actually BSc was his limit. While that doesn't mean he isn't qualified to criticise - certainly he is more qualified than the other MP's on the panel - but it's important to get things like this right.

Trident, nuke energy looking poorly under LibCons

No we don't

Nobody does. They didn't work. Bill Gates is supporting a new one though. That may work in 20 years times. Probably won't.

Who to blame?

Not the Tories who cancelled nuclear power in the first place and not Labour who sat on the issue for 13 years? Yeah let's blame the guy who points out the reality that they were cancelled in the first place because they were ruinously expensive and take far too long to build, and we still don't have a clue what to do with the waste. Well ok you might burn them in Candus but i only see these crappy pwr's on the planning horizon.

Coal to gas, Candu reactors (China just built 2 in record time for 3 billion dollarsthe pair) or looking for new gas fields are our realistic options.

The power of poop

I can see all this money spent on nuclear greenwashing has worked well on many of you guys. Yes we are in trouble energy-wise but engineers have been saying that to politicians since the 70's. Nobody wanted to listen. Nuclear power was cancelled on cost grounds when Britain was in a financially better state yet now we're skint we're just going to find billions out of nowhere? Of course we also need to decommission (at huge expense) all those old reactors and replace Trident too? Talk about getting real - when will we start?

Global warming may be normal at this point in glacial cycle

Actually 2....

You meant to say Julian Simon!

China's doomed attempt to hold the world to ransom

False premise?

Likely all China is doing is exchanging their toxic dollars for useful stuff before the dollar implodes - which will happen unless the US gets it's budget sorted and they show no willingness to do that so far, despite Chinas warnings to them. No conspiracy to control metals needs to be invented. It's just sensible self-preservation from the worlds biggest dollar holder. If only our own economic leaders were as smart - or at least less stupid.

Doing the maths on Copenhagen

debt?

Whenever i see the "think of our children" argument i'm left wondering why nobody cares that out children are going to pay off all this massive debt, plus any more that might have been added on thanks to any more 1% doctrines from false panics. I mean how much was wasted on the BSE non-event, bird flu, foot and mouth, millenium bug nonsense. Do you guys never learn?

Facts are, the media loves a bogeyman panic and the scientists revere funding more than the truth. Take the BSE scare as one example from many; scientists said it couldn't possibly pass to humans, then when it couldn't be avoided that it obviously did, the scientists predicted a widespread CJD epidemic. "Science" was utterly wrong twice! so don't tell me they can't be wrong. In fact it happens all the time in our fear-driven society.

Yet we all know exactly how to decarbonize - all that's needed is a cheaper alternative. Easy! well no it isn't easy and that's why people are looking into the science to see if it's really as bad as the press hypes up and why economists like Lomberg are pointing out that even if the IPCC are right, the economics say that mitigation is the most stupid way to go about things.

As was made quite clear even in this article we've had very high carbon taxes in Europe for a long time now. Did it reduce CO2 emissions? No. It did stimulate the development of small diesels which we can now use to get 50, 60 or 70 mpg. Clearly that allowed us to put more cars on the road. Hmmm. maybe this problem needs a bit more thought.

Nuclear power? That was actually rejected on cost grounds too. Thatcher was very keen on nuclear power but nobody wanted to buy it unless the taxpayer funded all the expensive stuff, like waste cleanup, insurance and decommissioning. New designs I hear you say? Sure and the band played "believe it if you like". The nuclear power industry are famous for painting an overly rosy picture and nothings changed there.

Geothermal heating. Now there's a great thing. Why not subsidize that instead of propping up the city of London with never-ending piles of cash? Negawatts is what we really need. Our children will like that too.

Gulf stream myth

That nonsense was debunked long ago. Carl Wunsch says that a gulf stream reversal would only happen if the planet stopped spinning. Richard Seager is even more scathing here:

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/

Yes you have to sift through a lot of nonsense from over-eager media-hungry scientists these days so the best rule of thumb is - if it sounds totally dumb then it probably is. And the idea that warming causes cooling is the dumbest idea that ever came out of the department of dumb ideas - yet you swallowed it didn't you. This kind of tripe presented as beef is exactly why people are skeptical.

Soot warming 'maybe bigger than greenhouse gases' - NASA

Be fair

Hansen's actually been saying this for a very long time. He's not an unwilling convert. In fact he likely authorized this work in the first place.

Brit robo-sub dives to 3.5 miles on seabed volcano quest

Longer life batteries...

The Norwegians have already created a deep water sub, funded by Statoil, that had extremely long-life aluminium-oxygen batteries. The oxygen was produced in-situ from hydrogen peroxide. It seems to me that battery type would be much better for this job.

Brit space agency to probe 'crackpot' antigravity device

A bit of history....

Lord Kelvin said flight was impossible yet the Wright Brothers managed it. Just one of many , many examples where arrogant professors assume that if they don't know something then it just can't be possible. The laws of thermodynamics were developed after the heat engines had already been built; the physicists then cheekily stealing them and calling them laws of physics and then trying to apply them to other areas where they often don't apply.

It wasn't that long ago that the Bernoulli effect was described universally in text books as the one and only reason why wings cause lift. That turned out to be simplistic and wrong and it was then replaced by other theories which were also wrong. All theories were only small portions of a very complex 3d fluid flow mechanism. Yet at one time if you built a wing that you said defies Bernoulli, (which is perfectly possible) yet still works you'd have been called a charlatan, despite the fact that pilots who flew upside down were defying Bernoulli too.

I recently read up about cold fusion. From the denouncements of eminent scientists you'd think that the original experiment hadn't been replicated. In fact in experiment after experiment it has been replicated, and in each case the arrogant establishment who have a vested interest in hot fusion tell us that the experiment must have been in experimental error, for this, that or the next reason that they just pulled out of their arses. Cold fusion though since it demonstrably happens is still being investigated by governments because at the end of the day science is about studying the odd things that happen in nature and trying to account for them. Those who assume something won't work despite mounting evidence that it does are the real charlatans.

Now that means it's this simple: It either works or it doesn't! No amount of professorial hubris will ever impress an engineer. When Physicists can explain whether light is a wave or a particle, or explain what the hell is dark matter, dark energy, or reconcile the Big Bang with the laws of physics (for which they conveniently overlook) then they can pontificate with some respect. Meantime engineers will continue to build things by largely ignoring Physics professors. As Von Karman put it: “The Scientist studies what is, the engineer creates what has never been.” Unfortunately too many scientists don't even do that, preferring instead to fit their data around their implacable dogmata.

Former astronaut takes control of NASA

Putting science first?

By replacing a Doctor of Aerospace engineering with a pilot?