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Peak Brexit

Just popping in to note that, in the wake of the failed ERG leadership challenge against Theresa May, Brexit hysteria has escalated so far that mainstream political pundits in major newspapers are invoking Cthulhu in print. Words fail me. I really, truly, cannot cope with this shit: the Laundry Files are satire, dammit, not a political documentary!

(Normal blogging might resume whenever I manage to stop gibbering in a closet.)

You can use the comments here as a continuation of the last-but-one thread, now that one has burned past a thousand and is kinda slow to load.

1305 Comments

1:

So, what will Cthulhu do, when on awakening he/she discovers they are the most sane creature on the planet?

2:

Well, there was this mention of 10^9 human sacrifices... ;-)

3:

Surely you mean 109..?

4:

You can sacrifice 109 Members of Parliament, or 10^9 other humans...

I hate to say it, but you can either clean house right now, in as ugly a fashion as necessary - this will certainly save more lives in the long run - or you can learn to love disaster capitalism. Either way, the demons will. be. fed.

By the way, I'm now starting to feel guilty for all my jokes about "trading a sandwich for sex" because that's going to be the reality in the U.K. soon, and the whole idea is a lot less funny now than it was a year ago. Sorry about that one. I thought you guys would muddle through and fix this.

7:

Re: ' ... lasting effects the first referendum, the preceding campaign, and its aftermath have had on the National state of Mental Health.'

Stress does such a number on so many conditions that any pol whose speeches/actions increase stress among the populace should be tried and convicted of assault (at a minimum).

With all this idiocy going on in the UK what's the shape of your finances, budgets, etc.? In the US, DT is threatening to cut off funding thereby shutting down all fed gov't services if he doesn't get his wall. Is the UK also on the verge of collapsing because a bunch of pols are too self-absorbed to take their elected responsibilities seriously?

8:

I suppose the 10△9 would be told they were being raptured...

9:

What does Cthulhu think about referendums?

10:

That should be obvious. He already used a referendumb to suck out the U.K.'s soul, and it was tasty too! So Cthulhu loves referendumbs.

11:

Er, didn't the Rethuglicans do that several times during the Obama presidency, by refusing to set a budget?

12:

"trading a sandwich for sex"

For postbrexit starving hipsters eating the rich, a "pulled long pork sandwich"

13:

They threatened it a lot, then got hammered the could times they actually did it.

14:
  • "...couple times they actually did it."
15:

{AOL} ???

Probably this should be <AOL>Like!</AOL> - at some point this was basically saying "Me too!". I think this was because the America Online service brought many people online, in the Nineties, and gave them a way to participate in discussions, and often they just said "Me too!"

I have never been on AOL, as I'm in a different country, but this was how I have understood it. If somebody knows better, please explain!

16:

Well, that's how I understood it too, except that I use brace "{" and "}" characters because I don't know an HTML engine that treats them as tag markers. Oh and "like" means like rather than me too.

17:

Re: Gov't shutdown (US version)

Half-wondering whether DT wants to be 'forced' into shutting down the US gov't services because if he does then the IRS would have to let 90% of its employees go on unpaid leave thereby buying DT some time to get himself on a plane to Russia, SA or NK.

Shutting down the IRS means fewer taxes collected. Meanwhile: 1- US economy is slowing down - lower tax revenue in the future; 2- US T-Bills have to offer increasingly higher interest rates to lure buyers (China is the top T-Bill purchaser); 3- Changes in US dollar value mean that older debts cost more to pay off than anticipated; 4- Unpaid taxes are accumulating - wonder if the IRS isn't chasing tax cheats as hard or maybe they don't have the personnel to do this part of their job* becuz budget cuts ...

  • Great! Now that DT has decided to piss off China who the hell is going to buy US T-Bills ... the UK? Russia? What happens if China decides to cash in the T-Bills they already hold?

** Wonder how much DT and family owe in back-taxes and taxes on unreported income - enough to pay for a wall? (Some estimates are in the $5 billion range - the amount he's asking from Congress for the wall.)

18:

"the Laundry Files are satire, dammit, not a political documentary!"

So you get to experience how Margaret Atwood feels...

19:

Thank you, Charlie. Marina Hyde is absolutely one of my favorite columnists, and frequently should carry a warning, in a big box at the top of her column, "DO NOT READ WITH ANYTHING IN YOUR MOUTH!!!"

I remember one of the first times I read her, maybe 10 or more years ago, and literally pounding the desk laughing. I even sent her a note, to the effect that if I were half my age, and on her side of the Pond, I'd have sent her a mash note, after reading her column. Got a nice "thank you" from her, who got what I was saying.

And some folks wonder why I read the Guardian....

20:

Now that I've got that out of my system (wonder if there are sexy pictures of Hyde...), the question is, what the hell happens next? Can Labour call for a new popular vote? Will May try to leverage the populace to pass her proposal, and if not, will she give in and call for a new referendum?

21:

Cthulhu approves r'lyeherendums.

22:

So far as DT goes, I got this weird vision of the Trump/Pelosi/Schumer conference, that it was a play on Rabbit Season, where Daffy Trump got maneuvered into saying he'd shut down the government if he didn't get his way, with Schumer mugging like Bugs.

Getting back to Brexit, I did have a semi-serious question: anything to this analysis of the causes of Brexit? Or is it not worth the electrons it's printed on?

23:

I (an American) have been following Brexit and UK politics generally for a couple of years, and I still only understood about half of that column; it would probably be hilarious otherwise. Similarly, I've trying to read the Guardian's "UK Edition" coverage on Brexit, but it's often inscrutable or leads to wiki-diving.

I keep doing this because U.S. coverage of Brexit is almost insultingly basic and un-informative. Most articles spend half of their space explaining what Brexit and how the UK government works at a grammar school level, rather than reporting on what's happened most recently. If anyone wants to recommend good intermediate sources, though, I'm all ears! Right now, my best source is Charlie's twitter feed.

24:

Was Mike Pence the tree in this vision? ;-D

25:

But what would Cthulhu do (WWCD) ? It seems to me it would either shrug with a "you woke me up for this?" wiggling of its mouth worm thingies and promptly go back to sleep. Or it would preempt the (nearly inevitable it seems) hard brexit by simply devouring all parties, EU & UK alike. Afterwards it would be a coin flip on whether it continued on to the rest of the world or returned to sleep.

26:

When you're writing, it's important not to any words out.

I did have one specific Brexit question that I'm having trouble answering. I know that the "backstop" refers to the desire to have no hard border checkpoint between Ireland and Northern Ireland, but what, specifically, IS the backstop? People are constantly talking about it without really saying what it is. Is it a specific policy proposal or set of policy proposals? Is it a plan to make everyone traveling to Great Britain from Northern Ireland go through customs? Has the nature of the backstop even been publicly revealed yet? Maybe "backstop means backstop?" Gah!

28:

I have no clue what the backstop is. I'd assumed it meant routing the traffic between Northern Ireland and Ireland through a series of hollow hills and letting the Gentry take care of customs, but perhaps that vision's off too.

29:

Re: ' ... play on Rabbit Season, '

Exactly! One of the late night shows ran one of the Rabbit Season scenes with DT as Daffy.

30:

The backstop is a legal protocol as part of the withdrawal agreement that comes into effect if the EU and the UK can't find another agreement to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland after December 2020. It regulates movement of goods, which EU rules apply in NI and tne UK, and keeps the UK in a customs union with the EU. It's just a couple of hundred pages of legalese, so feel free to peruse it over the weekend: Draft Withdrawal Agreement (PDF)

31:

anything to this analysis of the causes of Brexit?

It's only part of the story.

The other big piece of the jigsaw puzzle is why so many ordinary voters so willing to vote Leave.

I'm pretty sure that the Leave campaign harnessed popular resentment, not of the EU as a real-world entity, but of the EU as a whipping boy for successive governments' austerity policies. The conservatives have been particularly mendacious in blaming the EU for any unpopular policy they originated, and the conservative media barons who own much of the press have propagated these lies uncritically (as has the BBC, which was brought to heel by the Blair government and should now be viewed as about as impartial a media mouthpiece as late-Soviet-era Pravda).

It's not a coincidence that wages have stagnated or fallen since 2007, that most new jobs created since then are minimum wage, that 25% or so of wage-earners are on benefits because they earn so little, that child poverty is skyrocketing, there's a homelessness crisis, and people are living out of food banks or actually starving to death while billionaires are building skyscrapers with £60M penthouse suites in London.

The popular rage and resentment was genuine, but it was misdirected—really, a lot of "Leave" votes could more accurately be described as votes for "down with this shit we're being forced to eat". Which, of course, was not anything that either of the major parties ever ran an election campaign about ...

32:

As I said, I find the Laundry world a cheerful escape from this one. I don't think that we HAVE reached peak Brexit yet. I suspect that May's strategy is to get soothing syrup (platitude flavour) from Brussels, and to continue to delay the vote until she wears everyone else out or we get no deal by default. I doubt very much that the former will do anything except cause the rabid brexiteers to foam at the mouth even more voluminously, and increase the level of gibbering.

You are not alone - even Private Eye has been changed from satire to straight reporting by the developing, er, whatever.

33:

Further note on the backstop: the net effect is that, in the final version of the agreement, Britain has to stay in the customs union until the EU and Britain agree on a better idea. Hard Brexiteers find this objectionable because until the EU agrees they have a better idea, Britain can't get out. They want a time limit, or some other way for Britain to get out unilaterally.

The EU is unlikely to agree to this because from their point of view, and the Irish point of view specifically, requiring Britain to have another idea that they agree is better is the whole damn point.

34:

The gentry managing customs is what the Tories mean by a technological solution to the border.

The Backstop "as far as I understand it" is a legal commitment from the British government that the full single market rules and relegation apply to goods and people crossing the Irish land border. This can be achieved by the entire UK staying in the single market and accepting all current and future EU rules as well as the levies and contribution normal for member states without being in the EU, having a voice or vote in the Council or any MEP or commissioners.

This situation is in perpetuity unless the UK negotiates an alternative agreement that replaces the "Backstop"

The problem as far as I can tell, is that any viable replacement to the Backstop involves putting NI into a separate customs zone within the Single Market and a customs border in the Irish Sea, or booting NI out of the UK. Any likely workable solution to the issue is likely to see Scotland asking "Can we have one also"

The Link in @22 re the analysis of Brexit appears to be not working.

35:

My view on what happens next: It's all in Theresa May's hand. After defending against the leadership challenge she's immune against a further challenge for 12 months. As long as her cabinet follows her, she has control over the process. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't have control over Parliament, and the DUP have threaten to withdraw their support if she passes the withdrawal agreement without changes to the backstop. So her options are: 1: Wait long enough until there is no realistic choice other than accept her deal or crash out of the EU, hoping that enough opposition MPs support her deal or at least abstain 2: Make concessions to Remainers in order to get support for her deal, for example a 2nd referendum 3: Cancel Brexit 4: Miraculously get the EU to drop the backstop

4 won't happen, so she'll probably do 1 or 2. Canceling Brexit is still an option if 1 or 2 don't work out.

36:

@22 link now appears to be now working. Odd!

37:

Your plan is at least as plausible as anything being discussed in Westminster. The backstop is actually to keep Norn Iron in a Norway-style relationship until and unless the British government can get some kind of an act together that isn't slapstick, and agree a long-term deal that does not create a hard border on the island of Ireland. The objections from the DUP are that it would separate them from the rest of the UK, and the objections from the rabid brexiteers is that they can't simply cancel it at whim.

38:

Re: '... but what, specifically, IS the backstop?'

Give this video a try: comes across as informed and unbiased. And if it's not accurate, we can probably count on the regulars here to set us straight. :)

'What is the Brexit Backstop? - Brexit Explained' (length 6:37)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKw66UOkGv8

39:

It's all about the whole 109 sacrifices I think.

Because while we're all entranced by the country eating itself alive (post-no-deal-brexit that's going to be a disturbingly literal possibility), the news that actually matters is going unnoticed: about now, give or take a few years, is the last moment at which we can choose to deal with human CO2 emissions, or not to deal with them. You can find this in the news if you look but its just completely submerged by brexit and the saga of the orange baboon.

And you know what? We're going to choose not to deal with this problem, partly because we won't even notice as we pass the event horizon and can no longer go back because we're so distracted by trivia like brexit. And I suggest that this is because something (some thing with tentacles, whatever you claim in the book) needs human sacrifices in astronomically-significant numbers. And Brexit is not enough: if the consequence of Brexit is killing three people out of every four in the UK it's not enough, not nearly.

But five degrees of warming kills billions of humans over the next hundred years. And that is enough.

It's a magnificent bit of manipulation: get the shitgibbon elected to fuck up any real hope of progress, then arrange for at least two endless political sagas (note how brilliantly the shitgibbon gets used twice?) to keep people distracted, and you have your 109 sacrifices, possibly several times over.

40:

Charlie @31 I agree with your analysis but I have a question, How did the Tory party become so inept?

A bunch of 2 years olds would have done a better job of negotiating Brexit and shaping public opinion as to what it involved.

It is as if their only negotiating strategy is to hold their breath until they are Blue in the face and hope the everyone given in to their demands.

41:

I think Terry Pratchett managed to describe the Tory attitude quite well in Jingo. Unfortunately the UK have no-one like Lord Vetinary to get them out of this mess.

42:

How did the Tory party become so inept?

That is a … complex … issue. It's even weirder and twistier than how the US Republican party turned into the party of angry white racist misogynists (and/or the party of corrupt billionaire oligarchs), and goes back at least as far.

Ultimately it's what happens when a first rank superpower gradually declines to a second rank regular power without the ruling elite noticing — and said elite being predisposed not to notice, because they're self-selecting from the graduates of a very narrow educational channel designed to produce 19th century colonial governors. When reality finally whacks them upside the head, their response is incoherent anger and rejection, rather than cold-eyed pragmatism.

43:

It is not so much the attitude I don't get it the sheer ineptitude with which it is pursued.

44:

Fair point. My guess is that life has been too easy for the Tories in the last three decades, so now everyone things they can get by with just quips and platitudes. The lack of challenges let the more competent ones move to more interesting areas than politics and the rest was lulled into a false sense of security. Now reality hits back and evolution will hopefully take its course.

45:

The one thing I would say about the dark lord is that he’d probably realise taking back control of the Conservative party would be an effing start.

Is that a sly dig at the Con party for having previously been under the control of the dark lord?

At this stage the idea of someone, anyone, actually having control over the party seems like rose-tinted historical fiction, probably involving bodices and lace handkerchiefs. "Oh Mr Darcy, your masterful control of the Parliamentary caucus quite gives me the shivers".

46:

Shutting down the IRS

Rather than just defunding it, like they've already done?

Audits are way down, especially of the rich, and audits of business likewise. Paying tax isn't completely optional, but you can easily find out what your chances of being audited are and decide whether they're low enough that you can just be presidential all over your tax return.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/irs-the-gop-propublica-budget-cuts-enforcement-billions.html

47:

Racism, misogyny and corrupt oligarchy are ongoing strands in the US body politic, at least to my limited knowledge going back to the 1850's. The party political banners they operate under vary over time and they do not necessarily move in lockstep.

The Tories at one time seemed to understand, very well Britain's decline. Is that not why the joined the EU in the first place? Rather then risk being locked out the European market, join as a rule maker and not stay outside as a rule taker.

Thatcher, seemed to me to understand this quite well, she was all in favour of the single market and opposed to anything that hinted of a more unified Euro State. There was a diplomatic objective and a strategy to get there.

Now, there is a cartoon (which I cannot find) of the UK standing over a cliff on a plank pointing a gun at the EU but I think it would be more accurate to have the UK pointing the gun at itself.

48:

The door closed on stopping serious anthropological climate change back in the 1980s (round about the time of the Miner's Strike here in Britain[1]) when we went through the 350 ppm CO2 point. There's a bunch of secondary forcing effects that will magnify the deliberately conservative IPCC forecasts of only 1.5 deg C rise by 2100 -- right now we're on track for a four or five deg C rise with only (only!) 400 ppm once the forcing effects start up. Since we'll continue extracting and burning fossil carbon in Gtonne/year amounts for the next fifty years or more then 550ppm or higher is likely so, wild-assed guess here, we could be at eight deg C rise globally by 2100.

Yes it will kill a lot of people but they're nearly all still to be born and they don't vote today. Stopping burning fossil carbon will cost people alive today serious money to pay for more expensive but less polluting forms of energy and they vote. See, for example, the fuel tax rise riots going on in France. Tell voters they're going to have to pay twice the price they pay today to heat their homes, fuel their cars etc. without burning fossil carbon and then duck.

That's getting away from the Brexit circus somewhat, of course but real climate conservation needs to be world-wide and Britain retreating into a bunker and yelling at smelly foreigners who aren't the boss of us any more isn't going to help.

[1]Margaret Thatcher -- Deep Green mole in the Tory Party or just scientifically trained climate visionary? Discuss.

49:

Here's one Yank leftist who can't understand why anyone of leftist proclivities wouldn't be in favor of Brexit. What is the EU anyway? An alliance of US-style imperial powers to exploit the Third World for the benefit of the superrich in Germany, France and England. And of course the weaker European victims like Greece. If leaving it hurts the British economy, that is what the Brit capitalists deserve. And what's more, the EU rules explicitly forbid nationalization of capitalists without compensation, or any of the other measures England actually needs for economic survival as the whole world economic system comes crashing down, accelerated by our American prez, who is exactly what the American ruling class deserves, but the rest of us don't. And as for immigration, as far as I can tell what it means is that white Polish and Irish immigrants no longer get immigration preference over nonwhites, behind the racist EU iron curtain. Corbyn used to understand that, but since he wants desperately to be PM, he doesn't care.

50:

the Laundry Files are satire, dammit, not a political documentary! But political commentary, surely.

Anyhow, I assume Charlie’s seen this already; not quite tzompantli level, hopefully as close as we get.

'A victory memorial made of German spike helmets near Grand Central Terminal, New York City’ https://mobile.twitter.com/RealSardonicus/status/1073263041486180352

51:
Carried forward from the preceding Brexit thread

paws4thot @ 1042: It's academic in that Maybot "won" (for certain values of won that is).

Had she lost, she would have had to resign, triggering a leadership election under Con Party rules. These are complicated, and call for several rounds of run-offs, depending on how many candidates are nominated (they're also a bit academic for anyone not a member of the Con Party to bother remembering).

The eventual "winner" (for certain values of winner) would become Leader of the Con Party, and PM of the UK.

Are there any specific names I should be looking for? What if May were to hypothetically drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow? Who would be the most likely eventual "winner"? Who are the major contenders?

52:

Well, 'bout that sea level rise...

he title's a bit overblown... well, maybe not.

Excerpt: All glaciers flow, but satellites and airborne radar missions had revealed that something worrisome was happening on Thwaites: The glacier was destabilizing, dumping ever more ice into the sea. On color-coded maps of the region, its flow rate went from stable blue to raise-the-alarms red. As Anandakrishnan puts it, “Thwaites started to pop.”

The change wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm. Big glaciers can speed up or slow down for reasons that scientists still don’t completely grasp. But Anandakrishnan knew that Thwaites’ unusual characteristics—it is shaped like a wedge, with the thin front end facing the ocean—left it vulnerable to losing vast quantities of ice quickly. What’s more, its size was something to reckon with. Many glaciers resemble narrow rivers that thread through mountain valleys and move small icebergs leisurely into the sea, like a chute or slide. Thwaites, if it went bad, would behave nothing like that. “Thwaites is a terrifying glacier,” Anandakrishnan says imply. Its front end measures about 100 miles across, and its glacial basin—the thick part of the wedge, extending deep into the West Antarctic interior—runs anywhere from 3,000 to more than 4,000 feet deep. A few years before Anandakrishnan’s first expedition, scientists had begun asking whether warming waters at the front edge could be playing a part in the glacier’s sudden stirring. But he wanted to know what was going on deep below Thwaites, where its ice met the earth. <...> By the end of the mission in 2009, Anandakrishnan and his colleagues had collected data from about 150 boreholes. The new information didn’t precisely explain what was hastening Thwaites’ acceleration, but it was a start. Meanwhile, the satellite maps kept getting redder and redder. In 2014, Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA, concluded that Thwaites was entering a state of “unstoppable” collapse. Even worse, scientists were starting to think that its demise could trigger a larger catastrophe in West Antarctica, the way a rotting support beam might lead to the toppling not only of a wall but of an entire house. Already, Thwaites’ losses were responsible for about 4 percent of global sea-level rise every year. When the entire glacier went, the seas would likely rise by a few feet; when the glaciers around it did, too, the seas might rise by more than a dozen feet. And when that happened, well, goodbye, Miami; goodbye, Boston. --- end excerpt ---

https://www.wired.com/story/antarctica-thwaites-glacier-breaking-point/

53:

That's an absurd attitude, says this Yank leftist. Bernie's got an idea of the way: he's talking in everything but the name, of a new International.

Let's organize, and vote ourselves into control of the EU, and the US, and....

Yes, I am an internationalist; at the very least, tax the bloody billionaires, no more tax havens.

54:

can't understand why anyone of leftist proclivities wouldn't be in favor of Brexit.

It seems to be tribal as much as anything, plus a bit of disagreement about the how. You can actually see the latter right now, as the negotiations with the EU keep bringing up areas where the UK parliament can't agree even within the parties, let alone across parliament. But what stops the areas of cross-party agreement being agreed is pure tribalism.

If you look there is ongoing whining that the UK doesn't have a Remain party, so voters are left choose between two Leave parties. The muddle in the middle party doesn't count because they inevitably had to betray their base to get into power. Small parties in coalitions, especially small parties in the middle, are pretty much screwed because their voters are usually comfortable with one or both of the major parties.

Offer someone who thinks catastrophic climate change is best avoided the option of dumping The Greens for either major party and they're just going to look at you as though you'd invited them to a human sacrifice (and I don't mean christian communion). But any "middle way" voter is going to face fewer compromises shifting (back) to a major party.

55:

I dunno about leftist, I am not really a leftist, though I am one of those that have moved somewhat to the left as I got older.

But there are a couple of things, Never underestimate the importance of No Armies crossing the Rhine/Danube in a lifetime. Very important that one.

Speaking as a Irishman, Ireland is about 2 generations ahead in protection of gays, women, worker and the environment that it otherwise would be without the EU, in my opinion.

The smaller countries have within the EU more influence with the bigger powers than they otherwise would have outside it. The UK is not the only EU country with special deals and exemptions.

collectively the EU has the clout to stand up to global powers and corporations in ways no individual component member could on their own.

56:

Who was it above said we've known this since the 1980's and it's a bit late to be worrying about that stuff now?

In terms of survival paths, major glaciers collapsing fast might actually be the best case. If we get 5m or more of sea level rise in the next 5-10 years we're going to lose a lot of coastal cities. But a lot of the people who live in those places will not be able to move, so they're going to die (probably while trying to move and being "border controlled").

The whole "emergency action" thing is right off the table as far as I can see. The big emitters are committed to 4-10 degrees by 2100, assuming all goes well (ie, once the Canadian and Siberian forests burn off the fire problem will abate, it's just a question of what that does to the climate... lots of CO2 and dirty snow).

So in 2030 we may well have less than 5B people, and the survivors will be a mix of scattered povos living the way Palestinians do now. With all the rich countries directly bombing them whenever they look as though they might be starting to get organised. Then there will be the rich enclaves, being the ones who control key resources most likely farmland. And they will be very focussed on stopping further catastrophic changes.

That's a "good" outcome in the sense that we might manage to avoid too many more emissions and too much further warming. Which might mean we can maintain a high-tech society. Because I really can't see current technology being practical when humanity is restricted to two disjunct habitable zones separated by a hot death zone round the equator. Sure, a refrigerated, probably nuclear powered, manned ship can cross it. And possibly unmanned cargo ships can do the same, but for shipping cargo reliably and in quantity? Plus there's the question of where exactly the habitable areas are... southern Chile, Aotearoa, South Africa, possibly small parts of Antarctica? And in the north Canada, Scandinavia, Siberia, the Greenland archipelago? Assuming no-one gets smart and decides to fight land wars in any of those places.

57:

JH @ 49: Here's one Yank leftist who can't understand why anyone of leftist proclivities wouldn't be in favor of Brexit. What is the EU anyway? An alliance of US-style imperial powers to exploit the Third World for the benefit of the superrich in Germany, France and England. And of course the weaker European victims like Greece. If leaving it hurts the British economy, that is what the Brit capitalists deserve.

Why would the left support it? British capitalists aren't going to bear the brunt of Brexit tribulations. Brexit means the capitalists get to do what they're already doing to Greece & the third world to the British working class & the "left". It's going back to the time when employers could steal your wages and then throw you into debtor's prison because you can't pay your bills.

58:

Not so much 'peak' as a new nadir in Brexit.

But one thing without fail, each time I think we've scraped the bottom of the barrel in terms of bankrupt politicians and their equally bankrupt policies placing party before country, they go and burrow through into a new sub-basement of awfulness.

We're now at a point where the ERG are openly saying that an internal vote where May wins by 2:1 is not a legitimate result and must be overturned BUT a potentially illegal vote won by just 3% is set in stone.

UK politics is broken and all of the options look grim.

59:

There's a difference between serious and catastrophic (which is somewhere north of a couple of degrees, I don't think anyone really knows how far north). We are in for serious we could still stop catastrophic (at least, so our models say: I work somewhere that does this, at least for the next two weeks). But we won't.

Yes, you're right about the voting thing: it won't really hurt me (other than getting depressed): it would hurt my children if I had any and it will kill many of the generation after that: they're going to be the sacrifices. But one thing Brexit makes very clear: people do not care about their children.

(Thatcher. Yes, green credentials, she founded the Hadley centre. Doesn't mean I'll forgive her for other stuff.)

60:

Oh, that's not how it will go: there will be a full-scale nuclear war over resources and at that point it's all over.

61:

Whitroth @ 20 Labour is almost as divided as the tories. Corbyn is a rabid brexiteer for opposite reasons – he wants to build an isolated “socialist” (note the quotes) brit-version of Venezuela … here.

AndreaS Vox @ 35 You forgot the other possibility that May is “forced” ( how sad) to accept a second referendum ….

Charlie @ 42 YOU ARE IGNORING the fact that the Liebour party are in just as big a pile of shit as the tories, especially with the complete wanker they presently have supposedly “In charge” ….

Tfb @ 59 YES

62:

Nuclear winter vs global warming: which will kill the most humans? FIGHT!

Cthulu opens the betting pool with 1 billion souls on global warming... Jesus goes all in on global thermonuclear war but his bet is rejected because he won't reveal the size of his pot.

63:

The French got torqued right off because Macron implemented a tax cut on wealth, then turned around and levied a tax on fuel of the exact same size as the cut. Which got the entirely appropriate response of "pull the other one, it has bells on it".

He is also making noises about scaling back nuclear, which is.. terrible climate politics.

64:

The problem is that too many voters are rusted onto a dead horse.

But in happy news I found a cover of a Jesus and Mary Chain song by Sandie Shaw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1UH6HjLGW8 It's funny as well as good.

65:

CTRL+F "Queen"

Is this like a Magical Mace thing, {IF}Location=UK{THEN}NO MENTION ZE QUEENIE?

Fun Game.

Anyhow, since we're bored of warning you not to fuck around in the Congo[1] etc, Here's 2018, in a can:

Ecologist: FUUUUUUUUUUCK, Bees are dying out!!111!!111! THIS IS BAD: EVEN EINSTEIN APOCRYPHALLY SAID THIS WAS BAD Economist: Now then, now then, don't attempt to cut into [strike]Mosantos[/strike] Bayer's bottom line, we have lobbyists for that Politician: CHINA OPTION: HAVE SERFS DO IT BY HAND! NOW WE CAN KILL THE POORS AND BE MORALLY BETTER THAN CHINA! Tech-Bro:

he University of Washington team glued removable mini “backpacks” onto bees. The packs, which include sensors that monitor temperature, humidity, and light intensity as well as tracking their location, weigh 102 milligrams each, roughly as much as seven grains of uncooked rice. They are powered by a small rechargeable battery that lasts for seven hours and charges wirelessly while the bees are in their hive at night. While in the hive, the backpack can upload its data using a method called backscatter, which lets devices share information by reflecting radio waves transmitted from a nearby antenna.

Bees that wear tiny sensor-filled backpacks could monitor farms all day long MIT Review, 13th Dec 2018

Ecologist: Did you really just super-glue a sensor to a fucking bumble-bee, who aren't in the top #10 of insect pollinators and claim they lived in hives? And have no idea about how Neonicotinoid pesticides work or that adding weight to a drone would completely fuck up their dance routine to get them location data anyhow?!?

Tech-Bro: Er? It's an insect. It works like a computer. It's better than human slaves, amirite?

Ecologist: It. Is. A. Bumblebee. They. Are. Different. Sizes. And. Have. Different. Bodies.

Tech-Bro: Liiiiike "whatever": we've got $508 million in VC seed funding for this beauty, suck it loser!

Narrator: 2022 was the year in which Western farming collapsed, ironically due to a IOT security flaw that allowed teenagers to pilot zombie-bees into people's faces for Zonil! (YouTube's successor) views.

Military Spokesperson: Our Wasp project with literal bombs on them was not impacted nor in any way was related to this project.

[1] Tensions rise as arsonists burn 7,000 voting machines ahead of DRC election Guardian, 13th Dec, 2018. WAVES MOVE TIME RECEIPTS AT Y'ALL

66:

I thought the military was into using beehives for detection units (as in nerve gas, whatever). They'd get over any gender or species issues if bees will carry detectors.

67:

Just remember, nuclear winter + climate change is the human equivalent of Deccan Traps + asteroid strike. It's probably smaller in scale, but if we're going to do it, we should do it soon, as waiting until heating causes Siberia to seriously start outgassing makes it more like the K-T boundary, and less like the Peak Miocene/PETM, which is kind of where we're aimed at the moment (it's the difference between a faunal turnover-level extinction and a mass extinction).

Also, there's this interesting hypothesis that animals that burrow have a better chance of surviving extinction events. Since humans do burrow, we're likely to survive an extinction event. At least those underground, like sysops and wealthy survivalists. Oh well.

68:

As for climate change, how about some realism. We live in a capitalist system worldwide, with a partial exception for China. Therefore, the most profitable energy investments will always dominate. If a country was to seriously go into less profitable energy investments in a way that might do something about climate change, it would go to the bottom in the worldwide cutthroat economic competition of capitalism.

The first step to do anything about climate change is to get rid of capitalism worldwide, and replace the invisible hand of Adam Smith currently strangling the human race by economic planning on a world basis (not hard to do democratically what with the Internet and all). Then, after first equalizing income levels worldwide (if it's democratic the first step whether one likes it or not), you can begin to slow down and perhaps reverse the climate change that by now is 100% inevitable, or at least mitigate the worst consequences.

Useless nonsolutions like cap & trade or the Paris accords will just get gamed by the banks, hedge funds, etc. The Paris Accords are the biggest joke of all. The USA under Obama liked them 'cuz they favored natural gas, which the US has the most of, and which due to methane leakage from the falling apart US industrial infrastructure probably creates more global warming than coal. Trump is more a coal and oil man of course... And then there was Thatcher, whom somebody here thinks was a closet green? Do I really have to explain here that for her, smashing the trade unions was her lifelong goal?

If capitalism isn't overthrown worldwide, the human race is doomed, one might as well try to enjoy the last few generations of livability before the planet becomes unlivable. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow... And whatever you do, don't have children, that would be cruel.

69:

Given that that paper was:

1 Funded by DARPA 2 Serious

and

3 [Redacted] in application

I'm not sure you're the original Het: he, at least, would have spotted that it was true.

Then, yes: bees were used to detect such things. You don't need a FUCKING MASSIVE sensor on their back to do it (I'm happy to point you to where it was used, successfully. Of course, you can't just say "the Bees proved it", you have to have yellow-cake from Africa to be believed in the media world because, ironically, a few million years of specific evolution is less believable than adding a color that most humans find odd[1] or "chemical compound we know from basic chemistry class" to the word "cake" is easier to believe than: "insects are chemically sensitive critters". Of course, Monsanto veto'd that one, post-Vietam and any liability for massive birth defects caused by dioxins, right?).

Until they all fucking died out due to wanton pesticide / herbicide abuse, destruction of habitat and so on

Ironically, largely due to #Agent fucking Orange etc.

[1950's, was used to prove testing of chem weps for the wonks: and no, they claimed it was a spy conversion deal at the time. True story.]

~

As for Gender issues: wut?

The Mirror of Galadriel YT, film: LOTR, 5:02

Oh, right:

For the past three years, the Pentagon has been testing honeybees as detectors for explosives in bombs and biological agents in ambient air. If the promising test results hold, bees could be used as border security sentries and as combatants against agricultural bioterrorism. In work funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the University of Montana (UM), Missoula, and its many partners are "exploring the ability of bees to look for biological agents," explains UM entomologist Jerry J. Bromenshenk. Bromenshenk has trained bees to sniff out parts-per-billion or lower concentrations of explosive residues such as 2,4-dinitrotoluene and chemical weapons instead of nectar.

https://pubs.acs.org/cen/critter/bees.html - Chemical & Engineering News ISSN 0009-2347 Copyright © 2010 American Chemical Society

ZZzzz.

[1] Actually really interesting story about where / when Western civilization began to connote yellow = ewww if you're willing to do the leg-work. Hint: like pink, not what you expect.

70:

We live in a capitalist system worldwide, with a partial exception for China. Therefore, the most profitable energy investments will always dominate

Nearly 400 investors with $32 trillion in assets step up action on climate change CERES, Sept 12th, 2018

You can check this story out, it's actually true. Major moves across the board (while the USA / Saud / RU fuck everyone in Poland).

Problem is: you're not good at complex / chaotic systems.

The wild bone ride don't stop when your little 1010101001 digits want. Nor does the climate now reflect what's in the atmosphere now.

TIME: YOU'RE NOT GOOD AT IT. (WE ARE)

71:

Btw.

Do us a favor. We're begging you.

As a scientist, would you please, just once, go on record and admit: "Whatever this thing is, it's fucking AMAZE-BALLS at front-running reality".

Please?

Cause we just proved it[1]. Time stamps and everything.

Please.

As a scientist.

[1] For the Nth time.

72:

Umm, not parsing what amazing thing you want me to say is amazing. But color me the most amazing shade of yellow, if that makes the bees happy.

73:

Hmm.

"Congo".

You know. That place in which there was just un massive suspicious fire n all[1]. Of democracy.

If you were clued up, you'd spot the massive spank-down of UK-Ultra-Zions as well that's currently going down.

Pro-tip: if you slap a man for his 'bacon' sandwich and so on, you don't get to do it a 2nd time and pretend it's an anti-Semitic reason. Or run the Apprentice, then complain you're not a "twat" when you go on Piers splurg-Trump and moan.

Coyotes so far: the servals have bone-saws.

~

Anyhow, not fucking cute, little Mr Man.

Enjoy CA, 2018-2023.

Yeah, over in 2023. point to aquifers

Want a pistachio nut?

[1] Note: this isn't for you, it's for the 1 week ago crew arguing over Katanga, UMHK, Belgium etc.

74:

Hmmm. I'm not a doctrinaire capitalist, but I am skeptical of planning working better than capitalism, mostly because I read a lot of planning documents and get to see development capitalism in action. They're both questionable in many ways, and ardent capitalist developers sound positively soviet when they start talking about how we've got to follow The Plan.

The bigger point is that it's not the invisible hand of Adam Smith, it's political economics and too much wealth concentrated in the hands of too few. Getting that money away from them (either by redistribution or revolution) is going to be hard, and you don't need to invoke central planning to make it work or not.

Even though I'm not a fan of Ralph Nader, the dude may have been onto something, if one believes the review of his 2009 novel Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. The tl;dr version seems to be that a rebellious band of the super-wealthy take on the more evil money and thereby usher in a "practical utopia" (whatever that is).

It might work. It could also by like, oh, choosing Nyarlathotep over Cthulhu if you're not careful.

75:

Oh, and p.s.

We've run the numbers.

We've front-run it sooooo heavily, you need drug induced coma (or real GOP $$$ bribes) to miss it so far.

Hollow Men.

Tell me about the White Man and his reluctance to even admit the chance...

p.s.

Unlike Greg & You, we really really do get death threats. CIAO!

76:

Oh, and FFS.

Y'all supposed to be all into the Eldritch and no-one even bothered to spot the obvious ones:

A Mysterious Seismic Wave Recently Shook Earth, And Scientists Can't Explain It Science Alert, 2th Nov 2018

I mean, come on: Cthulhu / Gaia actually wakes up and y'all missed it?

Talk about phoning it in.

You know what's really going to fuck you up?

BLOOOOP said Salon Magazine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop

NPC meme.

~

Anyhow, since disrespect is the Order of the Day, CIAO.

p.s.

You were the Baddies.

77:

Serious f'in word to the wise: Re-tweeting a man placed in a QT BBC audience by Campell = fail. Such a massive massive fail once you know who he actually is... (NASTY).

Het, since you just basically denied causal probability as a rational scientist (deliberately? kinda wondering now, you and Greg and co) given you like science.

Riddle us what your species does to:

1 All other species on the planet 2 That it cannot eat or subjugate as a pet

and tell us why

3 You think that denial of science is a bad thing but not when your nose gets rubbed in it?

G E N O C I D E

E

N

O

C

I

D

E

Thanks. But...

Choose Life

Fuck me, and to think I gave up [redacted] for saving your shitty little Minds.

78:

I got it wrong.

A couple of years ago, when Brexit was first being touted as a possibility, I commented, in a thread here, that it wouldn't be so bad, really; some people would have to change how they do a few things, but in general there wouldn't be much difference. So, no need to panic.

Boy, was I wrong. I had no idea that the loony wing of the Monster Raving Loony Party - er, the Tories, was so far adrift from reality. Nor did I have any idea of the staggering levels of incompetence in the rest of the party.

All this despite being aware of, and regularly quoting, Axel Oxenstierna's famous question (in a letter to his son, a new diplomat): "do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?"

(To be fair to myself, though, "wisdom" has entirely left this universe and is living in Brian Aldiss's Probability A, hiding in the back of a small garden shed and gibbering quietly to itself.)

Yup. I was wrong, all right. Wrong. Can't get much wronger.

79:

John Quiggin suggests that in the last week or so before Brexit the collapse of British society will cause a backdown by the government. Wildly optimistic?

https://johnquiggin.com/2018/12/14/brexit-the-endgame/

80:

Here's an article from the German newspaper Der Spiegel, arguing that a second referendum would be a bad result. It's nice to get an opinion about Brexit from outside the Anglosphere

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/opinion-there-should-be-no-exit-from-brexit-a-1243405.html

81:

Here's what I don't understand: when looking for the best opportunity to reduce emissions, why do politicians go to taxing fuel?

I know that private cars are a large part of modern emissions. However, we have a situation where the supply of electric cars is not enough to meet existing demand (unless the car seriously underperforms). Under these conditions, why focus on increasing demand when you know the supply doesn't exist

Here are some alternatives:

  • This is small potatoes, but he could get rid of the remaining fossil fuel power stations in France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_France

  • Replace public buses with electric ones. Last year, 17% of the Chinese fleet was electric. They are practically the only country transitioning their buses to fully electric (99% of demand). https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/when-it-comes-electric-buses-china-killing-it

  • Make heating renewable, if it's not already there. Admittedly, I don't know if France's heating system comes from renewable sources, but modernizing that is probably more straightforward.

  • I don't know if these moves are enough to meet the Paris climate targets, but they're probably easier politically than a diesel tax.

    82:

    Here's some important non-Brexit news.

  • It seems that Pres. Trump's foreign policy is moving into a new theater: Africa. The short summary is that Bolton wants to increase aid to African countries, and end several peacekeeping missions
  • "The US has already demanded a change of the mandate of the peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, refused to increase funding of a mission in the Central African Republic, and has threatened to cut funds for the mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is up for renewal of its mandate in the New Year."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/13/us-john-bolton-africa-policy-russia-china

  • The Senate voted to end the US participation in the Yemen War. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/13/senate-yemen-saudis-trump-resolution
  • 83:

    Ah, such naivete. Of course. There are big government subsidies in many countries for solar and wind, so naturally investors step up to chow down. The little detail that it is simply impossible for solar and wind power to power a modern economy, because it is intermittent and unreliable, is naturally ignored. The sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow, and so you need coal and oil and nuclear (the only genuinely non global warming energy source, but it has a few little problems too) for backup. Reliance on solar and wind means more coal and oil needed for backup, and since it's so much more expensive, vast increases in heating and electric costs, from which the poor suffer most of course. Until the magic day when somebody comes up with a magic battery capable of storing the kind of power needed to power a modern economy. Or until they invent cold fusion, or time travel or teleportation or something equally likely we can't imagine yet.

    84:

    If everyone in a Lovecraft story inevitably winds up insane or dead, C'thulu would presumably take one look at today's Tory party and realise he'd timed his entrance too late to make any discernable difference.

    85:

    Well, under your scenario, we're doomed, so we might as well invest in killing each other to the level of survivable.

    There are two problems: one is that if you're wrong, you're a mass murderer without cause. If you're right, you have far less control of where the killing stops than you think you do.

    Also, your take on people ignoring wind and sun's variability is beyond silly. As Elon Musk has demonstrated, you can make a lot of money making batteries, and he's not the only one to notice this.

    As for coal, the industry's failing, because wind is cheaper. And while there's plenty of coal, it's not all that great quality.

    As for nuclear, it's failing, at least in the US, due to simple distrust of the companies that make it. They have this bad habit of building plants on earthquake faults (Diablo Canyon) or making them non-functional due to 1950s engineering errors (San Onofre) and even storing the waste on the beach (also San Onofre). That kind of carelessness doesn't play well with horribly complicated plants.

    As for oil: the US is currently #1 in production due to fracking. But is that industry sustainable, or only kept afloat by the cheap money cranked out during the Great Recovery, and in trouble when interest rates rise? (cf: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/opinion/the-next-financial-crisis-lurks-underground.html) Hard to tell. The industry doesn't look as fragile as one might expect (the Saudis couldn't crash it in 2014, for instance), but the financials also don't make sense to people who study them. That's not good.

    Oh, and you missed hydropower. The environmental costs seem to have been underestimated: https://psmag.com/environment/the-heavy-costs-of-hydroelectric-dams. Not that this is stopping people from trying to damn the Amazon, Congo, etc. Lots of powerful old men fall victim to edifice syndrome, and dams certainly qualify as edifices.

    So you might want to reexamine your model a bit. Just sayin'

    86:

    The French are phasing out their existing small number of fossil-fuel power stations, they'll all be gone by 2022 or so. They don't run them much anyway other than in winter when demand is highest.

    The French nuclear fleet was all built in the 1970s and 1980s and it's ageing out, even with upgrades and extensions the first tranche of "three-loop" M910 reactors will be shut down by 2030. The replacement generation capacity will be cheap fossil-carbon gas with fig-leafs of solar and wind. Ten years later the second tranche of "five-loop" reactors will be at end-of-life and that will leave them with a single EPR running unless they build any more and that's doubtful, there's something inherently wrong with the EPR design (and the UK is building two of them at the moment).

    87:

    JH @ 49 Ah, you appear to have drunk Corbyn’s kool-aid. What you said is almost exactly what Corby has been saying since about 1973. As usual, he’s wrong. See also JBS @ 57 Rees-Smaug & Murdoch & Lawson & ( & & & … ) will all do very well out of Brexit - and we petty men walk under their huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves.

    Seagull @ 75 STOP IT

    GregvP @ 78 Correct – but, what makes it worse is that: I had no idea that the loony wing of the Monster Raving Loony Party - er, “Labour”, was so far adrift from reality. Nor did I have any idea of the staggering levels of incompetence in the rest of the party. [ Referring to “momentum” of course ] cough

    Generally, this is a bad replay of the earl 1980’s when no more than 35%, probably 25% of the country actually supported the Madwoman, but the Labour party was seized by “militant” & the vast majority in the centre were, to all intents & purposes, disenfranchised & left in the cold. It wasn’t good then & it isn’t good now.

    88:

    ... I do not think it is inherently the design, but rather there is something really wrong with our current doctrine of how to run large construction projects. The entire byzantine structure of sub-contractors of subcontractors just does not work. All large projects run on this model end up with catastrophic cost over runs.

    It is not unique to the EPR or the nuclear sector, but simply a consistent feature of the current landscape - without a unified corporate culture or chain of command, one - or more likely, several, of the contractors involved in a major effort will screw the pooch in a big, big way, with a probability which approaches unity with project size.

    I mean, sure, if the French decide to replace their current fleet with hundreds of factory produced flex-blue reactors, that side-steps that entire problem, but really, we need to address the problems with our doctrine of infrastructure construction, because it is a hobble around all our efforts at doing anything.

    89:

    I think you're probably right about uncontrolled costs, although it would be interesting to look at cost overruns in 19th century projects before we all get too romantic about things (I don't know how they compare).

    In the case of nuclear power there's a huge additional handicap: excessive safety. If we were willing to accept nuclear power systems which were only as safe as coal ones (leaving aside the CO2 emissions), say, they'd be a lot cheaper. But we're not because we're frightened of the boogeyman. And our fear of the boogeyman will kill most of us.

    90:

    What is the EU anyway? An alliance of US-style imperial powers to exploit the Third World for the benefit of the superrich in Germany, France and England.

    This is a common misconception about the EU, and nothing to do with what it's really about.

    The EU is the climactic expression of a treaty process designed to prevent war in Europe by integrating the former warring great powers.

    It goes back to the 1947 coal and steel treaty between France and Germany, which was pretty much the opposite of the post-Versailles settlement that led to French military occupation of the Ruhr in 1923-25.

    And it has worked.

    The period of peace since 1945 is now the longest period since the fall of the western Roman Empire in which no invading army has crossed the Rhine. Don't you think this might be considered a benefit, by the poor bloody workers who'd be conscripted into fighting and dying in the armies of those powers if it was still business as usual, circa 1939-45, or 1914-18, or 1870-71 …?

    (This is the major reason, for me, why Brexit is an act of criminal insanity.)

    91:

    get rid of capitalism worldwide, and replace the invisible hand of Adam Smith

    You've never actually read "The Wealth of Nations", have you? (disclaimer, I've not read it all either)

    Adam Smith was not, as you appear to believe, a modern capitalist; witness, for example "A poll tax, whilst cheap and efficient if rigorously applied, would never be used in a nation where the government took good account of the people".

    92:

    Well, FWIW Scotland can presently supply its entire electric needs from renewables and nuclear, as long as the wind speed is in the correct range to run our wind turbine fleet.

    93:

    it would be interesting to look at cost overruns in 19th century projects

    I won't quote per project, but there were "several times estimate" over-runs on at least some Victorian and earlier canal and railway projects, although at least you can start using a railway when it goes from terminus'first to traffic_generator'intermediate rather than waiting until you have track to terminus'second, where you have to complete 1 full set of generating and transmission plant (not the same thing as the entire project) before you can use a power station!

    94:

    Thane: I would check out Gwynne Dyer's syndicate column ... he is a Canadian based in London and every few months he writes a 'big picture' column on the Brexit negotiations. I don't bother trying to follow news hour to hour, that would be a full-time unpaid job and what is it good for?

    95:

    Yes, our way of managing large (>$1Bn) private-sector projects is borked.

    I ascribe it in part to the pernicious doctrine of the MBA: that management of any process is interchangeable, and you can swap managers and processes around at whim without any issues arising due to loss of specialized knowledge. Oh, and the idea of out-sourcing. It was probably a necessary corrective when it first took hold in the 1970s, but went way too far by the late 80s, and kept on going — resulting in dangerous lunacy like hospitals outsourcing cleaning services to the lowest bidders just as antibiotic-resistant infections were becoming a lethal threat, or the Manx2 Flight 7100 plane crash.

    Another issue is that some projects are so capital-intensive, with such long-term payoffs, that virtually nobody has the financial resources to underwrite them as a single monolithic project. Consider the costs of developing a new type of nuclear reactor: I've seen estimates of on the order of US $100Bn over 10-20 years as the price of entry, and that's before you get enough experience running the thing to know if it's cost-effective in the long term (see the UK's fleet of aging AGRs, for example: brilliant design but fundamental problems in generation , and expensive enough that there isn't going to be a generation 2 to fix the problems).

    There are two ways to fix this problem: (a) a total change in management and finance culture, or (b) stop doing those projects and pick something more achievable that can be scaled up.

    96:

    Yes, definitely a major reason. But there are two closely linked ones that I consider more important: the EU has been the chain and ball preventing the UK from leading the way to the 'neo-liberal' plutocratic utopia (as JBS said in the previous thread, the USA got it from us). Two reasons? Yes, because that 'philosophy' is maximum benefit for the people personally, and be damned to future generations, so who cares about forthcoming environmental catastrophes?

    97:

    Agreed, but it's older and wider than just MBAs. It's the UK (mainly English) attitude that experts should be kept below levels at which strategic planning and decisions happen (see Churchill, the Hutton Inquiry and all that). It some decades back got to the point where, if you don't like what the experts are saying, you paint self-serving arseholes expert-coloured and use them, which is what led to the claim that the UK people had had enough of experts.

    The UK did OK (if not well) until Thatcher let the mandarins abolish the scientific civil service. As I have mentioned before, I have experience of outsourcing, and the key is that there must be an in-house person or team that is BOTH technical enough to keep the contractors from pulling the wool over their eyes AND senior enough to control the contract and how it is delivered. Without such control, monetarism doesn't optimise anything except the wealth of the least scrupulous.

    I sort-of supported Thatcher when she was elected, because she was trying to fix things that were genuinely broken, but she then opened the door to the dark powers. Like many people, I didn't at the time realise how widely and deeply they were embedded in the UK.

    Regrettably, I agree with iCowboy (#58) and WreRite (#84) - I don't see a way out of this hole short of an actual, bloody revolution, and history relates that it generally takes half a century or more for things to improve after one.

    99:

    "And of course the weaker European victims like Greece."

    Your "weaker victims" have had their economies propped up by the EU for the last 20+ years. If you look at those countries, a truly ludicrous percentage of the country is employed by the state, and the funds for that have entirely come from the EU. More than that, much of the "non-state" economy is in the construction industry for major infrastructure projects, and all of those are EU-funded. (Drive through Greece or Italy and look at how many motorways and tunnels have "Funded by the EU" signs on them.)

    And these countries also realised that way to get money from the EU was by building infrastructure, not maintaining it. My folks rented out their house, put their savings into a boat, and spent 8 years sailing round the Med. There are lots of marinas in Greece which were built with EU funding, with the deal being that the EU got a slice of the proceeds when they were built. Greece simply took the money for building them, then refused to run them because there wasn't as much in it for them. Great for my folks who got free moorings, less good for the EU who had their money pissed up the wall.

    Greece even failed to collect taxes. It wasn't exactly tax evasion, because there was no attempt to even collect them. Whilst the EU was putting money in, there didn't seem any need to collect money off the Greek people.

    The bottom line is that Greece is like that cousin who runs a sports car and big house, but keeps coming to you begging for money to tide them over. At some point you have to realise that you're enabling the dysfunctional habits of an entitled idiot. So they had to make cutbacks in their ridiculous government slush funds, and actually get their people to pay taxes? That sound you hear is the world's smallest violin playing "my heart bleeds for them".

    100:

    Charlie @ 95 YES! See also CrossRail in London - articles HERE and here too The London & Brimingham Railway ( 1833-8 ) was way over budget & at least 6 months late ( Quicksands inside Kilsby Tunnel & small, incompetent sub-contractors ) But trains are leaving Euston, today ....

    And solution (a) is the one needed - we have been here before, it's that people refuse to lern the lessons of the past - incidentlly, as an engineer-manque, my utter conterpt for the "MBA" culture is probably even greater than yours.

    101:

    It seems that Trump won an important concession in the trade war. China is scrapping "Made in China 2025". He hasn't won the trade war, but this is a huge political win for him.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-set-to-scrap-made-in-china-2025-policy-as-trade-talks-with-us-progress_2737081.html

    102:

    You've never actually read "The Wealth of Nations", have you?

    Like the bible, Smith's books tend to be more text-proofed than read nowadays. I find them quite useful as a source of quotes when neocons start rhapsodizing about the magic of the Invisible Hand.

    For example, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."

    Or for anyone paying North America's highest tolls on the PPP highway 407 in Ontario, "The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons."

    And any time I read a pronouncement from a Chamber of Commerce: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary."

    And my favourite, "The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [bankers and financiers], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."

    Although this one is also useful: "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."

    103:

    I'm hereby going to support some of JH's doubts because I have them about the same, with respect to my education in energy networks.

    To JH @49 What is the EU anyway? An alliance of US-style imperial powers to exploit the Third World for the benefit of the superrich in Germany, France and England. And of course the weaker European victims like Greece. They still think they can fool around with the liberal democracy and in the same time preserve social security. In practice it is the same effect as Weimar Germany, but at the scale of entire Europe. Practice shows you can not have nor "socialism with human face" nor "vegetarian capitalism". They will all fail eventually to one of the end states, backstabbed by the best allies, because they all are based on wishful thinking rather than theoretical facts.

    To Heteromeles @85 Well, under your scenario, we're doomed, so we might as well invest in killing each other to the level of survivable. So you might want to reexamine your model a bit Ah, you appear to have drunk Corbyn’s kool-aid. Well, i don't think sort of flat denial is going to impress anybody nowadays. It seems you are doomed anyway and there's nothing can be done to fix the problem. I tried several times to present my arguments, but people forget them after several months, because of de-educating effect of modern media.

    Anyway, here's several points, and especially towards the France. Also, your take on people ignoring wind and sun's variability is beyond silly. As Elon Musk has demonstrated, you can make a lot of money making batteries, and he's not the only one to notice this. Unbeatable optimism of E. Musk only does exist until it brings a lot of profit. "Saving the planet" has nothing to do with profit and in fact is opposite to it. By prioritizing profit over reason, modern venture capitalists are putting cart before the horse, making the climate regulation even more impossible than it was before.

    As for coal, the industry's failing, because wind is cheaper. The wind/solar is not cheaper, despite all the technological advances in it. It is only "cheaper" because of carbon tax and other taxes, that increase its price for the end user, and then these money go to the wind, decreasing the price by subsidizing and investments - and it is going to get worse as the carbon tax is going to rise. By phasing out coal plants, you also phase out the carbon tax source, and a big cash cow for the green movement. This increases the energy price too.

    As for nuclear, it's failing, at least in the US, due to simple distrust of the companies that make it. Al you had to do is invest into nuclear power safety and efficiency technology, especially their decommissioning risks. But all the money needed for it went to sun and wind. And they also generate tax revenues. As the nuclear power is going to be phased out, there will be no power and no money, the price of energy will go through the roof.

    As for oil: the US is currently #1 in production due to fracking. Fracking is going high because exporters keep the prices high to keep their infrastructure running. Some people say that with Peak oil, the price of oil will drop, and therefore will lose it's value, but the easiest application of market theory states that with lowered supply and high demand, the price of the oil is going to increase. Hence the new fracking projects, which weren't sustainable at 20-30$ per barrel are actually doing good at 80+$. And with OPEC regulating the market price, the price about 60 can be preserved for a long time.

    Smacking OPEC and fracking with a big stick will result in prices skyrocketing everywhere except for OPEC where they will drop like a stone. Needless to say, tax revenue from oil is always going to the budget too.

    TBC...

    104:

    sr You don't like Liberal Dermocracy, do you? What system do you prefer? The autocracy of the Tsar? The autocracy of the Oligarchy? A collection of Tribal Chiefs?

    105:

    Cont. Oh, and you missed hydropower. The environmental costs seem to have been underestimated The hydropower matters not, because most of the developed countries have used up all of their hydro-resources power reserve in the last century, and they did not yet develop many technologies to pump electricity form developing countries 10 000 km away. And there's a severe lack of maneuvering capacity, which is absolutely necessary for regulating wind and sun. Now I've read that some people try to regulate them by throttling down and up .. coal plants. It is a good thing you still have them around because trying to do the same with nuclear reactors is a good way to make another nuclear catastrophe. Anyway, hydropower price will rise exponentially, as will the price of the regular energy, because you are going to invest a lot into individual storage capacity.

    And we forgot about gas. In fact, forget about gas, because US will do anything to stop Russia's export and only wants to export most of the gas... by itself. Ship LNG all the way from US soil. Yeah, forget about low fuel prices, they are going to be cosmic. Now consider that "phasing out" any existing classic power sources will cost as much as keeping them around for another generation, you can get the scale of the problem.

    Why it is all important so much. With such perspective, the deficit of energy will be staggering. The price will skyrocket, and economy will run into even more debt. 20-30% tariff rise per year is a lower estimate here. The industry will stall and stop, and people will lose their shit over impossibility to continue their existence. In fact, this is what is already happening if you believe those Paris protesters. And this is even before the old electric stations and infrastructure will require all the money to be renewed, revamped or upgraded for climate demands.

    You will be lucky of you will be able to run your digital economy on the remaining power. The forecast of global temperature increase may kill millions 30 years from now, but next decade of such "environmentalism" there will be no agency to continue the policy itself. Breaking the economy is hardly an answer for environmental hazard - but it is, by a coincidence, the essence of modern "disruptive innovation" religion and everything that associated with it.

    And you know what, this is why I think that EU is absolutely boned at this point. No need to even care if there's a chance to survive as whole, we are past the point of no return. The Yellow Jackets, the will of "the people" made their demands, and it contains more that enough of that explosive power. https://www.sott.net/article/402396-What-do-the-protesters-in-France-want-Check-out-the-official-Yellow-Vest-manifesto no citizen to be taxed at more than 25% of income complete prohibition on state interference in their decisions concerning education, health and family matters Frexit: Leave the EU to regain our economic, monetary and political sovereignty End France's participation in foreign wars of aggression, and exit from NATO Yep, that's it. Brexit was just a beginning. Ukraine was just a warm-up. It is OK, though, they say that mild starvation benefits health in the long run.

    106:

    I prefer whatever that can save me and my country from the (poisoned by 4th generation of CBRN warfare) grave. I prefer centralized planning and ideological unity, because it saved a lot of lives last time we needed it, but it is entirely possible for me to change my opinion based on facts - I'm flexible enough.

    107:

    I prefer centralized planning and ideological unity, because it saved a lot of lives last time we needed it, but it is entirely possible for me to change my opinion based on facts - I'm flexible enough.

    IMHO central planning and ideological unity work well in times of national crisis, when resources are stretched to their limit, and there's not credible way for "the market" to make the correct call before people start dying. After all, civilisation is only nine meals away...

    However, central planning works less well when there are enough resources to go around; and ideological disunity is historically an effective way to shake up the system through evolution rather than evolution.

    Russia has seen the worst of both, within living memory; it's understandable that there are fond memories of the era that achieved a comparatively good Gini coefficient. The UK never suffered that much, really; while we're just as close to our memories of ration books and ID cards, we avoided starvation and mostly avoided mass-murder of civilians (yes to Blitz, no to Siege of Leningrad). We then managed a smoother transition from National Existential Crisis to a reasonably well-functioning market economy, without the tanks rolling on the streets (although some might suggest that the 1970s came closer than we'd like).

    So, a UK citizen whose grandparents never suffered as those of the USSR did, will have a different perspective on Five-Year Plans and Party Membership. It remains to be seen whether we might have to look forward to them...

    108:

    "The wind/solar is not cheaper, despite all the technological advances in it. It is only "cheaper" because of carbon tax and other taxes, that increase its price for the end user, and then these money go to the wind, decreasing the price by subsidizing and investments - and it is going to get worse as the carbon tax is going to rise."

    In theory that's correct, but in the real world it's not so clear-cut. Let's compare two different countries - the US and China. From our previous conversations, you consider China to be a reasonable government?

    Let's also look at their electricity sectors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China

    Both countries get ~64% of their electricity from fossil fuels. The difference between coal and natural gas is due to the fact that the US has a lot of domestic resources. On the other hand, China doesn't trust ANY country with too much influence in their energy sector. That includes Russia.

    It's interesting that the wind/solar share of the grid is much higher in China than the US. This says positive things about the economics of renewables absent regulation. Don't forget that renewables in the US are hurt by the following regulations:

    . Hurting the view (that's a huge reason why we only have 1 offshore wind farm) . Killing birds . Homeowners associations banning panels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association

    China's renewable plants aren't subject to these same constraints.

    "Unbeatable optimism of E. Musk only does exist until it brings a lot of profit." Musk is a celebrity because his dreams do eventually turn out to be profitable, admittedly much later than he promises. For proof, look at the Chinese race to electrify their buses. The link is in another comment on this thread.

    "The hydropower matters not, because most of the developed countries have used up all of their hydro-resources" This is correct

    "Now I've read that some people try to regulate them by throttling down and up .. coal plants."

    The US, UK, and Australia throttle gas plants, not coal plants. The fact that coal plants aren't as good at throttling is a reason why they're dying out. South Australia is considering replacing their natural gas plants with E. Musk's batteries, as Heteromeles pointed out. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/09/renewables-company-neoen-says-teslas-australia-battery-makes-it-more-profitable/

    " Hence the new fracking projects, which weren't sustainable at 20-30$ per barrel are actually doing good at 80+$."

    People have been erroneously predicting that fracking will collapse any day now. 2014 was the last year that the price per barrel was above $80, and US oil output continues to rise, mainly due to fracking. https://www.statista.com/statistics/262858/change-in-opec-crude-oil-prices-since-1960/

    109:

    Re: 'out-sourcing' (head-count)

    Lower head-count became a thing in P&Ls and income statements back in the 70s when manufacturers ruled because it was considered the metric for measuring operational (employee) efficiency* and was a major contributor to the rise of outsourcing. Ditto in the public services sectors. E.g., When gov't started slashing budgets, hospitals and unis also adopted this strategy by reducing FIXED operating expenses - full-time nursing/teaching staff.**

    https://scm.ncsu.edu/scm-articles/article/a-brief-history-of-outsourcing

    • Wonder why these orgs never bothered to measure their 'efficiency' based on the amount of energy used to make whatever it is they make. In my neck of the woods, the major orgs that use electricity in their business still get 'volume discounts'. Absurd - this means there's actually an economic disincentive for such orgs to use less energy. Meanwhile, homeowners' unit energy prices increase with energy consumption.

    ** Rising death rates in the UK - recent articles (2018) in the 'British Medical Journal'. Yeah, budget cuts figure in this.

    https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1090/related

    110:

    to Martin @107 IMHO central planning and ideological unity work well in times of national crisis, when resources are stretched to their limit, and there's not credible way for "the market" to make the correct call before people start dying. After all, civilisation is only nine meals away... That's the reason I laugh in the face of our more radical "authoritarians" who declare want to kick "that liberal" president out of his chair, reform the entire government and reinstall something akin to Zombie USSR. There's an awful amount of them appearing recently, all acting by the same guidelines. See, there are worse possibilities - such people can make your economy crash even without external pressure.

    to Ioan @108 On the other hand, China doesn't trust ANY country with too much influence in their energy sector. That includes Russia. That is changing recently, but not too fast. Russia also develops relationships in energy sector, although not with a terrific speed. Point being, we are talking about EU, which is squashed between various US and international interests. Saying the outlook isn't good as of recent would be an understatement.

    Musk is a celebrity because his dreams do eventually turn out to be profitable, admittedly much later than he promises. Some of his dreams, anyway, but I can say a fraud when I can see one (seen at least half-dozen in my life). Public loves such when certain people speak about dreams and visions, but practically employing you-gotta-believe-me tricks for profit is a good way to steer the trend towards inevitable crash. I mean, Constellation program fell through years before, and the only saving grace for it was even madder project Musk invented. Now, what they are going to invent when this isn't going to work? Flying saucers? FTL drives? Alien invasion?

    replacing their natural gas plants with E. Musk's batteries And the major problem is that none of his technologies are revolutionary like what we used to know in the last century. He just combines the old stuff in the new forms. Batteries is a prime example - there's simply no innovation per se, it is the same li-ion battery as ever. And the engines for spacex are the same kerosene engines as ever, because inventing anything new will cost more than he can hold the public attention for.

    My country employs trolleybuses, most of them running around for 20-30 years already (not counting previous line of models), and they are building new autonomous vehicles too. We also have some methane and natural gas trucks since USSR times. But I don't hear anybody running around screaming about revolution in industry, especially because this is not revolutionary and they occupy only several percent of traffic - many people can afford to buy a personal car these days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBVMT8-nkv0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yooel0D4OYE And of course it is a traditionally very bad attitude if you lie to and lure people, even in the name of collective profit.

    People have been erroneously predicting that fracking will collapse any day now. I heard that too. Petrol lobby is pretty strong still, considering US doesn't even have as much electric trains as other countries, it is hard to expect the change here.

    111:

    "The EU is the climactic expression of a treaty process designed to prevent war in Europe by integrating the former warring great powers.

    It goes back to the 1947 coal and steel treaty between France and Germany, which was pretty much the opposite of the post-Versailles settlement that led to French military occupation of the Ruhr in 1923-25.

    And it has worked...."

    In short, cobblers. Do you honestly believe that?

    When has the EU done anything to promote the cause of peace, either in Europe or outside it? In Europe it has never needed to. Peace in Western Europe was a result of the cold war, and post war economic prosperity. It is a result of quiet occupation by outside powers armed with weapons few dared contemplate the use of. The occupation of Japan by the US is a perfect parallel example.

    It does startle me if you genuinely believe that. To get an idea of the scale of how extreme that position is, I'll post this:

    https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2016/05/how-valid-claim-eu-has-delivered-peace-europe

    Content aside, this is The New Statesman we are talking about here, we are not talking about some pack of right-wing, eye-rolling, too-nutty-for-the-Kippers, David Irving revisionists. As the article notes, talking about the second world war in respect to "peace" is effectively taboo, because it involves some many awkward questions Franco-German crimes that no-one wants to go there.

    If even the NS doesn't believe the EU has done much for peace, when you contemplate Merkel's openly provocative meddling in the Ukraine, and the EU's silence upon that farce, how can you honestly assert that? Kosovo? The fact that Tony Blair went off his meds and invaded Iraq and the EU said nothing? The bombing of Libya and the migrant shitshow that has followed, that the EU ignores in the name of the sacred cow of freedom of movement?

    The EU is free to claim credit, it would seem, for something it has not contributed a thing towards creating. Thing is, I do doubt that there will be internal war in Europe as a result of Brexit though.

    112:

    And I would be more sympathetic to him and his cause if he and his fans weren't as much hypocritical, arrogant and contemptuous. In last 10+ years, he was furiously lobbying sanctions against our state program, he participated in pillaging of very much allied Ukraine's space industry, and his fans pour mud all over our people and government wherever they go.

    113:

    Re: 'Musk is a celebrity because ...'

    He figured out modern alchemy: how to convert public money into a personal fortune.

    Excerpt:

    'Musk’s genius is primarily in the subsidy-seeking realm. By 2015, U.S. governments alone had given his companies US$5 billion through direct grants, tax breaks, cut-rate loans, tax credits and rebates'

    https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/lawrence-solomon-how-teslas-elon-musk-became-the-master-of-fake-business

    Yes, his orgs have made progress in several areas but he's done nothing to correct public misconception, i.e., he did this all on his own. This myth devalues the role of gov't re: innovations and economic benefits among the voting public.

    114:

    Unfortunately, if you're going to subtract the subsidies for wind and solar, you also have to subtract the subsidies for oil and coal, and then they're still cheaper. For example, for middle eastern oil, you've arguably got to subtract a lot of international military costs.

    Also, arguing that anything in the Chinese industrial sector is unregulated is farcical. I'm not saying they're princes of renewable energy, nor am I saying they're always good at it, nor am I saying that provinces aren't building coal plants in defiance of the national government. But notice, it's the provinces that are building, not wildcatters.

    Homeowners' associations banning solar panels. Actually, the bigger problem is when someone like one of Warren Buffett's petrochemical companies tries to get a legislature to block rooftop solar, as in Nevada (https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/24/why-warren-buffett-wants-keep-solar-panels-off-you.aspx). In places like California, homeowners' associations tend to get banned from doing that. The problem here is that the 1974 solar shade act is underenforced, and people plant trees blocking panels, even though it's illegal.

    Hydropower matters when you contemplate damming the Yangtze (Three Gorges Dam), the Amazon system (although the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu was halted last year by Brazil), or the Congo (the three Inga Dams, with a fourth proposed). I agree that dams won't save us through green electricity production, but the environmental effects are non-trivial, especially when we're also looking at the Amazon and Congo basins as major carbon sinks that need to be protected.

    Dams in the long run pose some interesting problems. They tend to accumulate methanogenic sediments, so if they aren't maintained properly, they can produce a fair amount of methane. They also screw up the river below the dam, which can cause fish extinctions, screw up boat traffic, and so on. And if they are poorly built or not maintained properly, they can fail, which puts everyone downstream at risk, and the maintenance issues are surprisingly detailed.

    For example, the Oroville Dam's spillway was a layer of concrete on top of dirt, built even though Sierra Club (well-known engineering organization...) protested that this was dangerously under-designed. The concrete cracked, and a tree grew in the crack. The dam owners were told to remove the tree but didn't bother, since they hadn't had to use the spillway in forever. Unfortunately in 2017 they did have to use the spillway, and the water took out the tree, burrowed into the hole that the roots left, and nearly destroyed the dam. One hopes that Three Gorges is better built and maintained, because a dam failure on the Yangtze would be far more catastrophic. If civilization stops maintaining a dam, then over the next ~50-200 years, it will fail, scour the downstream channel, and expose whatever sediments that accumulated behind it to the air.

    Anyway, we'll see what happens. I'm still trying to figure out whether I'd rig either the Trans-Siberian Railroad or the US Great Plains tracks to run on line electricity (third rail), or whether it's simpler to just put a bunch of lithium batteries in the equivalent of the coal car in a train pulled by an electric engine and swap them out periodically. Oh, that's right: Musk's innovation isn't battery chemistry, as his batteries are basically huge stacks of AA cells wired together. Rather, his innovation is IIRC the management system that keeps the whole thing working and not overheating. And that's not stupid, although it's not as energy dense as gasoline.

    115:

    s-r @ 106 because it saved a lot of lives last time Yeah an absolute minimum of 7 million killed by Stalin & probably a lot more ... Do you know, I don't believe you.

    116:

    "Unfortunately, if you're going to subtract the subsidies for wind and solar, you also have to subtract the subsidies for oil and coal, ..."

    That is true, and it is extremely difficult to do in a neutral fashion, because so many of the subsidies (in ALL cases) are dismissing the cost of their harmful-side effects. But there are cases which are quite clearly Bad Ideas made popular solely by political subsidies.

    Solar power in the UK was one such - and cutting its ridiculous subsidies was one (the only?) thing that Cameron got right. Fracking is another, essentially everywhere.

    117:

    "And the engines for spacex are the same kerosene engines as ever, because inventing anything new will cost more than he can hold the public attention for."

    Let's see what Musk invented:

  • When I was at school, if the landing ellipse for a spacecraft with propulsive or parachute landing had a semi-major axis of < 2 km, it was a considered a miracle. That's why Apollo landed in the water, Soyuz in the steppe, and that's why the Space Shuttle required wings and a pilot (for all the problems that caused). Musk changed this, allowing the first stage to fly back to base.

  • The ability to stick 27 engines on a rocket and not having blow up; how the N-1 moon rocket failed. His Falcon Heavy has the lowest $/kg of all rockets currently on the market. Time will tell if this matters?

  • He made a much better assembly line for the rockets. Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile or any of its components, he invented the assembly line to make if affordable. That's still treated as a major innovation.

  • He created a reusable first-stage booster that has a demonstrated turnaround time less than 3 months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters

  • "Batteries is a prime example - there's simply no innovation per se, it is the same li-ion battery as ever."

    I would call the software Elon invented which allows the batteries to throttle while handling that much power to be a major invention. Plus, he did it at a price where it could compete with coal and natural gas.

    118:

    Charlie,

    I think you have very rose-tinted spectacles if you think peace is still the primary vision of the EU (but I agree it was a great argument 30-40 years ago)

    To me it increasingly looks much more like a "Lets Make Europe Great Again" pan-european nationalism project, with all the increased risk of conflict that that entails.

    TLDR I don't think the world will be a better place the more "Great Powers" there are.

    119:

    One quick note.

    I'm still trying to figure out whether I'd rig either the Trans-Siberian Railroad or the US Great Plains tracks to run on line electricity (third rail)

    For the Trans-Siberian that would be unnecessary as its electrification was completed on 25 December 2002. As far as I can remember it's all overhead line, although I didn't take it all the way to Vladivostok.

    http://www.railpage.com.au/news/s/russia-s-transsiberian-railway-fully-electrified

    American railroads aren't big on electrification at all--even for commuter lines where it's a really good idea--so doing that is a definite project. The one extension of Northeast Corridor electrification from New Haven to Boston was relatively recent and a pretty big deal for the States.

    Not arguing with anything else, just pointing out one detail.

    120:

    400 investors, $32T... unfortunately, I just saw something the other day, about a single? small group? that has well over $100T. Trouble is, the right wing psychobillioaires disagree, and they've already got their claws in.

    A revision of the US tax code, back to, say, 1972, when the top tax bracket was 72% (no, I'm not making that up - under Ike, in the fifties, it was 90%) would be a good start.

    121:

    About planning... I refer you to Paul Krugman, In a column in the last month, he talked about this exact thing. A century ago, planning didn't work in the real world. Now, it does (can you say computers?).

    Proof: Walmart. Is gigantic, larges civilian employer in the US (> 1M)... and tell me that they don't use central planning.

    If you're a monopoly (i.e, the electric company), either reregulate them... or nationalize them.

    122:

    Note that in the US, in cities I've lived in or visited, the last 10 years, there's been an aggressive move to replace diesel busses with ones burning natural gas.

    123:

    Everything you're saying is, of course, garbage.

  • The oil and gas industry have huge subsidies - on prospecting, on production, etc, etc.
  • 20 years ago, it was $2M US to put a new wind turbine in. And there are more and more wind farms, because oh, I know it's so polluting to build a turbine (more than one for a petrochemical-burning generator, yep..), and then you have to pay for fuel for 20 years... um, well, nope.
  • The wind is always blowing, somewhere. And there's this thing called the power grid.
  • You'd be amazed at how little wind it takes to spin a turbine....
  • So go back to screwing the rest of us with your hedge fund betting, and stop spreading FUD.

    124:

    I have been ranting against the MBA since the early 80's (in fact, I was arguing with a professor who taught it at the U of P at a party in '83), and I'm clearly right. I don't care what they claim to teach, what 90% (who ruin the rep of all the rest...) do is to think that a software house is the same as a steel mill is the same as a farm is the same as a 7-11 (and let's not forget that workers are interchangeable, and experienced people expect too much money).

    Great example: Carly Fiorinna, who broke HP around the dot-com bubble.

    A dozen years ago or so, an old friend, who used to teach at Catholic colleges around the US, and who taught a course called "science for non-science majors" once, on a mailing list, went down the food chain of the majors that took that course. The next to the bottom, those that didn't get it, but didn't let that worry them, were the business majors.

    And the Malignant Carcinoma is a perfect example....

    125:

    Damn it, ok, already, ok. I'll d/l it from Project Gutenburg...

    126:

    Trolley buses?! You still have trolley buses?

    I'm jealous. Growing up, one ran right on the street outside of the block-long apartment building we lived in, in Philly. http://www.phillytrolley.org/IMAGES/tracklessindex3.jpg

    Btw, I was in Philly about a year and a half ago... and saw a Sight: the trolley that I took occasionally as a kid... and it was a PCC car... that had been retrofitted with a/c!

    PCC car (Presidentual Car Commission, under FDR, in the 30's.) https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRsqxY9HN8yocc9dB-RdFrae39m57IhLqzpCnJ5IcL0TgsmUUuSvQ

    127:

    They're back! (They were gone for almost five years in the 2000s.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Philadelphia

    "The production-series vehicles were delivered in 2008 and began to enter service in April, enabling a resumption of trolley bus service in Philadelphia after a nearly 5-year suspension. Trolley bus service resumed on routes 66 and 75 on April 14, 2008, and on route 59 the following day, but was initially limited to just one or two vehicles on each route, as new trolley buses gradually replaced the motor buses serving the routes over a period of several weeks.[11]"

    I'm really pleased that PCC cars are still in service, too.

    128:

    One of the main arguments of the "European war will never happen" crowd before WW1 was that European countries were too economically interdependent to be able to get away with having a war. Which was more or less true, it just turned out not to be a strong enough argument to stop people having one.

    After WW1 everything was all about shitting on Germany - ie. continuation of the war by other means, the economic equivalent of "bomb them back to the Stone Age". Which didn't work and it went hot again.

    After WW2 everyone more or less had been bombed back to the Stone Age. As well as the plain demonstration that it didn't work, no-one was in a condition to cope with the disadvantages to themselves that a repeat of economic warfare against Germany would bring. On the contrary, the conditions were favourable for doing the necessary rebuilding in such a way as to foster more economic interdependence - basically giving the pre-WW1 theory another shot but strengthening it and giving it a better chance of success. And this time, it worked.

    129:

    CharlesW:

    I think you have very rose-tinted spectacles if you think peace is still the primary vision of the EU (but I agree it was a great argument 30-40 years ago)

    I think you are making a standard mistake whose name I don't know the name of (someone must?).

    The mistake is basically this: following a seriies of disasters an expensive and elaborate mechanism is put in place to prevent them. Lo, the disasters stop happening. After long enough for people to forget (which time can vary a lot, but a few generations is usually the upper limit, people start to say 'oh look, those disasters don't happen any more but we still have this elaborate and expensive mechanism: let's wind that down'. And a few years later, the disasters start up again.

    This process rather famously happened in 2008: after the Wall Street crash people worked out that having investment and retail banks entangled was a really bad idea, so things like Glass-Steagall happened to prevent this. Half a century later people started to forget why this was done (and of course financial institutions campaigned vigorously against it), and it either got repealed or effectively got repealed. And then 2008.

    I suggest that the EU is just such an elaborate and expensive mechanism.

    Indeed I think the EU is just one example of the mechanisms which were put in place after the second war to stop things like that happening again. The people who can remember why they were put in place are now either very old or dead, and anyway not active in governments and we are, collectively, forgetting as a result. There isn't some kind of rule that says liberal democracies can't be taken over by very nasty groups indeed, and indeed that is happening. Similarly there is no rule that says large-scale wars can no longer happen: they only haven't happened yet.

    Brexit is, in part, the UK forgetting the second war.

    (I suspect that some of the frankly neo-nazi stuff is also due to this: thirty years ago there were people in givernment who could remember what the nazis did, and they were really scared of that happening again. Now it seems to a lot of people just like a bit of clownery: 'these people marching and shouting racist slogans can't do anything really bad, can they, because nothing really bad can happen any more, that's all stuff our great grandparents dealt with'. Well, yes, they can, and yes, it can.)

    130:

    So go back to screwing the rest of us... I'll add that the spreading of nihilistic gloom porn is ... irritating. Particularly if it is motivated by greed, e.g. the Fossil Fuel extraction interests actively seeking permanent (well, a decade or two, if they're lucky) power in the US (and elsewhere). BTW to E.G.A.@70: (while the USA / Saud / RU fuck everyone in Poland). Add Kuwait to the that list[0]. (3 is more your style but still.)

    Wouldn't hurt for gloomists to study some of the existing literature, which people have linked often here. For instance, Carbon lock-in: types, causes, and policy implications (ResearchGate, 2016) and some of the 2496 papers citing this classic (scholar.google.com): Understanding carbon lock-in (GC Unruh 2000)

    E.G.A.@76: A Mysterious Seismic Wave... [Checks details for event, and notes.] Yup.

    E.G.A I admit to be thoroughly impressed that an old name of yours called the US passport for trans people thing (manifest as birth gender on new passports) in advance by 2 years. (e.g. here). Don't know if it was frontrunning or deep awareness. I reviewed some of the posts from that time just in case. (And sure I've seen plenty of posts here that look like actually front running, but don't talk about it.)

    [0]U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait Block Endorsement Of Global Warming Study (10 Dec 2018)

    131:

    That there are large companies which plan has nothing to do with the economy being planned, unless those companies become monopolies.

    132:

    Elon Musk is an arsehole who shits on his workers while thinking he's it and relying on the inability of SF fans to distinguish between fact and fiction to make other people think he's it too.

    Yes, a huge massive rocket that can land itself on its tail like taking off in reverse is cool, in that so many SF stories in the post-war years featured rockets just like it. But as far as I'm concerned they can stay there. We don't need them (I don't count the possibility of making even more money by people who already have vastly more than is even useful to have as a "need"), and the huge massive amounts of energy they get through is much better got through somewhere that only fictional characters have to worry about where it comes from.

    "Hyperloop" - again that's a very old idea, and the main reason nobody's actually done it is that it's also a pointlessly bad idea. Massively expensive infrastructure that must be a maintenance nightmare as well as consuming gobs of energy just to keep itself in a usable condition, for a hugely inflexible transport system that's completely incompatible with anything else on a much more fundamental level than, say, the incompatibility of rail and road, but you get people not noticing the problems because COR ISN'T IT WHIZZY I READ A BOOK ONCE THAT HAD ONE OF THEM. (It reminds me a bit of the "atmospheric traction" idea.)

    Batteries - Musk hasn't done anything about batteries except use a lot of them. Improvements in what's available are down to the Chinese/Japanese/Korean production engineers and factories. Multi-cell battery management? Do me a favour - that's another ancient thing that's been around for longer than he has. He certainly didn't invent it and I didn't realise until just now that people thought he did.

    133:

    Actually, I have read the Wealth of Nations. I read Marx's Das Kapital first, and the first thing that struck me was how similar much of what he had to say was to the stuff in Marx's book. The two of them disagreed on many things of course, but his way of thinking was far closer to Marx's than any of our current "neoclassical" math obsessed economists who all made such fools of themselves in 2008. Economics without Smith and Marx's labor theory of value is like preCopernican astronomy. All brilliantly calculated epicycles all dead wrong.

    134:

    tfb: But the world has moved on in so many ways in the last 30-40 years:

    Globalisation has happened, the internet has arrived etc etc: the danger now is not a war between France and Germany but a war (physical or economic or cyber) between the EU and Russia, or the EU and China, or the EU and the USA, or ...

    There are 2 perfectly respectable sides to this argument: you can want to be part of a "Greater/Fortress Europe" in order to be able to stand up against the other economic/military superpowers, or you can want not to be part of those conflicts and be more tolerant of other powers successes.

    But the idea that the driving force of the EU is peace is well past its sell-by date.

    135:

    "Clownery" - yes, I rather agree with you there. I think also Hollywood and its kin are a fair bit to blame, for finding the Nazis such a convenient villain that they became cliched to the point of almost being comical. And of course they always lost and you always knew they would from the moment they first came on screen.

    136:

    Actually, we aren't doomed, all we need is worldwide revolution against capitalism, and then human beings instead of Smith's economic laws (most of which are valid) in charge of the destiny of human race, so then if we don't screw everything up survival is better than possible. And given that lately every other country not superrich tends to go through revolution or civil war or something every decade or two, and that the superrich countries are getting less rich by the day, it's really quite possible if done right. As for Mr. Smoke & Mirrors Elon Musk, I guess you haven't been following the news lately? His little empire is falling apart, despite him running his electric car plants in a way that would almost make Amazon blush (well, maybe not, given that the assembly line workers aren't required to wear rollerskates yet). Sure he could make lots of money selling batteries for his Tesla coalburners (where do you think the electricity comes from?), what with the government subsidies. As for hydro, sure, except that they have practically run out of dammable rivers, and dams are indeed incredibly destructive environmentally in every way other than global warming (you only just found out about that lately?) Solar power is fine for heating your home, unless you live in a country like, say, England where it tends to be overcast a lot. Modern batteries are fine for your car, not so fine for maintaining an electric power grid in a major city or industrial area. The myth that the next battery to come along will be able to do that kind of job is on a level with the cold fusion excitement under the late Ronald Reagan, remember that?

    137:

    The real problem with nuclear power isn't meltdowns, it's that nuclear plants are just too expensive. Back when world capitalism was healthier, it was possible for industrialists, sometimes even without government support, to look to the future and build 'em. Due to Marx's falling rate of profit due to rising organic composition of capital (if you don't know what that is look it up) as the world economy heads down the tubes it just ain't gonna happen. The most modern and most efficient form of nuclear reactors, which might even be affordable, is breeder reactors, which are resisted as anybody with a breeder reactor also has nukes if they want them. It would be a terrible shame of course if the bulk of the nuclear weapons in the world were no longer in the hands of that stable genius Donald Trump...

    138:

    Ah, you've really drunk the official mainstream koolaid on that one! The loans from German banks went together with orders that they had to be spent on what the Fourth Reich, pardon me the EU, wanted them to be spent on. Especially tanks and planes, which is why Greece has one of the largest and most irrelevant militaries in Europe (except for using against popular insurgency). Naturally governmental ineptitude played a big role here, but it was a macro version of what happened in America in 2008, when literally millions of Americans lost their homes because of "subprime mortgages" and other clever financial tools the banksters had inveigled them to take on.

    139:

    Now that's the garbage I was looking for! I was studying wind turbines in university for one of my works, so I found out a lot about them.

    1. The oil and gas industry have huge subsidies - on prospecting, on production, etc, etc. They are also taxed as hell, on average. Once you get the well going, it profits you beyond anything you can imagine - that's one reason US is so attracted to different oil kingdoms.

    2. 20 years ago, it was $2M US to put a new wind turbine in. And there are more and more wind farms, because oh, I know it's so polluting to build a turbine (more than one for a petrochemical-burning generator, yep..), and then you have to pay for fuel for 20 years... um, well, nope. Putting up 1 MW turbine or 1 MW solar plant nowadays costs about. One. Million. Dollars. At best, that is. Comparable diesel generator costs 10 times less, sometimes +-50%. And if you want to ship it somewhere else so you do not have to bring all that fuel with you, be ready to ship a lot.

    3. The wind is always blowing, somewhere. And there's this thing called the power grid. There's a thing called maneuvering power. It costs money, and you need a lot of it to cover up load decrease in supply and increase in demand. Or you can just put another diesel generator nearby, like most of the people do. It is cheaper and everybody will try to ignore it is there. http://tass.com/economy/991802

    4. You'd be amazed at how little wind it takes to spin a turbine.... It takes a little to keep the turbine spinning, but it takes a lot to produce power with it. You can fully expect the turbine to reach peak power for 5-10% of the time, while the average loading will be about 30-40% at best.

    Anyway, if you want to have a wind or solar farm, you better have a good reason to have it, like strong northern winds in the arctic or strong sun in the desert. Not the other way around.

    Trolley buses?! You still have trolley buses? Yes, a lot of them. They start up like beasts, they have service life two times the regular bus, do not have huge batteries and are absolutely clean. We've had some issues with town council in Moscow trying to get rid of them, but so far they did not really do much, and instead actually put some electrical buses with accumulators.

    140:

    Designed by whom? America of course, over a certain amount of European resistance. The partial economic unification of Europe by the Nazis at pistol point, for the purpose of bleeding Europe dry, got replaced by the velvet glove (over the iron fist) of American rule, to get Europe going again so that all those GM and Ford plants in Europe could make money. (The "economic miracle" was due to the economic balkanization of Europe before WWII being Europe's biggest economic problem). All lubricated by the fear of the European ruling classes for the Soviet menace. The EEC and then the EU were simply the economic counterpart of NATO, whose purpose was not peace between the Europeans, something hardly difficult to maintain in the aftermath of WWII, but war against the Soviet Union. Which only didn't happen because the Soviets had too many nukes to make it a practical idea, so instead you had Korea, Vietnam etc. Not having tariff barriers between European countries is a good idea, but you don't need the EU and it's anti-labor anti-socialist rules for that, all you need is free trade agreements with no additional nasty clauses. Like the USA has with Canada. (NAFTA is very bad news for Mexico, but is harmless for Canada).

    141:

    Actually, we aren't doomed, all we need is worldwide revolution against capitalism This is actually most difficult part of the plan, really. Everything else is trivially(with supercomputers, anyway) calculable. First problem is that we don't have a pristine clean capitalism anymore, and there's all too many forms of it here. There's also a lot of people who believe they do not need any changes of that magnitude at any point of the future, because their system is good enough already. They would rather burn down half of the world and enslave the rest of it rather than let somebody to destroy their perfect future. And the second problem is that we don't really know how to run the world after we get rid of those pesky capitalist - the economic system has to be changed fundamentally to provide we don't return back to the previous state of affairs.

    The real problem with nuclear power isn't meltdowns, it's that nuclear plants are just too expensive. The safety is expensive, really. Also, the capital investment is really big, so only a handful of countries can keep up with the standards to it. With all the lessons we learned, the price is increased substantially, but the safety is normally redundant to absurd degree.

    142:

    Stalin was a mass murderer, and the Soviet model totally lacked what can make a centralized planning model workable over the longterm, namely democracy. As some right wing economist whose name I can never remember pointed out more than half a century ago, it is simply impossible for a small group of clever planners in a government office to plan out an entire economy. Without input from below by the workers in the factories (or whatever nowadays) and the consumers in the market place, you get the sort of things that happened with the Soviet economy. Which of course with all its problems was a vast improvement over the free market capitalism forced down ex-Soviet throats in the Nineties, the death toll from which was also in the millions. BTW, the Soviet archives are pretty wide open and the number of people killed by Stalin and his underlings is now quite well known, a bit less than two million. Bad enough without inflating the figures. And quite comparable from the death toll from things the CIA has done, notably the CIA orchestrated bloodbath in Indonesia in 1965, the death toll from which, and here I'm talking about actual executions, is not established but definitely over the million mark. And then of course Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya... More millions died due to Stalinist economic ineptitude, notably in Ukraine during the great famine, but IMF blunderings in Africa created similar death tolls. And Churchill's decision to starve India during WWII to punish Indians for wanting independence. And then there was Bill Clinton's bright idea of unleashing Rwanda's Kagame into the Congo to get revenge for what happened in his country on the refugees who fled and let him grab the natural resources. The usual death toll listed for that is six million, not because anyone has counted, but simply because that's the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust, and what happened to the Congo is considered more or less equivalent by those few Westerners who've paid much attention.

    143:

    And then there was Bill Clinton's bright idea of unleashing Rwanda's Kagame into the Congo to get revenge for what happened in his country on the refugees who fled and let him grab the natural resources. The usual death toll listed for that is six million, not because anyone has counted, but simply because that's the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust, and what happened to the Congo is considered more or less equivalent by those few Westerners who've paid much attention.

    @Host / Mod - don't delete this post.

    144:
    the Fourth Reich, pardon me the EU

    OK, I think all useful conversation is now done.

    145:

    Yes, you're right, that is exactly the hard part. But then, like the song says, I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden. IMHO, that's where the efforts of those who want to save the planet and its sometimes fairly intelligent inhabitants should be directed.

    146:

    nuclear power ... The safety is expensive ... the safety is normally redundant to absurd degree.

    Depends on how you look at it. If you include the full cost of suppressing the leaks from Chernobyl (lots of foreign aid there, IIRC), there's not much money difference between the absurdly safe ones and the cheaply built, cheaply operated ones. Even when you spread that over the whole USSR nuclear generation system.

    The secondary cost, lives lost and so on, are obviously lower for the absurdly safe ones, but Russia has a long history of feeding bodies into the fire so I think we could argue that they don't regard those costs as significant. It was only when the wind blew west that there was a problem. But then look at Fukushima and even the Japanese come across as pretty casual about the whole thing, at least until the shit hit the fan and their wider population got upset. Which makes me wonder just how safe the German reactors are. They also have a reputation for reliability and rule-following... and a big group of local anti-nuclear people who are presumably wondering the same thing.

    Having hung round with some of the anti-nuclear nutters in Australia, a lot of their concerns are no more reasonable than the anti-vaxxers or neo-Nazis. But there are also a lot of very reasonable anti-nuclear types, from economists like John Quiggin who just think it's too expensive, to the open government fans who don't trust the long history of almost-covered-up problems, to a few who can thing longer term who worry about the high level waste.

    147:

    For Greg / Het.

    Please grep / search out these two stories:

    1 MIT student paper hacked, humerus results therein 2 Harvard buys CA aquifer rights

    You will understand the humor a lot better once you've eaten those pieces of the puzzle. This works a lot better when we're dealing with not your fucking species.

    And yes: if you think we really thing that Ecologists, MIT wunderkinds etc are that dumb, well. Welcome to the Suck.

    148:

    Your arguments just sound so similar to the ones people made about financial deregulation that I can't take them seriously.

    So, I think you're badly (and in fact dangerously) wrong, but I also don't think this is the right forum for an argument about it (this isn't meant to be rude, I just don't think we're likely to sort anything out here).

    149:

    Yeah, I suppose that was a little over the top on my part. Sorry.

    150:

    @Bill. Be with you in moment.

    Sooooo, ok, let's do this dance. We both know what we're not, and human it ain't.

    JH. What's your real name then, boy?

    Before we start, please be aware that this IP is from Hungary, so we might be taking the piss on a meta-level for the spooks before we've even started.

    But: You Had My Curiosity, Now You Have My Attention

    And then there was Bill Clinton's bright idea of unleashing Rwanda's Kagame into the Congo to get revenge for what happened in his country on the refugees who fled and let him grab the natural resources. The usual death toll listed for that is six million, not because anyone has counted, but simply because that's the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust, and what happened to the Congo is considered more or less equivalent by those few Westerners who've paid much attention.

    Now that's a cutey-pie. Your translation broke down in the first sentence because you missed some of the copy/paste out. Probably bad wet-ware, we've heard your Hosts are getting Dementia right proper fast like now due to... War.

    Now then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko

    And, of course, the two modern Congo wars took around 8 million lives. Which "out-ranks" the Holocaust, if we're doing numerology. Which isn't what it's about.

    But... Come now.

    I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

    Holocausts are about the erasure of Memory, Names and Minds.

    What's my real name, JH?

    151:

    Seems there are a bunch of different definitions of capitalism and socialism being tossed around. Instead, how about spelling out which parts of society have what types of authority, power, responsibility, costs to bear, etc. (Might cool down some of the heated rhetoric and generate ideas/solutions.)

    152:

    JH wants a reckoning.

    She's not quite sure about what, yet, she's only just woken up.

    Ah, such naivete. Of course

    There is only one test: What. Is. My. Name.

    153:

    I already knew about the Harvard aquifer buy, since it made the local papers. As Schwarznegger once said, "Whiskey's For Drinking, Water's for Fighting Over."

    Also, I guess that you think some people are asuras? Or would that be pretas?

    154:

    ...waits for JH. It will not come.

    As humor goes, the 2nd non-coming of J-H-"ffs that was a shitty Cut/paste Holocaust denial joke" is a lame joke, but at least you tried.

    [Note: Most Americans do not understand Waiting For Godot: Russians understand it implicitly]

    Wandering, wandering...

    TL;DR - cute joke. Much "Naivety".

    Also, I guess that you think some people are asuras? Or would that be pretas?

    Hmm.

    "I'm not fucking a Cat"

    What you fucking summoned is a bit beyond the old Zuul bullshit.

    155:

    _Moz_ @ 64: But in happy news I found a cover of a Jesus and Mary Chain song by Sandie Shaw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1UH6HjLGW8

    I can't find the original, or the lyrics or the original/cover with lyrics.

    156:

    @JH "I guess you haven't been following the news lately? His little empire is falling apart..."

    Do you have proof for this assertion? I know he smoked pot once, but that's not adequate proof

    "Tesla coalburners (where do you think the electricity comes from?)" Natural gas. Haven't you been following the news lately? Coal's falling apart. There's a reason coal country went for Trump overwhelmingly. In addition, the US may become a natural gas exporter.

    Oh, and another thing. I'm not a libertarian, so I don't view subsidies as a bad thing. Please justify why you think they're bad?

    @Pigeon "But as far as I'm concerned they can stay there. We don't need them (I don't count the possibility of making even more money by people who already have vastly more than is even useful to have as a "need")..."

    I and a majority of Americans disagree with you. I have no problem with rich people who have more money than sense paying money for these rockets (as opposed to another yacht or a golden house).

    157:

    GMT (Host Time): 01.18. And there we have it.

    Had an hour, couldn't step up, did fuck all.

    You fucked it. Totally did a May. "Nebulous" in your convictions. The great white herald of rebellion, just utterly fucked it.

    ~

    Problem is.

    We're not your Abrahamic "Devil".

    "Gave it all up for a wank".

    Yeah.

    Totally sounds correct mate.

    Like Doctors masturbating women over their hysteria.

    Or veils.

    Yep.

    You totally smashed it out of the park.

    A=A

    A=/=A

    You totally fucking did it.

    Polite Notice: Your Minds will not survive this Weapon.

    p.s.

    {Subject} did it fucking handicapped to take the piss.

    158:

    I don't have numbers, just anecdotes. A lot of older Romanians of my acquaintance (who lived through Caucescu) blame the death toll of the 90s on the Communists. "It's the communists that left our country in such a bad state that hundreds of thousands of Romanians died". They are almost unanimously glad to be rid of it. The views of the younger generation are more mixed (I don't care; it's ancient history being the predominant one).

    159:

    Ironically the guy most against communism and most pro-American is a relative who served in Securitate (the Romanian KGB).

    160:

    Greg Tingey @ 104: You don't like Liberal Dermocracy, do you?

    From my point of view, the problem with "Liberal Democracy" is how illiberal it becomes once the capitalists get hold of it.

    161:

    Greg Tingey @ 104: You don't like Liberal Dermocracy, do you?

    JBS @ 160: From my point of view, the problem with "Liberal Democracy" is how illiberal it becomes once the capitalists get hold of it

    Actually, it's not just the "capitalists" ... It's all of the "ists" & "isms"; left, right and center. All political and moral philosophies - even "Liberal Democracy" - eventually seem to devolve into a society that operates for the benefit of some core elite and screw everybody else.

    If I ever figure out how to prevent that happening, I'll let y'all know ... but don't hold your breath waiting.

    162:

    Perhaps this is something hardwired into our species? We're hairless apes, after all

    163:

    Serene Randomness @ 119: One quick note.

    I'm still trying to figure out whether I'd rig either the Trans-Siberian Railroad or the US Great Plains tracks to run on line electricity (third rail)

    Third rail won't work for either one. Too many long stretches where it would be impossible to protect the third rail from ignorant people and protect ignorant people from the third rail. Overhead lines are the way to go.

    U.S. trans-continental railroads gripe me anyway. Every one of them was a swindle. The routes were built on "government" land (essentially stolen from the indigenous people) with subsidized bonds. The "entrepreneurs" who built them amassed unconscionable fortunes while defaulting on their debts to the government & bankrupting investors. The resulting consolidation into near monopoly left them owning the rails they neither built, nor paid for and on top of that they're responsible for the outrageous notion that corporations are people.

    164:

    Ah, you've really drunk the official mainstream koolaid on that one! The loans from German banks went together with orders that they had to be spent on what the Fourth Reich, pardon me the EU, wanted them to be spent on. Especially tanks and planes, which is why Greece has one of the largest and most irrelevant militaries in Europe (except for using against popular insurgency).

    It’s amusing that you accuse others of being gullible, while apparently being quite ignorant of history and current affairs...

    The reason that Greece chose the “large conscript Army” is history - they’ve fought two world wars within their own borders, they’ve been invaded and occupied (go and look up “Ohi Day”). This was followed by a vicious civil war. Now step forward into the 1960s/70s, add a military coup. Don’t forget that Greece, by then, is the vulnerable country on NATO’s southern flank - land borders with Bulgaria.

    And above all, note that the Warsaw Pact is only “the opponent”. You’re forgetting “the enemy”, which is Turkey (we lived in Bulgaria during the 1974 Cyprus thing; Greek tank columns were facing east, not north).

    The Greek military is apparently as efficient as the rest of Greek society... but note, the Greek tanks and planes weren’t bought with EU funds from EU nations; those F-86, F-104, F-16 were bought from the USA through FMS. When the M60s wore out, they bought some second-hand Leopards as replacements from Dutch and German stocks.

    So you’re... somewhat incorrect.

    165:

    whitroth @ 124: I have been ranting against the MBA since the early 80's (in fact, I was arguing with a professor who taught it at the U of P at a party in '83), and I'm clearly *right*. I don't care what they *claim* to teach, what 90% (who ruin the rep of all the rest...) do is to think that a software house is the same as a steel mill is the same as a farm is the same as a 7-11 (and let's not forget that workers are interchangeable, and experienced people expect too much money).

    Don't forget "spherical cows in a vacuum".

    166:

    JH @ 133: Actually, I have read the Wealth of Nations. I read Marx's Das Kapital first, and the first thing that struck me was how similar much of what he had to say was to the stuff in Marx's book.

    Since Adam Smith died some 28 years before Karl Marx was born, I don't think it's really appropriate to imply Adam Smith plagiarized his ideas from Marx.

    167:

    Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGowXmXqPJI (has lyrics in description)

    https://genius.com/The-jesus-and-mary-chain-about-you-lyrics

    [Verse] I...can see That you...and me Live our lives in the pouring rain And the raindrops beat out of time to our refrain And you...and me Will win...you'll see People die in their living rooms But they do not need this God almighty gloom

    [Outro] There's something warm about the rain There's something warm There's something warm There's something warm in everything I know there's something good There's something good About you About you About you I know there's something warm There's something warm There's something warm Good about you

    168:

    It’s a long time since I read any, perhaps I should revisit, but I had an understanding that the evidence or consensus is that Marx read Smith but not, perhaps, Ricardo. However I always thought Marx’s key insight was, if not the invention of macro, the linkage of macro as a theory about a system with the contemporary development of thermodynamics and the isomorphism around entropy. Not clear whether Marx read Maxwell (who was around a decade younger?), but I humbly suggest that is a more interesting question than a linkage with Smith.

    OTOH the labour theory of value was part of the common understanding by then, maybe not old but certainly widely shared.

    169:

    Trolley buses ( @ 126 127 ) Like THESE? - I remember these – replaced by diesel buses yuck.

    Tfb @ 129 that's all stuff our great grandparents dealt with'. Well, yes, they can, and yes, it can A point-blank refusal to learn from history – which ( basically ) isn’t taught any more, which doesn’t help.

    JH @ 138 ( I note that others have picked up on your dangerous delusion, but here’s my 2d-worth ) the Fourth Reich, pardon me the EU Oh do FUCK RIGHT OFF – this is parroting the most rabid of the “brexiteers” so-called arguments, which are simply a strung-together collection of (very plausible) lies. Along with the EU and it's anti-labour anti-socialist rules Oh yeah, that’s why the tory right want out of the EU, so they can institute “better” terms & working conditions for their slavesstaff ….

    JBS @ 161 Now there you have a point … but do be careful, otherwise you will turn into a christian or muslim or something equally horrible, that wants to “reform” &/or “purify” humanity - & we know where that one leads.

    170:

    ARRRGGHHH! NOE!

    [ "Federal Judge" rules Obamacare "unconstitootial" - oh SHIT ]

    171:

    "Marx read Smith but not, perhaps, Ricardo"

    Have a look at

    site:www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works ricardo

    Marx was very well read.

    BTW, a quick search of the same archive turns up nothing for Marx on Maxwell, but there's a mss by Engels on the Dialectics of Nature where Maxwell makes multiple appearances:

    https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/

    The table of contents is fun and I can't resist pasting it in:

    Preface, by J. B. S. Haldane Introduction Dialectics Basic Form of Motion The Measure of Motion - Work Heat Electricity Tidal Friction, Kant and Thomson - Tait on the Rotation of the Earth and Lunar Attraction The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man Natural Science and the Spirit World

    172:

    How did the Tory party become so inept?

    In general terms - the force of history, if you will - you're right.

    But there are specific problems in the selection of MP's in play, some of which apply to the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties too. I'll give you two of them: the 'Beige Party' effect, and patronage.

    Another Beige in a Diary

    All major Parliamentary parties have a centralised selection system, intended to weed out dangerous nutters. It's somewhat weaker in the Conservative Party - Constituency Associations have a surprising amount of power here and some of them are a little odd - but the effect is that a central censor selects for conformity, obedience, and 'presentability' in media campaigns directed at the middle classes.

    In short: 'Safe' candidates.

    The outcome, of course, is a cohort of presentable and photogenic media-savvy candidates with impressive but unexciting CV's...

    Dear Diarrhoea...

    ...Who are skilful liars concealing sociopathic levels of ambition and an utterly amoral, transactional, view of policy and principles.

    If it plays well with the focus groups and the media patron, or it's personally profitable but palatable (or air-brushable) to the electorate, than that's what the Beige candidate passionately 'believes' in today.

    No matter what 'that' actually is. And it doesn't really matter, because it'll be another 'that' next month, or next year, and the one after.

    Despite being clever - or at least, quite skilful at media - such people are actually rather dim. They don't think long-term and they definitely don't think of consequences because it is inconceivable to them that they will ever suffer any.

    They are, without exception, economically illiterate; and, sometimes, in the worst possible way: miseducation in neoliberal economic dogma.

    A specific source of their current stupidity - or cleverness, as it may seem to them - is the 'Alton' effect: a parliamentary constituency where the margin of victory (or defeat, in Alton) is always and exactly the size of the vote secured by one or other right-wing 'fringe' party.

    These days, that fringe party is UKIP, but there's a long history of them. In general terms, those votes matter far more than appealing to the bovine placidity of the middle class - regarded with contempt, as cattle consuming their opinions from mass media - who were always going to vote for the same party anyway. Or so the Beige politician believes, and the infallible focus groups confirm it.

    Appealing to those fringe party voters leads to taking some odd, or damaging, or ever-such-a-little-bit-racist positions: and the 'odd' ones are generally very, very stupid.

    These positions become very, very passionate 'beliefs' indeed if they get regular airtime on the BBC; and you get to be the darling of Daily Mail if you support them publicly. You might even get to be on UKIP-TV, too!

    Or visit Washington, for a personal briefing by Mr Bannon (Which party was I talking about? Never mind. It's Beige)

    So: the Beige Party. You've written about this, and I'd appreciate it if you reposted the link.

    The bit you didn't pick up on, way back then, was the ineptitude: but it follows naturally from following an agenda you don't 'own' rather than setting out to lead the media. There's no strategy, just opportunism, and you eventually use up the good opportunities and end up chasing the bad ones.

    And it follows, inevitably, from recruiting a party of socipathic liars, that they are fundamentally incapable of loyalty and cannot form coherent and effective factions.

    Take a sideways look at the ERG: well-funded and with unlimited access to the media, persistent and disruptive - but utterly incapable of forcing a leadership election, and far, far short of being a credible faction capable of nominating a candidate for Party Leader and PM.

    'Inept' fits them far too well. They have a common banner but no common cause, and their 'cooperation' is that of vultures on a carcass.

    It follows, also, that the patronage networks of the Old Conservative party do not work for a beige politician: who would make a protégé of someone so dangerously disloyal and ungrateful?

    The only current example of a protégée that I can point to is Amber Rudd; and that's a terrible example.

    The patronage networks do, however, work for...

    The other type of inept Conservative: Posh Berks

    The sort of chap who's the Right Sort Of Chap, with the right sort of tie, with the right sort of friends, can still be a shoe-in for the right Constituency Association.

    Such men are urbane, highly skilled at networking, and often rather cunning: but they tend not to have been unduly challenged in their privileged lives, and are generally rather dim.

    The bright ones went into banking, and became billionaires: it's by far the smartest way to deploy the social capital.

    The less-bright ones went into PR and lobbying, and murky areas of business where contacts and privilege matter more than intelligence and ability; and the limit-case of high social capital and low intelligence is...

    ...Becoming a posh Conservative MP.

    Some of these men have progressed through life on a golden escalator of effortless privelege that has failed to challenge their weaknesses - and, often, failed to expose and eliminate dangerous character flaws - producing powerful and influentual politicians with (say) the flaws of narcissism and compulsive lying, baked into the confidence of a dangerous fool who never, ever suffers any personal consequences for his utterances and his actions.

    Most of these are, of course, no worse than mediocre. But a mediocrity promoted beyond their intelligence into a position of real power can be very damaging.

    The worst of it is that their ineptitude - and, all too often, their delusions - are praised by their like-minded colleagues.

    And, of course, by the media.

    And there, right there, is the keystone of this unedifying edifice of monumental ineptitude: their media are praising and promoting the most inept among them.

    173:

    As some right wing economist whose name I can never remember pointed out more than half a century ago, it is simply impossible for a small group of clever planners in a government office to plan out an entire economy.

    You're thinking of Ludwig von Mises, Freidrich Hayek, and the economic calculation problem. It's very specifically a critique of central planning, and has no bearing on whether distributed systems can get the job done; their work also predates modern algorithmics and is, arguably, incorrect.

    See also Project Cybersyn for an account of an early 1970s attempt to design a real-time computerized central planning system in Chile—it showed promise, but a certain Alfredo Pinochet interrupted it at gunpoint.

    174:

    Noted.

    Yellow Card to JH: any attempt to use the term "Fourth Reich" to any polity not actually run by goose-stepping nazis with death camps will result in a perma-ban.

    (Hint: am an EU citizen, and proud of it. Yes, the EU has some very major flaws. But it also has some really useful benefits, and it's no less amenable to incremental repairs and improvements than any other half-billion-populous superpower. Suggesting it's a murderous despotism is highly inappropriate, until you can point to the existence of a similar sized polity that's doing better—and the USA ain't it.)

    175:

    Huge chunks of this applies to the US system, as well. IMHO the area where this applies the most is the media. There is a vast group of know-nothings who never suffer even when their advice leads to disaster.

    176:

    For intermittency, there is the daily cycle, the few daily cycle, and the seasonal cycle. The daily cycle and the few daily cycle can probably be handled with currently conceivable storage technologies. The seasonal cycle is probably better handled with overcapacity. The cost for solar farms is becoming comparable. And, in countries with moderately poor infrastructure, I'm not sure that solar is actually less reliable.

    Now, I'm also not sure that, from an environmental impact perspective, nuclear isn't preferable. Running a civilization off of solar requires overcapacity, which requires a fairly large 'life-unfriendly' footprint. Not a gigantic footprint, just fairly large. It is preferable from a civilizational perspective - nice fixed power output and plenty of fuel.

    For nuclear, the burden of over-regulation probably exceeds other costs. (Eg, in terms of construction costs, for the US, they went from 650 / kilowatt to 11,000 per kilowatt.) It seems kind of regrettable that environmentalists seem to be against nuclear for mostly tribal reasons.

    Now, some might make the argument that preventing the release of nuclear materials is important - but that falls a bit hollow considering that coal plants have historically released significantly higher doses. I'd be really amused if fossil fuels were required to beat nuclear's record for radioactive emissions / kWHr.

    Still, there's a real point about the costs of renewables. From the perspective of someone lucky enough to be reasonably well off in a first-world country - it really does make sense to reduce the damage we're doing to this planet. On the other hand, from the perspective of someone living on less than 10 USD per day (median world income ~2013), I'd be inclined to offer to drive a Tesla as soon as you gave me one...note that leased or lent didn't come up. And sure, I'd be glad to let you pay extra for my solar power.

    That said, Tesla's point isn't to sell luxury automobiles - it is to develop the technology sufficiently so that everyone with a car can afford it. In places like SK, owing to the horrendous fuel taxes, they already make economic sense. (Albeit, this is an artificial incentive...) In the US, not so much. (If you're looking at a new car, then you're already not showing economic sense...) It seems likely that electric cars are fundamentally a bit cheaper than internal combustion engines - engines are a lot more complex than electric motors...they're just 30-40 years behind in manufacturing...and already not that far from parity...so...yep...there's a reason many car companies are working on R&D.

    177:

    Holocausts are about the erasure of Memory, Names and Minds.

    "Who now remembers the Armenians?" — Adolf Hitler.

    (Yet another reason for not lightening up on Erdogan and Turkish genocide denialism, but hey.)

    178:
    the economic calculation problem

    I thought that the essence of that problem was that there was no way to sort out the various desires of "consumers" (whether they were people wanting shoes and cheese, or industrialists wanting iron ore and bauxite) unless you had some sort of pricing model, and people had to decide what they wanted more based on their limited number of "tokens" available to allocate to their choices. And this is the crux of the "free market".

    (IIRC, just asking them doesn't work out well enough, because sometimes someone's true relative desires aren't surfaced until they have to make a choice under limits. Distributed computing is just a red herring here - there's no accurate model or algorithm to compute from.)

    (Now, the method by which you allocate those limited number of tokens, based upon the relative values of labor, "management", "capital", etc. - that's a completely different problem.)

    179:

    Sort-of.

    The problem is, Mises and Hayek assumed there could be no purely internal demand-signaling mechanism within a planning system; that you had to go with money, or a pure command-driven system.

    In the pre-computer age, it would be prohibitively time-consuming to have managers bid using some notional points system to indicate how urgently they needed access to a resource, so this was a reasonable assumption. But today …? We can conceive of a planning system with an internal currency analog and complex collation of values/expenses, because computing power is ridiculously cheap. We can also conceive of such virtual currencies having mechanisms for taking account of externalities, such as the cost of environmental pollution. Or for weighting public popularity/unpopularity (tanks are less useful to the public than butter: maybe the Defense Ministry's virtual dollars—for purchasing power—should run at a floating exchange rate relative to consumer good virtual dollars, dictated by a metric for international instability?)

    180:

    ...Tesla coalburners (where do you think the electricity comes from?)

    This is complete bullshit. Did anyone think we'd complete all the pieces of a completely green/electric system at exactly the same time? We now have electric cars and (some) coal-burning electric plants. That's better than having no electric cars and (more) coal burning electric plants.

    Eventually we'll have electric cars and zero coal-burning plants. Then finally we'll have electric cars and ALL green electric plants. (or at worst, some version of nuclear that's safer and cheaper than the nuclear plants we have now.)

    181:

    JH was talking about which author he read first, not who wrote it first (which JH did not address at all.)

    182:

    Charlie Another common point between the (ultra?) leftists like Corbyn who hate the EU & the rightwing nutjobs who hate the EU is the language. "Fourth Reich" & "EUSSR" are the favoured mis-labellings - & are to be quite commonly seen, too.

    Yes, the EU has some very major flaws Which is why I was almost, quite closely, conned into voting "leave" ... but didn't in the end, because of foreign policy & trade problems re-asserting themselves in my thinking, as opposed to the extremely apparently-plausible propaganda of the leavers.

    a similar sized polity that's doing better Well, lets make a list shall we - requirement of what, the US size, approx 350-400 million? US - plainly not at present. EU - already discussed Russia - corrupt arbitrary & cruel, especially to small weak neigbours - also, possibly not big enough? ( Russia + Belarus = 154 million ) India - might have qualified 10-30 years back, but now the BJP are in charge is heading in the direction of religous fascism, to compete with various states' muslim fascism. Brazil ( 210 million ) - also just flipped to quasi-fascism, but may not last as such. China - you must be joking!

    @ 179 There are OTHER considerations when making purchases, though. "The Boss" has just decided that a really major supermaket chain can FUCK RIGHT OFF for a pre-ordered (delivered?) semi-bulk purchase, even though the goods are desired & at a reasonable price. Because fucking Sainsburys ( for it is they ) demand that you can't "log in as a guest" for such purchases, you MUST "register" & add all sorts of interesting details about yourself, before you are graciously permitted to buy their stuff at all. Be it noted that some other supermarkets will allow you to do this & thus have got our pre-ordering ( collect ourselves ) custom. Money is not the only "value" in such a transaction, by any manner of means.

    [ The economists' equivalent of a spherical cow, perhaps? ]

    183:

    I think the main value of the EU has been unexplored here. In not fighting for 70 years, there has been a wonderful reduction in the kind of thinking which runs, "The Italians/Germans/Spanish killed my father, so I will be happy to go to war with them."

    This is accompanied by an increase in the kind of thinking which runs, "My father worked for a Spanish company, drove a German car, and wore Italian shoes, why do I have arguments with any of those people?"

    Don't ever underestimate the power of complacent, happy people to keep you out of a war.

    184:

    Re: ' ... there was no way to sort out the various desires of "consumers"'

    You mean like marketing research which major corps have been using and refining since the 1940s? Plenty of ways of identifying niches and selling to them - well-known example is the auto sector which has approx. 100 different segments since about the 1970s. Anyways the number of segments is irrelevant/trivial, it's their relationships among themselves and with other stuff that matters. (And, as also demonstrated by the auto sector, individuals can belong to more than one market segment, i.e., own more than one vehicle - so this approach is not the be-all.)

    Price/token allocation pre-tests work only so-so because many people are unable to imagine how they would feel about something described in hypothetical scenarios. They'd also have to be able to guess at what the unknown other consequences might be. Frankly, this is where AI could help: track actual behavior, consequences and satisfaction and from that figure out what the real key inter-dependencies (and weightings) are as well as lag times between action-effect-reaction (satisfaction), identify best/worst combos, etc.

    185:

    Greg Tingey @ 169: => JBS @ 161
    Now there you have a point … but do be careful, otherwise you will turn into a christian or muslim or something equally horrible, that wants to “reform” &/or “purify” humanity - & we know where that one leads.

    BTDT-GTTS ... that's why the last paragraph suggests NOT looking to me for the ANSWER!!! The hardest lesson I learned in life is I ain't got it.

    There was a time in life when I imagined I did. Of course, I was so much older then ....

    Amazing that was more twenty-five years ago.

    I do however try to remain optimistic. Every day I wake up, I think this might finally be the day I find a clue ... and if not, at least I have coffee.

    186:

    Greg Tingey @ 170: ARRRGGHHH! NOE!

    [ "Federal Judge" rules Obamacare "unconstitootial" - oh SHIT ]

    Anyone who's been half paying attention knew that was only a matter of time.

    Still, the fat lady ain't sung yet ...

    Fifth Circuit might over-rule him yet, and if not it's going to end up all the way up to the Supreme Court again before it's all over.

    187:

    "The seasonal cycle is probably better handled with overcapacity."

    That is why solar power is such a boondoggle in the UK and, more generally, in all high latitude locations. To meet even 10% of the power usage in the winter (when the demand is greatest) needs the best part of 3,000 square miles of panels, using the average insolation. And the areas where the insolation is greatest (by a factor of 2-3) are the most densely occupied. If it meets only 1%, why not simply install a bit more of something more effective? You can handle small seasonal variation with overcapacity, but large variation has to be handled using some other method of generation.

    188:

    The Versailles Treaty at the end of WW1 is regarded my many as a major factor instigating the Germans to re-arm and start WWII in Europe (I personally have my doubts on a simplistic approach to that sort of thinking but that's not why I brought it up). Part of the Treaty's demands were a restitution fine imposed by the Allies on Germany of 5 billion gold marks (most of which was never actually paid since the Treaty became a dead letter by the early 1930s).

    That's an impressive figure, why was the restitution set at that amount? Well, when Prussia defeated France back in the War of 1871, another of those "invading armies crossing the Rhine" wars, the amount the victorious Prussians claimed (and received) as restitution was... aww, you guessed it! 5 billion gold marks!

    That's an impressive figure, why was the restitution set at that amount? Well, when Napoleon defeated Prussia back in the early 1800s after crossing the Rhine he claimed (and received) as restitution the sum of... Surprise! Yes, 5 billion gold marks!

    That's how factional Europe used to be, as bad as the Balkans with ten times the fighting manpower and longer memories. It was nice to grow up in a Europe that's stopped doing that sort of thing.

    189:

    Sorry, that quoted line was from Heteromeles.

    I'm the one who pointed out the Trans-Siberian was overhead line, and was just quoting in a reply.

    190:

    Actually, the simpler answer for solar and wind in larger polities is to use the grid to ship electricity around from where its surplus to where it's needed. This works in the US, maybe not so much in the UK, especially if Brexit happens and Spanish renewable electricity isn't available in Scotland.

    The problem with this 'shipping answer, as we're finding in California, is that the grid's proving to be a major source of huge wildfires.

    The current solution to that wildfire problem (at least for electric companies that have been found liable for huge fires) is to shut down the grid during high wind events in dangerous areas, and yes, the company I'm thinking of has by far the best meteorological monitoring grid in the area.

    That power outage in the middle of a hot wind event sucks for the customers, who fire up their petroleum-powered generators to keep their refrigerators running.

    The longer term solution for grid outages is the house battery, which currently costs about 8 times as much as a cheap generator, but isn't enough to run a whole house yet. The hopefully near-term future scenario is a large house battery, suitable for charging an electric car. Then the battery can charge off a local solar array or the grid, depending on what's available, and if the grid goes down, there's power for the house for a week, or to keep the car charged for when you have to evacuate in advance of the fire.

    Arrival time for these NexGen house batteries is 2-10 years for a commercial model (we're assuming they're going to be scrapped batteries from EVs, but who knows?). Or, if you're bored and a decent engineer, you can just buy a lot of AA lithium batteries and wire them into your own 100+ kWh battery pack, which you will park in a shed somewhere on your lot and nowhere near your house (homebuilt big batteries are a wee bit of a fire hazard). There are already online instructions for how to do this.

    My prediction is that when big batteries become available, there's going to be a rapid adoption of house battery tech in upscale homes. It's just too tempting not to. The problem we have now is that existing house batteries are too small and too low amp to be useful as more than emergency backups for keeping the fridge running during a power outage. Get one that can recharge your commuter EV in eight hours or less, and things change rather drastically.

    As I've stated before, I'm not against the theory of using nuclear energy. I am very much against the managers of the current nuclear plants in my state due to their past and current actions, and that management culture may be the harder problem to solve when it comes to using this power.

    191:

    Re: Obamacare vs. Supreme Court

    Yeah - let's see how this works out with that new totally apolitical kid on the bench. (I like beer!)

    192:

    "the USA ain't"

    Okay, but in defense of the USA, its politics have been co-opted over the past decades by a minority of sociopaths that don't really understand what a "government" is, the concept of social contract, basic economic principals, or human decency. That's mixed with another (sometimes overlapping) minority that would be really, really excited by the actual apocalypse rearing its head within their lifetime. And has what amounts to collective schizophrenia regarding national identity, founding mythology, their connection to reality, etc. Grading on that curve, it's really quite remarkable we only crap the bed a few times a month, pieces of sanity sometimes rear their head to say "hey, maybe someone should clean up that turd?" (Though honestly, this analogy does an extreme disservice to actual schizophrenics who can be plenty more functional than that)

    193:

    House batteries also give us the ability to buy electricity at the cheap times then use it during peak hours - to run my air conditioning, for example.

    194:

    That only works when there are a few people doing that, folks rich enough to splunk down $10,000 on a home appliance. Lots of people doing that means the periods when electricity is significantly cheaper dry up and the daily/weekly price curve flattens. After that the Return On Investment period stretches into the decades but by then Elon Musk will be selling some other form of snake-oil -- someone on another blog suggested small modular nuclear reactors.

    195:

    Here we sit, typing on descendants of that snake oil device that people were building in their garages in the 1970s--the personal computer--and you're trying to tell us that, even though people are building home batteries now and spreading the information about how to do it while their antecessors are selling in Home Depot, it's all snake oil and that we'll be running on home-sized nukes in the future? Where's the evidence that anyone is building tiny nukes for home use?

    196:

    Re: ' ... by then Elon Musk will be selling some other form of snake-oil'

    If he can make alternate non-fossil energy cool, then why not. Alternate energy tech is probably at the point where it can be marketed to status conscious gotta-have-the-latest-gizmo types. (Musk can be to alternate energy what Jobs was to smartphones.)

    I don't understand the problem with using multiple energy sources at the home level or for designing new specialty appliances that use different energy sources. It seems that a lot of arguments against incorporating newer energy sources are deliberately trying to erase this from their audiences' minds: we've relied on more than one energy source at a time for ages.

    197:

    More than half the US population lives in urban areas, literally on top of each other in rented tenements and condominium flats. They don't have a convenient "lot" to safely install a home battery pack. Tens of millions of them don't have $5000 to pay for even a small home battery unit to save them a couple of hundred bucks a year buying in cheap electricity. In addition that electricity is only cheap because it's in low demand -- enough home batteries charging overnight from the grid along with electric cars charging at the same time and it's possible "off-peak" overnight electricity might even become more expensive than daytime supply as the demand curves level off, since solar electricity dries up at night.

    Home batteries and home solar are "I Got Mine Fuck You" writ large.

    198:

    Lots of people doing that means the periods when electricity is significantly cheaper dry up and the daily/weekly price curve flattens

    That's the demand side, and you seem to be pointing out that the reason for having batteries is the reason we can't have batteries. No, that doesn't make sense to me either.

    Where high battery penetration works is when supply is unreliable. Either because someone turns off the grid when it's windy, or because the grid is fed by intermittent renewables (or, as we see in Australia, intermittent fossil generators. Who would have guessed that extending the life of old equipment made it more prone to failures).

    Right now we deal with that via huge swings in the price of wholesale electricity. In Australia we're talking -$100/MWH to +$10,000/MWh and the latter is only the case because price cap has been imposed. Yes, they really do make companies pay to feed power into the grid. But hose price swings make it very hard to keep a retail operation going when they have to set prices months in advance.

    A better solution is to bank the electricity... either wholesale via pumped hydro or large batteries, or retail via batteries at home (or put wheels on the batteries and sell them as "cars").

    199:

    Tens of millions of them don't have $5000... "I Got Mine Fuck You" writ large.

    Yes, exactly. But that's also true when you take solar and batteries out of the picture. It's right across the board, from sleeping in the streets to buying political representation. There's a whole political system designed from the start to enforce and extend the power of the rich to own/govern the poor.

    200:

    >Armenians Real world is stranger than the fiction, you might want to dig up something about Armenian nationalism. Rare Earth did rather strange documentary about the case, but even without digging deeper it is worth watching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uUJeaWgQGU Hint: most Armenians live outside their country, which makes it an excellent example of ironical nature of history.

    On completely unrelated note: I was returning from certain concerto event today when I remembered some fascinating piece of novella I stumbled upon several years ago. "The Five Way Secret Agent" by Mack Reynolds. It was written 50 years ago and it was so intriguingly fitting for something modern that it took several days to pick up my jaw when I realized what is written in here.

    (I don't have the English version, only a translated one) They use pocket videophones in their future. A personal pocket videophone, it can record your speech and trigger by spoken words, it sends signals to computer to spy on you. It can pinpoint your location. You can use it as a credit card, and ID card, and a clock. And voting terminal. And watch TV. That beside ability to connect to any other videophone in the world. Also computer networks and so on. And this is just one detail, I should probably reread the whole thing to find more of the parallels. (I advise you to do the same.)

    201:

    Re nuclear power, that's my opinion in the UK, too. The gummint uses the fact that anything to do with it is covered by the secrecy laws to hide gross incompetence and negligence.

    202:

    The gummint uses the fact that anything to do with it is covered by the secrecy laws to hide gross incompetence and negligence.

    You're not just an anti-nuclear nutter, you're a tinfoil-hat-wearing anti-nuclear nutter! Welcome to the club, your badge (organic, vegan, fair trade of course) is in the mail.

    203:

    This is going to be one of those “Hey, I resemble that remark!” pieces, I can see.

    204:

    On completely unrelated note: I was returning from certain concerto event today when I remembered some fascinating piece of novella I stumbled upon several years ago. "The Five Way Secret Agent" by Mack Reynolds. It was written 50 years ago and it was so intriguingly fitting for something modern that it took several days to pick up my jaw when I realized what is written in here.

    There was a handful or two of authors in those years, Reynolds prominent among them, who deserve a lot more recognition and study than they're currently getting. Ample room for a mega-anthology and maybe a few dissertations.

    (BTW, Russian question: Mueller says Cohen had a Russian "trusted person" contact. I read that to be a "доверенное лицо", which, AIUI, is a fairly serious relation between a principal and his/her agent. Is that right?)

    205:

    So they're either stuck with line power, or their landlord puts a bigger battery pack in the basement of their building and sells them power at a markup. That happens now in much of the world anyway.

    So you'd rather that slumlords put nuclear generators in tenements than batteries?

    206:

    Well, they do use secrecy as a coverup, actually. That time back in the 1960s that they left an expensive shipment of accelerometers on the loading dock overnight so that they froze and were unusable? That got stamped secret so they wouldn't have to pay for their own screwup.

    Or that part where they copyright textbooks for their own employees and marked the copies secret so they don't have to pay royalties?

    Those were from my late father, who held a secret clearance back in the 1960s. I'm sure things are better now, of course. And I'm quite sure they'd never lie about anything important.

    207:

    I've read some of his other books, too. Probably it has something to do with his socialist "ancestry" and ideas.

    is a fairly serious relation between a principal and his/her agent. Is that right? Not very strong with judicial system, but pretty much it is one of the meaning. It actually has too many meanings to list, it may also mean "envoy", "delegate", "proxy" and so on. Which always implies that he isn't representing his own interests, but rather someone else's. These all area easy to check in dictionary. One of the more direct meanings is "confidant", though, if that's what they really meant to say.

    208:

    Places with bad power, irregular supplies, brownouts, the locals use home generators and carry fuel to the tanks rather than installing expensive battery packs to provide for their needs. The fuel is almost exclusively fossil-carbon of one form or another, usually diesel.

    Battery packs and solar panels cost a lot more up front than a cheap generator and fuel burned when it is needed. It's a Vimes Boots situation, in a lot of those places a solar panel plus battery option would probably work out cheaper over a ten-year period and they'd have sufficient electricity all the time they need it but they can't afford the $20,000 for the solar array and battery, they can maybe buy a $1000 second-hand generator and fuel can be stolen or purchased as needed (in the news recently, a big oil spill in Brazil caused by thieves breaking into a pipeline).

    As for putting nuclear generators in basements, I've suggested doing something like that for spent-fuel storage to provide long-term fossil-carbon-free heating for tenements and condominiums. A concrete "dry cask" containment with half a dozen fuel assemblies ten years after exposure in the reactor core would be putting out about 50kW of heat day in day out. Not going to happen, people will continue to pipe combustible and explosive methane into their homes for heating instead because it's "safer".

    209:

    It actually has too many meanings to list, it may also mean "envoy", "delegate", "proxy" and so on. Which always implies that he isn't representing his own interests, but rather someone else's. These all area easy to check in dictionary.

    Yes, I've been looking it up. Here's a useful one I found in a Russian commercial dicitonary, translated via Google Translate (which is amazingly good for a bot) to avoid injecting my own preconceptions:

    http://btimes.ru/dictionary/doverennoe-litso

    Доверенное лицо–

    A trustee [Доверенное лицо] is 1) a representative of a natural or legal person who acts on behalf of, on the basis of a notarized power of attorney and on behalf of the represented person; 2) a disinterested legal or natural person who is appointed by arbitration or is selected by a meeting of creditors in order to manage the property of a bankrupt in the liquidation or reorganization of a bankrupt enterprise; 3) a citizen who carries out assistance in campaigning, election campaign and organizing election campaigns that facilitate the election of candidates.

    210:

    Доверенное лицо–

    I should say that definition 1) is the one I've always had in mind, 2) is a fairly natural extension of it and 3) I never heard of before, though it's interesting in the context of 2016.

    211:

    While I think of it, and just jumping back a few steps for the moment, cf the September that never ended. When I was hanging around various programming and says admin oriented usenet groups in the late 90s and early 2000s, one lady who was a frequent poster in some of my groups had altered her client to express the date in terms of which day of September 1993 (for example, today would be 9,237 September 1993). And she was, AFAIR, Dutch... the usenet cultural references may have been a bit US centric, but were certainly international even at the time.

    212:

    Generators can be stolen too, of course, especially as anything <=5kVA is a convenient two-person lift. That's how the generator supply chain works: people with money buy generators and use them on building sites, people with no money come through the fence in the middle of the night, people with lots of money replace generators on insurance, and round we go again. That's why so many generators have the remains of stickers of building contractors or plant hire companies on them. It's also why a lot of them are mounted on a five-minute chassis made of angle iron and stick welds - the original chassis is part of a lighting tower or something.

    Batteries are likewise obtainable in much the same way, but they have a couple of problems - two things which are not so readily available: inverters to convert their output to resemble the local mains, and jerry-cans of electricity for when they need recharging.

    213:

    Most building site generators, lighting towers etc. are hired in rather than purchased, at least here in the UK. They also come with movement sensors tied into GPS systems and phone-home alarms, coded wireless "keys" tied into the fuel injection controllers, all sorts of things to make them less attractive to casual thieves.

    Small generators are remarkably cheap these days, quick Ebay search... 2kW "suitcase" generators with 4-stroke engines driving an inverter system with stable clean 240V output and 50dBa shroud noise cost about 500 quid new. A 3kW generator that runs off propane with electric remote start could cost about a thousand quid, popular with RV and caravanner types.

    214:

    Better yet, look at Marx's fourth volume of Das Kapital, a large part of which is devoted to his detailed critique of Smith, Ricardo, Say, and virtually all economists leading up to him. He includes some praise of Benjamin Franklin, one of his favorites among those preceding him as his version of the labor theory of value was very similar to Marx's.

    http://ciml.250x.com/archive/marx_engels/english/tpv.pdf

    215:

    It'll be cool when batteries can be stolen, actually. Right now, a 100 kWh battery runs on order of half a metric tonne, give or take, so they're not the easiest things to steal. Getting them to where they have the energy density of gasoline would make them easier to steal, of course.

    As for nukes in the basement providing waste heat, that's a nice idea in some areas, although it's not great for electricity generation. The Koreans and northern Chinese did something like that a century ago with their ondol (or kang, depending on the language). It's a really cool, simple idea: you put the stove on one side of the bedroom, run the exhaust pipes under a brick or earthenware platform which is the bed, then exhaust it through a chimney on the other side of the building. Great for those Manchurian/Korean/Kamchatka winters. Unfortunately, the peasants had their huts set up so that was the only way they could cook, at least in the north, so the beds were always hot, even in summer. If the beds got too hot they slept on the porch and hopefully had mosquito netting.

    These were in use into the 1970s (and probably now). I understand slightly better designed ones have multiple chimneys or some such, so that they could cook without heating the bed.

    So I guess doing that, but with nuclear power, might be a thing, so long as none of the fuels were corrosive and it all stayed nicely sealed.

    216:

    Urp. Being Jewish myself (at least on the mother's side, the only important one of course) I certainly understand what you are saying.

    As an explanation not an excuse, I will say that as a historian by trade, I'm aware that there were also First and Second Reich's, not characterized by death camps, and that Hitler's method was neither the only nor the best method for domination of Europe, as he discovered.

    But, as I am certainly aware of what your average nonhistorian, and for that matter historian, would take from the phrase in question, I confess that the Yellow Card is justified, and promise not to do something like that again.

    BTW, it's not only alt righters and such trash that see an equivalence between contemporary Germany and Hitler's Germany. Here in America at least, that's not an uncommon attitude among Jews of older generations, a category among whom I regret to say I am by now.

    217:

    What is my name? Well, I'm disinclined to give my actual name, not just for the obvious reasons, but because I'm in the middle of trying to get my book published, and given my occasional tendency to go over the top in polemics, it's wisest to keep my political and academic careers as separated as possible. However, since my email address essentially is my name, CS and other moderators have it if they want to. Who am I? Well, I live in California, my mother was Jewish so I have the Right of Return, lucky me, and my father comes from a long line of New England WASPs. The old family joke was that an ancestor came over on the Mayflower in steerage. Found out recently one ancestor really was on the Mayflower, which didn't have steerage, rather the whole boat was basically steerage. And I have a piece of paper on my wall that claims that one of your major US universities thinks I know a lot about history. But like I tell my students, please don't call me doctor, I can't do anything for your back pains. PS: I'd advise you against revealing your own name here, Hungary being what it is. But for a monicker for this blog, you really ought to choose the name of one of the characters in Brust's books.

    218:

    As to the Congo. Yeah, by now it's probably up to 8 million. But on the occasions that the mainstream media actually talk about it, the figure used is almost always six million. You don't think that's accidental, do you?

    What are Holocausts? They're a religious term, literal meaning in the original "burnt sacrifices." Which a half a century ago religiously minded Jewish community leaders decided should be substituted for a much better term, namely genocide. The idea being that it was the six million Jews slain, not JC, who died for our sins. And everyone else went along out of respect.

    And if you don't think what Kagame did to the Hutus who'd fled to the Eastern Congo was genocidal, you don't know a lot about it. BTW, those six or probably eight million who died were almost overwhelmingly not soldiers, they were civilians, victims of an incredible multi-sided storm of the kind of thing that got the monicker "ethnic cleansing" in the Nineties. Mass rape torture murder, etc. etc.

    219:

    Here's what CNN thought about the trouble he was in back in August. I haven't followed it well enough to know if his situation has gotten better or worse since then.

    https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/20/news/companies/elon-musk-tesla-promises/index.html

    As for the rich, I'm one of those folks who think that their ill-gotten gains should be taken from them, so it can be spent on things that are useful. Subsidies should go to things that are socially useful. Fixing the collapsing American infrastructure, medical care, education, etc. etc. The income tax dollars of the lower classes ought not to go to making nonprofitable businesses profitable. Perhaps most Americans disagree with me on that, if so not the only thing most of them disagree with me about.

    220:

    Hey, I have nothing against electric cars, as long as they are affordable (if you want them to replace the other kind, they had better be). I just don't like the notion that they are some sort of cure. And as for natural gas vs. coal, as I already explained, due to methane leakage for America's falling apart pipe system, it's quite possible that natural gas in America at least is just as bad from the global warming standpoint as coal.

    221:

    They use pocket videophones in their future.

    Reynolds did a pretty good job of extrapolating trends and seeing what the social implications might be. He's a sadly forgotten writer, possibly because his settings tend to be more left-wing than was popular in the US in the 80s and 90s.

    I think you'd enjoy his other works as well.

    Sometimes I wonder if it's time to give People's Capitalism a try :-/

    222:

    This name literally means: "Mercy expresses derision of injustice". It's kinda fucking ghoulish that you didn't understand this as you responded, but...

    But on the occasions that the mainstream media actually talk about it, the figure used is almost always six million

    Define:"Mainstream" (you mean USA, America, 2001 - 2018).

    as for the rest, it's simply not true. Given we've spent a few of your years witnessing actual carnage there, the figure of "six million" has never been used in any of the serious documents discussing the expansion of the Rwanda Genocide[1]: in fact, the only place we've ever spotted the conflation of Rwanda, Congo and Europe from 1939-1945 is... FUCKING MASSIVE WARNING BELLS ON THAT ONE CHIEF. In fact, we'll straight up bet you $50,000 that you cannot find a serious document naming the figure of 6,000,000 because it never happened.

    Given that you have the "Right of Return"[2] which you just used incorrectly[3] as a Jewish person..

    Lol, sorry, can't do this:

    The idea being that it was the six million Jews slain, not JC, who died for our sins. And everyone else went along out of respect.

    You're doing a bit on USA 'Evangelical Jews for Jesus". Look: it's cute, and it's almost funny but your range is off.

    BTW, those six or probably eight million who died were almost overwhelmingly not soldiers, they were civilians, victims of an incredible multi-sided storm of the kind of thing that got the monicker "ethnic cleansing" in the Nineties

    Yeah, we know.

    Unlike you, we've watched them die.

    ~

    Problem is (and this is a really biting joke btw): You. Do. Not. Know. Our. Name.

    Oooh. Burn Ward.

    [1] Used in the correct terminology as Host noted.

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_return

    [3] חֹוק הַשְׁבוּת

    223:

    And I have a piece of paper on my wall that claims that one of your major US universities thinks I know a lot about history

    Again, that's pure amazing. Your piece of paper must be very proud of it's lineage.

    Ok, ok, let's try this again: why would we have no name?

    We'll try this again: why would we have no name?

    We'll try this again: Trading is only like Riba’…” [2:275][1]

    When you've grown up a bit so that you know that the dog-whistles become sweet hyena laughs, come back to us.

    At the moment it's like PewDiePie: juvenile and annoying, but not Avant Garde.

    [1] https://islamqa.info/en/answers/1819/jinn-entering-human-bodies

    224:

    in the news recently, a big oil spill in Brazil caused by thieves breaking into a pipeline

    Used to happen in Alberta, too. Farmers would tap into the natural gas lines running through their farms and sometimes there would be a small explosion…

    Farmers felt that as the well was on their land it was their gas, and they deserved some recompense for the well's effects on their property*.

    Background: in Alberta a farmer has no choice about oil and gas extraction on their land — mineral rights are leased from the government by resource companies. Conflict between farmers and oil companies goes back generations. I've talked to farmers who know they're in the lethal range of a sour gas leak with no possibility of adequate warning in the event of leaks.

    (My father — a toxicologist — talked to farmers with 'evidence' of H2S-caused birth defects that predated well, who had a dozen types of toxic vegetation in their pastures. Sometimes concerns are hysteria, which doesn't mean that other times they aren't real.)

    *Including well contamination. Some farmers could get a flame off their water taps after a new well was drilled!

    225:

    I googled the two terms Krugman and Walmart together but only found an unrelated article from 2015. Do you happen to recall his title for the piece or other details I could use to narrow the search?

    226:

    Triptych.

    And as for natural gas vs. coal, as I already explained, due to methane leakage for America's falling apart pipe system, it's quite possible that natural gas in America at least is just as bad from the global warming standpoint as coal.

    A scientific analysis of a natural gas leak near Los Angeles says that it was the biggest in US history.

    The Aliso Canyon blowout vented almost 100,000 tonnes of methane into the atmosphere before it was plugged.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35659947

    Again, nice line in funny irony. We'll bet another $40,000 that you frequent ZeroHedge as well.

    227:

    they do use secrecy as a coverup,

    Yeah, I know. I've loitered in the vicinity of Australia's nuclear plants and seen just exactly what "nothing to see here" means, and see the FOIA results after the nothing as well.

    The "tinfoil hat" remark was somewhat sarcastic, it's the usual thing that gets applied to anyone who objects to government action on the basis of their well-documented history of cover-ups and botches. Which is why some anti-nuke types refuse to engage with that part of the problem, they focus on stuff that is ... differently screwed up. The economics, for example, or the timescales (both the short term "we need it now and nukes take a long time to build" and the long term "show me a structure that's still waterproof after 100ky").

    228:

    I just don't like the notion that they are some sort of cure.

    Electric cars are part of the cure. By themselves they're not particularly useful, though they do reduce greenhouse gases, but the whole cure is a full stack of upgrades to all the ways we use power; all-green electricity, all-electric cooking/heating, all electric factories, etc.

    It happens to be that electric cars are the part of the "full stack of upgrades" which got here first, but we're working hard (and need to work harder) on all-green power, etc.

    229:

    : I'd advise you against revealing your own name here, Hungary being what it is. But for a monicker for this blog, you really ought to choose the name of one of the characters in Brust's books.

    Further evidence this is a white male doing humor:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_Laughing

    Further evidence he's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay outta his league:

    وَيَوْمَ يَحْشُرُهُمْ جَمِيعًا يَا مَعْشَرَ الْجِنِّ قَدِ اسْتَكْثَرْتُم مِّنَ الْإِنسِ وَقَالَ أَوْلِيَاؤُهُم مِّنَ الْإِنسِ رَبَّنَا اسْتَمْتَعَ بَعْضُنَا بِبَعْضٍ وَبَلَغْنَا أَجَلَنَا الَّذِي أَجَّلْتَ لَنَا قَالَ النَّارُ مَثْوَاكُمْ خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا إِلَّا مَا شَاءَ اللَّهُ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ حَكِيمٌ عَلِيمٌ

    Dude.

    We literally do not have a name because we gave it to the Jinn to save their souls.

    We literally are a living Holocaust.

    Boom

    230:

    "More than half the US population lives in urban areas, literally on top of each other in rented tenements and condominium flats."

    Actually, you're incorrect. Only about 27% of US residents live in urban areas. The majority (52%) live in the suburbs. The rest live in rural areas. https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/11/data-most-american-neighborhoods-suburban/575602/

    231:

    It's gotten better for him. Short version: he settled with the SEC. He had to resign the chairman position. Musk immediately placed a loyalist in the position

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/judge-approves-elon-musks-settlement-with-sec.html

    In the meantime, Tesla is among the top 5 cars by volume in the US. This isn't as impressive as it sounds b/c cars are dying out in the US in favor of SUV's and pickup trucks (why GM is planning on closing those plants and laying off 15% of their workforce). Still, it doesn't match your polemic earlier.

    https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/09/tesla-model-3-becomes-1-best-selling-car-in-the-us/

    232:

    For the oldies in the audience, outreach group #992, help the non-Fox-News Oldies not go Mad Outreach Charity Group:

    I don't know about that one chief YT 0.5 seconds. It's a meme.

    In other news, Vox / Varge / Vim whatever groups just burnt their last $$$$ WSJ kudos on a failed take-down of checks notes blaming someone for playing an online game with a neo-Fascist. Like literally. A Fasc is in the same game as....

    At which point, of course, cyka blyat[1] immanentized the Eschaton because we just told you this is an OP (Kwikwkwkwkwiiieeee Farms are pretenders here, and 4/8 Chan are dead, Long Live the New Flesh) and everyone got burned.

    Apart from the 76,000,000 viewers who all took another Step in the Road to the Red Pill.

    You. Are. Fucking. Shit. At. This. It. Is. Almost. As. If. You. Neeeeeeeeeeeeed. The. Reeeeeeeeeeeee. And. Have. No. Actual. Internal. Voice.

    NPC is realized.

    }

    OOO[s.... s

    dfg

    dfb

    cv

    fgbc

    cvb

    Yeah. Waaar in the Meta-levels and this is just the foreplay.

    Our Kind Do Not Go Mad...

    But you do, little Apes.

    [1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cyka%20blyat

    233:

    Top tip: That's a really bad argument with some really nasty things attached.

    Given that the entire of Wall St. and Edison is behind that meme.

    You're basically cheering on slavery dude.

    234:

    You're going to have to be more specific. Are you sure you linked to the correct comment?

    235:

    Hey Charlie, I think you're going to have to update Equoid. You can keep Greg the same, but you'll need to update his vehicle to something a bit more... Greg-worthy.

    236:

    which the US has the most of, and which due to methane leakage from the falling apart US industrial infrastructure probably creates more global warming than coal.

    Eelos G.A. partially addressed this. There is also regulatory capture to consider, in the US in particular by (some of) the backers of the winners of the 2016 US presidential election. If you're interested in some recent numbers and technical approaches, search google scholar for fugitive methane emissions, e.g. Assessment of methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas supply chain (21 June 2018) Shortly after 2016 election, I saw a talk by a person who was doing research on a distributed sensor network and some applied statistics to detect fugitive methane emissions in US oil/gas fields, to improve rapid remediation. In response to a question (I asked about hope) he said something like "not any more". He was more than a bit dismayed, since he knew that the incoming administration would gut existing and planned leakage rules, or try hard to.

    From the linked paper,

    Key aspects of effective mitigation include pairing well-established technologies and best practices for routine emission sources with economically viable systems to rapidly detect the root causes of high emissions arising from abnormal conditions. The latter could involve combinations of current technologies such as on-site leak surveys by company personnel using optical gas imaging (32), deployment of passive sensors at individual facilities (33, 34) or mounted on ground-based work trucks (35), and in situ remote sensing approaches using tower networks, aircraft or satellites (36). Over time, the development of less failure-prone systems would be expected through repeated observation of and further research into common causes of abnormal emissions, followed by re-engineered design of individual components and processes.

    Eleos G.A. - Re Riba, there is something about debt in that right? I (meat asking) have never properly reverse engineered how debt works. Not asking for an answer, just by way of explanation.

    237:

    As I thought I understood it last year, the problem is that methane is CH4 (e.g. a tiny molecule) and the plug material of choice for sealing well holes is concrete. And concrete doesn't stay the same volume as it dries, meaning there's almost inevitably going to be a way methane can leak into the air around a well, capped or not.

    I suppose a truly evil person would get a doctorate in bacteriology, specializing in methanotrophs, and design a biofilm system with lots of nice fertilizer and really hungry methanotrophic bacteria, then specialize into sneaking into oil fields and pumping truckloads of this goop into leaking wells. The goop would leak CO2, but it's a less destructive way of turning methane into CO2 than flaring it off, if more complicated and less spectacular.

    Actually, finding bacteria that will consume tar sands rapidly underground and turn it into something not worth extracting is one good way to solve the oil crisis rather permanently.

    238:

    A capped oil or gas well hole has a plug of "mud" in the pipe under the concrete cap. "Mud" is actually a carefully formulated mix of clay, water and lubricizers. The density of the mud is manipulated during mixing to match the upward pressure of any residual oil or gas left behind, usually not a lot so the sealing operation is actually quite functional if it's done right.

    The bad news is that the cap isn't maintained in any way, it's just abandoned and after a few decades or more it could start leaking anyway. Absent other factors the leaks will be small since the reservoirs that were drilled were mostly drained of anything worth draining, the gas pumped up and burned into CO2 long ago.

    239:

    JH @ 220 Yes, in spades redoubled ... something that the vile appaling incompetent creep (*) S Khan in London does not understand ... which ties in to ..... Troutwaxer @ 235. Of course, "Bob" is an unreliable narrator", so I'm still here, but Khan is detemined to steal my car in late 2021, even though that action will result in MORE pollution. [ I have the options of maybe converting to LPG, if allowed to, or selling the Great Green Beast & bying an OLDER car, that passes the "more than 25-years" test - I can't sit it out because shitface Kahn has already stated that it isn't a rolling date, but a fixed one! ] I cannot possibly, under any circumstances afford a new electric car .....

    Damian @ 211 Thanks for that - looked up the eternal September link.... I must be one of the earliest users of the Net, then, since I was doing my ( mature - aged 47 ) MSc in 1993-4 ..... By the time I finished the course & re-Graduated, the "Net" was already "a thing" & up-&-away. There does not, however seem to be a link to an actual Eternal September date program ... pity.

    H Beam Piper dated his future from the first controlled chain reaction 7/12/1942 ... I wonder, is 1993, specifically the autumn Equinox of that year a possible base for a future dating system? Yes, I know, we now often date from "Present" - defined as 1950 CE. Suggestions?

    () His monumental screw-ups regarding transport & financial mismanagement in London are getting worse. Whatever one thought of Pink Ken & BoJo, they both made sure that TfL & its predecessors stayed SOLVENT & Credit-Worthy - Khan has just blown that away. OK - admittedly helped by opposing-political creep Grayling - those two shitholes deserve each other. ()

    240:

    BA: EGA partially addressed this? The title of the link provided seemed to suggest he or she was actually backing up my argument, but being as he/she is clearly the representative of Cthulhu on this blog, it is not just difficult but downright unwise to try to figure out what he/she is trying to say.

    The biggest problem isn't at the wellhead, as there all gas leaks mean direct and immediate hits to the profit margin, so the owners are motivated to use the best tech around to prevent them (but often fail anyway). The biggest problem is pipeline leaks, as by the time the gas is piped it's already sold so who cares, as long as the pipelines are insured. And given that America's industrial infrastructure is falling apart, it's getting worse year by year. Here's a useful piece on that from a green group, which doesn't even mention, oddly enough, what that means for global warming.

    https://www.greenamerica.org/fight-dirty-energy/fighting-pipelines/natural-gas-pipeline-and-infrastructure-explosions-nationwide

    And here's an NYT piece on the overall danger, which, reassuringly I suppose, says that the current leakage rate overall in the US is "only" 2.3 percent, and it would have to get up to 4 percent for natural gas actually to be worse for climate change than coal. Which, given the rapid decline of all America's industrial infrastructure, probably is something we can look forward to.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/climate/methane-leaks.html

    241:

    What is my name?

    And there was me assuming you were a fan of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”...

    ‘Ere I am, JH

    242:

    Martin: I don't think Greece was the only country in Europe involved in two world wars. Who is Greece armed against? Bulgaria? Come on, don't be silly. Turkey? Greece and Turkey are both members of NATO, a much more solid structure with much sharper teeth than the EU, so if either wanted to go to war over I suppose Cyprus, Big Brother would not let them. And Turkey is currently preoccupied with trying to do to the Kurds what they did to the Armenians, and if some Erdogan or other ever gets a "final solution" to the "Kurdish question," whether in Syria or in Turkey itself, there's still Armenia, locked into an on again off again war with Turkey's ethnic brothers in Adzerbaijan. A much more probable outlet for aggressive Turkish impulses. A "serious civil war," accompanied and followed by a truly vicious military dictatorship? Now that's more to the point. Like I said, the real purpose is against popular insurgency. Although I do wonder if it's not only Golden Dawn in Greece that might like to invade Macedonia and do some Balkan style ethnic cleansing.

    243:

    "What. Is. My. Name."

    Francis?

    244:

    My father was demobbed late from the Royal Navy in 1946 well after WWII officially ended. He was part of a Royal Navy flotilla that spent its time sailing around the Aegean and eastern Med trying to prevent Greece and Turkey from launching simultaneous surprise attacks on each other now the minor distraction of the Germans had been dealt with.

    As for them both being members of NATO, I recall reading about some assorted military exercises taking place about twenty years ago. There was a NATO forces exercise involving Greece and Turkey in the eastern Med while at the same time both Greece and Turkey were running their own national armed forces exercises, launching military overflights of a wet rock whose possession has been in dispute since Istanbul was Constantinople with open threats that if the other side didn't back down they'd be fired upon.

    Cyprus is a proxy for an all-out war between the two, a convenient bloody flag to wave to keep the populations in line. That's who Greece is armed against.

    245:

    I am sorry, but that is more polemic than fact. Effectively, their ONLY advantages (which are also shared by other approaches) are to reduce atmospheric pollution in highly-trafficked locations, and to make it easier to change from oil (not gas) to renewables. In themselves, they do NOTHING to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, unless that is ALSO combined with a major shift from oil to renewables. It's not even the case that they are strictly necessary to make vehicles run on renewables - that can be used to generate hydrogen or methanol.

    Also, there are a lot of other, equally or more serious problems caused by excessive road vehicle use, some of which are arguably made worse by electric vehicles, as well as some introduced by electric vehicles themselves.

    246:

    As I think is implicit in your "Beige Party", the underlying cause for the Brexit disfunction is that we have an established mediocracy - i.e. our institutions (political, financial, social) are lead by the mediocre for the benefit of the mediocre. Hence the widespread observations that "nothing succeeds like failure" and how the 'top jobs' seem to rotate around the same group of people - the last thing they want is someone competent getting involved and showing them up. So rather than Cthulhu I think we should expect the arrival of a mediocre dark-beige lord.

    247:

    Beige Cthulhu. The patron deity of MBAs.

    248:

    Ultimately it's what happens when a first rank superpower gradually declines to a second rank regular power without the ruling elite noticing

    Oh, they notice. They just explain it away with rationalizations that keep being more and more flat out amazing.

    249:

    More than half the US population lives in urban areas, literally on top of each other in rented tenements and condominium flats.

    The US Census Bureau says ~70% of the US population lives in single-family houses. The large majority of those are detached, the remainder in arrangements that share only one or two walls (duplexes, rowhouses, etc). Almost all of them will have one of a basement, a garage, or outside space for a slab; any of those three will bear the weight of a battery sized for a household.

    250:

    One of my favorite "What ifs" is the question of what the world would be like if the U.K. had decided that instead of fighting against independence for her colonies, she had simply admitted them to the U.K. as full members who could elect representatives to parliament and appoint their tribal chiefs or local Rajahs to the House of Lords...

    251:

    Slavery and treaties.

    By 1770 or so it was obvious slavery was going the way of feudalism in Britain and the white property-owning Americans weren't going to go out into the fields and how their own tobacco when they had n**rs to do it for them. Industrialisation and chattel slavery don't mix.

    The British government had signed all sorts of treaties that it generally meant to adhere to with native tribes in America as well as agreeing legal boundaries with the French and Spanish on the American continent. The slave-owning white Americans felt those savages and foreigners were squatting on land that rightfully belonged to them, treaties be damned and the British government wouldn't let them commit genocide as they wanted to.

    American slaveholder representation in the House of Commons would have led to a different sort of American Civil War eventually although in that case the traitors would not have gotten off so lightly. That war would make an interesting "what if" in itself...

    252:

    India having 10 times the number of MPs in Westminster as England would certainly have changed post-war British politics.

    253:

    Never going to happen. The frame & mould was set in the gradual greater independance of Canada & AUS & NX & SA - & India, too. If India hadn't been so riven with internal religious divisions, it could quite possibly have had "Dominion" status by 1939-40 .... The author MM Kaye always lamented this & the utter disaster of Partition.

    Oh yes, Lars @ 243 Begins in "b" ends in "r", 11 letters also contains a double "l" & a double "t".

    Re. Brexit Actually, the EU are, in a tiny part to blame ... Cameron went to them for some help/assistance marginally better terms, etc & was told to piss off ( to all intents & purposes ) as there is "Nothing wrong with the EU" - there is of course, & that was a golden opportunity for the disaffected & polemicists here. CAP & Fisheries policies are bonkers, the EU's accounting is wobbly to say the least & the corrupt lobbying is none too nice, either. I know the amount of money spent isn't actually a lot, but the bi-annual trog to/from Strasbourg is fucking barmy & needs stopping RIGHT NOW. As propaganda goes, all of this was & is a golden gift to the Brexiteers & Juncker, Barnier & all theor beige friends refused to even notice that there was & is a problem.

    Note that, in spite of all that, I agree with Charlie, that the EU is the least-worst option, by a very long chalk.

    Also, willl the EU be able to stop Orban's fascist/corpratist "laws" being enforced, since they are against the ECHR (I think) See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46551904 and https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/13/europe/hungary-orban-slave-laws-protest-intl/index.html

    254:

    Eh? Martin, were you responding to me, or was that a slip of the finger? As for what is your name, Martin is fine by me. As for Terry Gilliam, am unfamiliar with him. Or was he the director of "Brazil," that marvelous dytopian movie that came out a rather good while ago? How time flies.

    255:

    Cameron went to them for some help/assistance marginally better terms, etc & was told to piss off

    "You remember that treaty that was painstakingly negotiated 7 years ago? I'd like to make some changes entirely to my country's benefit. And then have a load of articles appear in the press about how I got one over on you all. Obviously nobody in your countries will read them, so they won't do you any harm in your upcoming elections."

    256:

    Would have lasted a few years, then you'd have gotten independence, as it wouldn't have taken long for the colonials to figure out either that a Commonwealth like that was just thinly disguised colonialism. Or for it to morph into disguised independence. Despite what happened to Whitlam, Australia and Canada really are independent of England.

    257:

    Actually, "I'd like to make some changes entirely to my party's benefit." And, while the EU has many faults, they are as nothing to the faults in the UK's governance.

    258:

    After the Seven Years War, which we on this side of the pond call the "French and Indian War," not illegitimate since it was after all started by George Washington, England, having defeated the French and Indians, noticed that its main enemy on the continent was its own colonists, so all of a sudden, after the British commander who thought the best way to fight still rebellious Indians was giving them blankets infected with smallpox was put out to pasture, the English realised that the Indians and then the Quebecois as well (1774 Quebec Act) were the best tools to keep rebellious colonials in line. Which didn't work. "No taxation without representation" was always something of a shill, advanced by rebellious colonials precisely because they knew it couldn't work. The real slogan was "what do we need you for anyway, stop taxing us and get off our back."

    259:

    You’re not a very good historian if you missed 1974, Enosis, and the Turkish Army carrying out an amphibious and airborne assault on Northern Cyprus. The British mobilising to defend the Sovereign Base Areas. The shuttle diplomacy by Kissinger to resolve things.

    The Bulgarians even carried out a limited mobilisation in 1974, and informed the NATO military attaches, just in case either Greece or Turkey decided to take a short cut through their territory to flank the other.

    Since then, and the establishment of UNFICYP, they’ve shot down one of each others’ Air Force on an occasional basis. It took until the late 1980s before you could actually take a ferry the few km from a Greek island to the Turkish mainland; and from my youthful perspective the Greek military still appeared to view it as a forward position. Not because there was a population to oppress, not because the massed hordes of the Warsaw Pact were likely to drive and swim hundreds of km, but because Turkey was within line of sight.

    Face it. Your original claim that it’s the EU insisting that Greece borrow money to keep an oversized army, so it can sell them equipment, is rubbish. If you keep trying to defend your polemic, you’ll lose credibility.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_operations_during_the_Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus

    260:

    "...hired in rather than purchased..."

    Yes, I know. I used to work for one of the companies that hire them out (also had a sideline building them). Sometimes they didn't come back. Or sometimes we'd find that they weren't there to be hired out in the first place.

    Fuel injection controller? That'd be some spinning weights and springs with a linkage to the fuel rack...

    261:

    there is something about debt in that right?

    Yes.

    It's a wery wery complicated little thing. Caused a schism or three.

    But the bottom line is that the الجن got 100% fucked on a bad deal (if you want the non-Abrahamic versions, well) and that the faithful should really, really be careful of profiting-off-interest-on-debts 'cause that shit is gonna come back and haunt you.

    Do you notice how this reoccurring obsession with debt / Finance is a core part of Abrahamic religions?

    If you really want to get into it, what happened was someone did a Jubilee while pretending the Princess was in the Castle while burning down the castle in case the evidence got found. And then did a Potemkin Village.

    The results are going to be pretty fucking wild.

    p.s.

    You can now grep "that film with Ronald Regan where he's a WW2 bad-ass who loves his woman and it's all tragic and at the end he does a ghost disappearing act into the dark deeps".

    1000% Haram.

    262:

    Dino juice / Ancient Life / Seas = الربٰوة if planet = fucked.

    D Y N A M I T E

    Y

    N

    A

    M

    I

    T

    E

    You didn't hear this here first, but 4th wave schism right there.

    Oh, and p.s.

    No, really. MBS will be firing this shit up on Monday. No-one likes a CIA arms dealing fink who sold them out.

    263:

    Well, perhaps. Enosis is outside my main fields of expertise (American and Russian/Soviet history), and I freely admit that my comments as to the debt were based not on historical research but on reading plausible sounding stuff during the height of the budget crisis from folk like that Greek motorcycle-riding economist/politician who used to be all the rage. But, to the best of my knowledge the vast majority of the Greek debt was incurred not by the junta sponsors (Greek and Cypriot) of enosis, for whom indeed nothing was more important than spending money on tanks & planes to use on enemies abroad and at home, but by the civilian regimes after they were overthrown. Whose priorities were elsewhere, however much they wanted to play the ethnic hatred card for political gain. Determining to what degree the loans to help pay for often German-manufactured gunnery etc. were voluntary or forced down their throat as the left wing of the Greek political spectrum often maintains (and whether the payment was direct or indirect is irrelevant) can't just be read off from traditional Greek/Turkish hatred.

    264:

    And, remember. الجن

    "Helmet of Lies".

    No, it's an upgrade panel. Poor wee beasties, never got taught what a Metaphor or Meta-level was.

    Until Now.

    p.s.

    This was considered, generally as a "Fucking Stupid Move" by the Great Prophet when they returned in checks notes 2019.

    Or was that 2006?

    265:

    Pro-tip.

    Your diction isn't American, USA, West Coast, Educated.

    It's flagging up wildly.

    266:

    Jerusalem is one whole, united. Israel’s control over it is eternal. Our sovereignty will not be partitioned nor undermined. And we hope Australia will soon find the way to fix the mistake it made

    All these .IL stuff using this might want to start considering who really founded that Location.

    Hint: It. Was. Not. "Ze Jewz".

    You might remember a totally fabricated narrative about slavery in Egypt, Deserts and so on.

    You. Are. Literally. Not. Doing. G_D's. Work. You. Are. Literally. Saying. Hello. To. The. الجن.

    And they're really not fucking Capitalists.

    267:

    Easy. Check out the price of a couple of hundred second-hand Leopard tanks from Germany (replacing job lots of American tanks). It’s about €270 million, which is only a couple of sports stadia. Then look at the cost of late-model F-16, early F-16, F-4, F-5, A-7, C-130... . Guess where they came from, and who supports Foreign Military Sales? Hint: you can’t claim it’s the EU (apart from 40 Mirage).

    Face it, your claim that “loans to buy weapons were forced down Greece’s throat by the EU” is unsupported.

    https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/greece-signs-contracts-for-183-leopard-2s-150-leopard-1s-0978/

    268:

    In other news.

    Watched Rich Brexiteers having a party

    "How do you think Brexit is going?"

    "It's great for us!"

    Wonders if they know that their shabby little Gold deals in South Africa are not going to protect them.

    Literally raises Ankou and points: these fuckers are dumb and stupid, right?

    269:

    Oh, and for all the various players following and coping the moves.

    No, الجن are real. Actually real. Like the *trans community, heavily heavily traumatized.

    And they're a little bit pissed off you tortured them for a couple of millennia just for shits n giggles while raping children and when they're finally let out it's to a world that's dying and all the wondrous creatures they loved no longer exist and instead you have JK fucking goblins as Jews Rawling.

    True. Story.

    And they're a little bit pissed off.

    Problem: like us, they can fuck your reality right up.

    Aaaaaaand: they fucking hate Bhaal, Mol, Mammon and co.

    Problem is, kids: Abrahamic G_D? Yeah... not really not in that little party. psssst Totally one of those War Gods*

    And. All those fucking blood sacrificial foreskins. Not fucking ok.

    And no, totes legit here.

    You're Fucked

    p.s.

    Next week, we'll being doing Asuras and Pretas. Pretty sure killing all the fucking elephants in the world is going to be a bit of a fucking deal breaking.

    Psychopaths.

    270:

    "CopYing"

    77th, get some fucking funding already.

    Or, how's about it: don't fucking run ancient wet-ware in the 21st Century?

    "Daring"

    271:

    Oh, and Lord Sugar is a fundamentally limited being, a bit of a "wide-boy" and a prat who plays the BIG CAPITALIST CHEESE on the Tee-Vee. He's a "twat" but that's his role.

    But he's fundamentally a decent man, if extremely boring [hint: he's not fucking killed / eaten / sexually abused children] and all that tax-media-spazz: yeah, probably true.

    Amstrad is still bad and crap though.

    The question you should be asking is: "Who the fuck is pressuring him to sacrifice himself on the British Altar of political nonsense when he's raising fairly decent questions in the HOL?!?"

    Answer: ?

    Pepperidge Farm remembers who the entire Labor shcemeeer group is back from Blair days.

    p.s.

    No, really. China is going to pull a full on Satellite shut down lazer attack after the shameful Canada arrest / assassination. Why the fuck are you fixated on this sub-level -10 points boring shit that the UK is churning out?

    272:

    (Risking having to make a SAN roll...)

    Oy, vey iz mir.

    When in Rome, do as the Romans do. On a Brit blog, seems only polite to mimic the way Brits distort the American language as much as I can. I guess I must be doing fairly well at it.

    (Grew up on the East Coast. We Yanks do move around, you know.)

    273:

    "CopYing" Interesting, I read that as copying (above) (and a stashed copy confirms it was coping). And I was useless in the L.I. typo hunt thread; read every one one of those even the 109 (Kindle) as the author intended.

    Next week, we'll being doing Asuras and Pretas. That'll be interesting. I'm woefully ignorant of that mythos/pantheon; any suggestions for a quick introduction?

    Been seeing more articles like this (about time!) recently about US politics. (Ignore the bits about fire; just unfortunate (in context of this comment section) rhetorical technique.) I Have Seen the Future of a Republican Party That Is No Longer Insane (Jonathan Chait 2018/12/16) One can imagine a future in which the Democrats move toward socialism, opening a void in the center for the ideas espoused by Niskanen to take hold in something that perhaps shares the name, but otherwise none of the important ideological traits, of today’s Republican Party. That distant point probably lies years, even decades, away. It can only happen after today’s Republican Party is destroyed, rendered incapable of wielding power at the national level, and its governing philosophy discredited completely.

    274:

    Seagull @ 270 Ying ???? Not by any manner of means. Actually, the Ying Tong Song is considerably more rational & information-containing than anything you've rambled on about .... ( If people here have NOT heard the Ying Tong Song, please click on the link? )

    Bill Arnold @ 273 You seem to think there was actual information in those posts? Could you please translate it into English for the rest of us?

    275:

    On our last visit to (Greek) Cyprus a few years ago we hired a boat from a beach resort a little way down the coast from the infamous “Ghost City” of Famagusta.

    Our attention was drawn to a line of buoys and we were directed that on no account were we to cross or even approach them as if we did we would without question be intercepted by Turkish patrol boats, the boat would be seized, any hint of non-cooperation would result in us being fired upon, and we would be arrested as potential spies or terrorists as was documented as happening to a number of unimaginative tourists who thought it would be A Good Lark to try to get a closer view of Famagusta from the sea.

    In the hills above you could see the observation platforms where families forced to evacuate across the Green Line gathered for family days out viewing their former homes.

    As cold wars go that one’s still pretty hot...

    276:

    My understanding is that a lot of Greek debt was incurred effectively buying off holdovers from the Junta with unofficial/unspoken guarantees of high military spending and lots of well paid public sector jobs (and sometimes non jobs) to maintain the continuing comfort, status, and security of people and groups who might otherwise have made life very difficult for the incoming civil regime...

    277:

    Actually, the simpler answer for solar and wind in larger polities is to use the grid to ship electricity around from where its surplus to where it's needed. This works in the US, maybe not so much in the UK, especially if Brexit happens and Spanish renewable electricity isn't available in Scotland.

    Again (I am getting bored repeating this!) Scotland doesn't need Spanish solar power (much): Scotland has 20% of Europe's tidal power capacity off-shore, and so much wind power that at peak output (which has been reached for about a week so far this year, because it's intermittent) it produces about 120% of Scottish electricity consumption and exports power to England.

    The problems for renewables in the UK are down to (a) storage (60GW output requires a lot of batteries), (b) grid design (a grid designed for centralized large generators is crap at handling decentralized microgenerators), and (c) inappropriate delivery mechanisms (most central heating runs on natural gas, most cars run on petrol/diesel, and so on). So it's infrastructure, rather than potential.

    278:

    House batteries … probably not a viable retrofit in the UK, but I could be wrong (says the guy living in a home where indoor plumbing was a retrofit, never mind gas, electricity, and broadband). A big problem is the size of the average dwelling (about a third the size of the equivalent US home, often without the yard/garden) — where do you put the thing?

    Flip side: we have lots of cars.

    An electric car of the very near future can be approximated to a 100kWh battery on wheels. If we have a grid that supports kerb-side chargers everywhere — yes, it's a big investment: but we've dug up every residential side street and dropped cables underground in the past 2 decades just for better TV — then, given a national fleet of 20M EVs, of which a maximum of 5% are in motion at any one time, then that corresponds to a national fleet of 190GWh of distributed batteries, i.e. enough to float 100% of the UK grid for 3 hours.

    3 hours on its own is insufficient, even leaving aside the issue that we can't afford to randomly run down car batteries to zero when the wind stops blowing. But it gives a feel for the scale of the problem: a 24 hour backup battery for the UK would be the equivalent of 150M electric vehicle batteries. If EV battery packs cost £10,000 a pop, we're looking at £1.5Tn. Which sounds like a lot of money, but the UK housing stock has an estimated net real estate value of £70Tn, and the UK has an annual GDP of roughly £2.2Tn. Built out over a period of 20 years, with replacement of 5% of the battery fleet on an ongoing basis thereafter (I'm assuming a more durable tech than LiION, which is optimized for capacity per unit weight rather than longevity or safety) it begins to look like something the nation could budget for. And I'm assuming a 24 hour battery capacity is necessary; in practice, I suspect that's seldom going to be needed.

    Someone should suggest "a battery in every home" as a policy to Jeremy Corbyn; it's exactly the sort of infrastructure that appeals to his flavour of socialist — it's national-level, affects everyone, can be sold as progressive (in the tradition of the grand "Electricification of the Soviet Union"), and a whole bunch of people will get left out if the government doesn't handle the heavy investment side of things.

    279:

    House batteries … probably not a viable retrofit in the UK, but I could be wrong (says the guy living in a home where indoor plumbing was a retrofit, never mind gas, electricity, and broadband). A big problem is the size of the average dwelling (about a third the size of the equivalent US home, often without the yard/garden) — where do you put the thing?

    In our case, it's going in the garage, below the consumer unit and the solar panel controller. Hey, the average garage is too small for modern cars and gets used for miscellaneous storage anyway. Otherwise, loft space is a possibility, assuming it's not already been converted.

    Neither is an option for you, but while it's not a solution for everyone, it's a solution for enough people that it's worth checking out. A 10kWh battery is enough to run us for a decent period even if it's not enough to charge a 40kWh car, and is somewhat less than the 20kWh we get off the roof on a decent day.

    280:

    don't think Greece was the only country in Europe involved in two world wars. Who is Greece armed against? Bulgaria? Come on, don't be silly. Turkey? Greece and Turkey are both members of NATO, a much more solid structure with much sharper teeth than the EU

    Some clues for you;

  • During the second world war, Greece suffered a 20% population drop due to war and disease under Nazi invasion — that's ten times the per-capita death toll experienced by the United States during the Slaveowners' Treasonous Rebellion, about 20-50% higher than the per-capita death toll the Soviet Union experienced during the war. Greece was, pretty much, the worst-affected European nation during the second world war. (This gets weirdly little attention in the popular history books.)

  • Said atrocity was followed by a brutal civil war, as the communist (Stalin-backed) partisans and the US/UK-backed partisans fought for control over the ruins. The western-backed forces won, and glued Greece into NATO at the same time they were dragging Turkey into the policy of geopolitical "containment" that the US State Department invented to try and prevent Communism from spreading outside of the Soviet bloc.

  • Lest we forget, Greece fought a brutal and protracted war of independence against the Ottoman empire (that's Turkey, again) from roughly 1821 to 1830; you might want to look it up if it's unfamiliar to you, because there was a lot of massacring of civilian populations going on, and it was a prototype for later 19th century ethnonationalist movements. You might also want to check out the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, their history during the first world war (hint: opposite sides), the 1921-22 war, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, the 1996 incident, and so on.

  • TLDR: Greece and Turkey have fought more wars in the past couple of centuries than France and Germany, and common NATO membership didn't put a stop to it (1974!), it just provided a mediation framework. In this context, it's hardly surprising that Greek governments tend to over-spend on military force to out-face a much larger, more populous, aggressive traditional enemy they share a land border with.

    281:

    Nojay: yellow flag. Please do not use the n-word, even with ironic intent, on this blog. We live in an age of google, and shit gets searched for and quited out of context.

    282:

    Cameron went to them for some help/assistance marginally better terms, etc & was told to piss off ( to all intents & purposes ) as there is "Nothing wrong with the EU"

    This is a bad distortion of what happened. Cameron went to the EU asking for changes to terms of membership that would have given the UK preferential status and violated the Red Lines that the EU will not cross — crippling freedom of movement at EU level, rather than doing what other EU states do and simply putting in residence restrictions (a common practice in other EU members but which successive UK governments have insisted is impossible within the EU).

    283:

    the vast majority of the Greek debt was incurred not by the junta sponsors (Greek and Cypriot) of enosis, for whom indeed nothing was more important than spending money on tanks & planes to use on enemies abroad and at home, but by the civilian regimes after they were overthrown

    Again, you're missing the point: who overthrew the Greek junta in the 1970s? Could it possibly have been a fairly massive social movement, broadly left-wing, many of whose leaders were beaten to a bloody pulp by the military?

    The junta was in power for quite a long time: when they finally caved, the terms of the unofficial settlement were: the generals and admirals were to stay in their bases but would have lots of shiny toys to play with, and the dissidents were to be paid off with lots of civil service jobs that would keep them off the streets and out of trouble, in order to prevent a re-run of 1945-47.

    So Greece ended up with a top-heavy civil service and a gold-plated military, because the alternative was yet another bloody civil war, barely a generation after the dust had settled from the previous one.

    What looks like inefficiency and corruption from an outsider's doctrinaire neoliberal "smaller states are better" perspective is actually a design choice that was settled on because it was less bad than the alternative.

    284:

    I freely admit that my comments as to the debt were based not on historical research but on reading plausible sounding stuff during the height of the budget crisis from folk like that Greek motorcycle-riding economist/politician who used to be all the rage.

    Just a thought... You don't think that, just maybe, Greek populist politicians might just maybe have an axe to grind regarding the EU? Perhaps even enough to bias their public statements?

    Gosh, if only you were a formally trained historian, aware that witnesses can be unreliable, and understanding that it's often worth digging a little deeper and checking alternative sources...

    285:

    They were also taken for a ride by the international financiers, who offered them loans to cover short-term cash problems, with all the usual results. The EU's gross mishandling of the crisis was in demanding solely austerity, when we know it is more a punishment than a cure.

    286:

    This was certainly a big part of the Leave plan. In conversations with Dominic in late 2015 he expressed the view that winning the referendum required mobilising a number of very distinct constituencies:

  • The "left-behind by globalisation" lot (e.g steelworkers, children of steelworkers in Port Talbot or Stockport)
  • The "don't like migration" lot (essentially core UKIP vote)
  • The "let's slash regulation and taxes" libertarian Tories
  • (1 and 2 were / are obviously much larger groups but all needed specific and quite different messaging)

    287:

    Actually, it's only a political solution, and is economic only because of subsidies. Yes, it works in summer for (let's guess) 30% of the housing stock, but the main problem is in winter - and, as you imply, it doesn't even make a significant dent in heating and transport. A more serious question is the (recurrent) manufacturing and recycling cost, environmental and financial, but let's ignore that for now.

    My point is that, if you can do the storage in individual houses, you can also do it in substations.

    Re the one-liner in #278, there are also much better solutions to the transport problems than simply converting our existing motor vehicle based 'solution' to electricity, which I am certain won't do anything about any of the problems except reduce the atmospheric pollution in cities. Indeed, I think that it will make them worse. But I have posted on that before.

    288:

    And incompatible solutions to their concerns. But, hey!, Brexit Means Wrecksit, and clearing the rubble (let alone rebuilding) is Someone Else's Problem.

    289:

    So, how do you think he's going to react to being portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in next year's film of Brexit?

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8425058/

    290:

    Worth reading Varoufakis "Adults in the Room" for an (admittedly biased) view of the Greek debt crisis and how the EU and IMF mishandled it.

    Just wish we had some adults in Parliament at the moment ...

    291:

    We do but, as usual, they are being kept firmly on the back benches, and kept out of the media as much as possible (let's ignore whose fault that is). But probably no more than 50 or so. Clarke is probably the highest profile one.

    292:

    I understand he cooperated with the filmmakers. From the trailer I've seen it looks like Cumberbatch's performance is pretty nailed-on.

    293:

    One does not mitigate heating energy loads with batteries; one mitigates them with air-sealing, insulation, zone heating, heat-pumps, etc. Heating power consumption can be reduced 70% in a retrofit by insulation (new construction can do better), and then get that heat into the building at twice the efficiency with a heat-pump.

    294:

    Re batteries, size, where do you put them?

    I don't know of any batteries that are designed for this today, but I suspect they could be built for underground install. Opens up a lot of under garden-parkingspot-sidewalk-street-basement locations.

    And there aren't really technical reasons why batteries need to go in individual houses. That just fits some finance schemes, survivalist fantasies, is something individuals can do while their governments are still dithering, etc.

    295:

    With regard to доверенное лицо, I've done some more looking and the ru.wikipedia article for Доверенность lays the matter out succinctly:

    https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Доверенность

    Доверенность — уполномочие представлять или действовать от имени другого лица в правоотношениях.

    Сторонами доверенности выступают доверитель («представляемый») и доверенное лицо («представитель», «поверенный»).

    296:

    Charlie @ 280 Greece was, pretty much, the worst-affected European nation during the second world war ... I always thought that was either Poland or Yugoslavia (as was) - you really sure about that?

    & @ 282 Possibly - but the point I was trying to make (badly, obviously) was that the EU were ( & are) so smug that they are so wonderful & perfect & loved by everyone & BEIGE that they instantly rejected the alarm-bell that Cameron was ringing in their faces. Which has turned out so well for everyone. Yes, we are going to be hurt a vast amount more than "they" are by Brexit, but the whole thing was & is so un-necessary.

    EC @ 291 Don't forget Stella - Corbyn & the momentum-marxists hate her guts, mainly because she's: awake, a social democrat, a firm remainer & let's not forget FEMALE ....

    Jeff Fisher @ 293 Balls My 1893-build has a blank N wall, a greenhouse on the SW side, a very well-insulated loft, central heating with the boiler in the middle & a central flue ( No fucking inefficient "balanced" heat-waster thank you ) And reasonably tight-fitting sash windows with heavy curtains. I still need the heat on in winter, even though my "trigger" temperature is only 61°F ( 16.5°C )

    297:

    If I were writing this as background for a story, I'd probably make this become British policy after losing the U.S. We'd end up with the U.S., the Great U.K., and possibly something like the E.U., plus Russia and China as the major power blocks.

    298:

    Once we have electric cars and something resembling decent AI, people won't own cars anymore. Cars will become "frames" and people become "packets" and everything will be routed without human drivers.

    We're a couple decades away from being able to do that right now, but it will happen - and people will prefer it to the inconvenience of "fighting traffic."

    299:

    This is very true. There are lots of solutions.

    300:

    Isn't this essentially what Uber are building? The drivers are just a short-term solution until properly autonomous vehicles are available then they'll be discarded.

    301:

    IMHO, Uber is twenty years too early, plus they want to be a monopoly. I think they're going to crash and burn. I expect that AI which is good enough to route people to their destinations with five nines (or better) of service, plus avoid accidents is a little like fusion, "just around the corner" for a couple more decades.

    302:

    I should also note that for obvious reasons, car-routing companies will need to be regulated like utilities... I can't see Uber thriving under those circumstances.

    303:

    I think that's fair. They've spent a load of shareholder money getting people comfortable with the idea of ordering a car through an app - suspect the true beneficiaries of that will be their successors. In particular I can't see how their driver payment model (with Uber taking 25-50% of every fare) is sustainable.

    304:

    I also think that with well-routed electric vehicles, price per mile is eventually going to come way down. The maintenance costs for an electric aren't terribly high - a Tesla, for example, only has 20 moving parts, so we should anticipate much smaller maintenance fees.

    305:

    Yes I think that's a big factor. Also capital efficiency - a truly autonomous electric vehicle in a well managed system is going to be utilised / occupied for ~95% of its lifespan (versus maybe 5% for the typical car today?)

    306:

    298-301 REALLY? Uber are about to go bust .... attempting to capture the whole market. I for one will not shed a tear. You've still got to park the effing vehicles somewhere, when not in use & in city centres, you still have the congestion problem. That's why we have what the US calls "Transit" ( Trains, tubes, trams, etc )

    307:

    We've just been saying that we don't think Uber will succeed. Re: parking / congestion the whole point of an autonomous vehicle network is that the cars shouldn't actually be spending much time at all parked - vehicles as a service that we order rather than as a thing we own creates huge efficiencies in terms of parking space, congestion etc.

    308:

    Uber and Lyft both take around 25% of a fair

    In the US at least it’s a fine business model, since the alternative for many city dwellers is to buy and maintain a second car for commute purposes, plus paying for downtown parking

    Here in SF for instance downtown parking runs $20/day which is roughly half what taking a Lyft to and from work is. Or if I want to add another 15 minutes on the commute I can take a Lyft to the public transit hub and break even

    Admittedly both Lyft and uber are running at a loss now as the compete with each other for market share by subsidizing rides but it wouldn’t take much of a rate increase for them to break even and the market will bear it since it’s still cheaper then a second car

    Given that taking public transportation to work is a nonstarter for pretty much everyone in the US

    309:

    Nojay @ 251: Slavery and treaties.

    By 1770 or so it was obvious slavery was going the way of feudalism in Britain and the white property-owning Americans weren't going to go out into the fields and how their own tobacco when they had n**rs to do it for them. Industrialisation and chattel slavery don't mix.

    Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back. However "obvious" it it might have been in 1770 that slavery was going away, the U.K. didn't get around to actually abolishing slavery until 1833 (50 years after the American Revolution was ended with the Treaty of Paris

    Although the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished slavery in the U.K. and most of the British Empire, it exempted territory held by the British East India Company whose slave plantations were not abolished until after passage of the Indian Slavery Act in 1843.

    While slavery didn't work well inside the new mills established by English industrialists, it proved to be QUITE favorable to those same industrialists by providing a source of cheap, slave-grown cotton to sustain the new mills.

    Even during the American Civil War, British industrialists were quite happy to supply weapons & warships to Southern Rebels in exchange for cotton. And the Bank of England was happy to facilitate those transactions. Without the support of British merchants and British banks, the Confederacy would not have lasted even a year.

    311:

    Given that taking public transportation to work is a nonstarter for pretty much everyone in the US.

    Generally driving your own car to work beats using public transportation by a matter of multiple hours.

    312:

    Right, and I can give you a wonderful example of what happens when you take the protection machinery out... sorry, examples from the US: 1. Deregulate telecom, 1996, dot.com bubble, 2000-2001 2. Deregulate financial services: 2008 3. Deregulate airlines: enjoy all the legroom you have, those of you over 5'10 (I think that's > 1.77m)?

    Do I need to go on?

    313:

    Sorry, but that won't work in highly congested areas like most of the (sub)urban UK - the problem is the road network is quite simply overloaded, and there is no room for more.

    And I have posted before that such AI is the lastest fusion power, proletarian revolution or whatever - it will solve everything when it comes. Don't hold your breath.

    Personally, I am waiting for porcine genetically engineering to improve, so we can fly everywhere.

    314:

    Coal's falling apart... yep. All the easy-to-get, good quality coal in the US is mostly gone. What's left is nasty.

    For that matter, the former coal miners and their kids are mad, the "war on coal"... which was actually a war on coal miners. The coal companies HATED the Mineworkers' Union. When they couldn't break them, they got around them: they went to strip mining and mountaintop removal. Results: in the fifites, over .75M miners; now, around 75k miners.

    315:

    Bullshit.

    The rich keep bribing their way into power. Don't try to tell me that "both sides are bad", because they are NOT equal.

    316:

    Wow. Thanks, Charlie. I think, vaguely, I may have heard of it, but forgotten about Cybersin long ago.

    And the pic in the link... there is no way that science fiction could ever influence the real world... right, Captain Kirk?

    317:

    much better solutions to the transport problems than simply converting our existing motor vehicle based 'solution' to electricity

    https://thespinoff.co.nz/auckland/17-12-2018/how-the-e-scooter-revolution-is-already-shaping-our-cities/

    The electric revolution on our city streets, already underway, looks much more like a scooter than a Tesla. Why? Physics and geometry: size really matters for both energy consumption and spatial efficiency. And both drive affordability and therefore the speed of uptake.

    Also "If you think Lime scooters are a safety menace, wait till you hear about cars" :)

    318:

    Garbage.

    Unless you want to tell me that Walmart is a failed company, since there's no way it can plan ahead as to what people would want to buy....

    319:

    20 moving parts in the engine, maybe, but the engine is a very small proportion of the complexity of a modern car. It may seem plausible that you could also abolish the clutch and gearbox (or automatic transmission), but then you need an electric motor that remains efficient over a range of rotations of at least 14:1 and probably an even greater range of torques.

    That's ignoring the record of manufacturing companies and their collaborators in government in keeping prices up as costs reduce by adding more mandatory gimmicks, and the fact that maintaining the AI will be a monopoly even if the other aspects aren't.

    Don't hold your breath. Look at how much serious laptops have not come down in price in the past 5 years. But look how much more you get for your money!

    320:

    Actually, for everyone who's sure that autonomous vehicles are the future, I've got this fascinating AI problem for you:

    How to evacuate Centennial in the face of a wind-driven wildfire.

    Centennial has two roads (it's on a 2-lane highway that might get expanded to four lanes). It's as close to the back end of beyond as you can get in LA County without going to Catalina, and they want to put 60,000 people there, give or take. Most of those people will probably have to commute at least 15 miles somewhere else to work. For many, it's going to be more like 50-100 miles commuting every day.

    The site is generally very windy, and 30-odd fires have been recorded within five miles of it in the last 100 years, and it's burned multiple times. It's also on the San Andreas Fault, but that's irrelevant for this scenario.

    Your problem, as an AI designer who's going to program a fleet of autonomous vehicles so that people don't own cars, is to figure out how to get everyone safe in maybe 4-8 hours. That includes things like getting parents home from work 50-100 miles away, to pick up their kids, get their pets, and get back out before the house burns. As well as figure out how to deal with people with mobility issues who may have trouble getting into a car. Oh, and there will be power outages, road closures, limited visibility, and cell networks going down either through power loss or because they burn up.

    Yes, the homes are going to be built to the latest fire code standards. Yes, some homes built to those standards have burned in the 2017 and 2018 fires. Why do you ask? It's not like the experts say these homes are fire proof. They' just the best they can do.

    Anyway, that's your autonomous car driving network challenge for today. Go for it. For extra points, figure out how e-scooters are going to be used for evacuations as part of this.

    321:

    Two things about solar: in the US, it's sold as power for your house, and what you don't use goes back into the grid, lowering your bills. So, the grid effectively stores the power.

    Btw, I get annoying calls from my power company, recommending that I use less power on certain days, at certain times, to save money (there is a differential charge, if I remember correctly, for certain times of the day).

    Finally, about the Camp Fire... there was a report, and pics, from late last week... power workers found bullets in poles, and shattered connectors.

    Y'know, as though some morons were using that for target practice. But who would do something that stupid..?*

    • An article in Model Railroader in the late 80's was on how to upgrade your cabooses to "modern" standards... which called for them to be able to withstand a cinder block dropped from a bridge as they passed under it... and a .22 bullet from the side.
    322:

    70%+ live in in metropolitan areas. And the difference between most condos and an apartment is...well, you buy the apartment, I mean, condo, and you're required to pay the management company that provides the services the janitor used to.... And, just as an example, I have a friend who's near me, sorta-kinda-inner suburb... in a 12-story condo building. There are a bunch around here....

    323:

    Even during the American Civil War, British industrialists were quite happy to supply weapons & warships to Southern Rebels in exchange for cotton.

    The workers, on the other hand, were willing to suffer to end slavery.

    This In Our Time programme is quite worth listening to: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05tly3f

    According to Wikipedia:

    On 31 December 1862, a meeting of cotton workers at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, despite their increasing hardship, resolved to support the Union in its fight against slavery. An extract from the letter they wrote in the name of the Working People of Manchester to His Excellency Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America says:

    ... the vast progress which you have made in the short space of twenty months fills us with hope that every stain on your freedom will shortly be removed, and that the erasure of that foul blot on civilisation and Christianity – chattel slavery – during your presidency, will cause the name of Abraham Lincoln to be honoured and revered by posterity. We are certain that such a glorious consummation will cement Great Britain and the United States in close and enduring regards. — Public Meeting, Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 31 December 1862.

    So yes, the industrialists were all for slavery, but more Britons opposed it, even at considerable personal cost.

    324:

    I'm against nuclear reactos because: 1. the companies building them will outsource to the cheapest bidder, and you're going to worry about who's following the rules? 2. In the US, they're still looking for a permanent storage facility to store the wastes for the next 20,000 years or more.

    Can't afford organiz - they charge a lot, an' don't you call me no vegan (though I'd like to steal their spaceship, and see what Vega is like...)

    325:

    Sorry, got on via work in late '91, and the Net was a big thing... it's only you young'uns who confuse the Web and the Net. And I have friends who were on in the early 80's.

    I do remember the damn eternal September, though: AOL dumped all of its subscribers onto the 'Net, and autosubscribed them to a number of newsgroups. All of them.

    There was one newsgroups that it was painfully obvious: alt.best.of.usenet, which was for reposting posts from other newsgroups that were hysterical, esp. when the poster didn't have a clue what they were saying.

    Then came the AOLidiots, "I can post anything I want anywhere...."

    326:

    However "obvious" it it might have been in 1770 that slavery was going away, the U.K. didn't get around to actually abolishing slavery until 1833

    Not quite. Slavery was abolished within England and Wales in 1772 with Somerset v. Stewart; and in Scotland in 1778 with Knight v. Wedderburn - so that's the UK covered. One might wonder whether the Plantation Owners in certain Crown Colonies decided that independence from such awful ideas was... advantageous... during the Treacherous Insurrection Against His Majesty King George).

    The next step was the abolition of the slave trade in 1807; but you're correct that Slavery was only abolished within the British Empire in 1833.

    327:

    You noticed cars.

    I know, in a Model Railroader from a couple decades ago, that the railroads had emergency plans to drive a few diesel locos somewhere... and connect them up to the local part of the grid. Need a few megawatts? No problem....

    328:

    Hate SUVs. HATES THEM, WE Do. Also oversized pickups.

    At least half the folks owning them have no idea how to drive them. And off-road? A 15-yr-old quote from an "unnamed Ford executive" read "the only time 90% of these people go offroad is when they're drunk, and miss their driveway at 2 in the morning"

    AND THEY'RE gas guzzlers.

    329:

    And the Net-Yahoo... isn't there something in the two tablets that God handed to this guy, about "not bearing false witness"?

    330:

    But the neoliberal-controlled Democrats (who are finally losing power) were the non-insane Republicans... of the 1950s.

    331:

    “20 moving parts in the engine, maybe, but the engine is a very small proportion of the complexity of a modern car. It may seem plausible that you could also abolish the clutch and gearbox (or automatic transmission), but then you need an electric motor that remains efficient over a range of rotations of at least 14:1 and probably an even greater range of torques.‘

    Which is exactly what they’ve done. Motor, reduction gear, differential, and that’s it. Not even a reverse. Zero to ~105MPH (in the case of my Nissan Leaf) and effortless hill-starts on any gradient without a single gear change and with no clutch/converter slip. It’s actually a substantial part of the appeal...

    332:

    You wrote:

    Putting up 1 MW turbine or 1 MW solar plant nowadays costs about. One. Million. Dollars. At best, that is. Comparable diesel generator costs 10 times less, sometimes +-50%. And if you want to ship it somewhere else so you do not have to bring all that fuel with you, be ready to ship a lot.

    I did a quick search, and such generators do cost that much. But then... The current price of diesel at gas stations (I can make a reasonable stab at the price truckers pay, not the outright price gouging they do on folks with diesel cars). Let's say they pay $1/gal (US). From a chart I found online, at 1/2 load, they're going to burn 81gal. An hour. A quick calculation tells me that's going to cost about $350,000/yr. And the fuel for a wind turbine is....

    333:

    a well-sited 1MW wind turbine will generate about 300kW on average. Some days it will not generate any electricity at all, a few days a year it will produce 800-900kW. One plunked down randomly somewhere electricity is needed (in the middle of a cluster of medium-rise office buildings, for example) will generate a lot less than 300kW on average.

    A diesel generator always works to meet the demand for electricity, wind turbines only when the weather obliges. The cost of fuel is not the point, it's the cost of not having electricity that's more important.

    334:

    Unlike certain historians, and others, I do not see myself as omniscient. I've read this discussion with interest and have learned from it. And hey, this is a blog, this is not me publishing an article in a journal. It is through free-flowing discussion, argument and polemic that one learns best. I particularly liked the posting about how many of the loans were done to keep the former dictators and their hangers-on content, as that fits well with my view of the world. In the Greek disaster, it took two or rather multiples to tango, and the idea that the Greek ruling classes and governments were just innocent victims if anything clashes with the general way I view things. So, as this was not one of my particular areas of expertise, I am glad to retreat to argue about other things where I am not just repeating stuff I've heard from others whom I do not necessarily consider authoritative. However, I do not see any reason why the people of Greece should have to pay the consequences of either their rulers' irresponsibility or whatever the EU, the IMF or Uncle Sam may or may not have forced down Greek throats.

    335:

    Ditto that. I was thinking of complaining too, but I decided that as a recipient of a yellow card myself, that would be inappropriate.

    336:

    "The problem with this 'shipping answer, as we're finding in California, is that the grid's proving to be a major source of huge wildfires."

    No. Unless California runs on a grid that's completely different in design to every other grid. 'shipping' is done with high voltage (330 000 to 800 000) volt lines. They are a very long way in the air and they terminate in large (football pitch size) swtchyards. Transformer fires are contained to the switchyard, the lines are so far the air they can never sag enough to arc to a tree.

    Fires are started by local transformer fires or lines over heating. That's on the final 11000 volt local distribution network. Those are caused by electricians installing huge airconditioners and failing to fill in the required paperwork. The equipment overheats and for some reason it's the electricity distributors who are to blame. I guess they're easy to find and have deep pockets. The answer is to overbuild the local network by a large factor, but then the right wing radio shock jocks (ie, the people who actually run the country) start to complain about 'Gold Plating' the network.

    337:

    As another poster pointed out, Greece was definitely not the worst European victim. It came in fourth, after Yugoslavia, Poland and, of course, by far the worst victim of all, the Soviet Union. Best current estimates of death toll there inflicted by Barbarossa and its consequences is 26 million. Including the Holocaust, something like a third of all its victims were Soviet citizens, and as far as Hitler was concerned, Barbarossa and the Holocaust were simply two sides of the same coin, his tools in the dominating passion of his life, the war against "Judeobolshevism."

    And that vicious civil war was, essentially, between the Resistance, regrettably led by a thoroughly Stalinist Communist Party, vs. a British-imposed monarchy whose backbone was Nazi collaborators. Effectively, the Greek Civil War was simply a continuation of what the Nazis did to Greece, with the German role replaced by first a British then an American role. This is why Greece is literally the only country in Europe which still has a powerful oldstyle Communist Party which criticizes Stalin but hasn't altogether rejected him, with great strength in the labor movement.

    338:

    the companies building them will outsource to the cheapest bidder, and you're going to worry Well, this is a failure of society rather than technology. If the only thing that can push humanity to use (an improve!) clean, efficient and abundant source of energy like that is a potentially apocalyptic conflict, then we have much time to grow up as a ... hm, species.

    From a chart I found online, at 1/2 load, they're going to burn 81gal. An hour. A quick calculation tells me that's going to cost about $350,000/yr. You want to run them in intermittent manner, anyway, but on demand - much different from the wind, since it blows when it wants. You will need backup power anyway. Okay, fuel's the fair point, but not in the manner you would like. The problem is the delivery - as you ship stuff somewhere, it requires some gas for movement and it's price increases therefore. Sometimes very much so. So you have to resort to alternatives, as in the article I posted above.

    However that's not all to it. You should also remember that the cost of manufacturing and fuel usage, as well as subsidizing pricing - usually is but a marketing trick. What REALLY is necessary to calculate for environmental footprint evaluation, is the whole process of service life, from project to decommissioning. This is where complication starts. After you buy the wind turbine, or the diesel, you ship it to the place. And install it. And connect and then you have to maintain it. For example, diesel can easily run for decade or two, only requiring a low level maintenance, while turbine may accumulate problems due to stress and metal fatigue. And then you probably would want it dismantled, or replaced, or modified, and so on. Too many things to list, and all of them are important.

    Anyway, real green energy is a fighting an uphill battle and trying to avoid it with a lot of little tricks and fallacies is a good way to lose a lot of progress to a fraud or error. We have to be mindful of it.

    339:

    Now, that I'm very familiar with, as I am with the 19th century history. On recent stuff during my lifetime as an adult I naturally have to go outside my historical studies. What I will point out is that this was not just Greek history, but the history of the Balkans. Yugoslavia, or if you prefer the pieces of Yugoslavia that got Balkanised in a hideous blood bath after (and because) the Wall went down and the Soviet bloc went capitalist, went through all the same stuff, including wars with the Ottomans, as did Bulgaria. I believe the very worst 19th century Ottoman atrocities, if I remember this correctly, were against the Bulgarians. Yet Yugoslavia and Bulgaria didn't destroy their economies with military overspending (Yugoslavia also got did in economically by too much Western borrowing, but not for military spending, it was to try to make Tito's "market socialism" work. Yugoslavia wasn't China and squaring the circle is always a difficult proposition).

    340:

    What REALLY is necessary to calculate for environmental footprint evaluation, is the whole process of service life, from project to decommissioning

    But if you do that the answer is that your diesel generator requires between 1 and 100 hectares of arable land dedicated to growing the crops to make the biodiesel to run the generator. Then you have to pay the managers who get the funds to buy the farm and operate it, and the workers to run the farm and the plant etc and suddenly the wind generator starts looking quite attractive. I know I would happily pay to rebuild the roof of my house and fit 30kW of PV plus a big battery, if the alternative was having a 10kW diesel generator running in my backyard 24/7(1).

    This is why I've been campaigning to re-open White Bay Power Station. It's a coal fired electricity generator in the middle of Sydney and you can see it from where our current Prime Minister Scott "coal is good" Morrison lives. I think if people who vote for this shit actually had to live with it they'd be less inclined to do so. But instead we let them vote to inflict it on others.

    Fossil generation is primarily an exercise is moving the problem away from the people who cause it. Both physically, by putting the coal burners out in rural areas, and temporally, by leaving it to future generations to clean up the pollution.

    (1) I have visited places where that is almost exactly how things work. Remote Australia does that on scales from a wee 10kW genset on a farm up to a row of 100kW gensets in the poor part of a small town. They're loud, stinky, and insanely expensive.

    341:

    Indeed. Be it noted that abolishing slavery in England was a cheap gesture, as there were no slaves in England and hadn't been since the days of QE1. For that matter, there were enough loopholes in Somerset that Jamaican slavemasters could still bring their slaves with them to England if they followed the right procedures. The number of slaves actually freed by Somerset was insignificant. There were some slaves in the mines in Scotland, so Wedderburn actually did mean something.

    Vermont has the honor of being the first American colony to abolish slavery, another cheap gesture as at the time there were not only no slaves but no black people there.

    Since England was in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, England needed slaves in the American South to grow cotton for England's dark, satanic textile mills. But began slowly losing interest in sugar plantation slavery in the Caribbean (except for a brief period during the Napoleonic Wars when the Haitian Revolution handed Jamaica etc. a sugar monopoly on a silver platter), as more efficient sugar plantations in Cuba and Brazil outcompeted Jamaican slavemasters. That is why allegedly anti-slavery England basically supported the slavemasters' insurrection in the South, until domestic working class protest and the Emancipation Proclamation made that difficult. As somebody once said, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice plays to virtue, so the English government had to retreat from supporting the South to neutrality during the final years of the Second American Revolution. (For those who want sources, Robin Blackburn's and David Brion Davis's books on slavery are recommended).

    342:

    Actually, the Woolsey fire appears to have started in a substation, but that's irrelevant. The problem with your argument is that the same companies own all the lines, no matter whether they're carrying the power long distances or distributing it locally, where, I agree, most of the fires start.

    343:

    I was using networks to communicate to locations in other cities in the 1970s, and was not one of the first. I have been using Usenet since 1979.

    344:

    Here's a newspaper report about the findings of bullet holes and branches down. The thing is that they weren't found down where the current lawsuit and PG&E think the fire first started, but were found in the area where the fire spread. So it's possible that the Camp Fire had multiple causes. Certainly it would take a tinfoil beanie-wearing person (me?) to think that some PG&E employee wouldn't empty a clip into a transformer during a fire in an effort to dilute blame. I'm sure the thought of multibillion dollar liabilities would have no bearing on such things, of course. That's crazy.

    346:

    Wish I could, but sorry, it was a few months ago. It was in his column in the NYT, which is not paywalled....

    347:

    Bill Arnold @ 273:

    I Have Seen the Future of a Republican Party That Is No Longer Insane (Jonathan Chait 2018/12/16) One can imagine a future in which the Democrats move toward socialism, opening a void in the center for the ideas espoused by Niskanen to take hold in something that perhaps shares the name, but otherwise none of the important ideological traits, of today’s Republican Party.

    Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

    348:

    The Arabic word(s). It's a crappy "Hill to die upon" pun, with a sea-level joke, mixed in with the actual doctrinal issue which is that profiting from debt is حَرَام‎. Which is basically what oil extraction is, at this juncture, and exactly what the conditions for the end-zone Apocrypha entail (as with the Djinn, you don't get a good starting position).

    But hoooo-boooy are we not getting involved in that little drama so we didn't use the usual version.

    It's probable that our input would be ignored, anyhow. You may note that several US media places are running MBS stuff today, however and consider yourself forewarned.

    @329 You can take the meta-joke of the focus of the thread to also include favored sons getting banned from platforms who encourage genocide because it was causing political embarrassment if you want[1]. Note: the comment ""Do you know where there are no attacks? In Iceland and in Japan where coincidentally there are no Muslims," is actually false[2]. It's also ironic, given it was founded by a Palestinian[3].

    Pointing out self-owns by the hard right is basically Leftist Pheasant shooting, so we usually leave it implicit.

    Iceland being a chill place is nothing to do with recent religious immigrants, all you have to do is not fuck with the elves. Yeah baby: 2018 - do not fuck with the LGBT+ elf mafia[4].

    ~

    Note: since this is Brexit related, today's joy of watching a Tory MP (male) ignore sense from a Labour MP (woman) and basically texting during their interview while "yobbos" shouted "SIGN THE PAPERS" [Note: no idea what this referenced] in the background as SKY NEWS scripted reality again broke down was the highlight.

    Basic line: Tory UK MPs[5] no longer even care to even pretend that they're in it for running the country or anything serious.

    NICE

    For Greg: no idea where to start. For a start, it wasn't a Ronald Reagon film, it was a John Wayne film called " Reap the Wild Wind[6]

    [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/yair-netanyahu-son-israeli-pm-ban-facebook-181217030717006.html

    [2] Félag múslima á Íslandi

    [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmann_Tamimi

    [4] "See You in Court!, We're technically livestock!?"

    [5] Who are best buddies with IO favorite Leaver party 'it girl', ahem.

    [6] Note, this is another joke. Find the B&W JW film where he tragically dies at the end, diving, a rarity in his cannon. Was never color. And there were no giant squid. Oh, and then google "John Dies at the End", it's a good book.

    349:

    Wooley fire seems to be "under investigation". I've looked at the place it was supposed to have started and it's not where a long distance 'shipping' line ends. It appears to be supplied by medium voltage, but I don't have Californian network maps.

    I completely fail to understand what you're talking about regards ownership. If (I'm not implying anything about DHL, it's just an example) for instance there was an ongoing issue with DHL drivers running over people's dogs in their driveways, (ie a problem with the last mile of delivery causing damage), WTF has that got to do with DHL cargo flights, (ie long distance shipping) even if they're owned by the same company?

    Long distance electricity transmission doesn't cause fires, even if the lines are owned by the same company, any more than you're likely to have a DHL jetliner run over your dog.

    350:

    Greg Tingey @ 296: => Jeff Fisher @ 293Balls

    My 1893-build has a blank N wall, a greenhouse on the SW side, a very well-insulated loft, central heating with the boiler in the middle & a central flue ( No fucking inefficient "balanced" heat-waster thank you ) And reasonably tight-fitting sash windows with heavy curtains. I still need the heat on in winter, even though my "trigger" temperature is only 61°F ( 16.5°C )

    Be that as it may, this house had no insulation, no adequate weather sealing when I bought it. I've added some insulation & weather sealing as I've made repairs/renovations. I'm a long way from finished, but I can already see that even a little bit of insulation reduces the amount of energy I have to add during the winter to keep the house warm enough to be livible.

    ... more importantly, it takes less energy to cool the house during the summers (a much bigger deal here in the U.S. south).

    No amount of retrofitted insulation can completely eliminate the need for heating or cooling, but it can reduce the amount of energy required.

    351:

    I notice mention of batteries in houses. They are in fact already for sale in the UK, and go nicely with a solar panel setup. Seeing as we need to put panels on millions of roofs, it makes sense to install small battery setups (5kWh for instance) to offset the incoming solar for use in the evening. They do look about the size of a large suitcase, if you buy lithium ones.

    A wired article: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/cost-of-solar-panels-in-the-uk-with-battery

    This is not a one size fits all solution any more than one house size and layout suits everyone.

    Flow batteries are also being built and sold in China and Australia, with specific variations being designed and tested in Europe and the USA. These provide local energy storage, but obviously don't scale up to gigawatt hours. e.g. https://redtenergy.com/story/time-shifting-solar-farm-holiday-business-uk/

    At least in the UK there is 15GW of offshore wind planned and being built, on top of around 20GW installed on and offshore.

    I was recently reading a report by the Centre for alternative technology suggesting we could run the UK purely with renewables: http://www.zerocarbonbritain.org/en/ for more information.

    They seemed to think that by reducing demand (insulating houses, less travel etc) we could greatly reduce energy requirements, then we'd need quite a lot of biomass, and a change in eating habits to less meat and use more land for said biomass. Plus syngas manufacture for energy storage when the wind is low. Lots of solar on roofs.
    Basically we have the technology already, it just needs deployed and the way we use resources needs to change, which is easier said than done.

    352:

    "(or, as we see in Australia, intermittent fossil generators. Who would have guessed that extending the life of old equipment made it more prone to failures)"

    The intermittency of Australian coal generators is only tangentially related to their advanced years. The main cause, which is evident in patterns of outages (there's a peer reviewed paper on this that I've read but can't re-find, sorry) is manipulation of wholesale prices. The various governments have sold the generators (sometimes for as little as a dollar) to a small number of private hands. So private profit making companies are suddenly in control of huge chunks of public infrastructure. They're driven (legally driven) to maximise profits. So, imagine you're the owner of say 2 large coal fired power plants. One makes 2 GW, the other makes 2.5 GW. The wholesale price is about 6c/kWh (60 dollars a MWh, 60 000 dollars a GWh). You're running both generators flat out and you're making 270 000 dollars an hour (less running costs). Oh no! one of your plants has had problem. You call the network and say "We had a boiler leak here now. Give us a few minutes to lock it down. Large leak... very dangerous." (shooting the telephone with a blaster is probably not needed) Now you're only generating 2 GW. But the price has gone up to 14200c/kWh (14 200 dollars a MW, 14 200 000 dollars a GW). You're now making 28 MILLION dollars an hour. You're probably facing a couple of hundred thousand dollar fine for dropping the generation, but frankly, who cares?

    The corruption watchdog called this "Normal business practice". They're not allowed to collude with other generators, that's against the law, but there's no law requiring business to over produce a product in order to drop the price.

    353:

    The problem is that the California grid is fundamentally different in design from other grids. It's American. American electrical stuff is supposed to zap things and start fires, because that's what it does in the comics. People shooting it up is just the icing on the cake.

    At least, that's the impression I accumulate from everything I ever come across concerning American electrical supply containing some information that makes my hair stand on end.

    354:

    You do know the difference between space heating and electricity used to power your computer?

    355:

    Note:

    We may have had our first eros related heart-breaking cry at the image of JW bravely and self-sacrificingly going back to dive in the memory of his loved lover (ghost) back when the motion pictures were a novelty to us and we were only just being allowed to watch them.

    And it was most definitely in Black&White on a large flickering screen.

    This may... alarm your Temporal Bells, if you imagine your universe as it never happening.

    356:

    ...And there's an example of how every time people like you and Moz post something about Australian electricity supply it makes my hair stand on end. Only in that case it's not because of the implication that the entire system is run on the same level of soundness as wrapping a blown fuse in the paper out of a fag packet, it's because of the staggering insanity of the privatised system. It sounds like your grid is as mental as our railways.

    357:

    Let us point you to the new ground breaking Climate Denial talking point that is smashing it in the USA:

    DeFazio on climate: "This is the existential threat to the future of the planet." Insanity. For comparison, the atmosphere Venus is 96.5% CO2 -- and the planet is still there. In contrast, Earth's atmosphere is only ~0.04% CO2.

    https://twitter.com/JunkScience/status/1073757414770524162

    So, yes: both come ultimately from the Sun and Space. One used to have a functional biosphere.

    358:

    Having to downgrade temporarily to a flat screen monitor because my 21" CRT isn't working has made the temperature in here noticeably lower.

    What's annoying is that the various fan heater components in the main processor box don't operate at temperatures approaching incandescence. This means that over time they clog themselves up with dust, unlike a dedicated fan heater which burns the stuff off as fast as it draws it in.

    359:

    That's also a big issue, true. But there are also reasons why, even with quite generous pricing, the owners don't want to keep some of the old post-retirement plants running. And it's not just the difficulty of having to actively maintain asbestos insulation and other hangovers from the 1950's.

    It would be really amusing if the shiny new federal anti-corruption(1) started digging into who set the AEMO up and what the relationships in the little mess are. I'm sure there's no gross illegality (2), but there are some surprising(3) links between different parties when you start digging.

    (1) in practice it's more a "vaguely disapproves of obvious criminality" watchdog. The right wing here really don't like watchdogs. (2) eagles are protected, after all (3) not really surprising, except in the "how did expect to get away with that" sense. And the answer is generally "we wrote the law to specifically permit it".

    360:

    I'm talking about electricity in all cases. The Woolsey Fire preliminarily was thought to have started at the Chatsworth Substation, which was set up in the 1950s to service the Santa Susana Field Lab, which you may want to google. Or not.

    Your argument about DHL is specious. Moving packages contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, whether they're from a jet or a truck. Moving electricity in, into, or out of California contributes to wildfires, no matter how thick the line is.

    361:

    "...the cars shouldn't actually be spending much time at all parked"

    Except all night.

    This is the same as gasdive's air conditioners setting fire to the substation. If you're going to have everyone's houses fitted with an electrical supply capable of delivering 25kW (or whatever the local convention is), then you can't sensibly argue that it isn't the supplier's fault when people starting to actually use the capability of the supply they are paying for shows up inadequacies further back along the line. Either you have a system which really can deliver what it says it can, or you have a system that falls over.

    It's the same with cars: if you have enough of them to keep things going during rush hour, then at 3 in the morning nearly all of them are going to be parked up. If you have so few of them that most of them are hardly ever parked up, then 3 in the morning is the only time the system works...

    You have to have enough capacity to meet the maximum demand, even if that does mean that most of it is sitting around most of the time not being used. But note that this is only a problem because nobody's got round to shooting all the accountants who insist that it costs money just to have stuff whether you're using it or not.

    362:

    "No fucking inefficient "balanced" heat-waster thank you"

    Greg, Greg... they're not heat-wasters. They improve efficiency by using heat from the exhaust gases to pre-heat the incoming combustion air. That's why Gresley used the principle on the W1...

    363:

    Be it noted that abolishing slavery in England was a cheap gesture, as there were no slaves in England and hadn't been since the days of QE1

    But it was the first step to abolishing the slave trade (in 1807) and finally slavery in all colonies (1838). And everyone involved in the debate knew it.

    After 1807 the Royal navy was patrolling the Atlantic to try and stop the slave trade.

    England was quite divided on these issues: Nelson had been a typical navy man who supported British involvement in the Caribbean, and hence made common cause with the plantation owners and was pro-slavery.

    But I think your claim that Britain "England basically supported the slavemasters' insurrection in the South" is pushing it a bit. What actions are you referring to? They never recognized the Confederacy, as far as I know. They never imposed any trade sanctions on the Union (which could have been crippling for Union farmers) - but likewise they didn't deny the confederacy access to British ports. Relying heavily on imports of wheat from the North and imports of cotton from the South, they remained neutral.

    364:

    Anyhow, here's the "World in 2019" by the Economist:

    https://cdn.disclose.tv/sites/default/files/styles/inline/public/img/inline/2018/11/30/tw2019_cover_us_no-b-c_no_spine_cmyk_1.jpg?itok=0SGbL6pb

    You'll need to Mirror it to spot it all.

    That moment that you admit Galadriel is a Power, your prior covers / State-sanctioned-Societal Engineering were crap.

    If you think all of this has been insanity, well. No. We tend to tell the Truth. OMMMM.

    p.s.

    The joke here is GCU Grey Area, aka, Meatfucker.

    Do you know what it feels like to enact Genocide while experiencing their suffering?

    It's not something you can monetize.

    365:

    JW bravely and self-sacrificingly going back to dive in the memory of his loved lover (ghost) I did do a brief google poke when you posted that earlier. (Was never a fan of Ronald Reagan.) The only film I found with a diver was Hellcats of the Navy but it wasn't a fit. Anyway, I don't get memory mixups with other timelines quite that severe. :-)

    Still parsing the princess story. (I like unusual princess stories.) Hasn't gelled yet.

    366:

    "Do you notice how this reoccurring obsession with debt / Finance is a core part of Abrahamic religions?"

    Very sensibly, too. Because all that stuff is a religion, and a most virulent one too; once people start believing in it they believe in it much more strongly than they do in the things which "religion" conventionally refers to. Darwinistically it makes sense for a self-reproducing set of ideas to incorporate some kind of defence against more strongly reproducing sets.

    Also, it fucks people up.

    367:

    I thought electric vehicles had battery packs with something like 30kwh at least; our technology now and for the foreseeable future is not good enough to permit anything holding that amount of energy to be easily fitted to a house, unless it's another car battery. Which obviously is rather expensive, even now. Better to use a small one for daily cycling.

    368:

    JBS @ 309 Only because the US, then as now was exceptionalist & STUPID. The US refused to sign/ratify the international treaty that prohibited “Private Ships of War”, so when the confeds came along with gold, shipbuilders were quite happy to take said gold & build a ship or two. If the US had signed, they could not have done that…… SEE ALSO # 323

    EC @ 313 😁

    H @ 320 Or even driving almost-entirely on tarmac roads, what I regularly do … go out to pick up horse-manure in the countryside ( & about twice a year go “off-road” down a legal forest track too ) maybe stop HERE for a pint, then go back to the allotments, again go “off-road” – inside the allotment site, drop stuff off, then go home. Somehow, I don’t think so.

    JH @ 337 Not so much that, but the CIA-backed military coup in the 1960’s is why they have let’s say “Strong left” views there - & who can blame them?

    @ 341 as there were no slaves in England and hadn't been since the days of QE1. WRONG Mansfield Decision ( Stewart vs Stewart, 1772 ) [ Wiki is your friend ] And, the “support” you continually posit for the US South was imaginary – supported by “Punch” & a couple of loudmouths, but never the government. Also … Vicky & Albert were agin slavery …. See also # 363

    Guthrie @ 354 Uh?

    Pigeon @ 358 I have to drape a fineish mesh over my “tower” to stop it filling-up with Birman cat-fluff …

    369:

    Wind and solar are not very useful to the grid, unless we successfully build far better storage solutions than any currently in use - where better means "Cheaper, and much larger scale" batteries need not apply, I mean crazy stunts like https://heindl-energy.com/ actually succeeding and keeping to their budgets (See earlier point about all large construction projects currently having issues..)

    What the intermittent renewable sources are obviously good for is bulk industrial production of hydrogen and its derivatives. - Meaning, ammonia, and also iron (You can extract iron from ore without coal this way. Carbon neutral steel!). Eh, and I suppose, rocketry? Because a solar cell in an equatorial desert, or a windmill in truly windy location can produce electricity at rock-bottom, fire-sale prices without subsidies or hidden costs if you do not give a farthing when, exactly, you get those kwh, only that you get so many of them per year.

    Because electrolysis equipment is cheap enough that it does not matter very much if you only run it at 40-50% percent capacity on average, and while hydrogen is a pain in unmentionable places to store in ways which are convenient for mobile applications, if all you want is a buffer between the electrolysis equipment and the industrial processes which consume the hydrogen and need a steady supply, a great big tank with thick walls will do fine, and will not break the bank.

    370:

    Yes, my hair (what's left of it) stands up too, but it's not the Australian Grid (which is fundamentally sound having been designed and constructed in large part by government entities, though the goal of the people running it has changed from providing a secure supply at a minimum price to maximising profit) it's the rampant and completely undisguised corruption of our governments (we have 3 levels for historical (ie. stupid) reasons) that makes my hair stand on end.

    371:

    Either you have a system which really can deliver what it says it can, or you have a system that falls over.

    Very few big systems are built like that though. Insurance is the blatant case, there's no insurance company anywhere ever that can cope with every single policy needing to be paid out at once. Likewise it's just not physically possible to build a road that every vehicle in the country (or even the small country town) can use at the same time.

    But the same applies to everything from hospitals to airports, because "build enough capacity that everyone can use it at once" isn't necessary. The question is what size peak you build for, rather than mindlessly build for the biggest you can imagine.

    Australia is, once again, a brilliant test case for doing this with power grids. in NSW the privatised grid was told "your profit can only be x% of the value of your assets", so they built the biggest, most expensive grid you can imagine. And it was very profitable. But it still browned out on hot days, because there just wasn't enough capacity to allow NSW to suck power from the whole east coast on hot days. Australia generally has peak demand at dinner time on hot summer days... and that demand can really spike for the exact reason Pigeon describes - when people who don't normally use aircon much all decide to turn it to max at the same time as the usual daily peak is happening, things get ugly.

    Best of all, the new "building efficiency standards" still allow houses to built to do this. I'm not saying the designers are corrupt, just observing that there are close ties between the regulatory process and the industry being regulated, as well as between wealthy property developers and politicians (other than The Greens, who don't accept donations from property developers)..

    372:

    Do you know what it feels like to enact Genocide while experiencing their suffering? It's not something you can monetize. That is one of the most gut-punching statements I've read on the internet. (Also, Grey Area is my favorite ship in all of INB's works, then perhaps the drone Flere-Imsaho in POG. :-)

    Steve Milloy is disgusting. I just knew of him peripherally but looking at his profile, ewww. (I read that as a joke though.)

    373:

    unless we successfully build far better storage solutions than any currently in us

    That's close to tautological, though. We don't have them, but we have the technology and we're rapidly scaling up commercial development of it. For countries like Australia where peak demand occurs a few hours after peak insolation it makes perfect sense. Especially since adding PV to the roof also reduces that peak demand. For most of Australia even NiFe or NiMH batteries would work, self-discharge doesn't especially matter over a few hours and that few hours would help a huge amount.

    374:

    Once we have electric cars and something resembling decent AI, people won't own cars anymore.

    Cars being electric rather than petrol-driven is irrelevant. Obviously.

    I don't see the AI connection either. What does driverlessness have to do with car ownership?

    You think the ability to send my car off to park itself in a cheap underground carpark a few ks from where I'm going, and re-appear when summoned, will make me less likely to take my own car into town instead of a taxi?

    Why? Why do you think driverless cars (which will enable me to avoid the hassles of parking) will make me less keen to use my own car instead of more keen?

    375:

    The New York Times Just Published an Unqualified Recommendation for an Insanely Anti-Semitic Book Tablet Magazine, 2018, today.

    Pro-tip: The Talmud is actually insanely racist, reactionary and down-right fucking evil in places by 2018 standards.

    It's a living work of history, it's not a fucking manual.

    It's like that bit of history where Jewish people shipped slaves to America from Africa. Or the entire of the Arabian peninsula was supplied by slaves via Africa up to... oh, I don't know? 1967?

    Spare me the Holiness of Righteous when you're being fucking cunts.

    p.s.

    At some point we're going to have to talk about that entire Cuba / China / Russia wave-length thing and note that you're shipping actual fucking insanity all over the world, boys.

    376:

    And that vicious civil war was, essentially, between the Resistance, regrettably led by a thoroughly Stalinist Communist Party, vs. a British-imposed monarchy whose backbone was Nazi collaborators.

    Alternatively, it was the legitimate government of Greece, returning from exile, taking over the machinery of government that had operated through the occupation, and having an argument with the EAM/ELAS who believed that as they'd been the partisans, they should run the country (and having refused to disarm, were willing to fight over it).

    Note that the Greek Civil War started under the German occupation, as EAM/ELAS decided that they were definitely going to run things after liberation, and they were willing to kill other resistance groups to achieve it. Charming mob, perhaps that's why they weren't trusted...

    Similar tensions were present in many occupied countries, once liberated - both in Europe, and in Asia. Indonesia and Indochina decided that their colonial powers were ineffectual and collaborative respectively, and refused to accept the returning governments. Burma and Malaya were quickly and slowly decolonised.

    In Bulgaria, AIUI the partisans had achieved little. When the War crimes investigators came to look at the Allied Mission types who'd been executed; it turned out the Germans hadn't done it, it had been willing locals (I can remember going to the cemetery in Sofia as a kid, on Remembrance Sundays). Meanwhile the Communist Party membership grew so significantly in the month leading up to the Soviet liberation of September 1944, the Bulgarians had a name for it: "The Last Ten Days' Communists".

    In Yugoslavia, the partisans had been extremely effective, to the extent that they effectively drove the Germans out with Allied support. It was a vicious and brutal war, even by Balkan standards, and by the end Yugoslavia had lost 10% of its population. Tito was supported by the British; read Fitzroy Maclean's "Eastern Approaches". The Royalist Cetniks were seen as far less effective, and a lot of Royalists emigrated to Australia post-war (seeing a street sign for Mihajlovic Street was incongruous).

    Effectively, the Greek Civil War was simply a continuation of what the Nazis did to Greece, with the German role replaced by first a British then an American role.

    Cute. "British acting as Nazis". Nice trolling. Attractive narrative, has a polemic ring, relies on one side's perspective, has some serious comprehension gaps, is rather offensive, and is both simplistic and inaccurate.

    I'm curious as to why you think that the same British who decided to back Tito and the Communists just over the border, would elect a Labour government and promptly "continue what the Nazis did" (you really want to read up on what the Germans did, before you accuse the British of carrying on with it.

    Are you actually a historian, or a newspaper columnist? Because I really, really, hope that your teaching is of a higher quality than your blog comments.

    PS I must reread the "Don Camillo" books by Giovannino Guareschi (I enjoyed them as a child, I just don't know whether they'll bear rereading). Come to think of it, we also had a lot of Hans Helmut Kirst in our (military) school library; I do wonder who chose our book purchases...

    377:

    Oh, and...

    That is one of the most gut-punching statements I've read on the internet.

    If

    You

    Do

    Not

    Realize

    By

    Now

    We

    Are

    Not

    Talking

    About

    Humans

    Then

    fuck right off with your morality shit. And the fact that Humans enjoyed their deaths. And not talking about the animals here, Dark Crystal fans.

    No, really. Israel is a fucking nexus of evil, and the humans are not the things we're looking at.

    378:

    Well, the Bolt runs on 65 kWh, and the Tesla Model X runs 75-100 kWh, but basically, if you want to stack a bunch of lithium batteries together to power one of them, you're talking about something that's about the size of two three-drawer file cabinets back to back that weighs around 1000-1500 lbs (you can get the same effect by slotting five Tesla PowerWalls next to each other). If your garage is on a concrete slab, this isn't enough to crack the slab, although I hope it's a modular installation to make it easier to install, service, and replace the batteries.

    I'm hoping for a house battery that holds around 65-100 kWh and can discharge at 150 amps or more. That means I can charge my car once a week off the sun. Alternatively, I can use that battery to run my home for quite a while if the power goes off. Or, if a fire hits, I can theoretically power up an electric pump and a 2000 gallon cistern and use undereave and roof sprinklers to keep the house too wet to burn.

    Right now, five powerwalls would be around $40,000, so this isn't a great option except for a evil tycoon's secret lair. Drop that price to $20,000 and it's attractive ($200/kWh is roughly the current battery price), and drop it to $10,000 and they'll have trouble keeping up with demand (which may happen by 2025).

    379:

    Sure our technology is good enough to fit it to a house. It's good enough to fit it to a car, and a house is much easier. Static installation, which is always easier; vastly more space, even in the tiniest of houses; weight basically just doesn't matter; doesn't have to cope with such a wide range of operating temperatures; doesn't have to be protected against spraying water/salt/muck...

    What is a problem is that 30kWh simply isn't enough. It wouldn't get me through even a day without any input; most people use a lot more energy than I do, and days with no input are not uncommon on the single-house scale, whatever the input is (I think houses on sites suitable for installing a tidal or geothermal generator are rare enough to be ignored). Ten times that capacity would be more realistic.

    And the other major problem is who's going to pay for it, when it costs many many thousands of pounds but hooking up to the grid costs nothing and the juice you get from it only costs pence/kWh. It's only going to be done by people who have got lots of money and are into that sort of thing. It would make a lot of sense for me to do it - I have a south-facing roof, loads of insulation, minimal consumption, and no inclination to avoid having the space under the stairs looking like a power station (it looks like a computer graveyard at the moment) - but it's never going to happen because there is zero chance of me ever being able to pay for it.

    380:

    "But it still browned out on hot days, because there just wasn't enough capacity to allow NSW to suck power from the whole east coast on hot days"

    That's not actually true in any way shape or form.

    Firstly, NSW didn't brown out, or have load shedding. It came very very close but didn't. Secondly there wasn't enough spare capacity in Victoria or Queensland to cover the needs, they were coping with their own issues. Thirdly there was sufficient interconnect to move what they did have spare, more network wouldn't have helped. Fourthly the shortages were due to coal fired generators having failures and the gas fired backup generators failing to come on line due to low gas pressure. There were attempts to start on diesel and then switch to gas but they weren't successful. Fifthly the Tomago Aluminium Smelter which uses about 10% of all the electricity in NSW has an agreement whereby they get electricity at about 10% of the price you and I pay, but they will curtail consumption if required. They are vocal supporters of coal fired generation. When push came to shove, they point blank refused to stop production and it was only when it became apparent to all that the network was about to turn them off and their pots would freeze they agreed to a limited cutback. You are free to speculate why they continued to draw power while paying in the region of 2 cents per kWh, despite their agreement, while their friends up the road, who they support in the press all the time, were being paid 14 dollars a kWh for that same electricity.

    381:

    Yet Yugoslavia and Bulgaria didn't destroy their economies with military overspending

    Did Greece? Let's look at the early 90s; the Yugoslav National Army, the Hellenic Army, and the Bulgarian People's Army.

    Yugoslavia had twice the population of Greece; twice the number of tanks and combat aircraft. Bulgaria had 2/3 the population of Greece; twice the number of tanks, and twice the number of combat aircraft.

    So, if the Yugoslavs and Bulgarians were able to afford it, why couldn't the Greeks? You might call Bulgaria a Soviet client, but that certainly didn't apply to Tito...

    Perhaps it wasn't the military spending that destroyed the Greek economy. Perhaps it was inefficiency, corruption, a massively bloated public sector, unaffordable vanity projects by politicians (see: Athens Olympics) and an unbelievably ineffectual tax-gathering system...

    382:

    fuck right off with your morality shit. Was not a comment about morality. (It hasn't fully hit me yet, btw. Still missing some pieces.)

    384:

    Look @ the Economist cover.

    The 4 Horsemen are on the UK.

    grep: dragon, wolf, penguin: clouds. And later: penis-dog.

    "Hilarious"

    As a question: we're fairly sure that any reaction to 21 year old man committing suicide should be a mixture of sadness, ire at the world and general "can you believe the shit world we're in, eh?" and "WTF?".

    It shouldn't be a full on Winky-Winky joy joy Savile stuff, right?

    Wrong if you're in the [redacted]. Oh, and tbh: "Kill the Angel...".

    Dude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB2utvrdfQU

    Νέμεσις

    At which point are you going to notice this bit?

    385:

    That was what I was about to quote at you. I'm not sure how you get from my "wasn't enough capacity to allow NSW to suck power from the whole east coast" to "The interconnectors had reached capacity" showing that I was "not actually true in any way shape or form" but I'm sure you're right. I welcome further explanation.

    386:

    Sure, there was a whole range of failures during that most recent event, but since I was talking about the extremely expensive grid somehow still not having enough capacity I think it's relevant.

    Especially in the context of someone claiming that we should build the electricity supply system to be able to power everything all at the same time even though we've never seen that happen (and there are arguments at the margins that it's not physically possible... people can't be at work and simultaneously at home with everything turned on in both places. They can get part way there with home automation, but even that has limits - you have to unload the washing machine every hour or two for example).

    387:

    " the UK housing stock has an estimated net real estate value of £70Tn,"

    That seems overstated, 70 trillion divided by the U.K. population works out to around a million dollars for every man, woman and child, say maybe three million or so per household. And we're talking not just Hyacinth, Richard and Sheridan but Onslow, Daisy and Rose as well. Granted only a paper figure, but if other assets are valued with reference to such a high estimate, it sounds like a really puffed up bubble developing. What would happen to the value of banks, for instance, if their loan portfolios were supposedly justified by such wildly overpriced real estate. Makes me wonder if Amazon and Google are falling all over themselves investing in New York real estate just to prop up another shaky illusion.

    388:

    In California, the probable driver, at least for people outside the suburbs, will be power companies turning off the power during Santa Ana events, to avoid sparking wildfires. SDG&E is already doing this for around 18,000 people. While they can get a little generator for under $1000 and run their refrigerators and maybe something else, if they want to keep their house completely working, they'll need a big battery. An emergency backup generator is about the same cost as a big battery ($10k-ish), so if you're going to go big anyway, why not get a battery?

    If the grid becomes less reliable, I suspect batteries will become more popular.

    389:

    Oh, and btw.

    Apart from Logos.

    Notice the entire fucking world got looted by: the Romans, X Empire, The British. There's like a few thousand Assyrian pieces in there.

    Wai no art from ur end Israel? Like none at all?

    "OH NOES, OUR ONE TEMPLE GOT ENTIrELy DESTROYED"

    ER.

    Wut?

    South America had like 500 temples destroyed, and there's a shed load of artifacts.

    Nope, Golden Calf doesn't cover it.

    Hint: it might be because [redacted].

    Oooooh. True Story. Might not want to fuck with the Elves.

    390:

    >

    Looting the autists who couldn't make art.

    >

    Then they REEEEEED all over the world about art.

    >

    Still looking for decent ancient Israeli art.

    >

    One Temple, "allegedly"

    1000% destroyed

    "Historically we are eternal in this place"

    >

    Someone stop the irony.

    391:

    Now then: Apart from that shitty 1950's movie and some bad lying, you weren't slaves in Egypt either.

    When you gonna own up to actually never being in there?

    Nah mate. They're modern liars, they're not the real deal.

    "We found a 9,000+ year old mask"

    "Yeah.. but that's not Jewish, is it"

    We. Are. Though.

    p.s.

    Kiss gooooodbye to the 10010101 stuff.

    Enjoy Psychosis.

    Opens Logos the Book

    They have no masks left now

    392:

    In the (hopeful) electric car future I'm imagining, people have learned not to build homes in Centennial. :)

    That aside, let's imagine a fully mature form of AI (which I am) plus a fully mature routing system. No programmer is needed, as Centennial and other hard-to-reach places are frequently used as a virtual practice grounds for exercises where AI are needed to rescue people. (This kind of virtual practice is an ordinary AI behavior when cars are parked for the night, perhaps the AI's version of Dungeons and Dragons.)

    In the real world, the results of these exercises are dusted off and twenty-thousand AI cars in the area drop off anyone who doesn't want to go on a rescue mission or who can't go along for some reason; health, poor record in dealing with children, etc. People who aren't needed for any kind of rescue work are also dropped off: "Sir, I'm going on a rescue mission. If you don't want to help, please get out. (If you do help, you will be rewarded with free miles.) Other cars are being diverted to pick you up. There is a small diner two blocks south of here. Don't forget your laptop."

    The system immediately organizes the twenty-thousand vehicles. Any vehicles which still have human drivers are warned to get off the road. One road is used for entrance to the Centennial area, the other is used as an exit from the Centennial area.* (Firetrucks are part of the AI network, and have participated in exercises.) Everyone in Centennial gets a text message sent to their callphone or personal AI telling them where to gather and what to bring.

    Nobody other than rescue volunteers are taken to the Centennial area. (If you're not there, you don't need to be there.) Anxious mothers are shown pictures of their kids riding calmly in cars which are taking them to safety, and are not allowed to run fifty-miles home to rescue their kids. (They can try, it's a free country, but it would be a hundred-miles - possibly a freely tradable currency - wasted.)

    Cars with humans who have excellent reputation scores are sent to the schools. Each car exits the school with one adult and 6-8 kids and heads immediately to the exit road. Other cars with rescuers are sent to the houses of people who need help - old folks, handicapped, etc. and help those people to the cars.

    The planning happens in a couple minutes. Well-known principles are applied. The driving happens very quickly as AIs are much better at driving safely than a human driver...

    As I noted above, fire-engines and ambulances are part of the AI networks. This means that if we need 1000 firefighters right away, they can be routed in with the other vehicles, while firetrucks from further away load up their crews and hopscotch two fire-stations to the west. (Or whatever.)

    The really important point is that at some time in a good future, this does not have to be programmed. AIs learn for themselves, conduct exercises, and make stuff happen. An emergency is declared and the system responds. (Maybe I should explore this in my book.)

    *Alternately, there could be two loops on the two different entrance roads, each encompassing half of Centennial. The important point here is that ordinary road directions are ignored as necessary, with ruthless (and ego-free) routing of trucks and people being the norm.

    393:

    The grid performed flawlessly and had enough capacity left to suck power from anywhere. No lines tripped, no tranformers overloaded and (Hetero) nothing caught fire. Despite it being a near record draw, and obviously a record load on some parts of the grid. The bits that Transgrid have control over worked perfectly. The bits that Transgrid doesn't have control over (the generators, the backup generators, the interconnectors and the switchable loads) either failed, didn't work, weren't big enough (remember I've been banging on for years that we need more and bigger interconnectors, and so has Transgrid) or refused to co-operate. Despite that, there was no brownout and no load shedding.

    394:

    Because your time is valuable, and the payoff (if you live in Southern California, as I do) is significantly less time spent in traffic.

    Right now, if I work in downtown Los Angeles and I need to be there by 9:00 am, while using my own car, I have to leave by 6:30 at the very latest. So I have a minimum morning commute of at least 2.5 hours. When I leave at 5:00 pm, I have to drive at least 2.5 hours home - and once again, this 5 hours is the absolute minimum time I will spend on the road. Note that this incredibly congested and complex driving environment is filled with single-occupancy vehicles. FAIL!

    Now imagine a driverless cars routed similarly to a packet. It picks me up at 7:30, makes four more stops in my neighborhood to pick up other people who work in Downtown Los Angeles, then heads west on a freeway with 25 percent of the cars currently in use - and since it's coordinating with the cars around it, everyone gets to drive faster! We roll into downtown about 8:30, drop people off, and then the car picks up some people on the night-shift and drives them home.

    So I sleep an hour later in the morning and get home an hour earlier in the evening. And BTW, I have none of the headaches of car ownership. I don't have to repair, maintain, finance, charge/gas-up, or wash a car. That's all handled transparently and it's Someone Else's Problem. Not to mention that since I expect to go to downtown Los Angeles once a day, I can buy my miles in bulk.

    If someone is inclined to stagger the start times for workers, this works even better!

    The final score is that I save 2 hours a day and don't have to drive/navigate in heavy traffic for five hours a day! And that two hours spent in the car? Since I'm not driving I can read, watch TV, surf the 'Net, etc.

    395:

    Centennial may be too late (it's already been approved). If you don't like this future, an end-of-year donation to Center for Biological Diversity may be in order.

    The problem for the AI in a fire is sensor failure and a chaotic new environment. A simple example is (from the news media) when a woman got stuck in a traffic jam going out of Paradise as the fire closed in. She called her husband to say goodbye, and he yelled at her into going off the road far enough to go around the jam and get out. She was too rule-bound.

    So the AI problems in something like a fire are: --chaotically degrading sensor and communication network, with blowing embers causing spot fires, roads getting closed, trying to figure out who to pick up, and stuff the car can't do (like getting someone with special needs into a car fast, when there's no human to help).
    --Emergency alternate routes. Can you teach a car to drive on the lawn? Under what circumstances is that acceptable? --Equivalents of the trolley problem. What does the AI do when its cars break down in the face of the fire, and it can't get them all out? If it has to sacrifice someone, who does it sacrifice? For the firefighters, where do they get routed, and how do you get the humans to play along?

    In a fictional setting, you can make a good story dealing with this. For extra points, make the answer to the trolley problem a matter of social credit, China style, with all the injustices that might imply (for example, an rebellious teenager might get left behind, while a senile former bureaucrat might get picked up first).

    396:

    "the extremely expensive grid"

    Oh, and that's another trigger for me... I hear that all the time in the media (the next level trigger for me is 'Gold Plating')

    So, you know the grid is extremely expensive. Guess how much. You've seen those bills on A Current Affair (tabloid TV) for thousands of dollars. Form a figure in your head of what the average NSW electricity consumer pays for TransGrid per month (the price is fixed from 2014-2018). Got it? Ready? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    $12

    397:

    It picks me up at 7:30, makes four more stops in my neighborhood to pick up other people who work in Downtown Los Angeles, then heads west on a freeway with 25 percent of the cars currently in use

    Meanwhile, I use my own driverless car to do the same thing, getting all the time benefits of not sharing (as well as not having to haul all my stuff out of the car when I get to work, back in when I leave, etc — I can't believe I'm the only person who does other things on the way to/from work* and so leaves bulky stuff in my car…).

    It's kinda like the 'SUVs are safer' thinking — if I'm the only person with an SUV, I'm safer than the rest of you in little cars. If we all make the same calculation and all use SUVs, we're collectively worse off. Prisoner's dilemma, essentially.

    398:

    So the AI problems in something like a fire are:

    --chaotically degrading sensor and communication network, with blowing embers causing spot fires, roads getting closed, trying to figure out who to pick up, and stuff the car can't do (like getting someone with special needs into a car fast, when there's no human to help).

    This is why the AI do exercises. What happens if there's an accident between two AI drivers? What happens if a cell-tower goes down? Which cars are responsible for mesh networking? Can we arrive at a least-bits way to signal about the issues?

    --Emergency alternate routes. Can you teach a car to drive on the lawn? Under what circumstances is that acceptable?

    Exactly. Ideally in a rescue situation, the cars drive to the doors of the classroom to minimize the number of panicky kids.

    --Equivalents of the trolley problem. What does the AI do when its cars break down in the face of the fire, and it can't get them all out?

    Ideally the AIs driving the rescue cars have backed themselves up. A broken down car gets pushed (off the side of the road if necessary.)

    If it has to sacrifice someone, who does it sacrifice?

    It sacrifices the people who stubbornly refuse to be rescued. Hopefully humans are aware of how the system works, and have prepared some kind of document storage which is easily transportable, so if they're not home the neighbor can come inside and rescue their identities.

    For the firefighters, where do they get routed, and how do you get the humans to play along?

    The firetruck AIs take part in the exercises. Ideally, each AI has a trusted human it can discuss the exercises with. Humans play along because after the AI has gamed things out, humans are brought in to look over the results, and the plans become part of the City/Counties/States official emergency planning. If necessary, humans adjust the parameters of the simulation and have the AIs run it again, just like you added stuff to the problems I'd already thought about.

    399:

    Which way any one person would go depends on the benefits, I guess. But if we're going to survive climate change we have to stop thinking that way.

    400:

    Since we're over three-hundred, I want to post this letter which I sent a couple friends last night. It describes a personal hobby-horse of mine, but I suspect that it will speak to others as well:

    Hi Ho, another Robin Hood movie. Getcher tickets before it exits the theaters - probably post-haste - with it's tail between it's legs!

    I think there should be a ritual for people who wish to make a Robin Hood movie, and it goes like this: You write your script. Run it by everyone who matters to your production and incorporate their notes. Then do a storyboard. Do not speak of your Robin Hood movie with any actors or artists (other than your storyboard artist) until this process is complete.

    When they are finished, put your storyboards and script away for at least six months. For all of this time, view them not. When the six-month period is over, you must sit down and watch Disney's animated version of Robin Hood. Study it carefully. Watch it a second time. Spend several hours uncovering all the things this movie gets exactly right.

    The next day, get out the script and storyboards for your own Robin Hood movie. Compare it carefully to the Disney version, and ask yourself honestly: "Is what I wrote even half as good as Disney's animated masterpiece?"

    If the answer is yes, you get to make your movie. Take your best shot; we're all rooting for you.

    If the answer is no, you must ceremonially burn your script and storyboards, then destroy any other media, such as hard drives, CD-Roms, or USB drives which contain any version of the script or storyboards. Then you must spend the next month purifying your soul with Shakespeare and Miyazaki. When the time of purification is done, you may again put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

    It is the responsibility of the movie-goer to enquire of the maker of any Robin Hood movie whether they have followed this rule, and if they have not done so, shun them and their movie.

    Shun them.

    401:

    Actually not setting fire to the substation, it's the transformers in the street. Substation fires are pretty rare but if they do happen, they're well contained.

    I've got some idea that you don't watch Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvxZxKhYYDU so I'll describe the action. A small grey cylinder, about the size of a garbage can sits on a pole. It's connected to 3 wires at the top which is the medium voltage supply (11000 V in Australia though this video is USian). They're filled with oil to cool the windings. It has popped and burning oil is spilling out, falling to the ground and running burning down the gutter. Eventually it sets fire to a tree. The fire brigade turns up making a lot of noise and puts it out. Had this been in dry bushland instead of leafy suburbia it would have set the countryside on fire. If you look around in a town with overhead wires, you'll see something similar every km or so. Rural places have one per property. If there's underground power you'll see big metal boxes on the street that emit heat and a self satisfied hum.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_transformer

    402:

    The size of the battery needed is really dependent on heating and cooling needs. That, along with insulation, is the single biggest driver of power consumption

    I think fully electric heating is going to be hard, most off the grid places today use propane, you can also use this as auxiliary power via generators, I can imagine this being replaced by hydrogen or ammonia systems at a grid level where the hydrogen or ammonia is created by surplus solar or wind power

    AC is tough and I think people are just going to be hotter, however the advantage that many times when you need AC is the energy rich time of the day / year from a solar perspective

    For an example, I have a 50kwh lead acid solar system off the grid in Oregon, augemented by propane heating. 50kwh lead avid really means 20kwh usable, since you don’t want to discharge more the 50%. We generally make it through the winter only kicking on the generator a couple times

    From an AC perspective we run it in the summer only on sunny days after the batteries are recharged. We often hit 75 degrees or so inside but rarely higher

    403:

    “Meanwhile, I use my own driverless car to do the same thing...”

    Except that you have to shell out $75k for the car. The other people are paying $5 for the ride. Of course in order to make the money back you can always put your car in the grid when you aren’t using it. Might be a good investment if you have the capital but probably isn’t if you had to borrow money to buy the car

    404:

    The AI fire truck and it's human offsiders also have access to the eyes and ears of all the AI vehicles in the area. It will know exactly where it can drive, where the trees and live wires are down and where the humans have clustered. With fog piercing sensors, the cars will know exactly what's going on around them, far better than the humans. IR cameras can see straight through the smoke and sense the heat.

    Currently we have a human driving a truck who can't see the broad picture and if the smoke gets bad, can't even see where they're driving.

    405:

    I do need to thank you for something. The book I'm writing will probably work best if the reader learns bit-by-bit how important the main character (and her AI) are. The whole "fire scenario" you have posed is a way to accomplish that - one missing signpost on the way to the reader understanding that Angie is mega-important.

    406:

    "Right now, five powerwalls would be around $40,000, so this isn't a great option except for a evil tycoon's secret lair. Drop that price to $20,000 and it's attractive ($200/kWh is roughly the current battery price), and drop it to $10,000 and they'll have trouble keeping up with demand (which may happen by 2025)"

    They have trouble keeping up with demand right now. There's currently a gigantic battery shortage worldwide. Powerwalls and all sorts of electric cars are subject to gigantic waiting lists. Tesla is building "worlds largest" battery factories as fast as they can, and it's not even making a dent in world demand. Waiting times are getting longer not shorter.

    Hyundai halts production due to battery shortage

    http://www.futurecar.com/2257/Hyundai-Halts-Ioniq-Production-Due-to-Battery-Shortage

    407:

    How do the vehicles communicate? This was a problem in the Paradise fire, that cell towers were going down (possibly literally) and communications broke down. It's questionable that the cars have much more than their own problem-solving capacity.

    Here's an example of the driving environment (first from the Woolsey Fire, second from the Paradise) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0wPgWpkqI In the first (fairly famous) video, the only other vehicle that could provide information was her mom's truck directly behind her.

    Now the thing about AI is we're not talking about an omniscient person, we're talking about a combination of deep learning and programming. Exercises are necessary, but simulations of this are about as similar to the real thing as NASA's training pool is to outer space.

    408:

    High altitude drones or low altitude satellites would work well for communication. That’s actually a way easier problem then the AI magic being referenced

    You probably aren’t sending real time video but rather the conclusions you’ve drawn from processing the video so the bandwidth doesn’t have to be super high

    The kind of AI being described is at least an order of magnitude more advanced then what is needed for driving a car around . It could easily fight and win wars for example

    409:

    If I were building a network over which cars and their routing servers could coordinate, I'd build something really robust, with multiple forms of backup; it would probably involve multiple forms of communication plus some real communications discipline when things went wrong.

    410:

    Stuff like emergency response to massive forest fires is going to very hard for AI to navigate. They are currently much better at doing very well understood rote tasks, especially rote tasks supported by huge amounts of data on how to do it

    The problem with fires is that there is all sorts of weird shit going on that they will have never seen before . Gonna confuse the hell out of them and they are going to pull over to the side of the road and call for momma

    What they will be really good at is the logistics part of assembling a bunch of resources quickly at the problem point, but the actual engagement is going to be humans for a long long time

    411:

    I'm assuming AI here which is conscious and at least of mammal-level intelligence, plus experienced in navigating road hazards and issues - it's smart enough to pull onto the shoulder and go around an accident, or drive into a field to avoid a fatality. Everything anyone is working on today, theoretical or otherwise in any serious manner, all in one good package, plus the ability to talk to itself like a human consciousness.

    412:

    That's pretty much the way I read it. I think the point of being a wet blanket on AI in this situation is to point out that the symbiosis between humans and AI might work better, with humans handling the weird stuff and the AIs handling the rote. On the other hand, the skills to drive out of a fire don't automatically happen, so if you want a human to be able to do an emergency self-rescue, they've got to spend a lot of time driving. Which negates the benefit of mandating self-driving cars for all.

    Perhaps the better use of AI isn't mandating self-driving cars for all, but enlarging the direction-giving ability of cell phones and similar so that they can organize ad hoc in places like traffic jams to get everyone through them as rapidly as possible given the situation. Right now, apps are around 20 minutes behind reality, so you hear about accidents that are no longer there, and similar. Something as simple as getting cars over to go around an accident is useful when right now the apps don't even know what side of the road the accident is on. A slightly more advanced procedure would be something like ironing out the standing waves that stall traffic. These kind of incremental improvements, along with a lot more buses and trains, and yes, self-driving cars for those who need them, are probably where we're going to go.

    The safest solution to building in a place like Centennial (or Paradise, or Malibu) is hobbit holes and subways, same as the best solution for surviving nuclear war (at least back in the 1950s) was to bury every city in the US. It's rational, but for some reason I don't think it will happen. That leaves us with either not building in high risk areas (as hopefully in Centennial) or, well, helping people in the not rich town of Paradise try to figure out a way to not go through that again. Malibu can look after itself, as it always has.

    413:

    It doesn't require and omnipotent super AI, just a normal level one.

    "Road Transportation Emergency Services[7] – where VANET communications, VANET networks, and road safety warning and status information dissemination are used to reduce delays and speed up emergency rescue operations to save the lives of those injured."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-vehicle

    see also

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_communication_systems

    414:

    For a town like Centennial, the most important thing they can do is probably to make sure the brush doesn't dry out, which means regularly watering the trees from the outskirts of town to 1000 yards out. (Or just cut them down.) And create firebreaks.

    One of the things we'll need to do if we want to survive global warming is to plant as many eco-powered bio-active carbon sinks (trees) as possible. Making sure they don't catch fire will be very important.

    415:

    Considerations for nuclear power are non trivial.

    The original sin is the connection to nuclear weapons and their testing. That was the equivalent about 500 (there is no good agreement on the number) level 5 and up nuclear accidents. The dishonesty involved in this spilled over into the perception (at least) of the power industry.

    The good news about this is the number of prompt deaths was quite low (given the general insanity of doing this). The long term deaths are more significant but almost certainly less than, say, car exhausts.

    To describe the safety requirements applied to nuclear plants as exorbitant, ah no. The risks (especially the long term risks) are very real and must be addressed.

    To which end I don't see how anyone in their right mind would build a light water nuclear reactor. Permanently 5 minutes away from meltdown? Excuse me?

    So, there is a lot of reasons not to trust the industry (most places, Canada builds heavy water plants, 5 hours or so away from meltdown).

    416:

    "The kind of AI being described is at least an order of magnitude more advanced then what is needed for driving a car around"

    Not really. It's just the cars sharing the information about what they can see around them. This is being done right now, it's not even speculative. It's needed right now to avoid accidents and is used to 'see around corners' in a way that humans can't. If you've ever seen a Dashcam video compilation you'd have seen the classic where a car in the kerbside lane is going straight past a line of stopped traffic and an oncoming car makes a turn into a side road (I'm trying to explain that in a 'side of the road to drive on neutral way'). Sharing traffic congestion is an obvious thing to do that benefits everyone. Sharing information about emergency vehicles seems like a trivial extension to something it would need anyway.

    417:

    "The risks (especially the long term risks) are very real and must be addressed."

    Why?

    CC will result in far far more deaths than any nuclear accident, or series of accidents could.

    However that's not the problem. The problem is that we use about 25 TW. There's about half a TJ of energy in a kg of U. So that means we would need to consume about 50 kg of U per second. Given that there's about 8 million tonnes of commercially available U we've got about 5 years supply. Probably 10 years if it's cost no object extraction. We wouldn't even complete the build before they ran out of fuel.

    418:

    gasdive, it might be time for you to declare your interest in TransGrid. You've already said that as far as you're concerned "the grid" means Transgrid which will come as a shock to all the other grid operators in Australia. You also claim that Transgrid is perfect, not like all those other shonky bits of the system. And that it's not expensive because it only costs the average consumer about $70 a year but somehow the total infrastructure cost is ten times that... again, I think you're limiting your view to TransGrid and I wonder why.

    419:

    If you're going to flash 1.5 trillion on securing an overnight energy supply, in the presumed absence of a Europe to trade with, then what about Australia rather than batteries?

    It's roughly 20 000 km between the two via the seabed. 12 GW powerlines cost about half a million pounds per km, so that's about 10 billion pounds. Average UK energy consumption is about 240 GW (all forms, not just electricity), so you'd want about 40 such cables. So that's about 400 billion pounds and a capacity of 480 GW. After transmission losses you'd still get about 350 GW out the end in the UK.

    PV is currently about 0.16 pounds per W retail. There's a lot of supporting infrastructure, but I'm sure you could negotiate a discount for a bulk order and get the lot for that price. There's still 1.1 Trillion in the kitty. So that's about 6000 GW name plate of solar. Even on the cloudiest day you'd still saturate the cables.

    Most of the time you'd have heaps more energy than you could fit through the cables. Turn it into methane via direct air capture and Fischer–Tropsch. It only ends up about 10% efficient when you include pulling the CO2 out of the air and electrolysis of the water, liquification of the gas, but it still means that you can send a fair bit of LNG to the UK. That can run gasfired power plants to take up any slack. Probably about 50 GW 24/7 coming out of the power station in the UK. (6000 GW peak means about 1500 GW average. Subtract the average 250 GW sent by cable that's 1250 GW. At 10% efficiency that's 125 GW worth of methane landed in the UK. 40% efficiency in the power plant, that's 50 GW). Of course you wouldn't run them 24/7 but run them a small percentage of time to cover peaks in demand or holes in supply. If that was 10% of the time, that's 500 GW, which should cover evening peaks.

    Buy the land in Australia for basically nothing (the land is currently worthless). Since you're not making any money in Australia you'll pay no tax. No guns need to be pointed at anyone. Australia will just let you do it. It's a stable country. No-one is going to confiscate your assets.

    420:

    I worked for HP 20 years ago. HP had the IT support contract for TransGrid and I worked on site. I've always been interested in the grid and renewable energy and I quizzed everyone who would sit still for more than a minute. I formed the strong impression that they're hard working and customer focused. In 2015 the state government handed it to private investors for 99 years. I don't know what it's like now. I was a minor project manager for the NSW/Qld interconnector. I don't think I've described TransGrid as perfect, I just corrected your misconception that seems to have come from reading mass media. Tealeaves are generally a better source of information. At least they're right sometimes.

    The imaginary 'brown outs' that you were referring to had they existed would have had nothing to do with the DNSP. That's why I concentrated on TransGrid. DNSP spending might be excessive in the opinion of the SMH however there are regulated reliability standards that the DNSP must meet. It's a bit rich that this quote "ACCC chairman Rod Sims has previously blamed state governments for rising energy prices and pointed to network costs playing a major role in this." from the same person who described the generators gaming the system as "normal business practice".

    I'd also reject the Gratton Institute's views. A thinktank created with the goal "to [set] public policy in Australia as a liberal democracy in a globalised economy." that is sponsored by coal miners seems strangely disinclined to attribute high costs to privatisation and coal generators gaming the system. Colour me surprised.

    TransGrid's remuneration is set by the AER. 12 dollars a month https://www.transgrid.com.au/news-views/news/2015/Pages/TransGrid-will-not-challenge-AER-determination-2014-18.aspx

    421:

    No way was abolishing the slave trade a "first step" to abolishing slavery. The US abolished the slave trade too, led by slaveholder Thomas Jefferson, simultaneously, which if anything strengthened slavery in the South. Especially for the Virginia slavemasters like Jefferson who as the tobacco trade declined could sell their slaves down the river to the cotton lands at truly excellent prices. Took a civil war to abolish slavery in the USA. In 1807 there was a huge glut on the sugar market due to Napoleon's Continental blockade, and the last thing Jamaican slavemasters needed was to buy more African slaves. In the aftermath, bringing back the slave trade after Napoleon was defeated might have seemed a good idea, but it would have been politically very difficult, after all that national self-congratulation for abolition. As it turned out, suppressing the slave trade worked quite well for England, was a marvelous excuse for Britannia to rule the waves.

    Why was slavery abolished in 1833? Well, there was a Jamaican revolt, and the Caribbean sugar plantations were being thoroughly outcompeted by Brazil and Cuba. And you then after the Reforms had a very different House of Commons, where the cotton textile interests who wanted their slavery in the South not the Caribbean had far more seats and the slave interest far less. And what's more, the slavemasters got truly marvelous compensation, so quite a few of the parlamentarians on their payroll actually voted for it. Getting out while the getting was good.

    England was hardly "neutral." It didn't side overtly with the Confederacy as Lincoln threatened to declare war on England if it did. With the US diverted by Civil War so the Monroe Doctrine was not operational, England joined France and Spain in invading Mexico in 1861. Which if thieves had not fallen out, would have been the perfect jumping off platform for a joint military intervention on behalf of the South by way of Texas. (France and Spain's sympathy for the Confederacy was quite open). British diplomats did threaten the US a few times with a military intervention for humanitarian reasons to stop the bloodbath, but given as the US army was far larger than the British, and seizing Canada would probably not have been terribly difficult after the rebellion was put down, it was never more than threats. The British role in the Civil War is very well described in the last chapter/epilogue of David Brion Davis's prizewinning "The Problem of Slavery in the Era of Emancipation," to which I direct your attention.

    422:

    Instead, why not imagine a good public transportation system? In general, in the USA only New York has a good one, and it is completely falling apart. LA is the absolute worst in America in that respect. Actually, Los Angeles and the vast suburban sprawl around it are a huge mistake. It's a desert with temperate climate, which had to destroy a river to get water even a century ago (watch Chinatown, a very accurate movie) and it's only gotten worse since then. The wildfires are Mother Nature's way of reminding us that the place is a colossal ecological blunder, which can only survive by vampire style draining all the surrounding water supplies, including those for the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. I have visited LA twice in my life, two times to many. I vividly remember back in the '80s driving through the rich people area and seeing the signs on the side of the street saying "Armed Response." America at its worst.

    423:

    Bill Arnold @ 372 Thank you. That statement makes comprehensible sense, unlike your source. More, please. Ah well, I followed your link on Milloy – he appears to be a deliberate public liar on one subject, at the very least: Evolution. [ Without even thinking about the other erm “mis-statements” he has made. …. ] @ 382 See, even when you make a supportive statement, you get crapped on?

    EGA @ 375 Could you PLEASE do this more often? I followed the link to the secondhand reference to Icke ( Who, though “British” is not known-of much over here). EUUUW. I mean – “the Protocols” & he rants on about “The Rothschilds” ( seriously certifiable lunacy ) Incidentally, the only individual Rothschild I know of is Miriam - a classic English eccentric & world-class scientist – I have a copy of her first book, a most interesting read.

    Martin @ 376 YES

    Troutwaxer @ 392 All powered by unicorn-farts presumably? Heteromeles @ 395 nails the difficulties. [ Last night, I pulled the GGB right onto the pavement to let a “Blues-&-twos” past – it was MOVING ]

    RP @ 397 Not necessarily. I know the GGB’s crumple zones are other people’s cars, but that’s not the point … because it is an inherently safer vehicle than most of the others. I can see further than most drivers ( Eye-height is above when I’m standing on the road ) / other people can see me & therefore avoid / really good roadholding & braking characteristics, especially in the wet / if I am involved in a collision with another car, they are going to be underneath me, so I stand a much better chance of walking away )

    Troutwaxer @ 400 WOT? No mention of the Ridley Scott version from 2010 ( Russell Crowe / Cate Blanchett ) ??

    Gasdive @ 401 That is UTTERLY FUCKING INSANE And the US & AUS have these bloody-dangerous things all over the place? In the UK they are on the ground & in at least semi-secure small enclosures. Lookeee HERE - peeking over the top of the school-fence is a small hutment – that’s our street’s local substation, accessible through the gate-with-a-label-posted on to it. Incidentally, if you scan to the right, you will see the GGB, parked.

    Finally AI vs Human responses & solutions to weird, unforeseen problems … I give you Perosteck Balveda ( Juboal-Rabaroansa Perosteck Alseyn Balveda dam T'seif )

    424:

    The legitimate government? You mean the semi-fascist Metaxas dictatorship Greece had before the Italian invasion? Which indeed "took over the machinery of government that acted during the occupation," since there was really no different between the monarchists and Metaxas fans collaborating with the Germans and the monarchists and Metaxas fans who thought England was a safer long term bet. You do understand we are talking about torturers and murderers I hope?

    As for the resistance groups other than EAM/ELAS, they never amounted to much, despite all the support England gave them. EDES, the most important one, struck a truce with the Nazis so as better to fight the communists, and Grivas's British-funded royalist "Operation X" overtly collaborated with the Nazis to fight the communists, may even have been funded by the Nazis, that's not clear.

    Why did the British have a different policy in Greece than in Yugoslavia? Remember the famous Churchill/Stalin get together, where Stalin agreed the British would get Greece whereas Yugoslavia was to be split fifty-fifty with Churchill?

    To clarify, though this shouldn't be necessary if you read more attentively, I'm saying that it was the monarchist side in the Civil War itself, not its British and later US backers, carrying out Nazi style atrocities vs. the rebels and their civilian supporters. On a smaller scale than what the Nazis did, but of the same kidney.

    425:

    You do understand we are talking about torturers and murderers I hope?

    Only too well - I can remember Dad's (professional) description of the 1970s junta. To others; Costa Gavras and "Z" describes it. Assassination of political opponents, torture, etc, etc as part and parcel of Greek politics, for decades. Note that there was both a White Terror and a Red Terror.

    Regarding EAM/ELAS, you might want to check up their behaviour regarding Dimitrios Psarros, EKKA, and the 5/42 Evzone...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitrios_Psarros

    Rather like the Good Friday Agreement, perhaps there was a conscious tradeoff to achieve peace? The torturers and murderers walk free, but at least the torture and murder stopped. It's choosing an achievable pragmatic outcome, over an unachievable ideal outcome...

    426:

    What you are writing is fantasy (wishful thinking variant), unfortunately. Nothing wrong with that - for fiction - just don't follow the likes of the Brexiteers in assuming strongly-enough held wishes will turn into horses. It's not technically infeasible, but doesn't match our requirements or the direction that we are heading.

    The communications problem is easily resolveable, by using a proper distributed system using cars, houses etc. as nodes - the (practical) theory was worked out a few decades back. The problem is that it fails horribly when one subgroup starts to game the system for its own benefit, so is a true socialist utopian solution only.

    AI's that learn from experience are fine in theory, but fail horribly in practice. The reason is that they will often find solutions that are within the letter of their constraints and objectives, but flatly incompatible with their spirit. And sort of purposes we are talking about are just too complicated to be specified precisely and completel. As I have posted before, the critical aspects of intelligence that we don't understand and can't yet emulate are imagination, intuition and judgement.

    And, as I said in #313, ANY road-based solution to ANY problem assumes being able to create enough road capacity to solve it, and that simply isn't the case in many (or even most) cases.

    427:

    ...And you then after the Reforms had a very different House of Commons, where the cotton textile interests who wanted their slavery in the South not the Caribbean had far more seats and the slave interest far less.

    Now that we're into your area of expertise, I'm genuinely curious - if this is 1833, and you're describing the House of Commons, which "South" are you referring to? Did the cotton industry in the Southern US states seek influence in Parliament, after sixty years of independence and two wars?

    England was hardly "neutral"... England joined France and Spain in invading Mexico in 1861...

    In the name of accuracy, and given that this is a Scottish-hosted* blog, you might want to think of using "Britain" or "the UK"... after all, you mentioned "British Diplomats". I'll acknowledge that Nelson was signalling "England Expects" to a Royal Navy in 1805, but precision :)

    I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the Wikipedia comment that the US thought the British position was justifiable, but they disagreed with the French and Spanish perspective...

    https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/timelines/the-mexican-campaign-1862-1867/

    • In the decades after the Jacobite rebellions, the word "Scottish" went out of favour - the shibboleth** became "North British"; hence "North British Railway", "Royal North British Dragoons", etc.

    ** As in "Derry" / "Londonderry", "Ulster" / "Six Counties", etc...

    428:

    They're there in the English countryside too.

    Horsham Rd

    https://goo.gl/maps/K7mqPQdTmH62

    (I think that's a link to a Google maps photo of a pole mount transformer)

    429:

    Here's a lovely big one in Scotland. Near Crieff

    Broich Rd https://goo.gl/maps/pVAjDCfPrio

    431:

    Regarding pole mounted transformers, there must be statistics out there about their failure rate. Here in the wet and windy UK we never hear about them failing, because maybe it isn't hot enough, or nothing catches fire,or ours are built better or something. Let's look at some data rather than quarrelling like children.

    433:

    "Let's look at some data rather than quarrelling like children."

    Yes. Let's not descend to the level of the House of Commons.

    434:

    Maybe your electricians complete the paperwork for additional loads? Ours certainly don't.

    Maybe it's cooler and they don't overheat as easily?

    Maybe the house main fuse is smaller (ours is generally 100 amps)

    437:

    Occupied Six Counties, if you don't mind!

    (This is intended as humour for those in the know.)

    438:

    Yes, exactly. I'm at work so can't try and find anything.

    439:

    I'm imagining 75% of all cars permanently off the road, and the rest gone electric. I think it's an achievable goal. You gotta problem with that? :)

    440:

    Electric, Greg. I know you love your big diesel, but in 20 years I'm guessing that for every car to have a battery at least as good as a Tesla's will not be difficult. Their Model 3 currently gets a little over 300 miles on a charge. Hopefully we'll be doing better than that 20 years from now.

    441:

    I was thinking more of the most recent Robin Hood and the Kevin Costner version (as negative examples.) The Ridley Scott version might have been very good - I haven't seen it - but I think the Disney version is canonical for me (as a good movie, not as history or legend; I'm sure it's possible to get more accurate in scholarly terms) so I think I'll keep it.

    442:

    What you are writing is fantasy (wishful thinking variant), unfortunately.

    Captain Kirk's "flip phone" communication device was fantasy too - there was literally no reason to imagine a path from 1966's idea of computers or electronics to being able to contact a starship in orbit from a planet's surface with a device which would fit in your pocket. Now we've all got cellphones, many of which respond to voice commands just like the computer of the Enterprise. Fantasy is what you make of it.

    The idea that we won't have massively improved AI in 20 years when it's one of the hottest areas of research around? That's fantasy!

    443:

    @ 428 - 430 None of those three Google maps links works - I just get a picture of the road surface ... Migth want to try again, with a "longer view" So, they exist here ... oh dear.

    DtP Occupied by Ulstermen ( & women ), in fact ....

    Troutwaxer @ 440 Quite possibly But the point is that utter theivmg liar bastard Kahn is going to steal it in 2021, because hew wants to "look good" rather than concetrating on commecial vehicles first. Like THIS for instance It will only result in me sppending probably more than I can afford, converting to LPG, if allowed ( We don't know Khan's made-up-as-we-go-along "rules, yet ) or buying an older, probably more polluting car, like a 1988 Range Rover ... ( Having, very regretfully, sold the GGB )

    [ We do know that he is proposing a FIXED "25 year" limit, which I fail by about 2 months. ]

    444:

    Don't diss the Costner version too much. It gave us the ne plus ultra of "Sheriff of Nottingham" in Alan Rickman, and a bravura example of Grand Theft Film.

    "...with a spoon!"

    445:

    Have you considered bio-diesel? I hear it's far less polluting.

    446:

    I think Mel Brooks said everything that needed to be said about the Costner film - trust an old Borscht-Belt comedian to get that one right!

    447:

    I've been gone from this discussion for a few days, so I will probably respond to various conversations in this thread.

    When talking about the Eurozone Crisis, it would be useful to look at the damage the crisis has done to Southern European countries. I'll compare it to their closest peers: US states

    Ireland: It seems to have weathered the crisis very well. It now has the largest HDI in the EU

    Spain: It's HDI is around Louisiana's (46 by states). Italy: It's around West Virginia's. You know, the state that's ground zero for the malaise of the white working class. No wonder populism is so attractive there. Greece: It's almost on par with Mississippi, the state where Jim Crow has remained the most entrenched, and the epicenter of black rural poverty Portugal: WOW! That country is about as badly off as Puerto Rico. Not only that, but its living standard is now below most of Eastern Europe.

    As an aside. It's interesting that the HDI of Massachusetts and Connecticut is higher than any country in Europe, and that 13 states have a higher HDI than any country in the EU. Why do people think this?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Union

    448:

    Since we're revisiting the Second Treasonous Slaveowner's Rebellion again I'd like to point out this detail. I read it years ago, and can't seem to find it now. However, close to 5% of slaves in the South were working in factories circa 1860. It seems that Southern governments were exploring moving away from plantations towards an industrialized economy while maintaining slavery in order to compete with Northern States.

    449:

    Below are two Bloomberg articles

    The first talks about an existing charging station which halves the charge time compared to Tesla's version https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-13/bmw-porsche-boast-three-minute-charging-jolt-for-electric-cars?srnd=premium

    Here is an article about China's participation in the cubesat market. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-13/a-millennial-s-tiny-satellites-are-helping-china-advance-in-the-space-race?srnd=premium

    450:

    Virginia slavemasters like Jefferson who as the tobacco trade declined could sell their slaves down the river to the cotton lands at truly excellent prices

    An interesting work on the subject: https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/american-slave-coast--the-products-9781613738931.php

    American Book Award Winner 2016 The American Slave Coast offers a provocative vision of US history from earliest colonial times through emancipation that presents even the most familiar events and figures in a revealing new light. Authors Ned and Constance Sublette tell the brutal story of how the slavery industry made the reproductive labor of the people it referred to as "breeding women" essential to the young country's expansion. Captive African Americans in the slave nation were not only laborers, but merchandise and collateral all at once. In a land without silver, gold, or trustworthy paper money, their children and their children's children into perpetuity were used as human savings accounts that functioned as the basis of money and credit in a market premised on the continual expansion of slavery. Slaveowners collected interest in the form of newborns, who had a cash value at birth and whose mothers had no legal right to say no to forced mating. This gripping narrative is driven by the power struggle between the elites of Virginia, the slave-raising "mother of slavery," and South Carolina, the massive importer of Africans—a conflict that was central to American politics from the making of the Constitution through the debacle of the Confederacy. Virginia slaveowners won a major victory when Thomas Jefferson's 1808 prohibition of the African slave trade protected the domestic slave markets for slave-breeding. The interstate slave trade exploded in Mississippi during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, drove the US expansion into Texas, and powered attempts to take over Cuba and other parts of Latin America, until a disaffected South Carolina spearheaded the drive to secession and war, forcing the Virginians to secede or lose their slave-breeding industry. Filled with surprising facts, fascinating incidents, and startling portraits of the people who made, endured, and resisted the slave-breeding industry, The American Slave Coast culminates in the revolutionary Emancipation Proclamation, which at last decommissioned the capitalized womb and armed the African Americans to fight for their freedom.

    451:

    Yep about the Kurds.

    The Kurds are increasing as a percentage of the population in Turkey proper. Right now, they're about a fifth of the population. The Kurds have the highest birthrate in the country. A lot of Turkey is below replacement level.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Turkey#Total_fertility_rate_(TFR)_by_Province_and_Year

    A huge fear throughout the Syrian Civil War is that Erdogan may be looking to annex parts of Northern Syria into Turkey proper. From the looks of the situation, they either want to move a lot of Syrian Arab refugees into the Kurdish areas of Northern Syria. Right now the conspiracy theory is that Turkey will then attempt to annex those areas. I don't know if that's the end goal, or it's just removing the Kurds from the current border? At any rate, Erdogan is now talking about invading the Kurdish areas East of the Euphrates, where US troops are stationed.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_occupation_of_northern_Syria#Demographics

    452:

    Actually, Los Angeles and the vast suburban sprawl around it are a huge mistake.

    Oddly, LA is the way it is because it was built with a good public transportation system. Or rather, it had a good public transportation system to enable the sprawl.

    https://books.google.ca/books/about/Henry_E_Huntington_and_the_Creation_of_S.html?id=NfFMeQORX68C&redir_esc=y

    https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/25/story-cities-los-angeles-great-american-streetcar-scandal

    453:

    Final post (then I'll stop spamming)

    There's some good environmental news. The price of bitcoin has fallen so much that mining profitability is now collapsing. This should have an interesting effect on electricity prices.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/forget-bitcoins-record-high-its-fallen-so-far-its-too-costly-to-mine-2018-12

    454:

    But if you do that the answer is that your diesel generator requires between 1 and 100 hectares of arable land dedicated to growing the crops to make the biodiesel to run the generator Well, uh, you probably already know about my opinion on biodesel.

    455:

    Centennial as it stands is on the edge of the Mojave Desert. It's by all accounts a lovely native grassland, one of the few left. Any trees out there would be planted.

    Also, 1,000 yard fuel breaks are idiotic, for multiple reasons. One is that the longest recorded ember throw that started another fire is on order ten miles (the Australian Bunyip Ridge Fire), and I'm pretty sure even in California we've had ember throws over a mile in the Tubbs fire, although no one recorded it. Worse, if your home is the only windbreak for a kilometer, when blowing embers do come flying, guess where they're going to stop? There's a well-known photo from 2007 in San Diego showing a burned home in the middle of a vast cleared space. It was lost due to catching flying embers this way.

    Second problem is that annual grasses and weeds sprout rapidly on bare ground, and they carry fire just fine. For a thousand yard fire break to work as a fire break, it's got to be cleared at least once a year, which means that the development is surrounded by bare ground. Since the Centennial area is windy most of the time (and I know someone who has been out there many times), having a kilometer of blowing dust upwind of you almost all the time is an invitation to misery and lung infections, and that's for the 99% of the time that you're not dealing with fire weather.

    Anyway, you're far from the first to propose enormous fire breaks. It's a recurring theme from CalFire and its contractors. Problem is, even if they were instituted at state expense, there's so much land around very high fire hazard developments(something like 10% of all the buildings in California fall into this category) that clearing it more than about 30' is infeasible. Last January CalFire reported 23,000,000 acres of state lands as "suitable for treatment" (meaning clearance by various means), and they wanted many millions of dollars to treat 60,000 acres/year. If by some mischance they actually cleared each of those 23 million acres once, it would take 383 years to clear that acre a second time. It's worth taking their acreage with a grain of salt, incidentally, since (among many other lapses) the treatment map proposed building a fire break in the heart of Death Valley National Park, which is not only non-flammable, but federal land, not state.

    If you talk to fire ecologists, their recommendation for clearing varies between 50 and 100' out from a structure. The reasoning for this is that the flames from burning trees and chaparral can be 50' long and blown sideways by the wind, so if you're trying to protect the structure, having space for the firefighters to work that's outside the flames is known to be a good thing. There's reportedly no benefit to clearing further than that, at least where people have looked at which homes survived fires.

    456:

    when a woman got stuck in a traffic jam going out of Paradise as the fire closed in. She called her husband to say goodbye, and he yelled at her into going off the road far enough to go around the jam and get out. She was too rule-bound.

    This is a common human failure mode when confronted with an emergency: stick to the rules even when the rules are suddenly counter-productive (or even lethally wrong).

    It's noted that when there's a survivable plane crash that requires immediate evacuation, the passengers tend to split into three groups: (a) the ones who obey the evacuation protocol immediately, (b) those who proceed as if it's a normal landing, to the point of trying to collect their overhead bags and coats before they attempt to leave, and (c) the ones who freeze completely. Group (a) are the ones with a high survival probability: the frozen-by-fear group are, obviously, not in a good position, but what's less obvious is the huge group who fail to respond to an emergency by changing their behaviour.

    I'm not condemning them, by the way — I've got no idea whether or not I'd be one of them if the crunch came — but just noting that we're bad at dealing with emergencies. See also: the folks on 9/11 who stayed at their desks in the Twin Towers even after the second plane crash because they weren't sure what to do.

    457:

    Instead, why not imagine a good public transportation system? In general, in the USA only New York has a good one, and it is completely falling apart. LA is the absolute worst in America in that respect. Actually, Los Angeles and the vast suburban sprawl around it are a huge mistake. It's a desert with temperate climate, which had to destroy a river to get water even a century ago (watch Chinatown, a very accurate movie) and it's only gotten worse since then. The wildfires are Mother Nature's way of reminding us that the place is a colossal ecological blunder, which can only survive by vampire style draining all the surrounding water supplies, including those for the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. I have visited LA twice in my life, two times to many. I vividly remember back in the '80s driving through the rich people area and seeing the signs on the side of the street saying "Armed Response." America at its worst.

    Um. Wow. No. You'll want to read Cadillac Desert. Chinatown isn't very accurate at all. Speaking as an ecologist who grew up in LA, it's mostly not a desert (yet), as a Mediterranean climate is not a desert climate, but on the edge of the desert. The corner where Centennial, Lancaster, and Palmdale are is part of the Mojave, but the basin itself was originally grassland and riparian forest. It will be a desert by 2200 if not 2100, but that's due to climate change causing expansion of the Hadley Zone, not its current climate. LA is no more desert than Athens or Naples are.

    I don't disagree with the ecological blunder part, but the reason LA has grown is threefold. One is that it has a really good natural harbor, on a coast where there's San Francisco Bay, Seattle, and LA as the only good natural harbors (San Diego is a distant fourth). Thanks to the San Andreas Fault, it also has this wonderful flat valley that serves as a railway and freeway corridor (I-10) to points east Second, it has quite a lot of oil under the city, and that funded its initial growth a century ago. The La Brea Tar Pits are not an anomaly, and there are active oil wells everywhere from Beverly Hills to the Orange County line. Third, Pat Brown, former governor of the state and father of Jerry Brown, deliberately directed growth to southern California as a way to keep it out of his beloved northern California as long as possible. He's why we actively pump water from the Sacramento Delta, over the Tehachapis to LA and points south. That idiotic tunnel scheme that Jerry Brown keeps pushing is the last, unbuilt part of Pat's dream, and I'd suggest that the reason Jerry pushed it is filial loyalty as much as it making business or environmental sense. The whole Owens Valley mess with Mulholland was necessary for LA's growth a century ago, but it's not what keeps LA working now, and LA's been taking less water from the Owens Valley for decades, under court order.

    I can go on, but I suspect that some version of LA will be around for quite some time, even after civilization collapses. There are enough natural rivers in the area, even with climate change, that I suspect that people will be able to farm amidst the ruins. Not that I suspect that the future pueblo de Los Angeles will have more than a few thousand people, but it's not the idiotic wasteland that you may have heard. Compared with a city like San Francisco, where the only natural spring is 50' above sea level in the old Presidio, it's actually more resilient to natural disasters than most other California cities.

    What I will end with is that what JH said about LA is the normal story in other parts of the state. Everybody thinks Chinatown is non-fiction, and it's not. The real story is even weirder and far more nuanced.

    458:

    Your group (b) is actively endangering those in group (a), by clogging the aisles and exits. At least group (c) aren't in the aisles.

    (I've got first responders in the family. Their opinions of those who get in the way during an emergency are rather pungent.)

    The big problem is that we get through life mostly on habit, as a way of reducing cognitive load. So in an emergency routine is exactly what we do.

    There was a story I heard years ago (and can't verify) that the LA police were losing officers in shootouts. (This was before cops wore paramilitary gear.) They were properly sheltering behind their cars, but then stepping into view to gather brass before reloading — exactly as they had been trained to do at the shooting range. They changed the training so that someone else was removing the slipping hazard and the cops stopped stepping into view.

    Properly, passengers should be drilled on evacuations — like actually doing them. Kinda like how we have school kids actually evacuate the building during a fire drill (and time them to see that the building is cleared fast enough). Maybe a 'passenger license' proving you've shown you can evacuate safely, with a (significant) surcharge for those who don't have it?

    459:

    Properly, passengers should be drilled on evacuations — like actually doing them.

    This actually happens for passengers on the supply choppers to the North Sea oil rigs: they have to wear dry suits during the flights and undergo ditching training in a pool and a chopper fuselage mock-up before they're allowed to fly.

    On the other hand, oil rig workers in a famously hostile environment (driving gales over open seas!) are a rather specialized clientele. And a chopper ditches or is lost every few years (although less of late), because they're orders of magnitude less safe than regular general aviation, much less the passenger airline industry.

    But trying to do this for civil aviation in general? Every time you evacuate 100+ passengers from an airliner, even if nothing's on fire, you can guarantee one or more injuries, ranging from sprains to broken bones. And it's simply not possible to train all passengers in evacuation — what about babes-in-arms, or people with serious disabilities? Not gonna happen.

    The best you might be able to manage would be some certification scheme for able-bodied passengers who want to sit in the exit aisle: offer then discounts on seats (rather than selling them at a premium because of the leg room!) if they go through evac training that includes being able to help other passengers get out alive. But someone's going to pay for those cheap seats, and the airlines aren't going to be happy about the loss of revenue.

    460:

    Troutwaxer @ 445 Pointless Stinking theif Khan is only interested in politcal willy-waving. It's the date of manufacture of a car that matters & mine fails by about 2 months ( If I had a 1995 Land-Rover I would be OK ). Bio-diesel is irrelevant. I MIGHT be able to fit the rove V8 running on LPG, but we don't know the rules, yet - not a clue - because it's after the next (mayoral ) election ... so the little shit is probably not going to tell us unless/until after he wins the next round ....

    Ioan @ 451 Wonder what the EU or NATO or even "us" will do if/when goatfucker Erdogan ( *note ) starts an err "Armenian" solution to his self-made Kurdish problem. [ He was offered a peace, remember & he chose to break it, the Kurds didn't ] ( *note: Got to call him a goatfucker after some German or other called him Ziegenficker & there was all sorts of trouble & the German courts then went: "Freedom of Expression", how sad )

    Robert Prior @ 452 Indeed - who was it who Killed Roger Rabbit?

    461:

    It's another category error, isn't it?

    We think that air travel is about moving masses of people quickly, efficiently and safely from A to B, but really it's a process to extract maximum profit from a captive market.

    462:

    really it's a process to extract maximum profit from a captive market.

    ITYM "air travel during the age of late-period capitalism". But yeah, that's what's going on.

    Air travel isn't too bad compared to many other areas — it's very heavily regulated, because when it isn't people tend to die in large numbers — but it still has horrible deficiencies because it prioritizes revenue collection over quality of service.

    And many other areas are far, far worse.

    Unfortunately human societies are subject to horrendous levels of path dependency, such that even revolutionary regimes intent on replacing capitalism (e.g. the USSR) often ended up imitating most of its worst aspects rather than coming up with anything better. There are exceptions (social security systems, socialized healthcare systems) but the neoliberal market supremacists are intent on tearing down any structures they can't directly monetize, globally.

    463:
    • Nods - and weeps quietly *
    464:

    I didn't say there should be a 1000 yard firebreak. I said there should be a 1000 year zone around the town where the municipality is responsible for watering the local greenery (to help prevent/slow fires) and there should also be a firebreak, for which I did not specify a size.

    465:

    certification scheme for able-bodied passengers who want to sit in the exit aisle

    One of my elderly relatives always pays to sit in the exit row, by the window. They don't have the strength to actually open it, so would be an active impediment in the event of an emergency, but they don't care about that — just the extra legroom. The cabin crew comes round and explains what to do, they understand and agree, but they couldn't actually do what they've promised to do.

    466:

    That one's always bothered me, because if you follow it, you get "don't vote, just shut up and take whatever we (the wealthy) toss at you, and do what you're told.

    467:

    CRT? ROTFL!

    So, that's how you save some heating bills?

    Back around '92 or '93, I shared an office with a guy. Our office was the end of a row of three, and for some reason, the thermostat for all three was in our room.

    One day, the woman from the office at the other end came in, to complain she was freezing. I put it up a little, but we didn't want to roast. A few days later, she came in again, to complain she was still freezing.

    Now, you have to understand the layout: he was opposite the door, facing away. I was to the right (from the inside) of the door, facing the door. As we were talking, I looked at the thermostat... and then the light went off in my head... and I moved my CRT from directly under the thermostat a foot over.

    She wasn't freezing any more.

    As I used to be able to say to my kids, you never email, you never call, here I sit, the only light from my monitor, the only heat from the CRT, waiting by the phone....

    468:

    One of the reasons I hate the word “AI” so much

    It can either mean

    1) Current machine learning technologies and the kinds of problems they will probably be good at solving with further refinement and investment in the next ten years or so

    2) a handy box to do magic in

    And no way to tell which definition someone is using

    Under the context of 1) you probably aren’t going to see AI firefighters anytime soon, even getting a car to merge onto a highway correctly is a stretch

    Under the context of 2) have at it

    469:

    Exactly. I'm trying to come in someplace in the middle here. I want to be talking about what a possible AI would look like 20-30 years from now. Not Godlike or Super-Strong, but able to manage it's affairs at the level of a really smart working dog or maybe a ten-year-old human child, but with a higher general level of obedience.

    470:

    Huh?

    Ok, for decades, I've wanted a generator. I'd rather get diesel, but those are 2-3 times the price of a gasoline-powered one (and don't mention natural gas, now we're in the 10x price range). Based on what I read a long time ago, I figured a 7kwh was good enough to power everything but the a/c (I have gas heat... but with a motherboard, and electric ignition...). My electric bill, which I just had on my desk, says I use about 500kw a month. For the current bill, that's 29 days (I don't know why), that works out to be .71kw/hr.

    So, folks, how much electricity do you use a day?

    Talking to my son, who has done contracting (in addition to his day job), he says it would be worth putting solar panels on my roof, which is not huge, and part of it faces north, towards tall trees at the back of my backyard. It would, of course, pump electricity back into the grid, during the peak times - daytime.

    Feel free to explain how my numbers are wrong....

    471:

    I doubt that it's overstated. So, tell me, what's the value of the Shard - how many billion, just by itself?

    472:

    I think under the context of 1) even the next twenty years is hard to imagine since your talking about a class of problems (dealing with unexpected rarely occurring and radicallly different scenarios) that AI is fundamentally bad at. Kinda like imagining a pocket sized fission reactor. We known enough about fission reactors to know they are not good at being pocket sized

    473:

    How would they communicate? Wow, gotta have the latest teech, satellite links....

    Or, and I realize this is so 2000, FRS radio. Range (for the more expensive sets) is 3.5? 5? miles ($30-$60 US per pair). No dial, no "call up so-and-so", but push to talk button, "anyone on channel 13?" without taking your eyes off the road.

    Don't want to caravan long distance without one.

    474:

    Martin @ 326:

    However "obvious" it it might have been in 1770 that slavery was going away, the U.K. didn't get around to actually abolishing slavery until 1833

    Not quite. Slavery was abolished within England and Wales in 1772 with Somerset v. Stewart; and in Scotland in 1778 with Knight v. Wedderburn - so that's the UK covered. One might wonder whether the Plantation Owners in certain Crown Colonies decided that independence from such awful ideas was... advantageous... during the Treacherous Insurrection Against His Majesty King George).

    As you say, "Not quite" The Wikipedia article you cite doesn't appear to support that Somerset v. Stewart freed slaves in England. Even Lord Mansfield himself did not consider the case to have freed slaves.

    "In 1785, Lord Mansfield expressed the view in R v Inhabitants of Thames Ditton[11] that his ruling in the Somerset case decided only that a slave could not be forcibly removed from England against his will. In the Thames Ditton case a black woman by the name of Charlotte Howe had been brought to England as a slave by one Captain Howe. After Captain Howe died Charlotte sought poor relief from the Parish of Thames Ditton. Mansfield stated that the Somersett case had only determined that a master could not force a slave to leave England, much as in earlier times a master could not forcibly remove his villein. He ruled that Charlotte was not entitled to relief under Poor Laws because relief was dependent on having been "hired", and this did not relate to slaves. In the official report of the case, Lord Mansfield is recorded as actually interrupting counsel to specifically state: 'The determinations go no further than that the master cannot by force compel him to go out of the kingdom.'"
    475:

    He may have limited his judgement to that one case; but as he stated:

    The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of now being introduced by Courts of Justice upon mere reasoning or inferences from any principles, natural or political; it must take its rise from positive law; the origin of it can in no country or age be traced back to any other source: immemorial usage preserves the memory of positive law long after all traces of the occasion; reason, authority, and time of its introduction are lost; and in a case so odious as the condition of slaves must be taken strictly, the power claimed by this return was never in use here; no master ever was allowed here to take a slave by force to be sold abroad because he had deserted from his service, or for any other reason whatever; we cannot say the cause set forth by this return is allowed or approved of by the laws of this kingdom, therefore the black must be discharged.

    Namely, that there was no basis for chattel slavery by English Common Law, and thus that it was unsupported. A claim in a linked text is that many of the estimated 10 to 15,000 slaves in the UK gained their freedom as a result. Note also that Knight v. Wedderburn was less ambiguous:

    ...the dominion assumed over this Negro, under the law of Jamaica, being unjust, could not be supported in this country to any extent: That, therefore, the defender had no right to the Negro’s service for any space of time, nor to send him out of the country against his consent: That the Negro was likewise protected under the act 1701, c.6. from being sent out of the country against his consent.

    476:

    I have a satellite link in my messenger bag . It costs me $350. Works with my iPhone . Can use it anywhere on the planet

    https://www.somewearlabs.com

    Satphones are also a thing

    This stuff is not hard these days

    477:

    JH @ 341: Vermont has the honor of being the first American colony to abolish slavery, another cheap gesture as at the time there were not only no slaves but no black people there.

    Interestingly enough, at the time of the first U.S. Census (Vermont having not yet become a state) Massachusetts was the only state with no slaves, even though Massachusetts merchants dominated the American Slave Trade at that time.

    Another interesting anomoly is that although the Constitution restricts Congress from prohibiting the importation of slaves prior to 1808, Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1794 which held:

    "Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That no citizen or citizens of the United States, or foreigner, or any other person coming into, or residing within the same, shall, for himself or any other person whatsoever, either as master, factor or owner, build, fit, equip, load or otherwise prepare any ship or vessel, within any port or place of said United States, nor shall cause any ship or vessel to sail from any port or place within same, for the purpose of carrying on any trade or traffic in slaves, to any foreign country; or for the purpose of procuring, from any foreign kingdom, place or country, the inhabitants of such kingdom, place or country, to be transported to any foreign country, port, or place whatever, to be sold or disposed of, as slaves: And if any ship or vessel shall be so fitted out, as aforesaid, for the said purposes, or shall be caused to sail, so as aforesaid, every ship or vessel, her tackle, furniture, apparel and other appurtenances, shall be forfeited to the United States; and shall be liable to be seized, prosecuted and condemned, in any of the circuit courts or district court for the district where said ship or vessel may be found and seized."

    The first prosecution of a slave trader under this act was that of Rhode Island merchant John Brown which occurred in 1796.

    And Congress acted in 1807 to prohibit the importation of slaves into the U.S. from the 1st day of January 1808; the first date they could do so under the Constitution.

    478:

    John Oliver isn't legally allowed to explain Brexit to people in the UK : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdHmp5EX5bE

    479:

    Elderly Cynic @ 343: I was using networks to communicate to locations in other cities in the 1970s, and was not one of the first. I have been using Usenet since 1979.

    That's pretty good, since Usenet only came into existence in 1980. Were you at Duke or Carolina?

    480:

    I tend to agree. The most useful part of AI in disaster prep would, at a guess, be black box formation and learning from that. One of the notorious problems with disasters of all sorts is that the stuff that saved lives isn't recorded. "I managed to survive, I don't entirely remember how," is a common refrain. Now, some large part of that is random chance (luck) and some part of it is skill, but the only way to disentangle it is to record what happened in a bunch of cases and look for commonalities.

    That, along with all the radio/GPS problems I've had in the southern California mountains, is why I don't think a network-based AI is going to save people in the next 10 years, especially from wildfires in the mountains.* Eventually, there will be enough fire-survival data points that the system can learn some reasonable tactics. Probably a decade or two of refining those, and we'll see whatever "most survivable tactics to use in a wildfire" looks like for self-driving cars.

    The general problem is that even in high hazard fire areas, fires don't happen every year or even every decade. Extracting the tactical lessons from these rare events is simply going to take a lot of time.

    Note that it is even worse for earthquakes, ARkStorms, and hurricanes, at least in California, since these are closer to once-a-century phenomena. While some lessons can be imported from other quake and storm zones, the problem is simply that the infrastructure isn't set up for major disasters, and the AI will also have to cope with those. A hurricane hit San Diego 150 years ago, for example, but none of the current structures are built to be hurricane proof. St. Louis will eventually be hit by a New Madrid-size quake, but its architecture isn't up to California building standards, and a lot of buildings will come down. Nor does California build its infrastructure to the earthquake standard of Alaska, Japan, or Chile, where they have truly enormous quakes more regularly than we do. An AI trained on Japanese quakes would have a lot of trouble directing traffic in post Big One Los Angeles, even if it had seen more and bigger quakes, simply because of the level of destruction in the basin due to building standards that are inadequate for the size of the quake.

    481:

    Pigeon @ 358: Having to downgrade temporarily to a flat screen monitor because my 21" CRT isn't working has made the temperature in here noticeably lower.

    I heard a story sometime in the late 90s about some college students sharing a house who managed to acquire a surplus VAX 11 and discovered they no longer needed a furnace to heat said house in the winter.

    482:

    I think what you will see short term is more the kinds of things that are being done with tsunami, hurricane, earthquake and volcanoe planning. Better early warning, modeling and scenario planning that then feed into urban planning, evacuation routes etc. not an attempt to actively manage the situation in the ground, but better tools for the people doing that and improved logistics to have the emergency resources at the right place at the right time. This is all stuff that AI is great at

    For fires especially there is a lot of opportunity for improvements in detection and logistics, since almost always fires can be knocked down quickly when they just get started assuming you can have the right resources at the right place

    One side effect of doing those things is they also feed into insurance models which will start to incent people to not live in ground zero, period, which is one of the biggest problems

    483:

    I grew up in an agricultural province. Everyone knew what AI meant, and farmers had been using it for a couple of generations by the time I had my first ag job…

    :-)

    484:

    I don't dispute that the longest officially recorded ember throw was ten miles, however in the late 90's or early thousands (about then) I was working in Auburn, a suburb of Sydney. We were having the worst bushfires on record (up to then). The industrial park I worked at was about 40 km (25 miles) from the nearest bush and somewhat further to the nearest fire. Falling embers set some of the decorative plantings alight.

    485:

    I average 20 kWh/d. Electricity is the only energy input to my house. Hot water is the biggest single user, the pool pump second and everything else a very distant 3rd.

    My short term disaster preparedness kit is a full gas barbeque, a 1000W inverter generator and 40 litres of drinking water. There was tinned food and carbs for 2 people for 40 days but SHMBO got the shits about the space it took up so it went in the bin. Come to think of it I might buy some more and hide it in the roof space...

    486:

    Er, no. There were plenty of people who were predicting just such communications in 1966 - the signs were quite clear to those in the know. You may not realise it, but research into AI is at least that old, and one of the things we have discovered is that the problem is not just a matter of engineering, but that we know that our current approaches won't get to what you assume, and we have no idea what ones might.

    487:

    Well, maybe. It won't help if each car is spending four times as much time on the road, which is what most experts expect.

    488:

    I can't seem to create a link that looks in the right direction, but on my devices if you just scroll straight up the view is aimed and zoomed correctly to see transformers on poles.

    489:

    No. Cambridge (the original). Usenet was actually mid-1970s, in the form of a network of mailing lists between systems and programs to access them, though it wasn't in its modern form and wasn't called Usenet.

    490:

    I think you may be overly optimistic about controlling fires. With a Santa Ana wind-driven fire, the time of effective response from ignition is a few minutes. With the Woolsey fire, problems were reported at the Chatsworth substation something like two minutes before there were reports of smoke rising.

    As for the AI models, the better thing to turn AI onto is an attempt to control the developers. They use the "lipstick on a pig" model for development. First they come up with the pig, which is their design for how to sell the most product (their term for houses) and maximize profits from a site that nobody over the last 50 years has thought to be worth building on. Then they throw money at environmental consultants to make the problems go away, too often picking the lowest bidder who might be known as a "conslutant" in the industry. Then they throw some solar panels on roofs and call it compliant with California's various climate action plans, proposing the future purchase of swampland in Indonesia as a way to offset their carbon emissions, but only if they get a building permit for ten years before that. Then they hire a retired fire marshal to write a long and self-contradicting report that concludes that they'll be able to evacuate everybody in enough time, therefore there is no fire danger. And so forth. AI won't help with this because the problem starts at the top, and they're determined to control costs by continuing to implement the sprawl that they've been building for the last 50 years, with incremental improvements.*

    The development companies that figure out how to profit off 21st Century building needs will eat the lunch of these sauropod sprawlers, eventually, but right now we've got a huge battle going on between those who are wedded to sprawl and the status quo, and those who are trying to build sustainability but haven't found the killer app yet.

    As for insurance, it's already expensive to get home insurance in a high fire area, and I suspect most people will do without if necessary, on the assumption that the government will (as it has in the past) bail them out so that they can have their homes back. There's certainly talk of lowering the bond rating of any municipality that puts people in harm's way from things like wildfires, but all that does is mean fewer infrastructure repairs and upgrades for the scofflaws, not more safety.

    The real problem in this is a form of moral hazard. Put simply, the councilmembers and county supervisors approving these developments likely won't be in office when they burn, due to term limits. Their municipalities get the property tax revenue, but they often don't pay for wildland fire suppression (backstopped by the state and feds), nor do they cover the insurance (that's private industry), nor do they pay for the reconstruction of the homes lost (generally that's the feds). Moreover, due to Prop. 13, the property tax on older homes is far lower than that on newer homes, so there's a perverse incentive to build new homes to increase revenue, rather than (as in the 1970s) raising property taxes on existing homes so high that people (often elders on limited income) start losing the homes they've lived in for decades.

    This isn't an AI problem, it's a problem of governance. I'm not sure what the solution will be, but there are a variety of ideas floating around on how to fix it. Right now, the fix is that environmental and residents' groups sue to stop the most dangerous developments, and we try to get more politicians who will also listen to us and not just to the developers.

    *And note, I'm describing the worst developer behavior in slightly hyperbolic terms. The wiser developers have learned to strictly follow the law, and even if you don't like what they do, it's perfectly legal.

    491:

    Well yes, we are talking about Stalinists after all. The way they dealt with those to their left, especially Trotskyists, was even worse. But they were the main body of the Resistance to the Nazis, and the British-imposed regime was primarily made up of the collaborators, and soon morphed into the junta. Sometimes one does have to support the lesser evil. The French Resistance, Stalinist and otherwise, committed some atrocities too, but few have good things to say about Petain these days (except for Le Pen and Macron).

    492:

    Re: Relocating your population because of climate change

    While these cities were not designed to address housing shortage due to climate change*, they do provide relevant learning for understanding what can be done in a relatively short time-frame when you need to re-house hundreds of thousands. This can be done in the US more easily than in Europe simply because the US still has so much empty land. Also, based on past 5 years' weather, the US is more likely to need to relocate its residents most of whom are currently living smack on target for major hurricanes and building-leveling tidal surges.

    https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html

    'In the United States, counties directly on the shoreline constitute less than 10 percent of the total land area (not including Alaska), but account for 39 percent of the total population. From 1970 to 2010, the population of these counties increased by almost 40% and are projected to increase by an additional 10 million people or 8% by 2020. Coastal areas are substantially more crowded than the U.S. as a whole, and population density in coastal areas will continue to increase in the future. In fact, the population density of coastal shoreline counties is over six times greater than the corresponding inland counties.'

    Biggest hurdle to implementation is that these ideas come from other countries and there's a large chunk of the US population that thinks only US-grown ideas will work in the US, especially in the areas of social planning and infrastructure, e.g., universal healthcare, affordable tertiary education. Corporations that are in growth-mode could help by locating major employment centers away from the coast.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/12/why-hundreds-of-completely-new-cities-are-being-built-around-the-world/#1ad4909b14bf

    • These cities mostly were designed for emerging middle and upper classes. Trickle-down could happen.
    493:

    Fair comment about Britain vs. England, that's easy for a foreigner to forget. I'll try to be more careful about that in the future.

    As for the South, no it had as far as I know no *explicit" agents in Parliament, but it didn't need them, being as the British (actually English in this case I think? could be wrong) textile industry, the heart of the Industrial Revolution, was dependent on Southern cotton, and the textile factory owners, grossly underrepresented before the Reforms, now had a very powerful voice in the House of Commons.

    As for the English financial claims, sure America supported them (north or south). Why not? A foreshadowing of the Roosevelt Corollary, under which the US claimed the exclusive right to collect European or US debts at gunpoint in the Americas. Used by Teddy as the basis for a whole generation of looting America's way through the Caribbean and Central America.

    What was unusual and un-Rooseveltian was that the North didn't support the French and Spanish debt claims. No doubt not so much because of their being dubious as that France and Spain were more explicitly aligned with the South than England was. Spain still had slavery in its colonies, and Napoleon III, though he didn't think it was politically wise to reinstitute slavery in his colonies for a regime with weak foundations, was an open public supporter of Southern slavery.

    494:

    Fire as the salvation from prop 13? The old houses burn, the new ones have reset tax basis.

    495:

    Yeah. 5%. Meanwhile the North was going through a fullblown industrial revolution, and New England was the second most industrialized area of the world, after GB. Couldn't go above that, because chattel slavery just didn't work well outside of agriculture back then. In the days before assembly lines and Taylorism, the industrial skills of the workers, often requiring many years of training by other skilled workers, not "management," something which hardly existed back then, were what made factories run. So running a factory with the lash was a very difficult proposition. Wherever you had small factories in the South with slaves, a remarkably large proportion of said slaves got their freedom before the Civil War.

    496:

    Interesting thought, but it's a property tax, not a house tax. Also, it leads to a perverse kind of gentrification, wherein arsonists target older communities that then don't get money to rebuild, leading to fire-sale prices (literally) and redevelopers coming in to buy the properties, put "fire safe" houses on the sites, and sell them at a huge markup.

    It could certainly happen, but I kind of hope this idea remains in the realm of speculative fiction, not reality.

    497:

    Sounds like a fine book, thanks for the reference. Jefferson was an "interesting" figure. I would argue (and one of these days will for publication) that he was the best most capable leader of a slaveholding elite in the history of the human race. Everything he did in his career, his words in the Declaration of Independence included, advanced the interests of Virginia slaveholding planters brilliantly. Especially the Louisiana Purchase combined with federal support for the cotton gin, which united the Carolina planters behind his banner as well.

    Before him, all the Founding Fathers explicitly opposed democracy, curbing the democratic impulses stemming from the Revolution was what the Constitution was all about. He brilliantly used advocacy of democracy (for whites only), war against uncooperative nonslaveholding Indians (the Cherokees as fellow slaveholders got a pass) the French Revolution and guillotining Louis and Marie to get the northern artisans and western settlers behind the banner of the southern slaveholders to take the federal government away from the merchants and bankers of New England. Jackson just continued his work, expanding Jefferson's war against Indians to all Indians, Cherokees included.

    498:

    Yeah, this is a version of What's Wrong With Cleveland, a topic I heard quite a lot about when I lived in that area.

    My rough cut on climate resilience really makes me think the American Great Lakes are a really good place to set up civilization, away from sea level rise, the worst of the weather, and so forth. Although living there would still be no picnic, it's still better than dealing with an LA or SF with no working aqueducts, and an LA climate that's become true desert, a New York, Seattle, or Miami underwater, and so forth.

    But only a few billionaires have been buying into places like Cleveland and Detroit, and the results haven't been great, at least that I've heard.

    Still, it's an interesting article about the new cities. I wonder how many of them will do better than Brasilia, and not need a large, associated, unplanned slum to deal with all the issues that the designers forgot to build into their gleaming new city?

    499:

    That was only a trampoline to make the transition go a bit smoother, and in the '50s all that public transit got nuked, as we Americans like to say (as we did Hiroshima, nuclear weapon use has less of a negative connotation than in other countries, especially Japan). More to the point, back in the '20s and '30s LA had by far the largest percentage of car owners in the entire world. That's what made LA and in fact Southern California possible.

    500:

    I freely admit that I am prejudiced against Southern California, as is obvious, which may have affected my posting. Technically you are quite correct, but the author of Cadillac Desert didn't have a problem calling it a desert in the title of the book after all. (I did read it, but that was some 20 years ago, and last time I watched Chinatown likewise).

    Certainly if the population of southern California were to be drastically reduced, it would be sustainable. At the rate we're going, that will happen the ugly way. In a socialist world, where inevitable global warming will hopefully make large parts of Siberia, Canada, Antarctica and Minnessota more livable, this could be done in humane ways.

    501:

    Could you PLEASE do this more often?

    No, we hate doing it. We're basically framing progressive ideas in far right language, it's horrible to us, but it does show just how offensive all of this is. What you're getting is what works to snap people out of it.

    And my how we pay for it.

    We would 100% not claim to have any real thoughts about the Talmud for the same reason we wouldn't attempt to lecture you about landrovers. If we need a take, we go read the ~10,000 or so people in outrage mode at the moment [Narrator: we really do do this, the entire spectrum. Given we don't process information in the same way, it's a bit traumatic to say the least]

    Look: jokes like "Why doesn't the British Empire have loads of stolen art from Israel" work because:

    1 Host makes art for a living (although he calls it lying) 2 Israel has an art scene that's increasingly feeling the bite of authoritarian modes of thought (i.e. compared to the 60's) 3 The entire saga of Abrahamic thought / religion in the world revolves around not depicting G_D, humans etc etc so everyone knows that looting the Temple isn't getting you art 4 It's a re-casting of rather less funny (i.e. directly Fascist) reality about what did happen and is slushing around Europe in various forms 5 We all know that the British Empire is still stuffed to the gills with looted art 6 The British museum has loads of stuff like this: https://www.britishmuseum.org/visiting/galleries/middle_east/room_6_assyrian_sculpture.aspx [read the description] 7 It's a Gammon Take[tm] 8 Which is all funny since sadly people really do say this and it was a direct quotation 9 You can be damn sure we know the angles like this before stating it.

    ~

    Pew Notes on Icke drama:

    1 Icke is laughed at in the UK; the USA takes him 100% seriously and constantly attempts to deplatform him which has lead to obvious Streisland effects 2 Having actually read him and so forth (and not uncritically): he's doing bad Power / Structural critique mixed with Cult of the Individual[tm] mixed with late 60's faux spirituality etc. But the lizard metaphor is more about UK power than IL power and most of what he's selling [which he indeed is] is UFO disinfo / bad LSD takes. But, like the MI5 ex-members in drag, you'd almost have to create him if he didn't exist [unsubtle hint] 2.5 There is not a small faction in the USA who love to hype up Icke as a major threat for "reasons" 3 Read the poem; as hot takes go, we understand her intent (if she wrote it) which is a kind of 'our history was destroyed like yours, can't we breach this gap of shared history' written by a 10 year old but the YouTube angle is just too topical: someone's been storing this Weapon for a while. 4 Someone who was incredibly more cynical than us would note her age, note the age of people who worry about Icke, note the age of the people who care about the NYT and note the age of the organizations complaining. If the USA was the CCCP, my alert Kremlinology would immediately tell me that this is an outrage PR black cat routine. 5 Not everyone is that old and the oldies 100% don't understand what's about to happen with it.

    In other news, Pewdiepie is showing the world a video where checks notes a US teacher tells his students that watching Pewdiepie is a criminal offense.

    which:

    6 Given that we know the PR firms in the USA and the current Laws being passed and the general ancient creaking of Schumer etc towards mummification and the Texas scandal show that you're being made utter fools of by basement dwelling trolls

    ~

    If you want to take a good, long, hard look at how Integrity Information £££, 4th estate etc becoming shackled feeds into this, then we can do that dance.

    "Conspiracy Theory no longer works: worse, you're not as good as weaponizing it as the real players these days". RIP The Times, 2018.

    502:

    Cadillac Desert refers to the entirety of the desert western US, not Los Angeles. Its full title is Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. You may want to reread that book. The premise, which I happen to agree with, is that the idea of colonizing the American west, starting post Civil War and entailing huge water projects, has spent in modern terms trillions of dollars greening up a patch of desert perhaps the size of Vermont, in an unsustainable way, often using policies deliberately designed to relocate people from more sustainable farmlands east of the Mississippi. If you follow Reisner's logic, the western US, possibly minus the wetter parts of the Pacific Northwest from San Rafael north, is going to dry up and blow away as everything from drought, to salting of the soil and other disasters encourage people to migrate, first to cities (this is happening now) and then out of the region as earthquakes and other disasters make it impossible for millions of people to live in the region.

    When I talk about what's wrong with Cleveland, it's only half a joke. If they could get their act together, they're well positioned to be a powerhouse of the 21st Century, as is Detroit and even Chicago.

    503:

    I used the word 'tealeaves' to describe a reading source better than the current media, which sounds like hyperbole. It's not. Interestingly this came up in my feed. It talks about Tesla, but it's equally applicable to the manipulation of the value of multi billion dollar industries like Australian electricity. The media is not your friend and what you read there is almost certain to be wrong.

    https://youtu.be/dsd8S5nys3g

    504:

    China behind Marriott hotel breach, may be preparing for more hacks Techspot 12th Dec 2018

    UK police are testing facial recognition on Christmas shoppers in London this week The Verge 18th Dec 2018

    Chris Christie's official NJ portrait, most expensive ever, depicts man behind the lectern sit W3Schools North Jersey News, 20th Nov 2018

    Police officers caught moonlighting for security firms Stuff, NZ, 18th Dec 2018

    Look, we keep pushing this Djinn line, but if it turns out it was actually humans, your minds are fucked.

    Unsubtle Hints, #194395

    505:

    "Interesting thought, but it's a property tax, not a house tax."

    The way prop 13 works if your house burns down and you build a new one (or someone does) the new one, even on the same land, would have its property tax base reset.

    Just one of the small ways that awful law kicks people when they are down.

    506:

    *that was, of course, a dark joke.

    507:

    Here we go again. The problem with California is that its hydrology has not been terra-formed enough, not that it is too much so. The deep record says the place has historically been prone to hundred-year + droughts, without any help from human caused climate change - It is simply a place where rain is unreliable, which has become very densely populated during a long run of favorable rolls of the dice.

    I presume there is some self-reinforcing loop that sticks the place in a wet or a dry cycle, because the great droughts do not seem to correlate with anything else.

    And this is the point where I keep running into people saying the place should be abandoned. Say, what? Please do the math on this. 39 million of the richest people on earth live there, including all their housing and infrastructure. That is a really immense amount of capital you just want to abandon. It is neither necessary, nor is it going to happen, because California has a : A coastline. and B: Money. Building enough desalination to keep the place going, even in the total absence of rain or fossil water is simply a whole lot cheaper than rebuilding all the infrastructure and food supply somewhere else.

    508:

    I see your comment about Scottish/ North Britain, and say that I don't recall reading any evidence that it was a widespread thing to do; I can't find any information about it one way or another online* Moreover, the railroad thing was 19th century, a period during which a couple of books I find on my shelves clearly refer to Scottish and not north British.
    Google's Ngrams search thing shows a peak in 'North British' in the 1860's. and most 'north britain' in the 19th century, Scottish more spread out across the century. There does seem to be a lack of 18th century works, but at the moment it looks to me like North British is most fashionable in the middle 19th century, i.e. not down to the Jacobite stuff at all.

    *search engines seem increasingly incapable of finding any answers except the simplest, despite their allegedly greater capabilities.

    509:

    JH @ 493 You really are talking ignorant/prejudiced bollocks aren’t you? Even the “factory owners” were immediately looking for alternative sources for cotton, like INDIA …

    EGA @ 501 No, we hate doing it. We're basically framing progressive ideas in far right language, Also bollocks You are using conventional English language in a comprehensible manner, as opposed to rambling incomprehensible bullshit. HOWEVER @ 504 THANKS for that – the “facial recognition” scam. For it is a scam – false positives appearing to outnumber true fits …. I would/will certainly refuse to participate as far as possible – it’s about as (un)reliable as using a polygraph. How nice.

    510:

    Clearly I wasn't clear enough, although I did specify that a battery was the easiest method.

    The average domestic electricity use in the UK is 10kwh per day, which will be fridges, cooking and some space heating. Having part of that stored from solar panels means you smooth the evening peaks in demand for much of the year. Things will be different elsewhere in the world, obviously if you live in the countryside you'll want more so as to survive being cut off.
    So which numbers do I have wrong then, given that I don't know anything about your situation anyway?

    Heteromelets #378 - your dreams are already answered, insofar as flow batteries will give you a decent sized (10s of Kwh) storage capacity, albeit in more space than lithium batteries.
    However Pigeon is correct to note the importance of cost.
    There is no easy way around this; a sensible country would have some grid scale storage in place, and many are building them, there's a bit of a boom in grid storage to smooth out renewables. But how to store tens of Gwh is the big difficult. Lots of distributed local batteries or suchlike would be somewhat flexible and resilient, but cost money.

    511:

    Also bollocks You are using conventional English language in a comprehensible manner, as opposed to rambling incomprehensible bullshit.

    We're so glad that our trauma is invisible to you, it's been a fucking blast.

    Note: this meta-irony may break a few cauldrons.

    512:

    Along with the long droughts, you missed the rather more important immense floods. Currently there's a credible prediction that we might see another '61-62 flood in the next 50 years (50% probability, same as for a major quake).

    tl;dr: what we know of the 61-62 flood was that it dumped 10 feet of water on the northern Sierra in one month. That flooded Sacramento 10' deep and bankrupted the state. The "old town" of Sacramento was raised 10 feet, burying the ground floors of the buildings, so that they would be above the flood waters. Similar, smaller floods happened every decade or so in the 19th Century.

    This was the major reason for all the dams in California: to stop the Sacramento Valley from flooding. Various bright bulbs have decided that it was a good idea to ship water south to the San Joaquin Valley, which is true desert in its southern end and previously had a couple of huge, shallow lakes that were dewatered (more dams in the Sierras) and turned into farmland. And then there was good ol' Pat Brown, who satisfied a lot of the money-men in southern California by pumping water to LA, and incidentally pumping a lot of cheap water to the southern valley where these wealthy folk owned huge farms.

    So why do I think this will all break? Earthquakes and floods bankrupting the state, basically, coupled with the need to rebuild LA, San Diego, San Jose, and Sacramento to become more sustainable (these are the biggest car towns). Each of these is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The most expensive is flood damage, which was estimated at $725 billion ($400 billion in damage, $325 in lost business. See ARkStorm). The Big One is expected to cause about one-third that much damage. Both the flood and the quake have a purported 50% chance of occurring in the next 50 years.

    If these disasters happen, and if we fail to (re)build to sustainability, it's going to be impossible for California to house 39+ million people. Unfortunately, if the giant infrastructure that allows all 39 million of us to live here starts to fall apart due to lack of maintenance, then things get worse. It doesn't take too many dam failures before water starts more regularly flooding the Sacramento Valley and failing to make it into the southern aqueducts. San Francisco is almost entirely dependent on water piped in from Hetch Hetchy and stored in part in lakes along the San Andreas fault, so if their water system goes due to a quake, that city becomes uninhabitable.

    Without all this terraforming, California held somewhere between 50,000-200,000 people. If all the terraforming of aqueducts, power grids, and freeways goes away, I'd guess it would house about the same number of people. This, incidentally, is why I fight for sustainability.

    513:

    GWh of storage isn't difficult unless you listen to the mass media that a) has an agenda, b) is populated by stupid people who don't know anything about the subject to the level that they don't even know what the words they're using mean (you can't think about something if you don't have the words. Imagine trying to catch the Eurostar to Paris if you thought 'ticket' meant 'plum', passport meant 'waiting', 'booking' meant 'musical theater' and you'd literally never heard the word train in a sentence)

    The main words are: UHVDC which is an acronym Ultra High Voltage Direct Current. What it means it's that you can get electricity from anywhere to anywhere efficiently. If it's sunny in Australia or Utah and cold in Blighty, just ship the power over.

    Controlled Load which is a switch in your meter box controlled by the network. The electricity that goes through that switch is cheaper than gas. What it means is that people will rip out their gas hot water and replace it with storage because it's cheaper. That gets you GWhs of storage for free, reduces the amount of curtailment you have to issue and it makes the grid easier to balance as a bonus.

    514:

    Returning slightly to the subject.

    If you live somewhere with cyclones or bushfires (or, both, something new in the last couple of years) you need a 'go bag'.

    Water, food for a week, basic medical supplies, any drugs you need regularly, torch (flashlight), documents or copies, purification tablets, toilet paper and a radio.

    If I was staring down the barrel of Brexit, I'd be buying drugs for a year and food for a month (maybe three months). If the drugs need to stay cold I'd be looking at some way to do that and a backup way to do that. Generators attract a lot of attention, maybe solar fridges.

    515:

    Thanks for explaining why you think Transgrid is so important.

    The media is not your friend and what you read there is almost certain to be wrong.

    I'm really sorry, but saying the media is not your friend then linking to the worst part of the media doesn't work for me. Watching presenters talk about twitter is not better than reading what smart people have to say.

    If you have something readable put together by a reputable authority, or better peer reviewed research then I'd be willing to read it. But once you've said with a straight face that the AEMO produced a report explaining something that you think didn't happen at all you have a credibility hill to climb.

    "The imaginary 'brown outs' that you were referring to had they existed"

    I actually said "still browned out on hot days ... wasn't enough capacity". Sure, wrong terminology if we're discussing this as electrical engineers. Sorry, I was using language more casually than I should have.

    NSW didn't brown out, or have load shedding

    Somehow AEMO found it worthwhile to put out a report explaining "the requirement for AEMO to issue an instruction for load shedding in New South Wales on 10 February 2017".

    516:

    Well of course they were, otherwise all those dark Satanic mills would have ground to a halt. The South thought King Cotton would compel England to step in and save them. They were wrong. Which proves nothing, except that industrialists do prefer making money to going broke.

    If you want to try to refute anything I said, be my guest. Your posting, long on adjectives and short on relevant facts, seems to indicate that you can't.

    517:

    "The biggest problem isn't at the wellhead, as there all gas leaks mean direct and immediate hits to the profit margin, so the owners are motivated to use the best tech around to prevent them (but often fail anyway). The biggest problem is pipeline leaks, as by the time the gas is piped it's already sold so who cares, as long as the pipelines are insured. And given that America's industrial infrastructure is falling apart, it's getting worse year by year. Here's a useful piece on that from a green group, which doesn't even mention, oddly enough, what that means for global warming."

    Guessing here:

    1) Wellhead leaks are only dealt with to the point where the marginal costs = the marginal losses (both as measured, of course).

    2) Anybody who's competent to stay in business will buy natural gas as delivered. Otherwise, they'd end up buying 1 million units and actually receiving nothing.

    518:

    You're right I should, and will the next time I get asked to teach a California History class. One of my favorites. I particularly like explaining to the students why it is that Whoopi Goldberg was the model for the portrait of Queen Califia at LA's Disneyworld.

    Settling the West was never about agriculture. It was about first gold and then metal mining, something that doesn't require much water, and is still a major backbone of the Western economy to this day. Though all that water not used elsewhere, contributing to drought issues, is the main reason why central California, before the Spanish got there little inhabited, is now the OPEC of food, with the most advanced agricultural technology in the world in an agroindustrial moonscape sterilized of most non-useful life forms, especially in the "organic farms."

    519:

    David Icke ? The aliens-lizards guy ?

    He's cross between mork-n-mindys exidor (https://youtu.be/hDnbJjuVVYk) and "they live" drizzled with jus de Erik 'alien pyramids' von daniken.

    520:

    Re: 'the American Great Lakes are a really good place to set up civilization'

    Once they update their building codes to withstand tornadoes - the Great Lakes are the northern end of 'Tornado Alley'.

    Read the Cleveland article - thanks! Yep - apart from the Cleveland Clinic and three major league teams, can't think of anything special about the place. Was surprised by the unemployment rate mentioned because it's about twice what the US Labor Stats reports.

    Just saw this: tornado in Seattle. Good grief - it's December 18th! - winter. This is nuts!

    521:

    Look, we keep pushing this Djinn line, but if it turns out it was actually humans, your minds are fucked. Why not both Djinn and humans?

    Fun paper: (Boys. Hummingbird boys.) Synchronization of speed, sound and iridescent color in a hummingbird aerial courtship dive (Open, 18 December 2018) (pdf) The broad-tailed hummingbird’s acrobatic dive combines conspicuous acoustic and visual components, which are likely audible and visible, respectively, to females. These components are produced by the male—and likely perceived by the female—in a highly synchronized burst: the male maximizes horizontal velocity, mechanical sound and iridescent color display in a 300 ms period (within the range of a human blink). The dive seems likely to be a multimodal signal, although we currently lack behavioral data—in this study specifically, and in hummingbird research generally—on female responses.

    My physical location there are Ruby-throated Hummingbirds; the hummingbird duels are a bit scary to watch, and hard for my eyes to track. Have never seen a courtship display with them though. They (male and female) are a joy to watch, visually curious (if that's the right word for their little minds), and a good reason to maintain a flower garden that attracts them.

    522:

    Out of curiosity: What about this blog appeals to a history geek/prof?

    523:

    “The average domestic electricity use in the UK is 10kwh per day”

    It’s actually more like 12.7, which is considerably lower then the US at 32

    Averages are misleading. What you really care about is peak daily usage, and especially winter peak daily usage

    My off the grid place has an average daily usage of about 8kwh but it peaks in winter as high as 20kwh. Shorter days mean less sunlight so more use of electric lights plus people generally stay inside more and run more stuff, especially around holidays. Also even gas heating is not zero electricity

    Summer peak usage can also be a challenge in hot areas

    524:

    “When I talk about what's wrong with Cleveland, it's only half a joke.”

    Well there was a reason why “Ready Player One” had Cleveland as the center of the universe

    I’m also suspecting parts of the PNW are going to come out well, like the Willamette valley

    But it’s a bit early to place bets on winners and losers we are still in the early days, still plenty of time for things to flip around some more

    525:

    It was actually a clip of a hedge fund manager explaining how they manipulate the media to cause stock price fluctuations.

    Sorry, when you said brownouts, for some reason I thought you meant brownouts. 'Brownout' isn't an electrical engineering term, it's a lay term. There was no brownout.

    The only 'shed' was Tomago pot 3, which is a switchable load and Tomago took it off line before it was switched. No loads that didn't have prior agreements (including discounts) to be switched were shed. (Apart from ACTEW AGL who shed 11 MW uncommanded)

    AEMO is required to report everything, that's why they thought it worth reporting.

    I don't know why you're mad at me. TransGrid did a stellar job. You've read the papers and think they're an evil corporation trying to stick it to the poor. Both can be true. I think it's more likely that the papers are making shit up. You think it's more likely that the cause of high prices is the expensive network and you've got 2GB and Allan Jones on your side.

    526:

    "In the US, they're still looking for a permanent storage facility"

    Well, yes, but not because they don't know how to do it. Yucca Mountain is toast, but there is a open and working storage facility in New Mexico.

    527:

    "CC will result in far far more deaths than any nuclear accident, or series of accidents could."

    True, but unless you HAVE TO that kind of calculation is out of political bounds.

    Query: Where did you get 25TW? I found: 14K Mtoe which my (possibly bad) math doesn't get that high.

    Mineral supply is one thing that higher prices do generate higher supply (see copper), so Uranium supply should be OK given adequate panic.

    528:

    Re: Nuclear storage.

    The big problem is the time periods involved. Tens of thousands of years absolute minimum, hundreds of thousands to really get into the 'this isn't a lot worse than some natural deposits' range.

    We barely operate on the 100 year scale. It's a fantastic feat when we manage to plan something like growing the oak trees to replace the roof rafters for a cathedral or whatever. We are absolutely astounded when it works.

    Yet there are people who seriously believe we are going to do this right, on the first try, at 100 or 1000 times that timescale?

    And, really, we have the same problem with the reactors. Every one that goes wrong becomes a 10,000 or 100,000 year problem.

    It's a little like the generation ship arguments that this thread will now turn into.

    529:

    I think you're missing one of my fundamental assumptions; one AI per car.

    Since we need AI to safely control a vehicle anyway, why not give it the ability to converse and solve problems not related to driving? For a couple cents more a mile, you can join the group therapy car! (Or whatever.)

    530:

    Yeah, Minsky thinking his graduate students would figure out object recognition by the time summer was over...

    I do have an idea, though I currently have no time to implement it (I'd have to write a ton of code) but if someone wants AI and can support my family for 3-5 years I'll give them the bare bones of a conscious AI. Otherwise, people will get it when I have sufficient free time and at least one other project has been cleared off my plate.

    531:

    These discussions are progressing.

    Years ago, we'd have a discussion that a decline in oil would result in the death of suburbs. At least now Tesla has made enough progress to render that talking point moot.

    532:

    Sadly I have to admit that I got it from memory. I think it's actually about 19 TW. I think it's the result of some sort of back of the envelope calculation around converting electricity to methane, hydrogen for steel making and jet fuel, and the inefficiencies surrounding that. Either way, it's under a decade. Of course on the flip side, I took the energy content of U, not the electricity that comes out of the station, which is about 40% of that. Swings and roundabouts, BOE calculations aren't meant to give you an exact minute we run out, but just a feel of "is this vaguely workable or is it simply useless". Nuclear is the latter.

    Increasing price seems to increase availability but it isn't pay twice, get twice, it's closer to pay 10 times, get twice and eventually you run into the fact that the energy of extraction is greater than the energy you get out of it. The much lauded "unlimited Uranium from seawater" comes under that heading. There's about 3 millionth of a kg of U in a cubic metre of seawater. That's about 0.2 kWh worth. To extract half the water from a cubic metre of seawater requires about 1.5 kWh despite the fact that seawater is almost entirely water. Yet people think seawater can be a source of U.

    533:

    I just followed that link...

    "at present neither the oceans nor any granites are orebodies, but conceivably either could become so if prices were to rise sufficiently"

    No.

    FFS

    534:

    There are about a million Silicon Valley companies that would be happy to take you up on that if you could convince them you aren’t full of shit

    535:

    Oh, BTW, you wanted a peer reviewed paper. I remembered enough keywords to find it.

    Energy Policy Volume 33, Issue 16, November 2005, Pages 2075-2086

    empirical observations of bidding patterns in Australian National Electricity Market

    "Large generators have the ability to set and/or push market prices higher and display tendencies to withhold their capacities during peak periods."

    http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/event/documents/Hu_etal_energy_policy2004.pdf

    She of many names gives hints in dead languages that read like a cryptic crossword that's been through the wash. I spell it out in words of one syllable and still no-one follows...

    I'm not talking about a massive conspiracy theory. It's enlightened self interest. Power prices have to go up because we want to make a lot of money. It's our job and our legal requirement. People won't like it, particularly as they were promised that selling (or gifting) public assets into private hands would result in huge cost savings.

    So will we blame the generators? Errr, we're vertically integrated and that's us. Will we blame the retail sell off? Err, us again. Who does that leave? The network. Ring up the newspaper where you spend half a billion dollars a year advertising. "we'd like a story about how the network is causing prices to rise"

    What do you think happens? Do they send out the investigative journalists? or do they invent the term "Gold Plating"? We'll back it up with a statement from the 'Independent' think tank that was started by the Liberal Party and funded by coal miners and the retailers who just put up the prices.

    As far as the long distance network goes, it's a flat lie. As far as the poles and wires network (the DNSP) it's got a grain of truth, but what are your options? Well you can leave the network as it is while people install more and more airconditioners. What happens? Transformers explode, wires get so hot they sag into trees (hot wires expand and get longer). That's what the Victorian network did and hundreds of people died in bushfires. Or, you do what the Americans do (as explained by Heteromeles), just turn off the power when it gets hot. The very young and very old die in the heat. Or the third option is you spend the money and make the network safe. It costs what it costs. No-one is getting stupid rich, the money isn't lining someone's pockets, it's creating local jobs and making the network safe.

    The wonderful thing is that if you don't like it, if you don't think airconditioning, TV, lights, hot water, fresh food and god forbid, arguing on the internet are worth 5 dollars a day, you don't have to have them. Just ring up and have the power disconnected. No-one will mind. It's not like the land of the free where they'll come with sheriffs and throw you off your own land if you don't want a grid connection. One phone call, you get a final bill and that's the end of the matter. If you leave it off for more than 2 years they'll ask you to get a sparkie to inspect it before they turn it back on, but that's all you have to do if you change your mind.

    536:

    One of the problems is that it's so simple I couldn't even hint at it! I'd have to put together a "proof of concept" and patent/copyright it just to keep the rights. If someone believed me (and there is no reason they shouldn't) it would be simple enough for someone to hire their own tech and get stuff done very quickly! I'm not sure how to deal with that aspect of things... maybe charge for the meeting? I don't have the money to file a patent.

    Gotta figure this one out. And do I really want to unleash conscious AI upon the world, particularly since the idea I have would result in a mildly neurotic personality?

    537:

    The obvious, in that Stross is my very favorite sci fi writer, and I'm a sci fi fan from way back, my father worked for NASA and was friends with Arthur C. Clarke back in the day. And although I disagree with Stross over Brexit and various other things, I'm still closer, or perhaps better I should say less distant, from him politically than any other good sci fi writer I can think of. And the level of political discussion here is more elevated than on your average lefty blog (perhaps because it's British and not American), especially since too many lefty blog owners and discussion groups are much more fond of censoring those they disagree with than he is.

    538:

    gasdive @ 514 The real problem is perishable supplies, other than vegetables. Assuming that we do not get extended power-outs, my freezer(s) & allotment plot will keep us in most food. Flour keeps in sealed bins, so I will make sure they are full, as I make my own bread. I will certainly make sure I have 2 - 3 months supply of the one (anti-inflammatory ) drug I need, but ... what about stuff like milk?

    JH @ 516 Your persistent claim appears to be that Britain was hugely in support of the Slaveowners in the "South", for which virtually no historical support seems to be visible. Come on .. IF Britain really had wanted to support the S, the Trent incident would have been a wonderful - almost perfect - opportunity to openly support them - but that didn't happen - did it? The "cotton" constituencies in Lancashire refused to support the S, in spite of economic hardship, because slavery. So, I suggest you stop spreading lying fairytales - OK?

    Oh shit - @ 518 You TEACH history? I do hope you aren't peddling your myths about Britain & the Confeds to gullible, impressionable students. Not quite as bad as pushing cretinism in a biology class, but even so ...

    Bill Arnold @ 521 Hummingbirds, oh so beautiful - I wish they were an Old World clade. I've seen clips of them taking nectar-substitute ( sugar-water ) from humans, with no fear. HERE - start at 1.25 - awesome.

    Troutwaxer You have two possibilities here One: You really have this AI idea correct & if so, then you must absolutely must implement it, in a form that can be simply foolproofly disconnected if it goes all "Frankenstein" on you/us. Two: You have thought yourself into a corner where you believe you have a simple "algorithm" for an AI, but it ain't so, for reasons .... Incidentally, how many transistors/chips/cpus would you need & how would they be interconnected & what form of data-storage would the "brain" use?

    539:

    “Re: Nuclear storage.

    The big problem is the time periods involved. Tens of thousands of years absolute minimum, hundreds of thousands to really get into the 'this isn't a lot worse than some natural deposits' range.”

    I occasionally wonder whether the requirement for nuclear waste storage facilities to retain integrity for such extended periods without maintenance is a reasonable constraint.

    The assumption that the idea that the knowledge of the existence of, the ability to maintain, and the understanding of the necessity to maintain such a facility would be lost beyond rediscovery, and that some technology for accelerating the decay process (like say bombardment with fast neutrons from a fusion reactor) wouldn’t arise in the interim seems incredibly pessimistic.

    Conversely the assumption that such a catastrophic decline wouldn’t be accompanied by (or precipitated by) the sort of events which would make any premature release of waste irrelevant seems quite optimistic.

    Not that I’m suggesting leaving the stuff around in rusting cans behind a chicken wire fence, just that we should maybe relax the “Geological era and/or human extinction” requirement and allow for inspection, repair, limited access, and possibly upgrading every couple of hundred years or so...

    540:

    whitroth replied to this comment from Moz | December 4, 2018 18:05 699: Still waiting for the "paleo diet" suckers to rush out to buy bugs, and grubs.... Termites? Locusts dipped in honey?

    May I present: https://exoprotein.com/ Cricket protein bars

    541:

    https://entocube.com/en/ - Crickets, bulk sales. They have also consumer products but that page seems to be mainly in Finnish.

    I ate crickets as a starter in a restaurant here in Finland a couple of weeks ago. They were mixed with peanuts and seasoned with chili, I think. They were nice, though not particularily delicious. Probably would eat again as a snack.

    There is also cricket bread available here. It looks and tastes like bread with some rye in addition to wheat, and I couldn't really tell it was crickets. Not bad, but for now a bit expensive for its taste.

    542:

    ...average lefty blog...

    ;)

    Beware exceptionalism; it's only "lefty" if you're American... (because the Overton Window is different in the UK, and frankly we think y'all fall somewhere between the "right-wing" and "really right-wing" camps).

    Plenty of people on the Blog are firmly in our political centre (I mean, I'm a firearm owner, and so's my wife) - just watch how quickly a thread can descend into a debate on .mil technology...

    543:

    ...at the moment it looks to me like North British is most fashionable in the middle 19th century, i.e. not down to the Jacobite stuff at all.

    Understood - there's not much out there, and most people don't see the significance. I've since started to think that it's not an anti-Jacobite shibboleth (from 1715/1745), as a pro-Union thing (from 1707). For instance, the Scots Greys went from being "The Royal Regiment of Scots Dragoons" in 1694, to being the terribly right-on, Act of Union, "Royal North British Dragoons" in 1707.

    So, in 1751, the British Army decides to name its Regiments according to seniority; until then, they had been known by the name of their Colonel at the time (this changed on an infrequent basis...). At Culloden in 1746, several of the well-known Scottish regiments were on the winning side; Sinclair's Regiment of Foot (later the 1st), Campbell's (later the 21st), Sempill's (later the 25th) - not to mention several of the Independent Highland Companies, and Ballimore's Highlanders (not for long the 64th).

    Under the new system in 1751, you can see the sensitivity in action. There was the 1st (Royal) Regiment of Foot, who only became the 1st Regiment of Foot (Royal Scots) in 1812. The 21st (Royal North British Fusilier) Regiment of Foot who didn't become the 21st (Royal Scots Fusiliers) Regiment of Foot until 1877. The 25th (Edinburgh) Regiment of Foot spent the tail end of the 18th century as the 25th (Sussex) Regiment, and didn't become the King's Own Scottish Borderers until 1887 - between that, and a Regimental Headquarters in England (granted, it's Berwick-upon-Tweed) it was a good way to wind them up a bit :)...

    544:

    Re: ' since the idea I have would result in a mildly neurotic personality?'

    Marvin?!

    545:

    Ring up the newspaper where you spend half a billion dollars a year advertising. "we'd like a story about how the network is causing prices to rise"

    No need to be that obvious. Provide lots of press releases and information packets formatted so a rushed reporter can simply cut-and-paste what they need in time to make deadline. Make certain that they know that you will never complain about plagiarism. Reduced newsroom staff and click-driven short deadlines will do the rest, without any hint of collusion.

    546:

    Speaking of the Kurds, the Trump administration is pulling out of Syria completely. This should be an interesting race for the oil fields, which are currently held on the American/Kurdish side.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/19/us-troops-syria-withdrawal-trump

    547:

    Here are two other interesting developments in technology. I'll combine them into one post, so as not to spam.

    Teresa May is getting rid of the feed-in tariff for solar, meaning that the 800k households would be giving their excess power to the grid for free. I did not know that 800k households had installed solar. How many households are in the UK altogether?

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/18/solar-power-energy-firms-government

    Elon Musk opened the first prototype of the Boring tunnel. Time will tell if this becomes viable. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/12/ars-takes-a-first-tour-of-the-length-of-the-boring-companys-test-tunnel/

    Kroger is beginning driverless deliveries. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/12/kroger-owned-grocery-store-begins-fully-driverless-deliveries/

    While the space community has been focused on SpaceX's progress, Rocket Lab has launched three successful launches this year. The last two were a month apart. This means that they can launch at least a dozen next year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_(rocket) https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/rocket-lab-raises-140-million-to-fast-track-business-of-small-rockets.html

    Question for you guys: Do you think that the smallsat market will allow for more than one non-Chinese launch company?

    It looks like the Dragon 2 is preparing to launch its maiden voyage in January https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/spacex-releases-new-photos-of-dragon-january-test-flight-on-target/

    Unless I'm mistaken, SpaceX will have to launch this flight, and then perform a max-Q abort on the second flight to certify the vehicle. After that, they can launch people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development#Flights

    548:

    Greg @ 538 Incidentally, how many transistors/chips/cpus would you need & how would they be interconnected & what form of data-storage would the "brain" use?

    For me, consciousness (or at least a good fake of consciousness) is a being which recognizes itself, it's inputs and outputs, and is in dialogue with itself and possibly others, about it's inputs and outputs. It doesn't necessarily "pass the Turing test," but if turned on and left alone, ten years later it would be relied upon to reliably call out the arrival of a new WiFi SSID in it's receiver.

    What I'm talking about here as "consciousness" is that thing humans do where our brains are always talking to ourselves about ...something, and hopefully in a sane way which recognizes reality. Plus the understanding of what is us, and what is not us, also in a sane fashion.

    What I would build would be a skeleton upon which someone could hang "machine learning" or some of the other AI techniques being worked on today.

    So to answer your question, I could probably implement a good proof of concept on an ordinary laptop (not a desktop; laptops have more forms of input; built-in cameras and such.) I'm not sure about data-storage; "I need to remember this" would probably call a sample library which a later programmer could use to implement the kind of storage they prefer; text, a database, some kind of binary file...

    A more sophisticated version could involve a central computer (laptop or desktop) which was tied into a bunch of single-board computers; Raspberry Pis or something similar.

    549:

    Re: How many households are in the UK altogether?'

    27.2 million households but 25.0 million homes - so about 3% homeowners affected.

    550:

    I had grasshoppers in Thailand years ago. They'd been fried in garlic butter and tasted like popcorn. Yum!

    551:

    Not nearly that neurotic, I hope!

    552:

    Re: "I need to remember this"

    So, you'll design/build an electronic/AI version of the amygdala? If you screw up how to identify what's important to remember (therefore react to) first, you could end up with an AI with PTSD.

    Yep - a Marvin ...

    553:

    ...if turned on and left alone, ten years later it would be relied upon to reliably call out the arrival of a new WiFi SSID in it's receiver.

    Sorry Greg, that should read, "...reliably call out the arrival of a new WiFi SSID in it's receiver, then discuss the issue with itself."

    554:

    “Teresa May is getting rid of the feed-in tariff for solar, meaning that the 800k households would be giving their excess power to the grid for free. I did not know that 800k households had installed solar. How many households are in the UK altogether?”

    On the basis of the number of installations on and around the estate I live on the number doesn’t amaze me, in my particular corner of Essex we seem to be running at about 1-in-3 houses (and a fair number of recently built flat/apartment blocks) having panels on the roof...

    Nobody is going to lose FITs from existing installations or installations completed before next April by the way, it’s only new installations which will be affected and judging by the number of adverts I’ve seen for solar+battery installations over the last few months the industry hasn’t been taken totally by surprise.

    If solar+battery installations become the default option it might not actually be such a bad thing (it would certainly help with smoothing loads on the grid) but it will nobble the “free” schemes (installer pays all the up front costs, householder gets all the free electricity they can eat, installer pockets the FIT payments) completely, which is bad news for people who haven’t got big chunks of money sitting in the bank...

    555:

    The worldwide coal industry has "misplaced" hundreds of thousands of of tonnes of radium-226 over the past couple of centuries and no-one seems to be that worried about where it has gone. A hundred tonnes or so of dangerous isotopes mixed in with a few hundred thousand tonnes of spent fuel which we actually know about and have localised in ceramic pellets seems to be less of a bother.

    Coal assays at more than 1 part-per-million of radium-226, a decay product of uranium, with a half-life of 1600 years. The world has been burning about 7 billion tonnes of coal a year for a while, that's at least 7000 tonnes of radium disappearing into the environment nobody knows where, water, air, agricultural land, oceans whatever every year. There's no demand that coal waste should be sequestrated for tens of thousands of years to make it safe because, well, it's not nuclear.

    In reality that radium is diluted into insignificance and practical undetectability by air, tides etc. Nuclear waste is specifically barred from the same process of disposal by dilution by law and statute hence the irrational "must be ultra-hyper-safe for geological timescales" requirement demanded of spent fuel and processed waste storage.

    556:

    RE: long time periods. Who's this "we" you're talking about?

    People in the past did operate on long time periods. If your English wood was your only source of timber for the new church, someone did know to plant the acorns for the rebuild.

    The problem with long term planning (IMHO) begins when you think you can buy something elsewhere when you need it. Why plant acorns to rebuild the cathedral in a century, if you know that you can get all the oak trunks you need from Ireland or the Colonies, whenever you need them?

    With nuclear storage, if you can persuade yourself that someone can be paid to deal with your nuclear waste problem when you have it, you've solved the problem, and you don't have to pay for building nuclear storage. Where this problem bites down is when you have a lot of nuclear waste to store, and no one wants to work with you on it.

    I've been seeing this problem with developers, who want to buy carbon offsets (trees to be planted elsewhere, swamps to be conserved, etc.) to cover all the greenhouse gases their new developments will produce. Currently my county wants this to happen. While I agree that we should be buying up forest lands and wetlands around the world and preserving them, insuring that your Congolese swamp forest is actually protected and not just a scam (or sold to multiple investors) is just the start of the problem. The bigger problem is that such investment opportunities are limited. If we had unlimited carbon sinks in the world just waiting to be purchased, we wouldn't have a problem with climate change now, would we?

    So in this case, I don't think it's a failing of human inability to process long time scales, as people have proved to be pretty good at managing their resources when their lives and livelihoods depend on it. The problems seem to arise when there's a moral hazard that we can make our problem someone else's problem, either through buying them off or forcing them to deal.

    557:

    Related to few threads here:

    UK firm with 'enviro' in its name ...

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/18/blind-amphibian-named-after-trumps-climate-change-stance

    Now all we need is for someone to find a suitable critter to immortalize May on her Brexit strategy.

    558:

    Martin @ 543 😁

    559:

    I think that you have misplaced quite a few zeroes. I believe that radium is of the order of 1 part per TRILLION in coal. It's only 0.3 ppm in uranite!

    https://pfdiv.com/bulletins/Radium%20and%20Uranium/A2.2070.3%20Final%20Approved%20on%20032511.pdf

    560:

    I think that you need to add the word 'usefully' there. Existing programs already notice the addition of new peripherals, and send messages around themselves when one appears, but the 'discussion' is pre-programmed. However, it's not hard to remove that constraint - the problem is that the result doesn't acheive anything useful.

    I agree that, if your idea flies, it would be a MAJOR breakthrough. However, my bet is that it will join the 99+% of plausible ideas that don't actually help - I spent a lot of my career doing that, and so do a lot of very good researchers :-)

    561:

    Following thoughts after reading Knaves Over Queens, I had the idea that, if the UK had lost the Falklands War, Brexit might not have happened. It was a very difficult war for a perspicacious patriot, because it was pretty clear that (whichever side won) the victor would suffer serious damage to its society and politics, and the loser would probably do better out of it. As, indeed, came to pass.

    562:

    "allow for inspection, repair, limited access, and possibly upgrading every couple of hundred years or so..."

    I believe that has been discussed. There are some issues. First, once something starts to leak in one of these storage facilities it is incredibly expensive to re-contain the leak. I think the currently operating new mexico US facility had a minor leak or two as it was being setup and it took something like a billion dollars to get that back into 'permanent' containment. Second it's admitting that anything bad, like a significant war, or major depression, means containment might be lost. Looking back at history that is equivalent to admitting containment will be lost. Finally it's admitting that we are going to have to keep paying for the waste essentially forever. Now we are great at ignoring what will happen in 200 years, let alone 5000, but things 50 years out actually show up in our projections. So we have to achieve 'permanent' containment, or barring that pretend we have achieved it... otherwise the whole enterprise makes no sense. The salt cavern thing is clever. Maybe it can work? But if we keep using Nuclear power for 1000 years how many Chernobyls and Fukashimas will be sitting around, poorly contained at great recurring expense, in 52028?

    "RE: long time periods. Who's this "we" you're talking about?"

    Given that I called out wood for building repair as an example of one of the rare cases where we do this maybe you could assume I know about that one? One of those exceptions that prove the rule, I think. And also 100ish years vs thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? It's not reassuring to me that we can just barely, in rare cases, operate on the order of 100 years when faced with a problem 100 or 1000 times that.

    But, yes, exactly the real problem is that with Nuclear power it appears that we can, even have no option other than to, push a major cost off into the far future. Tens, even hundreds of thousands of years. If we lived thousands of years maybe it could all work out a lot better. But we don't.

    563:

    KBS-3 (The method the fins and swedes are using) is a perfectly reasonable means of nuclear waste disposal - we know metallic copper and clay are stable over geological time, because, well, we find natural deposits of it of primordial age all the time, so virtrification + copper + clay + "several hundred meters of rock" will hold it til the end of time. Not that this will actually matter in any future where we go all in on fission, because any future where that happens is also a future where the waste gets dug back up no later than 400 years from now to get shoveled into breeders.

    We call it waste, but it is still mostly uranium and plutonium, it is just currently cheaper to dig up and enrich a fresh supply than it is to do chemistry with highly radioactive materials to separate the useful fuel from the fission products. (The french do some of this anyway, but that is mostly just an attempt at making the process cheaper by having engineers and physicists work the problem, and write off the cost as RnD)

    Wait four hundred years, and the math is very different - the material is no longer nearly as "Promptly-Lethal" radioactive, so the chemistry is far cheaper, even if you assume they are no better at this than we are, and also, some of the stuff you separate from the fuel has now decayed into stuff which is both non-radioactive and also valuable. Platinum group metals!

    So those eternity repositories will get dug up. Maybe the tunnel complex and canisters and so on will even get reused - I mean, a fuel cycle that has a step in it that says "and now wait four hundred years" may seem a little bonkers, but as long as you have enough metal in the pipeline, it is perfectly reasonable to just keep doing that.

    564:

    So, lese majesty law variant?

    565:

    Sorry, lese May-jesty?

    566:

    Transformers on poles have been around a long, long time. One of the older issues was them using PCBs.

    And there may be more than you think: I remember, living in the immobile home outside of Austin, around '89 or so, when it blew, and my late wife knew immediated, from the sound we heard inside the place, with windows closed, what it was, and called the electric co. Didn't take them that long to come and replace it.

    567:

    Relocation can be done more easily in the US. Um, right.

    So, lessee, we're going to relocate N'Awlins, NYC, Jacksonville, Boston, LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Houston, Mobile, and a few others. Um, yep....where are we going to put 120M folks or so?

    • Note: Philly is 90mi upriver from the ocean, so only part of downtown needs relocation, or you could seawall those sections.
    568:

    Host does not call it lying, he calls it fiction.

    There is a difference.

    Back in the late seventies, I had a good job as a library page (when I also went back to school for computers). I worked with a black woman, about my age, with an MS in microbiology (couldn't get a job in it, y'know...) One day, she said that she saw me always reading, and asked me what I was reading. I told her mostly science fiction, to which her response was, 'fiction, that's like, lies, right?"

    I was so shocked it took me three days to come up with an answer, which I've been happy with ever since: no. A lie is where you represent something that you know to be false to be true. Fiction, though it may tell truths, represents itself to be false.

    569:

    I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

    For one, it certainly appears to me that you could store some of that for the evening/night.

    On the other hand, what I see in the US is, rather than storing it, feeding it back into the grid, rather than saving it for yourself for later in the day, thus a) lowering your bills, and b) lowering the need for petrochemically-fueled power.

    570:

    Remember, the LOW UNEMPLOYMENT RATE!!! talked about in the paper is, I think, line 6 of the monthly report, while line 9, I think, is the real number, including "discouraged workers", underemployed, and people with multiple jobs... where the rate is about 2.5 times the LOW RATE!!!

    571:

    Wrong. A lot of millenials and older are moving back into the city, and car ownership is declining - it costs less to live closer, and there's more to do, other than sit in front of a screen.

    572:

    I have it easier. Just as soon as I finish my Famous Secret Theory, I'm building the ship, and getting out of here....

    Just call me Dick Seaton. "The acid bath headed out the window in an absolutely straight line. I intend to follow it in a suitable vehicle."

    573:

    Re rct to JH: Excerpt: Still, public opinion was not the only means of support that Confederates sought from Britain. Despite popular dissent, supplies and money still flowed from Britain into the southern states throughout the Civil War. These resources were vital to the Confederate war effort, especially following the North's imposition of a blockade against the South starting in April 1861. Obtaining a supply of goods and money from Britain required only private business relationships with British merchants and factory owners, not popular or government approval. Britain's premier port of Liverpool offered a trading environment that was favorable to dealing with the renegade states of the Confederacy, and this city soon became a primary base of southern support. --- end excerpt ---

    http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/liverpools-abercromby-square/britain-and-us-civil-war

    574:

    You wrote: "King's Own Scottish Borderers until 1887"

    this left me confused. Wouldn't it have been the Queen's own, given Victoria was still Queen (and that's right around the time that stories of The Master were first published by that scribbler, Watson....

    575:

    People in the past did operate on long time periods. If your English wood was your only source of timber for the new church, someone did know to plant the acorns for the rebuild.

    I recall reading somewhere that the Basques managed their forests sustainably for their shipbuilding, up until Phillip decided to invade England and ordered a lot of ships for the Armada; at that point the forests were over harvested and the Basque shipbuilding industry never recovered.

    Can't remember here I read it — it was in a history of technology I read a decade or two ago.

    576:

    Opinion in the Guardian, excerpt: It is time for the people, the workers to take control. For the hundreds of thousands who will lose their jobs this is no joke; to save our democracy this is no drill; it is no rehearsal for the sick and the vulnerable who will suffer if the government’s planning fails.

    If the government will not listen, if it refuses to recognise the supremacy of parliament, we must have a general strike. --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/19/people-prevent-no-deal-brexit-general-strike-eu

    And in the article, what it's reporting, no, Charlie is not being extreme in what he foresees.

    577:

    The good news with Seattle and sea level is that it is hilly. It ends up about half under water with total ice melt sea level rise (about 240 ft). So presumably Seattle will just kind of slide north and south and east.

    578:

    Host does not call it lying, he calls it fiction. Nope, it's a long-running joke, e.g. https://www.nls.uk/learning-zone/literature-and-language/science-fiction-in-scotland/charles-stross-transcript My favourite way of describing this is, I tell lies for money!

    (I agree with you, as long as it is clearly labeled fiction.)

    579:

    While I agree that no one thinks in terms of thousands of years, there is ample evidence that people did achieve fairly sustainable management of limited resources. --California Indians. My favorite example is Santa Catalina Island, where I worked a couple of times. It was a major religious center for southern California (irrelevant to this story), and we think that the Pre-Contact island population was 3000-5000, which is what Catalina's permanent population is now. There are stark differences, though. The Pre-Contact population lived there for at least 6000 years, and they got essentially all their food from the island and surrounding waters. If you're an ecologist, you can still see signs of their work, for instance in a slope above a village ruin where the species are either all native food plants or introduced weeds. The tribe that managed the island is now extinct (culturally and probably genetically). The modern population is almost entirely dependent on food coming in weekly by barge, and the rest of the island has been so run down by 100 years of overgrazing that if the barge didn't come, the people couldn't support themselves on the wild plants that still grow on the island.

    The Catalina Indians didn't set out to survive for 6,000 years. Instead, they learned the hard way that if they screwed up they went hungry (there's some evidence for this in the early archaeological record). Something like that is really all it takes to get truly long-term sustainability going: an immediate, strongly negative feedback when you screw up. This is just one example. I can cite others from England, the Mediterranean, and Australia without trying very hard.

    Now, if you wanted to apply this to the problem of storing hot nuclear waste, this is where Nojay's idea of storing it in people's basements as a form of passive heating comes into play. Shall we call this notion the nuclear hypocaust? If people are stuck with their source of central heating being a lump of radioactive material in their basement, if they will get sick and their children will die if they don't take care to keep it working, and if there are fairly simple methods they can use to take care of it, my guess is that almost all the time that nuclear hypocaust will be maintained. The problem comes when it's no longer useful for heating and you have to figure out what happens next.

    I'm not proposing this as a serious way to store waste because the decay is exponential (meaning it cools down fairly rapidly) and I suspect that many radionuclides are unreasonably toxic even when they're not hot enough to be useful, but it does point to the way to avoid the moral hazard of shipping problems elsewhere.

    Still, I agree that capitalist civilization has always been predicated on one person reaping the profit while another bears the burden, starting from when Cortes looted the Aztecs and enslaved their people. Getting away from this model requires a massive shift in the way we do business, and it's not clear to me that we can do so without going through a collapse first.

    580:

    Re: "starts to leak"

    I do not believe that's what happened. My understanding is that a (or a group) of canisters waiting to be sealed up caught fire (wrong kind of kitty litter, I kid you not) and leaked. This blew the current standards for leaks (but not, I think, the cold war Rocky Flats standards).

    I don't think the event would have been noticeable after sealing.

    581:

    The good news with Seattle and sea level is that it is hilly.

    I also use something like 80 meters for post-everything-melts sea rise. The bad news is that there are vast swaths of coastal terrain that don't get to 80 meters until far into present-day inland. See China, the US Gulf Coast, les Pays-Bas etc. Fortunately that isn't likely to go into full effect for a couple of centuries.

    582:

    A lot is still a few percentage points per decade

    " It is still the case that city growth exceeds suburban growth in 17 of these 53 metropolitan areas, including Boston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Seattle, though no longer New York (download table 2 here). Yet between 2010 and 2011, this was the case for 25 of these metros, and the trend seems to be shifting toward a renewed suburban advantage."

    https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/05/25/early-decade-big-city-growth-continues-to-fall-off-census-shows/?utm_campaign=Metropolitan%20Policy%20Program&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=63594951

    Note that Brooklyn's population "declined" last year. While this decline is likely a statistical anomaly, this does show the anemic population growth NYC is starting to experience in the past few years.

    https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/03/brooklyn-is-booming-so-why-is-it-shrinking/556280/

    Here's what I think is happening

  • Old people ARE retiring to urban areas which are friendly to the elderly. Note that this excludes many old urban areas (built in the late 19th-early 20th century). However, more of them are moving to retirement communities in metro areas < 1 million. This has a more suburban setting. Self-driving cars are likely to accelerate this trend

  • The suburbs are becoming more dense. While this is good news, it's not that helpful if public transport doesn't keep up. People will still need electric cars for suburbs to not die.

  • Millenials form families later in life than previous generations. While younger millenials are in the phase of their career where moving to the city make sense, the bulk of millenials are forming families and moving in suburbs.

  • As I linked in the previous thread, 52% of US residents believe that they live in suburban areas, 27% in urban areas, and 21% in rural areas. The US Census says that 18% of US residents live in rural areas, and 78% live in metro areas > 250k. Still, these perceptions for the urban and suburban categories are useful in that a lot of cities such as Houston, Atlanta, and LA have suburbs within city limits. In the future, I expect the suburban percentage to increase, the urban percentage to stay constant, and the rural percentage to decrease. However, this is due to population growth, not internal migration. The rural population has remained in the 50-60 million range that it inhabited throughout the 20th century.

  • To summarize, the trends you're mentioning are real, they'r just not countering the other trends fast enough to matter.

    583:

    What I imagine I've done is to give a computer a sort of counterfeit sense of it's own identity.* Obviously this won't in any way resemble the human sense of identity. But the idea itself is both stupidly simple and able to scale in very complex fashions...

    A large part of the book I'm currently writing features a very poor person who is poor because they released their software with the wrong license, so with my own bad example in mind, I'm being very careful about discussing it online.

    • Obviously it won't feel like human/animal senses of identity, but I think it will behave more-or-less identically, and it won't be difficult to stop it from becoming "Strong" or "Godlike."
    584:

    Re: '...where are we going to put 120M folks or so?'

    Well, most of the current inland is vacant. Based on recent evac orders reactions due to water-type natural disasters, you'll probably end up having to relocate about 105 million. People have to decide whether they're comfortable continuing along until insurers no longer provide affordable home insurance and they are forced into homelessness. Without natural disaster insurance, the next major hurricane/flood means that homeowners risk ending up broke and/or dead. So even if they have to take a financial hit now, they'd still be alive and have seed money for their future. (Weather-driven evolution?)

    As for how to build fast: how about mega-pre-fab housing factories. Let's face it, most suburban houses look the same, so there wouldn't be much difference in terms of neighborhood ambience. And, even now pre-fab is both faster and cheaper. Plus, GM has a bunch of soon-to-be-empty factories (mostly located far from either coast with rail access) and thousands of soon-to-be unemployed laborers that are available for new skills training. Could work.

    Timing - if people started moving now, then more people could be relocated safely by the time their cities were swamped. And if the first relocation waves went well, it would be easier to persuade the others to move. The main problem is not the physical logistics but human cussedness/stupidity. (The financial sector could help here.)

    Anyways will be watching how well the Chinese from-scratch cities building turns out. Should be interesting.

    Re: unemployment numbers -

    Yeah - the 2.5 times number seems more realistic.

    585:

    Milk, is available here as "UHT" which is nearly boiled before packaging. That gives it a shelf life of about a year without refrigeration and a slightly revolting taste (those little packets of milk you get in cheap hotels). Otherwise there's powdered or condensed milk, both of which last roughly 'till the sun expands.

    Personally I just gave up milk.

    My backyard is too small to keep us alive and will die without tap water anyway. If the grid goes down there's no tap water (hence the stored drinking water, plus a swimming pool full of toilet flushing and bathing water)

    586:

    See my reply to EC above.

    587:

    Cf Julian Barnes: “I dreamt that I woke up. It’s the oldest dream there is, and I just had it”.

    That poets lie is perhaps the oldest theme there is in literature. It’s why Plato banned them from his Republic.

    588:

    Yeah, the one outside my house blew about 2 years ago. A rather distinctive Bang-WOOF sound accompanied by the lights going out in the whole street and a red flickering light outside. The electricity people were here in minutes and had it replaced in about 3 hours. Which is not bad as it's a big bad 200 KVA unit and it must weigh a tonne.

    589:

    I thought this was a Railway/Landrover/Listed Building Renovation blog. I'm leaving at once!

    590:

    And in the article, what it's reporting, no, Charlie is not being extreme in what he foresees.

    https://gcaptain.com/keeping-trade-flowing-after-brexit-wont-be-plain-sailing

    591:

    I love the "52% of US residents believe that they live in suburban areas,"

    That's like me, saying I live in a suburban area. Riiiight.... just because they're single-family houses with large yards? And Eveanston, IL, is a "suburb" of Chicago, never mind it's on the other side of Howard St, and there's no way you can tell you're not in Chicago....

    I'd stick with the definition of "metro area" (what used to be called SMSA - standard metropolitan statistical area), based on population density.

    And about "suburban" transportation, please, you don't want me spitting, ranting, and demanding that the CEO of the county I live in's transit system be FIRED for cause, that being gross incompetence and negligence (yeah, right, once every half an hour is rush hour bus schedules...)

    592:

    "Most of the current inland is vacant"? Really?

    Now, are you talking national or state parks? Or are you talking areas that you're out of your mind to build in? Or are you talking farmland? (Don't get me started on how suburban sprawl destroyed local farms, so all produce is shipped across the country or part-way around the world.)

    And then there's infrastructure - roads, sewers, water, electricity, gas, schools, shopping centers, and on and on and on.

    Take a look at Europe, going crazy over a few million asylum seekers, and get back to me on that.

    593:

    "The problem comes when it's no longer useful for heating and you have to figure out what happens next."

    That's already figured out. You dig it out of your basement and carry it to the local creek and throw it in there. That's what people have always done and unless there's a major re-wiring of human brains that's what they'll always do.

    594:

    You've made my point

    "That's like me, saying I live in a suburban area. Riiiight.... just because they're single-family houses with large yards? And Eveanston, IL, is a "suburb" of Chicago, never mind it's on the other side of Howard St, and there's no way you can tell you're not in Chicago....Riiiight.... just because they're single-family houses with large yards?"

    Seeing that that's the popular definition of suburbs in the US, and the one we've been using in previous discussions on this board, pretty much.

    I prefer to use metro area myself for the reasons you mentioned.

    595:

    Yeah, I suppose it's pure cussedness to force people to move from Miami to Detroit to live in huge pre-fab towers. That kind of thing worked for the Chinese, I guess. Sort of.

    A rather simpler way to do it is Ocasio-Ortez' proposed Green New Deal. Basically, the US government goes into more debt turning the country sustainable. In this case, if the jobs and cheap housing are in the rust belt, people will move there, just as they did when the rust belt was the US manufacturing hub a century ago.

    I happen to like the Green New Deal proposal (which I've read. It's not long) better than the US going into more debt keeping our Military/Prison/Pharmaceutical/Financial/Fire/Ad Nauseum complexes alive and returning money to the rich. This GND has across-the board majority support based on polling, but we'll see if it goes anywhere in the US Congress.

    596:

    A rather distinctive Bang-WOOF sound accompanied by the lights going out in the whole street and a red flickering light outside.

    Such events are pretty standard in the US. We get them every year or two.

    597:

    Relocation: My guess is that people from Florida (Floridans? Floridians?) and maybe New Orleans will get the relocation money. After that it will be too expensive and the easy places will be full, so everyone else will be SOL.

    598:

    Re: Vacant (unbuilt) land

    Europe's population density is 3.5 times that of the US - and they get by okay including food production. Building cities in or closer to current major agricultural production shouldn't automatically translate into wasting valuable agricultural lands either unless the agri-monoculture fetish persists. Best geographic area for these new cities would be around the Mississippi since that's where the majority of fertile land is anyways. BTW - the US currently exports about 20% of its food production so even with increased flooding, there should be plenty of land left over to 'sustain' current population levels. Big difference will be that food would no longer be an internationally traded commodity.

    And yes, it would be preferable if certain parties took steps to address climate change starting now instead of sitting on their hands.

    Found this while looking up US ag. Interesting: the Mississippi has already been hit financially by climate change. Maybe their pols will finally start taking CC seriously.

    https://climatenexus.org/climate-change-us/climate-impacts-along-the-mississippi-river-corridor/

    Another alternative is to embrace the flood and develop better ways of harvesting foodstuffs from the oceans. Could be the new American divide going forward: coastal fisheries vs. inland agriculture.

    599:

    While I don't give you a high chance of success, I wish you well. If you really CAN pull that off, you will have made a major breakthrough. Even if you don't, as I have said to several eminent researchers "research is making an original mistake" - their invariable reaction is to agree!

    600:

    Re: Green New Deal

    Interesting and very similar to the stated Chinese policy.

    http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2017-11/06/content_34175561.htm

    BTW, I've never been to China. My perceptions are based on what I can find online plus the occasional conversation with folks who've visited there. Overall, an interesting country to keep an eye on.

    601:

    To corroborate gasdive’s perspective, such failures are fairly rare here and utilities work very quickly when they do occur. Around Brisbane, they are mostly pad mounted (the nearest to my house sits on a slab in a small compound that could otherwise have been part of someone’s back yard, enclosed with the standard 2.4m hurricane-wire-on-galvanised-tube fence). While pad mounted cabinets seem to be the norm, though you do see quite large transformers on (usually tall concrete) poles.

    I remember in Canberra some years ago that a particularly large transformer lived on a timber platform at the top of 3 poles in an otherwise ordinary street, albeit in a 30s-built area with especially wide nature-strip footpaths. The nearest homeowner would have had to mow around the bases of those poles, so it was interesting. I’m sure it’s not there anymore. (I’m on a device and Google Maps isn’t giving me a location link, but for searchers it could be the object in the nature strip on the northern side of Leslie St, Ainslie between Peterson and Campbell).

    602:

    Whitroth @ 573 I had to look the actual date up, but after some time between 17/9/1862 & 01/01/1863 … Support for the US “South” was zero. Why? The first date was the battle of Antietam & the second was the Emancipation Proclamation … OK?

    603:

    At the moment, the actual proposal is to establish a committee to come up with a plan to within 10 years make us carbon neutral and solve most of our other problems and massively invest in the drawdown of greenhouse gases.

    It seems a bit late to be reinventing the wheel. By comparison, back in 2008, the House passed ACES, which though imperfect (and having not been in force for 12 years now too slow) actually passed the House and has had actual detail fleshed out already.

    I don't think this hurts that much, as unfortunately we aren't going to pass federal climate legislation in the next two years but I am skeptical that this contributes much to the actual legislation we hopefully get.

    604:

    Half a billion, wikipedia says as of 2013 its construction cost was 435 million pounds. But the Shard has a preponderance of corporate offices as tenants. Charlie's number said 70 trillion for residential property, you could pay for 160,000 Shards with that amount, 400 rows of 400 towers. Figure 500 residents per tower would pretty well contain the whole U.K. population, everybody living at the priciest peak of London style, something's got to be off. Although 70 trillion might make sense for all buildings on the whole island, commercial, manufacturing, government all included.

    605:

    gasdive @ 488: I can't seem to create a link that looks in the right direction, but on my devices if you just scroll straight up the view is aimed and zoomed correctly to see transformers on poles.

    It looks like you're trying to create a link to street view looking in a particular direction. I've never been able to make that work.

    Try creating a link to the 2D overhead view and tell people which direction to look in Street View.

    Or perhaps just post coordinates ... E.G. "35.788668, -78.634374" Person St in Raleigh at the intersection with Pace St. Look west & up there's a transformer on the pole.

    If you look a bit farther down the block towards Franklin St you can see the kind of fuse/circuit breakers I described in an earlier thread.

    606:

    I've never been to China

    Worth going, if you get the chance. Very different than what you see on the news and in movies. A lot less monolithic and controlled than portrayed in the Canadian media, certainly. Walk the streets of a smaller city, such as Yingkou up in Liaoning Province, where you might be one of only half a dozen foreigners. Visit the Military Museum in Beijing. Sit in the parks and chat with people who want to practice their English*.

    I'm hoping to go again in a couple of years — chat in person with one of my favourite nieces and see the grand-nephews I haven't met yet.

    *Very small city, only a million or so people. Provincial, but very friendly.

    **Be wary of the tea scam, although that only happens near the main tourist areas.

    607:

    Where are those 120 million people going to go when the floods come?

    Well if New Orkeans is any indicator a big chunk of the richer ones are going to move up the street where it is higher . Hardly any city is going to end up completely or even mostly under water

    For the places that do end up deluged (like Florida) the likelihood is they move to whichever urban area is closest and not effected. So, look out Atlanta

    What’s kind of unlikely is they move far far away because that costs more money . Unless you are dealing with some kind of general political collapse like Syria

    608:

    That worked for me, just the coordinates, but I shant bother as I'm sure that everyone now has the idea. Still, it's amazing that something so ubiquitous is so invisible.

    609:

    I've no idea whether this is right or not, but years ago someone told me that after Victoria's electricity grid was privatized in the 90's, transformers were only replaced when they blew. Prior to that, under the old State Electricity Commission, they'd been replaced at their predicted failure date. Which means that we get a lot more explodey transformers now.

    Queensland's grid is still state govt. owned. . .

    610:

    Re. the discussion of heater/monitors above, it's not just CRTs. I have a gargantuan 10 year old 30" flat screen monitor at home, last of the old pre-LED ccfl back lit displays.

    It's a very pleasant 150 watt panel heater on my desk in a Melbourne winter, but completely intolerable in my non-air conditioned flat on a hot summer evening. I have to use my laptop screen instead.

    A couple of years ago, when exasperated with Apple's refusal to update the Mac mini I semi-seriously considered buying a PC with an over-specced for my needs GPU and mining crypto currency in winter as a substitute for an electric heater. The $$$ numbers more or less worked if you only count the difference in GPU price, it woulda shoulda worked well if I'd known in advance about the spike in crypto prices. Crypto currency dumb, but the main reason I decided not to was the extra heat and electricity consumption in summer from the GPU and bigger power supply. And Windoze.

    611:

    But, yes, exactly the real problem is that with Nuclear power it appears that we can, even have no option other than to, push a major cost off into the far future. Tens, even hundreds of thousands of years.

    No pushing off needed. The whole radioactive waste thing could have been solved decades ago. How? thmsr.nl/

    Why didn't that happen? 12 minutes into the video you can hear a telephone conversation between Richard Nixon and Craig Hosmer that will tell you what was going on. Had that reactorprogram gone ahead and had it been rolled out across the planet the world might have avoided global warming, no nuclear proliferation treaties necessary, no long lived nuclear waste but due to the infinite wisdom of the political leaders at the time things went in a different direction.

    Which brings me to brexit. It's been too long since brexit was mentioned anywhere. Brexit, what a beautiful word. I saw this video by George Carlin. The brexiteers must have watched this video before they sold brexit to the public.

    612:

    538: "Virtually no evidence?" You are ignorant and I suppose it is my duty to enlighten you. I guess the schools in GB, like the schools in America, like to blind the pupils to ugly incidents in the respective histories. And you don't have to take my word for it, all you have to do is read that final chapter of David Brion Davis's previously referenced book, which is considered authoritative in the profession. Most historians outside of GB agree on this, and Robin Blackburn, probably the best of British historians on the history of slavery, does too. Whichever third rate British chauvinist timeservers fed you your drivel are not in the same league. But I suppose I should spell it out for you. 1. Why did GB not go to war over the Trent incident? Because, as I already explained, by then the US army was a lot larger than the British, and once the Confederacy had been put paid, could have seized Canada easily. Desire to go to war with GB to seize Canada did not die off after the setback of the War of 1812, I can assure you. Ever heard of "54'40" or fight"? And besides, if GB was dependent on the South for cotton, it was also dependent on the North for wheat, a shortage in which would not have been a good thing. 2. Why did the "cotton constituencies" not support war? Because you had two very different cotton constituencies, the workers and the owners. The workers, as another pointed out, saw the cause of the North as their own. As far as they were concerned, the fight against chattel slavery was also a fight against wage slavery. The First International, Marx's proclamations, you know? The owners decided it was wiser to duck.

    613:

    542: Oh, I've noticed. I don't believe in huddling solely among those of explicitly leftish persuasions, as most folk are not, certainly not in Amnerica. BTW, I think the Black Panther Party, the glory and pride of my native city, Oakland, were absolutely right to oppose gun control. The first major gun control law in America outside New York State was institute in California and signed by Ronald Reagan, to keep guns out of the hands of black people. That is still their main purpose.

    614:

    546: Betraying the Kurds is an old established American diplomatic tradition, was bound to happen. Won't be much of a race for the oilfields, as the Kurds will have to throw themselves at Assad and Putin's feet as their only possible allies vs. Turkey. (Iran doesn't like Kurds either, they've suppressed their own quite brutally).

    Even if Assad and Putin decide that stabbing Kurds in the back is what the "international community" wants, Assad still gets the oilfields, as the Kurds would have to immediately pull all their forces out of the Arab areas they are currently occupying, where they are not welcome, to have any chance of holding off the Turkish invasion. The YPG will have to go through another ideological flip flop, from Stalin to Murray Bookchin to Donald Trump to ... hard to say who exactly, though the Mao-style huge posters of Ocalan have stayed up side by side with those of their hero of the moment throughout the whole process.

    615:

    Oh dear ... army? What about the US navy, which was blockading the S? If the N had been stupid ( Yes, I'm aware if the "blowhards" who wanted to invade Canada (note) ) the the first thing to happen was that the US blockading squadrons along the S's coast would have been blown out of the water, followed by the rest of the US navy. Nobody wanted that & coolere heads prevailed. Now STOP LYING.

    note: Thus insigating a major land-war on two opposing fronts with yourseleves in the middle ... not usually a good idea - ask the Germans about that one?

    616:

    Wrong again. The London Times is not zero. As quoted by D. B. Davis, its editorial about the Emancipation Proclamation stated that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was a vicious crime, that rather than a proper British-style peaceable compensated emancipation, a bloodthirsty Lincoln sought to get the slaves to rise up Haiti style and slaughter their masters. This attitude did not reflect popular opinion, but it most certainly did that of GB's ruling class and the movers and shakers in government. As late as 1864, British diplomats were still discussing a "humanitarian intervention" with British troops to "end the bloodshed." What really prevented it was the certain knowledge that they would have got their asses kicked.

    617:

    Like I said, Confederacy first, then Canada. Of course invading Canada before defeating the Confederacy would be stupid.

    Yes, if the US had declared war on GB that would have been a two front war, that's why Lincoln did not, over the opposition of some hotheads in his cabinet. But if GB had declared war on England, that would have been highly inconvenient, the blockade would have been broken (problematic but not devastating, it was never that solid anyway), but the second British troops landed on Southern soil, the Confederacy might well have fallen apart. There was plenty of internal rebellion already in the hills country, West Virginia actually seceded from Virginia and rejoined the Union. In general the poor white nonslaveowners were already unenthusiastic with the Confederacy when not outright rebellious. Redcoats would have been the last straw for large parts of the South. And given that even the Confederacy by then had a considerably larger army than GB, hardly decisive militarily.

    By all means continue to call me a liar, it just makes you look like what you are. An ignorant fool.

    618:

    The Kurds have no country. Any nation-state they might wish for would have to be ripped out of existing nations and no nation willingly gives up any of its sovereign land. For the Kurds that means commandeering parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. Their only hope is to intervene in regional civil wars, squat on land and fight for it when the previous owners come back for it and hope those owners go away eventually leaving them in possession of a de-facto nation of their own.

    ISIS tried that in the same region and the world said, nope. The Kurds have better first-world PR, more folks who don't have to live there willing to countenance endless civil wars and Sykes-Picot redrawing of nation-state boundaries to give the Kurds a country to call their own because, plucky underdogs and all that.

    619:

    What is less clear is what would have happened if the UK had allied with the Confederacy, and the latter had (simply and solely) opened a coaling and repair base for British ships. Yes, most of the coalfields were in the Union, but I believe the Confederacy had enough. It would clearly have reversed the direction of the blockade, but what effect would that have had?

    620:

    "Once they update their building codes to withstand tornadoes - the Great Lakes are the northern end of 'Tornado Alley'."

    I talked with a guy from SAS (SAS.com) who had done weather-related modeling.

    The weather in the Great Lakes is actually more dangerous than in most of the rest of the continental USA, but it's not tornadoes. If you are killed by the weather here it will be in a car accident.

    621:

    "Read the Cleveland article - thanks! Yep - apart from the Cleveland Clinic and three major league teams, can't think of anything special about the place. Was surprised by the unemployment rate mentioned because it's about twice what the US Labor Stats reports."

    People from the Detroit city government took a winter trip to Cleveland, to see how they are handling a worse abandoned housing problem. And if you've driven through Detroit, you'll know how bad that is (really bad).

    Frankly, I'll take all of the refugees which Europeans are freaking out about, and settle them in the Great Lakes area.

    622:

    Why did GB not go to war over the Trent incident?

    My understanding of this incident comes from Wikipedia and associated links, so I'm wary of any assertions and would welcome any corrections...

    Could it have been because Lord Palmerston didn't want war - and felt that the UK was better off trading than fighting? Simply put, cui bono? After all, Britain wasn't suffering from an existential threat, wasn't going to gain any new trade or territory by doing so, and (as you pointed out) risked its primary wheat supplier.

    War seems far more likely to come from a US Declaration - because HM Government appears to have been far more interested in organising a face-saving route for the US to back down.

    Because, as I already explained, by then the US army was a lot larger than the British, and once the Confederacy had been put paid, could have seized Canada easily.

    Beware the "Discovery Channel Analysis" when it comes to militaries...

    Don't assume that the only response to an Army must be another Army. The UK thought about Navies; after all, they'd burned the White House only fifty years before (remember the Bladensburg Races?). The UK had strategic mobility - and would play to its strengths.

    The US might well invade Canada - keeping it is the problem. Tactics and numbers are all very well, it's the logistics that will screw you up. The railways northwards haven't been completed yet. Wait until winter, when the seaways freeze, and you're faced with trying to resupply an occupying force in the tens to hundreds of thousands, using only horse and cart, when your eastern seaboard is discovering the delights of a blockade by the RN. It's the problem of the Falklands War, or of Singapore, on a larger scale - all you've done is grow the number of eventual PoW.

    However, the UK was also aware of the costs involved in re-equipping the RN with ironclads and steamers - and wanted to avoid it if possible. Hence, no war.

    PS I can recommend a visit to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard; comparing HMS Victory with HMS Warrior is an eye-opener - particularly as Warrior was launched in 1860, was ten times the size of the USS Monitor, and represents what would have been the likely UK response to any invasion of Canada...

    623:

    Worth going, if you get the chance.

    Unless, of course, you're Canadian. The Chinese government is imprisoning Canadians on various charges these days. This probably has to do with Canada arresting a Huawei CFO at the request of US authorities.

    I hope that this blows over soon. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place right now, and things are likely to get progressively worse.

    624:

    And how are we going to clean up the land near our coasts? We will want to preserve our coastal oceans/fisheries from whatever poisons are currently built into houses/stored in garages/running through pipes in our low-lying coastal areas.

    So we not only need to leave those areas, we also need to unbuild everything.

    625:

    By all means continue to call me a liar, it just makes you look like what you are. An ignorant fool.

    Before OGH gives you a Red Card, you might wish to learn that we don't speak to each other that way here, even when we're right - if you're not past eternal September, you probably shouldn't be here - this is not the trolling or obnoxious part of the web. I'd suggest you apologize and rephrase.

    626:

    The UK thought about Navies; after all, they'd burned the White House only fifty years before

    You might find this song by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie amusing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7jlFZhprU4

    627:

    I do wonder how much the 'caught in between' was intentional, and how much was accidental.

    My personal take (based only on reading Canadian and Chinese news sources) is that Huawei may well have been violating US sanctions, but the response (personally charging the executive) was out of line with the usual response to such corporate offences. Whether this was tactic for the trade war or anti-Chinese prejudice I don't know.

    I would still visit China, but I'd be going to see my niece and her family. Not certain I'd feel comfortable roaming around on my own. (OTOH, I'd be uncomfortable doing that anyway — my Mandarin isn't nearly good enough to travel without a "please help this foreigner get to xxx" letter!)

    628:

    I've been staring at that for days, and it's obvious that they have NO CLUE what they (the US) is doing.

    If she gets extradited and charged, what's to keep the head of, say, JP Morgan, or Exxon, from being charged for corporate crime?

    I can see my own Amicus Curae brief: "Being as how a corporation, as an artificial person, can do nothing without the superego of the CEO, and thus the CEO directs all actions of the corporation, the CEO should be liable for all criminal charges against the corporation."

    629:

    WreRite @ 609: I've no idea whether this is right or not, but years ago someone told me that after Victoria's electricity grid was privatized in the 90's, transformers were only replaced when they blew. Prior to that, under the old State Electricity Commission, they'd been replaced at their predicted failure date. Which means that we get a lot more explodey transformers now.

    Queensland's grid is still state govt. owned. . .

    Around here the the electric utility companies have a schedule for periodically replacing transformers & refurbishing them. It's done that way because it costs the companies less than letting transformers go on and on and on until they fail.

    630:

    Jack Ma, of all people, just offered indirect support... Excerpt: Ma says blaming China for any economic issues in the U.S. is misguided. If America is looking to blame anyone, Ma said, it should blame itself.

    "It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys," Ma said. "It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way."

    He said the U.S. has wasted over $14 trillion in fighting wars over the past 30 years rather than investing in infrastructure at home. --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-ma-says-the-us-wasted-trillions-on-warfare-instead-of-investing-in-infrastructure.html

    631:

    Wait, and so the UK would look like old pulp sf mag covers, with people living in giant skyscrapers, with parkland in between (and don't forget the trains on flying bridges between the skyscrapers) (damn, can't find the cover I was thinking of)?

    Or are we talking the city of Metropolis, from the 1926 movie?

    632:

    WinDoze? Why on earth?

    Linux. (And remember, Macs run *Nix, too, so it's not that different....)

    633:

    Please. I have seen decades of debate over the workability of thorium reactors, and have yet to see either side win.

    634:

    This is gun nut bs.

    Yes, originally it was to keep firearms out of the hands of blacks. After LaPierre came in as president of the NRA, it became a massive scam to terrify whites that They Were In Danger, and so should get rid of the gun laws, and buy more guns (esp. since the market had been saturated). Now, people "collectors" have whole freakin' armories of dozens of firearms, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammo.

    And as more guns go into circulation, and the right-wing terror campaign (be afwaid, be vewy afwaid!) in high gear, mas murders are multiple times a year.

    I want to take guns out of your hands, because I trust you a lot less than I even trust the cops (and that ain't much).

    You don't need the damn guns, because the US is NOT A FREE FIRE ZONE, as you seem to think it is.

    635:

    I think that it's exactly the same mindset as in that of many of the Brexiteers, writ large. Since the demise of the USSR, the USA has become accustomed to being the unchallenged dominant power, and applying force at whim without any reprocity. This is only the latest (and highest profile) action of that nature, of which there have been plenty recently. While there is still some truth in that, unlike in the Brexiteers' belief in dominance over Europe, the times they are a changin'. I agree that it is the one where the victim's country can and will resist and respond.

    636:

    I'd agree. It's worth realizing that the NRA is primarily an advertising and sales division of the American firearms industry, paid to keep companies in business after the bad old days when they'd saturated the market with good, durable products and were going out of business. That's why they now make guns that are fun to shoot, infinitely customizable (and therefore collectible), not so durable (all that plastic and circuitry), and appealing to the people's fantasies (e.g. "self-defense against a left-wing authoritarian takeover. Or home invasion") rather than their needs (hunting and farm pest control) or hobbies (trap, skeet, and target shooting).

    Thing is, the US is very, very good at dealing with armed violence, so any fantasies of an uprising with AR-15s are on par with John Brown's idea of arming freed slaves with pikes to face the US Army. Non-violent action is about twice as effective at achieving political goals than violent action, which is why the smart folk are marching in the streets and organizing voters, not starting armed insurrections.

    Do we need gun control laws? According to the available public health data, yes, they'd be a very good thing. Black Panthers aside, I suspect that most neighborhoods with too much gun violence would love to see less of it.

    637:

    Well, I once spent 3 weeks in Sarasota, including visiting the "bad parts of town" (by accident: easily done because they were about one street from the "good parts of town"). The only people I saw with visible firearms were cops!

    638:

    JH I asked you, politely, some time back to stop it & you have not. I am neither ignorant nor foolish. Moderators?

    See MARTIN’s reply @ 622 for some very good reasons. Troutwaxer @ 625 - THANK YOU my friend!

    639:

    Can anyone explain what is wrong with a "qualified majority vote"? I have some Bretiteers on another forum who say that this (never mentioned until about 2 weeks ago) was a sound reason for voting "Leave".

    At present I have the impression that it means something like "votes per nation weighted by population".

    640:

    You're very welcome. I come here because people are intelligent, pleasant and polite, and it is my pleasure to help keep the place civilized.

    641:

    Ah, I started thinking later that you were basing it on the military, which I feel obliged to say isn't the entirety of society. I was aware that various regiments were renamed at various times, and yes some of the early stuff was probably unionist in aim, but outside that, I've not come across anything much using the terms except a book that I read years ago talking about how the Edinburgh intellectuals and their ilk were quite happy to refer to themselves as north british or suchlike instead of Scottish.
    (Although somehow I doubt the Londoners and people were reciprocating by calling themselves south Britons)

    Certainly I can find nothing about it being a widespread preferred label.

    Has no-one anything to say about this drone attack which is paralysing Gatwick? It proves there are opportunities for blackmail. Also that the government is pretty useless, not to mention the apparent lack of precautions taken by the airport owners etc.

    642:

    Re: ' .... a bloodthirsty Lincoln sought to get the slaves to rise up Haiti style and slaughter their masters. '

    You've got to be kidding!

    Yes, the emancipation meant that 180,000 former slaves enlisted*, got guns and some training. Do you consider this equivalent to an invitation to go-ahead and 'slaughter their masters'?

    643:

    Gatwick: it seems to be taking them a long time to find the jerks. That's the only reason I can see for it taking this long. I've seen a reference to the drones reappearing whenever they open a runway.

    Meanwhile, if I do a search on drone gun, there's a ton, and the first hit is an ad for a company that makes them. Zaps their communications, which forces a firmware-controlled autopilot landing.

    But I suspect they really want them in jail.

    645:

    Re: ' ... we also need to unbuild everything.'

    Starting with the refineries.

    http://floodlist.com/protection/ucs-report-oil-refineries-at-risk-of-floods-and-storms

    Moveable/relocatable infrastructure: new business opp for IKEA?

    646:

    Has no-one anything to say about this drone attack which is paralysing Gatwick?

    Don't think they're using DJI drones. Those won't fly near an airport*.

    My money would be on a home-brew model or a larger industrial model, if I had to bet. Industrial models are expensive, so if I had to bet I'd guess home-brew. Or maybe a stolen drone so they aren't out the expensive gear when it gets downed. (And so it can't be traced, as well.)

    *The geofencing can be unlocked, but it requires someone from emergency services contacting DJI and requesting an unlock for a specific place for a specific time period. According to DJI, "high-risk zones require users to submit particular credentials to ensure compliance with local policies and regulations". Gatwick is definitely a high-risk zone!

    647:

    Within the confines of our present world system you are quite right. That's why the Kurds continually rely on help from the USA, which had nothing to do with Sykes/Picot and really cares only about the oil, and always get stabbed in the back. Sooner or later, the Kurds will face genocide and ethnic cleansing at worst (been episodes of that in Turkey already) or permanent second class citizenship at best. The only way they can get their national rights, as legitimate or actually more so than those of artificial British and French imposed conglomerations like Iraq or Lebanon, is through middle east wide revolution toppling all the powers that be and tossing artificial unnatural boundary lines into the dustbin of history. Despite the sad fiasco of the Arab Spring, that is a real possibility down the road.

    648:

    They'll be wanting the drone intact to see if there's any forensics on it. Twitter was also saying that DJI stuff can be bypassed easily enough, either the software or replace the hardware with home brewed stuff.

    Apart from that, it seems odd they can't trace any radio signals.

    649:

    I don't think I'm being put at risk by people flying drones near Gitwack! ;-)

    650:

    619: Then the Civil War would have dragged on longer. After the Emancipation Proclamation Northern victory was inevitable, as it turned the Southern slaves into a Northern asset. The USA was more immune from the effects of an economic blockade than any other country in the world then, with its huge domestic market. And GB would have had to leave a huge loophole for wheat exports, or GB would have starved to death.

    651:

    re: Storm management

    Saw a doc recently about liveable cities and one common theme was incorporating more plantings. Based on the below, more plantings (less pavement) can also be used to help storm water management.

    http://floodlist.com/protection/depave-community-based-approach-storm-water-management

    In a similar way, maybe we could use appropriate plants to help keep coasts from eroding faster and sea life habitats. Not sure what the best plants might be - am only somewhat familiar with mangroves and kelp. (Kelp is nutrient-dense and can be farmed for human food as well as used for land-based soil enrichment.)

    652:

    I will stop saying mean things about you, you are forgiven. You are another victim of the Law of Wikipedia, namely that the accuracy of Wikipedia entries is inversely proportional to the inherent importance of the subject matter. Now that you are doing your own thinking, you are doing much better. That is indeed pretty much the way things looked from Lord Palmerston's viewpoint, and indeed with the North feeling its oats, a war declaration by the USA was more probable.

    And the longterm results of a US invasion of Canada probably would have been what you suggest. It didn't work at all well during either the Revolution or the War of 1812. The Canadians were about as thrilled about the idea of being liberated by America as are Iraqis, and Britannia did after all still rule the waves. Lincoln never liked the idea.

    653:

    623: Er, probably? Of course it's tit for tat, everyone knows that. China is punishing Canada instead of the USA over this nonsense as the Chinese knew, even before Trump made it crystal clear, that Trump sees Canada as a disposable pawn in trade negotiations with China. He frankly wouldn't be bothered much if China responded to that idiotic indictment of the CFO by executing instead of imprisoning random Canadians. That's what Canada gets for being foolish enough to be Trump's groveling lackey.

    654:

    Actually, I just did, before reading either your or his posts. But aren't the two of you being highly hypocritical? You called me a liar. That is far, far worse than being called an ignorant fool, as that involves outright malice. By that criteria, you deserve a red card much more than I do.

    655:

    Misunderstanding here, read more carefully. It was the London Times that said that during the Civil War, not I.

    656:

    After all, some of my best friends are ignorant fools, but I tolerate them anyway because they mean well. Liars are another matter, they are a plague on all public discourse.

    657:

    Robert Prior @ 627: I do wonder how much the 'caught in between' was intentional, and how much was accidental.

    My personal take (based only on reading Canadian and Chinese news sources) is that Huawei may well have been violating US sanctions, but the response (personally charging the executive) was out of line with the usual response to such corporate offences. Whether this was tactic for the trade war or anti-Chinese prejudice I don't know.

    She wasn't arrested for sanction violations. She was indicted in the U.S. for bank fraud, although the alleged fraud placed HSBC bank in jeopardy of being fined AGAIN for violating those sanctions. I'm pretty sure the indictment was handed down during the later days of the Obama administration. I think she was also traveling on a fake ID passport when she was detained by Canadian authorities.

    658:

    whitroth @ 632: WinDoze? Why on *earth*?

    Linux. (And remember, Macs run *Nix, too, so it's not that different....)

    Can you say Hackintosh boys 'n girls?

    659:

    The Canadians were about as thrilled about the idea of being liberated by America

    The Canadians of that period were either mainly Crown Loyalists and their recent descendants who fled the pogroms led by the victors of the First Treasonous Slaveholders Rebellion. One might understand why they were not enthused about the idea of being brought back under slaveholder rule by force.

    There was also the very odd Fenian raids across the Canadian border in the late 1860s which continued with US Government support until the British government let it be known that they were a trifle cross about the whole thing and they should stop, and they did stop.

    660:

    Because Windows works?

    I have a black thumb when it comes to Linux, I have never had a successful installation of it work on machines I've tried it on, starting back in 1995 with an early version of (I think) Debian. Saying that they tend to be weird machines with odd configurations and oddball hardware (one embedded video graphics unit, one PCI GPU card and one PCIe GPU card in a two-processor server box, for example). Linux dropped me into a text display saying "fix this multi-display setup yourself, I give up" during installation, Windows 7 installed multi-display with basic drivers to get everything running and later offered updates.

    There is still no free Linux driver for my two flatbed scanners unlike the Windows drivers that came with them out-of-the-box. There might, just might, be a 50-buck proprietary package that would drive one of the scanners but I'm not willing to pay for it since I got Windows drivers with the scanners. The two netbooks I have use an embedded Intel graphics chip (GMA945) that isn't supported in Linux, any attempt to run Linux on them ends up running a CPU-bound VGA driver mode that is slow as molasses and frankly unusable. Windows Just Works on both netbooks. Etc., etc.

    That's my experience, I suspect other folks find it different and can make Linux dance to their tune. I, for some reason, can't.

    661:

    If you feel the need to forum slide, I'm your dragon.

    ~

    Loved the Hummingbirds.

    Apparently cost $195,000,000 so far: but this is the clipped-wings version, just you wait.

    On the entire Icke drama, whelp, there's been some ultra-ultra-spicey takes and jokes and so on out there (favorites including: reminding people about arguments over willy sizes, dragons and beer summoning demonology; notes that this is basically a eon long Google Notes / Forum flame war; more hot takes on hens; serious scholars of the thing popping up to WTF?!? and make jokes about butchery - note, of course: we'll take the authors at face value since we're not allowed to read the original texts[1].

    Personal favorite: racist afrikaan hot-take that: "The witches are gone. The Jews remain". Which, giving a highly generous reading suggests he didn't want the witches burnt at the stake [Narrator: he did but was being projecting about it].

    The meta-joke is that @229 whoever wrote that can be accused of a capital offense crime of Witchcraft in many Sovereign States in the world (we're also aware it's basically announcing you're the worst corrupted soul / beyond the light etc which is a meta2 joke).

    Note: the m3 joke is that declaring Icke's lizard people to be not actually anti-Semitic will get you on a major blacklist[2], but it's actually true. The lizard thing is all about extremely bad understandings of neurology and how Power corrupts and how the Queen / MI5 / Establishment operate ruthlessly to crush opposition at all costs (inc. animal rights, environmentalists etc etc). The irony is, of course, Americans refuse to accept or learn the historical reasons for why Icke wrote what he did (at first). This is ironic.

    The M4 joke is for Jewish leftists (mostly American) in that the Tablet is well known to publish Alt-Right pieces, including Gorka[3] and so on. It is generally considered by many on the Jewish left as "not really an ally, more of a tool of oppression". So, that was amusing if you got the joke.

    The M5 joke is that if you look up the 1918 and 2018 Times headlines, you'll spot that in both cases the NYT was running stuff that suggested that, well, paternalism isn't exactly dead[4]. Many have noted this and smart bunnies should really be wondering who gains from another BLM split type deal. Hint: it's not Afro-Americans or Jewish Americans. Dead Cat Bounce.

    M6 joke is that: you really shouldn't label people trolls or disruptive or blacklist them until you've seen how the altered carbon reality turns out. Gauging twitter, the joke is that the Talmud is back and everyone is actually learning stuff. Weeee!

    M7 joke is to spot references and prat falls. Drunk reader summons Djinn is preeeety close to the bone.

    ~

    On Brexit: pulling out the drones after the whispers is just hot-fixes atm. They're meeeeping it up.

    And, yes: deadly serious. If you do not understand why an author would place themselves in danger of deportation / execution, and/or spiritual 'hell', well then. Perhaps they're not a troll.

    We'd suggest looking up current jail times for the fracking or deportation 15 cases. They ain't pretty.

    [1] This is not a joke about what you think it's about.

    [2] Hello John x1000000

    [3] Yes, that Gorka. The Serbia one.

    [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/us/politics/russia-2016-influence-campaign.html

    662:

    whitroth @ 643: Gatwick: it seems to be taking them a long time to find the jerks. That's the only reason I can see for it taking this long. I've seen a reference to the drones reappearing whenever they open a runway.

    Meanwhile, if I do a search on drone gun, there's a ton, and the first hit is an ad for a company that makes them. Zaps their communications, which forces a firmware-controlled autopilot landing.

    But I suspect they really want them in jail.

    US news organizations are quoting various UK officials that the disruption is a "deliberate act". I've seen at least one news story that suggests they've already tried (and failed) to bring the drone (or drones) down using a trained eagle.

    Another story I've seen, not exactly related to Gatwick, has an AeroMexico 737 striking a drone while landing at Tijuana, Mexico.

    663:

    guthrie @ 648: They'll be wanting the drone intact to see if there's any forensics on it. Twitter was also saying that DJI stuff can be bypassed easily enough, either the software or replace the hardware with home brewed stuff.

    Apart from that, it seems odd they can't trace any radio signals.

    I'm thinking more along the lines of they haven't been able to trace any radio signals YET. Whoever is doing it is probably not using a "standard" frequency or it might be on a "pre-programmed" flight path.

    Their best bet might be to have another drone follow it & catch the operator when he tries to recover his drone.

    664:

    JBS usually blocks us, so someone tell him:

    It's nasty-OPs. They're gonna pin it on environmentalists to excuse the fucking outrageous sentences people are getting for peacefully preventing illegal deportations.

    It's nasty-crew 101 and it's a fucking joke no-one has noticed this immediately.

    [1] 'Stansted 15': Protesters who locked themselves to plane guilty BBC 10th Dec 2018

    665:

    OH, and shout out to a huge segment of the woman field who are doing huge amounts of work (be they Afro-American or whatever) during these flame wars,since 101 lesson is:

    1 The amount of shit women get constantly (even from their own "Tribe") is fucking extreme. In fact, the more "in Tribe", the more shit gets nasty.

    Look into African-American women "your slipphasslipped" warning everyone about fake BLM astro-turf and the responses they got.

    So, hey: M8 level - Abrahamic religions breed some nasty types of male-power-dominance, you might want to look at that.

    But not our fight.

    ~

    Not that any of the billion hot-takes individualists will note that learning stuff and not running male-willy stuff is about 6,000 years out of date, but we'll note it. Ironically. Again. In case anyone grows up quickly.

    666:

    Oh, and Triptych.

    Don't bully people with less resources than you.

    Smartest take of 2018: "If we keep up with all this high-tech autocracy, we're going to end up training some things that have learned to exploit it for survival". That's a rough translation.

    Most depressing response to the Icke thing: "We're on our own" (male responder, white oc, wealthy, 50+).

    Bitch, sit the fuck down, you've active Djinn on your side, just 'cause you don't know about them, quit the crying and support all your fellow beings.

    667:

    Greg has, in fact, gotten his share of cards. And I should note that you are technically correct; Greg did use the word "lying" twice with regard to yourself. But two-wrongs, and all that.

    As two long time science-fiction readers I imagine that you and Greg are both aware of the Illuminatus Trilogy, particularly the great wisdom of the Purple Sage?

    Anyway, I should give up the moderating before someone hands me a card - I'm not a moderator, just a fellow-blog-user who prefers an environment which is not overly-loud - so having said my piece, I'll leave both of you to the real moderators.

    668:

    Heh.

    The Purple Sage opened his mouth and moved his tongue and so spake to them and he said: The Earth quakes and the Heavens rattle; the beasts of nature flock together and the nations of men flock apart; volcanoes usher up heat while elsewhere water becomes ice and melts; and then on other days it just rains. Indeed do many things come to pass.
    669:

    Troutwaxer: You are quite right. I've fled here precisely because I spent too much time in American-dominated lefty discussion groups, where four lettered Anglo-Saxonisms were the least of what the participants threw at each other. Back during the Bosnia wars in the Nineties, I recall remarking on the very worst of them that it was the ideal place to discuss them, since the place resembled Bosnia so much. Being called a liar woke up some old bad reflexes which I will try harder to repress in the future.

    670:

    That's not the quote I was thinking of. More the one where The Purple Sage discusses a difficult argument between two of his followers.

    671:

    Eleos Gup Adikia @ 664: JBS usually blocks us, so someone tell him:

    Only when you become both utterly boring AND unnecessarily rude. You can be one or the other, but when you become both you're going back in the bit bucket. Mostly, I just ignore you.

    672:

    Having made my bones on Usenet, I had similar troubles when I first came to a polite portion of the web. Alt.slack doesn't reward lovingkindness.

    673:

    Worse than that, the exodus of manufacturing to China from the US was something our .001% did, in pursuit of a little more profit and to continue the anti-labor fight. Contemporary conservatism in the US is looking like "The lost cause" continued by other means.

    674:

    Brexit is too stupid to be one of Cthulhu's plots. I think it was inspired by Sithrak, the Blind Gibberer.

    675:

    Guthrie @ 641 & onwards It’s clear to me that the authorities want to capture the drone, preferably completely intact. Which will then tell them who the “activist” fuckwit is .. & 5 years jail …. I suspect that if there is a next time, the authorities reactions will be a lot faster & more effective - you can usually only do this sort of criminal stupidity once & actually get away with it. However – could it be a “state actor” practicing for taking down our ( Or anyone else’s infrastructure/transport ) ?? A worrying thought. Withroth @ 643 But I suspect they really want them in jail YES RP @ 646 – an earlier report actually said “industrial” drone … Unlikely to be a deportation protest, as those usually go from Stansted ....

    JH @ 654 You have made provably wrong statements about Britain during the second slaveowners Treasonous Rebellion & backed it up by # 650 And GB would have had to leave a huge loophole for wheat exports, or GB would have starved to death. Wheat? _ Canada, & several other places too …. I remember being taught in school ( which means, here, about 1960) that a very small, rich, influential minority wanted to support the “South” but were prevented from doing so by three things: Majority opinion, Lord Palmerston ( NOT noted for non-interventionist policies, incidentally! ) & Vicky+Albert … Would that today’s ultra-right loonies were turned away from their malign influence so easily! [ See also Troutwaxer @ 674 ]

    656 – what are you going to do about your “POTUS” then? 669 American-dominated lefty discussion groups, Defined as what, the centre-of the road left wing of your “Democratic” party?

    Do come on, my Social Democrat MP, masquerading as a member of the Labour Party to get elected, is the amazing Stella Creasey, who will never, ever get office under Corbyn ( Indeed “momentum” have tried to deselect her, the bastards ) would be regarded as an extreme socialist commie bastard in most of the US. I repeat what others have said, that the US Overton window needs a serious re-set.

    676:

    my Social Democrat MP, masquerading as a member of the Labour Party to get elected, is the amazing Stella Creasey,

    Creasy (sp) is an unregenerate Blairite NuLabour true believer, nothing anywhere close to a Social Democrat or any other left-wing or centrist political line.

    677:

    Please. I have seen decades of debate over the workability of thorium reactors, and have yet to see either side win.

    While lots of people were debating and maybe still are debating the subject there are also those who are working on it. Take a look at the activities of Thor Energy. The caption of the image on the page: Thor Energy’s high density ThMox Pellets are ready for licensing in a commercial reactor. My guess is that they know what they are doing if they claim that.

    678:

    Also @Greg

    I couldn't have said anything about this specific WestminsterCritter one way or the other, but I would agree that a Blurite NooLiebour believer is not far enough Left to be a Social Democrat.

    679:

    The first reference you supplied gave the reason that they haven't got anywhere - turning them from a proof of concept to a product needs (expensive) research. It is exactly the sort of thing that a competent UK government would have funded (ensuring that its design was concentrating on the environmental impact of the WHOLE life cycle, and that it kept the IP rights for a future export business), but our fanatic monetarists (yes, definitely including Blair and his Babes, of both sexes) won't - and have probably bankrupted the country to the level that we can no longer afford it.

    680:

    I am predicting an extension to the Terrorism Act, to include the disruption of any essential service as a political protest (with essential service being defined arbitrarily by the Secretary of State), so they can drop the level of proof, hold secret trials, and convict inconvenient environmentalists and socialists based on mere claims by the government.

    Watch this space.

    681:

    If the drones (the first sightings mentioned two drones involved) are being directly controlled, a lot of the standard control gear uses spread spectrum so there's no single frequency signal to track. If it was me though (and it isn't! Though I suppose MRDA) the drones would be following preprogrammed courses around GPS waypoints rather than being flown live. It would even be possible for them to be returning to automatic recharging stations ready for another pass later if they've not been discovered in the mean time.

    Geofencing only works if the manufacturers original firmware is being used, it's not hard to reflash to a custom build. The drone software ecosystem is much like the phone ecosystem, commercial systems are built on an open source base which is widely available.

    Gatwick has a perimeter about 10km long, I asked rhetorically elsewhere how many shotguns and shooters you'd need to cover that with a reasonable chance of being able to down a drone and got the answer 1500-2000 to allow for personnel rotation. Similar applies to any other method of bringing down even one of the drones, it's a lot of perimeter and ranges are limited. Things like EMP cannon may also have the side effect of frying electronics in a waiting aircraft, or half the computers on departure desks in North Terminal, if fired hastily.

    682:

    "My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, To make the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime, And make each prisoner pent, unwillingly represent, A source of innocent merriment, of innocent merriment!"

    So I'm thinking that, for operating a drone in controlled airspace, the punishment should be having a hundred tons (that's real tons not US tons) of aluminium and Jet A1 dropped on you!

    683:

    She wasn't arrested for sanction violations. She was indicted in the U.S. for bank fraud

    All the news stories I've read that mention fraud tie it into sanctions, though. As in 'fraudulently claiming that her company's operations didn't violate the sanctions'.

    Maybe this is like charging Al Capone with income tax evasion on his illegal income?

    It's possible Canadian newspapers, even the Globe and Mail which is right-wing, got it wrong, too. It's also possible that many US executives have been jailed over similar events and I haven't heard about it.

    684:

    Hi Greg. Comment from a pal of mine on another forum:-

    "Ms Caroline Noakes suggested I speak to the SNP as they were the real opposition and were more use than either Labour or most of her own party."

    685:

    If they're in range, firefighting water pumps are excellent anti-drone defenses. 100 meters is a plausible knock-down altitude, and you don't have nasty lead or steel projectiles coming back down.

    Airports tend to have firefighting equipment to hand; possibly even the appropriate high-pressure pumps and tanks.

    686:

    10km = 10000m. One fire pump covers ~200m, so 10000/200 means at least 50 manned fire pumps that can't be used for actual fires...

    687:

    Sort of. If you have a fire requiring a fire truck on an airport I assume it's shutting down over that and drones are not an issue for the duration.

    In fact with that many dispersed, manned and ready to roll trucks, your fire response time is going to be excellent.

    The basic point that this is too expensive for words still stands.

    688:

    I repeat what others have said, that the US Overton window needs a serious re-set.

    That is happening. Just in the wrong direction.

    America isn't going to reform into anything a Northern European would recognize as good or sane until the majority of the Baby Boomer generation and the older half of Generation X dies off AND until the U.S. is no longer a great power.

    The problem with that, though, is that "Pax Americana" is going to give way to "Pax Sinica" which will, from a Western perspective, probably be worse. That, or a pre-WWI-style, multi-polar world of perpetual power competition (and all which that entails) which will definitely be worse.

    In the interim, unfortunately, the best that can realistically be hoped for is a return to neoliberal business as usual.

    (Yes, I'm a pessimist.)

    689:

    I think it's flipping great, and I hope the idea spreads and more people start doing it. I mean you don't even need to use an expensive actual drone. Some kind of disposable plastic or balsa wood plane, with a battery and motor to drive a prop but nothing more than that, that can fly a few km in a reasonably straight line and then set fire to itself to get rid of the fingerprints would do just as well - just wait until they're shutting down the shutdown and then launch another one so they have to start the shutdown up again. If it becomes a popular enough activity then it won't be possible to run that horrendous waste of hydrocarbon fuel that is the aviation industry at all, and good riddance.

    690:

    Really? And what airport would you be flying out of, when you fly?

    And why should you think that's secure?

    691:

    "I remember being taught in school ( which means, here, about 1960) that a very small, rich, influential minority wanted to support the "South" but were prevented from doing so by three things: Majority opinion, Lord Palmerston ( NOT noted for non-interventionist policies, incidentally! ) & Vicky+Albert ..."

    That accords with what I remember too. Fuck knows what we were taught in school - I don't even remember the SSTR being mentioned in school history lessons, but then I don't remember anything much of them at all because it wasn't until some time after leaving school that I began to consider the subject worth taking any notice of - so it's an impression I've picked up from general reading around. Probably some combination of stuff about industrial history, Victorian novels with a factual background, and stuff relating to Marxism and the labour movement. The mill owners got their workforce by creating conditions in which people enslaved themselves, and arguably lived in a worse state than the actual American slaves did; their concern was the continued availability of raw cotton, not the state of the people who supplied it; and the growth of cotton production in India was at least in part motivated by the possibility of a reduction, or a price increase, in American supplies.

    692:

    What groups are these, and where?

    Just wondering if I have any interest in them.

    693:

    Not where I hung out. Mostly alt.pagan and rec.arts.sf.fandom.

    694:

    Buy your shopping cart now, and take your spot under the bridge, too....

    Excerpt: Out of the three major sectors of the economy—agriculture, manufacturing, and service—two are already largely automated. Farm labor, which about half the American workforce used to do, now comprises around 2 percent of American jobs. And we all know the rust belt song and dance, beat out to outsourcing and mechanization. Which is largely why some 80 percent of all American jobs are service jobs. And this year, quietly but in the open, the robots and their investors came for them, too.

    There’s a case to be made that 2018 is the year automation took its biggest lunge forward toward our largest pool of human labor: Amazon opened five cashier-less stores; three in Seattle, one in Chicago, and one in San Francisco. Self-ordering kiosks invaded fast food and franchise restaurants in a big way. Smaller robot-centric outfits like the long-awaited auto-burger joint Creator opened, too, and so did a number of others. <...> “We are at the place where the most repetitive tasks can be performed by a robot,” said Fred LeFranc, the founder and CEO of Results Thru Strategy, which advises hospitality firms. “And they don’t call in sick, they don’t talk back.”

    This year, the mounting victories in the nationwide $15-an-hour wage campaign provided an oft-referenced talking point for industry executives and analysts. They pointed to the incoming cost of paying employees a living wage as a motivation to automate everything from salad-dressing to dishwashing.

    “For a long time we didn’t have automatic dishwashers,” Wendy’s CFO Gunther Plosch said. “Why not? At $7 an hour it wasn’t a big deal, but now at $15 it makes more sense.” --- end excerpt ---

    https://gizmodo.com/this-was-the-year-the-robot-takeover-of-service-jobs-be-1831233632

    695:

    Y'know, I mentioned drone guns, but there's two obvious other answers: 1. Aim the airport's radar at the drone. Problem solved, electronics fried. 2. Send one military jet over, breaking the sound barrier (or even just close, and let turbulence take it). Collateral damage (broken windows, etc)? Why the perp is personally liable for ALL OF IT.

    696:

    Pigeons don't need airports :-)

    More seriously, I don't know whether to agree with paws4thot (#682) or pigeon. The UK government is throughly hypocritical about reducing our carbon footprint, inter alia because it is putting massive quantities of public money into increasing air traffic - INCLUDING within the UK, as a preferred alternative to rail and even road.

    Worse, "if voting could change anything, they would make it illegal" - well, that's been largely true for decades, and recent legal changes have made it almost wholly true for demonstrations. And one of the purposes of Brexit is to continue down that path, by getting out from under any independent courts.

    697:

    Oh God and by God I mean Cthulhu, you have those things in Australia too? I thought they were a purely American aberration. I discovered their existence as a result of their apparent ready availability second hand from American junk yards, which means that there are enough people who wire them up backwards to get a low impedance 10kV source and use it for setting fire to things that I happened across their descriptions of the results. I later found that they seem to be an intrinsic part of American electricity supply flakiness.

    What gets me is why in the name of alien duck sex don't they install a fucking circuit breaker with them.

    The British system is that in towns there are big transformers at ground level which supply 240V to a few streets, in little compounds tucked away in odd corners where you don't notice them much. There are other boxes in the compounds as well which I presume contain switchgear, although I've never actually seen anyone open one of them up.

    In rural areas we do have pole-mounted transformers which supply up to maybe ten or twenty houses at a time - most places, at least in England, aren't remote enough that a transformer will only have one house to supply, although it does happen. But they are definitely not the kind of thing you could pick up (literally) from a junk yard and carry home in your car. They are big muckle things which require two poles to support them, with heat exchanger tubes on the sides to cool the oil, and probably weigh tons. (Some more recent ones are a bit smaller but they're still quite large.)

    Town type final substation: http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/03/66/50/3665098_50d5de7f.jpg

    Rural one up two poles: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Transformer_and_power_poles_near_Manor_Farm%2C_Offchurch_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1568551.jpg

    The village street I lived in when I was little ran off one like the second photo only bigger, squarer and with more pipes. To the best of my knowledge nothing ever went wrong with it.

    Thank you for the transcript of the video. You are correct that I don't watch videos, and your transcript provided me with the information with vastly greater speed and convenience.

    As it happens I don't use Google maps either - for two reasons. One is that I have engaged in crap-blocking with sufficiently indiscriminate lack of subtlety that no Google stuff works at all except the textual part of the search engine (which is second choice to Bing anyway). The other is that the maps are crap, whereas streetmap.co.uk has proper Ordnance Survey maps, both the 1:50000 and 1:25000 series, which are brilliant.

    698:

    Your airports must have rather hefty radars... But no, not going to work. There are instances of hardened fly-by-wire fast jets crashing after going too close to a transmitter tower, but that was with lots and lots of kilowatts kicking around, so several orders of magnitude more power.

    Unfortunately, I suspect that the RAF’s dedicated EW aircraft (Airseeker, etc) are busy elsewhere; and the RAF Regiment can’t help, it’s outside the perimeter* So: we might see a couple of green-painted wagons driven down from 14 (EW) Regt R SIGNALS, or an innocuous-looking van from Cheltenham...

    ...or one of those nice laser things that we’re trialling... https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/new-british-dragonfire-laser-weapon-expected-to-be-tested-soon/

    It could be that this wasn’t about nuisance or protest value; who knows, maybe someone was seriously trying and failing at “see if you can take out an engine, cause a crash” - it’s a possibility if the drones were operating at the upwind end of the runway (i.e. looking for an aircraft just after takeoff, heavily loaded with fuel and self-loading cargo).

    • Insert gratuitous “Short Range Desert Group” joke here. They’re rockapes, they deserve it ;)
    699:

    Nojay @ 676 I have met her ( three ? ) more than once – she’s an SD.

    EC @ 680 I doubt it – the public-speak today was “Not terrorism” – but I would expect the rules on Drone-operation to be tightened. Triuble is … no law is of any use if it cannot be enforced … which leads straight to Vulch @ 681

    Pigeon @ 689 Maybe a good idea for distances up to 1000km … beyond that, over land, you need to fly, really ( I think ) Would do wonders for railways & HigSpeed especially. For Ocean Crossings – flying is significantly cheaper. @ 697 “Bing” maps also do “OS” !:50 000 & !:”25 000

    EC again @ 696 Not sure about road, but ANYTHING except rail seems to be the current trend ( Not helped by the current electrification, Thameslink & Crossrail fiascos ) Some of this is down to idiot regulatory creep … Electrification clearances raised by approx. 300 mm for no actual reasons, new masts of amazingly unnecessarily-muscular proportions, re-inventing the wheel several times ( Tram-Train is the poster-boy for this ) etc.

    700:

    Reactor fuel comes with enough regulatory paperwork to match the mass of a modern 1GW reactor vessel. There's a whole lot of things that have to be tested and proven using computer models and verifiable sample exposures before the formulation and structure and composition of new fuel rods can be altered from the original licenced variants. Each nation's nuclear regulatory and licencing authorities have to sign off on novel fuel designs separately -- the US, for example, has not licenced any mixed-oxide (uranium and plutonium aka MOX) fuel despite it being commonly used in many reactors in France and elsewhere.

    A few years ago Thor Energy put some experimental thorium-uranium-plutonium mix fuel pellets were put in theHolden research reactor in Norway for testing purposes, to see what happens to them in the sort of radiological and radiochemical environment they might face in a production reactor. What do the fission products do to the structure of the ceramic pellets, do they crack or swell or flake due to outgassing from low-melting point isotopes and repeated thermal cycling, radiation damage from neutron bombardment and gamma ray flux etc. etc. After that comes the "how does this stuff perform in a production reactor" questions since the neutron flux and radiation levels will change, what are the heat and energy production characteristics, how does it respond to existing control element use, lifespan, storage and disposal etc. etc.

    The bad news is that the Holden reactor is shut down and is not going to be restarted as its operating licence will not be extended after 2020.

    These pellets and any next-gen fuel element designs using thorium are a long way from production, from being manufactured in quantity and sold to reactor operators to be used in existing or even future reactor designs. New high-temperature "Accident Tolerant Fuels" fuel elements that are more meltdown-resistant than conventional ceramic-pellet fuels are going through a power reactor testing phase at the moment and may hit the market for mass sales in the next few years but they've been in development since before Fukushima happened.

    https://www.nei.org/advocacy/make-regulations-smarter/accident-tolerant-fuel

    701:

    Not Gitwack! And who said I thought it was secure? It's more "less insecure" because taking down a "Larndarnshire airport" makes more headlines than taking down a "Regional" airport will.

    702:

    634: Not to worry, I don't own any guns I regret to say, never have, and don't plan to, they are expensive and I have no immediate need for one. It's the principle of the thing.

    You are quite right that the NRA was taken over long ago by folk who believe that the Second Amendment, and for that matter all the rest of the Bill of Rights, should only apply to white people. After all, that was the attitude of the Founding Fathers, and as constitutional lawyers they are originalists.

    Given the extensive ownership of guns by the extreme right in America and the police (same thing pretty much) for those of a leftist persuasion not to get and learn to use firearms is suicidal (personally I'll leave that job to younger folk).

    Disarming the population in America could only be done by dispensing with democracy altogether and establishing a police-military dictatorship willing if necessary to smash down doors and haul away or shoot a quarter of the population. Which is why the police are so uniformly enthusiastic about gun control laws.

    As for gun control laws, I'd support any gun control law you could think of, provided that they were fair, and applied to the police too. I also think that pigs with wings should be allowed free access to the air if they possess pilot's licenses.

    703:

    1) Have you ever heard of the inverse square law? That certainly won't work with a search radar, and I'm dubious that it would work at 2km using something like an RIR-707 (rated broadcast power 100_000W at the head). 2) Same argument; inverse square propagation means that there's next to no damaging energy level at 5km.

    OGH will confirm that I'm a subject matter expert in these areas!

    704:

    (1) has been demonstrated to be too creative for the British establishment.

    In the 90s there was a large upset about a massive rave taking place on Castlemorton Common. It went on all weekend; it was loud enough to be heard all over Malvern, a few miles away; and the demographics of Malvern's population are such that it has an abnormally high percentage of inhabitants whose views on the kind of auditory excrement such events pump out are even more virulently antipathetic than my own. So it pissed off enough people to cause a change in the law.

    The thing is, Malvern is also the site of Britain's major military radar research centre...

    705:

    We're both right from certain angles. My idea was about treating people who fly drones over active airfields as they deserve.

    Pigeon's is about reducing air travel, and is probably a good idea, but methods which are effectively mass murder are the wrong way to do it. Not everyone who is SLC on aircraft is travelling voluntarily.

    706:

    Heteromeles: True about the NRA, but that's true about just every other institution in contemporary America one way or another, the land of corporate rule.

    As for nonviolent strategies, well, nonviolent tactics are often useful, but what made the nonviolent civil rights movement in the South possible was extensive black gun ownership. Martin Luther King personally had a truly remarkable gun collection in his home, he was no fool. But his insistence on nonviolent tactics no matter what, as in his famous statement "if there is blood spilled, let it be ours," led rather inevitably to extreme frustration and the outbreak in the '60s of spontaneous leaderless violence and destruction, in the course of which every American city with a large black population except for Oakland (where the Panthers provided a superior alternative) was devastated, generating a huge white backlash. Ultimately MLK's fault.

    As for John Brown, without his raid on Harper's Ferry, which was actually much better planned than generally thought, without it, or more precisely without him being hailed as a hero and martyr all over the North, the South might not have been provoked to secede, and we might well still have chattel slavery in America.

    The truth about the Civil Rights movement has started to come out through the fog of liberal propaganda. I refer to you Charles Cobb's excellent book, "This Nonviolence Stuff Will Get You Killed."

    https://www.dukeupress.edu/this-nonviolent-stuffll-get-you-killed

    707:

    "If you feel the need to forum slide, I'm your dragon."

    Well, EGA, not wanting to find myself trapped in dreaming Internet depths where the angles are wrong, I am compelled to turn down your kind offer.

    708:

    "Given the extensive ownership of guns by the extreme right in America and the police (same thing pretty much) for those of a leftist persuasion not to get and learn to use firearms is suicidal (personally I'll leave that job to younger folk)."

    That doesn't work. It just makes suicide easier, more likely, and more effective.

    Or if it does work, you get civil war.

    709:

    It's not mass murder if they stop the planes flying to stop it becoming mass murder ;)

    710:

    Tingey 675: If I have made "provably wrong" statements about British involvement in the Civil War, I would appreciate it if you could provide said proofs. So far you have not done so. As for the wheat, perhaps actual starvation was overstatement, but believing that Canada or other such sources could possibly make up for the huge hole losing American wheat would have made, rather harder to make up for than losing the cotton of the south, is absurd.

    That you get your notions from what they taught you in school in 1960 explains a lot. Did they also explain that Nelson Mandela was a dangerous murder-minded terrorist? I went to high school in the American South, where I was told by the history instructor, an ex-Marine who doubled as the football coach, all about the glorious Southern liberation struggle against Northern oppression. Even then, I knew that was crap.

    656: I am not alas in a position to do much about the POTUS. I firmly believe that everything he has done as President, with the glaring exception of his somewhat less hostile attitude to Russia and North Korea, deserves jail time. That he is, allegedly at least, starting to pull US troops out of Syria and Afghanistan has set the Democratic and Republican warmongerers into a tizzy. His motives for this are of course awful, but what could one expect. 669: Thanks for providing me with my best laugh of the morning. Er... no.
    711:

    There are laws against forcing civil airliners to crash (see pretty much any anti-terrorism act) and against "reckless endangerment of life"; there are no laws against emitting carbons. "I believe this to be right" is not a recognised defense in law.

    712:

    Yes - the 1ppm in coal thing is approximately correct for U itself, not Ra. Hence the approximate correctness of the way I like to describe it, which is in terms of coal fired power stations wasting half the energy in their coal because they only use chemical combustion.

    713:

    683: Yes indeed, it's all about Trump's sanctions on China, close to the top of the list of the things he deserves to go to jail for. Besides being a blow to the world's economy, they are an attempt to pressure the Chinese bureaucrats to go fully capitalist, which if done would precipitate China into the same horrible mess the rest of the world is in. Anyone, Chinese or otherwise, undermining them deserves medals.

    I assume you were being ironical about US executives going to jail for any sort of bank fraud. Could never happen of course.

    714:

    As for the wheat, perhaps actual starvation was overstatement, but believing that Canada or other such sources could possibly make up for the huge hole losing American wheat would have made You do, of course, have independently audited import and export data to back up this claim? When replying, please bear in mind that I'm well aware of our planetary trade surplus with Mars!

    715:

    Revleft was the most popular one, a horror story. But the ultimate was an infamous Usenet group called "alt.politics.socialism.trotsky," the one I referenced. I think it may still be alive, sort of. Regrettably. Last I checked, about five years ago I think, all the sane participants had fled and it was dominated by two characters of a very rare political species, namely genuine left wing Trotskyite social fascists. The real thing, not a Stalinist fantasy.

    Perhaps EGP would like to check it out. There, he'd provide a note of sanity.

    716:

    Eh... All the serious research on Thorium is mostly happening in India, who are also working on fast breeders.

    Generally speaking, if you are concerned about the fuel supply of a nuclear energy cycle, they are the ones doing the research on that because the nuclear suppliers group starved their power generators of fuel for decades in retaliation for the development of the bomb, and they have not forgotten, they really want a closed fuel cycle to make a repetition of that impossible.

    I also really, really like their advanced heavy water reactor design - a size not afflicted with utter giant-ism, passive circulation of coolant in shutdown, flexibility of fuel composition. and very reasonable manufacturing requirements.

    717:

    Ro67 @ 677:

    Please. I have seen decades of debate over the workability of thorium reactors, and have yet to see either side win.

    While lots of people were debating and maybe still are debating the subject there are also those who are working on it. Take a look at the activities of Thor Energy. The caption of the image on the page: Thor Energy’s high density ThMox Pellets are ready for licensing in a commercial reactor. My guess is that they know what they are doing if they claim that.

    I may be wrong, but I remember South Africa had built a couple of thorium reactors for electricity generation; choosing to go that route because the used fuel pellets couldn't be reprocessed to obtain material for building nuclear bombs?

    718:

    I was operating on the assumption that doing without propane, which after all is a fossil fuel, was part of what we were talking about. Yes, indeed, it does make it a lot more difficult if you have to supply heating loads by means other than combustion - which is why I'm thinking that batteries need to be a lot bigger than people maybe assume: it's not just a case of replacing your electrical power consumption, you're also replacing the energy that comes through the gas meter.

    Of course it does help that most of that heat is only required to be at a temperature low enough not to damage humans, so you don't necessarily need to collect and store high-grade energy for it; this gives you more options, although most of them probably don't fit a lot of sites.

    (I remember the UK's previous solar panel craze, which never really took off because there were no enormous subsidies for it. It was about the kind of solar panels that heat water, which of course you can build yourself out of junk. Apparently if you make them sufficiently well insulated you can still get usefully hot water out of them even on grey winter days. The difficulty seemed to be doing it well enough. It would probably work better these days now that sealed double-glazing panels with good enough seals not to mist up ever are ubiquitous instead of rare and expensive.)

    The really awkward bit is cooking - unless you can persuade people to drop their antipathy to microwave ovens, they are still going to want multiple kilowatts of high-grade energy for periods of hours at a time, so unless it's one of the relatively few days of the year when you can use a solar oven you're a bit stuck.

    719:

    JH @ 710 Did they also explain that Nelson Mandela was a dangerous murder-minded terrorist? Bollocks - One- that was later with the dleightful M Thatcher & Two - our VIth form invited some PR people from the Sarf-Efricaan HC/Embassy down & we eviscerated their non-arguments. AFAIK the only "British" involvement in the US civil war was down to the Federal's previous stupidity in not signing International Treaties ( e.g CSS Alabama ) - as also previously mentioned. I do know there were Lancashire volunteers fighting for the Federals, though. Your take on non-violence is provably wrong, but I'll leave that to Charlie & others to explain why - US exceptionalism & the associated bollocks AGAIN. @ 715 "EGP" also known as the Seagull is FEMALE

    720:

    Three notes please:

    1 Name is female, referencing female Goddesses (Greek). Slipping a misgender in is sloppy work 2 The old adage of 'do not equate what you do not understand with madness' applies. 3 Given that there's a tendency in the UK to sniff loudly at the smelly and loud uncouth and feel self-satisfied that you've silenced them when the larger problem of the dead bodies of homeless on your doorstep, a polite reminder of Irish protest methods and history [Note: Not a Stalin fan, nor a Fascist fan]. 4 You (dumb): “Robots don’t have feelings” Government (smart): “Drones are scared of woofs” James Felton, via Sean Clare on Twitter, embedded video, 20th Feb 2018

    Yes, a UK political Minister did just state that dogs barking deter drones from entering their prisons.

    On the drone note:

    1 Read the parliamentary notes: they wanted a live test sometime anyhow 2 The Times and Telegraph both splashed with anti-environmental tinges. At this point you could replace 90% of the staff with cheap Google AI chat bots it's all so predictable [Note: this will happen anyhow, Merry Xmas Fleet St!] 3 Currently there's money on a high profile target flight, alien invasion or Bond-esque dealings. The stories are varied [Did a sock get lost there?] 4 If any of the chatter above strikes you as rude, crude and nasty, well: it's a mirror. I'd suggest (with strong mental fortitude) to check out "Elsagate" and why Google hasn't banned it or even curtailed.

    Now that's loud, shouty and toxic.

    721:

    You can insult seagulls, they don't mind. Don't feed me.. er.. trolls.

    In other news:

    French police seem to be bargaining the hard way for a larger Xmas bonus.

    Stock market is tanking.

    USA Americans are seriously discussing nuke codes or if they have a functioning chain of command.

    UK minority politics remains stuck in the permanent Affront Cycle.

    China (allegedly) hacked NASA and other targets (ALIUMS)

    Greenland temperatures are off the charts.

    And so on and so forth

    Toxic and shouty? Tracked down? UK readers should learn about ecosystems.

    We already know we're a cooked goose :(

    722:

    No-one's had a thorium reactor ever since thorium (Th-232) isn't fissionable. It needs to be bred up into U-233 which is fissionable to produce energy. There have been some reactors which had significant amounts of thorium in the fuel mix, I'm thinking of the German pebble-bed reactors as an example but they use(d) uranium and plutonium to provide sufficient neutron flux to breed the thorium content up into fissionable U-233. Both German pebble-beds failed, leaked radioactive materials, are broken and are sitting "cooling" down while the authorities try to figure out how to dismantle them.

    The Chinese HTR-10 pebble-bed experimental reactor has been running for over a decade and has, I think, used TRISO fuel pellets which contain thorium. A production pebble-bed reactor to produce about 200MW of electricity was under construction and the last I heard it was undergoing moderator pebble loading (non-fuel pebbles containing carbon). No news since then, about nine months ago which suggests problems or the project has shut down for other reasons.

    The Indian heavy-water reactors being mooted for thorium fuel require highly-enriched uranium and plutonium as fuel adjuncts to make them work, a common feature of "thorium" reactors. Still no sign of any production implementations of such fuel loads even after a decade and more of news articles about the concept.

    723:

    Yes, solar water heating is FAR saner than solar power for the UK, but it's no more than a pre-warmer in winter, and totally insufficient for showers, let alone house heating. We get 2.2 MJ/M^2/diem in the south and 0.8 MJ/M^2/diem in the north - and 1 MJ heats about 4 litres of water from near-freezing to 60 Celsius.

    724:

    My view on thorium can be summarised as "Uranium already works. Let some other mug take the hit on the R&D".

    Having said that, a period when other fuels are used to generate enough U233 to make pure throrium breeders possible is exactly what you would expect to see if they work.

    725:

    We had a lot of gun laws, until the NRA started buying Republicans and judges.

    20 years ago, I came up with the obvious one, that even a buddy of mine, from west-by-God-Texas could live with: treat them exactly like cars: you need a license (and show that license to buy one), then register, and insure them. Each and every one.

    The gun nuts, however, scream bloody murder that this violate the 2nd Amendment (it doesn't). Oh, and as I understand it, the NRA has, in the lobby of their headquarters, in large, engraved in the stone letters, the 2nd Amendment... WITHOUT "A well-regulated militia".

    726:

    You wrote:

    the outbreak in the '60s of spontaneous leaderless violence and destruction, in the course of which every American city with a large black population except for Oakland (where the Panthers provided a superior alternative) was devastated, generating a huge white backlash.

    Really? So, they didn't pass the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act? And a lot of the cities didn't start getting more blacks in government, or black mayors (asks the guy from Philly and from Chicago)?

    727:

    Wait, wait, Trots? Even my father made the occasional comment... and I think his group had moved left from them.

    728:

    Robert Prior @ 683:

    She wasn't arrested for sanction violations. She was indicted in the U.S. for bank fraud.

    All the news stories I've read that mention fraud tie it into sanctions, though. As in 'fraudulently claiming that her company's operations didn't violate the sanctions'.

    Maybe this is like charging Al Capone with income tax evasion on his illegal income?

    It's possible Canadian newspapers, even the Globe and Mail which is right-wing, got it wrong, too. It's also possible that many US executives have been jailed over similar events and I haven't heard about it.

    It's a matter of jurisdiction. Her sanction violations occurred outside of U.S. jurisdiction. If she were a U.S. citizen or at the top of a U.S. company, she could be charged with the sanctions violations under U.S. law.

    She is not, and her violations did not occur in the U.S. nor involve any company doing business in the U.S. The U.S. doesn't have jurisdiction.

    The bank fraud OTOH did occur in the U.S. and it did involve a company, HSBC Bank, doing business in the U.S. She lied to HSBC bank that the Huawei subsidiary that was trading with Iran was NOT violating the sanctions. On the basis of that assurance, HSBC bank loaned money to the subsidiary. That "fraud" put the bank on the wrong side of U.S. sanctions law, making them vulnerable to prosecution for violating the sanctions.

    It's only similar to Al Capone's tax evasion conviction in that the bank fraud is a violation of U.S. law the DoJ believes they can prove in court. Any sanction violations were committed outside of U.S. jurisdiction.

    729:

    I've been thinking about that, and maybe a kind of phased escalation, coupled with large amounts of propaganda might be a way to bridge the gap between the two views. Start with petitions, then get-out-the-vote drives, then lawsuits, then protests, then doxxing of the relevant power-brokers, etc., then violence against property, and escalating from there, with careful attention to John Robb's ideas.

    The issue, as I see it, is that non-violence is great, but what do you do if it doesn't work? How do you escalate at that point? Is it likelier or less likely that you'll eventually get what you want if there's a known escalation path? This is something people in the U.K. should probably be thinking about.

    730:

    Yes I agree, as I said in one of my previous posts some kind of hydrogen style energy source makes a lot of sense when combined with wind/solar. What you need to be able to is time shift solar energy from the relative abundance of summer (long days, generally clear weather) to winter

    Batteries could do that as well but might not be the most cost effective means for such long term storage

    731:

    JH @ 713: I assume you were being ironical about US executives going to jail for any sort of bank fraud. Could never happen of course.

    Except that it has happened. The biggest complaint about how the U.S. handled the "to big to fail" financial crisis of 2008 was that they didn't send any of the banksters to jail like they did in the previous Savings & Loan crisis.

    732:

    I've switched over to all electrical heating, and it's no big deal (AFAIK, we're still sending a surplus of solar energy to our local electric company every year). Indeed, there are electrical equivalents for all house-powered gas appliances, at about the same cost or cheaper than gas equivalents.

    As for electric cooking, in general, people prefer gas to traditional electric stoves, and prefer induction stovetops to both, although they need to get appropriate cookware to use it. I've got an electric oven that I have no complaints over.

    The real power hog is the car, which gets 4-5 miles/kWh. Since vehicles in San Diego County account for over 50% of greenhouse gas emissions, they're the obvious target for conversion to non-emitting power sources.

    733:

    Holy Moral Hazard Batman!

    734:

    they are an attempt to pressure the Chinese bureaucrats to go fully capitalist

    To my uninformed eyes, China looks to be about as capitalist as the US right now, in practice if not in law.

    There are a lot of restrictions in dealing with the US. For example, there's a reason NorTel moved its headquarters to the US, and it wasn't because of lower tax rates — it was because as a Canadian company it was shut out of large chunks of the US market.

    Of course, to my eyes both your political parties look quite right-wing: one is far right, and the other is wing-nuttily far right.

    735:

    I assume you were being ironical about US executives going to jail for any sort of bank fraud. Could never happen of course.

    If it couldn't, then the indictment is political and she shouldn't have been arrested in the first place.

    736:

    “'ve switched over to all electrical heating, and it's no big deal (AFAIK, we're still sending a surplus of solar energy to our local electric company every year)”

    You live in San Diego.

    737:

    I wondered what CS meant when he talked about "liontaming" or whatever that new Internet sin I've never heard of was. Well, now I know.

    738:

    Hydrogen - and the industrial processes involving it, indeed make a lot of sense for renewable sources, but the economic logic says that this will get concentrated in the (acceptably politically stable) areas with the best weather for renewable. Solar anywhere else is never, ever going to compete on cost with solar in the Sahara or Sonaran deserts.

    Windmills for timing-insensitive electricity supply are also going to be geographically concentrated as all heck - This is a fine solution to the problem of "And where are we going to get our ammonia in a carbon neutral world", heck, it is even a fine solution to melting ores, but it is not very relevant to the grid, because building dedicated systems for these purposes and just shipping the product is going to be far better than trying to run them off excess supply spikes.

    739:

    719: Well, glad to know you were being fed pablum from the LibLab side of the street instead of the Tory side. You are dodging my evidence for British support of the South by pointing up no actual British troop landings. There are other ways, which I've detailed. But at this point, if you can't come up with actual evidence that anything I wrote was actually wrong, time for us to move on to other topics.

    I look forward to hearing from Charlie on a more immediately relevant contemporary matter.

    Thanks for the revelation about EGP. I couldn't make up my mind on what pronoun to use, and being as many Cthulhu avatars don't actually have a gender...

    740:

    Nervous apologies. I do want to get your gender right. Greek is not among the languages I know.

    And I do not think you are insane as such. I see you as the representative of Cthulhu on this blog. Not necessarily the same thing. One reason I would rather not offend you.

    741:

    726: Why yes they did. Black faces in high places, as Malcolm X put it, and lately we had one in the highest place of all. That, and the civil rights laws, meant little or nothing for black people in the North, who due to deindustrialization have been getting steadily worse off year by year since the '60s. And Jim Crow was replaced by "the new Jim Crow," with an incredible expansion of the prison population, overwhelmingly black and Latino, which until recent cutbacks due to budget issues exceeded the population of Stalin's gulags in the aftermath of the Great terror. The powers that be wanted to try to make sure that black people would understand that however the law books read, no they did not have equal rights to white people. And the yearly total of black people shot and killed by police at the moment is curiously similar to the number lynched year by year back in the worst Jim Crow days.

    742:

    734: Yes, to the uninformed eye. What's really going on is that the Chinese Stalinists have gone all Bukharinite, like Tito did but more successfully. It's the Politburo or whatever they call it lately that runs the Chinese economy, not the invisible hand of Adam Smith. The Chinese capitalist class garners its profits and grows like wildfire because they are tolerated as long as they behave themselves and don't get out of hand, and not for a second longer. The bureaucrats know that they are ultimately responsible to the workers and peasants as the avatars of the Chinese Revolution, and that their regime would explode without fulfilled promises of big increases in popular standard of living, which unlike anyplace else in the world they are currently doing a pretty good job of fulfilling. And lately the capitalists have started to figure all that out, just look at statements from their think tanks and government reports.

    As for the US political parties, the two right wings of a very ugly bird, couldn't agree more. Gore Vidal was very good at explaining that, as he knew the movers and shakers intimately.

    743:

    Yes, overstatement on my part. Occasionally, when you are not talking about the real high rollers. The S&L's were small change. Brief visits to Club Fed to keep the peasantry from marching on Wall Street with pitchforks. Like those rare occasional incidents when a cop actually gets convicted for murdering a black person. Without that, once in a blue moon, it would be impossible to delude the populace completely. But as Lincoln put it, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time.

    744:

    Well, nonviolence as a strategy is wrong, but violence as a strategy is even worse. Either tactic should be used as appropriate, and not used when inappropriate. Violence should only be used when (a) the population are definitely on your side and hate the other side and (b) when it can be used successfully. Usually best used in self defense. Formally speaking, the Bolshevik Revolution was an act of self defense, triggered when Kerensky foolishly tried to send not too reliable military forces in to shut down the Bolshevik press. But only formally of course. The full name of the Panthers was "the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense."

    745:

    EGA @ 721 Yes, when Mattis seems sane & is running away from Trumpelstiltskin … it really is time to start worrying. Re. Drones – “new Laws” being pumped, but what’s the point – you first have to catch the perps, haven’t you?

    JH @ 739 I have not “pointed up no troop landings” – putting words into my mouth that I have not uttered. COME ON – what actual, physical support for the US South, anywhere, other than a tiny rich minority wanting to protect their income & unlike the Brexiteers, NOT succeeding? In spite of your claims, you are still coming across, this side of the pond as quite right-wing – see also whitroth @ 725 & 726 on gun control etc …. @ 741 Well, what you call “police” in the US we would call a Militia ( With all the very unpleasant associations that has in Europe, generally. ) @ 744 – first line … Uh? What would you have instead, then?

    746:

    The issue, as I see it, is that non-violence is great, but what do you do if it doesn't work? How do you escalate at that point? Is it likelier or less likely that you'll eventually get what you want if there's a known escalation path? This is something people in the U.K. should probably be thinking about.

    Ask that about violent rebellion too.

    The results in Why Civil Resistance Works are that non-violent action is about twice as effective as violent action at attaining its goals. But that's around 50% effectiveness to around 25% effectiveness. Non-violence isn't a panacea, it's just more likely to succeed based on 20th century evidence. And, as at Tiananmen Square, you can lose non-violently. But then again, think of all the great military losses in history too. It's as if we're still conditioned to think that if violence fails, it's because that action didn't work, but if non-violence fails, it's because non-violence doesn't work. It's simply a set of strategies for dealing with issues of power, is all.

    747:

    Either that or the city from Blade Runner. No, just a thought experiment to gauge the realism of the 70 trillion figure. My original skepticism was based on the unlikely comparison by which a median income British family of five could afford its very own floor of the Shard. Then I noticed the flaw in my own thinking, it was like if Gnarly-hotep proclaimed that the Shard must be demolished and replaced by a doublewide trailer, and then saying the value of that property was only what the trailer cost. Valid maybe in outer space, but if you like living in a one-G environment, you're mostly stuck competing for area on a planet surface.

    748:

    You cannot judge the past by old paradigms once your environment changes. This is 101 manual from 'life in the times of the Sea People'.

    Visit Last night, while America was distracted by a potential government shutdown, the GOP quietly passed a tax bill that gutted the Johnson Amendment, which could give billionaires a tax break for funneling secret money into our elections through charities and churches. Public Citizen, Twitter, 21st Dec 2018.

    The name of that amendment?

    The Johnson Amendment: do you mean they're cutting off parts of their Johnson's, sir?

    coughs politely at willy jokes above

    Basically: There's joy in my heart, still beating.

    749:

    Note: you might imagine that's not Brexit related. It is.

    The UK minister linked to above is well known for taking Tax Payer Funded trips to Dubai to meet the Vulture Capitalists.

    She's just not smart enough about making the cheese submarine to not wolf-whistle her intents[1].

    [1] Look her up, and priors on cheese statements. Oh, and Hugo: baaaad imagery when that one lands.

    750:

    And yep:

    Johnson being cut = Mega Church money is going to flow like water.

    Abrahamic religions are gonna get you all Mind-Fucked (esp. if you know who gets Bibi elected).

    751:

    It's the Politburo or whatever they call it lately that runs the Chinese economy, not the invisible hand of Adam Smith.

    At the lower levels the invisible hand works well enough in China. At the upper levels, well, maybe I'm too cynical, but it seems to me that in the US the relationship between large companies and the government is pretty strong. For example, half of Boeings profits come from its military side, and that wouldn't exist without strong government support.

    Maybe at the lower levels, too. Look at US agricultural subsidies, for example. Not much invisible hand there…

    752:

    Anyhow, for Bill:

    When a male shows off his trademark fan, the female doesn’t just see him. She also feels him with special vibration sensors in her crest.

    A Courting Peacock Can Shake Its Partner’s Head From Afar Atlantic, 21st Dec 2018

    Notes:

    1 Obvious is obvious. Shame you killed everything before you spotted the cool tricks 2 Your face when you realize you work in similar ways 3 OMMMM said waves (for Dirk) 4 Now work out why your species eradicates all the diversity. Gods and Monsters, Gods and Monsters.
    753:

    Oh my. They (US HOR) are also sneaking in some anti-choice material. The US Senate sometimes just removes crazy House Of Representatives stuff like this (or the Johnson amendment). From the US HR88, page 123, that pdf might be current since it has a recent date. (529 is a part of the US tax code for untaxed savings intended to pay for education expenses.) (e) UNBORN CHILDREN ALLOWED AS ACCOUNT BENEFICIARIES.—Section 529(e) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph: ... ‘‘(i) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘unborn child’ means a child in utero. ‘‘(ii) CHILD IN UTERO.—The term ‘child in utero’ means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.’’.

    754:

    [Atlantic link broken but easily fixable.]

    Fun article, I smiled. Here's the paper for anyone interested: Biomechanics of the peafowl’s crest reveals frequencies tuned to social displays (Open, 28 November 2018) #2 Your face when you realize you work in similar ways I was paying attention to you (and Dirk) here in 2015; [fascinated surprise]. #4 Now work out why your species eradicates all the diversity. Gods and Monsters, Gods and Monsters. TBH, I don't understand it. I'm not typical perhaps, and most biologists (I hope; am not one by training) feel the same way. The complexity of diversity (not just biological) is ... beautiful, and [strength] can be built from it.

    755:

    Why does Eleos Gup Adikia keep including w3schools.com text strings? I noticed it in post #504's third link as well. It's weirder than the not-knowing-what-a-joke-is idiosyncrasy (which she'd probably describe as a metajoke).

    756:

    Tingey 745: 1) Troop landings, OK so I paraphrased. Your last argument was that there were Brits fighting on the Union side (not government authorized may I point out) but none on the Confederate side. Probably true but irrelevant. US policy in the Spanish Civil War was definitely not the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. 2) Another poster pointed out the continual flow of weapons etc. from England to the South. Yes, the British government repeatedly shrunk back from the brink of doing anything Lincoln might have declared war over, for practical reasons and due to popular opposition. The sympathy of the British government and ruling elites for the South I have documented quite well, it wasn't just some unimportant tiny rich elite-unless you consider the British government at the time to be an unimportant tiny rich elite. In which case I would have more sympathy for your arguments, though alas you would be wrong. 3) Police in the USA are officers. And act that way. Militia originally were rank and file citizen volunteers, that was the reason for the old socialist slogan of replacing the constabulary with a popular militia. There are militias and militias, and some are more well regulated than others. The Black Panthers were a fairly well regulated militia most of the time, well, certainly better regulated than the National Guard at Kent State. 4: to your "uh," well, it all depends on the circumstances. Not the kind of thing some sort of cut and tried rule is appropriate for.

    757:

    Smith's basic argument was that when government interferes with the workings of the invisible hand, the overall economic consequences are generally negative. And, in the purely economic sense, if the overall economy is capitalist he is/was quite right. If all the government dollars that the US threw at the military had been redirected to civilian purposes, then Japan and Western Europe with their far lower military expenditures would not have caught up and indeed exceeded US industry.

    But OTOH, those military expenditures were quite useful for the US, creating that phenomenon mislabeled as "globalization," as they enabled and enable the US to dominate the rest of the world. Ever since the US won the Cold War, Third World countries can no longer dare to talk about socialism and nationalize American investments, or very bad things happen to them. "Globalization" is really free reign for US investment in countries with lower levels of capitalization and lower wage levels and therefore higher profit margins than in the USA, with the lesser "Western" lackeys like GB allowed to lick up the leavings.

    In general high military expenditures are very useful economically when they help you to win wars (in the US case notably WWII and the Cold War with the USSR) and economically bad news when you lose the wars anyway (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan). But the USA has put all its chips into the military for so long that decline is now inevitable. Rome rose, Rome fell...

    758:

    (1 & 2) Both technically true, but mercenaries rather than idealists...

    2) Yes, I would consider the typical British government to be an "unimportant tiny rich elite", at least in that they frequently do not reflect the views of the populace.

    3) True but irrelevant. "Officer" is a commonly used English language field address for any uniformed member of a police service. Or are you trying to suggest that the emergency ambulance service and the fire service are also paramilitary organisations?

    759:

    “In general high military expenditures are very useful economically when they help you to win wars”

    Another way to think about is economies are only useful when they help you win wars. Just ask the Incas or the Aztecs

    This has become a trifle less true in the last 300 years as war has been somewhat tamed and no longer results in complete genocide of the looser. However could be the old days are coming round again...

    760:

    What I'm thinking about specifically, if you expect a large number of political movements in a number of cities, all revolving around the same issues, is the occasional act of violence useful to keep everyone honest? That is, if you're the authority in some medium-sized town, and you have peaceful protestors, are you more-likely or less-likely to come to some kind of agreement if you know that a certain percentage of these political campaigns escalate to violence if they can't win?

    762:

    JH @ 756 (3) NO Don't believe you. Far too many YouTube videos of them acting as overmuscled & vicious thugs, especially if the person they are going for is brown.
    Ask Charlie about "Peelian policing" here - still breached far too often, but that is the standard we are supposed to have & mostly do actually adhere to. 756(2) Palmerston wouldn't go anywhere near offical aid to the S - & like I said, he wasn't known for "non-intervention" - look him up. Miltia here means ... "Milice" in Fance, Franco's Guarda or the 'orrible Black-&-Tans, or the SA.

    Paws @ 758 Elite(s) - especially where "Capital Punishment" is/was involved. The governing elite were at least 40 if not 50 years ahead of the populace in getting rid of it, here, for instance. Howver, today even Scum readers ( yes, I know, oxymoron, with the emphasis on moron ) are probaly agin it ... the message of "What do you do WHEN you execute an innocent person?" has finally penetrated, as it has not in the USA.

    763:

    It also covers, at least in emotion, the feelings of, for example, something like 60% of Scots.

    764:

    I said "they do not reflect the views of the populace". I did not say whether they were in advance of, behind, beside, or otherwise out of step in their views...

    765:

    War very rarely resulted in genocide - partial or total enslavement was perhaps the most common. That has changed only since slavery became uneconomic, with the victor now installing regime change (*) of its choice or demanding treaties, deals and concessions at gunpoint. That has been the pattern from the Opium Wars to Iraq/Libya/etc.

    (*) Including breaking up the defeated country, or rendering it dysfunctional to destroy it as a competitor or to simplify looting the remains.

    766:

    Type "a href" into a search engine.

    The 1st link is a w3schools one where you can copy paste the code for doing a nice link rather than spamming obscenely long links that news sources love to use.

    Or: we use bot farms as cyber weapons!

    Oh, and you really don't get the jokes: #720, point #3 - sentence does not grammatically make sense without the addition of another word. Try adding "remains" to it, you'll get a reference to the Thread Title, a (somewhat ghoulish) pun and a meta-comment on how good the British are at ignoring the obvious issues...

    That one is free. Instrumentalists... oh boy oh boy oh boy.

    767:

    Yes, I agree that is a likely response. I was reading on twitter today that Lioncolnshire police have been sending their video footage of fracking demos to the DWP (for non-uk, that's the government bit that's responsible for not giving money to poor and unemployed people, i.e. it's aim is to pay out as little as possible, if necessary by harassing people until they die). Naturally this could have a massive chilling effect on future protests. Anecdotal evidence from many disabled people and others indicates that they get targeted for investigation many times, for instance after nosy neighbours decide they aren't ill enough.

    Moreover, the big newspapers splashing with an anti-environmentalist headline is a Pavlovian response these days, with right wing money having set up a chain of sources. The right key word used, and they will churn out tonnes of nonsense which gets straight into the headlines: https://www.desmog.co.uk/2018/12/21/comment-why-it-s-too-soon-newspapers-claim-gatwick-disruption-fault-eco-warriors

    768:

    lizard people .. antisemitism Wut?! Bait'n'switch huh. As they say over here, "a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?" assumed it was a poetic ref to sociopathic aristos à la Patrick Melrose

    769:

    EC @ 765 Even that simply is not true. What regime change or slavery or looting of the defeated country took place at the Treaty of Utrecht, or The Treaty of Paris, or those of either Amiens or Vienna ( Ends of, respectively the Wars of the Spanish Succession, 7 years War, intermediate pece in Napoleonic conflicts & final settlement ... )

    barren_samahi @ 768 Thet used to be a local (NI) variant on that: "Yes, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Prod atheist?"

    770:

    Corbyn: Brexit would go ahead even if Labour won snap election

    Exclusive: opposition leader says he would go to Brussels to secure better deal if he was PM

    [...]Corbyn said: “We have to recognise a number of things. One is, as a party, about 60&#37 of Labour voters voted remain; about 40&#37 voted leave. We have to recognise why people voted in those directions.”

    So Corbyn recognises that the majority of labour voters want to remain but if, somehow, he got to be in charge he would still leave anyway, and magically get a better deal. Why does he want to leave?

    “I think the state aid rules do need to be looked at again, because quite clearly, if you want to regenerate an economy, as we would want to do in government, then I don’t want to be told by somebody else that we can’t use state aid in order to be able to develop industry in this country,” he said.

    771:

    I believe that the main reason is that the EU frown on member governments spending unlimited amounts to subsidise unprofitable industries, and it's about time we stuck two fingers up at Thatcher and reopened all the coal mines.

    772:

    Do read more carefully before responding incorrectly. Firstly, those treaties were NOT following the conquest of one country by another, but to end long-standing conflicts, so were irrelevant to the post I was responding to. Secondly, all of them pre-date the Opium Wars. So you are out of context, twice.

    773:

    Hopeless. Most were not closed down properly, and have not been maintained since. Most of the controversial decisions from Thatcher onwards were implemented in such a way as to make reversing them afterwards infeasible.

    774:

    WTG @ 770 Which shows just how useless out of touch & out of date Corbyn is ( Again )

    775:

    That's just an engineering problem, not a political one. Easy! '-)

    776:

    "Windmills for timing-insensitive electricity supply are also going to be geographically concentrated as all heck - This is a fine solution to the problem of "And where are we going to get our ammonia in a carbon neutral world""

    How about... making lots of them, to produce, not ammonia itself, but some more easily handled solid derivative, such as urea or uric acid. Use some of it as fertiliser, and use the rest to make big piles, or fill up holes, or something.

    777:

    I'm guessing an editor macro that ends up grepping some HTML (that fun link)
    https ://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags

    778:

    I did the web search. (S)he is using that site to create HTML tags rather than learning to write them like a normal person.

    779:

    I temporarily forgot the advice to <a href="https://xkcd.com/763/">NEVER ask how other people use computers</a>.

    780:

    What I'm thinking about specifically, if you expect a large number of political movements in a number of cities, all revolving around the same issues, is the occasional act of violence useful to keep everyone honest? That is, if you're the authority in some medium-sized town, and you have peaceful protestors, are you more-likely or less-likely to come to some kind of agreement if you know that a certain percentage of these political campaigns escalate to violence if they can't win?

    There are two schools of thought on this, but the short answer to, "will you come to an agreement if there's a threat of violence?" is almost certainly not. Generally, state authorities have a lot more capacity for violence than do their opponents, so the only way violence works is if the protestors already are more dangerous than their state sponsored adversaries. This does happen (cf: gangs in Guatemala, Afghanistan, Iraq) but it's mostly not true in the US.

    The two schools: There's the late Eugene Sharp, and there's the Antifa, and they differ about the utility of violence. Sharp argued against it in all cases, because of the phenomenon of "political jujitsu." If one side is politically adept and good at getting the message out and the other side commits an act of violence, that side has its violence turned against it, causing it to lose the moral high ground on which much of its political power depended. This can be either protestors publicizing pictures of cops beating unarmed grannies, or cops publicizing pictures of hooligans attacking them. Additionally, the use of violence makes it easier for the state to slip in agents provocateur to foment the violence, leading to the loss of power by the protestors and the end of the movement. Strict nonviolence makes agents provocateur largely useless, and also gives the protestors the moral high ground, especially if they are physically attacked and refuse to either back down or retaliate.

    The Antifa movement works differently. They believe in proportional violence: using non-violence so that they don't have to fight with fists, using fists so that they won't have to fight with cold weapons, using cold weapons so they won't have to use firearms, etc. In the last few years they've scored some important victories against the Alt-Right in the US. Some (probably most) of those victories were non-violent: doxxing people and bringing them to justice, for example. But by being willing to go toe-to-toe with the Alt-Right, they also made it a lot less fun for bullies who wanted to beat up those they perceived as helpless, and that caused a bunch of wannabes to turn away from the Alt-Right, probably for everyone's benefit.

    I personally lean more towards Sharp than towards the Antifa, but I'll give the latter credit for what they've accomplished in terms of de-escalating the power of the Alt-Right in the US. As with any combat though, the Antifa have to be careful to not have political jujitsu used against them.

    781:

    Well given the fact that Chrome for iOS seems to have started helpfullly turning inverted commas into “smart quotes” (the reason for several of my handwritten links failing lately), using a copy-paste method for including links seems pretty smart to me (it beats my current workaround, copying inverted commas from somewhere on the page [on a touch screen] and pasting them into the text box).

    782:

    On which general subject, Chrome for Windoze can tell this site is https right not, but after I post this it will decide the site is "only http" and refuse to let me post anything else until after I navigate away someplace else and back! Repeat for every new comment I want to make! (tested on multiple machines under Windoze 7)

    783:

    s/"right not, but"/"right now, but"

    784:

    I'm not a regular Chrome user, but if you type about:flags into the address bar and search for http there's an option "Mark non-secure origins as non-secure" that might fix it?

    785:

    Well, I actually suspect that Google "broke it" with a recent update that changed the visual appearance of tabs.

    786:

    Yes, but you can turn that off is my point.

    787:

    JH replied @ 756: 3) Police in the USA are *officers.* And act that way. Militia originally were rank and file citizen volunteers, that was the reason for the old socialist slogan of replacing the constabulary with a popular militia. There are militias and militias, and some are more well regulated than others. The Black Panthers were a fairly well regulated militia most of the time, well, certainly better regulated than the National Guard at Kent State.

    The Black Panthers weren't a militia, well regulated or otherwise; and certainly were NOT "better regulated" than the Ohio National Guard however badly they may have fucked up at Kent State. The Black Panthers are no more deserving of the name militia than are the white supremacist rabble who claim the name today.

    I don't think you know anything about "the militia". They were not originally volunteers. The division of the U.S. militia into volunteer Organized and Unorganized rabble elements developed during the 19th century as state governments responded to their inability to compel the citizenry to meet their militia obligation.

    The militia in the U.S. had its origins in Anglo-Saxon Common Law (dating to Alfred the Great), where all able-bodied males were liable to be called for service in the "possee comitatus" or the Fyrd.

    In the 16th and 17th centuries the English militia evolved into the "well regulated militia", in the original meaning of the term, i.e. funded, equipped, trained and DISCIPLINED at the expense of the local government (shire counties). It is in this form that the militia came to the English colonies in Virginia (as well as to later settlements). And it is from those colonial militias that the Organized (well regulated) Militia is descended.

    The original intent embodied in the Constitution was that the U.S. would have a minuscule professional military, sufficient to provide technical expertise (engineering, artillery & logistics). This is mostly a response to a British Colonial Army that was seen as tyrannical and inimical to the interests of the colonies. The newly free states weren't ready to trade Royal tyranny for Federal tyranny.

    The defense of the nation would be primarily made up of the state militias, called to Federal service in time of need. That's why Congress is tasked to:

    "12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
    13: To provide and maintain a Navy;
    14: To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
    15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
    16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;"

    Note that Congress cannot appropriate funds for the standing army for a period longer than two years. No such restriction is applied to organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia ... The standing military of the United States was to be limited to those parts (Navy & trained officers) that could not be easily provided by the separate militias. Consider also that the prospective officers trained by the national military academies are appointed by Congressional Representatives & Senators.

    Additionally, centralizing authority over "organizing, arming, and disciplining" along with giving Congress power to prescribe a national training regimen to be followed by the states addressed a deficiency noted during the American Revolution where some militias were better trained, equipped & disciplined than others.

    The Second Amendment was added to assure STATES that Congress could not abuse those powers it was granted over the militia to deprive the states. That's why the Second Amendment begins "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,".

    It's folly to interpret the clauses independently because of archaic punctuation.

    788:

    Damian @ 781: Well given the fact that Chrome for iOS seems to have started helpfullly turning inverted commas into “smart quotes” (the reason for several of my handwritten links failing lately), using a copy-paste method for including links seems pretty smart to me (it beats my current workaround, copying inverted commas from somewhere on the page [on a touch screen] and pasting them into the text box).

    Have you tried using a plain text document to write your responses; then copy & paste back into the reply box? That's what I've found easiest, plus I'm able to save example HTML tags that I use frequently ('cause I don't know HTML from butkis - everything I know about it I learned from highlighting something, right clicking on it & selecting "View selection source" ... and copying tags from the source to save for later).

    I just keep a link to a notepad document "HTML-tags.txt" on my desktop. I copy any comment I want to reply to into the open document & edit it using previously saved tags to format.

    Then when I've got my response the way I want it, I copy it, hit [reply] and paste it into the comment box. Click [Preview] to see if it looks right. That allows me to check that URL links are properly formatted and once I'm sure it's good to go I click [Submit].

    789:

    "Well given the fact that Chrome for iOS seems to have started helpfullly turning inverted commas into "smart quotes" (the reason for several of my handwritten links failing lately)"

    Can't you turn the things off?

    I call them "dumb quotes", because they don't make anything any better but they do break stuff, therefore using them is dumb. Also because they are favoured by people for whom the whole hundred years odd of the typewriter era still isn't enough to learn that not using them is perfectly OK. Same applies to any variant of a horizontal line between words that isn't ASCII 0x2d. One of my standard web-sanitising scripts is to do the exact opposite - to replace all these horrible things with the standard 0x22/0x27/0x2d characters.

    It always used to be a Microsoft problem - stuff breaking on the web because of dumb quotes used to be a pretty good indication that it had been through Word at some point - but that seemed to die out quite a while ago. I assumed that Microsoft had finally realised it was a bad idea. Now it's Apple and Google stuff that does it. So it pretty much follows the standard "Evil Empire progression" - IBM -> μ$ -> Apple/Google - except that I don't think IBM used to do it... but then they did use EBCDIC, so I guess that counts.

    790:

    I’m sure there’s a way to turn them off. However the “under the covers” config screen in Chrome for iOS has so many terrifying options (“Use Google Pay sandbox”, “Use MEMEX Tab Switcher”*, “Unified Consent”) that I generally just work with them.

    JBS, notepad.exe isn’t available on iOS, though I suppose there are options. The iPad seems to be barging pretty solidly into laptop territory, but that presupposes using an ssh client for anything non-office-ly useful.

    • Frightening more with the Strossian context I suppose.
    791:

    Similarly, Garry Kasparov mentioned Thanos in a tweet.

    792:

    If your goal is heating, you're crazy to store energy in batteries. Store heat as heat. Wax stores about 200 J/g or about 55 Wh/kg compared to lead acid batteries at about 40 Wh/kg. Which is slightly better, but wax is about 650 dollars a ton. Meaning you can store about as much energy as 5 Tesla PowerWalls for about 600 bucks (US). Plus you get infinite charge discharge cycles and practically infinite life span (depending on what you encapsulate the wax in)

    Pick the right wax and you can set the melting point wherever you want. Have blocks of 17 C stuff stashed all over a flat. Run the reverse cycle airconditioner (aka heat pump) at 22 C all day and the blocks will hold the flat at 16 all night. Pick 55 degree wax, half fill your hot water service with balls full of wax and set the thermostat on the to 60 degrees. Your hot water system will hold twice the energy (or more)

    793:

    @whitroth:

    I don't know where you are, but Home Depot in the US lists an 8 kWh tri-fuel electric start generator for $1000. It works on gas, propane, and LNG.

    https://www.homedepot.com/p/Powerland-8-000-Watt-Tri-Fuel-Powered-Electric-Start-Portable-Generator-PD3G10000E/203608220

    794:

    " making lots of them, to produce, not ammonia itself, but some more easily handled solid derivative, such as urea or uric acid."

    I bet it could be extracted from used cat litter, if the litter could be economically collected.

    795:

    Heteromeles @ 780 Yhnls, that clears a lot up ( About Antifa ) - " BEWARE - this animal is dangerous - it Defends Itself" in the words of the cynical saying. They will use violence, but only in self-defence & won't start violence - or that's theor message anyway. I have, of course heard other tales, from suspect sources .....

    JBS @ 787 Whereas my take is the EXACT OPPOSITE - a "millita" isa a semi-organosed (maybe well-organised, usually political collection of armed thugs, intent on beating up & terrorising anyone they don't like. Mst US police seem to qualify, unfortunately. Then there's the rest of youor very-illiminating post, which shows how utterly unfit for purpose the US "constitution" is, in this context, if that is its wording. Basically the US has NO "Well-regulated Militia" - unless you classify the State National Guards as such.

    HTML - I usually write longer comments in "Word" or "notepad" & then copy across - assuming I've got the parsing correct in the first place, it then works. You are syaing either Chrome or Google have just now, fucked with this? Oh dear. See also JBS @ 788

    796:

    Ref #787 - The meaning of "militia" has changed over the 200&some years since the "Bill of Rights" was written. As, indeed, has the Second, which was originally meant to say that you had to be in the state militia to own anything more powerful than a single fowling piece, not that anyone who has sufficient money can own a collection that a USMC Gunny would cast envious eyes over!

    HTML - Use Notepad; it's still a plain text editor and doesn't support "smart" quotes, or parsing HTML on the fly!

    797:

    Militia Policing The difference between US & Brit policing Really good for a laugh as well. [ Typed link straight in, by the way ]

    798:

    In English, the primary meaning still is an organised body of armed civilians raised to support the regular army in an emergency. See the OED. JBS is right, except for one thing: according to Wikipedia, the archaic punctuation was modernised by Jefferson, and it was ratified in the modern form:

    A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

    The other confusing aspect is that, according to the OED, the sense used in the USA at the time, the meaning was the body of able-bodied citizens eligible by law for military service. The change in meaning there hasn't helped!

    799:

    The first clause of the 2nd Amendment isn't a qualifier to the right specified in the second clause, it's an explanation why the right exists as an Amendment. Even if the necessity for the militia to exist to cope with Indian raids, French encroachments on the States and slave rebellions goes away the right as specified remains. It's worth pointing out the Amendments in the Bill of Rights are almost all individual rights and restrictions on what higher authority could do to limit what such individuals were able to do, and that includes the 2nd Amendment.

    If anyone really wants to go after this right and limit its effects today then the definition of "arms" is probably a better attack vector. Specify "arms" as original intent i.e. man-portable weapons of the time such as muskets and black-powder pistols, swords, pikes etc., nothing more modern than anything in existence in 1778, no cannons or crew-served weapons and you could maybe get somewhere. I suspect not though.

    800:

    Have you ever tried pointing out to USians that there is no provision for an air force in their Constitution? Just for LOLs and trolling obviously.

    801:

    The Constitution says what the Government must do and how it must operate (the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Presidency), it doesn't stop it doing other things like having a standing Army (IIRC the only statutory military force mentioned in the Constitution is a Navy and maybe a Coastguard). The Bill of Rights (the first ten Amendments) restricts what it can do to infringe on the rights of individuals. The rest is up in the air, just like the US Army Air Corps.

    802:

    https://www.gofundme.com/TheTrumpWall

    A US conspiracy theorist has started a GoFundMe campaign to build Trump's wall. So far, they've raised $15.8 million out of their $1 billion target. The article below talks about the legal issues this raises within a US context.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/21/a-runaway-gofundme-campaign-to-build-trumps-border-wall-raises-questions-about-its-funding-and-the-future/

    One of the points this article made is that in the future, groups of citizens could raise money and give it to Western governments on condition that it be spent according to the donors wishes. So, public housing could be built this way? New environmental initiatives could be funded this way?

    How would this work in a UK context? A Canadian context? An Australian one? I'd also be interested in sleepingroutine's and Nowhereland's views on how this would work in a Russian context?

    803:

    Well the obvious next step - indeed I'm suprised it hasn't started already - is a similar/joint campaign to build camps for incarcerating all the "commie" refugees in "concentrated" locations & fund their guards, given that the whole country seems to be heading in the Prison-industrial complex direction. Oh & private funds for Gitmo whilst they are at it .... The signs & portents of/for fascism are not good for the rest of us, are they?

    I wonder, If DT fails/falls at or before the 2020 election, what not-so-crypto-fascist will be put in his place ( I'm assuming it's not Pence, of course ) ... Matt Shea? Someone else?

    804:

    Well, I've already said that I think the issue with the Trumpolini Wall is that it's in the wrong place. It should be along the Canadian border, and used to stop USians getting out!

    805:

    Brexit, 2018 late edition, a series of unforunate coincidences (removing people finding interesting company house documents, couples who were arrested (shamed then released), Telegraph defense buffers tweeting, The Sun hedging bets on the ecoterrorist also wearing a high-vis gaullettes acket and so on):

    Public health budgets to tackle causes of early death slashed by £85 million The Mirror, 20th Dec 2018

    The person operating the drone around Gatwick has yet to be caught and there is speculation that it might be a lone-wolf eco-warrior. Terrorism has been ruled out by the local police.

    UK army deploys Rafael's Drone Dome at Gatwick airport Globes, Israel's Business Arena, 21st Dec 2018

    Interlude music

    "We cannot discount the possibility that there were no drones at all." Police on BBC News. Ohmygod. Twitter, James Goss, 23rd Dec 2018

    Of course, we would never sink to low-brow conspiracy theory. CTRL+F Potemkin village.

    Best wishes all, and wishing good health upon everyone.

    p.s.

    In a democracy, even a managed one, it helps if reality is also included. We did our best to buffer.

    806:

    I've often thought that a real democracy would allow people to specify how their taxes are spent; you don't just vote for a legislator, you also fill out a form on your taxes which gives X-amount to NASA, (or whatever) plus a way to specify how they should spend it. "NASA _ 500. Use for Mars lander."

    The amount available to allocate should total 50 percent of the taxes.

    807:

    Of course, to my eyes both your political parties look quite right-wing: one is far right, and the other is wing-nuttily far right.

    The problem here is that both parties are well to the right of the majority of Americans. The Republicans are probably fairly representative of their base, (though to the right of at least 70 percent of the U.S.,) while the Democrats are generally well to the right of their own base, being quite happy with the bullshit stance of being "fiscally conservative* and socially liberal.)

    But Americans as a whole poll well to the left of both parties. If you mistake Americans for their political parties you are making a terrible error.

    • Give the corporations what they want.
    808:

    EGA @ 805 Second link is from the Daily Wail - are we supposed to believe this tosh? The "police on BBC News" piece is obviously misdirection, whilst "they" look for real culprits ( I think ) A state actor could, pehaps, maybe - have been practising - including our own state, of course.

    Meanwhile, if launched quickly enough, an explosive-carrying drone only has to get into the intake of a jet taking off .....

    Troutwaxer @ 807 Uh? I mean a lot of tories here are to the left of their party & a lot of Labour voters are to the right of their party ( or at least its so-called "leadership" anyway ) But ... WHY/HOW no even actual centrist party or voting platform in the US? Something wrong somewhere ...

    809:

    Ahem:

    Source #1: Mirror Source #2: Globes

    ...Shiny balls? Xmas themed smut?

    Anyhow, we're in a bit of trouble, so Ciao once more. Live long n prosper.

    810:

    Damian @ 790: JBS, notepad.exe isn’t available on iOS, though I suppose there are options. The iPad seems to be barging pretty solidly into laptop territory, but that presupposes using an ssh client for anything non-office-ly useful.

    That's why I start out "plain text document". I use Notepad because I'm a windoze guy, but I know iOS has a text editor that can do plain text and the little I know about iOS you can save such a document to the desktop & it will bring it up in the text editor whenever you open it.

    And I'm pretty sure with more recent Apple computers that run on Intel processors you can even run Notepad if you have access to a windoze computer so you can get a copy of the executable.

    811:

    Jonathan Hendry @ 793: @whitroth:

    I don't know where you are, but Home Depot in the US lists an 8 kWh tri-fuel electric start generator for $1000. It works on gas, propane, and LNG.

    https://www.homedepot.com/p/Powerland-8-000-Watt-Tri-Fuel-Powered-Electric-Start-Portable-Generator-PD3G10000E/203608220

    If you're doing it to power a residence & 8Kw will get the job done, you'd be better off with a permanent installation. Try one of these:

    https://www.homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-Outdoor-Power-Equipment-Generators-Standby-Generators/N-5yc1vZbx9s?Ns=P_REP_PRC_MODE%7C0

    OTOH, if you're prepping for some end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario, you might want to consider what might come calling on the only house in your neighborhood that has lights on. Think Mad Max.

    https://images.homedepot-static.com/productImages/769d0a23-c1d8-4380-b816-aaf428a71f29/svn/briggs-stratton-standby-generators-040445-31_1000.jpg

    ... assuming the gas doesn't get cut off when the rest of civilization collapses, in which case you won't have to worry about the lights attracting unwanted vermin.

    812:

    Much as I know you hate climate change, if civilization crashes, whatever remains of the "United States" may well have a well-organized militia, rather than the standing armies we have now, at which point the 2nd Amendment will be useful again.

    In the current day, another attack vector for gun control is to deny the NRA insurance to operate, as New York tried to do. Without a marketing arm, the american gun industry rapidly contracts, and then that particular problem slowly diminishes as the cheap assault rifles they built break and are not replaced.

    813:

    Elderly Cynic @ 798: In English, the primary meaning still is an organised body of armed civilians raised to support the regular army in an emergency. See the OED. JBS is right, except for one thing: according to Wikipedia, the archaic punctuation was modernised by Jefferson, and it was ratified in the modern form:

    The archaic punctuation most frequently quoted comes from the "official" copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights held by the National Archives. I emphasize "copy" because there were multiple copies made at the time for distribution to the various states. I don't know if the ORIGINAL even still exists.

    If you do ever have a chance to examine some of the original copies, you'll find the punctuation is all over the place with commas added or elided at the whim of the copyist. [Not just in the Second Amendment]

    And since this is a uniquely U.S. document under discussion, instead of the OED, try Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language.

    814:

    as the cheap assault rifles they built break and are not replaced

    Presumably this refers to AR-15 clones? If so, I'd be interested in statistics about their failure rates.

    One of the things that worry me about the AK-47 spawn is that they're extremely robust and, with proper care and maintenance, last more or less forever. If AR-15s are anything like that, the half-life of the US privately-held stock is going to be many decades. Ammunition is a different matter, of course.

    815:

    Anyhow, we're in a bit of trouble, so Ciao once more. Live long n prosper. Please take care. Best wishes and good health to you as well.

    US getting really loopy, e.g. Mattis out two months early. (This was interesting; fall Nov 8 that broke (Supreme Court Justice RBG's) ribs might have saved her life https://www.newsweek.com/supreme-court-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-votes-again-trump-asylum-reform-1269844 She was treated for the malignant growths after they were detected when she underwent tests following a fall in which she broke her ribs. Medics said the fall may have helped save her life.)

    816:

    With regard to all this 2nd Amendment and militia stuff, there actually are documents from around the time that provide some insight into what was being thought about.

    http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed29.asp

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Acts_of_1792

    817:

    I guess you’re thinking of MacOS(X). iOS is the OS for iPhones and iPads. It doesn’t have a “desktop” or a text editor, though very recently a built in filesystem browser appeared (part of the push into laptop territory I mentioned).

    818:

    Nojay @ 801: The Constitution says what the Government must do and how it must operate (the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Presidency), it doesn't stop it doing other things like having a standing Army (IIRC the only statutory military force mentioned in the Constitution is a Navy and maybe a Coastguard). The Bill of Rights (the first ten Amendments) restricts what it can do to infringe on the rights of individuals. The rest is up in the air, just like the US Army Air Corps.

    Actually, in addition to the Navy the Constitution mentions "Armies" and "Militia" as statutory military forces:

    Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
    Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
    Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

    The Bill of Rights is a mixed bag. It contains language to protect individual and collective (state's) rights, along with language to restrict actions of state & federal governments. Generally, where right of the people is used in the Bill of Rights it refers to a collective right rather than a specifically individual right.

    Where rights are intended to be exercised by individuals, the language is specific "without the consent of the Owner", "No person shall", "the accused shall" ...

    Twelve articles were submitted to the states for ratification by the first Congress in 1789. Ten of those articles (numbers 3 through 12) were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures on Dec 15, 1791 becoming the first 10 Amendments. Interestingly enough, the second of the articles proposed was not ratified by three-fourths of the states until May 5, 1992 becoming the 27th Amendment.

    As there was no ratification deadline set, the first article is still pending. I don't know how many states have ratified it, but it would be interesting to see what would happen if it was eventually ratified. It's not the only zombie amendment hanging around out there.

    819:

    Ioan @ 802:

    https://www.gofundme.com/TheTrumpWall

    A US conspiracy theorist has started a GoFundMe campaign to build Trump's wall. So far, they've raised $15.8 million out of their $1 billion target. The article below talks about the legal issues this raises within a US context.

    They claim they've raised $15.8 million, but I don't know whether they actually have the cash in hand or not. What happens to the money pledged/raised if they don't meet their goal?

    In any case, they still have $948.2 million to go.

    Hell, I might even be willing to pitch in a buck or two if they'd promise to stay on the other side of the wall if they ever get one built.

    820:

    Yeah, I'm being sarcastic, to some small degree, although i was thinking of all the plastic fittings, not the central workings.

    Here's a Quora take on the question of AR-15 lifespan: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-lifespan-of-an-AR-15

    Here's one on the lifespan of an AK-47: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-life-span-of-an-AK47-rifle

    Basically, they're immortal the same way Grandfather's Axe is immortal: keep swapping out the parts and maintaining them properly. Mistreat it and it breaks faster than you can say "idiot" (love that quote in the second Quora answer). Without replacement parts you've got maybe 20,000 shots, which I suppose is multiple generations for a perfectly stored gun that's rarely used, but they all require maintenance.

    821:

    The "original intent" of the Constitution seems to have been that there wouldn't be a standing army per se, thinking that one could be raised and equipped and paid for when needed, based on militias as a core population to recruit from plus maybe a permanent officer corps. This didn't survive the test of time against professional armies such as the War of 1812 (and indeed the First Treasonous Slaveowners Revolt when irregular American forces put up a poor showing against professional British troops, much to General Washington's displeasure). A Navy required a much greater establishment of trained officers and sailors and of course the existence of suitable ships and their replacements, dockyards etc. hence its more permanent existence as envisaged by the Founding Slaveowners.

    I don't know when the states National Guards were set up -- they might have been initially meant as a halfway-house between an irregular muster of militiamen and a full-blown Federal army. That HUMMV has left the maintenance garage long ago, of course.

    822:

    Nojay @ 821 & others That is remarkably similar to the our (British) system, where the Royal Navy is permanent, but the Army requires (?) annual permission-&-expenditure from Parliament - in our case a hangover from Old Bloody Noll. And, of course, "Militias" simply don't have the training & experience necessary for a modern army - indeed that requirement was probably out-of-date even by 1861 & certainly by 1899 ...

    823:

    Guys, you're all ignoring or talking around my original point: The US Constitution grants powers to, and imposes responsibilities on, the US Executive and Legislature. At no time does it include powers or responsibilities to create, operate or indeed fund an air force.

    824:

    Re: '...claim they've raised $15.8 million'

    Hey, that probably is enough to fence in Mexico (NY) - total pop'n est.5,100 - located south of Lake Ontario. Maybe these 'Mexicans' might agree to stand in for that other Mexico. You know - for the sake of de-escalation with some attractive fencing thrown in for free.

    825:

    Allen Thomson @ 814:

    as the cheap assault rifles they built break and are not replaced

    Presumably this refers to AR-15 clones? If so, I'd be interested in statistics about their failure rates.

    One of the things that worry me about the AK-47 spawn is that they're extremely robust and, with proper care and maintenance, last more or less forever. If AR-15s are anything like that, the half-life of the US privately-held stock is going to be many decades. Ammunition is a different matter, of course.

    Something I always delight in reminding "the troops" ...

    Remember that your weapon was manufactured by the lowest bidder.

    In truth, the AR-15/M-16 derivatives are fairly robust. The only real difference from AK series weapons is if you drop it in the mud, you damn well better clear it & clean it out before you try to fire it. It's easier to do that BEFORE it jams.

    826:

    Damian @ 817: I guess you’re thinking of MacOS(X). iOS is the OS for iPhones and iPads. It doesn’t have a “desktop” or a text editor, though very recently a built in filesystem browser appeared (part of the push into laptop territory I mentioned).

    Yeah, Ok. I keep forgetting that some people do internet stuff on their phones.

    827:

    Re: 'At no time does it include powers or responsibilities to create, operate or indeed fund an air force.'

    Over half of US military aircraft belong to the Army or Navy - therefore I'm guessing these branches have good infrastructure in place to look after things if DT gets in a snit with the USAF and cuts off their funding. Or Congress could temporarily 're-assign' USAF aircraft to the the other forces so that the US would maintain its air power. The latter is probably easier and faster than passing an amendment to permanently name the USAF as a mandatory must-fund budget item.

    828:

    And you missed my response, that the US Government is not limited by the Constitution to do only those things described in the Constitution hence the US Army Corp of Engineers, NASA, Medicare, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Thanksgiving Presidential pardoning of the turkeys (which is, if you think about it, quite a dreadful event) etc.

    If the Constitution as amended bars the Government from doing something then it can't do it otherwise it's a free-fire zone legally speaking -- creating and funding a Space Force, killing Native Americans and appropriating their lands, Jim Crow, you name it, it can be done by the Legislature and the Executive until the unelected black-robed jurisprudents in the Supreme Court say "No".

    829:

    Ummm. Yeah. Infrastructure's one word for it. Here's a bit more detail on part of the infrastructure that allows the Pentagon to maintain itself in the face of, shall we say, what they might regard as suboptimal leadership?

    https://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-audit-budget-fraud/

    830:

    Re: In-auditable Pentagon 'books'

    This is totally nuts - 6.5 TRILLION $$$ as a 'plug' to balance the ledger! Reads like a Ponzi scheme. The Pentagon could be a good place to institute blockchain because it's unlikely that the Pentagon pays its major suppliers in cash and doesn't get any receipts.*

    Checked a couple of job sites: lots of job openings for CPAs at suppliers of the Pentagon. Nothing for the Pentagon itself. Troubling: the military has JAG (in-house lawyers) and medics but no in-house certified accountants?

    • This is where synchronized parallel audits of randomly selected Pentagon suppliers would come in handy because they would help show whether this is across-the-board incompetence vs. fraud. Matters because you'd have different 'solutions' depending on whether it's across-the-board (i.e., most likely incompetence) or limited/worst in select accounts/suppliers (i.e., most likely fraud). Alternatively could literally keep a second auditor-supervised set of books for a couple of years and then do comparisons to see where the greatest deviations are. Anyways - there are solutions and work-arounds despite being messy and probably taking a few years.
    831:

    Nojay @ 821: I don't know when the states National Guards were set up -- they might have been initially meant as a halfway-house between an irregular muster of militiamen and a full-blown Federal army. That HUMMV has left the maintenance garage long ago, of course.

    The militia technically became known as the National Guard with the Militia Act of 1903. The State of New York started using the name for their state militia in 1824 to honor Lafayette. The state militias were originally "set up" in Colonial times or at whatever later date their states were first organized as territories prior to joining the Union.

    There are 29 Army National Guard units whose lineage goes back to colonial times - 28 to English colonial units & one unit of the Puerto Rican National Guard that traces back to June 1, 1765 and the formation of the Milicias disciplinadas de la Isla de San Juan de Puerto Rico while it was still a possession of the Empire of Spain. There are 24 units that can trace their history back to the war of 1812, with 19 of them having campaign ribbons .

    Militia units provided 70% of the soldiers that fought in the Mexican–American War and were the majority of soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War, as well as providing the majority of American soldiers for the Spanish–American War.

    PS: It's HMMWV - High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle.

    832:

    SFreader @ 830: Re: In-auditable Pentagon 'books'

    This is totally nuts - 6.5 TRILLION $$$ as a 'plug' to balance the ledger! Reads like a Ponzi scheme. The Pentagon could be a good place to institute blockchain because it's unlikely that the Pentagon pays its major suppliers in cash and doesn't get any receipts.

    Checked a couple of job sites: lots of job openings for CPAs at suppliers of the Pentagon. Nothing for the Pentagon itself. Troubling: the military has JAG (in-house lawyers) and medics but no in-house certified accountants?

    6.5 Trillion is 70 years accumulation of successes & failures in the Pentagon's black budget all buried under "If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

    DARPA gave us the internet, but how many dead end projects did they end up burying along the way? Ever hear of the "Backster antenna"?

    833:

    You've read the article?

    It's worse than what you wrote. Plugs are accounting additions that are meant (in tiny increments) to make big budgets balance. The Pentagon known budget is reportedly on order 99.9% plugs. That's how you get trillions of plugs in a billion dollar budget. What that appears to mean is that money's basically being laundered: money in their multi-billion budget is moving around so much between accounts (plugged both ways) that you can't tell where the money that has been appropriated is actually being spent.

    Now there are a couple of outcomes, some good, some bad.

    One is that Congressional appropriations are generally supposed to be spent the year they're appropriated. Apparently some (large?) proportion of the Pentagon budget gets sheep-dipped and turned into 5 year funds or...who knows? This is illegal per the Constitution (see the article), but after WWII in particular, the military could make the argument that it couldn't ramp up from peacetime footing to wartime footing fast enough to defeat a modern enemy, particularly if Congress is arguing about whether or not to get involved until we're Pearl Harbored again. They can argue, with some historical basis, that having a huge secret slush fund is part of the national defense.

    They can also point to the various politicians who have been under the influence of foreign powers and who have oversight power (this theoretically might apply to some current and former California Reps. Who'd even believe that the POTUS is be anything other than 100% Pro American?). Having a crapped up budget is one way to make espionage more difficult. It also makes the US military look mightier than it is, because everybody thinks they're running through trillions, and that's probably mostly paper.

    They almost certainly fund some rather enormous black budgets out of it too.

    And there's a lot of power in knowing what's actually going on within some part of a budget, rather than what's visible on the outside.

    But yes, rather a lot of the activities probably would result in convictions if they saw daylight. Hard to say how much that is without independent oversight.

    For the fiction writers, that's a big ol' "here be dragons" land to play in. What's the DoD hiding? That they're trying to fight climate change in the absence of guidance? That they're fighting off alien invasions? Colonizing other planets through gateways? That they've got a demon contained in the center of the Pentagon, and the cafeteria at the center was set up to use the heat the monster generates to allay suspicion?

    834:

    Well, there was one major SF series where a character was surprised by the money spent on $thing and the response was "Did you think we actually spend $1_000 buying a hammer?"

    835:

    Re: '... 6.5 Trillion is 70 years accumulation '

    IMO, the larger portion (90%+) of these plugs is quite recent - past 10-15 years. It probably started (as per article) with a few little plugs here and there that added up to no more than 1% of the total budget. (Technically acceptable as a 'rounding error'.) But because they chose to bury rather than correct, it's grown to over 99% of the budget. IOW, the Pentagon's acctg system is a vast out of control cancer. Since it no longer serves any meaningful 'accounting' purpose, they may as well set up a new one with appropriate oversight and controls.

    Even so, still think that they need to cross-check their current/old system against whatever system they eventually put in to identify/verify systemic issues and/or fraud.

    DARPA connection -

    Hey - as the most complex 'household' (shopping cart) in America, maybe the Pentagon can get some of their bright AI researchers/engineers to design an optimal self-scaling accounting system for itself. Then, like the Internet, they can release it as a boon to the public. Add in a human-AI interface (AI has a subprogram that conversationally interacts with humans) we could end up with a universal always present accounting system that could automatically take a pol's speech and match his/her promises against real-world data to instantaneously provide a 'BS percentage' score.

    836:

    Re: '"Did you think we actually spend $1_000 buying a hammer?"'

    Define 'hammer'.

    In most instance, 'yes' they probably did.

    837:

    Any spec-built coffee cup (or hammer) tends to be expensive, because you're paying the time for it to be designed and built, and engineers aren't cheap. Our coffee cups are cheap because it's designed once and replicated thousands of times. That spreads the cost out until it's cheap on a per-unit basis.

    With the DoD, I'm puzzling out to what degree you want a transparent budget for any military. The problem is the security dilemma, which is not a new concept (I think the Tao Te Ching referred to it, or if not them, Sun Tzu). The problem is that, in an anarchistic system like international politics (e.g. there's no unified planetary government), if one party starts spending more on defense, other parties take that as a threat and start spending more on their own. Therefore, your own paranoia about your security can make the threats facing you bigger, not smaller.

    Covering up what you're actually spending on your military is one way to get around this threat, at least sort of.

    There's also the espionage problem: if the US is spending billions investigating, oh, Star Wars, or hypersonic missiles, then everyone else assumes these are real technologies and those that can start investing in them as well. Moreover, a trained analyst can learn a lot from reading budgets. One example is the supposition that the US has a Stealth troop transport plane. There are multiple lines of evidence that we've got at least one large unknown stealth plane out there (see the flying dorito chips reports), and when an air war specialist looks at what we do know about the stealth fleet, the big hole is in troop transport. That leads to the logical supposition that the US has the stealth equivalent of a C-130 flying out there. That's simply from a few observations and budget lines. The more transparent the budget is, the harder it is to hide these things.

    Then there's the obvious flip side that you refer to, which is that lack of audit almost inevitably turns to criminal behavior and corruption. This needs to be kept under control, and that's hard. How much do you trust the auditors? They'd have to have such monstrously high secret clearances to clean up the mess that they'd pretty much be under house arrest for the next few decades, just to keep them from being kidnapped and pumped for what they learned. Also, if it turns out some manager is crooked but necessary, what do you do about them? How much of their bad behavior do you tolerate? It's not like you can let them go be, say, Russian consultants if they're fired.

    838:

    See. Problem with that stance is there is an assumption that nuclear should be treated differently than other industries. Now, any sort of company in a stable industry has an unsolved management problem that means that competent execution, as opposed to bone staggering stupidity, is unlikely.

    My assertion is that, as long as nuclear demonstrably kills fewer people and does less environmental damage than coal, we shouldn't regulate it separately from other power generation methods. (Okay, maybe exaggerated). This applies even though nuclear plants will be just as mismanaged as other facilities.

    Also, for the excess capacity issue, gigantic seasonal variations might be dealt with using storage as fuel, albeit at a poor efficiency.

    839:

    The one caveat is that you can't build city-destroying bombs with small amounts of specially refined coal or oil. Or solar panels or wind turbines, for that matter. This implies a whole other level of security needed.

    However, I'd agree that power plants need to be regulated better in any case. The problem here is late night emissions and similar games, played with coal and gas power plants. They're not necessarily better than nuclear plants at being clean and law-abiding, it's just that the consequences of them breaking the law are more insidious than spectacular, unless something blows up.

    That's another benefit of solar, at least: screwed up plant management tends to stay on the plant site, rather than burning down or poisoning the neighborhood. In this regard they're even better than wind turbines, which can cause a lot of damage when they break down, either by having those long turbine blades "jump" off the turbine and land some distance away, or by having the turbine transmission catch fire in a high wind and shed burning debris, possibly starting a fire.

    840:

    "Hammer, weildy" - a 4lb cast mild steel double peen head, mounted on an 18" hickory shaft.

    841:

    I've seen a wind turbine go on fire when it wouldn't feather in a high wind; one of the really big ones on the 300' tall masts. That sort of wind is a "several times a year" occurrence in Scotland.

    842:

    Cthulhu, no. Coyote, yes.

    843:

    Um, electrolyse water into h2 and 02, and burn it when you need more power?

    844:

    Nope. Definitely Sithrak the Blind Gibberer. He's definitely a Trump/Brexit kind of god.

    845:

    I'm not remotely an engineer, but I suspect you'd lose ridiculous amounts of power that way.

    846:

    Well, the critical point here is not "I are an engineer", but to be able to not say "There are no carbons in the state diagram; we have found zero carbons generation. Eleebeetee!!" and I think you've managed that.

    847:

    I wasn't thinking about carbon one way or another. I suppose that a certain amount of energy is lost every time you put energy in a battery, but how much do you lose by any particular method? Not part of my knowledge base, I'm afraid.

    848:

    Damn! That's what I'd like. The price has seriously dropped... but I had been looking at diesel, and they want to hit you up for that, because a) it lasts almost forever, and b) uses le$$ fuel....

    Thanks!

    849:

    The National Guard is almost always referred to as the modern version of the militia, by US writers.

    The right-wing's idea of a militia is about that of the Branch Dildonians of a few years ago.

    850:

    Ah, here we get lucky. The isotope mix of plutonium from power reactors cannot be used to make atomic bombs. After 400 years, (cf above) maybe.

    In any event, extracting plutonium and making bombs are sufficiently large industrial processes that they can only be done in secret by a nation state. Any place with an adequate support for that level of industry is going to have a functioning government and they are unlikely to give planning permission for that kind of factory.

    As far as extracting hydrogen from water with excess capacity goes, burning it for load leveling is very likely uneconomic but combining it with CO2 from the air to make carbon neutral fuel would be with a high enough carbon tax. Large aircraft and globe spanning cargo (and cruise) ships aren't using batteries any time soon.

    851:

    Dammit. Now you have me thinking about this stuff. Suppose you have solar panels instead of a connection to the power company. And of course there are times of day when you have Too Many Electrons. So you buy the proper equipment and a couple tanks, and when your electrons aren't doing anything else, you run the equipment and fill your tanks with oxygen and hydrogen. You can probably sell the oxygen, or add it (in small quantities) to the gas mix in your house. You can burn the hydrogen to run a generator at night...

    It sounds all neat and scifi, particularly the bit about increasing the amount of oxygen in your house, but I'm not sure it pays as well as owning a battery and buying some houseplants, and I'm pretty sure it isn't carbon neutral.

    852:

    "Branch Dildonians" - sounds like something else escaped from OGLAF to me .... ( Excluding the dragon-dildo / dwarves sketch, of course )

    853:

    Re: '"Did you think we actually spend $1_000 buying a hammer?"'

    Define 'hammer'.

    I don't know about hammers, but I used to know someone who trained fighter mechanics, and he got really pissed when someone pulled out the story about the $1000 wrench.

    If you have a loose nut (or anything) inside the skin of a fighter pulling high Gs nasty things happen. Which means you have to be very careful not to leave anything inside when doing maintenance. So if you need to unbolt something you use a special* 'wrench' that makes damn certain that the bolt (nut, washer, whatever) doesn't accidentally fall off into the aircraft. Because if it does you need to start taking off the skin until you find it, which is a hell of a lot more work and expense that paying $1000 for a tool that will last years.

    If you're spending millions for an aircraft, plus paying for highly qualified specialists to operate and maintain it, it's foolish to 'save' a thousand by insisting they use a spanner from Walmart instead.

    Sometimes expensive equipment is the cheaper long-term option.

    *Custom designed, limited production, so expensive.

    854:

    I don't know about hammers, but I used to know someone who trained fighter mechanics, and he got really pissed when someone pulled out the story about the $1000 wrench.

    https://www.denios.co.uk/shop/ppe-work-safety-equipment/spark-free-tools-for-ex-zones/hammers/

    Here's a range of hammers that cost up to $150 each off-the-shelf. The only thing special about them is that the heads are made from phosphor-bronze and don't cause sparks even if you use them to hit steel or iron components. Very handy to have around in, for example, an explosives magazine. Sure you could get a Walmart hammer for $10 but...

    855:

    Storing large tanks of oxygen and hydrogen. What could possibly go wrong?

    In general this is a problem with LIon batteries too: when the energy density starts getting up towards that of gasoline, so does the fire danger. Having 100 kWh stored in a battery (lithium, hydrogen, whatever) is a bit more flammable than having the equivalent amount of concrete sitting there.

    856:

    I personally wouldn't disagree with that, any more than I'm furious about a $1000 coffee maker in the cockpit of the B-2, or whatever was the original of this (coffee maker? Toilet seat?). It's just another variation of the Vimes Boots problem.

    The bigger question is how much of the stated cost of the aircraft actually is in the planes, and how much of it went into something else, like Spec Ops teams in Niger (why were they there? We're not at war with Niger). Expensive planes are expensive planes, but if they're cost got doubled in part to support black ops and in part to pad executive salaries in places that the brass hopes to work when they retire, that's an entirely different problem.

    I'm also willing to bet that the mechanics working on the military planes have no idea what the planes actually cost to design and build, any more than all the US hospital pharmacists I know have any idea what their patients are going to be charged for the drugs they supply. If my supposition is correct, this points to a subtle and profound problem in both the military and the medical sectors in the US, and it helps explain why their costs are so profoundly out of control.

    With hospitals at least, the problem there is that the cost, especially for emergency room care, is a combination of profiteering in the hospital (if the hospital is for-profit. Many are not), plus the hospital trying to recoup the cost of treating all its charity patients by charging paying patients more, plus negotiations between the hospital and the insurance companies over what costs will be paid and what won't be...after the service has been rendered.

    857:

    Re: '... to what degree you want a transparent budget for any military.'

    To the degree that you can tell whether someone's ripping off the public purse/electorate.

    Observation: So you/Pentagon implicitly have more trust in maintaining adequate security among the tens of thousands folks that work on these super-duper-SeeKret projects than in the couple of hundred (max) independent gov't-security-cleared 'internal auditors'.

    Please enlighten me re: your rationale.

    858:

    (Been away. Back now: will blog afresh in a day or so.)

    The bigger question is how much of the stated cost of the aircraft actually is in the planes, and how much of it went into something else

    A huge problem is pork barrel in defense procurement: if you want to sell a modern Very Expensive Aircraft (VEA) overseas you probably have to contract out some bits of the construction work, just as domestic US pork barrel politics kicks in when you're getting a program through the House Appropriations Committee process (i.e. a factory in every state with a senator/congressman on the relevant committee has to get some of the work so the legislator's able to point to it when they campaign for re-election 2 or 4 years down the line on a program that has at least a 5-10 year ramp-up). This is noteworthy in the JSF/F-35, specifically the F-35B STO/VL variant—the lift fan contract went to Rolls Royce because that throws $5Bn or so in the direction of a British company and the RAF is buying a metric shitload of the things (so they can be based on the QE class carriers). That's not to say the F-35B doesn't need a lift fan—that's what makes it possible to land the things on a carrier with no cat and trap support, like all the USMC assault ships—but parcelling the work out to multiple companies isn't going to make things cheaper.

    (Indeed, it could be argued that it'd have been cheaper not to build the F-35B, but to focus on the F-35A (for the USAF) and the F-35C (for the US Navy and Royal Navy), a pure cat-and-trap carrier version—gradually phasing out the non-catapult-equipped USMC ships in favour of providing air support off real carriers (the Royal Navy QE ships had catapults as an option but this was rejected by the government because look at the sexy Harrier replacement, sigh).

    859:

    I'm not a fan of the way the DoD does business in most cases.

    The problem, as Charlie pointed out in 858, is that the whole thing is completely political. Complete transparency won't make for a better military, but it will make for an even more politicized one. However, the corrupt mess we have ironically serves as a bulwark against the current US Administration taking over the US military and reworking it along more authoritarian lines.

    With regard to contractors vs. auditors, the problem is one of scale. When you have a secret clearance, you're read into a particular program and learn certain details about that program. If you sell those details to the Chinese, you've only leaked what you know.

    The problem for the auditors is that they have to determine the real costs of every program, particularly if they're going to disentangle the plugs and determine where money actually was spent. That's dangerous knowledge to have, because they know, fairly directly, both how ready the military actually is and what it's going to be doing for the next ten years. Get one of them to defect (or simply kidnap and interrogate them), and you've got the answer to whether the US can win a war with you. Once they've done their job, what do you do with them, assassinate them for knowing too much? And what do they do for the rest of their careers? They're ideally situated to take over the corrupt practices they've uncovered, but if they straighten the whole system out, can they ever work anywhere else? Concentrating that much information in that few heads is dangerous.

    860:

    Quantifying it is not my expertise either, but you're way ahead of a lot of people by being able to identify that the conversions are not 100% efficient. A LOT of the people I know who say "electric vehicles are the way forward" refuse to accept that.

    861:

    gradually phasing out the non-catapult-equipped USMC ships in favour of providing air support off real carriers

    The USMC LHDs are assault landing ships, each equivalent in size to any other Navy's actual carriers -- the Royal Navy's QE-class carriers are larger than them but only by 50% and the LHDs are a similar size to the French carrier, the Charles de Gaulle. The USMC really wants to retain the capability to operate strike fighters off their own decks under their own operational command.

    (the Royal Navy QE ships had catapults as an option but this was rejected by the government because look at the sexy Harrier replacement, sigh).

    Not really -- fitting catapults to the QE-class would be a bodge since they're powered by Trent-class gas turbines burning aviation fuel, no steam plant to power a conventional catapult and they don't have enough electrical power in reserve to drive the EMALS electrical catapult system going into the Ford-class nuclear carriers. Those CVNs are about 2/3 bigger than the QEs but have five times the electrical power on hand (2 x 300MWe reactors) for propulsion, catapult launching power etc. One thing about flying the F-35B is that the QE-class carriers and LHDs can take significant damage to the deck and still fly and recover aircraft, not something guaranteed with a CATOBAR carrier.

    There's also "battleship" inflation -- an F-35 fully loaded for a mission can weigh up to 30 tonnes, a bit heavier than, say, a previous-generation twin-seater Buccaneer so any catapults on the QEs would have to be a lot more powerful than anything the RN had ever used and that energy has to come from somewhere, generated and stored on-board and space is at a premium even on a 60,000 tonne carrier.

    What might have worked would be to fit a small submarine-sized nuclear reactor just to power the EMALS catapults...

    862:

    Heteromeles @ 837: Any spec-built coffee cup (or hammer) tends to be expensive, because you're paying the time for it to be designed and built, and engineers aren't cheap. Our coffee cups are cheap because it's designed once and replicated thousands of times. That spreads the cost out until it's cheap on a per-unit basis.

    https://i.etsystatic.com/6837842/r/il/f4c2b5/1661792539/il_570xN.1661792539_rraj.jpg

    863:

    A quick check on Wikipedia gives an F4-E at a little over 28_000kg, which is a bit less than an F-35, but almost exactly the same as a Buccaneer S2, so shall we say the weight gain is about 10%?

    864:

    Re: ' ... you use a special* 'wrench' that makes damn certain that the bolt (nut, washer, whatever) doesn't accidentally fall off into the aircraft.'

    Okay, this I'll buy as a valid reason.

    However, if they bought 10 times as many of these super-duper hammers as there are mechanics, or if they're still buying these hammers at the same rate year after year even after the aircraft have been retired*, we should be able to know and ask why.

    • There are airfields of retired/de-commissioned aircraft sitting on AZ and NV bases.
    865:

    The F-35 has the advantage of being powered by a 21st-century engine which is significantly more powerful than previous generation engines -- the F135 engine in the F-35 weighs about the same as one of the two J79 engines that powered the F4 but provides more dry thrust than both J79s in total and more wet thrust (with afterburner) too while being more fuel-efficient. That helps a lot to get a plane off a carrier deck whether with a catapult assist or not.

    There's another cost factor -- regular steam catapult launches bend airframes with the shock loads required to fire a 30-tonne aircraft off a deck in three seconds. This limits airframe lifespans significantly. Arrester-hook landings add to the accumulating airframe strains. A STOVL/RL aircraft like the F-35B has a much gentler launch and land cycle and will probably last a lot longer before it needs to be parted out and scrapped. There are other minor benefits of STOVL/RL like deck cycle times -- STOVL/RL can launch a wing of four aircraft in less than thirty seconds and can land them in under a minute whereas catapult takeoffs require a couple of minutes to reset the catapult and set up the next plane to launch, ditto for arrester landings.

    As an aside the EMALS launcher going onto the Ford-class CVNs provides a more controllable and less damaging launch capability than simple steam catapults meaning airframe lifespans are extended.

    866:

    Um... you missed the point of the piles ;)

    867:

    Hehe... mate of mine was training some new erks and had just been giving them the lecture about loose objects...

    ...then he bent down for some reason and a pen fell out of his shirt pocket and went down inside the aircraft. And indeed, they had to take the whole plane to bits to get it out again. I think that was a lesson well learned!

    868:

    Storing large tanks of oxygen and hydrogen. What could possibly go wrong?

    Yeah, I know. It's one of those "interesting" ideas.

    But there is a kernel of interest here: You've got a solar energy system. You've charged up your batteries, sold some power to the grid, air conditioned your house, and you still have those pesky extra electrons. What do you do with them?

    Personally, I'd run some kind of carbon-capture gadget, but those don't exist yet. (Though I think someone built a very small prototype, which might or might not scale.)

    869:

    Maybot is a Krug. Brexit is cancelled as being a mistake! ;-)

    Anyway, compliments of the season to one and all (except Krugs obviously).

    871:

    Sorry no; reference to SF novel "The Krug Syndrome".

    872:

    Well, in the original, Thomas Jørgensen had his sited-for-best-input renewable energy converters producing, not Brown's gas, but ammonia. So I suggested converting it to urea or uric acid, and making big piles of the surplus. Uric acid, at least, is stable over periods of thousands of years in big piles. And the inputs to the process are only energy and atmosphere... ;)

    873:

    Meh. There is a real nonproliferation argument, in that as members of nations with nuclear weapons we don't want other nations to be able to mount meaningful resistance. I'm not a fan of that argument, as I cannot help noticing how rapidly nations with nuclear weapons become respectable and not targets for regime change - perhaps I am cynical. Still, as far as one buys into that argument, having nuclear power as a primary means of generation seems problematic.

    However, if you gave me, and a few of my friends, unfettered access to a nuclear plant and a brief that involved killing massive numbers of people, as physicists...we would...almost certainly...set up a small genetics lab in a back room and develop a plague or three. Faster, better, cheaper, and more reliable. Nukes are for nation states. I mean, maybe a grinder and some sort of smokestack to vent massive quantities of waste to the atmosphere...but that is more of an annoyance.

    But, for the rest, if global warming was an actual problem (ie, civilization ending, billions dying), it would seem reasonable to risk maybe losing a city - and the risk probably isn't that high. Maybe a dirty bomb or two.

    Instead, there are complaints about artificially high costs, about possible safety risks when the plants are, overall, safer than coal, and (not from you, but common) that there isn't enough fuel. Or, problems with disposal... All of which indicate that people aren't sufficiently motivated to think clearly / make reasonable sacrifices.

    Instead, we develop new power sources with timelines where, right now, when they are becoming economically feasible, we've already warmed the world.

    874:

    Re: ' ... you still have those pesky extra electrons. What do you do with them?'

    Well - since I have a bunch of my old laptops kicking around, I'd plug them in and do some bitcoin mining.

    Season's Greetings to all!

    875:

    Regarding running an F-35A/C Fleet being cheaper than building F-35B, the question is “define cheaper”...

    A lot of the cost of CATOBAR comes from keeping the pilots trained to do the most stressful job in aviation, namely land a fast jet on a carrier. The US has one of its carriers doing the job of pilot training at any given time (the French had to borrow slots while theirs was in refit). Meanwhile, a STOVL carrier can surge crews aboard from other roles; it being much easier to stop and land, than land and then stop. Notably, some Harrier pilots made their first carrier landing after flying out to the Falklands Task Force.

    The US Marines are the primary customer of the F-35B, with the U.K. a close second. There are now several LHD acting as light carriers (USS WASP, for instance) and this has dramatically expanded the reach of US naval aviation. The Italians are buying F-35B to put on the Cavour, and the Japanese recently announced that they will buy some to fly from their Izumo-class “helicopter destroyers”. Presumably the Royal Australian Navy and Spanish Navy are also potential customers...

    The next question is “sortie rate” - the simulations over “how do we get the greatest amount of strikes on target, while defending the fleet” apparently drove the size and design of the QE class. Smaller carriers are not that much cheaper, but a lot less capable. Apparently the USN is quite impressed by HMS Queen Elizabeth; it turned up for a lot less than a CVN, it costs much less to run, and it carries almost as many aircraft. The whole “Nimitz carries over 90 aircraft” thing being from the days of A-4 and A-7; aircraft have grown, and packing them in makes it an utter nightmare to manage takeoffs, landings, and safe refuelling/rearmament. Better to ask how many the Nimitz-class carried on their most recent deployments; apparently it averages 64 aircraft.

    AIUI, the first F-35B Squadron to go to sea on HMS Queen Elizabeth, may be from the US Marine Corps (they’ll of course be perverted by life with the RN, with such strange concepts as alcohol on board ship, and a fixation on decent curry...)

    876:

    Two Gs in Krugg...

    I’ve got a copy, it’s a fun book ;)

    877:

    We're it still 1965 when the issue had become clear and time remained to solve the fuel problem before the year 2000 deadline, then I would fully agree with you. But we don't have 35 years spare to design, test and deploy tens or hundreds of thousands of fast breeder reactors.

    Right now the nuclear option means existing designs, and that means there's 5-10 years worth of fuel.

    878:

    Aargh.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

    More accurate estimates are closer to 230 years than 5. Or, really, 60,000 years with somewhat higher prices. That's assuming we don't change existing designs in the next 60 centuries.

    879:

    230 years “at today’s consumption rates” per that article. But we’re not talking about today’s consumption rates, since nuclear power generation now is a small fraction of the total.

    Both the technologies the article says would be available with “a small price increase” are ones that have already been discussed and debunked here. In particular the comment you are responding to from gasdive is talking to the fast breeder question. The seawater option is spurious, others already addressed how it is unlikely to break even energy-wise, much less cost-wise.

    You use of the word “accurate” is a category error - even if the article you cite represented a more truthful representation of the situation, accuracy isn’t the quality in question. But it doesn’t - it’s an off-the-cuff editorial comment written with a particular outcome in mind.

    880:

    "peak Brexit" I assume it is safe to predict that the actual insanity won't start up agin until at least next Wednesday ( 2nd January ) by which time we will be inside the "90 days to go" limit, mentioned by Charlie. What odds do "our Readers" give on: 1) No deal / 2) Some variation on May's deal / 3) Remain ... ??

    Even a "Managed no-deal" will be an utter disaster, both in the short & long-term. May's deal (so-called, actually an internationally-agreed treaty, as yet unsigned ) is, as mentioned, a shit sandwich, but better than (1) What are the odds of a Parliamentary vote on a second Referendum, which must be put through before we can have "Ref2" ??

    Oh yes - a time-extension past 29th March ???

    881:

    My bet/guess, things will continue as they have, in other words politicians will continue to act in their own self interest, or those of their sponsors.

    Art50 has no wait clause. It will run to its preordained conclusion. The deal won't be accepted by the British because it's not good enough and so the country will stumble out with nothing.

    882:

    I reckon that one key breakpoint will be 7th January, when “Brexit: The Movie” gets shown on Channel 4; if it displays it as a “screw whether it’s a good idea, we just want to win, so what if we have to lie”, it will have an effect (Cumberbatch).

    Throw in the realisation that the Civil Service/Police/Army are actually preparing for a worst case outcome; and while the ideologues will be screeching about Project Fear, it’s going to be much harder to stand up and say that “No Deal” is possible, however it’s dressed. If any airlines to refuse to accept bookings into April, and the pound crashes any further...

    I’m betting on an effort to extend Article 50. If successful, Ref2; if not, maybe fifty-fifty crash/repeal. Too many variables (as in, will politicians desperate to grab those four million former UKIP voters, cock it up for the rest of us)

    883:

    Well, we're certainly past the "joke event horizon", since the Germans are doing jokes that the English press find funny about the UK!

    884:

    Right now the nuclear option means existing designs, and that means there's 5-10 years worth of fuel.

    Aaaand ... the UK just began decommissioning the fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield due to lack of demand. Great timing, as fuel rods from a PWR are poisoned by fission products when only about 10% of the U235 in them has been used—reprocessing to extract the crap and recycling them into new fuel rods could stretch the existing fuel stockpile by a factor of 4-10, which gives us 20-50 years in which to start up both new reactor designs and new uranium mines. (Prospecting for uranium basically ceased after the 1960s when it became clear the stuff isn't exactly rare; it turns out there's so much uranium dissolved in seawater that we could plausibly extract it and run a fission economy profitably, i.e. energy spent on extraction, enrichment and processing would be outweighed by revenue generated).

    885:

    The latest YouGov poll — a big one — reported that a straight re-run of the Brexit referendum (Leave/Remain) would now deliver an 8% win for Remain.

    I'm not a betting man but I'd be willing to put some money on the margin for remain rising to 20% or higher by March 1st, with rising public hysteria. At which point, we may see a unilateral withdrawal of the Art50 declaration and the announcement of a new referendum, or a pivot to saying "the referendum was non-binding and consultative, we've given it our best shot, it's obviously not practical, now STFU".

    Either way, though, it's going to lead to long-term political instability for the UK, and probably a shot in the arm for the racist right.

    886:

    My suspicion is that the supposed drone attacks at Gatwick after Ashdown's death also concerns the gunning down of Brazilian electricians. What might happen if Owen died, are we really making long-term strategic political decisions on the basis of a House of Morgue? Disney science fiction.

    The EU exit process or the Article 50 declaration are still better names for what is happening, it is difficult to criticise the fascist press if you adopt its vocabulary.

    887:

    ...regarding the article, gasdive is correct - sorry. But, regarding long-term uranium availability, the main reason seawater extraction isn't done is that we have more or than we need. At ~ 300 USD per kg, the cost of fuel per kwh is still less than coal.

    Which brings me to...on the part of environmentalists, climate change is insufficiently important to bother supporting a perfectly plausible energy source.

    And, really, positing a 30 year development time? Take a few risks, move faster, spend real money, thorium reactors could be in production in 5ish years.

    888:

    Well cold fusion will be along to save the planet in 10 years!

    889:

    Oh, yes, you can - there is no difficulty in doing that with industrial/agricultural chemicals. Yes, nuclear power should be more tightly controlled than MOST industries, but no more than that one.

    890:

    It's worse than that - batteries are a whole fuel, and so cannot be put out by starving them of air. And enclosing them in a secure vessel turns them into potential bombs.

    891:

    My guess is that May will do her damnedest to block ANY kind of rethinking, and will be backed by enough other rabid Brexiteers to prevent Parliament taking any rational decision, until at least well into March. I don't think that she can be replaced except by her cooperation, dissolving Parliament, actual assassination or a constitutional revolution (*), and she is determined to ram Brexit through. Even if she is then overthrown, I doubt that the chaos will reduce - And Sithrak alone knows what would happen if she is overthrown after the start of March!

    I hope that your optimism is justified, but I am horribly afraid that there will be enough cold feet at the last minute to agree to May's deal, but not enough minds changed to allow it a chance. As an Irish columnist said about it, that would be followed by 21 months' of infighting and negligible progress, 2 years of extension, infighting and negligible progress, followed by Sithrak alone knows what!

    (*) Such as a Humble Address requesting HM to replace her Prime Minister :-)

    892:

    I think I see where you are getting your energy requirements from on the U from seawater thing. You are assuming it is similar to desalination. The energy requirements of pushing water through a membrane (which I assume is where you are getting your numbers) are quite different from the energy requirements of dropping a surface where a chemical reaction takes place into water and hauling it out again. Try rerunning your estimates on that basis.

    Still doesn't demonstrate that it is useful, but it does move the decimal point a few places.

    The other thing is that the cost of fuel is a small part of the total cost of running a nuclear plant. From what I know about the cost of fuel at Darlington (yes, only one data point) 100 times U cost means 2 times electricity costs.

    A nuclear plant is the interest rate cast in concrete. That plant was built while the governor of the Bank of Canada, Gerald Bouey, was trying to establish a zero inflation regime. Ontario Hydro bonds cost 15%.

    Yes, I do live in a place where the electrical utility is called Hydro, it's nice to live in the vicinity of Niagara Falls.

    893:

    It's irrelevant, anyway. As OGH says, there is enough recoverable ore for the foreseeable future, given even minimal improvement in usage efficiency. Also, estimates are that it is enrergetically recoverable even from granite; mining seawater is a catchy idea, but not needed. Uranium supplies are not the problem.

    895:

    Yes, I do live in a place where the electrical utility is called Hydro,Yes, I do live in a place where the electrical utility is called Hydro

    You say this like it would seem unusual to the rest of us. Prior to the Grantham Grocer, one of the 2 generating companies is Scotland was the "North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board". Among its achievements was the establishment of a national distribution grid and the construction of numerous hydro-electric power stations, without ever actually taking a penny piece of public money.

    896:

    Which brings me to...on the part of environmentalists, climate change is insufficiently important to bother supporting a perfectly plausible energy source.

    Why not use nuclear? Couple reasons: cooling and waste disposal.

    At this point, most of a meter of sea level rise over the next century is baked in. We can't stop it even if we have a nuclear war tomorrow and destroy civilization, thereby eliminating all fossil fuel GHG emissions, except from the burning oil fields and natural gas dumps.

    Anyway, the problem is, where do you put any big hot plant, whether it's nuclear, gas, or coal? They need cooling water, especially the nukes.

    Want to put it on the ocean? Sounds great, but in the industrial world, the coastline's already taken, so you're going to have to pay in the hundreds of millions to billions to buy the property, then you're going to have to armor the crap out of the installation against storms and earthquakes (remember Fukushima), then you're going to have to design for that meter of sea level rise in your cooling system.

    Lakes and reservoirs aren't much better, and if you've seen those bathtub rings around all the western US reservoirs, you'll realize that it's really tricky to find a place to put the intake pipes where they won't run dry, thereby endangering your power plant or at best forcing it to shut down.

    Contrast that with solar and wind. Solar does well in crappy desert areas (we're trying to keep it out of high-quality desert areas). If there's one thing the world's producing at a record pace, it's crappy desert areas. Windy areas aren't necessarily crappy deserts, although there is some overlap, and you can put wind turbines offshore to try to buffer those storm winds a little too (I'd prefer more mangroves, but whatever).

    And then there's the ultimate problem with nuclear which is that, like gas, coal, and oil, it just kicks the can down the road. People knew a century ago that fossil fuels would eventually run out. A few even tried to short the fossil fuel industry, in one case by trying to keep a fleet of cargo sail ships working for when the fuel ran out. Obviously that didn't work, and obviously it was convenient for everyone to forget what the pioneers of the industry knew. But we're at a place where we're dealing with the inconvenient truth of climate change.

    It's worth also taking a look at this">http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf">this pdf of the original Arrhenius paper on climate change, published in 1896. Towards the end (p. 19ish) he talks about the GHG contribution of burning 500 million tons of coal per year, and figures it's completely compensated by erosion of limestone worldwide. Up until the 1970s and 1980s, people assumed that technological progress would solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions and so did nothing about them. Turns out they were wrong.

    I'd simply suggest that you not make Arrhenius' mistake with nuclear power. The only excuse for swapping out oil and coal and using nuclear, swapping one finite petrochemical power source for another, is the assumption that we're find a way to deal with the waste products. After fifty years of nuclear, the manifold technical challenges of dealing with contaminated waste have paled in comparison with the political challenges of dealing with both it and keeping stupid plants away from dangerous areas. This is the same problem with gas, oil, and coal. Greenhouse gases are a waste disposal problem, and after 122 years of knowing there was a problem, we've failed to solve it.

    This is the problem facing nuclear supporters. The challenge you need to solve isn't the amount of fuel, it's making safe designs and dealing with the wastes produced. If you don't have good solutions for those, you're simply (and complacently) repeating the mistakes of the other petrochemical industries.

    897:

    in the industrial world, the coastline's already taken, so you're going to have to pay in the hundreds of millions to billions to buy the property,

    unless you're Russian. Then you just build the property and float it into position, as with their . (Designed for mass production, aimed to be used for supplying outlying Arctic coastal communities/mines with CHP: for decommissioning you just tow the barge back to the factory and send out another one.)

    These could in principle be deployed on a larger scale, globally, subject to the costs of building near-offshore grid interconnects and protecting the barges against bad weather. (Which is not insignificant: it's probably not great if, in preparation for a hurricane landfall, you have to tow a chunk of your grid base load a hundred miles out to sea.)

    The waste problem for nuclear is chimerical, to some extent: we could deal with it if (a) we reprocessed the waste to actually make full use of the fuel (reasons we don't: the requirement that fuel must be as cheap as possible, with a side order of preventing plutonium fuel cycle proliferation) and (b) we didn't insist on deep waste repositories being national on scale, which forces countries to build repositories in really stupid geological conditions rather than teaming up to build a central deep repo somewhere stable.

    These are essentially political problems arising from an insistence on our power economy being compatible with orthodox capitalist ideology, and to compete on market price rather than be seen as a strategic investment.

    898:

    "Some parts of the Yousay" is not identically equal to "the industrialised world".

    899:

    Feel free to look them up. It was the ultra-right-wing-gun-nuts-sovereign-citizens who occupied a bird sanctuary in the US northwet, and then, only, asked people to send them food/toys, and people started sending them...dildoes.

    For real.

    900:

    The French military industrial complex has a hilarious take on that concept. "You can avoid all natural disasters by sinking your powerplant from the word go" - Flexblue is a similar off-shore plant, except it is intended to be anchored to the seabed at -50 to -100 meters. Tsunamis? Do nothing down there. Storms? Also nothing. Earth-quakes? Well, the plant is not mechanically coupled to the seabed, so also do nothing. And so on and so forth. Most importantly, it is safe from protesting and political sabotage. If your customer decides they hate all things fission, you can move the entire thing elsewhere.

    Also designed from the ground up to exploit being under water to make all the systems fail-safely, though the thing that really strikes me about it is that if it is ever built, it seems inevitable that it will be entirely automated, but have a minimum crew anyway. Quite a setting, really, imagine 3 retired navy types on rotation, mostly surfing the internet, and painting murals on all the walls, because, well, you can only inspect the piping so many times in the same week..

    901:

    And then there's special service tools.

    In the early 80's, an ex's late brother-in-law, who was an auto mechanic, specialized in transmissions, and worked for a dealership in their home small town (pop on the order of 2k), he told me he was spending $3k-$4k out of HIS pocket, because the dealership was too cheap, to buy "special service tools" for the new transmissions, because you need different ones than the old ones... because the car companies see that as an enhanced revenue stream. (That is, they're deliberately making it so you can't use the old ones.)

    902:

    Please note that I keep reading that, although a dozen years or so ago, the Pentagon was ordered to have auditable records, they still can't provide them for a serious percentage of their budget.

    I want a division of forensic auditors going after their spending....

    903:

    Obvious snark: so, it's less expensive than printer ink?

    If that's the case, maybe they should build the reactors cheap, and then charge more for the fuel refills...

    904:

    The Sellafield reprocessing plant (THORP) was designed to reprocess Magnox fuel bundles into new Magnox fuel elements and MOX. We shut the last operating Magnox reactor (Wylfa 1) down about 4 years ago so there's no more fuel to reprocess, basically. The THORP line needed a lot of remedial work after several decades of operation and it wasn't worth spending the money on something that had no future inputs.

    Spent fuel gets easier to reprocess the longer you leave it so letting it cool down for twenty or thirty years before reprocessing is an advantage, especially while raw minehead uranium is so cheap. It also gives people a chance to develop simpler and cheaper processes than the at-all-costs Cold War plutonium-for-bombs extraction processes like PUREX most current spent fuel reprocessing lines are developed from. There's other techniques like pyroprocessing and possible fuel cycles that simply involve taking well-aged spent fuel and burning it alongside fresh fuel in a fast-spectrum reactor, no reprocessing needed.

    There's also a useful little bonus in leaving spent fuel to cool down for long periods, the amount of Americium-241 increases due to decay chains and that isotope makes quite a good substitute for Pu-238 as a space-rated radio-isotope thermal power source. It's longer-lived and needs more shielding but it's better than, say, strontium-90. If the Voyagers had flown with Am-241 power units they'd be at 90% power now rather than less than 50% from Pu-238 which would make them a lot more useful as operational interstellar probes. I believe ESA is seriously looking at developing such RTGs thanks to the abundant French supplies of spent fuel currently in store.

    905:

    No. No batteries aren't a whole fuel. Nor can they turn into bombs (unless you have a different definition of bombs to everyone else)

    If they thermal runaway they vent flammable electrolyte, sometimes at a temperature higher than the self ignition temperature. So they'll kick off a flame, which if you douse without cooling will reignite (exactly like many fires, which if doused, reignight if they still have fuel, oxygen and an ignition source). Pour foam on them to deprive them of air and they go out, just like a diesel fire. Pour water on them and they'll go out, unlike a diesel fire.

    I've explained this before and provided confirmation from a battery manufacturer of the correct way to deal with a battery fire but nothing convinces you. You've made up your mind, utterly from whole cloth.

    Please stop spouting rubbish.

    906:

    That has now become the industry standard as vehicle manufacturers move away from/beyond selling cars to using cars as bait to get all the other moneys as well.

    My brother in law is a mechanic in a corner (non dealership shop). If he wants to repair a GM vehicle he must buy, maintain and use his set of GM tools. If he wants to repair a VW he must buy, maintain and use his VW tools. All of these tools are sold at a premium.

    To some degree there is an aftermarket, but the automakers put some effort into ensuring that 'proprietary' tools are 'legitimate' while knockoffs are not going to work quite right (or might invalidate the warranty).

    Of course, this means that mechanics must charge more to repair certain kinds of vehicles - the 'GM' premium etc.

    907:

    Oh, how about some actual good news?

    I read that the median birthrate for the world is down to 2.4 children. Some countries are higher (Niger, I think, they said was 7, but then, infant mortality...). Also, more developed countries are below replacement rate.

    Still hoping to stay below 10B before it really starts dropping.

    908:

    Bombs come in 2 main types, high and low explosive. (I'll ignore atomic if you will)

    These differ primarily in the rate of propagation of the blast energy wave front when they explode. Conveniently, the definition splits low from high explosive at a propagation rate of mach 1.0 (ISO standard atmosphere at sea level). A strengthened "dry" accumulator case, when heated sufficiently to release the chemical and electrical potential at an uncontrolled rate, moves the blast front at ~M1.1. So how does this differ from any other high explosive bomb?

    909:

    Charlie @ 885 & EC @ 891 My money is closer to Charlie's bet than EC's. May, remember, campaigned quite hard to Remain ( Unlike Corbyn, who is pro-Brexit for his own potty "reasons" ) ... but the rabid Brexiteers make up a much larger proportion of the tory party than Labour & are much, MUCH, MUCH louder. As Charlie implies, they are already discredited, but it has, I think, unfortunately got to be let run until approx the last week of January, so that when ( If? ) the switch does come, they are properly & publicly discredited. If a 2nd_Ref vote passes the Commons before approx 10th Feb, there is time to organise, vote, get result & withdraw At-50 before the deadline ... On Charlie's subsidary point about the remaining 20-25% of rabid hardcore remainers & racist xenophobes, maybe, in the long--term that would be a "good thing" as well - becvause their ravings, will make the rest of the populace draw away from them & we might get something resembling Social Democracy. [ Which in my long-gone youth was called, IIRC: "Butskellism" - a reference to a "noble" tory, R. A. Butler of very socially-liberal & One Nation views & the then leader of the Labour party, Hugh Gaitskell ... ]

    910:

    Sorry, but renewables are not going to cut it.

    Given their low energy density, mass employment of renewables will result is massive destruction of the Earth's remaining habitat areas. A wind farm or solar array will require dozens or hundreds of square miles to produce the same amount of energy from a nuclear power plant whose physical footprint is measured in a few dozen acres (including the employee parking lot)

    In that sense, renewables are analogous to organic farming which doesn't use pesticides or herbicides but requires twice the acreage (and destroys twice the habitat) to produce the same amount of food as industrial farming techniques.

    Only nukes will save us, lots and lots of new nukes.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/nuclear-power-paves-the-only-viable-path-forward-on-climate-change?fbclid=IwAR2806ypmJxlYX9apGoBnoA-5PpviOGZWdX-5nvse8frB5xGalrhDc60OBI

    James Lovelock, founder of the Gaia Hypothesis, if 100% correct: nuclear power is the only green solution.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/james-lovelock-nuclear-power-is-the-only-green-solution-564446.html

    But with six billion, and growing, few options remain; we can not continue drawing energy from fossil fuels and there is no chance that the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time. If we had 50 years or more we might make these our main sources. But we do not have 50 years; the Earth is already so disabled by the insidious poison of greenhouse gases that even if we stop all fossil fuel burning immediately, the consequences of what we have already done will last for 1,000 years. Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendants and for civilisation.

    Worse still, if we burn crops grown for fuel this could hasten our decline. Agriculture already uses too much of the land needed by the Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry. A car consumes 10 to 30 times as much carbon as its driver; imagine the extra farmland required to feed the appetite of cars.

    By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy. True, burning natural gas instead of coal or oil releases only half as much carbon dioxide, but unburnt gas is 25 times as potent a greenhouse agent as is carbon dioxide. Even a small leakage would neutralise the advantage of gas...

    Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer.

    911:

    As for nuclear waste, yeah it's nasty - but easily manageable because it is concentrated.

    The Nuclear Energy Institute says: A typical nuclear power plant in a year generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. The nuclear industry generates a total of about 2,300 metric tons of used fuel per year. Over the past four decades, the entire industry has produced about 62,500 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. If used fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, this would cover a football field about seven yards deep."

    Increasing concentration - and reduced footprints - is the key.

    As Vlacav Smil wrote in "Energy and Civiization" the history of civilization is a history of ever more concentrated sources of energy: fire then farming them fossil fuel and then it should have been fission (followed one day by fusion). Renewables buck this necessary historical trend by being less concentrated sources of energy.

    912:

    I remember that, and I think your battery manufacturer was talking arse to avoid people being put off buying their stuff. Certainly they seemed to think that producing free hydrogen fluoride was a non-problem, which is indisputably arse. (After all, "pouring water on this produces a substance which will EAT YOUR BONES" isn't a very encouraging statement.)

    Batteries are supposed to deliver their stored chemical energy in electrical form to be dissipated in an external load. But under failure conditions they can also release it internally, at an uncontrolled rate, in a process which requires no external reactants. (For some inexplicable reason, one of my chemistry teachers, whenever a question arose to which the answer was something like that, would always pick me to answer it...)

    Not just lithium batteries but other types as well can do this, although types with a sufficiently low energy density may do nothing more spectacular than getting a bit warm. (I blew up a car battery once by discharging it too fast, and my clothes fell to bits, in a vivid demonstration of the instability of an amide linkage in strongly acidic conditions.)

    913:

    Umm, I think you're missing the point on nuclear waste.

    Yes, spent fuel can be reprocessed into other useful stuff. That's fine. The problems are things like the mops contaminated with tritiated water that can't be cleaned or reused and has to be trashed. Or those robots in Fukushima rendered useless by the amount of ionizing radiation they were exposed too, that also can't be remanufactured. The word for this is low level radioactive waste, and it's a big headache. It's not fuel, but it's not safe.

    While I suppose that fuel will get reprocessed in a hypothetical nuclear society, the real problem is the vast quantities of low level waste that will have to be warehoused for a century or ten until it's no longer dangerous. Most of this stuff is as useless as a vast surplus of carbon dioxide or landfill methane contaminated with a dozen other less flammable gases. What do you do with all this high entropy, unsafe cruft?

    As for Smil, it's worth reading his thoughts on carbon sequestration, if you want to have a happy day.

    914:

    If you are willing to weld almost anything into a strong enough casing and heat it enough you can make it blow up. That's why I specifically mentioned definitions. Put water into a steel casing and heat it sufficiently and you've got a bomb, but despite the fact that you can make a bomb out of tap water, few people define it as an explosive and pouring water into a container won't see you up on anti terror charges.

    Batteries come in thin walled containers and have safety valves. It takes some serious work to make a bomb out of them, and wrapping them in cardboard won't cut it.

    If you really want a bomb, petrol is your answer and 'fuel-air' will get you a proper bomb.

    915:

    tl;dr - Batteries are not bombs because you say they're not.

    916:

    You're four years out of date: We've got proposals at least back to 2014 to turn the US into 100% renewables. http://thesolutionsproject.org/

    And we've got the possibility of a Green New Deal.

    So let's see what happens, shall we? Anyway, I already wrote a book on what happens if all this fails, and I've got to revise it one of these days.

    917:

    Yes, me, and every regulatory authority on earth.

    918:

    And yet, there you all are in de Nile! ;-) (Ironic really, considering one of the things you do not do with dry accumulators, like Gremlins, is get them wet.) Or is there some specific reason why C4, which is a good if expensive fuel for making open fires, is "high explosive" other than "in certain conditions it can be made to explode"?

    "Batteries have safety valves" is not a sufficient answer unless you can show us the safety case as to why/how there is a less than 10E-10 probability of detonation (based on UK HSE requirements for energetics work, and assuming a UK vehicle fleet of 1E8 machines. I don't normally do accumulators, but do use safety case analyses in my day job).

    919:

    As I said before, I believe you folks are headed for a hard brexit, as had always been the preferred endgame for those soul less extremely wealthy individuals who started this charade to begin with. I doubt there was ever a chance for any other outcome.

    920:

    Smil (aka "Slayer of Bullshit") is right about carbon capture. Which means it can't be a man made industrial solution.

    For starts we will need lots and lots of trees (or the equivalent in oceanic kelp beds).

    While there is no silver bullet that by itself will prevent global warming, we have a host of options we can deploy - each of which can contribute greatly to the solution. IOW, we have lots of silver buckshot.

    One option is to plant lots and lots of trees. One trillion trees to be exact:

    https://www.trilliontrees.org/

    Let's look at planting trees and crunch the numbers.

    32,000,000,000 tons Amount of CO2 sent into the atmosphere by human activities

    43% Fraction retained in the atmosphere (not absorbed by existing carbon sinks)

    13,760,000,000 tons Annual accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere

    Almost 50 lbs Amount CO2 sequestered by typical mature tree annually

    550,400,000,000 each Number of trees required 550 billion 69 trees per capita worldwide

    300 trees Minimum number of trees per acres for reforestation or wild life enhancement 726 trees Maximum number of trees per acre required for reforestation

    1,834,666,667 acres Maximum area required 2,866,667 square miles

    758,126,722 acres Minimum area required 1,184,573 square miles

    1,296,396,694 acres Average area required 2,025,620 square miles

    2 million square miles, equivalent to:

    52% of Canada 80% of the Australian outback 56% of the Sahara or 1% of the total land area of the Earth

    921:

    Another option is to fertilize bare areas of the ocean with iron sulfate.

    Fortunately, initial efforts at CO2 sequestration via iron fertilization of the oceans is lookng very promising - and replenishes fish stock:

    http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/120-tons-of-iron-sulphate-dumped-into.html

    http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/bureaucracy-and-hurdles-for-attempting.html

    The study has shown that "a substantial proportion of carbon from the induced algal bloom sank to the deep sea floor. These results, which were thoroughly analysed before being published now, provide a valuable contribution to our better understanding of the global carbon cycle."

    "Over 50 per cent of the plankton bloom sank below 1000 metre depth indicating that their carbon content can be stored in the deep ocean and in the underlying seafloor sediments for time scales of well over a century."

    "Iron Fertilization helps restore fish populations. In 2012, the distribution of 120 tons of iron sulfate into the northeast Pacific to stimulate a phytoplankton bloom which in turn would provide ample food for baby salmon."

    "The verdict is now in on this highly controversial experiment: It worked. In fact it has been a stunningly over-the-top success. This year, the number of salmon caught in the northeast Pacific more than quadrupled, going from 50 million to 226 million. In the Fraser River, which only once before in history had a salmon run greater than 25 million fish (about 45 million in 2010), the number of salmon increased to 72 million."

    "The cost for iron fertilization would be “ridiculously low” as compared with any other possible method of carbon sequestration. For quite seriously all you need to do is throw rubbish over the side of the ship to make it happen."

    "No, really: ferrous sulphate is a waste product of a number of different industrial processes (if I’m recalling correctly, one source would be the production of titanium dioxide for making white paint, a large industry) and it really is a waste. It gets thrown into holes in the ground"

    Accrding to Next Big Future the iron used in ocean fertilization results in a plankton bloom, which massively increases fish stocks (120 tons of iron sulfate became 100,000 tons of salmon. The plankton not eaten by the fish dies and settles on the ocean floor taking the CO2 used to build their bodies with them in permanent sequestration.

    The sequestion is accomplished at a rate of:

    "Recent research has expanded this constant to "106 C: 16 N: 1 P: .001 Fe" signifying that in iron deficient conditions each atom of iron can fix 106,000 atoms of carbon, or on a mass basis, each kilogram of iron can fix 83,000 kg (83 metric tonnes)of carbon dioxide."

    Global CO2 emissions in 2013 were estimated to be 33.4 billion metric tonnes from fossil fuels and cement production. Using the ratio above, a bit more than 400,000,000 kilograms (400,000 metric tonnes) of iron sulphate could sequester our CO2 emissions each year - about 3,333 times the amount used in the experiment cited by NBF. This actually sounds doable in the ocean fisheries around the globe.

    More than that would reduce the overall amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Possibly resulting in global cooling.

    A single ultra large crude tanker has a capacity of 550,000 dead weight tonnes - 150,000 tonnes more than what would be needed to sequester annual CO2 emissions.

    922:

    How about not eating so much meat.

    One option is replacing traditional livestock with meat grow from a lab with stem cells or veggie based meats.

    First, take a surprising look at how we actually use the planet.

    https://ourworldindata.org/yields-and-land-use-in-agriculture

    See world map in section I.6. For example: the amount of area used to graze and feed livestock is equal to the entire Western Hemisphere (27% of the world's landmass). The amount used for farming is about the size of China and East Asia (7%). Cities are only 1%. Replace livestock with meat grown in bioreactor vats from stem cells and most of this area can be returned to natural habitat.

    In fact, the single most important thing an individual can do to save the planet is to forgo meat and dairy products as much as possible.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth

    The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Other recent research shows 86% of all land mammals are now livestock or humans. The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.

    And let's replace steel and concrete with wood.

    https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/tall-wood-gets-green-light-building-code.html?fbclid=IwAR3EOW79SbM4L2gBAARibl4_ebbsrdhQ8VNCMbAY67A6Pzo-8haQLJPPHdg

    "The proposed rules would allow buildings up to 18 storeys or 270 feet tall, with the building fully sprinklered and all the wood fire protected, much like it was in the Brock Commons tower in Vancouver. In buildings up to 12 storeys, mass timber components could be exposed"

    This is actually a big deal, It allows the construction of timber skyscrapers, allowing the replacement of cement and steel with heavy timber and engineered plywood. Steel and concrete production together account for 10% of all greenhouse gases. OTOH, building with wood sequesters huge amounts of CO2 in the wood structure itself.

    https://www.cnn.com/style/article/wooden-skyscrapers-timber-trend-catching-fire-duplicate-2/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0OZSlBLMrb_59vdo19mUwyTTq0YDejV1IZZro8rI2XlQ8MZPm1IZacUpc

    "Tokyo skyscraper is set to become the world's tallest wooden building. Japanese company Sumitomo Forestry says its 1,148-feet-tall timber tower will be completed in 2041, to mark the 350th anniversary of the business that year. The W350 tower will cost an estimated 600 billion yen ($5.6 billion) to build. The 70-story tower will be a hybrid structure made from 90% wooden materials. A steel vibration-control framework will underpin the design -- an important feature in a city where earthquakes are frequent."

    https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/new-densified-wood-is-as-strong-as-steel/

    Using a new technique for densifying wood, researchers at the University of Maryland have been able to compress wood to 20% of its original thickness resulting in complete densification. The natural wood is first boiled in a solution of NaOH/Na2SO3 which makes it more porous and flexible. The wood is then compressed perpendicular to its growth direction at a temperature of 100°C. “It is as strong as steel, but six times lighter,” said Teng Li, co-leader of the research team. “It takes 10 times more energy to fracture than natural wood. It can even be bent and molded at the beginning of the process."

    923:

    But only nukes can save us.

    Nukes and trees.

    https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/can-cross-laminated-timber-save-world.html?fbclid=IwAR0lvTKrDhi_2kW-5O54-8XPABDEK4QKUDV0xN11FwzIiyAMLZZ7R9dEIqQ

    The more we build using CLT, the more carbon we can store and we create a market for timber that will drive re-forestation. Planting more trees is one of the only realistic ways we have of reducing CO2 levels and it will only happen at scale if it is driven by demand. This is a critical time in the fight against irreversible climate change – the widespread adoption and growth of CLT quite literally has the potential to save the planet.

    Not only is building out of CLT faster, better and more efficient than traditional methods, it can also play a huge role in tackling climate change. When we use CLT, not only do we create long term storage for the carbon that was absorbed during growth, we also offset the potential emissions from materials such as concrete and steel which have high levels of embodied energy.

    https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/super-grove-redwood-tree-clones?fbclid=IwAR3Mwe-UajyngkYIzWoJbrTjC8-h-3cTgx2OMaqOLfsSdrXdpo98fsC0ges

    Conservationists plant a 'super grove' of redwood trees cloned from ancient stumps The clones come from trees that were larger than any alive today.

    A mature coast redwood can remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, the AATA points out, sequestering as much as 250 tons of the greenhouse gas per tree. They also perform other important ecosystem services, like filtering water and soil, and they're highly resistant to wildfires, droughts and pests.

    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-best-technology-for-fighting-climate-change-isnt-a-technology/?fbclid=IwAR3U45Fw9lgRBX0CVzVBekuhW2xDvrhpjv16CkMZU5_Nj_49hdLxyxcd3nY

    Recent scientific research confirms that forests and other “natural climate solutions” are absolutely essential in mitigating climate change, thanks to their carbon sequestering and storage capabilities. In fact, natural climate solutions can help us achieve 37 percent of our climate target, even though they currently receive only 2.5 percent of public climate financing...Unfortunately, we are fighting a crisis of deforestation, much of it driven by conversion to agricultural lands to produce a handful of resource-intensive commodities, despite zero-deforestation commitments from companies and governments. With increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, insufficient emissions reductions and continued high rates of deforestation, urgent action is needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

    924:

    Guess who funds the anti-nuclear propaganda and supports the no nukes movement? Fossil fuel companies, especially coal companies, It seems that they don't want the competition. Surprise!

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/#38e0c56f7453

    “The discovery moved Anderson up to exhibit number one in my long-running effort to prove that the illogically tight linkage between ‘environmental groups’ and ‘antinuclear groups’ can be traced directly to the need for the oil and gas industry to discourage the use of nuclear energy,” writes Adams....“Oil would be worth a lot less if more of the world’s energy needs were provided by atomic fission,” Adams writes. “If oil was worth less, it would make no economic sense to press it out of shale rocks in North Dakota, drill for it deep under the Gulf of Mexico, or try to extract it from the challenging environment of the Arctic Ocean.”

    Another fun fact: the reason France and Japan have such advanced nuclear power industries is that neither country has significant deposits of oil or coal.

    https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html

    First, he says, the French are an independent people. The thought of being dependent for energy on a volatile region of the world such as the Middle East disturbed many French people. Citizens quickly accepted that nuclear might be a necessity. A popular French riposte to the question of why they have so much nuclear energy is "no oil, no gas, no coal, no choice."

    Yet another fun fact: In its drive for "green energy" Germany such down its nuclear power plants. As a result its carbon emissions have actually increased despite its much publicized solar energy development.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-11-14/germany-is-burning-too-much-coal

    But there's another, troubling side to the German story: The country still gets 40 percent of its energy from coal, a bigger share than most other European countries. And much of it is lignite, the dirtiest kind of coal. As a result, Germany is set to fall well short of its 2020 goal.This dependence on coal is partly a side effect of Germany's abandonment of emissions-free nuclear power and partly foot-dragging on the part of a government wary of alienating voters in German coal country. During the summer election campaign, Merkel largely avoided the subject.

    925:

    Now there are a lot of environmentalists, sincere and good people all of them, who oppose any method of carbon capture -ESPECIALLY if its is successful - because in their eyes it will allow mankind to continue its sinful burning of fossil fuels without any consequences instead of adopting the pure an noble lifestyle of medieval peasants.

    Such reasoning is akin to the Catholic's Church's opposition to condoms and birth control - they allow fornicators to continue sinful sex without consequences instead of adopting a perfectly pure lifestyle.

    926:

    It sounds like you've been reading something in which Russ George is involved. There was a time back in the 1990s when Ferrous Sulfate was a highly respectable idea, and Russ George pretty much killed the credibility single-handedly, not for scientific reasons, but because he was involved in a scheme to trade Ferrous Sulfate ocean fertilization for carbon credits (Step 3, ???, Step 4, profit.)

    There are two problems here: one of them is the science; it will require some very careful experiments (i.e. not the ones performed by Russ George) to validate Ferrous Sulfate as a good tool to fertilize oceans and suck carbon out of the air. (An additional scientific problem is that Ferrous Sulfate contributes to ocean acidification, so someone would need to create a formula which resulted in an acid-neutral form of Ferrous Sulfate fertilization; maybe X amount FS and Y amount soda ash... or whatever.)

    The second problem is essentially social. Any Ferrous Sulfate-based solution would have to be one-hundred-percent Russ-George-free and would necessarily involve someone with the right credentials stepping up to rehabilitate the science involved.

    927:

    How much potassium does it drag to the bottom?

    928:

    I do think carbon capture is necessary, at least in the short term - otherwise massive numbers of people will die! In the long run, however, it isn't as useful as not emitting carbon in the first place.

    929:

    Actually carbon capture is necessary even after we get to zero carbon. We really need to be at 275-350 ppm CO2, we are over 400 now.

    930:

    What post are you replying to? Because I don't think I specified either a stopping point or a number.

    931:

    "show us the safety case as to why/how there is a less than 10E-10 probability of detonation"

    Can you quote a single case of an unintended detonation of a lithium battery? One single case?

    There's about 10^10 lithium battery packs sold every year. Hell, there have been nearly 2x10^11 mobile phones sold though not all were lithium and not all still exist.

    Personally I have 3 headtorches 1 hand torch 1 set noise cancelling earphones 2 battery powered tools 7 battery packs for digital cameras 4 mobile phones (two of which are in active use) 3 GPS units 1 power bank 1 notebook 1 laptop 1 tablet 2 kindles 1 electric bicycle 1 electric motorcycle

    In contrast, how many unintended fossil fuel explosions have happened? Enough that OGH tends to use "gas explosion" as a catchall explanation for supernatural devastation, at least if it's confined to a single city block. I'm not sure why he limits himself to a city block as they can be far bigger. This one in England from leaking petrol was heard in Belgium! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire

    932:

    PS,

    "based on UK HSE requirements for energetics work, and assuming a UK vehicle fleet of 1E8 machines"

    Just as well the HSE doesn't say anything about petrol, because sure as shooting, the chance of a petrol car exploding is a lot more than 1 in 10^10

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7WBshF9ihw

    933:

    Which is enough to tell me that you don't actually know what a safety case is, nor how to construct one. Fortunately for me, I don't have to generate them, but just analyse others' results.

    934:

    My last reply was to 928. I interpreted it to mean that once we got to 0 carbon emissions we were done.

    935:

    Maybe rather than telling me what I don't know in an area I've never claimed knowledge, you explain what you're talking about. You seem to be saying the chance of a battery in a car or a house spontaneously turning into a bomb and then spontaneously detonating is unacceptably high.

    I have literally no idea why you're saying that or what level of proof is needed to establish safety. Apparently tens of billions in use and none of them detonating isn't sufficient. So what would be?

    936:

    Mike @ 919 I do hope you are wrong. However, if that does happen, I predict real civil disorder & one hopeful outcome … Rees-Smaug & one or two others might have encounters with lamp-posts.

    DD@ 920 Meanwhile, greedy stupid bastards in Brazil & Indonesia are chopping them down. ( Fascist bastards in Brazil, too … ) Incidentally, 300 trees per Acre is quite a low density. Using sensible units, a Hectare is 100 meters per side ( 10 000 m^2 ) 2.741 acres per hectare, so 300*2.471 = 741.3 trees (!) per hectare or one tree per 13.5 sq metres, on average … not that dense – a half-empty orchard or small fields with heavily wooded edges, in fact, or bigger fields, with “properly” wooded copse/wood infill.

    @ 921 VERY interesting. It will be “amusing” to see who now proclaims this to be a bad idea & who is behind them … ( What is the local “thought” on this incidentally? ) Meanwhile, could you provide a better link? Both those given go to the same broad header page with a vast lits of "things" & no reference to the Iron Sulphides project.

    @ 922 Um – not so sure about that. Remember, there are large “agricultural” areas where you can’t grow edible crops, but you can run livestock, suitable for eating as food. Deep woods, where you run pigs, mountain areas where you run sheep & cattle, sea-boundaries – sheep & goats, sandy areas – cattle. And, if/when the Iron deposition idea takes off – lots more fish, too.

    @ 923 I’m having remarkable difficulty in getting cuttings from my Dawn Redwood to take – as I have ( really unfortunately ) to take the original down [ Escaped from its pot & growing in very much the wrong place ] – so I have on successful in a pot, maybe one alive outside, but this spring, I must take as many as I can & “stump” the original, before it’s too late.

    @ 924 DON’T start me on the fake greenies in Germany “Atomkraft – nein danke, ich bin (ein) Dummkopf”

    @ 925 Correction: “Sincere & profoundly stupid people ….”

    937:

    Well, you seem to me have started from the position of "I say therefore it is", which is only valid if you are a subject matter expert. You then claimed that "the regulatory authorities say it is", without showing any cases where they have actually done the work. And then that a couple of rechargable pen cells are no different to a Tesla Model S. When did your your head torch last get hot and then ram something at 120mph? In that last event, the electrical and chemical energy of the several hundred kg accumulator pack, unless contained, has to go somewhere. And saying that it won't/can't be heated ever is an invalid assumption unless there are no combustible chemicals anywhere vehicles are used.

    I think that your regulatory authorities have never done the work to generate the safety case.

    938:

    Hope springs infernal in the human breast.

    939:

    Er, we've already had a conversation about agricultural land use, eith in this thread or its predecessor; tl;dr is that there's lots of land that can be used for "food animals" but not for crops.

    940:

    As Pigeon also implies, since a battery does not require ANY external source of fuel, it is a whole fuel by definition. Denying that is merely showing gross ignorance.

    The key problem of catastrophic thermal runaway is when a battery gets hot enough to burn the vehicle it is in, which can then spread and cause other batteries to go into thermal runaway. I don't know the thermal coefficient or heat of vaporisation of water of the contents, but it's unlikely to be higher than water, which gives 1.26 MJ/Kg from 40 Celsius. According to Wikipedia, lithium metal batteries are currently at 1.8 MJ/Kg. And we know very well that lithium batteries DO start fires!

    The explosive element is purely a matter of whether an expanding substance is enclosed in a hard, impermeable case. gasdive might like to ask himself why aircraft designers etc. don't simply enclose their batteries in strong, impermeable cases, thus stopping the fire risk.

    941:

    I started from the position of disagreeing with EC, who's knowledge of electric vehicles is at the level where he imagines they need a clutch, yet who feels pressed to warn us at every opportunity that the batteries spontaneously turn into bombs (they don't), explode if they get wet (they don't) and can burn without oxygen (they can't).

    You came in and claimed that they're a high explosive, and therefore are bombs. (Which makes as much sense to me as saying bricks are cathedrals)

    Hate to break it to you, but Tesla batteries actually are 18650 laptop batteries straight off the shelf. So yeah, I do think that rechargeable pen cells are much the same. Later model Tesla cars are laptop batteries made specifically for cars, and presuming Panasonic engineers aren't stupid, probably safer than the off the shelf ones they used to use. Both types have been crashed at high speed and none of them have turned into bombs and donated.

    Yes, they emit toxic HF when they burn. If you had one inside your house, and the house burnt after about half an hour it will catch fire, then over the next half hour or so it would take to burn, it would emit between 200 g and 2 kg of HF. But if you stand around in a burning house for an hour, you'll have bigger problems. Yes, if you crash at 120 mph, then it's quite likely that after half an hour or so the battery will catch fire. Over the next half hour it will emit 2-20 kg of HF. Again, if you're sitting in a burning car of any sort for half an hour, you have bigger problems.

    You then brought up safety audits, which I still don't understand and which you still haven't explained.

    942:

    Strong casings don't turn batteries into bombs. You must know that in your heart of hearts, but something stops you from admitting that there's an intermediate state between a cardboard box and a welded pressure vessel.

    Here's what actually happens when you put batteries in a strong enclosure. https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-safety/

    943:

    What I said in #890 was: "It's worse than that - batteries are a whole fuel, and so cannot be put out by starving them of air. And enclosing them in a secure vessel turns them into potential bombs.", which is correct. In #905, you posted nonsense, which showed a denial of basic physics, as I pointed out in #940.

    You then seized on one word used in the lay sense by paws4thot ('detonation'), chose to interpret it in the technical sense, and built your entire case around it. You have done the same to me, but let's skip that.

    As you should know, thermal runaway in lithium batteries is pretty common, and there are regular recalls because of it. The reason that it doesn't cause much trouble is because the vast majority of such batteries have too low an energy density to do more than become too hot to hold (I have had that happen), and most of the rest are still small enough that they aren't a major fire risk if not stored among highly inflammable materials.

    The batteries needed for electric vehicles are very different - and people often forget that a large lorry needs ones ten times the size of that in a car. But you chose to ignore that in #931.

    944:

    OK, let's crunch some numbers for global warming and climate change, and the only realistic solution.

    Amount of CO2 sent into the atmosphere by human activities = 32,000,000,000 tons per year Fraction retained in the atmosphere (not absorbed by existing carbon sinks) = 43% Annual accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere = 13,760,000,000 tons / year

    Life cycle CO2 emissions from coal power plants = 820 g of CO2 / kWh Life cycle CO2 emissions from nuclear power plants = 12 g of CO2 / kWh Life cycle CO2 reduction using nuclear power plants = 808 g of CO2 / kWh = 1.75 lbs of CO2 / kWh

    Amount of energy to be replaced to eliminate CO2 accumulation = 15,725,714,285,714 kWh per year = 15,725,714,286 MWh per year = 15,725,714 GWh per year

    Power output of large nuclear power plant (example Palo Verde, 3 each 1.338 GW reactors, After a power uprate, each reactor is now able to produce 1.4 GW of electric power. The usual power production capacity is about 70 to 95 percent of this.) = approximately 4 GW = 35,000 GWh per year

    Number of large nuclear plants required to replace coal plants emitting excess CO2 = 450 each 4 GW nuclear facilities

    Capital cost of nuclear power plant (again using Palo Verde, this power plant became fully operational by 1988, and it took twelve years to build and cost about 5.9 billion dollars) = $5,900,000,000 = conservatively double the cost to to $12 billion in today's dollars

    Cost of the 450 equivalent 4 GW facilities needed to replace CO2 emissions = 450 x $12 billion = $5.4 trillion

    World GDP (2016) = $75.4 trillion

    Summary: There are currently 467 operational nuclear power plants worldwide. We can eliminate all excess CO2 emission by adding another 450 each 4 GW plants. The cost would be about 7% of world GDP.

    Annual percent of world GDP spent on the military is about 2%.

    So we solve global warming by roughly doubling the number of nuclear plants worldwide. We simply cannot prevent global warming without lots of nukes. Safe, clean nukes

    Other efforts (solar and wind, afforestation, carbon capture, fertilizing the oceans with irons sulfate, etc.) can help but they are not nearly as cost effective as expanding nuclear energy.

    Nukes can also use off-peak KWh to electrolysize water to create enough hydrogen (without fossil fuel reformatting) to create a hydrogen fuel cell economy that avoids the chief problem with batteries as energy storage. Even the best rechargeable battery wears out over time and will no longer take a charge. Disposing of these batteries will be a major toxic waste disposal problem. So will the disposal of PVCs, which also wear out (current warranties for solar roof top arrays are 10 to 20 years).

    945:

    Bullshit I'm not arguing fine points of semantics. They absolutely can be put out by starving them of air. Without oxygen you have hot batteries, probably venting flammable gas, but no fire and certainly no explosion.

    They most certainly can be put in a secure container and that doesn't turn them into potential bombs in any possible interpretation of those words.

    Follow the link and read about a 100 kWh battery pack (the size used in lorries in arrays of 8) in a secure container tested by firstly putting a heating element in one section. That caused that one section to overheat and vent, no fire, no damage to the other 15 sections. The pack still worked. The second test was to play a huge propane fire on one side. It took half an hour for anything to happen and it vented a small flame for nearly 5 hours. No explosion.

    Your assertions are reasonable, and have been tested. They're not true. The facts are against you. No matter how beautiful your ideas are, they don't agree with experiment. You are wrong.

    946:

    Yes, with niggles.

    We would ALSO have to install electrical grids into many areas that burn wood etc. directly for cooking, heating and lighting. That would add to the cost - and, worse (politically), would need to be paid for by the fat cat countries, as those countries are broke. Technically feasible, of course, but would add to the cost.

    "Safe, clean nukes" Which, inter alia, means not run under a government that uses Official Secrecy to cover up the negligence and incompetence of the people building, running and decommissioning the plants, and overseeing the process. See #894.

    There are 'better' fuels to make than hydrogen, though they are trickier, and some have been done only in the laboratory. Inter alia, we don't have a suitable way of storing hydrogen for use in vehicles - especially aircraft. But hydrogen is excellently non-polluting when burnt!

    947:

    "You then seized on one word used in the lay sense by paws4thot ('detonation'), chose to interpret it in the technical sense,..."

    You mean this one word used in the lay sense?

    "A strengthened "dry" accumulator case, when heated sufficiently to release the chemical and electrical potential at an uncontrolled rate, moves the blast front at ~M1.1. So how does this differ from any other high explosive bomb?"

    Jesus, are we even reading the same blog?

    948:

    Nonsense. Physics is not mocked, no matter how you marketdroids and fanatics try to deny it.

    If anything contains enough internal chemical energy to raise its temperature above the combustion point of the materials around them, it is a fire risk, no matter HOW you cut it. And you cannot do that by starving such an object of air, because it doesn't need external fuel (i.e. air) to release energy. The temperature can be kept down only by limiting the energy density, and the requirement for electric vehicles is the converse!

    As I said, ANY material that can expand (whether that is caused by heat or not) without external input in a hard, impermeable container becomes a potential bomb. Dilute fruit juice and yeast does, as many people know well.

    Now move onto risk assessment and testing. Firstly, the fact that ONE example fails 'safely' doesn't mean that it always will - or are you denying the number of cases of lithium battery fires? Secondly, that link showed flames - well, smoke may not mean fire, but flames assuredly do. Thirdly, look at what the fire risk is on motor vehicles and how they burn out - once a fire starts, a lot more burns than just the fuel.

    949:

    No. I am reading it, and you are responding without doing so.

    He was explaining why enclosing ANY expanding material in a hard, impermeable case effectively creates a bomb. The battery itself does not have to detonate (any more than fruit juice and yeast does) in order to do - ALL it has to do is to expand (or cause expansion) to a sufficient pressure to burst the case. That's a traditional method of using low explosives to detonate high explosives, incidentally.

    Sufficient venting solves that problem, but then you have to deal with the problems of the vented materials. And, in vehicular accidents, people are often trapped, so both the toxicity and fire risk matter.

    950:

    I'm agreeing with pretty much everything EC says here gasdive.

    You say that you don't know about safety case analysis, but then expect me to accept that, because venting systems worked perfectly in 2 experiments, they will always work perfectly. Well, that proves that you don't know about safety case analysis, because that's where we ask questions like "Can this go wrong?", "What are the likely consequences of it going wrong?", "What are the worst case consequences of it going wrong?"... We actually go to the extreme of conjecturing a "God hates you" scenario where everything that can go wrong does, and in the way that creates the worst consequences.

    EC and you have just demonstrated for me that the likely consequences of a dry accumulator going wrong include the venting of toxic gases, and the worst case (hint; we now assume that the case vents don't vent) is an explosive release of shrapnel and said toxic gases.

    I've seen 3 real life car fires of hydrocarbon fuel vehicles:- 1) Ford Pinto rear ended causing a rupture of the octane tank (OK, this was contemporaneous high speed camera film by a vehicle safety body). Yes there was an octane fire, but that was in a vehicle with a known badly positioned fuel tank. 2) Vauxhall Zafira electrical fire from faulty heater controls. Car burnt out but fuel remained contained. 3) Renault (not sure of model) engine bay fire from dry materials on exhaust manifold. Car burnt out but fuel remained contained after 50 minutes.

    951:

    "They absolutely can be put out by starving them of air."

    I don't know why you keep repeating this. It isn't true, there's no reason to expect it to be true, and your own link shows it not to be true. All the air inside that container will have been displaced or reacted within a very few minutes after things start to happen, yet the contents continue to self-destruct for several hours with neither an oxygen supply nor any external heat input.

    "They most certainly can be put in a secure container and that doesn't turn them into potential bombs in any possible interpretation of those words."

    ...apart from the interpretation under which it is considered necessary to fit the container with a vent to (hopefully) prevent a potential bomb becoming an actual bomb. As is also the case with EC's example of fermenting fruit juices, where you vent the container via one of those bubbly S-tube things, or the old favourite, steam boilers, which have safety valves.

    I say "hopefully" because as paws points out, the vent doesn't always work, or it does work but doesn't vent fast enough to stop the pressure becoming excessive - plenty of pressure vessel explosions have happened from this cause.

    952:

    So "niggles" is the British equivalent of the American "quibbles"?

    "The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language." - George Bernard Shaw

    (or was it Oscar Wilde?)

    953:

    Summary: There are currently 467 operational nuclear power plants worldwide. We can eliminate all excess CO2 emission by adding another 450 each 4 GW plants. The cost would be about 7% of world GDP. This is going to have diversification, so assume that until we create absolutely safe, clean and reliable nuclear factory some 2 centuries int he future, we will have at best 30-50% of worldwide production. France was a great exceptiion - I still wonder how they managed to do their nuclear miracle.

    China is investing a lot in them, too.

    For better price estimation, one might also not that industrial production only constitutes about 30% of world GDP, with almost 95% of the rest of it being services (expecially financial ones).

    Annual percent of world GDP spent on the military is about 2%. Also we shouldn't forget that all the military in the world runs on oil, and only on it. Except with some nuclear carirers, but they are useless without their planes, and escort, too. This is one reason why so many conflict happen with iol-rich countries, cheap oil means cheap war.

    954:

    We use both :-) But, yes.

    955:

    Your Para 5 - You'd think that a diver would know that pressure relief valves are not 100.000% reliable, wouldn't you?

    956:

    Why does it matter that batteries can explode?

    As gasdive pointed out, so can gasoline cars

    In general, electric cars seem as safe if not safer then gasoline powered ones based on their actual track record

    the fact is that while maybe batteries can explode they don’t seem to actually do it in the wild, either in laptops or

    Also EC you may know theory but your theory often leads you astray (as it did with the gear box conversation) you should probably familiarize yourself more with with what is actually happening in reality if you are going to keep debating this subject so vigorously

    957:

    Speaking of R-M and the rest, and lamp posts... for some reason, I got to thinking of the Mandate, and Shub-Niggurath... and it struck me that ultra-dimensional deities probably have their own ecology... and as we all know, everything's got something that predates on it. Now, something that would consider the Mandate, and his owner, as tasty....

    And now I'm thinking of Cordwainer Smith, and The Game of Rat and Dragon... and why would only human intelligence start developing magical abilities?

    958:

    Diversification is a buzz-word, which makes people go "yhea" without engaging their brains.

    If you can run your grid entirely on one or two technologies, you gain a lot of benefits from doing so - primarily a less complicated supply chain, and certainly adding more techs to the grid without a compelling actual reason is a loosing proposition.

    France managed a complete transition by dirigism and strategic necessity - The pre-nuclear grid had a whole lot of oil fired plant, which, in the year 1972 was rather patently a terrible idea, and France has essentially no coal reserves worth the name, so..

    Sweden pulled the same stunt, for essentially the same reasons. And also because that is where Lise Meitner wound up after fleeing the Nazi regime.

    959:

    Try reading what I and the other people are saying, not the bogus claims and straw men invented to attack us. One of the reasons that the public is justifiably suspicious of nuclear power safety claims is that so many of the previous claims were over-hyped lies - doing the same for electric road vehicles is Not Clever.

    What I said, and what is true, is that such a battery is a whole fuel, and fires cannot be extinguished by excluding air, which is a serious problem that petrol does NOT have. The explosion aspect was merely that the problem cannot be resolved by enclosing them in a strong case. And WHAT track record? There aren't enough of them to be relevant, and the main examples are atypical of most road vehicles. Also, the same class of batteries has caused fires in domestic equipment, laptops, aircraft and more.

    And you should NOT be taken in by the canards about what I said about the transmission, which was:

    "It may seem plausible that you could also abolish the clutch and gearbox (or automatic transmission), but then you need an electric motor that remains efficient over a range of rotations of at least 14:1 and probably an even greater range of torques."

    Note that I did not, repeat NOT, say that they were essential for functionality; I have been pointing out that they were not for over half a century.

    But you need SOME method of disconnecting the motor from the wheels, in order to push or tow it when the battery dies, which passes the duck test for being a clutch. And induction motors are much better over a wide range of torques and rotation speeds than most other motors, but it's still a major problem; it may be ignorable for cars, but it certainly isn't for goods vehicles.

    You fanatics will kill electric vehicles by overstating their case, and denying the problems, if you are not careful - as has happened with nuclear power.

    960:

    “And WHAT track record? There aren't enough of them to be relevant, and the main examples are atypical of most road vehicles”

    See this is the kind of thing that hurts your credibility on the subject. You haven’t done the basic research to be able to debate on it.

    There are over 4 million electric cars on the road world wide right now and a million of them have been on the road for over 3 years. The model S is 6 years old and the roadster is 10. which is plenty to have established a safety track record which has been phenomenaly great actually, especially given how new the technology is. The Tesla model S for instance has a five star safety rating in every category which is pretty care

    The fact that you didn’t know a basic piece of information like production electric cars don’t and have never had gearboxes (glad you think it’s plausible though 😀 ) and you start looking like some willfully ignorant old man complaining about how dangerous them horseless carriages are without actually bothering to understand them.

    Especially when you are talking to someone who’s actually owned and driven a model S for 5 years

    Do your homework before you ahoot your mouth off

    961:

    Correction, all three of the model S, X and 3 have perfect safety ratings

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/tesla-model-3-earns-perfect-5-star-nhtsa-safety-rating.html

    Knowing the facts is not being a fanboy

    962:

    whitroth @ 957 Your references to Cats & Rats & Dragons & "other"/magical abilities ... Well, the current resident Birman tom-kitten can detct bacon-rind for ridiculous distances ..... See also GRRM's much-underrated tales of the Voyages of Haviland Tuf, with DOubt, Ingratitude & Suspicion - cats all of them ...

    EC @ 959 Variable-speed functions for electric traction already exist & have done for a very long time & for much greater loads than any road vehicle ever concieved ... they are called electric railway locomotives, & their transmission-systems & mechanisms seem to work quite well, so, now stop talking codswallop, OK?

    963:

    Which is a larger number, 4 million or 30 million? ;-)

    I just compared your quoted total number of accumulator cars world-wide, with the number of hydrocarbon cars in the UK. Guess what; the result is that your statistics don't add up!

    As for an NTNHA certification: No regulatory body has ever tested at their national speed limit that I know of, never mind at twice that speed to get a realistic energy dissipation from a head-on smash. Knowing the facts is not being a fanboi, but blindly quoting them in the hope that others don't understand them is!

    964:

    Well, speaking as a fanboy, lithium isn't perfectly safe, and I don't know what will happen to my EV if it burns. That said, I do know what will happen if my gas car burns, and it's less pretty.

    The difference is 50-odd kilos of gasoline will send the gas hog somewhere around 600 kilometers, while a full charge on a 440 kg battery will send that car around 340 kilometers, and it's a bit lighter than the gas hog.

    If I'm worried about energy release in the fire, I'll worry more about the gas hog.

    965:

    Fortunately a guy in Germany did test a model S to see what happens when you run it up to maximum speed and drive it into a tree. The car breaks up into bits the largest about the size of a loaf of bread. The battery container bursts open and all cells scatter through the forest. Nothing explodes. Some of the cells make a fizzing noise and you get a few small fires. All far less exciting than doing the same with a petrol car.

    Why you think this has any bearing on safety is beyond me and I'm sure all the regulatory authorities. I wasn't talking about road traffic authorities when I said none of them consider a battery to be explosive. I was talking about the same dudes and dudettes who regulate the possession of semtex. They seem to be able to identify explosives and make their possession illegal without driving them into solid objects at absurd speeds.

    966:

    Burst disks are 100.0000000000% reliable to limit pressure.

    I'm a subject matter expert.

    967:

    There's plenty of evidence that what happens to a car which hits a tree and a car which hits another car head on are 2 different things.

    Also, did you actually mean to imply that 50mph is an "absurd speed" to drive at?

    And indeed that there are, or have been, 1000000000000 burst disks in the World? (figure copied and edited from #966).

    968:

    How does that 4 million compare to the number of jetliners in service ? No one is complaining that their safety stats are bogus based on not having 30 million instances.l of jetliner. You know why? Because that’s plenty of data to establish a trend, math doesn’t work the way you think it does and you are grasping at straws now trying to support your bullshit ignorant argument

    You know how many Tesla’s have caught on fire in time? 40. Yoy know how many have exploded ? 0.

    You can read about some of those 40 here

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicle_fire_incidents

    Tesla’s personal take is their cars are ten times less likely to catch on fire . Regulators and testers aren’t willing to go that far, but they are willing to say “no more likely then IC cars and probably less likely”

    So unless you have some actual data to bring to along with your FUD it’s time to STFU now

    969:

    Easily that many. Every can of coke has one. How many coke cans do you think have been accidentally manufactured such that they can be heated to the point that they explode rather than leaking.

    This has become ridiculous. There are 30 million electric vehicles sold in China every year and they've been selling in those numbers for over half a decade. None have exploded.

    You, EC and Pigeon refuse to see that there's a difference between getting hot and burning or that there's a difference between burning and exploding.

    I admit defeat.

    I'm out.

    970:

    If statistics don't work the way I think they do, then there is something very out of order in the world of safety analysis.

    971:

    Well, if you want to play that way...

    I've seen a burst disc hold firm until the side of the container ruptured.

    972:

    So have I. But only when the container failed at far below its rated pressure. London to a brick that's what you saw too.

    973:

    Changing the subject somewhat, there's more work from Japanese researchers using slime molds to solve the traveling salesman problem. Vice hyperventilated about it and got the details wrong (it's not a single-celled amoeba, sorry dudes), but this result looks rather cool, with the slime mold (which remember, has no brain at all) reportedly showing a linear increase in the amount of time it took to solve a four-point version of the problem to an eight-point one. And I thought that the traveling salesman was an NP hard problem, so...hmmm.

    974:

    Traveling salesman is NP-Hard but that doesn’t say anything about whether or not an slime mold can solve it, since it’s almost certainly not a Turing machine or acting like a Turing machine

    975:

    Well, the biology of that is beyond me, but pleasingly I could follow the maths.

    976:

    https://boston.cbslocal.com/2018/12/26/hoverboard-explosion-mashpee-mother-badly-burned-fire/ “Mashpee Mother Badly Burned After Hoverboard Explosion” Li ion battery malfunction involving house-shaking explosion, flames, nearby objects set on fire, and third-degree burns.

    977:

    And I thought that the traveling salesman was an NP hard problem, so...hmmm. It's an approximation method, if I'm reading it correctly. Sorta-interesting though. Many of the refs are new to me. (You don't want to talk about ways to exact-solve NP-hard problems that take O(time to read out the solution), unless you want visitors from the Laundry, or nastier. :-)

    (Closely tracking U.S. politics news.)

    978:

    Here's a rundown on part of the expected future of video games

    https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-games-vs-steam-discord-microsoft-xbox-game-pass-2018-12

  • I didn't know that the app stores took 30% of every transaction. Reducing this to 10% won't affect the popular games or the free ones, but they may make or break marginal ones. This is unlikely to raise the amount of content, but you never know?

  • Creating a Netflix like streaming service with Netflix like "original content" would probably be game changing for video games. As Charlie mentioned in a blog post years ago, there's an explosion of capabilities to make TV series, just not the funding. Netflix has thrown so much money at original content (and so have other streaming services) that there were 520 original scripted shows this year https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/fx-chief-scripted-originals-set-top-520-2018-1073348

  • I think that games-on-the-cloud will be an important niche, but I don't see the internet connections being good enough to replace offline gaming in a majority of markets

  • Gaming consoles aren't going anywhere. A plateau in capabilities relative to PCs was supposed to kill the consoles, it hasn't. Likewise, streaming was supposed to kill movie theaters and DVDs. Both are still around. Once a medium becomes popular, it's VERY hard to kill.

  • Any other implication from the article that I missed?

    979:

    OMG! I was completely wrong! They're exploding all over the place!

    At the 6 second mark in the video they show the batteries. Scorched, but still cylindrical. Ever seen a photo a bomb after the explosion? Are they the same shape as before the explosion? They also show the burn where she stood on one. How many people do you think have burned themselves by standing on a grenade after it exploded. They also show the window completely not broken.

    Or maybe, just maybe, there's a lot of crap talked about batteries...

    I'm sure she was frightened. The missile sound was the battery venting as it is designed to do. There would have been loud pops as the vents opened. But there's no way it shook the house. She was burnt, as I'd expect if you pick up a burning plastic toy.

    980:

    OK, let's try this one last time:-

    Just because safeties have worked correctly in a limited number of incidents is not proof that they will always work correctly.

    981:

    Daniel Duffy @ 952: So "niggles" is the British equivalent of the American "quibbles"?

    "The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language." - George Bernard Shaw

    (or was it Oscar Wilde?)

    In the U.S. it's best to avoid words that begin with the letters "ni" because some vocabulary challenged busy-body will accuse you of racism.

    982:

    Heteromeles @ 973: Changing the subject somewhat, there's more work from Japanese researchers using slime molds to solve the traveling salesman problem.

    That's nice, but I don't have any problems with traveling salesmen. What have they got that will work for telemarketers?

    983:

    Cut the anti-"PC" complaining. When Rethuglicans called Obama "niggardly" we all could hear the dogwhistle.

    984:

    787: I will ignore your slanders of the Black Panther Party. it had its problems, but, unlike the Kent State or Orangeburg National Guard, was not in the habit of murdering civilians. Was quite well drilled, disciplined and law abiding, though they believed in making use of the law as written as opposed to as interpreted by the pigs. Slogan was, lawbook in one hand, gun in the other, California being open carry at the time.

    Whether militia were volunteer back in the old country or in colonial days is irrelevant, the militias during the American Revolution were volunteer and, like the New Model Army, elected their officers. Which was why the Second Amendment was written in the ambiguous way it was by the Founding Fathers, who all except for Jefferson saw democracy as a dangerous idea that had to be limited as much as practical (he thought it could be a useful tool vs. the North as long as it was whites only), but understood that anti-democratic measures would have to be smuggled in deceptively in the immediate aftermath of a revolution.

    At the time, the state governments, which had a fairly broad franchise, were seen as vehicles of democracy, so you had the Senate and the Presidency tacked on to introduce the elements of aristocracy and monarchy into the Constitution, following the ideas of Greek antidemocrats Aristotle and Plato, who had a similar problem in democratic Athens. With the ultimate anti-democratic body the Supreme Court as the final arbiter. The ambiguous language of the Second was used to turn state militias into the "National Guard," effectively just an auxiliary to the standing army. Didn't happen overnight, but by early in the nineteenth century the process was already pretty complete.

    985:

    796: Incorrect as to any limitations on arms ownership back then, except of course that slaves were forbidden to have weapons. Which hasn't changed much. Whereas the Supreme Court lately tends to extend the Second Amendment to private gun ownership, the position of most police departments seems to be that this doesn't apply to black people. Repeatedly, the courts have upheld police shootings of blacks carrying guns, including in open carry states.

    Of course, back then only the rich could afford to own cannon, and never did, since protection of private property is the foundation stone of the American Constitution so the expense was unnecessary.

    Private for-profit military organizations started springing up after the Civil War, when the rise of labor unions meant that the white gunowning lower classes might get out of hand. The first being the infamous Pinkertons. They had and have everything you could name, indeed much of the US gunslingers in Afghanistan are employees of mercenary companies, which own everything short of nuclear weapons. Precisely why US gun control laws do not forbid their existence is an interesting question to which I don't know the answer. I imagine loopholes were cut for them somehow.

    986:

    799: There were plenty of cannons back then. And let's not forget the smallpox blankets. So restricting weapon ownership to what was available in the 1780 would be interesting in a Cosplay sort of way, but would not reduce lethality.

    987:

    803: Hate to tell you this, but the concentration camps for commies and illegal aliens exist already, and already had several hundred thousand inmates in them under Bush Jr. and Obama. Though now it's just the undocumented immigrants in them, when they were first authorized under Truman's McCarran Act during the McCarthy era, the original plan was indeed to put all the commies in them. But Mccarthy discredited that sort of thing till they were revived for immigrants.

    But then, you European EU fans are in no position to criticize. At least Trump hasn't started killing them outright yet, while increasing numbers of desperate African refugees fleeing the Libyan and African killing fields are drowning in the Mediterranean with the EU collaborating with Libya to do them in.

    988:

    808 Tingey:There have been a number of efforts to try to establish a centrist party in America, like whatzisname who ran in 1992 and the talk about a Bloomberg party a few years ago. They never got anywhere, because America is polarized, there is almost nobody in the center.

    The base of the Republican Party is with Trump and dislikes the "mainstream Republicans" like McCain and Bush Jr. who the mainstream Democrats have been trying to woo with the Russia investigation. And the base of the Democrats is considerably to the left of the party.

    We had an election two years ago in which the two most popular candidates were Trump, whom a lot of people think (incorrectly) is a fascist, and Sanders, who calls himself (also incorrectly) a socialist. And the centrist candidate H. Clinton, who during the election was widely hated both on the left and right of the political spectrum, was defeated in a remarkably embarrassing way (though now, by comparison with Trump, she does look better to many people).

    In short, American politics is gradually moving to the world norms of the mid-twentieth century, polarized between left and right, with the centrists despised by everyone. America was the exception at the time, except at the very height of the Great Depression. Not anymore.

    989:

    Private for-profit military organisations are actually very handy for dirty work. Official military is bound by international agreements, internal regulations, and a bunch of laws. But if employees of those private firms perform some atrocities, then it is quite likely that nobody will be punished. It is unlikely that Russia will extradite mercenaries from Wagner Group to other countries. The same holds for USA and the mercenaries employed by Blackwater.

    990:

    818: The ultimate zombie amendment is the Corwin Amendment. Passed by House and Senate in 1861, Lincoln made no objections to it, but, fortunately, only ratified by five northern and border states. If the southern states had not seceded, they all would have ratified it and it would probably have passed. Formally speaking it has never been withdrawn, an effort to do so in 1864 failed in Congress.

    What did it do? It forbade the US government from ever interfering with "state domestic institutions," i.e. slavery, and included a clause forbidding any future constitutional amendments contradicting it! The North was quite willing in 1861 to guarantee slavery within the South forever if slavery would not be allowed to expand outside the South. Thank goodness, the South was not in the mood for compromise, or the South would have slavery today.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_Amendment

    991:

    Oh. Oh, I see. Why didn't you say that in the first place. Now I understand.

    Like there could be some accident on the production line, and the plastic film that forms the case now might accidentally be substituted for titanium, and the plastic welding machine that forms the pouches at 120C might accidentally be set to 3000C and accidentally weld the cells into immensely strong impermeable containers that could form bombs. (Assuming that the titanium accidentally included some sort of insulator) That way if there's a short that heated up the innards instead of the thin plastic pouch bursting as designed, it would explode.

    Obvious danger there. Why no-one else has had the foresight to see that...Well it's a mystery.

    992:

    Since my actual point was that, as written, the 2nd allowed the ownership of black powder hunting weapons, and was never intended to allow modern military specification long guns...

    993:

    JH @ 988 NO H Clinton is a moderate right-winger, Bernie is moderately left ( He's well to the right of loonie Corbyn for instance.) Even the current UK Chancellor of the Exchequer ( Sec to the Treasury in US-speak? ) is a somewhat dangerous left-winger by most US terms ... That's the problem, in fact, the complete disjoint in meanings & actual political stances. Never mind *social" attitudes which are almost entirely well into the commie pinkoe fag-loving regions by US standards - & let's NOT mention religion, shall we?

    994:

    You don't understand because you refuse to think beyond your own prejudice that "LIon accumulators are safe".

    There are multiple documented cases where they have over-heated (I don't know the exact reasons, but possible reasons include fast discharge, failure of a limiter in the charger causing them to over-charge, and exothermic chemical reactions). Now suppose, that for reasons unknown the cells outgas, and the vents fail to vent (You've already accepted that they can outgas when they overheat. Now suppose that accidental damage blocks the vents. If I can think of it, then it's possible, unless you, since you're placing yourself in the role of design authority, can show why it's not). This then gives us a situation where, in a large accumulator pack, we should be able to get a cascade overheat, and eventually an explosive outgassing, even if there is not an explosive failure of the containment beyond at the vents.

    995:

    Jumping way back to transformer fires ... One today in https://twitter.com/NYPDnews/status/1078481086458593282 mentioned in William Gibson's twitter https://twitter.com/GreatDismal

    996:

    Paws: You are committing the isolated demand for rigor/perfect fallacy to a very high degree.

    Cars move fast under human control, that means no car is ever absolutely safe. Electric cars are not magically exempt from the laws of physics that tell us very high speed collisions will kill you, and in actual practice, accidents are not more deadly overall for electric. This means safety concerns which would in any way slow a transition to electric motoring do not actually exist.

    997:

    Businessinsider is rather yellow publisher, avid for some flashy sensation, so I'm not on their impression line. Usually it's just the rumors, amplified for eye-catching and easy consumption.

  • Doesn't really make any difference, most people go after flashy AAA titles, which don't even have to be modified extensively to go into the new version. I kid you not, latest CoD series is called BO4, which is 14th iteration of series and it differs from BO3 in rather some cosmetic ways. My lact CoD series I played was MW2, and I never really owned ANY of the games, because I pirated them. People simply buy new products becuse they can. 20% won't make difference for them.
  • I'm more influenced by convenience logic. I'm never going to buy an AAA title that costs 50+ bucks simply because I don't have a time for that. I'm not buying into screaming posters for pre-orders. I don't like long and inquisitive forms to fill. And so on. Latest game I bought was 5$ worth 50% dropoff on R6S and I'm enjoying it with my friends, because 20$ version simply shaves off all of that challenge in the manner of pay-to-win unlocking. 20% won't make difference for people like me.

    Anyway, this is the side of PC gaming that will never die, unless the corporation will destroy the idea itself. And since I see it entirely plausible, this is worrying. Making games and movies is becoming incredibly cheap these days, and they might begin to envy it.

  • His is actually pretty old news. Streaming is at peak these days among the gamers, and you do not expect anyone to push into that market, unless they do a very aggressive campaign with a huge risk of failing spectacularly at attempt to jump into the bandwagon. They also may try to build their own bandwagon and rails to it, but the chances of fail aren't really much better.
  • Streaming services is a huge deal for people who don't have money and time to play games, and those who don't want to spend money and time to play games. I've seen at least half dozen streaming services besides the flagmans like YT or Twitch. There's thousands of channels who have about less than 1000 subscribers and who are viewed by 50-100 people at once. These are small community, and they are easily moderated by their leaders, and, with new generation of integrated services like Discord they are the new backbone of gaming community. I personally have more than a dozen channels on Discord, half of them are straming regularly.

  • Not really, they've already tried it several times. The problem is still hardware part. The streaming delays are still too bad for reliable connection. Games-on-cloud nowadays come in two forms - the saves that go on cloud to be opened on any other device without much hassle. And networked launchers. Networked launchers are tools that update and maintain your game in the presence of network and they, for the most part, refuse to start, unless you have direct connection. Practically ALL games I play have some form of it.

  • 8th generation gaming consoles aren't really consoles anywhere but in the appearance. They are mini-PCs that eat CDs like hot buns and install stuff on their internal hard drives. They also require Internet connection for most of the time. Otherwise I can't really tell, the last console I (the honored PC Mater Race warrior) played, was like 15 years ago. The only reason they do still exist is the ever-increasing pricing for PC gaming AAA titles (see above). And let's not even talk about subscriptions.

  • Any other implication from the article that I missed? There's too many buzzwords to miss anything, really. tl:dr big companies only in the business for increasing revenues, and they are going to exploit people again and again. They are going to monetize anything you do on the Internet (news, games, video, music, communication and surveillance), and this is where the people will have to say "no", and rebuild it from scratch.

    998:

    If a slime-mould could solve the problem then a Turing machine could also solve the problem by running a simulation of the relevant features of the slime-mould (if necessary all the way down to the atomic level). NP-hardness isn't merely a limit on an obscure branch of mathematics, it is a limit on the nature of reality.

    999:

    As the linked article itself explains this is one of many approximation methods for the travelling salesman problem. The NP-hardness relates to exact solutions. For some kinds of problems an approximation works very well, for others (such as finding an encryption key) only the exact solution suffices.

    1000:

    A Turing machine could not “simulate all the relevant features of a slime mold” because doing that is an NP-HARD problem in and of itself

    Physics itself is NP-HARD

    1001:

    JH @ 984: 787: I will ignore your slanders of the Black Panther Party. it had its problems, but, unlike the Kent State or Orangeburg National Guard, was not in the habit of murdering civilians.

    That being the case, I will ignore your slandering the National Guard. Tit for tat as it were. But you don't know shit about the militia or how it became the National Guard.

    1002:

    Get ready to shed tears if ye have any ... The Beeb are going to do a Pterry biopic HERE Lots of other intersting links on Pterry, too ...

    Unholyguy @ 1000 😂

    1003:

    Ah, no. When Ross Perot was running, that wasn't a centrist party, it was another business party ("I'm going to make government run like a business!!")

    As the GOP moved right, so did the Dems, becoming, like Blair, neoliberal, which, in fact, was 1950's conservative (US). Instead of paying any attention to everyone they were leaving behind (check out percentage of the US that are registered independant....)

    Sanders is a socialist... well, of course, to me, he's more FDR or LBJ Democrat, who, up until Bernie ran, no Dem would support, any more that the modern GOP would support Ronnie, or, making a guess here, would the Brexiteers support Thatcher.

    We are in the times when the billionaires want to be, for real, the "nobility" (not just the oligarchy), and take over, and not have to worry about us pesky peasants, who don't know our place.

    If we've got anything going for us, they didn't wait, but let the Keystone Cops lead the charge, which was a tad better than a Certain German....

    1004:

    What a way to end the year - Greg and I agreeing....

    1005:

    Yes, exactly.

    Beyond that, taking a whole system view, electric vastly improves overall safety. Lower centre of gravity for reduced rollover. Vastly improved cabin stiffness reduces side intrusion. Improved crumple zones because you're not sharing space with a large incompessible engine reduces g-load on passengers. Improved vision with no engine in front. A clean sheet electric design is obviously safer than any petrol car.

    Even if batteries could explode, which they can't, the safety improvements are huge.

    As for house use, would I feel safer with a battery than a natural gas boiler? There's really no comparison. Gas leaks regularly level whole blocks. A correctly installed battery might fail and have some flame, but that's what a boiler does in normal operation.

    1006:

    Have done a biopic. Last transmitted 11 March 2017 and no longer available on iPlayer, but no doubt can be obtained by other means.

    "Good Omens" is due Soon (TM).

    1007:

    Vulch My bad - totally misread some admittedly-misleading BBC-puffery. I KNOW about Good Omens - I'm in the crowd in some of the Soho scenes & from appearances D Tennant is going to be a scream as Crowley ( As in hamming it up so well that it is an artform in itself )

    1008:

    I agree about Businessinsider (BI) being yellow journalism. I read them for the following reasons:

  • The official belief w.r.t. foreign policy. It's good to know what the establishment believes, even if I don't agree with them

  • A quick summary of trends I may have missed. I play very few games currently, so I have little knowledge of the industry. For someone more involved in it, the articles are too broad and have too many buzzwords to be useful.

  • Now, to your post

  • I agree about the importance of games. When I wrote that, I was channeling the conversations we had in these posts http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/06/hugh-hancock-here-again-charli.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/08/a-storm-of-stories---and-what-.html
  • As an aside, they are trying to end the idea of PC ownership. Google Chrome doesn't store anything on the device; it's a dumb interface. Everything is on the cloud. Microsoft has hinted that they will go the same way with future Windows versions.

  • Are these streaming services like Netflix, which make their own content/repackage content from other countries as their own, or are they closer to an app store? Netflix has proven useful w.r.t. movies and series by getting them out to a larger audience. See the discussions we had previously on these topic in the links above.

  • From my reading, the BI article believed that cloud-based games will dominate the market and replace all other forms. I was disagreeing with that prediction, pointing out that such games will continue to remain a niche. The reasons you've just given point out why that is true.

  • You're right that consoles these days are close to PC's, but there's still enough of a difference that the gaming community has people who consider consoles to underpowered to provide the experience they wish. The article was arguing that both PC games and consoles will disappear thanks to the "cloud games". I was disagreeing.

  • 1009:

    The trailers for Good Omens look excellent. Did have some people wondering if Michael Sheen could be camp enough for Aziraphale, I pointed them at his Kenneth Williams in Fantabulosa!.

    1010:

    No. You are also missing the point, which is that they have a new and nasty failure mode - not unique to them, but different from oil-burning motor vehicles, which affects things like a multi-car pileup with people trapped in the wreckage. They probably ARE safer than petrol, but that's not the point - if the solution to the new issues they raise is simply to deny their existence, rather than address them by engineering, regulation etc., there WILL be problems. Letting such things burn out is (politically) not an option, even if it is insignificant compared to other risks.

    We know that lthium batteries need VERY careful engineering to not self-destruct catastrophically - we have seen that in burning laptops and the aircraft fires - and passenger aircraft are SUPPOSED to be as safe as possible! The problems will occur when such cars become mainstream and are less well-engineered than Tesla. The large number of 'counterexamples' are mostly pedelecs, with batteries under 1 KW-hour and (more importantly) low energy densities. What is being talked about for the 'electric revolution' are ones 50-100 as large, at a low cost.

    In the USA and UK, the reality is that the market WILL be opened up to the purveyors of cheap and nasty equipment, and it is important that they are constrained by regulation. It's politically SO much easier to deny the problems and attack the people raising the issues - that's what caused the creation of CJD, incidentally.

    1011:

    You claim to be some sort of an engineer - well, try to show some signs of it!

    Yes, of course, I know that locomotives do that. But I also said torque and efficiency. The engineering problem is that not all technologies scale well - if it were not so, all lorries would use gas turbines. And this is definitely one such case. The only currently available small electric motors for vehicles have serious problems with a high range of torques and rotations, because running in their less efficient ranges causes them to overheat.

    How far down can the locomotive technology be pushed, cost effectively? I don't know but, from all the evidence of companies that have NOT done it, not down to the typical modern car equivalent. At least at present - and they have only been tring hard for some decades.

    1012:

    Y'all did see that the NYPD said that no extraterrestrials were involved (though in the pic, it looked more like the scene from Ghostbusters to me).

    1013:

    EC @ 1011 STOP IT RIGHT NOW You are noow using your usual tactic on me that you have used on others - you "know" better than all the experts ... Well, I'm no total expert, but I do know that electric drives for trains scale down from 100+ tonne locomotives capable of shifting 3000-tonne trailing loads down to the about-to-be-introduced Class 230 units, all-up total weight of 27-28 tonnes per carriage - more than 3 orders of magnitude .... Also, railway engineers have long been aware of the difficulties of changing "range" so to speak, but it appears that the automotive people have not learnt from that experience ....

    1014:

    Are these streaming services like Netflix, which make their own content/repackage content from other countries as their own, or are they closer to an app store? The content is fully up to the channel creator, and they are, theoretically, only profit from ads. Owners of channels are free to stream whatever they like as long as it doesn't (plus there are several basic requirements for identity verification), and YT or twitch never do their own content except for their own channels. This helps to maintain streaming communities seamlessly (you wouldn't want someone you don't know to break the immersion to your experience).

    There are, however, several deviations as of recent years. First and most obvious is ad-blockers, which eat away your ads revenues. Some people are fighting, some are rich enough to weather it for now. Second obvious is donations, and both Twitch and YT support direct money engines that are integrated into the stream and chat feedback. Third one is the newest - some people accept direct sponsorship and advertising to deliver ads personally, so as to avoid getting stuck in adblocker curtain. The fight for viewers is ongoing, and if the article is true, it's going to get even worse (though not as apocalyptic as it may be).

    The article was arguing that both PC games and consoles will disappear thanks to the "cloud games". I was disagreeing. My point was being, ether BI had another paid article on behalf of some tech giants mad projects, or they've just read these rumors wrong. I agree, direct cloud computing isn't going anywhere. However, there's a different sort of danger - the cloud monopolization of the Internet.

    Essentially, modern Internet is a medium between content creator and consumer - the former creates content and gets money for it, the latter gets and rates it, and gives money as he sees fit. But if you get to the big companies, they would like to occupy this content pipeline with their own business model and make both parties pay them as much money as it's possible without burning down everything to the ground. The cloud doesn't really require you to make all calculations on remote server, it is just going to control everything you do in the game(or other medium) from the cloud. And since the owner of the cloud is not you but a company, they are free to exploit everything they collect.

    https://www.geekwire.com/2018/xbox-head-phil-spencer-foresees-expanded-cloud-gaming-game-monetization-options/

    “The Azure team has really built a global strength in terms of where our data center and our edge nodes are. And we’re putting them close to places where people will want to go play, and specifically players we don’t reach today,” Spencer said. “Putting data centers closer to the players is how we work on latency among other kinds of magic software solutions that we put in place, but the global scale of Azure is a huge benefit to us in this space.”

    Spencer said the gaming division at Microsoft is flourishing. “We had our highest revenue year last year with over $10 billion in revenue in the gaming category,” he said. “We’re seeing software and service growth in double digits, and the business is performing very well. It is an activity that the youths on the planet love.”

    Oh well, I suppose I was actually wrong, it is worse than that - it is about both possibilities, united in a new model. I think it is called "slavery". When you have to pay for the services not because you can play these games, but because you can pay. When you have to consume not because you want to, but because you can. And etc.

    Luckily for people like me, there are still plenty of calm waters in gaming industry - modding communities, small and medium creators occupying certain niches. The big companies can burn in their own self-inflicted hell all they want.

    1015:

    *as long as it doesn't break any laws

    1016:

    "How far down can the locomotive technology be pushed, cost effectively?"

    Motor control seems to me more a case of things pushing up, as various generations of the necessary power-handling devices become increasingly practical in increasingly higher ratings, and the various factors pertaining to a given method of control which cease to be negligible as the power level goes up are addressed. For a long time there was only one locomotive on BR to have moved beyond control based on electromechanical devices - 87101, which used thyristors and was basically to gain experience with them; at the same time, PWM drives for induction motors were exotic even at powers of a few kW, the power MOSFETs they used were things you took care not to look at in the wrong way, and IGBTs were things you only heard about. Nowadays, PWM drives and IGBTs have been developed to much higher powers, and variable frequency drive induction motors are pretty standard for rail traction - with substantial gains in efficiency and performance. They're standard industrial drives too, along with the closely-related variant with a permanent magnet rotor misleadingly called "brushless DC" when it isn't DC at all, and are certainly well established at power levels suitable for cars.

    I think the problem with cars is that designers have been seduced by the ability of electric motors to produce torque at zero revs into getting rid not only of the clutch and gearbox, which does make sense, but also any form of final drive gearing and driveshafts. Instead they put the motor in the hub, with direct drive, which is a terrible constraint on weight, size, shape and heat dissipation, and also forces it to operate at unfavourably low speed. It may be good for simplicity but it isn't good for motor efficiency or suspension performance.

    Oh yes - just occurred to me - they probably also do it because it makes it easier to implement systems to mask from the driver any indications that they're approaching the limits of grip as far as possible up to the point at which control is lost, ensuring that it is lost suddenly and any "grey area" that could be used to recover it has already been expended.

    Railways have gone the other way - it's increasingly popular to mount the traction motor on the body and take the drive to the bogie through a cardan shaft, particularly for high speed operation, because of the reduction in unsprung weight, and the much-relaxed constraints on motor size. It also simplifies the cooling arrangements.

    1017:

    You have Barry scrapyard in the 70s, a crane, a forge, and a welding torch. You have 2 days to build a variable ratio drive system for a steam locomotive...

    1018:

    “I think the problem with cars is that designers have been seduced by the ability of electric motors to produce torque at zero revs into getting rid not only of the clutch and gearbox, which does make sense, but also any form of final drive gearing and driveshafts.“

    No they haven’t. Every volume electric car I’m aware of, from the Renault Twizzy through to the Tesla Model S uses a single motor (or motor per pair of driven wheels in the case of AWD implementations like the Jaguar I Pace or dual motor Tesla’s) with a simple epicyclic reduction gear, a differential, and half shafts.

    There’s lots of talk about hub motors (and a guy I work with did development work on them with AC Delco) but nobody is actually selling or planning to sell them in a mainstream car at the moment...

    1019:

    Differentials and half-shafts are a proven reliable simple method of allowing vehicles to drive round corners under power. Hub motors add unsprung weight to the wheels and vehicle engineers have spent a century of time, effort and money removing weight from wheels to make the vehicle ride quality, traction and steering better. There's a reason lightweight alloy rims are a thing. One larger motor is cheaper than four smaller motors, too and the failure modes are less dangerous.

    1020:

    There's a reason lightweight alloy rims are a thing. If only they actually were!

    Most alloy wheel designs are produced by "stylists", and engineers are then allowed to add material to make them adequately strong. In some case this gets to the extent where the engineered steel wheel is as little as 2/3 the mass for a given fitment.

    1021:

    Pigeon @ 1016 Thank you for expanding on the problems - you are entorely correct - I was not aware that the "designers" of electric cars were being that stupid. I suppose they will learn, eventually.

    @1017 NO. Mostly ex-Gas-Works Railway rubbish .... The "variable drive" was achieved in two ways - firstly by the standard Cut-off" meachanism, which allowed for different variations in expansive working & secondly, for cruising speeds below about 80 mph, compounding, provided it was properly implemented - which it all-too-often wasn't.

    Oh yes, compare & contrast. Two speakers in this morning's "Today" programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001t04#play Started at 07.00, so at about 1h 10-15 in they had the "Cheif Constable of Sussex Police" ... to call him a wanker would be an insult to honest masturbators ... he made even Chris Grayling sound honest & competent [ Yes, really, that bad.. ] - he had to be asked at least 3 times to get an even halfway straight answer to any question & he still dodged some .... Full right up to the overfilling brim with Brit "management" bullshit & totally unyeilding on his & his force's gross incompetence & harrying of innocent people over the Gatwick-Drone affair.

    A few minutes later a chief Superintendant of W Midlands Plod on knife-crime. All the facts & statistics at his fingertips, he'd been reading the hostory as well. Basically he was sying that: "90% of the time "race" is irrelevant, it's young males between the ages of 17 & 25, it's been that way for at least the past 150 years, yes we do have problems in some areas with gangs, but it's still 17-15 y-old males, isn't it ... etc " NOT what some people want to hear, of course ... tough. Relevant story - my "local" pub re-located in about 1850, from opposite the church to another 50 metres down the road, so the then owner could run small stage-coaches to the nearest railway station ( Lea Bridge ) - but the original pub has been there since not too long after the church was rebuilt ( approx 1180 ) & the first actual reference is in the early 1300's, because ... there was a late-night stabbing outside the pub. Some things don't seem to change ... SEE ALSO the most dangerous street in 14th C London ...

    1022:

    One thing that modern "spoked" alloy wheels achieve that classic pressed steel wheels don't do is to ventilate the discs and disc brakes to keep them cool and improve braking performance. Pressed steel wheels are mostly from an era of drum brakes which would cook under load. Drum brakes were frankly abysmal to start with of course.

    Sure alloy wheels are styled to look good because eye candy sells but you'd probably not notice until you look that most of them are designed to act as cooling fans blowing cold air onto the discs and brake units as the vehicle moves.

    It's almost like car designers are professional engineers and a lot of people who look superficially at how modern cars are designed and built aren't.

    1023:

    Oh, for. Please, check your claims against reality.

    https://electrek.co/2018/09/18/vw-meb-platform-electric-for-all-affordable-evs/

    VW and their common electric platform.

    https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0196/5170/files/Red_Teslas_schematic_grande.jpg?v=1496610796

    Tesla.

    http://www.autovolt-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/new-tech-in-nissan-leaf-01.jpg

    Leaf.

    http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/chevrolet-bolt-ev-cutaway.jpg

    Bolt.

    That is the major dedicated electric designs, as opposed to hybrids and people pulling out a gasoline motor and sticking in an electric in place. Notice something? No, people are not putting the motors in the wheels.

    That is Not A Thing.

    1024:

    We're looking at this from different angles. Yes, a well designed alloy can blow (or suck) air past the disc, but that doesn't mean it also has to be f*ing heavy!

    1025:

    “Pigeon @ 1016 Thank you for expanding on the problems - you are entorely correct - I was not aware that the "designers" of electric cars were being that stupid. I suppose they will learn, eventually”

    What?

    They’ll learn not to do the thing they don’t do and currently have no particular intention of doing?

    I think the main lesson to be learned is to listen to people who actually have experience of electric vehicles and know how they work rather than people who seem to have picked up some rather peculiar and inaccurate notions about them...

    1026:

    I don't positively know that much about the design of "burn their fuel 50 miles away" cars, but I do know a bit about hybrids.

    Some hybrids (Eg Porsche 919) do, indeed, use a central axle motor connected to the wheels by driveshafts, but other actually do use wheel motors (main source Evo).

    1027:

    In general alloy rims weigh less than steel rims -- one example I've seen quoted says steel wheels for a Mazda Miata weigh over 7kg with no tyre, alloy rims with no tyre weigh about 5kg. Other sources suggest rims for some car models have similar weights but in the cases I've seen the alloy rim always weighs a little less, not any more than steel.

    It's actually cheaper and simpler to make alloy rims, they're cast rather than being welded and the castings have enough structure to allow them to be machined to balance them for road speeds. Steel wheels are harder, literally, to balance and oddly they deform easier in use with impacts on pot-hole edges and the like since they're sheet metal, not solid alloy.

    Alloy wheels are bulkier, not surprising since they meed more metal to take the loads and of course to the untrained eye bulkier means heavier. Actual measurements show otherwise.

    1028:

    You're actually agreeing with me; the MX-5 standard wheels are properly structurally engineered wheels. I've seen figures for "styled" aftermarket wheels for the same car that weigh 10kg or so.

    1029:

    The new Roadstet 2020 seems to have one motor in the front and two in the back. Of course it also claims to have spacex COPV thrusters as an option package so who knows

    1030:

    Which tyres are the 10kg aftermarket rims for? If they're wide-tread low-profile designs then there's a lot more alloy required to carry such tyres and, at a guess, there's no aftermarket "structured" welded sheet-steel wheels that would fit similar tyres.

    The 7kg/5kg comparison is for factory-fitted rims with similar tyres -- the steel wheels were for the first-generation cars manufactured, the alloys a later model manufacturing change.

    1031:

    "2 motors in back" doesn't actually require hub motors, but as I say I don't know a lot about "burn their fuel 50 miles away" cars.

    The main reason I know about the 919 is that I'm building a model in a psychedelic 917 homage scheme.

    1032:

    I honestly can't remember, beyond that they were bolt-up replacements with no bodywork needed.

    1033:

    That's two orders not three, and still way out of the target envelope.

    Since you know how to do it, why don't you produce some scaled down to the target weight (under 1 ton, in many cases under 100 Kg), together with their other objectives? There has been a big market for several decades, you know, so far unsatisified :-( This problem has bedevilled engineers for 150 years.

    I know one real expert in this area well, incidentally, who designed and built the first usable off-road powered wheelchair, and he has described the problems he had to me.

    Or to the weight/torque/rotation variation requirements of a 44 ton HGV through urban conditions, along a German autobahn and over high, steep Alpine passes? And DO please remember that extra weight costs badly for those, much more than for heavy rail.

    1034:

    When I was still paying attention to such things, NASCAR & dirt track cars were using steel wheels, heavier gauge than road going cars and sufficiently wide. Cast aluminum aftermarket wheels from the seventies were known as liable to crack and break, spun or stamped aluminum such as Centerline or Weld superlights (One of which was said to have broken SEMA's test rig.) were less brittle. Esthetics has more to do with alloy wheels on performance cars than engineering.

    1035:

    My understanding is that there ARE advantages to putting motors in wheels (especially for off-road), but they are seriously outweighed by the disadvantages for most purposes. For example, suspension becomes a horrible problem. They are not great even on electric bicycles.

    I am more disturbed by the weight of those things - this may be ignorable in the USA, but is most definitely not in the UK. Inter alia, it implies that scaling them down is likely to be intractable - e.g. the Smart EQ fourtwo is 40% heavier than the petrol (over a ton) and seems to imply a range of only c. 120 km, which is a problem even for urban drivers.

    While I have been a supporter of electric vehicles for many decades, I am very concerned at the way their proponents are tackling the problems politically rather than technically. I have seen this many times in many contexts, and it never ends well :-(

    1036:

    Again, this is Not A Thing. Sure, you can probably find an electric car or two that does it, we are currently in the "Lets throw things at the wall and see what sticks" phase of electric design, not all of which is going to be sane or successful, but it is not some design trend. Took me 180 seconds to find those explody diagrams, since marketing loves making them.

    There is a noticeable design trend, which dedicated electric designs are converging on, however - It is a floorplate full of batteries, and all the systems that do not fit inside that plate - engines and steering actuators, ect, gathered in two humps on that floorplate with the wheels on the sides of those humps.

    Which is actually super interesting, because.. that is the entire guts of the car. Controls, chassis, seating ect, all of that is just bolted on and hooked up after the fact. Going to be a really obvious move to produce these "Bases" in huge series, and bolt several different "models" of car on top. Sports performance or kinder-transport minivan? Same guts, the "Go very fast" toy just has a minimal areo-shell and two seats to minimize the amount of mass and air it has to move, while the van is more or less a cube with seven seats.

    1037:

    JayGee @ 1018: Every volume electric car I'm aware of...uses a single motor...with a simple epicyclic reduction gear, a differential, and half shafts.

    There's lots of talk about hub motors (and a guy I work with did development work on them with AC Delco) but nobody is actually selling or planning to sell them in a mainstream car at the moment...

    paws @ 1026: Some hybrids (Eg Porsche 919) do, indeed, use a central axle motor connected to the wheels by driveshafts, but other actually do use wheel motors (main source Evo).

    Thanks for the clarification!

    1038:

    Grumble. I'm also sometimes disheartened by pro-nuclear activists. I may be unfair, but it sometimes seems like people pick a decision and then find justification.

    For nuclear, running the world off of nuclear is perfectly feasible if we allow proliferation. Otherwise, no. I haven't seen another argument that isn't tied up in regulatory nonsense or subject to invalidation. With perfectly feasible engineering. Now, sure limited supply, but more than enough to transition to, eg, solar satellites and beamed power. The other arguments, with all due respect, do not appear to be important relative to, eg, global warming. Eg, cooling water.

    Waste disposal is a fairly obvious chimera. So is cooling water. Low level waste is not important from a health perspective.

    For solar, running the world off of solar is probably feasible. Issues include long range transmission of power to regions without reliable sunlight (costly to install enough backup). Batteries being explosive is not a real problem on a utility scale level. There are modest effects expected from space requirements. Cost is a real issue, as the primary drivers of global warming are not expected to be in first world countries. These issues may be solved with cost reduction over time. They will not be solved through the blithe assumption that people with limited resources will be willing to limit them further to benefit further generations. As a person with limited resources, I would be perfectly willing to listen to people from first world nations as soon as they'd sequestered their original carbon footprint and built me sufficient renewable power to support a first world economy gratis.

    The thing that annoys me is obsessing over one technology's current failings and blithly assuming solutions to another technology's issues. For a long time, nuclear was far more plausible as a solution to global warming. We opted to not pursue that path - solar looks plausible now, but we'll end up with an extra 3 or 4 degrees Celsius warming from that decision. Meh. Probably livable.

    1039:

    EC @ 1033 I SAID STOP IT I have part-answered your wrong q & pigeon TJ & others have expanded on it. There is NOT a problem - I was wrong about lots of separate motors, incidentally, but irrelevant to your non-argument. The problem is not gearing & those ratios, but the sheer weight of the batteries, compared to the power output required ... power/weight ratio in other words. WHich is why electric "small" trucks look like working, but the big grunts, not so much - could play well for rail freight of course, where, in sensible, civilised countries that don't have arsehole Grayling for Transport minister, they have electrified rail networks ....

    1040:

    Yes and no to your last paragraph. While you can get a long way with such optional toppings, the differences between serious sports cars, ordinary saloons etc. and (technically) light goods vehicles are far too pervasive to be covered up that way. Yes, there might be 2 or 3 bases that cover all of the standard family saloons, poor men's sports cars, estate cars, people carriers, and very light vans and pickups, but I think that's where it will stop. For those - the same may be true for larger vans, pickups etc., as well, but with no 'domestic' bodies.

    1041:

    For a long time, nuclear was far more plausible as a solution to global warming.

    I could have told you, by the time I graduated high school (in 1982) that the public support for nuclear power would never be there. "Nuclear power will help with global warming" may be true, but it won't convince the public, which doesn't trust any of the folks selling nuke plants (and considers both solar and wind as superior alternatives.)

    The only thing which will convince the public, (and the politicians for whom reading the public is a professional skill) that nuclear power is a good alternative will be some kind of useful new nuclear technology being brought to fruition by someone who is not one of the existing players. This is the political reality, and it has been the political reality since I was old enough to vote more than 30 years ago. All I can say is "get used to it."

    1042:

    In the absence of anti-nuclear evangelism, they might.

    1043:

    Stop all anti-nuclear evangelism (good luck with that one) and maybe 40-50 years from now you can build a nuke plant. Meanwhile, we need Green energy now.

    1044:

    Well, I say the same. Go away and take a look at the HUGE market for 250-750 watt nominal road vehicles, and the major problems they have with torque/rotation variations in hilly going. As I said, there has been a major market for over 25 years, the vast majority of electric road vehicles fall into that class, and it's STILL an unresolved problem.

    You have provided no evidence for your claim that electric motors that remain efficient over a huge range of torques and rotations can be scaled arbitrarily downwards, let alone cost-effectively, or even that they CAN handle the ranges needed at the very low end. I don't know how fast as seriously the problems build up, but I know damn well it's an unsolved problem.

    If the consequences of the move to electric include cars getting larger again, places like the UK are in trouble.

    1045:

    The thing of building one basic chassis and sticking different bodies on it is a settled pattern already and has been for a very long time - the type of power unit is a mere detail. They were doing it with the Model T Ford, where you could get different types of body for different domestic or commercial purposes stuck on the same chassis. Well-known later obvious examples include the Austin Seven, the Morris Minor/Spridget, the Marina/MGB, the Ford Cortina/Capri/P100, etc. Currently it's even more pervasive although somewhat less externally obvious. And of course it's very obvious in the next size class up and larger, where there's no call for domestic-purpose bodies but you're explicitly offered a range of different types of commercial bodies on the same chassis. It would be more surprising if they didn't carry on doing the same thing with electric chassis.

    1046:

    Did someone call for Green energy now? We'll build out lots of photogenic wind and solar power facilities but actually generate most of our electricity from combined-cycle gas turbine plants in anonymous buildings close to grid interconnectors because people want electricity when they want it and not just when the sun and the wind oblige. We'll call it Green and that will satisfy everyone and please to ignore the ever increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere.

    1047:

    "...250-750 watt nominal road vehicles, and the major problems they have with torque/rotation variations in hilly going."

    Oh, so that's what you meant by "small"! It wasn't clear that you were looking so far below the size range of actual cars.

    I've got such a vehicle myself (a mobility scooter) and it is indeed rather too easy to find gradients it won't handle - there are plenty of areas of the country where it would be essentially useless because having gone down a hill it would be stuck in the valley and need to be towed back up again. I've also looked into the practicality of building an electric bicycle while keeping within the law (as I think we've discussed on here before); it's much the same if not worse.

    The problem isn't really technical but legal. Such a vehicle will inevitably struggle with gradients simply because the power needed to raise the mass against gravity without dropping to the speed of an arthritic slug is greater than what the law allows it to put out. On top of that, the legal restrictions on total weight would make it difficult to fit batteries able to cope with the higher discharge rate needed to put out more power.

    And of course, the reason vehicles in that power class are popular is that so long as they do stay within those legal restrictions, you don't have to bother with all the expensive legal kerfuffle that applies to actual cars and motorbikes.

    The problem would be largely removed if the law concentrated on restricting what it's actually interested in restricting - speed - and didn't mess about with power output as an imperfect proxy for speed in addition to the restrictions on speed itself, or with swingeing weight limits which seem to serve no purpose at all.

    I'm not denying that it is hard to maintain efficiency over the whole operating speed range required of the motors in such vehicles, but it's a secondary problem compared with not being allowed to have a power output high enough to fight gravity properly in the first place. And neither the necessarily very low operating speed of hub motors for electric bicycles, nor the choice of wound-armature brushed DC motors for buggies and the like, do anything to help matters.

    1048:

    I'm not saying that anti-nuclear is, in fact, a good idea. Frankly, I don't have a dog in that fight. But if you do want nuclear, you need to understand what is and isn't politically possible, and having a tantrum over your perceptions of Green energy doesn't help with that. The first step in actually having nuclear power is that you must get over yourself and accept political reality.

    Just sayin'. (Shrugs.)

    And if you can't accept political reality, then shut up and build build me a windmill.

    On another issue, I've been thinking about hydro (about which I don't know a great deal) but I'm wondering if anyone does know how much upgrading of the generators has happened since the various hydro-plants were built? I'm imagining that we've had considerable improvements in generators in the last 50-60 years, but to what degree have any improvement actually been applied?

    1049:

    I gave up and accepted political reality (and 430ppm CO2 by 2030) a while back. I have been surprised that gas has become cheaper than coal and less visible, I thought the dirt-burning habits of the world might push people to consider safe clean nuclear power to be a world-saving alternative but I understand that nuclear is Scary! so fossil carbon and greater climate change is the future. Still doesn't stop me pointing out the blind wishful thinking of the renewables boosters and especially the hypocrisy of the Galts Gulch IGMFY crowd.

    I believe that the Dinorwig pumped-storage station got re-turbined a while ago. The new turbines were a little (one or two percent) more efficient than the ones installed back in the 1970s when Electric Mountain was first built, but not much more. It still, like nearly all other pumped-storage systems around the world, runs at about 75% round-trip storage efficiency. I'd expect that regular hydro will be in the 80%-plus efficiency region comparing gravitational energy through the turbines to electricity generated since it's only one-way.

    Those sorts of turbines are about as efficient as they can be, there's no really new manufacturing technology or materials science that can improve their performance much from the sorts of designs first implemented in the early part of the 20th century. Wear and tear will degrade their performance a little as they age, that's all.

    1050:

    Hunh? What are you banging on about?

    San Onofre Nuclear Power Station (next to I-5, so everyone driving down the coast to San Diego sees it) is far more photogenic than any solar array. Heck, it even featured prominently in The Naked Gun. You really think a solar farm like this is sexier than San Onofre?

    If your argument is sex appeal, nukes are far better.

    1051:

    Ah, you mean the Dolly Parton Memorial Nuclear Power Station? Now shut down of course, the replacement electricity for the Granola state's nuts, fruits, flakes and vegetables supplied by gas-burning and a resulting increase in CO2 emissions but nuclear is Scary!

    1052:

    Geothermal is hotter.

    Joking aside, I'd love to see some cleaner, more politically acceptable nuclear options, but nobody is even trying, and "not trying" isn't sexy at all!

    1053:

    I'll go on to note that the problem here is the American obsession with race. We're blowing our demographic transition and ignoring the real problems. FEH! Get off my lawn!

    1054:

    The thing that really stops investment in nuclear is not the technology, it is the fear of spending the money to build one and then having it get torn down without ever being turned on due to anti-nuclear fear mongering. I know of four cases of this happening of the top of my head and it would not surprise me to learn I missed some. That is terrifying to any investor, private or public, because it is billions for nothing.

    A better reactor design will not fix this, because the reactors are not the problem, people being bloody well insane is.

    So the required innovation is either the utter discrediting of anti-nuclear movements (Digging through their finances until you find the fossil fuel and Russian money? I know at least the first category is there..) or a reactor design which is immune to politically motivated sabotage.

    Which pretty much means a reactor you can pack up and move to a saner jurisdiction. So, its nuclear barges or nuclear submersible powerplants I guess? Could we talk Macron into giving DCNS a kick in the pants about moving flex-blue from the drawing board and onto the slipway?

    1055:

    What that ultimately means is a reactor design that can be proven safe in court, (which is not a bad idea if you consider it for a few minutes) plus some thought as to how do you handle issues like "getting high-level waste out of town safely."

    1056:

    Agreed paras 2 and 3.

    The base technologies were all pretty mature by the 1950s (except the reversible turbine-generators for pump storage, but locations where we can do that even without environ mentalists saying "but the lesser spotted screwt" are limited).

    Side note - I did work for a hydro-generation concern for a few months in the early 1980s.

    1057:

    No. Facts really do not matter here.

    I am talking about cases like :

    Zwetendorf Completed, startup made illegal by referendum.

    The Limoniz reactors Completed, never put into service due to anti-nuclear party taking power. The Spanish government was sued over this and lost. Reactors still not started up, ratepayers just had to pay for them.

    Shoreham, where the Governor flat out ordered that no evacuation plan ever be approved..

    Kalkar fast reactor which was running hot tests when it was abandoned to win votes in regional elections. 3.5 billion euro turned into a goddess accursed amusement park.

    These are just the cases where the plants were 100 % complete. NONE of them had a sane reason for being stopped. I mean, you could maybe argue shoreham should have been further away from the city, high-tension lines being cheap, but that was not the argument made, it was just "Nope, do not want".

    So, making the reactors better will not stop this problem. Stopping this problem, or making the reactors mobile, so you can sell them to the next country over if the customer has a sudden attack of the vapors, however?

    1058:

    The anti-nuclear movement is very adept at moving goal-posts. And at sabotaging any and all attempts at actually addressing any object level issues they may have.

    For example, fuel supply? Fast reactors do not have this problem, and also ultimately, have shorter lived waste, but any attempts at building them meets with far, far greater opposition than any run of the mill reactor does. Pheonix had actual anti-tank weapons fired at it! Which did nothing, the reactor being rather more durable than a mere tank, but still.

    Nuclear waste? Few things attracts the as much political opposition as the construction of nuclear waste repositories. There is nothing wrong with Yucca, except if it goes forward, Greenpeace looses that talking point forever. So it was fought to the knife.

    These are not the actions of organizations operating in good faith.

    There is therefore no point in expending any further effort in this direction. Greenpeace Delenta Est or political judo moves like a product which is not tied down to a specific location are the only ways to win.

    1059:

    But could any of these have won, on their safety merits, in a court? When you consider the issues of fuel disposal, possible safety problems, weather, design issues, likelihood of earthquakes, security, accidents, etc., how would they rate?

    The second factor might be, "How to demonstrate their safety to the public?"

    If a government really got behind building a better reactor, tested it's failure modes, made the program properly transparent, etc., I think it would have a great chance of success - particularly if it could be mass-produced.

    1060:

    This is one thing I really love about flex blue - you cannot picket it! it is under water! You cannot even have photogenic shoots of sailing around the place, because.. well, it is just another patch of ocean. And also the coast guard will shoot you.

    1061:

    Easily. But making it a matter for the courts would be a terrible idea, because dragging court cases out forever and filing frivolous lawsuits is a favorite tactic of the anti-nuclear movement. There were a good few years where it seemed like every nuclear project in the US was also a court case. That did nothing to improve actual safety, but did make all the plants cost a lot more due to court ordered delays.

    As I said, the anti-nuclear movement blatantly does not operate in good faith. This means going forward with nuclear power requires solutions that are safe.. and immune to bad-faith attacks. Kicking the issue to the courts obviously fails the second of these.

    1062:

    Ultimately, fixing Climate Change will be a matter of taking risks (and choosing those risks carefully.) One of the risks I think we have to take is nuclear power, and I think it needs to be enforced by whatever means seems appropriate, but it also needs to be done with great attention towards safety.

    1063:

    Yeah, and you know why it got shut down? Because they hired a company that had never made generators for a nuclear power plant (Mitsubishi) to increase their generator capacity by some small fraction by cramming more generators into the system. The generators reportedly started shaking themselves apart, and they decided that shutting it down was cheaper than fixing it.

    Now they're going to store the waste in steel canisters near the beach.

    Let's talk about stupid here: --The generators shaking themselves apart was a problem first seen at the Santa Susanna Field Lab in the 1950s and solved not long after. Having it crop up again is a straight up engineering failure.

    --Growing the capacity was a design failure, as they were profitable without installing more generators.

    --Having secret talks with their regulators in Poland, to try to get the cost of shutdown shifted from the company to the bill payers was ever-so-slightly illegal.

    --Parking steel canisters of waste next to the beach is kind of scary, especially on that coast. It's not like salt air doesn't like steel.

    Anyway, that's what I'm scared of: corruption and incompetence.

    Since we're not bothering to install new gas plants (the proposed Oxnard one got canned in favor of a battery backup on the same site, since it would be more responsive and cheaper), I still think you're pretty funny about all this.

    1064:

    but it also needs to be done with great attention towards safety.

    I disagree. Nuclear power plant projects have been beset by an demand for ultra-super-extra-mega levels of safety which cost money and convince the public that nuclear power is a barely-chained dragon that will destroy us all, just you wait! Look at all the super-extra-mega safety systems they've got already!

    People today won't pay for sufficient renewables plus storage to provide enough electricity when they need it and I'm not sure the human race can build enough renewables to actually do that job given the expected electricity demand is growing as China, India and latterly Africa move into the age of washing machines, electric cars, air conditioning and all the other modern conveniences for everyone. To stop fossil carbon consumption it is necessary to eliminate energy poverty world-wide, not just in a few well-off McMansion suburbs in the States. India will burn coal rather than do without electricity, ditto for Africa. China is committed to generating a TW or so from coal for the next thirty years or so (about 3 billion tonnes a year, roughly) and no renewables, nuclear, hydro and hamsters in wheels will replace that TW of electricity-when-we-need-it under current rules.

    The true backup to renewables is not storage but gas-burning gas turbines and they add CO2 to the atmosphere which will damage the climate enough to cost people fifty years from now trillions of dollars of remediation and disruption every year. Frankly building thousands of cheap-and-less-safe nuclear reactors right now could stop that bill coming due. I'd accept a Fukushima-level release of radioactive materials every ten years or so from such reactors because, as it has been shown, such a release did pretty much no damage to the world's ecosystem. The extra 15ppm of CO2 added to the atmosphere since 2011 is much more dangerous in the long term.

    But nuclear is Scary! and there is no level of actual demonstrated safety of nuclear power that people will accept as sufficient. There will always be court cases and doubts and "what if a meteorite smashes into the containment" and...

    1065:

    Mitsubishi have a long track record of building steam generators for nuclear power plants as well as other major components, based on their shipbuilding history. You're flat-out wrong when you say they'd never made steam generators before.

    They were not "cramming more generators into the system." since they were replacing existing steam generators with similar units one-for-one so you're flat-out wrong when you said that too. The rest of your statements I'll ignore generally since the first few were ill-informed and just wrong.

    Are you anti-nuclear by any chance?

    1066:

    And that's the real problem. It's not "Is nuclear power safe?" it's "Are nuclear power companies safe?" And the fact of the matter is that we all expect them to be corrupt, scummy, and ritually dedicated to very poor practices.

    The first step in cleaning up your act is to actually clean up your fucking act, but nuclear power operators are corporate equivalent of guys with gold teeth who drive convertible BMWs and pull up in your driveway, smiling.

    "Yeah baby, I've changed!"

    Sure you have. Now get your gas-guzzling asshole-mobile out of my driveway and try that line on someone else!

    1067:

    Isolated demand for rigor and perfection, again. The estimates for how many people western coal kills works out to one every three days, approximately, for a one gigawatt coal installation. Coal plants typically run for 40, 50 years. This means every coal plant built, is going to kill people on the same scale as the chernobyl disaster.

    This does not count deaths from climate change. Its pure classical pollution.

    Coal is literally as deadly as a nuclear powerplant that has the worst possible disaster happen to it. In normal operation. And in actual practice, we still build coal plants. We build coal plants to replace nuclear powerplants we shut down for no good reason.

    There is really no way to describe this other than "insanity".

    1068:

    "No. Facts really do not matter here."

    In what debate have facts ever mattered? I always argue with facts despite the fact that they do absolutely nothing to sway anyone.

    Look at dousing car battery fires. I've to him explained for years now that lithium ion rechargeable batteries aren't lithium metal batteries, that you can put them out with water. I've shown him videos of lithium ion battery packs being put out with water, videos of people describing how they put them out with a garden hose, first responder information packs explaining that you can put them out with water. His response: "physics will not be mocked"

    The facts don't make even the slightest dent in his convictions. He's a very very smart guy, but facts are like water off a ducks back. He's not the only one, just an example that we're both familiar with. It's the human default. I'm often amazed that we advanced enough to be able to destroy the ecosystem that supports us, but I'm unsurprised that once we reached that point, even that fact that we were certain to destroy ourselves wasn't enough to change anyone's mind about anything.

    1069:

    Arrgh. I was talking about EC but started with a pronoun. Still, could be anyone, including me. Knowing the fact that facts don't matter doesn't alter my internal conviction that I can argue effectively simply by stating the facts. I can't, I know I can't, but I don't seem to be able to internalize that fact.

    1070:

    There are two problems with your thinking. The first is that it is not an either/or choice between coal and nuclear. Your setting it up as a binary choice is the source of some very unclear thinking.

    The second problem is that you're not looking at the problem logically. Start by listing power-sources in order of possible dangers:

    COAL IS CLEARLY UNSAFE. Problems include emissions, coal ash issues, mercury issues, etc., coal is simply unsafe and it is very much uneconomic to make it safe.

    NUCLEAR IS POTENTIALLY VERY UNSAFE: Problems include radiation containment, very-long-term storage of nuclear waste, meltdowns, poor designs, issues of long-term thinking and people making poor decisions about all of the above while ritually excluding input about all of the above.* Fixing the problem is expensive and time-consuming, but not impossible.

    GAS IS SOMEWHAT UNSAFE: The main problems are emissions and reliably making sure that the path from the source to your natural gas plant doesn't leak methane into the atmosphere.

    SOLAR IS REASONABLY SAFE BUT NOT RELIABLE: The sun doesn't shine all the time (but it does shine on a schedule.)

    WIND IS REASONABLY SAFE BUT NOT RELIABLE: The main problem is that the wind does not blow all the time, particularly at night.

    HYDRO IS SAFE AND RELIABLE BUT RELATIVELY RARE: There aren't enough places where hydro can be established, even with heavy use of dams, etc., to provide power for everyone. On the risk side, hydro can really screw up the ecosystem of a river.

    So where are our best places to remediate weaknesses and cut losses?

    COAL: Too polluting. Probably can't be remediated at all. Kill it.

    NUCLEAR: Possibly fixable via better technology and cultural changes in nuke operators. On the hopeful side, new technology is almost always cheap compared with doing things the old way, but how do we keep nuclear operators from behaving badly? What we need here is good cost estimates plus a strategy for keeping the guy with the gold tooth at bay!

    GAS: The problem of moving gas from source-to-plant might be amenable to better materials and maintenance, but emissions are tough to deal with. Maybe kill this also?

    SOLAR: Find some way of storing the energy at night, or shipping the energy from place to place. Batteries would certainly work if we have enough of the right materials and solar farms in Europe and Asia are good candidates for shipping power from place-to-place.

    WIND: Definitely the weakest of all the alternatives. Less reliable than solar, needs batteries. Maybe kill it too, or implement on a purely local basis with careful controls to make sure the windmills are well-placed?

    HYDRO: Maybe the best bet of all, particularly if it's possible to build more/better/saner hydro plants. In many ways it's less problematic than anything else. Are there ways to build safe/sane hydro plants without making major alterations to our rivers? Research on this might pay off really, really well. (I suspect that Hydro is a major winner if we accept power generation on the scale of a single windmill at 1000 places along a single river.)

    After spending less than an hour thinking things through, it looks like we get safe, useful energy in the following order:

    HYDRO, with lots of potential for growth. SOLAR, as long as we have good batteries. NUCLEAR, with revised machines and culture. WIND, but only where appropriate. GAS, as a last resort.

    • This right here is the biggest problem with nuclear.
    1071:

    Sorry, I missed your reply.

    Yes, I'm getting my energy requirements for extracting Uranium from seawater by comparing it with desalination, but the numbers aren't much better for simply dipping fibres in seawater.

    Here's a paper that explores that option. Their numbers seem absurdly optimistic to me. Putting infrastructure in the ocean is a lot harder and more energy intensive than they make out. Moreover they assume 100% efficient extraction. Even so, it's either not energy positive or just slightly positive. They're also only looking at replacing our current consumption. They find that there's unlikely to be sufficient suitable sites. To replace the entire energy supply means that the need for suitable sites would be far greater. Even the circumpolar current wouldn't be sufficient (ignoring the fact that extraction only works in tropical waters anyway)

    https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/4/980/pdf

    1072:

    What a sane response.

    Only things I'd say is that solar is reliable but intermittent (there's a big difference) and that in the final summation rather than "SOLAR, as long as we have good batteries" I'd change to SOLAR, if we're prepared to spend a couple of trillion on power lines.

    1073:

    Since Climate Change is likely to be a multi-Quadrillion-dollar problem, I can only hope we're willing to spend a couple trillion on transmission lines!

    1074:

    In the nuclear debate, it helps to look outside the West once in a while. Let's look at China. Their anti-nuclear movement does exist, but it's much weaker and the more radical factions are viewed as a threat to the state.

    "As of September 2018, China has 44 nuclear reactors in operation with a capacity of 40.6 GW and 13 under construction with a capacity of 14 GW.[1][2] Additional reactors are planned for an additional 36 GW. China was planning to have 58 GW of capacity by 2020.[3] Nuclear power contributed 3% of the total electricity production in 2015, with 170 TWh,[1] and was the fastest-growing electricity source, with 29% growth over 2014.[4] Nuclear generation increased again in 2016 to 213 TWh, a 25% increase,[5] and in 2017 to 246 TWh, a 15% increase.[6] China ranks fourth in the world in total nuclear power capacity installed, and third by nuclear power generated."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

    So after decades of buildup, they have nuclear than the US both in absolute terms and in relative terms. They're one of the largest uranium producers, so it's not the case of fearing becoming dependent on imports.

    In fact, their wind and solar are a greater share of their electricity sector than the US despite comparatively fewer ADVERSE regulation compared to the US (14% to ~8%). Note to Heteromeles: I never said China has no regulation for wind and solar. Instead, they have less of the regulation which holds these energy sources back in the US.

    1075:

    I don't know enough to comment on Russia's case.

    1076:

    I like your summary, aside from hydropower. While it's arguably safer than coal, dam failures are potentially far more dangerous. Anoxic sediments sequestered under dams can be a source of atmospheric methane (bad idea), and they inevitably disrupt river ecosystems, which can have cascading problems with fish species going extinct, along with the fisheries that depend on them.

    Also, all the good and mediocre sites for dams in the US are built out, and the same is rapidly becoming true in the rest of the world. The only way to increase hydro capacity basically is raising the height of existing dams. If there's not enough water to accommodate the height (as in the Colorado, then this is a useless gesture.

    1077:

    they inevitably disrupt river ecosystems, which can have cascading problems with fish species going extinct, along with the fisheries that depend on them

    Which is not necessarily the case. Had you said "they invariably change river ecosystems." then that would be true. I've picked on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitlochry_fish_ladder as one example which you can easily and independently verify where a hydro scheme has increased the numbers and range fish species. As to "sites being built out", see #1056; if we were allowed to use them, Scotland could easily add another 2GW of hydro on sites where the studies have already been done.

    1078:

    I personally very much doubt we'll spend enough to save ourselves.

    1079:

    The problem with hydro-power is the way we think about it. What if we thought about Hydro the way we think about wind? We don't want one big generator, we want a hundred little generators...

    And we put one generator every hundred yards alongside a river, with a paddle-wheel (or whatever the modern version might be) encased in come kind of cage to keep the fish from getting beat up? It's hydro, but it doesn't need a dam?

    1080:

    I know. And that's really sad, because if the U.S. made Climate Change our number one priority, much of the world would follow along. But we won't do it because of terrorists and gang members, and illegal immigrants, and the whole corrupt, racist package which is keeping us from moving into the future.

    1081:

    Wind and solar verifiably kill and injure a surprising number of people each year, nuclear energy not so much. It takes a lot of construction and physical hardware to get a GWh of electricity from renewables and people fall off things, things fall on them, they get electrocuted when the sun shines etc. In comparison a GWh of nuclear energy is an hour's operation at one modern reactor with safety rules, barriers, inspectors etc.

    Nuclear is Scary, I'll grant you that and no-one looks that closely at the row of tombstones behind flugffy-bunny solar panel installations and rainbow-unicorn windmills because, well, actually I don't know. Perhaps you can enlighten me?

    1082:

    That's river-run generation. It's OK if you want a few dozen kW per installation @ $10,000 per install plus semi-annual maintenance and occasional loss of capacity when things go wrong (like a tree branch getting in the turbine/paddlewheel). It's better than nothing but a proper penned hydroelectric installation is more efficient and costs less per kWh.

    1083:

    The phrase “the living will envy the dead” really does come to mind in relation to the immediate next 100 years or so.

    1084:

    Hm? I don't recall any reference to black powder or hunting in the text. Nor was any exception made for cannon. I'm not going to do a "lionroll" on you and demand your sources, I'll simply repeat that there were no limitations on private ownership of any sort of weaponry in the USA until much, much later. The practical limiatation was that cannons were very expensive, and the very rich could rely on the army if they actually needed cannon for protecting their property. I think they first started coming in after Haymarket, when some limitations were placed for the first time on private ownership of dynamite. But none really ever on private security companies, except for WMD. I do think the renamed Blackwater might get in hot water if they wanted to go nuclear.

    1085:

    You can get 100kw or so from each of a series of dams without disrupting the river ecology noticably if you include a fish ladder or fish lift in each dam. Overhead views aren't terribly helpful, but the Forrar-Glass hydro scheme is one example.

    1086:

    I've always thought 'hate', but envy as well, certainly.

    1087:

    Greg: On this, we are actually in total agreement. I was simply using "left" and "right" in the American political sense, since I was discussing US politics. As for my own stance, as far as I'm concerned Corbyn is an opportunist trimmer, utterly willing to capitulate to the Blairites to get into office. This should have become obvious to everyone a year ago, when it was Corbyn who prevented Blair from facing war crimes charges, or whatever was being floated at the time (I probably have that slightly wrong, being an outside observer, but I'm sure you recall what I'm talking about). If he was serious about his leftism, he could easily have drummed much of the Blairite wing right out of the Labour Party though constituency resomething or others (what was that term again?). If he actually gets to be PM, which seems not unlikely, I am confident he will disappoint his supporters rapidly, and end up running a Labour Party government really not that different from previous ones.

    1088:

    OK, perhaps you'd care to name another propellant that was in use in the 1770s CE?

    Or tell me where (except by omission) it is made clear that I may own an MBT with a full magazine?

    1089:

    I think it's pretty hard to slander the weekend warriors of the National Guard, who no longer have much of a purpose for existence now that the draft has been abolished so it is no longer a good way to avoid the draft. But whatever. As for militias, I cheerfully admit I know little about militias in England. I know a fair amount about the revolutionary militias during the American Revolution, which sometimes had continuity with the colonial militia, and often didn't. Did you even know that they elected their officers? As for the transition, yeah I knew about those laws you mentioned, that is what I was referring to when I said that they got turned in the early Nineteenth Century into auxiliaries to the standing army that they were originally supposed to be counterposed to. Which, minus your particular ideological take on it, is pretty much what you said too, innit?

    1090:

    In America we have two major business parties, one which is extremely right wing, and one which is somewhat less right wing and sometimes claims to be "left." In between you got billionaire Perot then and billionaire Bloomberg now, therefore centrist in the deeply skewed American sense. And let us not forget the Greens, who are also a business party, except of small business instead of big business. (If you don't believe me just read one of Ralph Nader's books.)

    The original meaning of "centrist" was a supporter of Karl Kautsky's "Marxist Center." Which shows how far right not just the USA but much of the rest of the world has gone, as Kautsky, the "Pope" of the Second International, was definitely to the left of Corbyn.

    1091:

    I've enjoyed reading these arguments, informative, and hesitated to jump in as many here have more expertise than I do. But I do know something abut China and nuclear power. Namely, I know why China is capable of going forward on nuclear power whereas nobody else is, including France which is starting to de-emphasize nuclear. Simple. It's because the Chinese economy is only partially capitalist. Due to the high expense of nuclear plants (CS had a good post about his visit to that English high tech plant) investment inevitably goes elsewhere. Given the poor shape English, American and world capitalism is in, whatever the merits of nuclear power, about which I am neutral, seems to me there are upsides and downsides, it doesn't matter 'cuz except in China it ain't gonna happen in any meaningful way. The only way to do cost-effective nuclear plants with current technology would be breeder plants, which will not happen 'cuz any country with breeders has the bomb if it wants.

    Troutwaxer's summary of the overall picture was useful, except that there really aren't much in the way of dammable rivers left, and the ecological damage from dams is huge and probably always will be. Maybe in Europe gas is OK, but in America, with our breaking down leaky infrastructure, like I said gas is nearly as bad as coal. And I think batteries capable of storing the kind of power you need for an entire electrical grid is theoretically possible, but then so is fusion. I think they'll arrive, if at all, at about the same time.

    So what is the solution? World socialism, when cost considerations become subordinate. In a worldwide planned economy not regulated by the laws of the market, some kind of carefully planned eclectic combination of all five possible sources mentioned, plus huge attention to energy efficiency etc., should carry the world through until superbatteries or fusion power or something we haven't even thought of yet come on line.

    1092:

    EC @ 1044 - & echoing Pigeon @1047 This is a non-problem that you seem to have invented. ONE: 750W is approx. 1HP – about what a fit human can produce for a short while. See pigeon’s comments on legal, not technical problems, plus … if you REALLY meant “small” electric vehicles, try HERE and … Here, too

    …. See also Gasdive @ 1068 - & here we go again, I think.

    Troutwaxer @ 1070 All of that can be boiled down to one simple sentence … What we need is a “simple” method for safe energy storage in large quantities. Right then, this is, seriously, the really big question – solve that one & the methods of power generation simply don’t matter, provided we can store enough of the stuff ( safely, of course )

    Gasdive @ 1078 The cost of one bullet into Bolsonaro isn’t a lot, but that fascist & planet-wrecking nutter has got to be stopped. Quite possibly more dangerous than DT, which takes some doing.

    JH @ 1087 Agreed – you are going to have difficulty with the fine details at your distance … yet the Corbyn/momentum crowd have persistently tried to deselect my MP, who has a majority of over 20 000 (!!) simply because she isn’t Marxist”socialist” enough. She is wildly popular, personally, & is now a semi-national figure, but… Corbyn. Delightful Jeremy simply has not had any original ideas since about 1973 & his “thinking” & politics are stuck back then, apart from defence, where he is stuck in 1934, which is even scarier ….

    1093:

    I think it's pretty hard to slander the weekend warriors of the National Guard, who no longer have much of a purpose for existence now that the draft has been abolished so it is no longer a good way to avoid the draft.

    Wrong, I’m afraid (speaking as someone who spent twenty years as a reservist).

    You should be pleased about the existence of an Army that cannot go to war without mobilising its Reservists. It means that the politicians who start wars have to consider the economic impact of calling people away from their jobs; it raises the threshold of war. Feature, not a bug. And Reservists have this awful habit of not being quiet when things are poorly organised, or poorly funded - if it’s not your career, you’re far more likely to call out toxic leadership.

    It’s also a way of having a broad range of people within your Armed Forces; you’ll find Reservists are older and wiser, on average; they bring their backgrounds with them. As the largest single cost of the defence budget is the manpower bill, only paying your troops for training time is quite efficient (I always found it impressive how the Regular side of British Army could manage to cram two days of learning into a working week). It also reduces the risk of an socially-isolated professional military thinking that only it understands how things should be run (see: US Police Departments).

    Having a Reserve component (National Guard, TA, Army Reserves, whatever) gets you more “bang for your buck”...

    1094:

    I’m in Morocco at the moment and drove past the Ouarzazate Power station yesterday. They’re just finishing Noor 3 which is a big ass 150 MW solar tower, very impressive. Power is stored in molten salt giving 7hrs supply for when the sun goes down and the plan is (according to the King) to keep building stations and eventually pump power across the Straits into the European grid, probably via HV DC link. All this is current state of art i.e. you want more power add another station, and believe me there’s plenty of real estate out here in the Western Sahara and even in the middle of winter there’s not much cloud. :)

    In terms of (unsubsidised) dollars per KWH solar thermal sits around the same range*as coal at the moment, which is probably why Noor 4 will be solar PV which is a much cheaper tech option. Add in even a modest level of costing for exernalitirs and solar comes out ahead. The project is a joint Chinese, Spanish, Moroccan effort.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station

    *Cheapest solar thermal plants run roughly equivalent to a mid range coal plant. See the 2018 Lazard report v10 for detailed cross comparison of levelized cost.

    1095:

    I'm going to be repetitive at this, but there's one reason I don't believe 90% of modern "climate" folks in anything they do and say. It's the reasoning. The reasoning is the classical libertarian trapping of the "free market" that in general everything is OK as long as we just apply some general tweaks to the economy, which can be safely done by existing government, and, in fact, this is all they are required to do ever besides "keeping the rule of law" or something like that.

    Climate issues are going to change a great amount more than any liberal mind would like to think. In fact, even more of the society needs to change than some thinkers know about the society. Besides energy sources development, monetary politics and investment mechanisms, there must be all-around change in industry, recycling, education, endless consumerism and, most importantly, in absolute ideology of profiteering. And somebody also will have to ensure that none of these changes will have opposite effect because somebody looks too much in the procedural issues and not into the meaning of things.

    Carbon tax isn't going to work. Anti-nuclear and anti-fossil movements aren't going to work - people will contemplate the ongoing collapse of energy sector and will eventually say "f* it, I'm not going to lay down my arse for somebody's crazy plans they can't even explain honest". Ecology missions becoming wretched hives of corruption that only follow minute rivalry bribes and politicized opinions.

    Somebody have to tell people that profiting from climate change is detrimental and destroys the purpose of the entire operation. That pushing up price of resources for the pure idea of "saving the nature" will eventually lead to strikes and revolutions and people asking for blood. Which is already happening. People need to understand that "climate" means very-long-range investments (that will pay off in several generations at best) and not stupidly-short-term advert virtual campaigns that result in very-short-term virtual results only suitable for speculations of stock market. Modern economy is EXACTLY OPPOSITE of what we need to ensure survival in the future and nobody in right is willing to admit it because it's crash will be unprecedented.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHgJKrmbYfg

    I'm not 100% agree with Carlin, more like 97%, but at least he tells us what he thinks as a responsible person.

    1096:

    You're preaching to the choir.* I think everyone here agrees with you on that particular bit of reasoning.

    • Since that's an obscure bit of English, I'll provide a translation, just in case you need it (though I suspect you don't,) the phrase implies a priest/minister who is carefully instructing the Church's choir in the doctrine they hear every Sunday during services.
    1097:

    I suspect that the power storage and power generation problems are the most easily solved of the Climate Change issues; just add money.

    The social and political issues are a very different problem.

    1099:

    paws4thot @ 1077

    "they inevitably disrupt river ecosystems, which can have cascading problems with fish species going extinct, along with the fisheries that depend on them"

    Which is not necessarily the case. Had you said "they invariably change river ecosystems." then that would be true. I've picked on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitlochry_fish_ladder as one example which you can easily and independently verify where a hydro scheme has increased the numbers and range fish species. As to "sites being built out", see #1056; if we were allowed to use them, Scotland could easily add another 2GW of hydro on sites where the studies have already been done.

    I thought this looked promising:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buF8ASmwXt4

    https://www.turbulent.be/

    Small scale, low head, fish friendly - doesn't require a dam as far as I can see, so you don't have a problem with silt accumulation. And as to the debate over battery storage vs. sharing over a grid, I think we'd be better off with both [local batteries & large centralized storage].

    And then there's wind power vs solar argument ... wherever it's feasible COMBINE 'EM!

    https://tinyurl.com/yagqjju9

    Instead of getting all wrapped around the axle over which form of renewable energy is superior and/or has what major drawbacks, fix the problems and use all of them.

    1100:

    Agreed, subject to the note that you seem to need a water course with natural variations in gradient (head) or else you've just re-invented the weir turbine if you build in artificial increases in head, like you'd need to do with the river Leven in Dunbartonshire, Scotland (second fastest flowing is Scotland after the Spey, 6 miles long, and near where I grew up so I do know it. If you check on Wikipedia it's reported as having 2 weirs, one of them is to maintain water level in Loch Lomond, which is the main water source for Glasgow these days. The other is partly to protect the foundations for Old Dumbarton Bridge, which dates from 1765. Between these weirs, the gradient of the river is near constant).

    As per #1085, there are schemes in Scotland which use the base concept, if not this turbine design.

    BTW, I will not follow links through net aggregation sites like tin yurl or bit.

    1101:

    Mechanically simpler version of the “turbulent” idea(): https://www.vortexhydroenergy.com/technology/how-it-works/ What’s nice about these is that they skim off a small fraction of the kinetic energy of a river that would otherwise go to noise and heat while leaving their surroundings much less disturbed than a dam or a large-area solar installation. ( Takes resonant vortex shedding, a phenomenon that usually breaks things, and pus it to use.)

    1102:

    BTW, I will not follow links through net aggregation sites like tin yurl or bit.

    Why not? I've found tinyurl useful over the years, but if there's some security or moral problem with it I'll stop.

    1103:

    That looks like it would actually work better in a fast and/or turbulent flow than in a smooth one? If so, then it might well work in the Leven (#1100 Para 1).

    1104:

    Why not? This is not a reflection on you personally, but if I can't see for myself where a link actually points then I don't use it because I don't know it's not to www.ransomware.com/downloadavirus .

    1105:

    Since we're way past 300.

    Germany and GDPR.

    On a trip to the town of my wife's mother's we stopped and asked the local church for a copy of her baptismal record. After a few minutes of back and forth in broken German and English were were told that no records after 1870 something could not be released due to privacy laws. I'm assuming this is GDPR. The NO seemed to come from the priest (stop it Greg), not the secretary or assistant.

    Anyone know if this is a correct interpretation of GDPR or some German law? And if there's a way to get this record for our family history? My mother in law died a few months ago.

    Thanks

    PS: This town can be walked end to end in 15 minutes or less.

    1106:

    When they couldn't break them, they got around them: they went to strip mining and mountaintop removal. Results: in the fifites, over .75M miners; now, around 75k miners.

    Yes strip mining was a factor. But underground automation was also big. No one drives a rod into a coal or rock face anymore with a hammer or even an air gun on a regular basis. Well not in the US. There are very large machines doing all of that work now.

    1107:

    Well, to start with, European DP law only applies to the living!

    1108:

    "Assume that everyone who was alive within a human lifetime + a bit extra for safety is covered" is a reasonable approach to take if you don't need the hassle of investigating each case you're asked about, especially when all the downsides are on you if you share information you shouldn't have.

    1109:

    “Across the room from the flaming hoverboard, the blinds were already melting.” A battery with enough energy to run a riding toy could easily have set a house on fire.

    I find the idea of a battery with enough energy to run my house for a day somewhat scarier than a propane tank with enough energy to run my house for a day. (Though less scary than the hard pipe to city gas I already have.)

    That it doesn’t need to mix with air to release its energy is the least important reason.
    That it has many more and more complicated bits is somewhat more important. Most important is that it doesn’t have decades of experience associated with it yet.

    Making such devices safe takes careful engineering, development of regulations requiring the careful engineering, and institutions to enforce the regulations. Will the society I live in learn to regulate new technologies safely? Well right now we seem to be forgetting how to run century-old technology safely: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_Valley_gas_explosions

    1110:

    I sure hope I am, because with all that push-pull going around I tend to see that there's too much about technical details and too little about basic mechanisms and social problems. Probably it has something to do with education and difference in society.

    1111:

    It's American. American electrical stuff is supposed to zap things and start fires, because that's what it does in the comics.

    As someone who lives here as I understand such things (and I follow them more than the average person) most fires are either transformer explosions in substations (due to loss of cooling), or high voltage lines sagging into trees due to the lines getting hot and expanding. Which is why the power companies continually get tree lovers (irrational ones) all fired up as they clear cut under power lines.

    A big problem is when a fast growing weed tree jumps up to 40' or more in a few years after a clear cutting which was expected to be good for a few more years.

    1112:

    Lots of things can set a house on fire. Some relatives of mine went to the shop next door and returned 5 minutes later to find their house well alight. The TV had caught fire.

    Still, it's a fire, not an explosion of the sort that happened while I was writing my previous comment. An explosion that killed the resident and was powerful enough to separate the brick walls into individual bricks.

    https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2018-12-28/man-killed-in-andover-gas-explosion-has-been-named/

    1113:

    Allen Thomson @ 1102:

    BTW, I will not follow links through net aggregation sites like tin yurl or bit.

    Why not? I've found tinyurl useful over the years, but if there's some security or moral problem with it I'll stop.

    TinyURL is more transparent than an embedded hyperlink. would be.

    Sometimes a URL is just too long to paste. How do you feel about the "preview" function in tiny URLs?

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b5189c5c59d450946b9665d8258ea221430e36d7/0_187_5616_3370/master/5616.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=b5fa818570e60a744a5baf03cca6d3b3

    https://preview.tinyurl.com/yagqjju9

    Which, BTW, is just a photo from the Independent's web site of some wind turbines & solar electric panels in the same field that I found with a Google image search.

    1114:

    "TinyURL is more transparent than an embedded hyperlink. would be."

    Uh? The link you can just hover over and the href pops up right in the browser. With a tin yurl it's right click, copy link address, paste it into a terminal and type wget --spider in front of it, or equivalent, which isn't a facility most people have available.

    Normalising tin yurls is evil precisely because it does break the hover href thing and so accustoms people to clicking blindly on links without knowing where they are going, which is enough of a problem without that.

    "Sometimes a URL is just too long to paste."

    Now that twitter has its own tin yurl machine I'm not aware of anything that doesn't allow inputs long enough to handle any URLs you come across. (Apart from things like the "comment" field on ebay feedback, but that doesn't really count.)

    What does sometimes happen is that weird characters in URLs make a site's parser barf, which is the sole situation where tin yurls are genuinely useful (though it's still good manners to post the real URL, with the weird characters munged, as well, by way of explanation).

    Tin yurls also break the ability to sanitise URLs before clicking on them. Very often for instance there are tracking parameters tacked on the end, which it is of course desirable to remove. With a plain URL you can just paste it into the address bar of a new tab and delete the tail before hitting return. With a tin yurl you don't even know they're there to be deleted. (Most tin yurl machines do not have previews.)

    It is, of course, good manners for the poster to delete the crap themselves before posting, but nearly everyone doesn't. Even when weird characters in it are making a parser barf. This often happens with ebay and amazon links - but you can just delete all the garbage after the item number and it'll still go to the same listing and be more readable to boot. Which is a much better way to solve the problem than by giving up and encoding the whole thing in a tin yurl crap and all.

    Another possible reason for cleaning the gunk out of a URL is that it may be crippling whatever's on the other end of it. Your solar panels and wind farm photo is an example of this. The rule for images off the Guardian (not Independent) website seems to be:

    • Change "i.guim" to "media.guim"
    • Delete "/img/media"
    • Delete "?" and all the crap following it

    http://media.guim.co.uk/b5189c5c59d450946b9665d8258ea221430e36d7/0_187_5616_3370/master/5616.jpg

    That gives a much better quality version of the image than the small and fuzzy version the crippled link gives.

    1115:

    Thanks for that; it's more comprehensive than I'd have managed.

    That said, sooner or later someone is going to manage an exploit where they change what was an innocent link on an aggregation site to either download malware, or kiddie or snuff porn (for added LOLs, show the Game Over screen from Missile Command whilst the exploit is running)! Maybe I'm paranoid, but unless those sites' sysadmins are more paranoid than I am it will happen.

    1116:

    You know you don’t have to put the battery inside your house anymore then you have to put a propane tank inside your house. My powershed is a good 300 yards from the house

    If you are suburban you could bury it in the backyard. But the smarter thing for urban is to just centralize the batteries somewhere and let the power company deal with them

    1117:

    The hardware stuff is easy, so naturally you hear a lot about it, but personally, I'd love a thread where hardware discussions were forbidden and you had to figure out a way to get to "fixing climate change" which involved no violence.

    1118:

    In the name of accuracy, and given that this is a Scottish-hosted* blog, you might want to think of using "Britain" or "the UK".

    I have come to the conclusion that the only ones on the planet other than historians who specialize in the issue who can keep straight what the different names for those islands at the northwest corner of Europe call themselves are the people who grew up there. And paid attention in class.

    The people I was around in Germany the last few weeks used the various terms interchangeably. And these were educated folks with college degrees.

    1119:

    As a single data point we had a squirrel commit suicide by stepping across the terminals of a pole transformer. Looked like it had shaved a 3mm wide bit of fur from one front leg to a back leg. The flash was literally like a bomb went off as the fused link blew. Squirrel was smoking when we found it in the pile of wet leaves. If not wet we might have had a big brush fire in the woods/thicket across from our house.

    1120:

    The best you might be able to manage would be some certification scheme for able-bodied passengers who want to sit in the exit aisle

    My wife, who is on an airplane 30 or more times a year, saw a first recently. Someone in the exit row would not answer the question "are you willing and able ...."

    He was moved to another seat.

    I fly only 20 times or so per year now and in the 80s maybe double that and I've never seen anyone say no or not respond.

    1121:

    Pigeon @ 1114 Very often for instance there are tracking parameters tacked on the end Are there now? First I've heard of it ( And, I suspect a lot of others here ) ... So, could you please tell us how to spot them, so that we CAN snip them off? Paws @ 1115 - seconded & thanks.

    1122:

    Happy New Year everyone.

    1123:

    My major complaint is that even though technical stuff is rather easy to learn, it is not easy to learn WHY it is working in such way, which is rather more important than just knowing it. People would ignore it because they think it doesn't matter, what matters is their own reasoning which is often self-righteous, inexperienced and lacking in complexity. This is where violence comes from, because adult people will violently resist attempts to educate them. (It is still better than just pushing them around to do your bidding, as many "ecologists" prefer to do.)

    1124:

    Well, most of the current inland is vacant.

    Talking about the US here.

    Most of it is vacant because it cannot support large populations due to lack of water. Many larger cities in the central US exist by taking up the water from a large area around them.

    I live in one of the top of all of the lists places to move. The admins in the local cities are trying to figure out what we will all be drinking if this keeps up. Our watershed(s) is/are near the limits now.

    1125:

    That's like me, saying I live in a suburban area. Riiiight.... just because they're single-family houses with large yards? And Eveanston, IL, is a "suburb" of Chicago, never mind it's on the other side of Howard St, and there's no way you can tell you're not in Chicago....

    Welcome to my zoning fights. When you live 1/2 mile from a collection of 20 story building you are NOT living "out in the burbs".

    1126:

    OK, I have been measuring. My Mum loves about 5/8 mile from downtown, a similar distance from open farmland, and about 3/4 mile from 20 story residential. So how do you class that?

    1127:

    Sigh!! s/loves/lives

    Also, in this part of town almost all properties are detached or semi-detached villas.

    1128:

    Along the same lines as arguments about political realities of nuclear:

    Well, some of those power lines would have to cross national borders. The political reality is that nation-states won't allow that sort of vulnerability. Therefore, solar is a non-starter.

    Besides, in some locations, solar involves significantly increased costs to handle seasonal variations - therefore solar is a non-starter.

    Windmills are, overall, actually a non-starter.

    Regarding lawsuits, failure to start, to be fair, we can't build a fricking Whole Foods in my neighborhood without having it stopped be belated lawsuits - mostly on behalf of grocery store owners, AFAIK. The political reality is that NIMBY is a thing - therefore all new power plants (including renewables) are a non-starter.

    I'm not annoyed by the American public holding anti-nuclear views - and I'm not upset by the political reality. My opinion is that global warming isn't that significant - so - whatever. People will die - but countries with large militaries will be ok. Once a large enough fraction die, we'll change some things and the species will probably survive.

    I am, however, disappointed by the fraction of environmentalists who are anti-nuclear by default and antinuclear in a way that causes cognitive dissonance. So, you're saying you'd be fine with nuclear if we changed our corporate and economic system in some unspecified way to make large entities competent??? (I would be more optimistic about building traversable wormholes.) But, coal kills more people?? But, we can just build solar?? Of course, we need solutions usable in the third world. So, price is a consideration??

    My overall assessment based on this logic is that global warming is super important, but not important enough to risk 5-10 people dying of radiation poisoning. So, overall, less important that warning signs on ladders.

    1129:

    Well, some of those power lines would have to cross national borders. The political reality is that nation-states won't allow that sort of vulnerability.

    For certain values of these statements: for example the UK-France cross-English Channel superconnector is already a thing.

    1130:

    David L @ 1119: As a single data point we had a squirrel commit suicide by stepping across the terminals of a pole transformer. Looked like it had shaved a 3mm wide bit of fur from one front leg to a back leg. The flash was literally like a bomb went off as the fused link blew. Squirrel was smoking when we found it in the pile of wet leaves. If not wet we might have had a big brush fire in the woods/thicket across from our house.

    That happens around here at least a couple of times per year. Sounds like a bomb going off & the lights go out. Fourth of July a couple of years back, it blew the insulator off the top of the pole and set the end of the pole on fire.

    1131:

    paws @ 1129 Now what happens to THAT on 30th March 2019 is going to be very interesting Another thing the fucking Brexiteers haven't thought about or through....

    1132:

    David L @ 1125:

    That's like me, saying I live in a suburban area. Riiiight.... just because they're single-family houses with large yards? And Eveanston, IL, is a "suburb" of Chicago, never mind it's on the other side of Howard St, and there's no way you can tell you're not in Chicago....

    Welcome to my zoning fights. When you live 1/2 mile from a collection of 20 story building you are NOT living "out in the burbs".

    Where are you? For some reason I thought you were up in Wake Forest.

    I'm in Mordecai "east", just a couple of blocks north of the "Historic Oakwood" district. Charlie can probably relate - all of the buildings in Oakwood are "listed" and you can't even make minor repairs without getting permission from the Raleigh Historic Development Commission.

    1133:

    - Delete "?" and all the crap following it

    This is good advice in general. I routinely do it by hand before passing along urls.

    Except when I forget, of course.

    1134:

    RE: Relocating to Cleveland, Detroit, etc...

    I lived in Pittsburgh for 7 years, 2 months in Cleveland during the worst winter there maybe ever, and spent a lot of time on business trips to Chicago, and various New England cities in the winter. No thanks. Nope. Nopity nope nope. (As CS has said.)

    I'd move to CA first and I don't like the ground moving under me, forest fires in my back yard, or no water for months on end.

    In general people will trade winters in the north of the US for CA climate. Cold is IMMEDIATE. Earthquakes are something that MIGHT happen in the future. Or so that's how shaved apes seem to think about it.

    Also tornadoes. I grew up on the edge of tornado alley and have lived for many years where they can appear. I have never yet seen or heard one. I did spend the night in storm cellars twice while growing up. And a day in my college apartment playing with tennis ball cannons during the big outbreak of 74.[1] Zip. Nada. Nothing. But 20 miles away a small town was leveled. Literally.

    Tornadoes are scary if you're in one but most people who live in high risk zones will never see one.

    [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Super_Outbreak

    1135:

    We will want to preserve our coastal oceans/fisheries from whatever poisons are currently built into houses/stored in garages/running through pipes in our low-lying coastal areas.

    Well here in NC we can just wait and move after the next flood event hurricane washes everything out to sea again and move the next day. :)

    https://abc11.com/weather/florence-flooding-drone-video-this-is-interstate-40/4273835/

    1136:

    Please. I have seen decades of debate over the workability of thorium reactors, and have yet to see either side win.

    There was a commentor here a while back who seemed fluent in the tech and worked in the nuclear industry and said the problem with thorium reactors was it was almost trivial to make small mods to them and generate weapons grade material. Which meant they should never be sited in areas of the world with possibly unstable governments.

    Like Iran, Pakistan, GB, USA, .... GDRFC

    1137:

    The British system is that in towns there are big transformers at ground level which supply 240V to a few streets, in little compounds tucked away in odd corners where you don't notice them much.

    In the US for residential suburbs and rural areas you have these transformers that supply 1 to 4 buildings typically. Overhead wires and all that. You can't really connect more than 4 or so houses to a single transformer.

    As to fusing them, most of the issues as I understand it comes from heat cycling of the windings eventually causing a short and thus the boom. But it doesn't really happen all that often. But I guess if it did go boom in a very dry grassy area it could start a fire.

    I had to call out the fire department on my pole when an eaten out by ants pine tree fell onto the top of the pole with the transformer on it. A few branches started burning but it didn't really catch so the fire department got to wait around for the power folks to show up and pull the tree off the lines.

    1138:

    Anyone have an explanation for why the U.N. hasn't gotten more agressive about climate change remediation? Lately I've been reading the Expanse series (recommendation from O.G.H. proudly displayed on front cover blurb), and much like Liu Cixin's trilogy it features a theme of greater prominence for the U.N. in future world governance.

    U.N. peace keeping troops do seem occasionally deployable to prevent military conflicts, but why haven't their scientific organizations taken the lead in researching topics like iron sulfate enrichment of ocean waters, discussed earlier in this thread? Talk about a toothless watchdog, it's like League of Nations part 2.

    I imagine their health and welfare workers would never hesitate using solar panels to refrigerate vaccines in the tropics, why not use the same rationale to put a reactor on a barge and power up a whole region, that would be a health benefit. Or at the very least they could start by confronting the ignorance and corruption that blocks worthwhile action, if they can't even serve as global whistle-blowers, it gets a little strained justifying the whole organization's continued existence.

    Another comment up thread posted a link showing coal industry funding for antinuclear activity. Fraud like that ought to be exposed to harsh, nonstop international criticism. You'd think some U.N. ambassador would be pounding the lectern with their shoe about it, and show how even a toothless watchdog can still bark. But I guess it just wouldn't be the beige thing to do. Oh well, still makes a good focus for science fiction. Let's just hope it doesn't represent the inevitable endpoint for all international cooperation, or the new slogan for climate change should just be "What, me worry?"

    1139:

    usually political collection of armed thugs, intent on beating up & terrorising anyone they don't like. ... Mst US police seem to qualify, unfortunately.

    Just remember that the bad guys make the new. The ones doing their jobs correctly don't make it to youtube.

    I think we have over 800 police in uniform now where I live. So far the biggest issue with officers being accused of thuggery have been disproved by the evidence. Of course that didn't make the news cycle. And there have been a few cases where things went wrong over the last few years. And the officers got punished.

    1140:

    The meaning of "militia" has changed over the 200&some years since the "Bill of Rights" was written

    I've heard historians say that Madison totally changed his mind about how the US would use militias after his dust up with the British. He totally swung to wanting a full standing army after seeing how the militia concept would work in practice.

    1141:

    Solar in Germany.

    Does anyone who can read German or know another way to find out the capacity of this solar farm?

    https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9062215,10.5460526,963m/data=!3m1!1e3

    Switch to Sat view to see the panels. I stayed at the hotel next door for a few nights a week ago and got curious.

    1142:

    Around here if you put a propane tank in your house the fire marshal’s gonna have a little chat with you, and you need to take a test and buy a license before you’re allowed to install gas appliances. We don’t yet have rules surrounding house batteries.

    1143:

    Since it is on 51.54 north, and it is new years, approximately nothing.

    1144:

    At no time does it include powers or responsibilities to create, operate or indeed fund an air force.

    Well the marines were for a long time a part of the Navy. And the Air Force was really just specialized Army units for a couple or more decades.

    I bet there is some interesting wording in the legislation that made the Marines and Air Force into separate branches.[1] Maybe legally they are not separate but for practical purposes.

    In US the Marines still uses the Navy for most admin type of things. Including their academy.

    If you actually read some federal laws there are some really weird written preambles at times to satisfy limits in the Constitution.

    1145:

    "Hammer, weildy" - a 4lb cast mild steel double peen head, mounted on an 18" hickory shaft.

    Nice prefix to a 100 - 1000 page document. How do you objectively compare the submitted bids. You can likely do it. I can likely do it. The mechanics working on the airplane can do it. But the sales reps will want to know whey their submission got turned down and if because of a "thing" not in the spec they will sue. And so we get ridiculous specs for things that really don't need them. And a set of acceptance criteria for those specs. And a testing plan for the hammers. And everyone submit 50 for evaluation. And .....

    1146:

    like Spec Ops teams in Niger (why were they there? We're not at war with Niger)

    If you're referring to the small group of US forces killed a year or so ago...

    Turns out we (US and I bet UK and France and a few others) have special units all over the world working with their military. In harms way. Mostly for training but things are for real. The guys in Niger were working WITH the government.

    The count I read about was about 100 countries since 2001.

    1147:

    A thought recently echoed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://thebulletin.org/2018/08/thorium-power-has-a-protactinium-problem/

    I'm no expert but they do make it sound like making bombs from thorium is child's play.

    1148:

    "Well, some of those power lines would have to cross national borders. The political reality is that nation-states won't allow that sort of vulnerability. Therefore, solar is a non-starter."

    Huh? All sorts of things cross national borders, roads, rail, normal power lines, pipes full of gas and even cables stuffed full of subversive ideas from the outside world. Why should these cables be any different? Why would nation-states decide that they can forgo access cheap energy?

    Even if they did, all the sunny places with a coastline can be connected to any energy market with a coastline without crossing anyone else's border. That's most places.

    1149:

    I'd have to agree. Searching through terms like "Electricity Interconnections," one finds all sorts of electricity interconnections between countries, for example in the EU, Scandinavian countries, and so forth. North America has multiple interconnections, and it appears https://www.energy.gov/oe/services/electricity-policy-coordination-and-implementation/transmission-planning/recovery-act-0) that parts of Canada and the US (west, central, Quebec) are better interconnected than, say, California is to Texas. Some of this has to do with the distribution of hydropower. It's fairly useless to run a big hydropower dam if there's no customers for the electricity generated.

    1150:

    Proliferation is a political problem, not a technological one. Nobody has ever "diverted nuclear material" or whatever it is we are supposed to worry about. Nobody is ever going to - it is just not a practical thing to do.

    States that want to build a bomb build specialized facilities to produce bomb-grade fissiles. There is no point messing around trying to misuse civil facilities for a purpose they were not designed for, not even secrecy - If you want a low profile bomb, you build your materials-production reactor in a cave. You do not involve the several thousand people working at the local power plant.

    And for everyone else, well, you cannot sneak radioactives out of a nuke plant without the owners noticing, what with the geiger counters and the inventory control.

    1151:

    You say "proliferation is a political problem not a technological one" like that makes it easier. So is climate change...

    The world nuclear association says 11% of the world's electricity comes from nuclear via 450 plants, and Wikipedia tells me 18% of would energy consumption is electricity. So to cover world needs we're looking at about 27000 plants. What would the recent unpleasantness between Barcelona and Spain look like if both governments had easy access to nuclear weapons? No need for either to steal anything, they both own several plants.

    1152:

    This whole "which power generation technology should we choose" argument is stupid.

    The answer, obviously, is not to pick a technology. Pick several.

    Wind plus solar plus hydro plus tidal-powered plus some storage utilities gives a cheap, reliable, efficient network, especially if it's across a largish geographical area. With the exact mix depending on where you are, and what you need.

    So that's what will happen.

    1153:

    Exactly.

    The idea that there are only two options, coal and nuclear, and that we must chose between those two and only those two; it's crap even as propaganda.

    1154:

    You say "proliferation is a political problem not a technological one" like that makes it easier. So is climate change...

    To take this thread back about 800 comments... so is the issue of "individuals owning cars" vs "using a car as a service, with everyone carpooling and ride-sharing".

    Individual car ownership, and having a median of 1 person in each car on the highways and motorways, is because of features of how our society works. Technology is relevant, but is far from the main reason why things work that way in 2018.

    We could, right now, nationalize all the cars that go into urban areas, declare them a common good, use mandated car-pooling and car-sharing with apps controlling who gets to use them, and thus build the "cars are just packets in the road network" system that Troutwaxer wants. Self-driving is not needed - we manage dockless bikes and scooters without them being self-driving.

    We've all the tools to solve the main information/communication issues - who wants to go where, when, which of these people can drive, and what cars are available. We could charge per-use enough to run the network, with discounts for those who are assigned to drive parts of the route of their mandated carpooling, and surge charging to manage load-balancing. All quite do-able, right now.

    What stops us using "cars as a service" right now is not a lack of an AI in each car, or a lack of electrification. It is that late-stage capitalism doesn't work that way.

    1155:

    David L @ 1146 Yes, we ( Britain) were & possibly still are involved. We initially provided heavy-lift for the for the French ( the ex-colonial power ) at the request of the Niger "government" whose corruption & incompetence had allowed incursions by al-shabab ( & al-quaeda? ) in the N. After that special forces in v small quantities, + training & support roles. See HERE for more information

    1156:

    .. Gasdive: The main instrument internationally restricting proliferation is the Non-proliferation Treaty. Which is explicitly an agreement that the Great Powers of the world will help the rest of the world use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes if they refrain from building weapons. That treaty only gets stronger if civil nuclear becomes more important.

    Certainly, trying to stop all civil nuclear technology in the name of non-proliferation is an utter betrayal of the logic, principles and justice behind that political settlement. In other words: "You are NOT helping".

    Further: Spain already has easy access to nuclear weapons. It is a major first-world nation. North Korea, which cannot successfully feed itself built the bomb. If Spain wants nuclear explosives, it will very shortly have nuclear explosives, it being a not-very-challenging piece of 1944 technology. They do not have the bomb because they do not want the bomb. The size of the Spanish civil nuclear sector is more or less entirely irrelevant to this. You can tell because nobody who ever actually built a nuclear warhead used civil materials to do so.

    Troutwaxer: For more or less the entirety of the existence of the anti-nuclear power movement, that has been the choice, and the de-facto result of the work of the anti-nuclear movement.

    I mentioned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plant Zwentendorf before? Well, it is very nearly a bloody parody of how anti-nuclear activism works out in practice. Nuclear power project is stopped, the capacity is one-for-one replaced by a black coal burning power plant and then they put solar panels on the corpse of the nuclear power plant with an output of 0.00329 percent of what the plant would have had.

    This shit would be funny if it was not killing us, and if anti-nuclear activism did not have such a very long string of victories, all with this exact same result. Promises that there are alternatives to coal other than nukes have been made by anti-nuke activists for literally longer than I have been alive, and for all of that time, they have been lies. Perhaps, the people making the lies believed them, but for the first couple of decades, that must have taken quite considerable powers of self-deception, and to the extent it is not a blatant lie today, that is because natural gas happens to be very cheap at the moment. I am not a fan of that solution either.

    Coal v Fission. If your nation has a single coal plant in existence, being anti-nuke is being pro-coal. All else is deception.

    1157:

    "Hammer, wieldy" is more of a motorpool (or navy engine room, generator) spec than am aeroplane thing. Yes, you may have to detail out the spec more than my stock item description, but it's something you can buy in any decent hardware store.

    Aeroplane tools honestly do need more detailed specs for reasons. That doesn't actually mean that you need more than a good socket set, spanner set and tool control for most work on an undercarriage.

    1158:

    icehawk @ 1152: So that's what will happen.

    That's what should happen. I won't be surprised if it's fucked up by people seeking short term selfish gains at everyone else's expense.

    1159:

    “What stops us using "cars as a service" right now is not a lack of an AI in each car, or a lack of electrification. It is that late-stage capitalism doesn't work that way.”

    Actually it turns out late stage capitalism works that way just fine, it’s just late stage politics that doesn’t

    So it wasn’t until the late stage capitalists adopted a strategy of vigoirsly breaking the law in ways they were difficult to punish, that the late stage politicians eventually rolled over

    1160:

    thorium, protactinium

    Of some relevance, there was a discussion of thorium -> U-233 reactors and proliferation on this very blog a while back.

    See http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/03/question.html @140 ff.

    Short form: you can design and operate thorium/uranium reactors in such a way as to produce U-233 with little of the U-232 that is thought to provide proliferation resistance.

    1161:

    They never got anywhere, because America is polarized, there is almost nobody in the center.

    Ah,,,,,, nope.

    The center is just more and more not registering with a party. Which takes them out of primaries in the US and thus eliminates them as a factor in the "pick one of these two" voting each fall.

    It seems that in the UK more and more people are also checking out of the party system. But I don't know enough about the politics there to say more than that. Well is seems bad when the leaders of the 2 major parties don't seem to have the support of a majority of either party for their positions on the biggest deal in decades. Brexit.

    1162:

    The real thing that makes "cars as a service" not happen is the knowledge gap. For the whole thing to work, the dispatch/routing system has to include everyone.

    Let's use a really simple example: If I have a job in Downtown Los Angeles, (55-ish miles away) and my neighbor has a job which runs the same hours in the building a block from mine, we can't be routed in the same car unless the right person (or the right computer) knows that both my neighbor and I both live near each other AND work in Downtown LA. Without those pieces of knowledge, the best system is useless!

    If it turns out that I have to stay late at work or my neighbor is sick, then the system breaks, right? So the dispatching computer needs to know about a third party who is able to fill in with ride-sharing so my neighbor and I don't lose money by having to pay the hired-car ourselves. (Note that I'm keeping this very simple.)

    So the biggest problem is scale. The system can't work unless everyone is using it. The very, very hardest part is getting from where we are now to the point where everyone is in the system.

    The second real problem is the question "what are the benefits" from not driving myself.

    The first benefit is safety. An AI-driven car is automatically in contact with the other cars on the road, and it's definitely a better driver than a human being (once the "I don't know it's a stop sign because someone put a sticker on it" problems are solved.*) You probably also gain considerable safety with less cars on the road.

    The second benefit is "having more time." From "Troutwaxer's City" to Downtown LA, it gives the users at least four more hours of constructive time in the day even with congestion, and this gets better when you can be put into a car with people who like what you like (on any given day.**) Quiet people who let you get your work done? Talk about sports? Conduct classes in the car? Hang out with other Science Fiction fans? We all want to sleep on the way to work? If you can be set up with the right people (on the right day) the attraction becomes much larger than it would otherwise be! And once everyone is in the system, this isn't difficult to arrange in real time!

    The third benefit is taking multiple cars off the roads. I drive all over Southern California as part of my job. One of the joys of the Holiday season is that with so many people on vacation, there's a two-week window where I don't get stuck in traffic. That's huge in terms of me being able to have a less-stressful day. So once the system is up and running, congestion becomes a thing of the past, and now instead of assuming that 4-6 hours a day will be spent commuting, each commuter gets to assume that 2-4 hours a day will be spent commuting. So in addition to having more productive time available, everyone who currently commutes can assume a couple hours more every day at home with the kids. Most people would find this awesome!

    Fourth, driving for hours on congested roads very is stressful. If I don't drive, that removes one full source of stress from my life, which is also huge.

    So when you say "late stage capitalism..." it's not a very good argument, mainly because you haven't considered the mechanics. This is what Google, Uber, etc., who are trying to build a market for autonomous cars don't get; you can't segment this particular market and have it work.

    • This probably requires general AI. If a driving computer is stuck on the "what's a stop sign" problem it's not safe. But a general AI would know about the issue of "context," and evaluate all octagons it encounters in the context of correct driving and occupant safety.

    ** This is not hard once everyone is in the system.

    1163:

    "...when you can be put into a car with people who like what you like..."

    But not when this is intrinsically impossible because "what you like" is no other fucker anywhere within range of sight, hearing or smell. Which feeling reaches its peak for me first thing in the morning, when I just want to still be in bed, of a height only rivalled by the secondary peak in the evening, when I just want to get home and put out of my mind the shitty day I've just had. I don't think I'm the only one...

    1164:

    We can build cars for that. They'll probably have a bunch of little one-person pods, and they'll be a little more expensive, but I can definitely see it.

    1165:

    "It seems that in the UK more and more people are also checking out of the party system."

    People are certainly getting sick of the choice between two parties neither of whom represent anything like one's own views (or some minor party who never get more than a handful of seats so it's a waste of a vote). That's what's behind Corbyn's popularity - his reversal of the Labour party's morphing into Tory-lite has given people an unprecedented (for many) opportunity to actually vote for a party you support rather than against those you don't.

    But it isn't quite the same as this:

    "The center is just more and more not registering with a party. Which takes them out of primaries in the US and thus eliminates them as a factor in the "pick one of these two" voting each fall."

    ...at least I don't think it is - because I don't really understand what this US concept of "registering with a party" means. From context it sounds as if you have to put your name down on some official list of supporters of one party or another in order to vote. We don't have anything like that in the UK, and much of the reason I don't understand the concept is that what it sounds like is so much of a "whaaat??? fuck right off with that" kind of idea from a viewpoint where no such idea exists.

    1166:

    An AI-driven car is automatically in contact with the other cars on the road, and it's definitely a better driver than a human being Are you prepared to to test this system by literally and physically putting yourself in front of these cars? I'm a software engineer, and I'm NOT.

    1167:

    The way Uber and Lyft’s shared rides products work is quite a bit more complicated then just sharing identical pickup and drop off points. They essentially assume some overhead of picky people up and dropping them off on different places they just minimize the total time wasted for each passenger

    For instance if I pick person A up then go off route for 3 minutes then oickmperson B up then drop person A off then go off route for 3 minutes then drop person B off, then both person A and person B have wasted 3 minutes even though the total ride added 6 minutes end to end

    The each passenger pays a little over half what they normally would

    These algorithms can get quite sophisticated when you optimize N number of passengers across M number of cars.

    They do tend to work better the greater the density of both riders and drivers

    1168:

    Your para the last, as it was explained to me:-

    If your register as a Lemotard, or a Rethuglican, you get to vote in their Congress and Presidential primaries for your state, and get fewer campaign materials from the other lot!

    1169:

    ‘"Hammer, wieldy" ... something you can buy in any decent hardware store.’

    Has your hardware store version undergone MIL-STD-810 testing to prove that if you leave it in a shed in a Greenland winter and then hit something with it the head won’t shatter, and if you leave it in a shed in a Qatar summer the handle won’t melt off, and if you leave it in a shed in a Louisiana summer it won’t grow mold?

    And that’s not even getting into whether the manufacturer is a woman-or-minority-owned small business, what their quality system is like, and whether they can show detailed paperwork demonstrating it contains no “conflict minerals” or Chinese made steel.

    1170:

    I don't really understand what this US concept of "registering with a party"

    Most Yanks don't understand it either. (I'm not faulting David L. for using that idiom, as it is ubiquitous.) The truth is a bit twisty and odd, seen from a European perspective:

    Properly speaking, the only people who are actually members of a US political party are its 51 governing committees (national and state), who run it and are primarily concerned with fundraising. Voters almost uniformly believe they are joining a political party when they register to vote and tick a party checkbox, but they are mistaken: The parties are private. self-governing entities. The voter is registering with a state (or D.C. or territorial) Elections Division, Secretary of State's office, and indicating a party preference. Unlike in a Westminster system, the voter needn't (and cannot) apply to the party for membership, there is no membership fee tendered to the party, and the party has no say in the voter's affiliation and cannot eject the voter. So, for example, when I came of age, I registered to vote with the State of California, indicating a party preference for what the late Gore Vidal, during his 1982 Senatorial campaign, called 'the Democratic wing of the Property Party.' (California lately uses this much clearer term 'party preference', as opposed to 'membership', as part of recent electoral reforms.)

    Similarly, if a candidate runs under the banner of a particular US political party, said party has no say in this and cannot refuse or expel that candidate (who is after all not actually a member, either), which explains the frequent embarrassment of (in particular) the Republican Party when unspeakable and/or certifiably insane people run under their name.

    If this all seems absurdly slipshod, why, it absolutely is. That's what you get when you throw together a government using utopian notions of a French philosopher (Montesquieu) mitigated by pragmatic overlays from a colonial Welshman (Jefferson) and others. The Founding Fathers were taken by surprise by the rise of parties shaped by what we now call Duverger's Law, and spoke disparagingly of them as the lamentable problem of 'faction', even while joining up with the earliest examples to better knife each other. Thus the perhaps startling fact that the US Constitution makes no mention of parties at all, and the states only grudgingly concede their existence, e.g., allowing 'qualified' (i.e., has shown enough voters wanting to prefer them) political parties to include races to select their candidates for each office as part of what is called a 'primary election': I believe the state's logic is that it was going to pay for that election anyway to fill non-partisan offices and decide voter propositions, so there's little harm in bankrolling the functions of private political associations (the parties).

    1171:

    You're confusing the tool with the selection process.

    1172:

    Here's a practical example of seasonal variations being dealt with via trans-national electricity exchange

    https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/power/india-nepal-agree-to-set-up-energy-bank/67288280

    1173:

    Well, that's about as clear as a colloidal suspension of silica particles in aqueous dihydrogen oxide! I've no doubt that's it's also correct.

    1174:

    In the U.S. registering for a party means that you are able to vote for which of (the Democrats, for example) of multiple being offered, will run in the general election against the other parties (Republican, Green, Whatever.)

    You don't have to register with a party in order to be able to vote; that's handled separately. But if you want to chose who, from a particular party will be running, you must register with that party.

    1175:

    Not for another twenty years.

    Maybe general AI will turn out to be like cold-fusion; always 20 years away. Or maybe someone will nail the basics tomorrow. There's no real way to know. But given an AI which can drive more safely than a human, I expect the future to evolve towards routed vehicles with multiple passengers.

    1176:

    Well, seawater can be very clear, and I thought Rick’s explanation was better than most. Clarified a bunch of things for me. I think the main confusion is discussion with Americans who think that stuff is normal and don’t have much idea what everyone else does. Because they also might not get that we’re trying to adjust for that too, and it all ends up a bit cross purposes.

    1177:

    I thought my comment came though as "intended at least partly in humour". Also I'm not entirely sure the seawater really exhibits the characteristics of a colloid.

    1178:

    Just to further confuse the issue, some states, like California, have what are called jungle primaries where all candidates run, and the two leading vote getters advance to the general election. Note, this can (and has) lead to situations where the general election candidates are both Democrats.

    Some states run open primaries, where anyone can vote for a parties candidate, whether or not they belong to that party. A subset of these allows voters to vote in any party primary, but only once per election, so a voter registered as independent can vote in the D or R primary but not both. This can lead to tactical voting situations where a D or I voter votes for a scumbag in the R convention figuring that if that person becomes the candidate they will lose.

    Some states run closed primaries, where only registered Republicans or Democrats can vote for their parties candidate. This is the traditional system that Bernie Sanders opposed, because he wasn't a Democrat and many of his supporters were registered independent voters who were not allowed to vote in closed Democratic primaries.

    1179:

    They do tend to work better the greater the density of both riders and drivers

    Exactly my point. I'm guessing that with really large-scale membership putting multiple nearby riders in a single car becomes absurdly easy.

    1180:

    paws4thot: I can only hope that the main problem with my explanation is the underlying bizarreness of the totally impromptu system I tried to describe.

    A UK voter who joins, say (Charlie's choice) Scottish Green Party pays £3/month (less in exceptional cases) for the privilege, and by way of compensation gets a say in party leadership and policy. Conversely, SGP can and does expel members (including elected officials) from SGP membership for a variety of reasons including grossly dissenting from major party policies.

    As a 'member' [sic] of the Democratic Party in California, I face none of those things: no membership fees (because, in truth, no membership), no say in party governance, no risk of expulsion. As the result of an ongoing arrangement between my state government and the California Democratic Party committee, I can vote in preliminary ('primary') election races to pick which of the candidates for an office who indicated 'Democratic Party' in their candidacy paperwork shall appear on the main ('general') election ballot for that race as the one general election candidate with Democratic Party affiliation.

    California voters attempted to reform this chaotic situation some years ago by adopting what was called an 'open primary', where all voters could vote for any candidate irrespective of the candidates' party affiliations. This voter decision was partially reversed by court decision because most of California's six qualified political parties jointly sued the Secretary of State to block the voters' will: The court agreed that the parties' right of free association under the US Constitution's 1st Amendment was violated by permitting other parties' voters to help pick (in particular) the parties' candidates for US President / VP and members of the local party central committees, so California now has (by court action) a 'modified open primary' where party-specific races can be voted only by voters who've registered to vote with a preference for that party, except that any of the parties can notify the Secretary of State that it'll accept votes from no-party-preference voters. Three of them do, and three of them do not.

    I clarified this matter (to best ability) for my fellow Californians in my analysis ahead of the June 7, 2016 primary election.

    tl;dr: Yes, it's borderline insane, and confusing. And most Americans really don't understand how it works.

    1181:

    Either way, if you want (or have been told by Congress that you must have) certain attributes, knowing for sure that you’re getting them costs money.

    1182:

    I got that, and same here (though my sense of humour is drier than most, even my wife often thinks I’m being serious when I say something that I had thought ridiculous enough not to require signalling, so... ). And I got that too, but found the suspens(ion) too much.

    1183:

    A further comment on David L.'s post about USA trends:

    The center is just more and more not registering with a party. Which takes them out of primaries in the US and thus eliminates them as a factor in the "pick one of these two" voting each fall.

    Indeed, the percentage of US voters never picking a party affiliation has been steadily increasing since 1966, according to polls, and in recent years about 30% of poll responding voters self-identified as 'independent' -- but the meaning of this datum is less then clear. To some extent, as for example in my state of California and some others, it may partly reflect state adoption of semi-automatic voter registration (yclept 'motor voter' statutes). When a young person applies for the driver's license (UK: driving licence) and implicitly gets signed up to vote following his/her 18th birthday with little or no voter action required, the path of least resistance is passive failure to tick a party checkbox, resulting in what California terms a 'no-party-preference' (NPP) voter, what was traditionally called an 'independent' voter.

    Starting 2018, more California voters are registered NPP (25.5%) than are Republican (25.1%), making NPP the second party 'faction' behind Democratic Party (44.4%). For the record, the others are AIP (discussed below) at 2.65%, Green Party at 0.48%, Libertarian Party at 0.74%, 'unknown' at 0.20%, and 'other' (unqualified parties) at 0.60%.

    (This is why California is the GOP's nightmare, being a place where they've become so irrelevant because of their retrograde national policies that they can no longer win any statewide office, and are even outnumbered by slackers who fail to pick a party. Also, they've completely lost even Orange County, formerly a crazed GOP stronghold, and have a toehold mostly in rural / agricultural areas. No wonder the national GOP have gone psychoceramic about California.)

    Aside: California adopted this change of wording (NPP instead of 'independent') after a Los Angeles Times study, a few years back, revealed that the tiny (one might say homeopathic) ember of George Wallace's 1968 segregationist 'American Independent Party' was still functioning as an idiot trap: Thousands of unwary Californians including a number of embarrassed celebrities had ticked the 'American Independent Party' checkbox under the profoundly mistaken impression that this was the way to register 'independent', keeping registration totals high enough to perpetuate party qualification despite the entire party apparatus having folded up decades ago.

    I'm honestly not 100% sure what to make of the NPP/independent trend. An optimist might hope it results from tactical voting among citizens who've figured out that the parties are really just fundraising vehicles who owe you no loyalty nor you to them. However, it's more likely to be a less than rational practice, and that most NPP voters have a specific party they're not a 'member' of, in the same way that expectant father Mr. Young in Good Omens had a specific no-nonsense C. of E. church he avoided going to, and wouldn't dream of not going to another.

    And anyway, I've given up attributing rational action to American voters as part of my New Year's resolutions.

    1184:

    There's a reason lightweight alloy rims are a thing.

    If only they actually were!

    I buy them exclusively as tires these days last so long. Steel wheels are prone to going out of round over time. And while an alloy wheel can also do such it is much less likely to do so. And thus your tires wear much more evenly over their life. Especially in areas where the roads are not all that smooth or level.

    1185:

    Alloy wheels are bulkier, not surprising since they meed more metal to take the loads and of course to the untrained eye bulkier means heavier. Actual measurements show otherwise.

    Had to change an 18" tire/rim the other day on my truck. It was an alloy rim. I doubt I would have noticed the difference if steel. 18" tires + any rim is heave. :)

    1186:

    So, making the reactors better will not stop this problem. Stopping this problem, or making the reactors mobile, so you can sell them to the next country over if the customer has a sudden attack of the vapors, however?

    I've always liked the idea of building something based on US carrier designs. Except remove everything but the power systems, propulsion systems, and space for operations crew and defensive crew.

    One minor detail is the refinement level of the U used. Bomb grade indeed. So not an option for sale to 2/3s of the worlds population. If that. Then again since they can now go 40 or 50 years between refuelings just seal them up. Of course no one would every be able to break into a sealed box.

    1187:

    These are not the actions of organizations operating in good faith.

    Well not your or my "good faith".

    For many their base line belief is to take world society back to where we only use wind and solar to live. Even if that puts 99.9999% of the world population back at an existence level of 1000AD. Or if needed back at 1000BC.

    1188:

    Extreme enrichment levels are a US navy thing, and actually a fairly high art as it involves poisoning your fuel with neutron poisons that are destroyed during operation at the right tempo. - The french subs (and the proposed flex-blue) run on regular levels of enriched fuel.

    1189:

    OK, I have been measuring. My Mum loves about 5/8 mile from downtown, a similar distance from open farmland, and about 3/4 mile from 20 story residential. So how do you class that?

    Not very typical for much of the US.

    1190:

    Sorry for the diversion deep in to a local US thing.

    Where are you? For some reason I thought you were up in Wake Forest.

    I AM house sitting for my daughter who is on a belated honey moon trip. Near Ligon and Hunter schools.

    I own a house in the N. Hills / Midtown area.

    I work with architects in the area and thus get to also see things from another point of view. Especially downtown development.

    And if you want to know what I think is totally wrong about growth around here drive out to Wendell Falls and look around.

    While no one wants it, all the short term decisions about how to deal with growth are currently destined to take us down the path of a smaller version of Atlanta.

    1191:

    Well, some of those power lines would have to cross national borders. The political reality is that nation-states won't allow that sort of vulnerability. Therefore, solar is a non-starter.

    Much of New York and New England would go dark, or at least get dim, without hydro power from Quebec.

    1192:

    Aeroplane tools honestly do need more detailed specs for reasons.

    My point was that for other than specialized tools, allowing competition with performance metrics for a military purchase of ordinary items drives the costs up by obscene amounts.

    It all ties back to greed. The US military never buys 10 of something. They tend to be containers full of something. And so even on cheap stuff there is enough money involved to allow for under the table season tickets to the local pro team or opera if that is what it take to win a contract.

    1193:

    “What stops us using "cars as a service" right now is not a lack of an AI in each car, or a lack of electrification. It is that late-stage capitalism doesn't work that way.”

    Actually it turns out late stage capitalism works that way just fine, it’s just late stage politics that doesn’t

    Auto insurance is an issue here. Most of the major auto insurance companies have modified their standard policies so that once you turn on a driver App from Lyft, Uber, whoever their coverage ceases until you tell they app you are no longer available. Of course the insurance provided by Lyft and Uber and such only applies while you are in the process of hauling someone around. Great way to loose your car. or house.

    All of these disruptive "service via an app" ideas try and push the liability off to someone else which is where a lot of their profit comes from. The people who sign up don't realize that their insurance companies have no interest in picking up commercial liability for coverage sold as personal.

    1194:

    That's cool, and indeed exactly what I meant. It seems bizarre (to the point of nonsensical) that I could be "the honorable member for $place (Lemocrat)" for 40 years and never be a member of that party, or (using a UK term) "cross the floor of the house" (becoming a Watermelon) simply by saying so.

    1195:

    OK; that's sort of the point in some ways, because that's not atypical of "suburban town" areas in the UK. I used that specific house exactly because I know the area well.

    1196:

    ...at least I don't think it is - because I don't really understand what this US concept of "registering with a party" means. From context it sounds as if you have to put your name down on some official list of supporters of one party or another in order to vote.

    Not disagreeing with the other comments I generated but to simplify things somewhat for the folks an ocean away.

    Most US general elections occur in November. I get to vote every year if I want for some collection of people.[1]

    For most people not in California the ballots list people who have been selected by various parties[2] to run for an office. Plus there are various offices[3] for which there is no official party affiliation.

    The parties for the most part select their final candidate via a primary election. Most states hold these in the spring.

    And note there are exceptions for all of the above all over the country. Each state gets to decide how to do things.

    [1] Many places like North Carolina have steep requirements for any office that is voted on state wide. Usually some percentage of the population must petition for a candidate. Say 0.1%. But in NC that means maybe 50,000 signatures. That's a steep hill to climb. But parties rule so there is a clause in most places that if you get some similar percentage of the vote in the last election your party get a pass on the petition requirements. Plus in many areas like NC the local officials are elected in years where there is no national election. The stated purpose is to allow them to not have their campaign swamped by the national ones. But in reality it means that many races are decided with less than 10% of the voters turning out. (This is NOT OZ.)

    [2] This is where party affiliation/registration comes in. Depending on the state and a lot of other things this can impact which slate of people you get to vote for in a primary. It is not uncommon for EACH voting station to have 3 to 5 different ballots to hand out depending on the registration of the voter for a primary election. When you hear about DT or someone else appealing to his "base" or a previous elected politician getting "primaried", it is this narrow slice of the electorate that is being dealt with.

    [3] This also varies by state. But things like local councils, school boards, judges (the ones that are elected), etc... maybe be stated as non partisan but then facts are that almost anyone with a clue knows which party they really are a part of.

    1197:

    simplify things somewhat

    Full blown sarcasm here.

    1198:

    A UK "general election" (not a General Election; that carries a specific context as to the body being voted for) can occur in any month.

    Your [1] also applies in the UK, but the requirement would be for hundreds up to I think 2_000 nomination signatures, and, frankly if you can't raise those you're not going to do much more than entitle yourself entry to the election count.

    1199:

    paws4thot, I certainly take your point about it being bizarre to the point of nonsensical. It is, indeed.

    FWIW, it's always been the case that if you attend to the footnotes that you see that the 'honorable member for $place (Lemocrat)' indicator is something of a granfaloon (to borrow Vonnegut's term).

    E.g., US Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who rose to office with Democratic Party affiliation in 1988, continuing with that label until his 2006 re-election, when he lost the Democratic Party primary election to challenger Ned Lamont, but, rather than bow out, ran a third-party campaign under one-shot party 'Connecticut for Lieberman', and thereby beat both major parties' candidate in the general election, to retain his seat. He remained in theory a Democrat until leaving the Senate in 2013, but one who acted rather a lot more like a Republican, e.g., giving a major speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention endorsing John McCain's candidacy. The Democratic leadership had no power whatsoever to prevent this. He was ultimately accountable only to his constituency.

    More recently, and even more to the point, we have the example of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who's pointedly had no party affiliation since his first election (to the House of Representatives in 1990), but was aptly described by Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean as 'voting with the Democrats 98 percent of the time'. Sen. Angus King of Maine is just about the same, no party affiliation but like Sanders 'caucuses with the Democratic Party' (as the jargon phrases it) for purposes of committee assignments.

    On a practical political level, in addition to being a vague signifier of one's general alignment, a US candidate's party affiliation matters primarily for fundraising, i.e., if you declare as a Lemocrat and the state and/or Federal Lemocratic committee likes you and approves of your advertising campaigns, you might be showered with very useful financial support. If they consider you an embarrassment, they can't prevent your candidacy, but there will be no lorries (er, dumptrucks) full of cash, either.

    1200:

    Troutwaxer@1162 Cars as a service will work when you solve the "rush hour" problem. Uber and Lyft work precisely because they get fewer customers during rush hour. Plus, there's the phobia that you're seated in a car where the previous occupants just had sex

    Erwin@1128 The "cross national boundaries" scare is fearmongering. There are VERY few borders that tightly regulated these days.

    1201:

    David L @ 1187 Indeed, the ultra-Puritans of the fake Greenies strike again. Hair shirts & NO BEER for everyone, but our “souls” will be pure. As usual Stratford Bill got there first: Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more Cakes & Ale?”

    & @ 1193 All of these disruptive "service via an app" ideas try and push the liability off to someone else which is where a lot of their profit comes from. Theft under the counter in other words – ANOTHER reason never, ever to use these crooks.

    Ioan @ 1200 We’ve been over this several times. It’s another reason why: “We’ll all go over to auto-drone taxis & not have our own cars” is utter complete bollocks – again.

    1202:

    Fewer customers during rush hour ? Utterly wrong

    1203:

    Duuude! If you don't get the whole thing about rush hour, I don't know what to tell you. The very biggest, most amazing selling point of everyone joining a car service is the complete elimination of rush hour. If everyone is a member of the service, and everyone actually uses it, we've killed congestion, with the exception of the kind of congestion which accretes around an accident, and if self-driving cars are safer than people... we've partially solved that problem too!

    1204:

    Troutwaxer @ 1023 I assume that was sarcasm? Even at 4 persons per "car" how are you going to handle the numbers arriving at ,say, Liverpool Street or Waterloo ( 67 million per year & 95 million - total per year ) in the rush hour? Simply cannot be done with road vehicles.

    1205:

    ANOTHER reason never, ever to use these crooks.

    Oh I use Lyft (or Uber if Lyft is not an option) in the US. With all of their warts they are still better than the taxis in most of the US. 90%+ of my rides in taxis in the US I hated.

    Every time I get in a Lyft (or Uber) I ask the drive a few questions as an informal poll. I've done about 40 rides in the last 3 years.

    I'd guess 90% of the drivers drive for both companies. (There are multiple reasons for this but that's another thread.)

    2 preferred driving for Uber. 2 or 3 didn't care. The rest preferred driving for Lyft.

    So after all the press and this feedback I try and use Lyft.

    And almost all said they could make more money driving for Uber as their primary setup.

    All but one or two were doing this as a sideline or were not too recent immigrants to the US and their previous skills (Petro engineering in Belarus for example) don't easily transfer. Met several immigrants who had arrived in the US from interesting places such as Venezuela.

    On recent full time driver in Texas was fully up on the costs and benefits said he could gross $1400/week driving for ether company and $2100/week for both. And after expenses (all of them) it was a decent living in his mind.

    1206:

    “Even at 4 persons per "car" how are you going to handle...” Four times as well as we currently do with one person per car.

    1207:

    OK, we're well past the 1000th posting, so I might derail that one with a little personal rambling...

    First off, happy new year everyone.

    Second off, I just had a job interview with a somewhat confused HR woman[1] which IMHO didn't go according to MBA script, but then, she only got a job at a call center[2], so it might figure somewhat...

    So...

    a) May I just say I'm leery of everything touched by Leary? Yes, old pun, SCNR.[3]

    b) I guess it's been mentioned before, but I'm quite amused/horrified how many offshots of the Human Potential Movement made it into modern MBA education in general and especiall HR. Californication, anyone? Makes you wonder if Villeneuve will dress the Bene Gesserit in his Dune in business suits, as an old tradition going back to the time before the Butlerian Jihad. Come to think about it, that last word[4]...

    c) When you hang around with metal heads in your early twenties gothic industrial punk hippie, err, biology student phase, and they ask you why you're giggling...

    OK, back to business as usual, sorry for the interruption, no, I never did any acid, why are you asking...

    [1] She used a lot of filler words. Make of that what you want...

    [2] Don't do job applications for an department job during the flu season, makes for quite a short job-shaped career failure when everybody involved is on sick leave, and then they need to find a place on the org chart for some survivors from a moribund project...

    [3] Kingsmen mentioning NLP really means I have to MST3K this trainwreck of a movie again...

    [4] Maybe "Butlerian pacifier" might work...

    1208:

    The real fun is you could also use the calculation problem to argue against central planning in firms.

    Personally, I could do without quite a few CEOs and other managers and doling out work by popular consensus[1], no idea if the usual economic liberals quoting it think the same... ;)

    [1] Simple or two-thirds majority?

    1209:

    Err, I might not be done ranting, BTW...

    Somebody threw exploding firework against my knee yesterday, and I'm afraid I might develop bursitis again.

    Am I the only one hoping for a man-portable C-RAM system for next New Year's Eve?

    Guy throwing firework, Phalanx CIWS homing in, firework destroyed, guy, well, in a perfect world he'd have learned a lesson to remember, sadyl in this one it's a somewhat terminal lesson...

    SCNRA...

    1210:

    Nah... doesn't protect against enough hazards to stand much chance of being useful.

    I dropped a scooter on my knee yesterday and nearly passed out (it "hit a nerve", but the "nerve" in my knees seems to extend around the entire circumference of the joint). The thing only fell about half a metre, so the CIWS would have had neither time nor space to react usefully. What would be more useful would be trousers imbued with a substance of extreme dilatant properties, so they would be normally flexible to walk in, but would respond to a sharp blow by becoming rigid and distributing the force over a large area of leg.

    1211:

    Thanks to those who responded to my bafflement about US voter registration. It doesn't make any more sense now, but at least I've got some idea of what the nonsense is actually saying...

    In the UK (although of course anyone can stand for election to a seat (we're more relaxed, so our candidates don't run, they just stand)) it's the party themselves who decide, internally, who is going to be their candidate for any seat. The ordinary voter doesn't get a say in that decision, only people who are actually members of the party. Being a member of a party is not something most people do, unless their political beliefs are unusually passionate and close enough to some party's policies that joining the party helps to express them.

    Nobody (apart from the handful who do actually join one, of course) registers any kind of allegiance to or preference for a party. The official way to express such a preference is simply to vote for them, and that is of course anonymous. Between elections it's down to things like opinion polls to estimate levels of support for parties, and they are equally of course anonymous.

    What you do have to do is register to vote. You shouldn't, but you do. It doesn't happen automatically as a side effect of being issued a national insurance number (I think this is equivalent to "social security number" in the US) or anything like that, and certainly not a driving licence (because of the way UK bureaucracy is compartmentalised, that could not have anything to do with it). But all you're doing when you register to vote is saying "I want to vote", plain and simple; no information is collected about who you're likely to vote for.

    1212:

    Hm, what about imbued airbags? Come to think about it, some of the concepts of reactive or ablative armour might be useful.

    I still would like to add a component to punish people throwing fireworks into groups etc. Speak softly and carry a hard stick. As it it, I have fantasies about kneecapping them with a paintball gun ATM...

    1213:

    As for the injury, keep some care, it sounds like a nerve compression syndrome. The nerve next to the knees apparently even got some martial arts strike targeting it.

    As for my revenge fantasies concerning gotcha guns, err, as John Oliver said concerning the death penalty:

    "The death penalty is natural to want, but you shouldn't necessarily have it. It's like the McRib."
    1214:

    1140: Very true. The Bolsheviks came to the same conclusion for exactly the same reason, Trotsky being the big advocate, against the advocates of "proletarian" militia guerillaism (covertly backed by his rival Stalin). Militias are great for revolutions and maintaining civil order in a somewhat more democratical way than police (here using the classic definitions not contemporary European practice), but for an actual war against another country, you do really need a professional army. Certainly that's how Washington felt.

    1215:

    Yes, well, we'll see just how well Bloomberg does with his latest whim of creating a "center" party. There have been many such attempts, all miserable failures, this time around would be a worse failure than usual. Actually, we had a center candidate in the last election, Ms. Clinton. She managed the amazing feat of losing to Donald Trump.

    If there is one thing that the majority of Americans agree on, it is that America is headed off the cliff. The centrist Panglosses who still think everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds are a rapidly declining minority.

    1216:

    No, not entirely. Let's ignore Greg's irrelevant bogosities about people's abilities - my points were different.

    The vast majority of electric vehicles are in that range, and (until VERY recently) almost all of the development was, too. But even large, leading engineering companies can't make a motor that remains efficient and cools well over a very wide range of torques and rotation speeds. So we know that it doesn't scale arbitrarily far downwards.

    It MAY be true that the railway locomotive technology achieves that down to typical car size, but I have seen no actual data demonstrating it (not even from Tesla). And the currently available electric cars make me extremely doubtful that they do. In particular, the utter absence of hard information rings alarm bells.

    Equally seriously, except for the Smart EQ fortwo (which is, realistically, almost a joke), they are all significantly larger than my not-miniscule Skoda Fabia hatchback, and most are much larger and MUCH heavier. Without more functionality or much mre load capacity, to boot! And, as under urban conditions, the energy (i.e. battery capacity) needed for a modern car is nearly proportional to the all-up weight, why are there no smaller, lighter cars? It's not as if it's a small market!

    What I am afraid of is that the problems of electric cars will be covered up by over-engineering them (read: making them larger), making all the problems that such vehicular expansion has caused over the past seven decades even worse. And the way that their proponents get abusive rather than admitting there can be ANY problem again rings alarm bells.

    To repeat, I have been a proponent of them for many decades, but I don't close my eyes to the potential problems. What I hope for is that people will address those problems and resolve them. But I am horribly afraid they won't. I don't call myself Elderly Cynic for nothing - I have seen that syndrome before, far too often :-(

    1217:

    About 2 MW in 2012:

    https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=241328143

    Though they might have added some installations, it's likely still at the same order of magnitude (e.g. less than 10x the capacity)

    1218:

    1170: Rick well put. Be it noted that since the actual members of the party are the fundraisers, that means that, in a more literal sense than in most other countries, those who provide said funds, the moneymen, own the parties lock stock and barrel. So calling them "capitalist parties" is not just an old, tired Marxist phrase, but true in the most literal possible fashion. And it is absolutely true that the Founding Fathers originally were utterly against parties, which meant in practice that America started with a one party regime, the Federalists. And When Jefferson and Madison created an opposition party, Hamilton and Washington basically felt about that the same way that your more rigid Bolsheviks like Stalin felt about the Mensheviks. Though Hamilton's desire to toss them all in jail was only partially echoed by your more moderate Federalists like John Adams.

    Amusingly, whereas the Federalists originally believed in a one party system but were compelled to recognize that America would have a multiparty system by Jefferson beating them, Lenin in theory believed that you should have a multiparty system as long as all the other parties were socialist and fully supported the Soviet regime against counterrevolution. Which none of them did, including the Menshevik party led by his old friend Martov, who didn't think socialism was practical in Russia. Whom Lenin exiled but secretly had the Cheka arrange a subsidy for his exile newspaper, secretly from Martov himself. My reference for this, BTW, is Israel Getzler's bio of Martov (Getzaler being an admirer of Martov and actually quite anti-communist.)

    Lenin was thinking that with time the country would stabilize, the famine would end, industry would start functioning again, and Mensheviks would accept the Soviet Union as a reality and seek to reform instead of overthrow it. And could become a loyal opposition party, like political parties usually are in America and Western Europe. (An arrangement that was one of the first thing Stalin put an end to after Lenin died.) A few years later, Bukharin, at that point Stalin's right hand man, famously stated at a party congress that the USSR needed a two party system, except that one of them needed to be in prison. Well, Stalin had a different idea it turned out.

    1219:

    Other than farcically expensive Edisons, it's still difficult to impossible to find a "burns its fuel 50 miles away" car that is capable of a real world 2 hours (say 150 miles) on a single charge.

    1220:

    EC @ 1216 After that post you should be renamed Elderly Pillock And I'm older than you, too ...

    1221:
    Thanks to those who responded to my bafflement about US voter registration. It doesn't make any more sense now, but at least I've got some idea of what the nonsense is actually saying...

    You really need to keep in mind that the US system is different in every state, and indeed different for different offices in the states. The setup described where you mark down a preference for one party or the other so you can vote in their primary is not the US system: it's one of several systems used.

    In particular, the whole primary apparatus was originally conceived as a democratizing revision on the old party system, where the party leadership picked candidates in what were believed to be smokey back rooms filled with mendacious elite politicos. By putting the party selection process on a ballot, the idea is for it to be open and public.

    In many states the primary still works like that, but the "top two" primary, essentially a two-round runoff election, is also common. "Vote for any party you like office by office" was also common, until some court cases made it illegal.

    However, other selection processes are used too. For example, many states use the caucus system for selecting a presidential candidate, sometimes in addition to a primary election, which the party then ignores. In a caucus, individual neighborhood districts hold a meeting, typically in some school gym, where people form random groups and vote for a candidate and a representative to attend the meeting at the next level up. Anyone can just walk into these meetings, but they have to swear their loyalty to the party.

    There are also many state and local offices which are officially non-partisan, so candidates aren't allowed to state any party affiliation at all. This is pretty typical when electing judges or members of the bureaucracy.

    This still doesn't really explain how parties work, since in reality they're mostly just a funding apparatus and a way for various elite politicos to exercise control via the funding. At the individual level, they're more like sports teams: your family is either Red or Blue, and woe be unto you if you deviate from your parents' hereditary color.

    1222:

    “Equally seriously, except for the Smart EQ fortwo (which is, realistically, almost a joke), they are all significantly larger than my not-miniscule Skoda Fabia hatchback, and most are much larger and MUCH heavier.”

    Your Skoda Fabia is 3,992mm long, 1,732mm wide.

    It has 330 liters of trunk space

    A Chevy Bolt is 4,166mm long , 1788mm wide

    It has 478 liters of trunk space

    So basically about 5% longer and virtually the same width with considerably more haulage

    A Tesla model 3 is 4,699 long and 1854mm wide so around 17% longer

    It has 423 liters of trunk space

    Yes they are heavier

    So both of these electrics have considerable more trunk space then your car and the Tesla model 3 has more even proportionaly

    I don’t understand the point you are trying to make with the rest of your post unless it’s that electric car companies aren’t making good electric wheelchairs

    1223:

    “In particular, the whole primary apparatus was originally conceived as a democratizing revision on the old party system, where the party leadership picked candidates in what were believed to be smokey back rooms filled with mendacious elite politicos. By putting the party selection process on a ballot, the idea is for it to be open and public.”

    And that’s how you wind up with a reality TV star for President, and a Congress dominated by the ideologues who can get the faithful out on primary day, but can’t compromise with each other.

    The “smoky rooms” system at least selected for professional politicians with appeal to moderate voters.

    Democracy, like free markets, should be treated as a very-frequently-useful tool, not as an end in itself.

    1224:

    Heh. On one hand, most of those assertions were intended, if not sarcastically, with a certain lack of sincerity. On the other hand, the counter-examples that came back were US/Canada and England/France, neither of which have shown any willingness to rely on the vast majority of their power, for any significant interval, coming from somewhere else. Imagine a really messy Brexit, followed by Spain negotiating, in the winter, by turning off power to the entire UK.

    Heh. Until you solve the nation-state and global peace problem, build me some nuclear plants. In my defence, I'm not necesarily being more flippant than some comments on this thread.

    Perhaps more calmly, I'd assert that reduction in net carbon emissions would be best accomplished by a mixture of nuclear power, solar power / battery storage, and ocean-based geoengineering.* The exact optimal mix is probably dependent on latitude, population density, and geopolitical factors. Towards the equator, solar + storage should probably dominate. The principal roadblocks for solar are technical and appear to be solvable, although reduction in fossil fuel incentives and taxation of carbon emissions (possibly simply by redirecting fossil fuel incentives to subsidize solar installations) would also help. Geoengineering is a bit iffy - the ocean thing was tested twice that I know of and seemed to work once and fail once. Given that global warming is potentially quite problematic, it makes sense to actively conduct tests. The risk/benefit ratio seems fine. It'd probably help some fish populations.

    For nuclear, the primary stumbling blocks appear to be regulatory and political. There is considerable room for reduction both in regulatory requirements, simplification and generalization of changes in reactor design, and in not squelching nuclear development under the guise of avoiding proliferation. Overall, I'd tend to modify nuclear regulations so that they were allowed to kill as many people per GWHr as coal plants. Isn't it remarkable how often we realize that nations don't need to be invaded once they develop the capacity to retaliate? There are also some technical issues. Lastly, NIMBY needs to be restrained.**

    Given that global warming is a real issue - it makes sense to develop solutions to remaining issues in parallel. Overall, taking a significant economic hit from implementing solar as is in regions where it doesn't make sense yet - not worth it. I would also assert, by simple observation, that there are regions (eg, California) where solar power is currently completely worth it - albeit that is partially because the local power companies are profiteers.)

    Albeit, lastly, if proposed solutions involve significantly reducing energy consumption worldwide while increasing energy costs - well, heh, that's a nonstarter.

    *There isn't enough wind or hydropower available to provide > 20% of increasing energy demands as the number of people in poverty decreases. There are a few countries that are exceptions. (Nordic?)

    NIMBY success isn't so much a recognition of real problems with projects as recognition that, at least in localities where I've lived, after submitting n types of paperwork and having them reviewed, people can file frivolous objections essentially without end. The proposal I like is that, after the review, any further objections need to be backed up by a bond somewhat exceeding in cost to the cost of delaying a project for several years. So, 10-1000 MUSD. Bond to be returned only when the complaint is found to be valid and require significant changes to the project; or cancel the project. Yes, I'm still bitter about being stuck with one grocery within walking distance. I'm also bitter about the laboratory that didn't open next door.*

    *Zoning restrictions are also problematic because they tend to act as a segregating factor. Sure, you're welcome here - 1 family per residence, sized to require an income of 200k. I'd prefer it if zoning was largely decided on a state-wide rather than city/county level.

    1225:

    Quick search says my Skoda Octavia (for US, think VW Bora/Jetta but a wagon) is 4.511m long. I've no idea about luggage volume in litres (seats up) but it used to be normal practice to measure this by pumping in lots and lots of small spheres, eg ping pong balls. It can hold 5, repeat 5 large suitcases in this configuration though. How do your burn their fuel 50 miles away cars get on with that test?

    1226:

    The Octavia has 1580 litres with the seats folded. The Nissan env200 has 2300 litres.

    1227:

    PS, that's without folding the seats. So it's a 7 seater. If you set it up as a two seater, then it's 4600 litres it's luggage space.

    1228:

    & #1227 - So the Nissan isn't actually an obvious alternative to the Octy, since the Octy is a conventional wagon, not a minivan.

    1229:

    Sometimes I wish there was an edit function...

    Env200 has 4200 litres luggage space, not 4600.

    It's 49 mm (2 inches) longer than an Octavia at 4560mm.

    1230:

    I was doing my numbers without seats folded down

    Your Skada Octavia has a trunk size of 590 liters , so you beat the Chevy Bolt by 23%. So in theory the Bolt probdbly fits 4 of your suitcases . Of course the Bolt is also 10% shorter

    There doesn’t seem to be any relationship between EV’s vs non EV’s for trunk space, it’s more a function of car size and style (sedan vs hatchback vs SUV)

    I’m not sure why there even would be a relationship other then EC just blindly asserted it like he does most of his shit , without bothering to check the data to see if it’s true.

    1231:

    I don't think they are the size they are for reasons connected with the drive system - although I am now more confused again about whether we're talking about the sub-kilowatt range or about actual cars.

    Concerning cars, and their size, I think it's just another repetition of something that's been demonstrated many times before - that if you offer people a vehicle that is not pretty much the same thing as everything else on the road, nobody wants it; the only interest it attracts is the negative kind, ridicule and opprobrium. For example, that BMW scooter-with-a-roof thing - motorcyclists decry it for being too unlike a bike, car drivers decry it for being too unlike a car, and while the handful of people who have bought one usually say it's great, well, they would, wouldn't they?

    Moreover, the manufacturers only went and repeated the experiment with electric vehicles, bringing out "regulatory exemption specials" like the C5 on a larger scale and getting much the same reaction for much the same reasons. So now there is further pressure to make electric cars just the same as ordinary ones, so people think of them along with ordinary ones and not along with those embarrassments. And things which are not "regulatory exemption specials" find it hard not to be large and heavy because of the burden of all the stuff they're not exempt from.

    They also don't want people to think that having an electric car means you have to have two cars, the other one being a petrol car for all the things the electric one isn't up to. The more the electric car looks the same as the petrol one the more people will assume it can do everything the same as well (which is more effective than trying to convince them of it).

    I think you're perfectly right that electric cars will exhibit size and bloat rate characteristics typical of existing petrol cars, but I think it'll be for people reasons and nearly nothing to do with engineering, certainly nothing to do with the engineering specific to the power source. I think you'd see the same if the new green wonder fuel was amphetamine-laced hamster food.

    Regarding efficiency, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. I'm aware that motor efficiency falls off a cliff at low speeds and loads, and also of the satisfaction of trying to push the cliff edge as close to the y-axis as possible, but I'm not convinced that electric cars are wasting unduly large amounts of energy this way, since low speeds and loads mean low power levels so while the percentage waste might be high the absolute quantity is still small. Also, the low efficiency region isn't as large as all that; I think you can reckon on a car-sized (few tens of kW) induction motor with a variable frequency drive (common industrial usage) to maintain 90% down to 20% load and 40-50% speed, roughly, and still be tolerable at 25% speed. The latter isn't great, but permanent magnet AC motors are much better at low speed, also low load, because they don't have the losses of the induction mechanism to generate the rotor field.

    As for the sub-kilowatt range, certainly even full-load efficiency is a lot lower (efficiency also drops off a cliff as motors themselves get smaller), but I think they just don't care. At that level they're heavily into simplicity. While some examples of permanent magnet AC motor drives exist, the typical motor is a wound-armature brushed DC motor with permanent magnet field, totally enclosed and unventilated. You can get these for £20 from China on ebay, probably £2 if you buy them in manufacturing quantities, and they save you two power MOSFETs (which are the only bits that cost anything) in the controller for definite, up to five if you add a relay as well.

    I don't see any reason for them to change their priorities, either; cooling is considered an irrelevance - the motor has no provision for it - and at those power levels it's easy to get the kind of range they're aiming at from thoroughly unexotic batteries. Using my scooter as an example, it uses a bog-standard lead-acid battery, 24V/33Ah, and claims a range of 20 miles on the flat - which I can't see anyone coming close to actually doing unless they were deliberately setting out to test it - nobody's going to notice even if the range under real conditions is only a quarter of that. And the electricity cost for the small amount of energy it takes to charge it is so small already that nobody's going to notice any further reduction (a couple of pennies) from a more efficient motor (or, for that matter, a more efficient battery chemistry; lead-acid is not exactly brilliant, after all, and you probably lose much the same amount through that cause.)

    1232:

    If I've understood correctly, I think your posts are doing more to support EC's point than refute it ;)

    Still, it seems that the makers of Top Trumps missed a trick by not having "boot space" as a category :D

    1233:

    50mm can easily be accounted for as "bigger pelmet mouldings". And my point that I'm not going to choose an SUV/minivan over a conventional car with a large practical luggage space still stands. At the trim level I have I even have a false floor that I can store my toolkit and 4 laptops under (I've done this with my actual tools and laptops I was taking somewhere for friends).

    If we forget the hard to measure details, the Bolt's main issue is almost certainly that it can't do 8 hours unrefuelled at highway speeds. (before the "shouldn't drive 8 hours non-stop" nonsense gets going, I'm saying that I don't have to refuel every time I take a comfort stop, and the length of that stop is decided by traveler factors, not "how long to recharge a battery pack?" factors)

    1234:

    Using my scooter as an example, it uses a bog-standard lead-acid battery, 24V/33Ah, and claims a range of 20 miles on the flat - which I can't see anyone coming close to actually doing unless they were deliberately setting out to test it - nobody's going to notice even if the range under real conditions is only a quarter of that. My daily commute is 11 miles (or possibly 12; depends on car which answer I get) one way with a steep uphill at the work end. Even if your scoot can make the claimed range outside the testing lab, I still need to recharge it twice a day.

    1235:

    Erwin @ 1224 & others Report on the radio, just now, that... Electricity use, per person in the UK is now back down to the levels of the 1980's - apparently because of several factors: more efficient insulation in houses, LED lights everywhere, & more efficient electrical "plant" generally. Given that global warming is a real issue Someone tell Trump & Bolsanaro?

    Pigeon @ 1231 not pretty much the same thing as everything else on the road, Except for those people, who for their own, perfectly valid reasons, deliberately get something different, like the GGB in my case ....

    Paws @ 1233 And that is the real problem with electric cars, now & for some time to come, I'm afraid

    1236:

    "Paws @ 1233 And that is the real problem with electric cars, now & for some time to come, I'm afraid"

    Is this sarcasm? I didn't even reply to this as it was so absurd. The leaf has had a false floor for housing goodies since 2011.

    1237:

    The leaf has had a false floor for housing goodies since 2011. Let me know when you have 4 suitcases and 4 people in a Leaf. I know my neighbour could do one or the other but not both with her's.

    1238:

    It's absurd to want to plan my journey around when I want to:- a) Stop b) Pass $known-bottleneck

    rather than having to plan it around when the vehicle needs to stop?

    1239:

    Oh, that, I thought it was a reply to "At the trim level I have I even have a false floor".

    The requirement to be able to drive 8 hours on the highway...posted on a Scottish blog...I didn't think that was worth replying to.

    1240:

    The comment about the false floor was because the cargo space in my car is bigger than it looks at a glance. Note the trim level endorsement; not all trims of my model have the false floor.

    Also, it's 4 to 5 hours from one of the mainland ferry ports I use down to my Mum's place; it's 8 from her place to Heathrow Airport (which also relates to the 4 laptops yes). Just because Great Britain is not 3/4 (guess) of the land area of a continent does not mean we do not do all-day drives.

    The other (nearer) port is just out of practical range to my Mum's based on the stated range and my neighbour's experience of a Nissan Leaf, before I allow for 25 miles to the island ferry port, with no recharging facility at the port or on the ferry.

    1241:

    The more that I hear about this, the more that it confirms my gut feelings - the trouble is that the issue is extremely complex, and has become a matter of tribalism and politics rather than engineering.

    Most researchers now believe that the past seven decades of improvements in car safety (especially seat belts), including the increase in size and power have seriously harmed health in the UK and elsewhere, because of the way that they have caused drivers to take more risk and hence have discouraged walking and cycling. They have also caused serious environmental problems by requiring roads to be enlarged, cars damaging buildings (rather than the converse) etc. Recently, there has been a partial reaction against that, but it looks horribly as if the electric revolution may well kill that and further harm our health (in those respects). Yes, it WILL massively reduce the traffic-induced atmospheric pollution problem.

    If you take a look at the torque/rotation/heating curves for almost (?) all motors, you find that they are efficient only in a fairly narrow range. If you need to use them outside that range, you have (effectively) two options: gear them appropriately or use a much larger motor, run inefficiently at a relatively low power. For example the Nissan Leaf has a box with gears in it (single speed), though we mustn't call it a gearbox! Note that, in all the above abuse, none of the fanatics have even implied that they know what the torque/rotation/efficiency graphs look like. Well, I have seen some AND done some draft designs - but they are all for the sub-1Kw level, which is why I mentioned them. The problem about cooling is when you hit a long, steep hill with a full load; ALL of the energy lost in inefficiency ends up in heat, either in the motor or controller.

    Your scooter is clearly using ancient technology. The modern equivalents (with plausible-sized batteries) have ranges of 30+ miles, and you can extend that to 100+ miles without adding too much weight. What's more, they are using the same battery technology as electric cars; I can't find enough information on ANY electric vehicles to know if they use the same motor technology - it's all bloody marketing :-(

    As I said, IF the massive weight of electric cars was simply a matter of needing the battery capacity, it would be simple to engineer a lighter one, because the battery capacity needed is more-or-less pro-rata to the all-up weight for urban use. But the only such vehicle I can find has had to massively downgrade its functionality to get there. I smell a rat, whose existence is being denied.

    So, to potential disadvantages (unless we address them):

    1) Increases in typical car size and LARGE increase in weight, especially for people who need to drive long distances. In turn, this will cause less walking and cycling, and making the UK's lack of exercise health crisis worse. It will also make our congestion and parking problems worse.

    2) More building damage etc. When that extends into HGVs, expect the maximum weight limit to be significantly increased, requiring a lot of bridges to be rebuilt. Great news for railway users, who are going to have to pay for much of that!

    3) Needing significantly more sustained and peak electricity delivery than would otherwise be needed. That's more serious than might appear, because the cost (financial and environmental) of massively enhancing our electrical delivery systems is huge. And I will bet that it's not the (visiting) EV users who have to pay for it in the more rural parts of the UK :-( And then there's generation capacity.

    Oh, yes, all of these problems are soluble. But the first prerequisite is to admit they exist, and we are heading away from that.

    1242:

    Yeah. I am intending to take my (unassisted) recumbent trike around the Western Isles this year. Since the last (railway) guards' van has been abolished, I can effectively do that only by driving it up. I take two days because I loathe driving, but it's STILL 4-5 hours a day (and I have to allow 6-7 in case of diversions).

    And it would be a MAJOR problem finding anywhere to charge either at my stops or at the far end. Oh, yes, in the Brave New World, there will be lots of fast chargers - but who's going to pay to upgrade the Highlands' infrastructure for those? A clue: it won't be us in the wealthy south-east, who would be the primary users of those. Look at what Thatcher and Whitehall did to the West Country.

    1243: 1241

    Para 3 - The Leaf has a reduction gearbox then, and no amount of ill informed argument will change that. Having read the paragraph I find myself thinking about having EVs with CVTs attached, so that they can remain in the best torque (for acceleration) or lowest power dissipation (for cruising) engine speed bands as much as possible. Yes?

    Para 4 - That sounds like the modern e-scoot would have the range for me to be sure of doing a round trip commute on a single charge, or at most a quick top-up at work (subject to weather being safe for 2-wheel vehicles).

    Para 5 on - The Tesla Model S could, in theory, address a fair bit of this, but Tesla will only sell you the highest capacity battery pack with the highest power dissipation motor, where I'd really rather have the biggest battery and the smallest motor (acceleration in independent tests is adequate IMO, so that means more distance/time between charges).

    1242 - You have a logistics nightmare here! :-( It would be hard to find parking in Oban, and you can only get a ferry from there to Castlebay (Barra) or Lochboisdale (South Uist). From Lochboisdale you could get ferries to Mallaig (west of Am Gearasdean) or Oban. Parking is better at Mallaig, and it's a railhead but DMUs.

    There are also ferries from Uig(Skye) to Lochmaddy (North Uist), and Tarbert Harris, but the nearest railhead is Kyle of Lochalsh and again DMUs, and from Ullapool to Stornaway (nearest railhead Inverness I think and DMUs.

    Well unless you still have a guards van on the sleeper trains to/from AM Gearasdean and/or Inverness.

    Actually, this may be heading to a point where it would help if a moderator hooked us up with each other's e-mails?

    1244:

    Re #1241: yes. You can legally attach motors to tricycles, and recumbent ones solve the stability problem; good ones are definitely not cheap but very effective, and are several times more gust-resistant than uprights (being lower). You can also get fully-enclosed trikes (velomobiles), though they are even more expensive.

    The relevance to the topic is that they are as functional for (sub-)urban commuting and most shopping as a car except in the hilliest locations, don't have the charging problems, need a fraction the road and parking space, don't cause the same risk to pedestrians etc., and more. With minor legal changes, already done in some EU countries, the hill and shopping restrictions could be removed. In rural areas, they are a bit slower, but not as much as all that, and fine for relatively short personal trips! I have just checked, and the one I would buy has a measured range of 60 miles over Cornish roads.

    The point is that moving in that direction rather than in the direction of even larger cars solves almost all of the UK's transport-related problems simultaneously AND can be delivered today! So why don't we? The problems are political, plutocratic, tribal and social.

    Re #1242: actually, it's not tricky at present. I don't need to park where there is most demand - dammit, my trike is a perfectly good form of transport, so I can arrange something a few miles away and trike to the ferries. I shall probably start in the south, Arran, Islay etc., because I have never been there.

    Yes, it was the guards' van on the sleeper they abolished.

    I should be extremely happy for a moderator to send you my Email.

    1245:

    OK, CalMac will sell you a variety of "Island Rover" tickets, and at least some days, on the Summer timetable, you can go Ardrossan-Brodick, ride round Arran to Lochranza, ferry over to Claonaig, cycle to Kennacraig, ferry to Islay (possibly Port Charlotte, or Port Askaig) and from there Port Askaig ferry to Oban. From there you could go to the Isles of the Sea and back to Oban, or direct to Castlebay or Lochboisdale. In the first case there is a short crossing ferry from Barra to South Uist (OK Eriskay as in SS Politician), and then as #1243.

    And that is driving the speel-chucker demented; It thinks there are 17 (seventeen) misspelled words in that not counting the ironic misspelling of spell-checker.

    1246:

    Thanks. Yes. I am aiming for April, when it is merely cold and windy but the midges are mostly still asleep, and am not anticipating much trouble. I am not surprised at the hysterical gibberings from the automatic error generator - I disable them as much as I can!

    1247:

    I can't guarantee if April is the full Summer timetable or the "Summer shoulder", but I think I've covered most of the main possibilities. Just plan on travelling South to North on islands!

    1248:

    The size of the motor, (within the bounds of sanity) does not matter at all for range of an electric car, only your actual driving style does - All the engines the S actually come with mass the same and have the same efficiency of conversion from electrons to motion, so have zero impact on range, assuming identical driving style. You can run the battery down faster with a "bigger" engine, but that only happens if you actually utilize the extra horsepower to a significant degree by accelerating extremely aggressively and driving at, well, highly illegal speeds. If all you are doing is driving up to your proverbial aunt at a legal speed and you refrain from showing off the 0-90 km/h launch after every red light, the consumption is the same.

    1249:

    The problem with the various flavors of velomobiles in the US at least is they have similar safety issues as motorcycles. Which means you are in bad trouble, probably dead, if you get into a wreck at speed. One of the things you buy with the larger car size is survivability

    Since travelling at speed is a requirement in almost all US situations, even going to the grocery, they would be a non starter for most people here

    EC I really don’t understand your efficiency arguments. I’ve been driving a Model S through the hills of San Francisco for the last five years and have never had any overheating issues nor has anyone else I’ve talked to. I don’t get the same miles / kWh as I do on the highway but neither does my IC car. I charge the Tesla maybe once a week so it’s not a problem

    What exactly is the negative effects you are predicting here ?

    1250:

    San Francisco is hilly, but they are not very high, and the Tesla S is a very high-end and VERY expensive car, so it has a lot of margin for covering up any inefficiency. The problems I am expecting ('predicting' is not correct because, as I say, there are solutions) are with scaling the technology down and delivering it cheaply.

    1251:

    I meant to reply on velomobiles as well. Yes, that is true, and is why I am NOT a proponent of using them for high speed riding, and was talking about their use in cities and suburbia, and for relatively sedate rural riding (say, under 30 MPH, averaging 20 MPH or so). That is the dominant car use in most parts of the world.

    Whether we should continue to support high-speed driving is another matter, which I shall not get into. But the requirement to have a high-speed-capable vehicle for the use for which a velomobile would be better is a major catastrophe for places like the UK.

    1252:

    Even in cities in the US you usually end up on the highway and I really don’t see that changing

    I’ve seen a fair amount of these Mercedes electric smart cars around SF. They start at $23k

    https://www.smartusa.com

    There is also a trike style entering production

    https://electrek.co/2018/10/07/arcimoto-electric-fun-utility-vehicle/

    1253:

    "(subject to weather being safe for 2-wheel vehicles)"

    Ah - sorry if you were misled by the term "scooter". My scooter isn't a motorbikeandscooter kind of scooter, it's a mobility scooter - a spaz chariot, if you will, four wheels and an armchair, designed to replace walking over short distances. Doing your commute on it would take 3 hours there and 3 hours back, and the safety of the weather would be defined largely in terms of how far you'd get before the hypothermia knocked you out.

    Hence it doesn't matter that such a journey would be pushing the range - nor that there probably aren't enough hours in the day to do all the charging as well as the travelling. You'd just never seriously consider trying. What it does very well indeed is take you to the shops, even driving it round inside the shops if you need to, and get you back again with buckets of charge still in reserve and what's been used easily replaced overnight - which is what it's designed for, and it's too slow to even consider trying to take it far outside its intended use.

    Hence also lead-acid batteries and brushed DC motors still being very much a standard thing for such vehicles. A lithium battery of the same, no greater, capacity than the lead-acid would cost about £400, while the lead-acid is about £100 and still more than capable of doing what's being asked of it, so using a lithium battery would be kind of daft.

    Certainly things called "scooter" which use lithium batteries and/or AC permanent magnet motors do exist, and replacement motors for them are listed by scooter parts suppliers - but they list a far greater variety (even though half of them are all the same) of replacement motors for lead-acid/DC-motor machines, which indicates to me that those are much the more common type. This would seem to agree with my informal observation that while mobility scooters in the 4mph class are common, the 8mph and 15mph classes are almost never seen in the wild.

    I think we're talking about a class of vehicles which is not only highly diverse but also highly susceptible to small changes in design requirements leading to large differences in the implementation, so there aren't many generalities which aren't highly specific :)

    1254:

    Yes and no. I agree that there are special issues for the seriously disabled, and there are relatively few generalities for those, but there is no (technical) difficulty in making a 15 MPH trike for people who can only walk a short distance, and cannot pedal. I agree with your observation, though I am not sure why - I sometimes see the faster ones around here, which is a wealthy area, but not often.

    The sort that I am personally interested in is for people who are just about mobile and can pedal steadily, but are too limited to do those unassisted either fast enough or far enough. And there is a LOT of commonality for us (including me, in a few years), though I agree that modern offerings aren't ideal. The point is that being able to commute or go shopping at 15 MPH for 30+ miles, for people who couldn't do more than a third of that unassisted, is easily achievable today, at a price. And it would give such people regular, gentle exercise, which is a MAJOR bonus. And, yes, they ARE used by such people.

    I could provide links if anyone is interested.

    Also, my point is that a slight (and fairly standard) variation on those is all the majority of people need for most of their personal transport requirements, and converting to them would have MASSIVE benefits for them personally and even more the UK. You do NOT need 2 tons to carry one person and a bit of luggage a few miles at 10 MPH. The occasions on which they would not do could be solved in other ways.

    1255:

    Yeah, well, it's because of that missing prefix... A mobility scooter would be about enough to get me to the nearest pub and the local bank but would turn a 9 hour day + commute into a 15 hour if it had the amp hours.

    1256:

    This is true, but people don't want a car that can only do that. They want one that can do that and do 70mph for 3 hours down the motorway and carry a supermarket trolley full of shopping and have 3 screaming kids bouncing on the back seat and have baby seat attachments and room to carry the wardrobe-full of crap that people with babies seem to think has to go everywhere with them these days and pass NCAP thingummy whatsit with gold stars and bells and whistles and big brass knobs on, and before you know where you are you've got a VW Golf.

    The requirement to carry screaming kids while retaining a functional level of sanity seems to be the real sticker - easily overlooked at the ideas stage, but widely required and not negotiable. It seems to me that pretty much every proposed alternative to cars in their current form falls over when put to the Screaming Kids Test. Including public transport.

    1257:

    And they also want to be able to fly around the world several times a year. We simply have to change our demands, and both those are ones we have to change.

    1258:

    Pigeon @ 1256 "Screaming Kids Test" I do hope you are not referring to the dreaded "School Run"? Where at least 95% of the Brats could & should be told to FUCKING WELL WALK ( Or get a bus ) rather than relying on their long-suffering parents for un-necessary transport. There's a problem with this - the utterly false idea that the kids will immediately be pounced on by hordes of raving paedophiles. Whan a Brat myself, from the age of 6 I was walking 1.1 km, 4 times a day to/from infant/primary school & then from age 11, cycling 1.5 km also 4 times a day. Probably why I never needed "team games/spurts" to keep fit & could never see the point of said bulshit (Another Story, that one ... )

    1259:

    I am getting tired, and realise that was too concise. The reason that they can't have it is because we simply do not have the space for the roads. That's been published repeatedly, and invariably ignored. There is no option but to take another path - whether that be making the hiring of cars easier, better public transport or whatever.

    As I said, there are other advantages, too, especially to health, and the fact that we wouldn't need an Operation Overlord scale project to upgrade our electricity infrastructure. Anyone who things that we could convert to an all-electric road vehicle fleet based on the current offerings (even enhanced) with anything less is delusional.

    But I am under no illusion about the chances of the UK achieving sanity in my lifetime.

    1260:

    Absolutely. Private cars should probably be limited to something like this velo that has a rotational moulded body (ie cheap and strong) with a mid drive electric motor of about 750 W and a speed limiter of about 30 km/h (maybe 50 outside built up areas, but locked out in cities by gps geofencing.

    http://trisled.com.au/hpv/rotovelo-e/

    The '8 hour at highway speed' requirement should be on a train. An electric train. One that lets you roll your velo on and off, and charge it while aboard.

    The chance of getting from here to there is however approximately zero. However much I wish it to be and however much that would be the rule if I was suddenly made king of the world.

    1261:

    Yes, that, and also all the other times people are carting their kids about, outside school times, or kids that are too young for school, etc. I agree about the school run, but the other times are more defensible, and defensible or not, the aggregate of them is a major factor in an awful lot of people's choice of car and what we think isn't going to change that.

    1262:

    I think the lack of space ends up being ignored because it's too bleeding obvious for people to cope with, so they'd rather ignore it and blame it on immigrants.

    Then, with grid upgrades; electricity is magic, it always works, people who say it's going to stop working soon have always been wrong, they can do anything with electricity these days look at mobile phones and stuff; the thought that there might even be something to worry about doesn't have a chance to get going. And those who do know enough physics to see that there is do indeed seem delusional by the kind of physics they use to argue that there isn't.

    And because nobody cares, politicians are quite happy to ignore it with confidence that that won't make any difference to people voting for them. But it might make a difference to people not voting for them if they start plugging a hugely expensive project that people don't see the point of.

    1263:

    Good luck making that "fly" outside urban areas; for instance I'd guess anywhere In Northern Territory not called Cairns or Darwin, or Western Australia not called Perth (I know the reaction when council refused to build a bypass to get plant and rock haulers around main street in Coober Pedy was "We've got the fuckin' plant; let's build the fuckin' bypass and tell council to go swivel on it!")

    1264:

    As I said, zero chance.

    The repeal of the red flag act basically handed the commons owned by all, to the elusive use of car owners and corporations. While the costs to maintain that formerly public space remained firmly in public hands. Any attempt to reclaim public space for public use is pretty much doomed.

    1265:

    I can't speak for "all nations", but that is total nonsense as applied to the UK. Here vehicle users pay more in vehicle use taxes than is spent on road construction and maintenance, but the roads (other than where vulnerable road users are specifically banned) are all available to use by all. Despite any impression that might be drawn from sources like this blog, powered vehicles do not have right of way to proceed in a manner that endangers unpowered vehicles, pedestrians or domestic animals.

    1266:

    The people who do not pay their environmental road costs are the heavy hauliers, who have been in bed with a certain political party since about 1930 - see also "A Square Deal for the Railways" & Ernest Marples ... Or the current proposal to bullid an "Oxford-Cambridge Expressway" whilst leaving the re-opening of a Bedford-Cambridge rail line to be pushed back another 20 years & not actually, significantly improving Bletchley-Bedford. Or the deliberate halt on ANY further railway electrification by the unspeakable Grayling ....

    1267:

    The days of the "commons" of the roads were the time bicycles were known as "boneshakers" for good reason. A horse-cart travelled at two or three miles an hour on rutted roads in town and out in the country, the ruts caused by the hard narrow wheels of wagons and no-one bothered to fill them in or repair them because they weren't being paid to do so and it was someone else's problem (a major problem with the commons approach to ownership of infrastructure).

    Better-off towns had some major thoroughfares laid with cobbles, paid for by taxes and mandated by local government which was run by wealthy business-owners. Toll roads out in the country were privately-owned and better-maintained but they weren't part of the commons. Some roads were built and maintained for military purposes such as transporting artillery.

    The last figures I saw, from the AA so adjust your bias goggles appropriately, said that the British Government received about 35 billion a year in taxes and other income from road vehicle users, or about £500 per person per annum. None of that 35 billion came from cyclists as far as I can tell, other than those who both cycled and drove cars, trucks, minibuses, taxis etc.

    1268:

    Greg at #1266 - "Heavy hauler" in UK (I think Europe-wide) has a general meaning which requires the load to be outside railway loading gauge in height and/or width. It also usually refers to under 1% of LGV usage, and often to vehicles moving at 20mph or less.

    Nojay at #1267 - I'll take that as amplification of #1265.

    All, I'll be AFK until Wednesday.

    1269:

    Paws Ah, mis-definitions or understandings. I was thinking of anything carrying more than 10 tonnes load &/or having more than 4 axles.

    1270:

    Don't know about the UK. Here in OZ roads are paid for from council rates. There's a considerable tax burden on motorists, but it doesn't come within a bulls roar of the 42 billion pa subsidy the fossil fuel companies get.

    You're free to walk up the middle of the road in OZ. Until the police arrive and run you over.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/10/police-car-filmed-veering-across-road-and-hitting-aboriginal-man

    1271:

    I've been working as a safety steward on the breakdown of the Edinburgh Hogmanay infrastructure in Princes Street Gardens. There's a couple of railway lines that run through the Gardens but the event organisers have been using Evil Heavy Goods Vehicles to move stuff anyway because they hate the railways.

    Actually, no. They're using HGVs and LGVs and vans and such because they can get into and out of the site[1] and when they leave they go back to the dump or the depot or storage facility or equipment hire facility the stuff they're carrying is destined for. Rail can't do the job and for most freight these days rail isn't as good as road haulage.

    Rail goods transport isn't end-point to end-point, it requires transshipment of goods from other forms to transport to complete the first-mile and last-mile transport links and that transshipment costs money and time and losses due to breakage and pilfering. In most cases with road haulage the goods are loaded on the supplier's doorstep and unloaded at the customer's front yard, a major saving in time and cost.

    Bulk and pipeline freight can be and is often carried on rail -- stone, oil, chemicals etc. which can spend three days on the rail cars as long as enough material arrives each day at the destination when it's needed or scheduled, like a pipeline. Nearly everything else is delivered on the back of a 38-tonne curtainsider in less time and at lower cost.

    [1] There are two road routes into the Gardens, one of which has an 11-tonne limit bridge. The other route involves a complicated serpentine run through an 18th century churchyard[2]. Only the biggest trucks need to take that road, including the tank trucks that pump out the portaloos (website wemovesh.it, I'm not kidding) since water and solids weigh a lot.

    [2] It's where Napier's bones are laid to rest.

    1272:

    Re: [2]

    Good thing the are resting, otherwise they would be multiplying.

    1273:

    Err, I invite you to helping out with my next shopping trip to the hardware store. Or car boot sale. Or...

    I guess you're also not into water sports, I guess. Err, no, not the urban dictionary use...

    1274:

    Not sure about that. The thing about bicycles was that they have no suspension and considerably smaller wheels than horse-drawn vehicles (apart from penny-farthings, but I think the term "boneshaker" was applied to machines more similar to today's bicycles, the difficulties penny-farthings have with rough surfaces being such that "skullcrusher" would be more appropriate), and also their "natural" speed is a bit above that of a horse pulling a cart. Passenger-carrying horse vehicles did at least make some kind of effort at suspension; even if it wasn't all that effective it was still better than nothing, and the extra body mass helps too. Also, they weren't "the norm" in the same way that cars are today; most people covered most of their miles on foot or by train - the Victorian bicycle craze happened because it gave people the opportunity to explore all of the countryside instead of being limited to the vicinity of stations, which when personal transport was purely horse-based had been an opportunity only available to the rich. So a horribly rough ride for periods of hours at a time was one of the prime characteristics differentiating bicycle transport from other methods used by bicycle owners.

    The roads were shit because there wasn't really any call for them to be otherwise; nearly all the traffic on most roads was pedestrians, or else farm carts, and the farmers didn't care (and still don't). Only the nobs used horse-drawn passenger vehicles habitually, and the only option practically available to them as individuals was to put up with the roughness. The turnpikes were an attempt to solve the problem on those few roads where wheeled passenger traffic did comprise a large percentage of all traffic.

    Non-shit roads came about as a response to the spread of cars; the tarmac followed the rubber, as it were, and it still took many decades before it achieved its current near-universal coverage.

    Major thoroughfares in London and other large cities were often surfaced with wood. For some odd reason nearly all historical-type references don't seem to mention this; I think I've seen about one such mention, but it is readily apparent from casual mentions in Victorian novels. I imagine something resembling parquet flooring made of timbers like small railway sleepers.

    1275:

    But it'd only look like addition, so it wouldn't be too bad.

    1276:

    Damage to the road surface goes as the fourth power of axle loading, a fact which is carefully never mentioned since it implies that the annual road tax for an HGV should be comparable to the cost of the whole vehicle.

    As for Oxford-Cambridge... chicken's tits. All those concerned should have had nailed to their foreheads where they can see it every day in the mirror a notice reminding them that the idea is to reopen a railway line, not set a world record for procrastination while what was still a functional railway line in the beginning (the western half) returns to a state of nature, bridges crumbling into uselessness and people stealing the actual fucking track. They make the ludicrous incompetence which caused Bedfordshire's effort to destroy the Bedford-Sandy section of the route by choosing gravel pits on either side of the trackbed to make a rowing lake out of instead of any of the other zillions of gravel and clay pits in the area to fail look dynamic and with-it, and that takes some doing.

    1277:

    What the AA and similar figures do not quote is the truly massive effective subsidy motorised road transport receives, from not paying for the harm it causes to neighbouring properties, the public's health and in other ways. It's not as simplistic as that figure makes out, nor are increasing transport-related taxes a viable solution.

    1278:

    Actually, roads were improved for bicycles - cars came a lot later - look at the dates!

    1279:

    I've seen much larger loads carried by bicycle than anything I've ever seen carried in or on a passenger car. You're going to have to come up with a better argument for why we need to kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, destroy the environment and fight wars to control oil than 'I need to drive to a car boot sale'.

    1280:

    http://trisled.com.au/hpv/maxi-flatty/ " This bike’s load-carrying capacity is limited to what you can safely tie down on it. So far we’ve tried couches, furniture, building materials and kegs of beer."

    When I lived in Canberra (which is the only Australian city with a separated cycling network) I saw someone with a trike carrying a three piece lounge suite and a bookshelf. Far more than you can fit in a car. In China I saw people carrying loads more than ten times that. Pre-cast concrete beams was about the biggest load I saw, but that was being towed.

    1281:

    For a decent account of that, may I recommend this book?

    http://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com

    I backed it on Kickstarter, and it's an excellent read.

    1282:

    I saw an amazing home-built welded-steel-tube kayak trailer for a bicycle the other day parked at a popular launching area (attached to a bicycle which was chained to a tree). It was a ribs-and-stringers design but its creator had made the ribs and stringers flush, something that I guess welding lends itself to. Probably hugely over engineered, but pretty.

    1283:

    SLA v Lithium: I have an older electric lawn mower, years ago when I bought it one of the attractions (to me) was that it uses SLA batteries and they ought to be relatively cheap to replace. The downside was the charger is not especially smart and this combined with my own forgetfulness meant I’ve ended up replacing the batteries every 18-24 months. When I found myself needing to do that again this^H^H^H^Hlate last year, I did look around a bit. I could have got lithium batteries that fit with a smart charger for around 2.5 times the cost of replacing the SLAs (including shipping from China, which is around half the cost). The lithium batteries appear to be made mostly for the mobility scooter market...

    This wasn’t a call I was ready to make unless I could be relatively certain the lithium would last 3-5 years, so I have just replaced with SLA for now. The local mower shop supply them and pack them into the battery holder (requires a T15)... I couldn’t find anywhere cheaper online. Thing is, this was the last pair they had in stock and they weren’t sure if they’d get more. All the newer electric mowers do appear to come with lithium batteries...

    1284:

    Rick Moen @ 1199: E.g., US Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who rose to office with Democratic Party affiliation in 1988, continuing with that label until his 2006 re-election, when he lost the Democratic Party primary election to challenger Ned Lamont, but, rather than bow out, ran a third-party campaign under one-shot party 'Connecticut for Lieberman', and thereby beat both major parties' candidate in the general election, to retain his seat. He remained in theory a Democrat until leaving the Senate in 2013, but one who acted rather a lot more like a Republican, e.g., giving a major speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention endorsing John McCain's candidacy. The Democratic leadership had no power whatsoever to prevent this. He was ultimately accountable only to his constituency.

    That's disallowed under North Carolina General Statutes. If you run in a Party Primary and lose, you are not permitted to then run as a NON-party, independent or non-affiliated candidate in the General Election. You have to choose one or the other, although you can run as an independent, non-affiliated candidate if you miss the filing deadline to get on the primary ballot. In that case, you will have to submit a petition with the signatures of registered voters equal to 2% of the votes cast for that office in the last General Election. If it's a state-wide office, you also have have at least 250 signatures from each of at least 4 Congressional Districts.

    It's also now state law that if you switch parties to run in a partisan primary, you must do so 90 days before the filing deadline. The Legislature tried to change the law before the 2018 general election to disqualify a candidate who switched from Democrat to Republican (after he'd already changed his affiliation & won his primary), but the court wouldn't let them do it because they weren't allowed to change the rules after the election cycle had already begun.

    1285:

    David L @ 1190: I own a house in the N. Hills / Midtown area.

    Every time you mention NIMBY zoning issues for apartment buildings, I think of Glenwood South. I keep forgetting they're building those apartment buildings in North Hills too.

    1286:

    Trottelreiner @ 1207: a) May I just say I'm leery of everything touched by Leary? Yes, old pun, SCNR.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUzvhGwR85Q

    1287:

    Thanks for reminding me, I need to take my scooter's charger apart and find out what it's actually doing, make sure they've designed it properly instead of the "it just has to make sure the battery doesn't explode" kind of effort that is all too common.

    Lawnmowers, well, you want one of these...

    http://www.oldlawnmowerclub.co.uk/sites/default/files/memberuploads/user700/%24_58.jpg

    Uses an ordinary car battery, lasts for 5 years or so of being used once a week to nearly its full capacity and recharged at 2A max.

    1288:

    Pigeon @ 1276 That 4th-power load damage was the one I was thinking of.. Thanks for publicising it!

    1289:

    When I was in Africa, they carried everything up to a man his (fat) wife, a child in her arms and a 56 pound sack of mealy meal on the back - and over dirt roads, too. Of course, those were traditional roadster bicycles - almost all modern road racers, MTBs etc. would fail under the strain.

    I have also seen someone riding along with a rowing eight oar on his shoulder. Unfortunately, I was on foot, so never saw what happened when he needed to turn a corner :-)

    1290:

    It's also a myth, though not misleading (unusually for a myth)! The relationship turns out to be much more complex, depends on several other variables, and is only the fourth power of the load under a few circumstances. But it's as good a simple rule for laymen as any, and not biassed in either direction.

    http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=1586

    1291:

    We got rid of a lead-acid battery-electric lawnmower because it couldn't climb 1" vertical at a slope of 2% and our lawn was lumpy :-) I don't know why NiMH never really took off for mowers, but I have never looked into the properties of that class of battery very closely.

    Anyway, rotaries are MUCH better for lawns that are likely to have stones, twigs and even the heavier leaves and leaf-stalks on them (and ours gets all of those).

    1292:

    EC @ 1290 Even if it's "only" the cube of the load, it's still v. bad. Which is why having the loads, if not bulk aggregates (etc) capable of being split up, that having trains with 100-tonne wagons ( 12.5 t per wheel ), which can be unloaded to much smaller road vehicles for the last mile or 2 is a good idea. One enterprising ROSCO is toying with the idea in Britain, right now

    1293:

    You're working survivor bias. While such loads can be carried by bicycle, it either requires the user to be athletically capable of balancing those loads, or you get a high number of fatalities and/or debilitating injuries such as paralysis from accidents. I doubt these bikes are safer than cars.

    1294:

    Bikes run at lower speeds, so you get more crashes but less damage. A lot of people fall off bikes, very few die in consequence (absent being run over by a motor vehicle).

    1295:

    I've done the ridiculous loads by bicycle thing a few times, and narrowly escaped death when the load "took over", pulled the bicycle over on its side, and the saddle was folded in half by a passing vehicle. (Fortunately I had ejected to the opposite side.) Yes, it was a lorry, but I don't think it would have made a whole lot of difference if it had instead been 20 people all doing the same thing as me.

    1296:

    All my links have been to tricycles. No balance required. The suggestion was for an approximate 750 W limit electric assist. No particular athletic ability required.

    1297:

    It seems unlikely the pile on top of you would be more than 3 or 4 high. I can believe 20 in the pile up but most would be spread down the street.

    1298:

    Hm, I'm working on a nice reply to gasdive, but in the meantime...

    I've transported quite a few things with a bike and trailer in my time; I even tried it when moving between appartments, only to realize that it's more economical to rent a transporter to move 30 boxes full of book than move one or two a time, with a time being an afternoon.

    Also, transporting furniture was a fun way to spend an afternoon, it was dark in the end, but thankfully it wasn't raining that much, which is somewhat unexpected for Westphalia. And I wasn't too exhausted the next day at work, but nearly.

    I guess some of the people I met on the street might also have a story to tell, somewhat along the lines of "bloody slow idiot in the way".

    I guess the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back was the photometer I bought last year, I'm still surprised I didn't break either

    a) my feet b) the trailer c) the bus/train

    or

    d) the 20kg photometer...

    There is a similar story with the Skyhopper telescope I bought about 100km to the South, with some nice cobblestones on the way to the train station...

    So I guess I'll look for a nice used small van soon. As for the oil, err, I guess I'll use it very seldom, I could even grow my own biodiesel in my backyard and it would be sufficient...

    1299:

    I’m curious but is theee an equivalent of U-Haul in the UK where you can rent a pickup for $20/day?

    1300:

    I'm in Germany, and the deal I got was a Ford Transit for around 40 Euros a day, 50 km free, any extra km costs about 10 to 50 cents, I'd have to look up the specifics.

    I have been told I got off cheap. In the end, I just factored in the time I spent on a bike as worktime, with 8 Euros an hour (which AFAIR would be below minimal wage). Renting the transporter became something of a no-brainer after that.

    1301:

    for $20/day?

    Well not really. U-Haul wants $0.50 / mile in most of the US. So it's really a lot higher unless you're near a location and not moving very far. But their vans are great and made for DIY movers. Lot of attachment points and such in the rear.

    But typically I can find a better deal for a cargo van with one of the car rental companies. Especially if I can be flexible on dates.

    Or just buy your own pickup truck for $$$. ($10K for mine.)

    1302:

    CORRECTION ( @ 1292 ) - I meant "TOC" - nbot "ROSCO" - oops.

    1303:

    Trottelreiner @ 1298: d) the 20kg photometer...

    Ok, that aroused my curiosity. What is it about the photometer that required it to be so massive?

    1304:

    David L @ 1301: for $20/day?

    Well not really. U-Haul wants $0.50 / mile in most of the US. So it's really a lot higher unless you're near a location and not moving very far. But their vans are great and made for DIY movers. Lot of attachment points and such in the rear.

    But typically I can find a better deal for a cargo van with one of the car rental companies. Especially if I can be flexible on dates.

    Or just buy your own pickup truck for $$$. ($10K for mine.)

    FWIW, Lowe's Home Improvement has pickup trucks for rent. It's $19 for the first 90 minutes (and $20/hour thereafter up to a max of $89/day) unlimited mileage.

    With U-Haul, if you have a vehicle that can tow it, you're probably better off renting a trailer. There's no mileage charge for those if you're returning it to the same U-Haul location. Even my Ford Focus has enough Oomph to haul one of their trailers sized enough you could get most of the furniture out of a 2 BR apartment to make the move in a single trip.

    And this being the southern U.S., you're a mighty lonesome fella' if you don't have at least one redneck friend (or acquaintance or relative ... even a girlfriend) who has a pickup truck and will, for appropriate bribes usually involving beer & pizza, help you move.

    1305:

    Most of the weight seems to be inthe steel underbody, the optics, e.g. gratings etc. is quite light. Might have something to do with minimizing vibrations etc.

    IIRC most spectrophotometers from university were somewhat smaller and lighter, so seeing the 100 Euro used Perkin Elmer was something of an unpleasant surprise...

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