Jez Weston

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• Commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  @kyb: Shipping batteries to and from orbit isn't going to be viable. The best batteries might get to an energy density comparable to rocket fuel. To get a tonne of rocket fuel to orbit takes something like 50 tonnes of...
• Commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  Yes, renewables are killing coal. UK electricity has gone from 40% in 2021 to 2% in 2020. US total energy has gone from 22% in 2010 to 12% in 2019. China has gone from 70% of total energy in 2010...
• Commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  There's a new technology that makes space-based solar power more viable - metamaterials for microwave lenses. The lenses themselves don't look like optical lenses. They're thin sheets of insulator printed with fancy copper foil patterns, so can be very light,...
• Commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  The economics of solar has strong returns to scale - bigger is much cheaper. Solar on a household roof is 5-10x the cost of utility-scale solar. Every roof is different so there's high design & compliance costs, fixed costs for...
• Commented on Cough Cough
  Accountability isn't that hard. Here's NZ's Health Minister's response to a much more trivial cock-up, David Clark offers to resign after revealing he took a trip to beach during Covid-19 lockdown. He went 20k while the rules said "local". "Prime...
• Commented on Public appearances in a time of pandemic
  As of today, CoNZealand isn't cancelled. Our (damn awesome) PM flagged today that stronger travel restrictions are coming. Some large events are cancelling this weekend. New Zealand has only had five confirmed cases so far with no evidence of community...
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  As one of the Kiwis here, I can say that we're welcoming to immigrants, but if you're a billionaire who's running away from the crisis that you yourself have created, then that's not going to go down well here. As...
• Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (1)
  Greg @ 84: Those roads aren't exactly the border crossing scene from Sicario, but I'm sure with sufficient concrete barriers and bureaucracy, the M25 can become a festering strip of resentment. Oh wait... Moz @ 85: Scottish independence proceeds exactly...
• Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (1)
  At this point, Scottish independence seems certain....
• Commented on The Inevitable Brexit Thread (1)
  There's a simple solution that I haven't seen proposed yet: the Malaysia-Singapore approach. London is substantially different to the rest of the UK. It's avidly pro-EU and voted strongly for remain. Londoners are 35% foreign-born and on average twice as...
• Commented on Solarpunk rising, or how to turn boring bureaucratic meetings into creative fodder
  Solar is already economically viable and like all power generation, it has economies of scale and works better the more is installed. The resilient and socially beneficial solution is not households owning the panels on their roofs. It is deployment...
• Commented on Solarpunk rising, or how to turn boring bureaucratic meetings into creative fodder
  I have to disagree with you about the economics of solar - they are rapidly becoming the cheapest form of generation. It's not, or it shouldn't be about whether individual households can afford the purchase price on top of their...
• Commented on Ever Young?
  Emigrate. It's the perfect way to draw a line across the expectations and habits of youth. You'll still find yourself embedded in a whole new cultural narrative, but that coz things are new, not coz you are old. (Doesn't mean...