Balanced Question Time panel tonight - of course not!

[Einion Yrth]

legzr1 said:

boardroom coo

I don't imagine you'll believe me but I'm not attempting to be a smartarse, merely to inform. That would be "boardroom coup", it's French, you know.

[MGJohn]

hidetheelephants said:

>>>> Much snipped <<<<

.... increasing prosperity reduces child birth through improved access to healthcare; this increase in prosperity is through access to cheap energy, which brings us full circle back to the Green party and the bone-headed wrongness which seeks to make energy more expensive.

Chicken and egg, cart before horse scenario ^^^^.

Increased prosperity rarely comes without first an understanding of the need and application of common sense and fully understanding the causes and very few ways out of poverty. That wisdom can only come through education. Education comes in many forms be it simple observation of the way others do things and follow those examples, or, actual training of better ways by outside agencies or from within by those who have the vision to be able to see and find ways out. There are no quick fixes. Only longer term vision and planning.

[JustAnotherLogin]

Ignoring all the claims, counter-claims and strongly diverse opionion, this is good news whatever your view on where our future power should/will come from as it will be useful in all case

10Mwh "Big battery" trial in leighton Buzzard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_t...

[Scuffers]

How so?

Cost wise it's worse than a dead end.

Once again, subsidies to the rescue.

[MGJohn]

legzr1 said:

MGJohn said:

>>>> Lots of MGJohn stuff snipped leaving a nice picture and a question. <<<<

For me, this image I captured about twenty years ago shows a North American Built Class 66 purchased and imported over here at huge expense hauling a dedicated UK Company Freight Train. Any idea the contents of that train's wagons?



Give you a small clue. The corporate colour scheme of the now extinct company is a dead giveaway ...

legzr1 said:

Those wagons look like 'continentals' - carrying British steel slab and coil to Europe - those were the days

As to the class 66 - as I'm sure you're aware, reliability, cost of,purchase and cost of running made them an easy purchase for a North American company new to Europe with an empire to build.
Naturally, home politics and pricing would have a massive bearing on purchase choices too.

But, and it pains me to say this - which UK company could have completed an order for 250 euro-compliant locomotives within budget at anywhere near the cost?

The Nation's Industrial spine had been surgically removed long since remember so easy to answer that. None! What few asset stripped remnants of UK indigenous Industry were allowed to continue now mostly gone or in foreign control.

legzr1 said:

Still, the consolation was the order for HTA multi-product wagons which were designed, built and tested in York (U.K. ) - thousands of the things were made are still doing great service.

Unfortunately, 'profit' went first to North America and now to a (publically ran!!) German operation.
The plant is mothballed now but some skilled workers made a few bob for a couple of years.

...

I too met Ed B. very briefly at an EWS event about twenty years ago.

Answering my own question :~

By the way, those Maroon and Silver corporate colours were of the now defunct Rover Group and the Class 66 is hauling the Rover Parts Train between the Steel works at Swindon producing body panels etc up to Longbridge. Prior to using North American built Class 66s, those Rover parts trains were a frequent sight as they passed through Gloucester on "The Loop" up to four times a day each way hauled by former British Built Brush Type 4s latterly known as BR Class 47s. The class 47s around four decades old and still pulling strong and making an impressive sight. There are a few 47s still surviving.

There again. Whatever happened to Mail Trains? Once a very familiar sight on the tracks.

Not as familiar as the huge number of Royal Mail Vans and Articulated trucks which now infest the UK's highly stressed Motorway Infrastructure. Still, never mind the quality of life, feel the width of these privatised profits... Ching-ching ..

I even voted for Privatisation way back when. What a mug! I did not expect the the mish-mash of spiv-like selling off of so many things at knock-down prices leading to the cartel riddled excesses and abuses which we see today. Much of it now in foreign control which must be a positive for the longer term ...

Posted purely in the interests of balance a la Question Time on any night ... .

[JustAnotherLogin]

Scuffers said:

How so?

Cost wise it's worse than a dead end.

Once again, subsidies to the rescue.

How do you work that out.

You do realise that production units tend to cost less than R&D prototypes?
And that such systems could save hundreds of millions a year smoothing out peaks

[Scuffers]

Do the numbers.

Yanks tried this year's ago, ignoring the costs, system life was tragic.

Pump storage works, is much cheaper, lasts years, proven tech.

[JustAnotherLogin]

Scuffers said:

Do the numbers.

Yanks tried this year's ago, ignoring the costs, system life was tragic.

Pump storage works, is much cheaper, lasts years, proven tech.

Prototypes almost always have short life and are more expensive.

So no point researching anything then. Just use proven tech.

Slates and a large box of chalks last much longer than a laptop battery. Just use them. More reliable and cheaper too

[hidetheelephants]

CamMoreRon said:

HEY GENIUS! WHEN DID I SAY I WAS ANTI NUCLEAR?

QUOTE THE EXACT TEXT IN CONTEXT PLEASE.

No need to shout; I didn't say you did/were; I was taking issue with two things, firstly you agreeing with Green party energy policy outside of their anti-nuke dogma and secondly your comment about waste being some terribly difficult conundrum.

CamMoreRon said:

For those dheads that decide to jump in from here, here's a timeline:

1 - I said the way we should go is to stop building PWR's and build MSR's that are more waste-efficient.
<snip>
7 - elephant man said we should stop building PWR's and build MSR's that are more waste-efficient.

No, I didn't say that either; LWR and for that matter the UK's gas-cooled fleet are not very efficient, burning <1% of the fissile in the fuel rods before refueling is needed. We've been stuck with the inherent inefficiency of solid fuel reactors since we started 72 years ago, despite there being alternatives. We are lumbered with LWR in the interim, as even with the Chinese going at it hammer and tongs a commercial MSR design won't appear for at least a decade; I'd prefer a modern iteration of AGR homegrown but you can't have everything. You didn't mention MSRs, but your citing of advanced reactors could be a vague reference to GenIV which covers the whole gamut, including MSR.

[Mojocvh]

sidicks said:

CamMoreRon said:

Don't dismiss what I have to say just because you have nothing quantitative to come back to it with, and don't tell me I'm detached from reality just because my opinions clash with yours.

If TB can answer my questions with some impartial raw data then I'll have no option but to listen. I don't want to see somebody's agenda-driven manipulation of statistics / reality, I want to see impartial, undeniable data.

As stated quite clearly, this stuff has been done to death on numerous Climate change threads - the ones you ha

.

Has it REALLY?

I will say that in fact there has been nothing but rhetoric on this subject from both sides for many dozens of pages or so..

[Einion Yrth]

Mojocvh said:

sidicks said:

CamMoreRon said:

Don't dismiss what I have to say just because you have nothing quantitative to come back to it with, and don't tell me I'm detached from reality just because my opinions clash with yours.

If TB can answer my questions with some impartial raw data then I'll have no option but to listen. I don't want to see somebody's agenda-driven manipulation of statistics / reality, I want to see impartial, undeniable data.

As stated quite clearly, this stuff has been done to death on numerous Climate change threads - the ones you ha

.

Has it REALLY?

I will say that in fact there has been nothing but rhetoric on this subject from both sides for many dozens of pages or so..

Which surely is a symptom of it having been "done to death".

[Scuffers]

JustAnotherLogin said:

Prototypes almost always have short life and are more expensive.

So no point researching anything then. Just use proven tech.

Slates and a large box of chalks last much longer than a laptop battery. Just use them. More reliable and cheaper too

maybe so, but why are we (as in the consumer and tax payer) once again footing the bill?

you only have to look at where they have built this to realise the stupidity of the project - it's on land that's likely to flood!

the real problem even if it works as planned is that the scale and impact of it is insignificant.

£18.7M to to store 10Mwh? just think about that for a moment, that's less than the output of 1 big wind turbine in a day, or to put it another way it's max output is 1/1000 of drax powerstation for less than 2 hours.

if you then factor in the charge/discharge cycle in-efficiencies, it's just madness.

Like I said before, all it's there for is to enable more over-priced electricity to be run through our subsidy based electric market.

[turbobloke]

Einion Yrth said:

Mojocvh said:

sidicks said:

CamMoreRon said:

Don't dismiss what I have to say just because you have nothing quantitative to come back to it with, and don't tell me I'm detached from reality just because my opinions clash with yours.

If TB can answer my questions with some impartial raw data then I'll have no option but to listen. I don't want to see somebody's agenda-driven manipulation of statistics / reality, I want to see impartial, undeniable data.

As stated quite clearly, this stuff has been done to death on numerous Climate change threads - the ones you ha

.

Has it REALLY?

I will say that in fact there has been nothing but rhetoric on this subject from both sides for many dozens of pages or so..

Which surely is a symptom of it having been "done to death".

Heat death or frozen?!

To be more accurate, there's been rhetoric from the faith side and data plus science from the rest of us. That'll be impartial data, as per available to anyone from credible sources. Not knowing this already suggests a neat one-liner from somebody who hasn't looked. Hi CMR.

I seem to recall it kicked off in this thread when somebody, can't recall who started championing the Green Party and its nonsensical policies.

There will be another QT along soon to indicate the straight and narrow.

[Scuffers]

turbobloke said:

I seem to recall it kicked off in this thread when somebody, can't recall who started championing the Green Party and its nonsensical policies.

exactly, and several pages later we are still none the wiser.

The Green position appears to be nothing more than lofty aspirational stuff, all very nice and fluffy, but 110% impossible and impractical.

Aspirational stuff <> genuine policy

even if we accept climate change and mankind's responsibility (which for the record, I don't), the problem is that none of the solutions being touted are actually solutions.

it's like saying I am going to build a car that runs off water and it will make no emissions, do 500 miles to a tank, etc etc. - it's a great aspiration, however, it's simply not going to happen (any time soon!).

[turbobloke]

Scuffers said:

turbobloke said:

I seem to recall it kicked off in this thread when somebody, can't recall who started championing the Green Party and its nonsensical policies.

exactly, and several pages later we are still none the wiser.

The Green position appears to be nothing more than lofty aspirational stuff, all very nice and fluffy, but 110% impossible and impractical.

Aspirational stuff <> genuine policy

even if we accept climate change and mankind's responsibility (which for the record, I don't), the problem is that none of the solutions being touted are actually solutions.

Precisely that.

Before the next QT gets Zod's thread on topic in terms of wider issues, the attack on impartiality needs to be addressed properly. There's maybe time to dispel the idea that data and information in the key links I posted is a PR Direct exercise from Big Oil HQ

The impartiality of the information in one link was supported by a willingness to set out reasoning and to consider all available parallel analyses - which reached the same conclusions: "This particular study does not stand alone. Closer to home, Springer have just published a monograph, Energy in Australia, which contains an extended discussion of energy systems with a particular focus on EROEI analysis, and draws similar conclusions to Weißbach. Another study by a group at Stanford is more optimistic, ruling out storage for most forms of solar, but suggesting it is viable for wind. However, this viability is judged only on achieving an energy surplus (EROEI>1), not sustaining society (EROEI~7), and excludes the round trip energy losses in storage, finite cycle life, and the energetic cost of replacement of storage. Were these included, wind would certainly fall below the sustainability threshold. It’s important to understand the nature of this EROEI limit. This is not a question of inadequate storage capacity – we can’t just buy or make more storage to make it work. It’s not a question of energy losses during charge and discharge, or the number of cycles a battery can deliver."

Renewables cannot sustain society as it now exists. That's not a biased conclusion, it's down to EROEI energetics. Also what's not impartial about a group of true believer engineers who set out to save the planet via renewables then discovered as above that it's not going to happen - as per their study published in IEEE and about which they wrote "At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope. Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach. As one commentary put it 'The study considered exotic innovations barely on the drawing board, such as self erecting wind turbines, using robotic technology to create new wind farms without human intervention. The result however was total failure – even these exotic possibilities couldn’t deliver the necessary economic model'.

Anyone taking the trouble to read the material at links provided would know that already. Neither politicians nor Green zealots have the ability to micromanage the planetary thermostat within a complex non-linear coupled chaotic climate sysrem, even via a tax or two with windymills to go, and there is simply no way that renewables are the future of global energy production unless we accept regression to a localised medieval lifestyle. Voters will love that idea, the issue is that they don't get to hear about it in all the baseless green hype.

[CamMoreRon]

JustAnotherLogin said:

Scuffers said:

Do the numbers.

Yanks tried this year's ago, ignoring the costs, system life was tragic.

Pump storage works, is much cheaper, lasts years, proven tech.

Prototypes almost always have short life and are more expensive.

So no point researching anything then. Just use proven tech.

Slates and a large box of chalks last much longer than a laptop battery. Just use them. More reliable and cheaper too

Exactly. The old stick-in-the-muds will never agree with the advancement of technology, because they cannot see past the need for investment to get things off the ground. They seem to see prototypes as indicators of the exact performance a production unit will have. I work in automotive and spend a lot of time with prototype vehicles - you would never buy a car again if you saw the state of most prototype mules!

Scuffers you need to learn to look past the end of your nose and in to the future a little bit.

[CamMoreRon]

Scuffers said:

And scare resident greenie has failed to justify anything but was promoting heat pumps...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19511637

http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/Grimsby-area-res...

That went well!

This is what happens when stupid people force their rhetoric on poor people.

And that's just selective reporting. There are significant numbers of people who use heat pumps & solar for their heating - my brother lives in such a house and has no heating bills AT ALL.

[9mm]

CamMoreRon said:

Scuffers said:

And scare resident greenie has failed to justify anything but was promoting heat pumps...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19511637

http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/Grimsby-area-res...

That went well!

This is what happens when stupid people force their rhetoric on poor people.

And that's just selective reporting. There are significant numbers of people who use heat pumps & solar for their heating - my brother lives in such a house and has no heating bills AT ALL.

That's great. How much did the installation cost?

[CamMoreRon]

hidetheelephants said:

CamMoreRon said:

HEY GENIUS! WHEN DID I SAY I WAS ANTI NUCLEAR?

QUOTE THE EXACT TEXT IN CONTEXT PLEASE.

No need to shout; I didn't say you did/were; I was taking issue with two things, firstly you agreeing with Green party energy policy outside of their anti-nuke dogma and secondly your comment about waste being some terribly difficult conundrum.

I just wanted to make myself clear, but you have still misunderstood. In my original post I said their hearts were in the right place energy-wise (as in I understand what they're trying to achieve) but I don't agree with it.

Waste is a terribly difficult conundrum; there's no way around that. If you understand how difficult it is to design something to last a hundred years with extremely minimal maintenance then you should realise how difficult it must be to design for timescales a thousand times longer.

hidetheelephants said:

No, I didn't say that either; LWR and for that matter the UK's gas-cooled fleet are not very efficient, burning <1% of the fissile in the fuel rods before refueling is needed. We've been stuck with the inherent inefficiency of solid fuel reactors since we started 72 years ago, despite there being alternatives. We are lumbered with LWR in the interim, as even with the Chinese going at it hammer and tongs a commercial MSR design won't appear for at least a decade; I'd prefer a modern iteration of AGR homegrown but you can't have everything. You didn't mention MSRs, but your citing of advanced reactors could be a vague reference to GenIV which covers the whole gamut, including MSR.

Ok, well this is a matter of semantics then, I guess. I'm sure I did mention MSR & breeder reactors in general but let's give that the benefit of doubt. I agree that MSR will take some time to roll out, but I guess the point I am getting at is that we need to start heading in one direction. At present all parties are pulling against each other, and that helps nothing. The AGW debate is toxic to progress and that's why it does my head in to see just how much effort people are willing to put in to cast doubt. It shouldn't be a matter of whether AGW is a real phenomenon or not, as the timescale to gather adequate data is so long that irreversible damage could be done by not acting - with that risk in mind it should be blindingly obvious that the best course of action is one of caution and attempting to limit our potential impact as much as possible.

The solution is of course to listen to the advice of the scientific community, to acknowledge that the best course of action is preventative, and to agree on an energy policy that is LONG TERM and CANNOT BE CHANGED without serious democratic consultation.

Which brings me on to another reason that Green are the winners here - democratic reform.

Edited by CamMoreRon on Wednesday 17th December 11:53

[CamMoreRon]

Guam said:

Was that, that old Canard the "precautionary principle" I just heard squawking there?

Well said. This applies absolutely to those "taking action" - i.e. humans burning fossil fuels - in that the burden of proof is on them if they want to carry on risking irreparable damage to the environment.

However.. the consensus of scientific opinion is behind AGW, so that becomes invalid and we should stop risking harm asafp.