On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 01:38:57 +1000, Mike Halmarack
<mikehalmarack@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:48:29 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 11/04/2022 14:54, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 12:56:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:36, alan_m wrote:
>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:02, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 10:48, newshound wrote:
>>>>>>> https://watt-logic.com/2022/04/11/cost-of-renewables/
>>>>>> What I love about Kathryn, is that she says exactly what I have been
>>>>>> trying to say, much better than I have the patience of the aptitude
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> say it.
>>>>>
>>>>> The problem is that a lot of people are now convinced that wind and
>>>>> solar are "free" and the energy they produce should be very cheap.
>>>>>
>>>>> Social media is full of windmill enthusiasts who also believe in no
>>>>> more
>>>>> Nuclear and turning off gas and coal in the next few years because
>>>>> "wind
>>>>> is working". These people also tend to be on totally green tariffs
>>>>> and
>>>>> believe that ALL the gas and electricity they are receiving is green.
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, it amazes me to find that there are people out there who still
>>>> apparently 'believe in man made climate change' and 'renewable
>>>> energy'...
>>>
>>> I do. I believe in both. I believe that fossil fuel is ony
>>> advantageous to those with vested financial interests in it, and
>>> extremely destructive for everyone.
>>>
>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>> put it mildly
>>>
>> Whereas the idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to
>> do lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>> environment with multiple windmills that don't even work reliably, is
>> apparently laudable?
>
> Why do you say windmills don't work reliably?
> They work completely reliably in the context of windmills.
> Just because they don't rotate when it's not windy doesn't make them
> unreliable. They just have to be used in a way that's appropriate for
> windmills.

That isn't possible with electricity generation.

> I'd much rather find ways to store windmill produced energy.

Not economically viable even with massive amounts of
pumped hydro available, and it will never be in the UK.

Not even economically viable to store it in Norway for the UK either.

> than find ways to get rid of nuclear waste

No point in getting rid of it. You keep it until it is more economic
to use it in breeders instead of mining more uranium or thorium etc.

> produced by hastily and
> precariously built nuclear reactors.

That is emotive language, not a rational argument.

> It's hard to get a bit of bricklaying professionally done these days,
> let alone safe nuclear reactor construction.

Hinkley C is being built fine.

> It's not as easy as safely cladding multi-storey flats.

But still perfectly possible as France has proved.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 01:46:24 +1000, Mike Halmarack
<mikehalmarack@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:42:14 +0100, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> On 11/04/2022 14:54, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 12:56:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:36, alan_m wrote:
>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:02, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 10:48, newshound wrote:
>>>>>>> https://watt-logic.com/2022/04/11/cost-of-renewables/
>>>>>> What I love about Kathryn, is that she says exactly what I have been
>>>>>> trying to say, much better than I have the patience of the aptitude
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> say it.
>>>>>
>>>>> The problem is that a lot of people are now convinced that wind and
>>>>> solar are "free" and the energy they produce should be very cheap.
>>>>>
>>>>> Social media is full of windmill enthusiasts who also believe in no
>>>>> more
>>>>> Nuclear and turning off gas and coal in the next few years because
>>>>> "wind
>>>>> is working". These people also tend to be on totally green tariffs
>>>>> and
>>>>> believe that ALL the gas and electricity they are receiving is green.
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, it amazes me to find that there are people out there who still
>>>> apparently 'believe in man made climate change' and 'renewable
>>>> energy'...
>>>
>>> I do. I believe in both. I believe that fossil fuel is ony
>>> advantageous to those with vested financial interests in it, and
>>> extremely destructive for everyone.
>>>
>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>> put it mildly
>>>
>>
>> So what is your solution to a UK reliable energy source of the future?
>> You have ruled out gas and oil and probably nuclear but what is your
>> suggestion for the backup for the current intermittency of the current
>> solar and wind and what alternatives do you suggest?
>
> There are various storage and conversion+storage solutions.

None of which are economically viable.

> I'm not an engineer

Or an economist either.

> but I do know when I'm being scammed and
> bullshitted by the lovers of big bucks at any cost.

Fraid not. Just another conspiracy theorist.

You haven't even noticed that that's what those doing the windmills are.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 02:25:33 +1000, Mike Halmarack
<mikehalmarack@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:52:52 +0100, Harry Bloomfield Esq
> <a@harrym1byt.plus.com> wrote:
>
>> Mike Halmarack brought next idea :
>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>> put it mildly
>>
>> Your solution to providing the essential near 100% backup for wind
>> generation is what exactly? No wind = no power, unless there is
>> adequate conventional power generation.
>
> The tide keeps going in and out even when the wind isn't blowing.

But that doesn't generate enough electricity to power the UK.

> What about diverting shit into methane digesters to provide gas and
> fertiliser instead of dumping it into the rivers and sea?

Again, doesn't produce enough gas or fertiliser for the UK's needs.

> There are multiple ways of producing relatively clean energy.

All of which are very intermittent.

> Saving energy too.

But that needs energy to produce the insulation,
even if you just 'live' underground.

> Use them in combination, then adapt to the limitations.

By walking everywhere or riding a bike ? Fuck that.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 02:43:03 +1000, Mike Halmarack
<mikehalmarack@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 17:25:20 +0100, Andrew
> <Andrew97d-junk@mybtinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> On 11/04/2022 16:38, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>
>>> Why do you say windmills don't work reliably?
>>> They work completely reliably in the context of windmills.
>>> Just because they don't rotate when it's not windy doesn't make them
>>> unreliable. They just have to be used in a way that's appropriate for
>>> windmills.
>>>
>>
>> Ok, so what happens when the wind is too strong ?.
>
> The windmills stop working?
>
>> The windmills are
>> feathered and the owners (including Camerons FIL) are paid to not
>> produce any power.
>
>>> When there is a blocking high pressure over the arctic for days and
>>> days
>> blanketing the UK in freezing fog, there is no wind and no solar
>> either, then what ?
>
> If it happens and I don't remember when it last did, adapt.

Makes a lot more sense to have enough nukes so you don't
need to, and don't fuck the environment with lots of windmills.

>> How much electricity does the NHS need 24/7 ?. I don't know, and I would
>> like to know. Are you prepared to manage without all those MRI scanners,
>> ITU hi-tech gear, and all the other paraphernalia that needs an
>> uninterrupted supply of power at 230V and 50 Hz between November and
>> April every year ?.
>
> If the production of the energy it needs is going to be destructive of
> health,

It isn't when nukes are used.

> reduce the paraphernalia.

Just let them die eh ? Brilliant.

>>> I'd much rather find ways to store windmill produced energy.
>>
>> How ?. Do the maths. NO such storage systems exist and unless the
>> laws of physics can be bent, there is unlikely to be one for the
>> foreseeable future. Dreaming about a 'solution' will not solve the
>> immediate problem that the UK is possibly facing power blackouts
>> and definitely facing massive energy cost increases. Ask a dairy
>> farmer how much his costs have gone up over the last year.
>
> I don't know how farmers put up with the abuse.

They don't have any choice in the matter.

>>> than find ways to get rid of nuclear waste produced by hastily and
>>> precariously built nuclear reactors.
>>>
>> we have already spent billions on the best reprocessing system for
>> nuclear waste that money can buy. It works, so we can use it.
>
> It does work and we can use it but should we, considering the history
> of disasters

None in western europe.

> and modern methods of testing?

What ?

>>>> It's hard to get a bit of bricklaying professionally done these days,
>>> let alone safe nuclear reactor construction.
>>
>> Nonsense. The people who build nuclear reactors (and subs) are the
>> best brains available,
>
> The best brains available don't always get their way.

They do with nukes in western europe.

>> unlike your jobbing brickie, and apart from
>> decorative cladding, no brickwork will be found in any nuclear
>> power plant anyway, it's all reinforced concrete .
>>
>>> It's not as easy as safely cladding multi-storey flats.
>>
>> The people who build nuclear power plants know what they are doing

> We'd absolutely need to think so, in order to sleep at night.

We know so, there have been no nuke disasters in western europe.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 02:45:32 +1000, John Rumm
<see.my.signature@nowhere.null> wrote:

> On 11/04/2022 17:25, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:52:52 +0100, Harry Bloomfield Esq
>> <a@harrym1byt.plus.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Mike Halmarack brought next idea :
>>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>>> put it mildly
>>>
>>> Your solution to providing the essential near 100% backup for wind
>>> generation is what exactly? No wind = no power, unless there is
>>> adequate conventional power generation.
>> The tide keeps going in and out even when the wind isn't blowing.
>> What about diverting shit into methane digesters to provide gas and
>> fertiliser instead of dumping it into the rivers and sea?
>> There are multiple ways of producing relatively clean energy. Saving
>> energy too. Use them in combination,
>
> ok that takes care of 0.5% of our energy needs...
>
>> then adapt to the limitations.
>
> Reduce the population to 5m, and go back to the stone age?
>
> Stop waving you hands in the air, and show us the sums!

He can't do that, he isn't an engineer, just a hand waver.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 02:49:02 +1000, John Rumm
<see.my.signature@nowhere.null> wrote:

> On 11/04/2022 17:07, Andrew wrote:
>> On 11/04/2022 16:19, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>
>>> Not where it was done as safely as possible.
>>> Which under current circumstances it wouldn't be.
>>> I don't think expensive placebos help much with radiation sickness.
>> Unless you are a stupid Russian conscript who dug trenches and
>> foxholes in the highly contaminated soil in the forests all around
>> Chernobyl, then radiation sickness is only an issue if you live in
>> Cornwall or somewhere where radon gas is a problem.
>
> That seems a bit unfair on the Russian conscripts, who were not told of
> the risks, and were two young and poorly educated to know any of the
> history of the Chernobyl disaster.

Putin claims that conscripts are not being used
in the Ukraine and that appears to be correct.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 02:50:01 +1000, Mike Halmarack
<mikehalmarack@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 17:30:03 +0100, John Rumm
> <see.my.signature@nowhere.null> wrote:
>
>> On 11/04/2022 16:46, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:42:14 +0100, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 11/04/2022 14:54, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 12:56:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
>>>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:36, alan_m wrote:
>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:02, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 10:48, newshound wrote:
>>>>>>>>> https://watt-logic.com/2022/04/11/cost-of-renewables/
>>>>>>>> What I love about Kathryn, is that she says exactly what I have
>>>>>>>> been
>>>>>>>> trying to say, much better than I have the patience of the
>>>>>>>> aptitude to
>>>>>>>> say it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The problem is that a lot of people are now convinced that wind and
>>>>>>> solar are "free" and the energy they produce should be very cheap.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Social media is full of windmill enthusiasts who also believe in
>>>>>>> no more
>>>>>>> Nuclear and turning off gas and coal in the next few years because
>>>>>>> "wind
>>>>>>> is working". These people also tend to be on totally green tariffs
>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>> believe that ALL the gas and electricity they are receiving is
>>>>>>> green.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, it amazes me to find that there are people out there who still
>>>>>> apparently 'believe in man made climate change' and 'renewable
>>>>>> energy'...
>>>>>
>>>>> I do. I believe in both. I believe that fossil fuel is ony
>>>>> advantageous to those with vested financial interests in it, and
>>>>> extremely destructive for everyone.
>>>>>
>>>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>>>> put it mildly
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So what is your solution to a UK reliable energy source of the future?
>>>> You have ruled out gas and oil and probably nuclear but what is your
>>>> suggestion for the backup for the current intermittency of the current
>>>> solar and wind and what alternatives do you suggest?
>>>
>>> There are various storage and conversion+storage solutions.
>>
>> Now show us one that works at grid scale?
>>
>> Remember if you are committed to wind power then you need enough storage
>> to survive the two or three extended (say 14 day) periods of zero
>> generation per winter when the whole continent is becalmed. That means
>> you also need enough generation capacity to supply base and peak load at
>> the same time as recharging your storage solution to cover that level of
>> interruption.
>>
>> Tesla's newest "gigafactory" in Germany, should be able to produce up to
>> 100 GWh of battery capacity per year when it starts production - with a
>> projected ramp up to perhaps 250 GWh/year.
>>
>> So even if we were allowed to, and could afford to buy the entire annual
>> output, that could in theory store enough to keep the UK grid running
>> from batteries for under three hours! Two orders of magnitude short of
>> the minimum we would require.
>>
>> All our pumped hydro added together can generate a peak of 3GW, and keep
>> it going for a few hours (just under 30 GWh storage in total).
>>
>> Our base load exceeds 30 GW all year round - that is 720 GWh per *day*
>> in the summer - and probably closer to 1TWh/day in the winter. That is
>> before we shift any significant portion of transport, or space heating
>> to energy demand to electric power.
>>
>>> I'm not an engineer
>>
>> And that is the challenge with many promoting "solutions" to this
>> problem. Yes energy storage is easy at small scale, and doable at the
>> small to medium (i.e. individual power station) scale, but rapidly
>> becomes a massively more intractable problem at grid scale.
>>
>> Run the numbers, most proposed "solutions" don't come anywhere close.
>
> Thanks for the information.
>
> We should produce energy safely, as abundantly as possible,

That is what nukes do, and they do that very reliably 24/7 too.

> then adapt to the limitations.

No need to do that with nukes.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 02:56:05 +1000, RJH <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:

> On 11 Apr 2022 at 17:45:32 BST, "John Rumm"
> <see.my.signature@nowhere.null>
> wrote:
>
>> On 11/04/2022 17:25, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:52:52 +0100, Harry Bloomfield Esq
>>> <a@harrym1byt.plus.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Mike Halmarack brought next idea :
>>>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>>>> put it mildly
>>>>
>>>> Your solution to providing the essential near 100% backup for wind
>>>> generation is what exactly? No wind = no power, unless there is
>>>> adequate conventional power generation.
>>>
>
> I don't think *anyone* is talking about 100% renewable right now. The
> issue is
> providing a *combination* of renewables (not just wind, tidal, solar,dams
> etc.) and other (nuclear, gas etc.) that will meet peak demand. With the
> tilt
> towards renewables.
>
>>> The tide keeps going in and out even when the wind isn't blowing.
>>> What about diverting shit into methane digesters to provide gas and
>>> fertiliser instead of dumping it into the rivers and sea?
>>> There are multiple ways of producing relatively clean energy. Saving
>>> energy too. Use them in combination,
>>
>> ok that takes care of 0.5% of our energy needs...
>>

> I thought tidal had a potential of around 20%.

No, and nothing like that. And that would fuck the
environment even more comprehensively than windmills.

>>> then adapt to the limitations.
>>
>> Reduce the population to 5m, and go back to the stone age?
>>
>> Stop waving you hands in the air, and show us the sums!
>
> Of course, figures are needed. But it's always going to be a tradeoff,
> with
> some figures not known because of future events and non-measureable
> variables,
> for example. Somebody just has to decide what the priorities are - and
> do it.

And the only sensible approach is nukes and even Boris has noticed that
now.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 03:00:04 +1000, Mike Halmarack
<mikehalmarack@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 17:45:32 +0100, John Rumm
> <see.my.signature@nowhere.null> wrote:
>
>> On 11/04/2022 17:25, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:52:52 +0100, Harry Bloomfield Esq
>>> <a@harrym1byt.plus.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Mike Halmarack brought next idea :
>>>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>>>> put it mildly
>>>>
>>>> Your solution to providing the essential near 100% backup for wind
>>>> generation is what exactly? No wind = no power, unless there is
>>>> adequate conventional power generation.
>>>
>>> The tide keeps going in and out even when the wind isn't blowing.
>>> What about diverting shit into methane digesters to provide gas and
>>> fertiliser instead of dumping it into the rivers and sea?
>>> There are multiple ways of producing relatively clean energy. Saving
>>> energy too. Use them in combination,
>>
>> ok that takes care of 0.5% of our energy needs...
>>
>>> then adapt to the limitations.
>>
>> Reduce the population to 5m, and go back to the stone age?
>
> Of course not. Lets keep growing and reproducing faster and faster
> until we go pop.

That isn't happening. NOT ONE modern first world country
is even self replacing now if you take out immigration.

True of most of the second world too now.

>> Stop waving you hands in the air, and show us the sums!

> I'd rather be waving than drowning.

No one is drowning.

> Explain the problems in detail

We have.

> and I'll see if I can do the sums.

No chance.

> Though there are those better equipped and currently working at it.

Have already proven that what you want to see isn't viable.

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 03:04:46 +1000, Andrew
<Andrew97d-junk@mybtinternet.com> wrote:

> On 11/04/2022 17:25, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:52:52 +0100, Harry Bloomfield Esq
>> <a@harrym1byt.plus.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Mike Halmarack brought next idea :
>>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>>> put it mildly
>>>
>>> Your solution to providing the essential near 100% backup for wind
>>> generation is what exactly? No wind = no power, unless there is
>>> adequate conventional power generation.
>> The tide keeps going in and out even when the wind isn't blowing.
>
> There are no viable tidal systems operating anywhere. Period.

That isn't true, the Rance system in France works. The problem is that
it produces fuck all power and fucks the environment comprehensively
and isnt feasible in may places at all, none in the UK.

> The experimental systems simply cannot supply a reliable constant supply
> of power

Doesn't need to be constant with other intermittent sources.

> and have an even worse problem than offshore windmills.
> At least the latter are up in the air and not submerged in a very
> aggressive corrosive medium making repair and servicing so difficult it
> might be impossible.

That is fixable tho.

> Unless you are going to go the whole hog of course and dam the
> Channel/La Manche and install turbines in the dam.
> A road link on top means we could tell P&O to piss off completely, but
> I think international shipping would be rather annoyed at having to go
> via Scotland to reach Rotterdam etc though
>
> There are also horrendous ecological side effects of dams.
>
> The proposed Swansea bay lagoon would decimate local flora and fauna
> that needs its mudflats exposed twice a day. The person behind it owns
> the quarry in Cornwall that would 'supply' the stonework. Go figure.
>
> The cost per megawatt/hr is higher than all other forms of 'green'
> energy.
>
>> What about diverting shit into methane digesters to provide gas and
>> fertiliser instead of dumping it into the rivers and sea?
>> There are multiple ways of producing relatively clean energy. Saving
>> energy too. Use them in combination, then adapt to the limitations.
>
> Already being done all over the country, but if you had been listening
> to the Archers in recent years, any planning application for a
> biodigester system (or an incinerator) results in a storm of
> objections from the local nimbys (the same idiots who have 'Vote
> Green' or 'Lib Dumb' banners outside their house at election time),
> who do not want HGVs full of other peoples shit travelling down their
> local country lanes

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 06:03:19 +1000, Fredxx <fredxx@spam.uk> wrote:

> On 11/04/2022 18:07, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 11/04/2022 16:09, Fredxx wrote:
>>> On 11/04/2022 15:50, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>> On 11/04/2022 15:42, alan_m wrote:
>>>>> On 11/04/2022 14:54, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 12:56:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
>>>>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:36, alan_m wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:02, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 10:48, newshound wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> https://watt-logic.com/2022/04/11/cost-of-renewables/
>>>>>>>>> What I love about Kathryn, is that she says exactly what I have
>>>>>>>>> been
>>>>>>>>> trying to say, much better than I have the patience of the
>>>>>>>>> aptitude to
>>>>>>>>> say it.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The problem is that a lot of people are now convinced that wind
>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>> solar are "free" and the energy they produce should be very cheap.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Social media is full of windmill enthusiasts who also believe in
>>>>>>>> no more
>>>>>>>> Nuclear and turning off gas and coal in the next few years
>>>>>>>> because "wind
>>>>>>>> is working". These people also tend to be on totally green
>>>>>>>> tariffs and
>>>>>>>> believe that ALL the gas and electricity they are receiving is
>>>>>>>> green.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes, it amazes me to find that there are people out there who still
>>>>>>> apparently 'believe in man made climate change' and 'renewable
>>>>>>> energy'...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I do. I believe in both. I believe that fossil fuel is ony
>>>>>> advantageous to those with vested financial interests in it, and
>>>>>> extremely destructive for everyone.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>>>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>>>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> put it mildly
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> So what is your solution to a UK reliable energy source of the
>>>>> future? You have ruled out gas and oil and probably nuclear but what
>>>>> is your suggestion for the backup for the current intermittency of
>>>>> the current solar and wind and what alternatives do you suggest?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> ArtStudents™ only have cat-belling solutions, if indeed they are
>>>> concerned with any more than attacking the status quo on moral or
>>>> ethical grounds.
>>>>
>>>> If the Left had any solutions to the problems it raises, who would
>>>> need the Left any more?
>>>
>>> Yet I wouldn't call you a typical engineer. Engineers typically have
>>> open minds to ideas and puts forward solutions rather than
>>> name-calling. Name calling is out of ignorance I might expect from an
>>> Art Student.
>>>
>>>
>> You are right I am not a typical engineer.
>> I am a fucking good engineer.
>> I have an open mind to ideas, I always check them against the laws of
>> physics before condemning them out of court.
> You condemn climate change,

Yes

> deny that CO2 levels are rising,

Nope, that is Doom.

> and oceans are becoming acidic.

He has never commented on that.

> This is one instance where you are in the pay of fossil fuel interests..

Nope, he doesn't get any money from them.

> Some of us have children and rather not risk damaging their future.

Some of us have enough of a clue to realise that climate change
doesn't necessarily damage to future of UK children.

> You appear to have none,

Thank christ for that.

> so not surprising you choose to be blind to certain scientific facts.

It isn't a scientific fact that climate change will damage the future of
UK children.

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> posted
>Chemical energy storage
>===============
>Basically you take stable compounds and by adding energy, turn them
>into unstable compounds. Water to hydrogen. Carbon dioxide and water
>to diesel fuel etc etc. Since the optimal fuel for mobile use is
>hydrocarbon fuel, that's probably what you want. Because you don't
>really need to store energy for static on grid needs. I'll explain why
>later. At any level this will be less efficient that running directly
>from electricity, but if that is the price of portable power, and there
>is no alternative, so be it. Once again all the potential parameters of
>chemical fuel are absolutely well known - there are no hidden pots of
>gold, only basic chemistry and physics.
>All that can be possibly improved are better ways to manufacture
>synthetic fuels, that's all. improve efficiency a few percent.

That doesn't show it isn't a useful thing to do, though. If you had
sufficiently large solar arrays in heavily insolated areas, might they
be able to produce hydrocarbon volumes significant enough to contribute
to the solution?

--
Algernon

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 08:35:03 +0100, Algernon Goss-Custard
<Ben@nowhere.com> wrote:

>The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> posted
>>Chemical energy storage
>>===============
>>Basically you take stable compounds and by adding energy, turn them
>>into unstable compounds. Water to hydrogen. Carbon dioxide and water
>>to diesel fuel etc etc. Since the optimal fuel for mobile use is
>>hydrocarbon fuel, that's probably what you want. Because you don't
>>really need to store energy for static on grid needs. I'll explain why
>>later. At any level this will be less efficient that running directly
>>from electricity, but if that is the price of portable power, and there
>>is no alternative, so be it. Once again all the potential parameters of
>>chemical fuel are absolutely well known - there are no hidden pots of
>>gold, only basic chemistry and physics.
>>All that can be possibly improved are better ways to manufacture
>>synthetic fuels, that's all. improve efficiency a few percent.
>
>That doesn't show it isn't a useful thing to do, though. If you had
>sufficiently large solar arrays in heavily insolated areas, might they
>be able to produce hydrocarbon volumes significant enough to contribute
>to the solution?

The Sahara desert would be a good place assuming you could keep the
panels free from dust, and such a scheme has been proposed in the
past. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec and
https://www.ecomena.org/desertec/ As well as photovoltaics, they also
looked at solar furnaces, proposing to store heat as molten salt to
power generators overnight. The electricity produced would be fed
across the Mediterranean via DC interconnects into the European grid.
It all came to nothing.

--
Chris

The amount of personal insult and vitriol in this thread is indicative
of hysterical uncertainty.

I believe that renewable energy should be combined and maximised.
Safe and sensible nuclear reactors should fill the gaps, which means
avaricious tory politicians and greedy financiers should be kept out
of the mix as much as possible. Nationalisation is the answer to
that.

The furore over the suggested reduction of high energy demanding NHS
paraphenalia is a bit of a joke.
I'm lucky if I can get an appointment with a GP within a month. And if
I was rushed to hospital with a serious illness I'd be quite likely to
die languishing in the car park or some busy corridor.
So, calling me unrealistic is just projection.
--

Mike

On 11/04/2022 20:03, Fredxx wrote:

> You condemn climate change, deny that CO2 levels are rising

What TNP condemns is the creed that the latter is caused by the former.

--
Spike

On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 18:26:42 +1000, Mike Halmarack
<mikehalmarack@gmail.com> wrote:

> The amount of personal insult and vitriol in this thread is indicative
> of hysterical uncertainty.

Nope, your stupidity and mindless hand waving.

> I believe that renewable energy should be combined and maximised.

No point, nukes make a lot more sense.

> Safe and sensible nuclear reactors should fill the gaps,

Makes more sense to use nukes and not renewables.

> which means avaricious tory politicians and greedy financiers

Corse that wouldn't be you resorting to personal insults, eh ?

> should be kept out of the mix as much as possible. Nationalisation is
> the answer to that.

Bullshit when there is a tory govt, stupid.

> The furore over the suggested reduction of high energy demanding NHS
> paraphenalia is a bit of a joke.

There is no furore, stupid.

> I'm lucky if I can get an appointment with a GP within a month.

Your problem.

> And if
> I was rushed to hospital with a serious illness I'd be quite likely to
> die languishing in the car park or some busy corridor.

We can but hope...

> So, calling me unrealistic is just projection.

Pathetic.

On 11/04/2022 21:03, Fredxx wrote:
> On 11/04/2022 18:07, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>>>
>> You are right I am not a typical engineer.
>> I am a fucking good engineer.
>>
>> I have an open mind to ideas, I always check them against the laws of
>> physics before condemning them out of court.
>
> You condemn climate change, deny that CO2 levels are rising, and oceans
> are becoming acidic.
>
I don't deny CO2 levels are rising. They most certainly are as the
widespread greening of arid areas indicates. I merely observe that the
presumed temperature rises are simply not occurring to anything like the
amount predicted and are well within natural variation, and that the
models are deeply flawed. If any dynamic system contained as much
positive feedback as the IPCC models, it would be so unstable that the
earths past temperature record could not have existed as it did,

Engineers live and fie with [computer] models of stuff they need to build,

The ocean is broadly alkaline, The Ph is around 8.1. It maybe used to be
8.2. It changes very little really. The depths are another ball game,
and life will simply respond by using more carbonates to build shells,
like it always has.

> This is one instance where you are in the pay of fossil fuel interests.
>
You have totally lost your marbles Fred. I am no fan of fossil fuels.
They are practically at the end - of life. And the only interest I have
is a block of Shell shares which I inherited from my mother which nicely
hedge my heating oil bills.

> Some of us have children and rather not risk damaging their future. You
> appear to have none, so not surprising you choose to be blind to certain
> scientific facts.
>
It is precisely because I fear for other peoples children's futures that
I am so vocal about the very real - not modelled, not imaginary -
dangers of renewable energy.

And the fact that I can see it so clearly is entirely down to a broad
training and lifetime practice of building electric circuits and
programming computers.

I just happen to have quite coincidentally all the tools necessary to
analyse certainly the implications of a renewable grid, and indeed have
done so, and the result horrifies me.

All the people with enough technical understanding to do so, come to the
same conclusions. We are sleepwalking into an existential crisis, not of
temperature rise, but of man made ignorance and greed based on political
troughing in the renewable energy trough, and in fact the people who are
most likely behind it are the established oil and gas interests of
Russia and the middle east.

So much of the green movement was funded by the Soviet union as part of
their generalised anti-nuclear agitProp, that is was merely a short step
to push in money and their own people and steer it into a nation and
continent destroying enterprise.

In short the people who are really in the pay of Big Oil and gas are in
fact the greens and the all the acxtivists like XR IB, and the Great
Chunderberg.

You only need to look at say Germany, whose 'Energiewende' has in fact
not dented their fossil consumption one iota, merely raised their
electricity prices and their dependence on Russian gas, just as it was
designed to do.

One think that will destroy the value of Russian Saudi and Kuwaiti gas
is nuclear power, since the vast majority of gas goes into making
electricity or heat, and nuclear power does both of those are very low
cost. .

The second thing is fracking. Devalues their reserves massively if other
people discover gas and undercut their prices.

Cui Bono? Who benefits from renewable energy and the green activists
anti-nuclear anti-fracking idiocy? Russian and Middle Eastern gas does.

Why would they *not* covertly feed money into these organisation?
Whilst utilising the Big Lie that renewable energy challenges fossil
fuel, as a reason to ensure no one ever cottons on.

>> Its because I am a fucking good engineer
>
> That's a lie. And only in your dreams.

It's not a lie.

The problem is that you have comfortable beliefs that are carefully
handed to you and designed to make you feel good about yourself whilst
any wealth you accumulate is stripped from you ostensibly to support
noble causes, but actually to support the lifestyles of Saudi princes,
Russian oligarchs, and a plethora of extremely rich men who perfectly
understandably have in private nothing but contempt for you.

The reality that we are in the grip of such men, and they are not based
in UK or even mostly US oil businesses, but else where, and they are not
our friends, and they are in fact fighting a resource war, to ensure
that when the shit hits the fan, they own the world, not the people who
built it, and they are a bit miffed at Putin for going of in such a half
cocked 19th century way.

The climate is not our enemy. Big Oil is not our enemy. The people
behind the 'climate change movement' are our enemy. The ones who have
turned traditional Marxism through modern mass media and marketing,
green washed it, and refined its propaganda and Agitprop to make a
highly successful weapon with which to destabilise nations they want to
eventually weaken enough to take over.

As I said. Putin jumped the gun, and invaded the wrong nation. He could
have had Germany on a plate., He owns it already. But he picked a nation
more familiar with his techniques.

The difference between you and me, is that you deal in beliefs, whilst I
deal in facts.

People can be controlled via beliefs. Machines and climate cannot, they
must be controlled by facts, and that is much harder than wishful thinking.

You can believe all you like about 'Big oil' and 'climate change' and
the like. That will dictate how you are fleeced of your wealth. But the
climate and the electricity grid run on solid hard facts. You do not
make a windmill reliable by choosing to believe that it is, any more
than a man who dresses in women's clothes and uses makeup and high
heels can transform himself into a woman and rid himself of the hormones
that have made his body and mind what they are.

In this context the only real fact you have to offer is that
atmospheric CO2 is in fact rising.

There is no material change in weather patterns global temperatures,
patterns of ecosystem change ocean alkalinity, that cannot be fully
explained by normal natural variations.

The only impact of the CO2 seems to be to promote plant growth.

However the intimate relationship between civilisation and excess
energy, and the only rational way to supply that excess energy being
from either fossil fuels or nuclear, has led to a geopolitical
convenient lie of the greatest magnitude.

Who controls energy, controls civilisation.

What better way to take over the world than by declaring that the energy
that supports civilisation represents a clear and present danger to
civilisation, and beyond, and therefore must be *centrally controlled*.

Remember, the new Left are in fact the people the old Left warned you
about.
And a UsefulIdiot™ is born every minute

--
Microsoft : the best reason to go to Linux that ever existed.

On 12/04/2022 08:35, Algernon Goss-Custard wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> posted
>> Chemical energy storage
>> ===============
>> Basically you take stable compounds and by adding energy, turn them
>> into unstable compounds. Water to hydrogen. Carbon dioxide and water
>> to diesel fuel etc etc. Since the optimal fuel for mobile use is
>> hydrocarbon fuel, that's probably what you want. Because you don't
>> really need to store energy for static on grid needs. I'll explain why
>> later. At any level this will be less efficient that running directly
>> from electricity, but if that is the price of portable power, and
>> there is no alternative, so be it. Once again all the potential
>> parameters of chemical fuel are absolutely well known - there are no
>> hidden pots of gold, only basic chemistry and physics.
>> All that can be possibly improved  are better ways to manufacture
>> synthetic fuels, that's all. improve efficiency a few percent.
>
> That doesn't show it isn't a useful thing to do, though. If you had
> sufficiently large solar arrays in heavily insolated areas, might they
> be able to produce hydrocarbon volumes significant enough to contribute
> to the solution?

You didn't read my other post where I classified solutions from non
working to ecomicially viable.

Of course you could, but it is simply WAY cheaper to use a nuke instead.

The criteria that 'it works ' means nothing in engineering or economic
terms.

I can build a car with hexagonal wheels that *works*.

To be worth having, new design has to work better, at lower cost than
what went before.

Let's take a really nice green idea - sailing ships, that use no fuel at
all. So in order to work, they have to follow the wind, which isn't
there all the time, its often somewhere else or in the wrong direction.
Then again instead of half a dozen guys loafing around pushing buttons,
you need a crew of 200 to take the sails in by hand. Hey. Look. More
green jobs!

At their zenith, clipper ships were capable of over 20 knots. And yet
they faded from existence when coal powered steam tramps barely capable
of 8 knots replaced them. Why? because the steam tramps had a *reliable*
8 knots and the clippers only *averaged* 5 knots on most runs. And the
clipper ships needed a whole crew of skilled seafarers, whereas a tramp
steamer needed one engineer and a couple of stokers.

Wind turbines and solar panels are the modern equivalent of sailing
ships. They work, but they do not work better or at lower cost than what
they are supposed to replace. On the other hand nuclear plants *do* work
as well as, and at similar cost - and now with gas prices up, at lower
cost - than gas power stations.

The only reason we have renewable energy at all is on account of people
lobbying government to make an unprofitable 17th century technology
economically profitable in the 21st century.

We cannot afford to do this any longer.

Any energy technology that cannot on its own wholly replace a gas power
station needs to be costed in conjunction with, over its full life time,
all the extra gear it needs in order to be a relaible and stable power
generation source - the backup, the grid stabilisation kit, the extra
long grid connections, the mobile gas guzzling service craft needed to
access its remote location, the cost of its maintenance in carbon and in
money...and the like, and compared with an equivalent nuclear power station.

If it isn't as cheap it's not a solution any one needs, or wants, except
those who profit by raping the consumer with government subsidies.

"An engineer is someone who can do for five bob what any damned fool can
do for a quid".

You can take a rather large kettle, fill it full of refined uranium and
make a flash boiler that would run a car. It would probably kill the
driver and run out of water after ten miles, but it would work . As well
as a BEV anyway.

Obviously you would have to 'adapt to the technology' by wearing lead
clothes. But apparently that is the fashion, these days.

--
“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of
intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on
intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is
futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into,
we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every
criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a
power-directed system of thought.”
Sir Roger Scruton

On 12/04/2022 09:16, Chris Hogg wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Apr 2022 08:35:03 +0100, Algernon Goss-Custard
> <Ben@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> posted
>>> Chemical energy storage
>>> ===============
>>> Basically you take stable compounds and by adding energy, turn them
>>> into unstable compounds. Water to hydrogen. Carbon dioxide and water
>>> to diesel fuel etc etc. Since the optimal fuel for mobile use is
>>> hydrocarbon fuel, that's probably what you want. Because you don't
>>> really need to store energy for static on grid needs. I'll explain why
>>> later. At any level this will be less efficient that running directly
>> >from electricity, but if that is the price of portable power, and there
>>> is no alternative, so be it. Once again all the potential parameters of
>>> chemical fuel are absolutely well known - there are no hidden pots of
>>> gold, only basic chemistry and physics.
>>> All that can be possibly improved are better ways to manufacture
>>> synthetic fuels, that's all. improve efficiency a few percent.
>>
>> That doesn't show it isn't a useful thing to do, though. If you had
>> sufficiently large solar arrays in heavily insolated areas, might they
>> be able to produce hydrocarbon volumes significant enough to contribute
>> to the solution?
>
> The Sahara desert would be a good place assuming you could keep the
> panels free from dust, and such a scheme has been proposed in the
> past. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec and
> https://www.ecomena.org/desertec/ As well as photovoltaics, they also
> looked at solar furnaces, proposing to store heat as molten salt to
> power generators overnight. The electricity produced would be fed
> across the Mediterranean via DC interconnects into the European grid.
> It all came to nothing.
>
Of course it all came to nothing. It's wildly impracticable, massively
expensive, has many single points of failure and would make us as
dependent on the politics of Africa, as Germany is on Russia.,

But it would *work*. Till some jihadi blew up the interconnector sat his
camel on it and demanded full rights and a free lunch for every Muslim
in Europe...

--
“it should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism
(or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans,
about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and
the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a
'noble' idea. It is not an honest pursuit of 'sustainable development,'
a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for
rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet
things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that
you live neither in Joseph Stalin’s Communist era, nor in the Orwellian
utopia of 1984.”

Vaclav Klaus

On 12/04/2022 09:26, Mike Halmarack wrote:
> The amount of personal insult and vitriol in this thread is indicative
> of hysterical uncertainty.
>
No, it is indicative of a total loss of patience with uneducated morons
who persist in turning hard facts into 'matters of opinion' that can be
hand waved away.

As you are not attempting to do. You cannot counter the facts, so you
attempt to shift the argument to the sort of emotional arena which is
all you know,

Electricity does not run on emotion, it runs on hard physical chemical
and engineering facts, 'nor all your piety, nor wit, shall lure it back
to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it'

> I believe that renewable energy should be combined and maximised.

I don't deal in beliefs. I deal in facts. The facts say that they only
place for renewable energy is in a museum, and te best place dor tjhose
who finaced it is in jail.

> Safe and sensible nuclear reactors should fill the gaps, which means
> avaricious tory politicians and greedy financiers should be kept out
> of the mix as much as possible. Nationalisation is the answer to
> that.
>
There is nothing a fleet of dispatchable nuclear power plants cannot do
that cannot be done worse and more expensively and with higher carbon
emissions and more adverse environmental impact by adding intermittent
renewable energy

Do you deny the reality of this statement, that once you have built the
nuclear plant to cover *all* your needs, because you cannot rely on
renewables at *all*,, and you have outlawed gas or other fossil, there
is *no point whatsoever* in having any intermittent renewable energy *at
all.

> The furore over the suggested reduction of high energy demanding NHS
> paraphenalia is a bit of a joke.
> I'm lucky if I can get an appointment with a GP within a month. And if
> I was rushed to hospital with a serious illness I'd be quite likely to
> die languishing in the car park or some busy corridor.

Well no, you wouldn't, Ive been there, and I am still here. Yes it took
some doing and IU was stuffed in corridors, But I didn't die.

> So, calling me unrealistic is just projection.

No, its just a fact.
Calling yourself realistic, is just your projection.

--
“it should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism
(or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans,
about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and
the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a
'noble' idea. It is not an honest pursuit of 'sustainable development,'
a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for
rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet
things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that
you live neither in Joseph Stalin’s Communist era, nor in the Orwellian
utopia of 1984.”

Vaclav Klaus

On 11/04/2022 17:50, Mike Halmarack wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 17:30:03 +0100, John Rumm
> <see.my.signature@nowhere.null> wrote:
>
>> On 11/04/2022 16:46, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:42:14 +0100, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 11/04/2022 14:54, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 12:56:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
>>>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:36, alan_m wrote:
>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:02, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 10:48, newshound wrote:
>>>>>>>>> https://watt-logic.com/2022/04/11/cost-of-renewables/
>>>>>>>> What I love about Kathryn, is that she says exactly what I have been
>>>>>>>> trying to say, much better than I have the patience of the aptitude to
>>>>>>>> say it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The problem is that a lot of people are now convinced that wind and
>>>>>>> solar are "free" and the energy they produce should be very cheap.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Social media is full of windmill enthusiasts who also believe in no more
>>>>>>> Nuclear and turning off gas and coal in the next few years because "wind
>>>>>>> is working". These people also tend to be on totally green tariffs and
>>>>>>> believe that ALL the gas and electricity they are receiving is green.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, it amazes me to find that there are people out there who still
>>>>>> apparently 'believe in man made climate change' and 'renewable energy'...
>>>>>
>>>>> I do. I believe in both. I believe that fossil fuel is ony
>>>>> advantageous to those with vested financial interests in it, and
>>>>> extremely destructive for everyone.
>>>>>
>>>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>>>> put it mildly
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So what is your solution to a UK reliable energy source of the future?
>>>> You have ruled out gas and oil and probably nuclear but what is your
>>>> suggestion for the backup for the current intermittency of the current
>>>> solar and wind and what alternatives do you suggest?
>>>
>>> There are various storage and conversion+storage solutions.
>>
>> Now show us one that works at grid scale?
>>
>> Remember if you are committed to wind power then you need enough storage
>> to survive the two or three extended (say 14 day) periods of zero
>> generation per winter when the whole continent is becalmed. That means
>> you also need enough generation capacity to supply base and peak load at
>> the same time as recharging your storage solution to cover that level of
>> interruption.
>>
>> Tesla's newest "gigafactory" in Germany, should be able to produce up to
>> 100 GWh of battery capacity per year when it starts production - with a
>> projected ramp up to perhaps 250 GWh/year.
>>
>> So even if we were allowed to, and could afford to buy the entire annual
>> output, that could in theory store enough to keep the UK grid running
>>from batteries for under three hours! Two orders of magnitude short of
>> the minimum we would require.
>>
>> All our pumped hydro added together can generate a peak of 3GW, and keep
>> it going for a few hours (just under 30 GWh storage in total).
>>
>> Our base load exceeds 30 GW all year round - that is 720 GWh per *day*
>> in the summer - and probably closer to 1TWh/day in the winter. That is
>> before we shift any significant portion of transport, or space heating
>> to energy demand to electric power.
>>
>>> I'm not an engineer
>>
>> And that is the challenge with many promoting "solutions" to this
>> problem. Yes energy storage is easy at small scale, and doable at the
>> small to medium (i.e. individual power station) scale, but rapidly
>> becomes a massively more intractable problem at grid scale.
>>
>> Run the numbers, most proposed "solutions" don't come anywhere close.
>
> Thanks for the information.
>
> We should produce energy safely, as abundantly as possible, then adapt
> to the limitations.

You mean, going back to a Medieval economy. Wind, water and tide mills,
all metals, bricks, glass, and ceramics produced by nice sustainable
charcoal.

On 11/04/2022 15:46, Mike Halmarack wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:42:14 +0100, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk>
> wrote:

>> So what is your solution to a UK reliable energy source of the future?
>> You have ruled out gas and oil and probably nuclear but what is your
>> suggestion for the backup for the current intermittency of the current
>> solar and wind and what alternatives do you suggest?

> There are various storage and conversion+storage solutions.
> I'm not an engineer but I do know when I'm being scammed and
> bullshitted by the lovers of big bucks at any cost.

During just one of the several weeks this winter where the whole of the
renewables output was less than 10% of demand, the shortfall of energy
that needed to be made up would have required something like 100 million
60kWh vehicle batteries. At £2k(?) per mass-produced battery pack that's
£20bn of batteries lying idle for most of the year.

Where are these to come from?

And a bigger question is how long they would take to recharge from any
surplus that might have finally been available?

Unfortunately, the second week of the low renewables output this winter
closely followed the first, suggesting that the backup energy required
wouldn't have been available due to the recharging problem.

What do you propose then?

> We should produce energy safely, as abundantly as possible, then adapt
> to the limitations.

If we took that line, large parts of the population would freeze for
days at a time during winter. Rich people would just go abroad to
somewhere with more sense. In fact, projected energy bills suggest three
months in Spain might be a cheaper alternative. Is that the sort of
adaptation you had in mind?

--
Spike

On 12/04/2022 10:39, Spike wrote:
> On 11/04/2022 20:03, Fredxx wrote:
>
>> You condemn climate change, deny that CO2 levels are rising
>
> What TNP condemns is the creed that the latter is caused by the former.
>
>

Thank you .

Climate change is the new christening. Imagine the england of Chaucer..

"Twere an biggun wind last nighte"
"Aye, it be god's will, and them that fornicate with widow Hawsei do
have summat to answer for"
"An I here that John the miller is predicting no corne this summerday"
"Aye and its all to do with children not being birched enough, God is
angry at their impudence, and will cause famine to kill them"

"In the medieval chronicles of Europe, the summer of 1258 was described
as unseasonably cold, resulting in poor harvests that were devastated by
heavy floods. That summer thousands of people were buried in mass graves
in London, possibly a result of the bad weather and the lack of food. "

It were Godde's Wille, and Mortal Sinnes, not 4x4s clanking down
chelsea kings road.

"The Great Famine started with bad weather in spring 1315. Crop failures
lasted through 1316 until the summer harvest in 1317, and Europe did not
fully recover until 1322. Crop failures were not the only problem;
cattle disease caused sheep and cattle numbers to fall as much as 80
percent. The period was marked by extreme levels of crime, disease, mass
death, and even cannibalism and infanticide."

"Between 1310 and 1330, northern Europe saw some of the worst and most
sustained periods of bad weather in the entire Middle Ages,
characterized by severe winters and rainy and cold summers."

It was the end of the Mediaeval Warm period - the one that Michael Mann
and the climate cultists erased from the records , when the Scandinvians
grew crops in Iceland and wine grapes in Scandinavia,when it was so warm
that civilisation blossomed across northern Europe basking in
temperatures that the IPCC has decreed will bring an end to civilisation
(and of course Polar Bears..) if they were to happen today. A time when
glaciers were smaller than at any time since the Roman warm periods and
it is likely the Arctic was fully ice free in summer.

These are verifiable FACTS. Not ecobollox projections from simplistic
computer models fed with incorrect assumptions, insufficient data and
'adjusted' in a vain attempts to make them match historic data - which
they utterly fail to do anyway.

--
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain

On 12/04/2022 11:54, newshound wrote:
> On 11/04/2022 17:50, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 17:30:03 +0100, John Rumm
>> <see.my.signature@nowhere.null> wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/04/2022 16:46, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:42:14 +0100, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 11/04/2022 14:54, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 12:56:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
>>>>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:36, alan_m wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 12:02, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On 11/04/2022 10:48, newshound wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> https://watt-logic.com/2022/04/11/cost-of-renewables/
>>>>>>>>> What I love about Kathryn, is that she says exactly what I have
>>>>>>>>> been
>>>>>>>>> trying to say, much better than I have the patience of the
>>>>>>>>> aptitude to
>>>>>>>>> say it.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The problem is that a lot of people are now convinced that wind and
>>>>>>>> solar are "free" and the energy they produce should be very cheap.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Social media is full of windmill enthusiasts who also believe in
>>>>>>>> no more
>>>>>>>> Nuclear and turning off gas and coal in the next few years
>>>>>>>> because "wind
>>>>>>>> is working". These people also tend to be on totally green
>>>>>>>> tariffs and
>>>>>>>> believe that ALL the gas and electricity they are receiving is
>>>>>>>> green.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes, it amazes me to find that there are people out there who still
>>>>>>> apparently 'believe in man made climate change' and 'renewable
>>>>>>> energy'...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I do. I believe in both. I believe that fossil fuel is ony
>>>>>> advantageous to those with vested financial interests in it, and
>>>>>> extremely destructive for everyone.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The idea of allowing the present gang of corrupt incompetents to do
>>>>>> lucrative deals to boost their offshore accounts by splathering the
>>>>>> environment with multiple mini nuclear reactors is very disturbing to
>>>>>> put it mildly
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> So what is your solution to a UK reliable energy source of the future?
>>>>> You have ruled out gas and oil and probably nuclear but what is your
>>>>> suggestion for the backup for the current intermittency of the current
>>>>> solar and wind and what alternatives do you suggest?
>>>>
>>>> There are various storage and conversion+storage solutions.
>>>
>>> Now show us one that works at grid scale?
>>>
>>> Remember if you are committed to wind power then you need enough storage
>>> to survive the two or three extended (say 14 day) periods of zero
>>> generation per winter when the whole continent is becalmed. That means
>>> you also need enough generation capacity to supply base and peak load at
>>> the same time as recharging your storage solution to cover that level of
>>> interruption.
>>>
>>> Tesla's newest "gigafactory" in Germany, should be able to produce up to
>>> 100 GWh of battery capacity per year when it starts production - with a
>>> projected ramp up to perhaps 250 GWh/year.
>>>
>>> So even if we were allowed to, and could afford to buy the entire annual
>>> output, that could in theory store enough to keep the UK grid running
>>> from batteries for under three hours! Two orders of magnitude short
>>> of the minimum we would require.
>>>
>>> All our pumped hydro added together can generate a peak of 3GW, and keep
>>> it going for a few hours (just under 30 GWh storage in total).
>>>
>>> Our base load exceeds 30 GW all year round - that is 720 GWh per *day*
>>> in the summer - and probably closer to 1TWh/day in the winter. That is
>>> before we shift any significant portion of transport, or space heating
>>> to energy demand to electric power.
>>>
>>>> I'm not an engineer
>>>
>>> And that is the challenge with many promoting "solutions" to this
>>> problem. Yes energy storage is easy at small scale, and doable at the
>>> small to medium (i.e. individual power station) scale, but rapidly
>>> becomes a massively more intractable problem at grid scale.
>>>
>>> Run the numbers, most proposed "solutions" don't come anywhere close.
>>
>> Thanks for the information.
>>
>> We should produce energy safely, as abundantly as possible, then adapt
>> to the limitations.
>
> You mean, going back to a Medieval economy. Wind, water and tide mills,
> all metals, bricks, glass, and ceramics produced by nice sustainable
> charcoal.

and all transport by horse and cart, or pack mule, which can eat the
weight it can carry in 50 miles...

--
There’s a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons and reasons
that sound good.

Burton Hillis (William Vaughn, American columnist)

On 12/04/2022 11:54, Spike wrote:
> On 11/04/2022 15:46, Mike Halmarack wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:42:14 +0100, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>
>>> So what is your solution to a UK reliable energy source of the future?
>>> You have ruled out gas and oil and probably nuclear but what is your
>>> suggestion for the backup for the current intermittency of the current
>>> solar and wind and what alternatives do you suggest?
>
>> There are various storage and conversion+storage solutions.
>> I'm not an engineer but I do know when I'm being scammed and
>> bullshitted by the lovers of big bucks at any cost.
>
> During just one of the several weeks this winter where the whole of the
> renewables output was less than 10% of demand, the shortfall of energy
> that needed to be made up would have required something like 100 million
> 60kWh vehicle batteries. At £2k(?) per mass-produced battery pack that's
> £20bn of batteries lying idle for most of the year.
>
> Where are these to come from?
>
> And a bigger question is how long they would take to recharge from any
> surplus that might have finally been available?
>
> Unfortunately, the second week of the low renewables output this winter
> closely followed the first, suggesting that the backup energy required
> wouldn't have been available due to the recharging problem.
>
> What do you propose then?
>
>> We should produce energy safely, as abundantly as possible, then adapt
>> to the limitations.
>
> If we took that line, large parts of the population would freeze for
> days at a time during winter. Rich people would just go abroad to
> somewhere with more sense. In fact, projected energy bills suggest three
> months in Spain might be a cheaper alternative. Is that the sort of
> adaptation you had in mind?
>
The most normal adaption the greens come up with is that all the people
who wont adapt simply die.

Unfortunately, what they don't realise, is that those that are least
likely to adapt will in fact be the greentards themselves, as they are
twice removed form reality

--
There’s a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons and reasons
that sound good.

Burton Hillis (William Vaughn, American columnist)