I would like to see the writeup for "the environment is so leaky that leaking hydrogen is no biggy". As in legally-responsible-for-the-result writeup and signature.You need it to get to a certain concentration for it to explode, though, surely? And with it being so leaky that's going to be hard to achieve - no-one encloses their boiler that well....and a much higher hydrogen leakage value. Which then explodes.The current plan is to mix 15% hydrogen in with the natural gas, isn't it? So the same partial pressure of hydrogen as in the old town gas mix...Net zero U-turns will hit UK infrastructure, say government advisersHoly Moly, are they really thinking of piping hydrogen to homes? That is the stupidest fucking decision in history. Any minister stupid enough to authorise that should be shot. We need to stop being governed by morons.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/16/net-zero-u-turns-will-hit-uk-infrastructure-say-government-advisers
..The NIC found:
The government will fail to meet its targets on heat pump rollout.
The promised lifting of a ban on new onshore windfarms has not gone far enough.
Massive investment is needed in the electricity grid.
There is no proper plan for rail in the north and Midlands now that the northern leg of HS2 has been cancelled, severely inhibiting economic growth in those regions.
Water bills will need to go up to fix the sewage crisis, and more reservoirs are needed to avoid drought, while water companies have done too little to staunch leaks.
The UK lacks a coherent strategy on flooding, with more than 900,000 properties at risk of river or sea flooding and 910,000 at risk of surface water flooding.
Good progress has been made on the rollout of gigabit broadband around the country.
Armitt called for this government, and the next, to act swiftly. “It’s not too late to catch up in many of the areas we’ve highlighted, if the goals are matched with policies of sufficient scale. But the window is closing,” he said.
“Ducking big decisions over the next 12 months will put the major goals of net zero, regional economic growth, and environmental protection in jeopardy,” he warned.
Greater investment was needed in public transport, the NIC found. Uniquely in Europe, the UK’s second and third cities showed lower economic productivity than the national average, largely because of poor transport links, the review found.
The axing of the next phases of the HS2 high-speed rail project left a “critical gap” in rail connectivity between the Midlands and the north, with northern cities likely to “remain poorly served” without further investment.
Given long-term growth in demand “a do-nothing scenario north of the proposed connection of HS2 and the west coast mainline at Handsacre is not sustainable”, the report found.
The target of rolling out 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028 to reach 7m homes by 2035 was way off track, the report found, while putting off a decision on hydrogen for home heating until 2026 had created uncertainty.
The next government should end new connections to Britain’s gas network from 2025, and ban the sale of new gas boilers for homes and fossil fuel heating in large commercial buildings by 2035, according to the report. It also called on the government to rule out subsidies for hydrogen heating...
The two highlighted items in particular are just economic stupidity from the government. I don't think there's any reasonable grounds to argue about that.
Perfectly safe, just a slightly lower heating value.
Reasons for not using hydrogen are:So it's expensive to make, impossible to store, dangerous to transport and pointless. It has a large red flashing sign over it saying "THIS IS A MASSIVE ERROR". It is Blackadder levels of wrong. It's not just wrong it's stupidly wrong. I could do a Baldrick impersonation whilst saying "wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong..." but I think my view is clear at this point.
- Hydrogen is just greenwashed coal: it takes more energy to produce than it releases.
- It leaks like a bastard.
- It is worse than all the other alternatives.
But I don't disagree that domestic hydrogen's a dead end given the continuing development of heat pumps - as you say, there's still no economic source for the volume needed.
It'd be better to just set a date now for switching off gas altogether rather than stringing it out with the promise of a hydrogen transition that will probably never happen.
But you need trees for - ah, I get it now.Bondegezous, in fact...Would rhinos be better? They fart less. Or kangaroos? My vote is for kangaroos.This was an interesting piece on the linkage between re-wilding and climate change.The core message seems to be
I don't know abut the figures they claim, but the reasoning seems plausible.
Herd of 170 bison could help store CO2 equivalent of almost 2m cars, researchers say
Free-roaming animals reintroduced in Romania’s Țarcu mountains are stimulating plant growth and securing carbon stored in the soil while grazing
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/15/bison-romania-tarcu-2m-cars-carbon-dioxide-emissions-aoe
"Bison influence grassland and forest ecosystems by grazing grasslands evenly, recycling nutrients to fertilise the soil and all of its life, dispersing seeds to enrich the ecosystem, and compacting the soil to prevent stored carbon from being released. These creatures evolved for millions of years with grassland and forest ecosystems, and their removal, especially where grasslands have been ploughed up, has led to the release of vast amounts of carbon..." So reverting the land to grazing by sheep would presumably have the claimed effect but without the rewilding fairydust sugar sprinkles?
Also bison are bovids and therefore methane farters
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8357158/
But farming bad, rewilding good.
Diprotodons for me.Would rhinos be better? They fart less. Or kangaroos? My vote is for kangaroos.This was an interesting piece on the linkage between re-wilding and climate change.The core message seems to be
I don't know abut the figures they claim, but the reasoning seems plausible.
Herd of 170 bison could help store CO2 equivalent of almost 2m cars, researchers say
Free-roaming animals reintroduced in Romania’s Țarcu mountains are stimulating plant growth and securing carbon stored in the soil while grazing
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/15/bison-romania-tarcu-2m-cars-carbon-dioxide-emissions-aoe
"Bison influence grassland and forest ecosystems by grazing grasslands evenly, recycling nutrients to fertilise the soil and all of its life, dispersing seeds to enrich the ecosystem, and compacting the soil to prevent stored carbon from being released. These creatures evolved for millions of years with grassland and forest ecosystems, and their removal, especially where grasslands have been ploughed up, has led to the release of vast amounts of carbon..." So reverting the land to grazing by sheep would presumably have the claimed effect but without the rewilding fairydust sugar sprinkles?
Also bison are bovids and therefore methane farters
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8357158/
But farming bad, rewilding good.
Bondegezous, in fact...Would rhinos be better? They fart less. Or kangaroos? My vote is for kangaroos.This was an interesting piece on the linkage between re-wilding and climate change.The core message seems to be
I don't know abut the figures they claim, but the reasoning seems plausible.
Herd of 170 bison could help store CO2 equivalent of almost 2m cars, researchers say
Free-roaming animals reintroduced in Romania’s Țarcu mountains are stimulating plant growth and securing carbon stored in the soil while grazing
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/15/bison-romania-tarcu-2m-cars-carbon-dioxide-emissions-aoe
"Bison influence grassland and forest ecosystems by grazing grasslands evenly, recycling nutrients to fertilise the soil and all of its life, dispersing seeds to enrich the ecosystem, and compacting the soil to prevent stored carbon from being released. These creatures evolved for millions of years with grassland and forest ecosystems, and their removal, especially where grasslands have been ploughed up, has led to the release of vast amounts of carbon..." So reverting the land to grazing by sheep would presumably have the claimed effect but without the rewilding fairydust sugar sprinkles?
Also bison are bovids and therefore methane farters
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8357158/
But farming bad, rewilding good.
The advantage of the Olympics, and related projects, was that there was an absolute deadline that was never going to change, and everyone knew this several years out. There was also a lot of legislation which IIRC replaced much of the usual planning process.Wasn't something like that done in the early 90s, in the wake of the Sizewell B inquiry taking an unacceptably-long 3 years? Certainly things seemed to work okay in the late 90s and 2000s - Jubile Line Extension, HS1, Olympics, etc.Oh absolutely. One can understand why the planning stages can be more difficult in somewhere like the UK, it’s a small island and there aren’t many vast empty spaces where you can plonk down a nuclear power plant or a railway line without annoying people, but the process for major projects really needs to be streamlined considerably.Yes, the article references their completed projects - but this is even more striking, given that it's a European contract (with possibly stricter planning terms ? ) at today's prices.Hinckley Point C consists of 2 1600MW reactors, and could end up costing over £40bn. The original contract was inked over a decade ago, and it's still half a decade away from operation.The Koreans just finished building one out here in the sandpit. 4x1345MW, $24.4bn, 13 years from breaking ground to reactor #4 being commissioned.
https://www.nucnet.org/news/uk-nuclear-station-could-be-delayed-to-2031-and-cost-up-top-gbp46-billion-says-edf-1-3-2024
This is a contract for 4 x 1000MW reactors:
Doosan goes all out for Korea to win Czech nuclear plant project
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2024/05/419_374685.html
The Czech Republic plans to build up to four nuclear power plants in Dukovany and Temelin by 2036.
In collaboration with Doosan Enerbility and Daewoo E&C, KHNP is competing with EDF, a French government-owned electric utility company, to win the 30 trillion won ($22 billion) project...
Can anyone explain ?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant
They’re good at this stuff, and the UK should have bought their tech rather than - again - trying to re-invent the wheel.
We have seriously lost our way in terms of getting stuff built, whether it's housing, railways or nuclear power stations.
I suspect that the answer is to give Parliament the authority over local planning committees and judicial reviews, for projects of national importance, but also to increase compensation to those affected, eg paying 150% of the value of property to be compulsorily purchased. Yes it can be seen as undemocratic by objectors, but if you’re going to run your national infrastructure projects to the agenda of activist groups looking for greater crested newts then nothing’s ever going to get built.
For how long now have we been talking about HS2, Heathrow’s new runway, Stonehenge Tunnel, Brynglas tunnels, Hinkley C, and so many more major projects? All of these should have been completed at least a decade ago, if not two, and the inertia will be causing economic damage and foregone growth.
What's changed since then?
I think he's worried that the Tories won't get to take part in the debate, the way their polling is going.Why does a Parliamentary vs Presidential system make polling less relevant? You can poll for Parliamentary elections. We do poll for Parliamentary elections.We have a parliamentary general election and we won't be having a Presidential election like the US. So prior seats won not current polls rating is key."Under CNN network rules, a candidate must be on enough state ballots to win an Electoral College majority and score 15 percent in at least four major national polls."I quite like this CNN rule and when the equivalent UK General Election debates come up I think something similar should be introduced.
Will RFK Jnr qualify ?
Whilst some may disagree, I didn't want to see Nicola Sturgeon and Leanne Woods on a main UK GE debate when it was not possible their party could win a majority (I know, I know, they could've formed a coalition). I'd have applied something like:
[AND: Must - Stand in at least 326 seats;]
[AND: Have 1 MP at dissolution
OR: Have polled 10% at the previous General Election]
At the moment, that would mean Labour, Conservatives meet all three, LD, Greens and Reform meet 1 and 2 (And therefore appear).
You therefore couldn't exclude Swinney as leader of the third largest party at Westminster from any debate beyond a straight Sunak v Starmer head to head even if I am no SNP fan
Apparently, Hinkley C is not just a copy of the french design - because it has to be adapted to British nuclear regulations:Oh absolutely. One can understand why the planning stages can be more difficult in somewhere like the UK, it’s a small island and there aren’t many vast empty spaces where you can plonk down a nuclear power plant or a railway line without annoying people, but the process for major projects really needs to be streamlined considerably.Yes, the article references their completed projects - but this is even more striking, given that it's a European contract (with possibly stricter planning terms ? ) at today's prices.Hinckley Point C consists of 2 1600MW reactors, and could end up costing over £40bn. The original contract was inked over a decade ago, and it's still half a decade away from operation.The Koreans just finished building one out here in the sandpit. 4x1345MW, $24.4bn, 13 years from breaking ground to reactor #4 being commissioned.
https://www.nucnet.org/news/uk-nuclear-station-could-be-delayed-to-2031-and-cost-up-top-gbp46-billion-says-edf-1-3-2024
This is a contract for 4 x 1000MW reactors:
Doosan goes all out for Korea to win Czech nuclear plant project
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2024/05/419_374685.html
The Czech Republic plans to build up to four nuclear power plants in Dukovany and Temelin by 2036.
In collaboration with Doosan Enerbility and Daewoo E&C, KHNP is competing with EDF, a French government-owned electric utility company, to win the 30 trillion won ($22 billion) project...
Can anyone explain ?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant
They’re good at this stuff, and the UK should have bought their tech rather than - again - trying to re-invent the wheel.
We have seriously lost our way in terms of getting stuff built, whether it's housing, railways or nuclear power stations.
I suspect that the answer is to give Parliament the authority over local planning committees and judicial reviews, for projects of national importance, but also to increase compensation to those affected, eg paying 150% of the value of property to be compulsorily purchased. Yes it can be seen as undemocratic by objectors, but if you’re going to run your national infrastructure projects to the agenda of activist groups looking for greater crested newts then nothing’s ever going to get built.
For how long now have we been talking about HS2, Heathrow’s new runway, Stonehenge Tunnel, Brynglas tunnels, Hinkley C, and so many more major projects? All of these should have been completed at least a decade ago, if not two, and the inertia will be causing economic damage and foregone growth.
Not entirely - though it's certainly true that composers need to make a living, so they go where the money is.Someone on here a while ago talked about contemporary classical music having lost its way and, while I was listening to RTÉ Lyric (home to all the classical music you've already listened to) it occurred to me that there was plenty of good contemporary classical music - it's all been written for film soundtracks..See Sky's Portrait and Landscape Artist of the Year programmes. Yes, you can paint a perfectly well executed piece of art, but no, you will not beat someone who produces something 'challenging', such as painting the King in red on a red background, so that it looks ridiculous. Usually helps that the judges are the kind of idiots who thought Tracy Emin's unmade bed was great art. They usually contort themselves to find ways that rubbish art has a hidden message (but not hidden from the learned judges, who are enlightended).Love the flinch.Is that really what the picture looks like? A massive disembodied head floating in a sea of red? Can artists not just paint a normal picture anymore?
https://twitter.com/historyinmemes/status/1790688574880489498
Definite ESB carbonite vibes, too.
My favourite was an artist who left large sections of the canvass blank (they only have 4 hours) and this was turned into a great idea of leaving things for the viewer to interpret (or some other guff). Reality - the artist hadn't painted fast enough...