Ken Fabian

I don't know how things work in the UK. Here in Australia what actually gets done is less an overarching long term 'green' plan than it is short term political compromises, with the doubt, deny, delay crowd 'helping' exacerbate the planning, coordination and management problems that emerge from rapid change and new technologies, that they then go on to highlight and criticise as flawed and inadequate, as if what we get is what the proponents had wanted all along. The rate of uptake of RE has grown rapidly, far more rapidly than even optimistic 'planners' anticipated and is now driven primarily by electricity generation companies seeking to add capacity at least cost, yet at the politician level the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists promoting alarmist economic fear of RE and insisting that if not coal then gas must expand remains strong. There is a lot of coordinated, political party supported local astro-turf opposition and obstructing of the elements a high solar and wind grid need to advance, like transmission lines, like solar and wind farms, especially off-shore that have high capacity factors, like large battery install. Every power outage becomes an opportunity for criticism of RE, even when RE was a lesser factor in them - Outages vs media mention of RE (FYI - graph shows Australia National Electricity Market power outages as minutes per year per customer, ups and downs but clearly declining, but the most recent major outages incited an abundance of media blaming of RE - even when triggered by storms taking out transmission or when coal and gas plant failures were the initial and primary cause. Note - I don't know why I can't insert this image as an image rather than as a link - it wants to put it into 'downloads' folder and takes multiple steps to get to view. Part of recent changes to site? Is there another way?) I think we are getting massive growth in battery storage to add to solar and wind not only because it has come down in cost so much, so fast but because, in part it is a consequence of expectations that solar and wind would cost a lot more and grow much more slowly; batteries have become the quick fix to add system strength in the face of the failure to anticipate, whilst longer term actions like major transmission upgrades or pumped hydro need longer lead times; the investments in them were never going to happen until it was clear that there would be enough solar and wind to need it. A few years could see better use of 'idle' wind farm assets.

You will need a universe with different physics to get planets that are not close to spherical. At fine scale it may look very uneven but viewed from space Earth looks close to spherical, the unevenness too small to pick out by eye. With accurate measurement, shown to be oblate - fatter around the equator due to centripetal force from spinning. Gravity tends to make stuff higher than that around it to tumble and flow to fill lower places. How do we know? Does someone really have to count the ways for you? That could be a homework assignment. Google and Wikipedia would probably give a start. Google Scholar for the more technical, published papers.

The moon? I think we will see crewed missions within a decade overseen by NASA - because the goal is known to be achievable and already has US Congressional support, with contracts to provide different elements already approved. Private sector (not Provide sector)? Taxpayer funding is the source of all private sector profitability; without it there won't be moon missions. The moon isn't a cash cow waiting to be milked, it is taxpayers that are the cash cow, and no shortage of milkmaids for that. (Same breed of cow as jumped over the moon?). Is it a private enterprise activity when it depends on public funding? When the most cited commercial opportunity is imaginary demand for He-3 from imaginary fusion reactors that is a red flag, not a green light. Mars? Not convinced that will happen at all, but it seems possible, barely. Nothing there is worth what it will cost to send astronauts there but that hasn't damped the optimism around it. Which just says to me the optimism is based on the imaginary, not on well thought business plans.

Apparently people can taste and smell garlic through their feet - https://www.popsci.com/you-can-taste-garlic-with-your-feet/ Unlike synesthesia (wikipedia - "Synesthesia or synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People with synesthesia may experience colors when listening to music, see shapes when smelling certain scents, or perceive tastes when looking at words") it seems that one of the crucial aromatic chemicals in garlic can be absorbed through skin and be carried around the body by the bloodstream to mouth and nose. So technically you still taste and smell it through nose and mouth. (As an odd anecdote, possibly unrelated, I sometimes get odd 'itchy' nerve sensations in the 'webs' of my fingers, that will be echoed by unpleasant nerve sensations in my teeth. Crossed wires somewhere?)

Worth keeping in mind that LFP type lithium batteries are becoming the dominant type - and they have low fire risk. They don't need cobalt amongst other advantages. Our solar batteries and electric ride-on mower are LFP - the mower rated at 3,000 cycles, so at the rate we use it... over 60 years. (Hah! That won't happen but battery should last the life of the mower. Long lifetime is a significant factor). I think some emerging Sodium batteries do rely on cobalt in their cathode, but others do not. I'm in wait and see mode. With mass manufacture Sodium might undercut lithium for many purposes. Not sure to what extent the costs of the materials sets the price or if it is manufacturing costs; a bit of both no doubt. Supply constraints emerging for lithium (or nickel or cobalt) might be the factor that decides in favour of alternatives.

Frugality that is forced on people, that is widely disliked and resented, does not help and can work counter-productively to give ongoing popular permission to policies that build and expand fossil fuel use - no questions that fossil fuels do work whilst new technologies do come with uncertainties. Of course the climate consequences of emissions have a lot of 'certainty' but they are widely seen as remote certainties and (frankly) the ability to weigh it all up by the public, without resort to trusting high level expertise, in a milieu where false claims of expertise is common and can be well aimed at popular dislikes and resentments, is very limited. Whilst frugality as a choice by those who are informed and care enough helps a bit - and as a choice by everyone would help a lot - that still can't get us to zero emissions without threatening more than access to unnecessary luxuries. It can put a ceiling on them but the ceiling is still too high; we are too dependent. We need abundance of low cost low emissions energy to displace the fossil fuels and that takes forethought, planning, with sufficient funding and investment, which seem harder to get when economies are struggling. Dependence on the economy we are part of (and on the energy economies use) is too great for 'going without' to fix the problem. And yes, frugality as a choice is a virtue - but it remains deeply unpopular.

@studiot I'll stand by what I said - 'very close to homogeneous'. Yes there is a slight effect, but too small to be significant. Gravity will slow the rate of vertical diffusion mixing (slightly) but not actually cause any separation under Earth's atmospheric conditions. Any observed accumulation - the sort that present hazards in enclosed spaces - will be from nearby sources that begin at higher concentration than surrounding air - bulk air - sinking and pooling before getting mixed, not from any separation at the molecular level due to different density - molecular speeds are too high. More extreme conditions eg gas centrifuges used for nuclear fuel enrichment can overcome that diffusion due to molecular speeds, yes, but the equivalent 'gravity' to do that is extreme. (Lab centrifuges can get up to millions of g's).

This is incorrect. There is higher than average concentration because the sources of CO2 are at the surface and it takes mixing to disperse and homogenize them in the air. Those sources are higher concentration than the air, not from any stratification. Total gross amounts are mostly greater because lower atmosphere is higher density. At larger scales bulk air movements mix atmospheric gases - convection and wind. A big thunderstorm will carry air from ground level to the stratosphere with vigorous mixing all the way. At small scales diffusion mixes them and prevents any stratification, even in enclosed spaces with still air. Without a source at higher concentration it won't pool in the bottom - and is maintained by the source. Take the source away and diffusion will mix them to very close to homogeneous.

I don't see how they can be serious. I think it is unrealistic enough to expect much from Carbon Capture and Storage even in more familiar forms - it would have to become the world's single biggest industry, without any profitability, ie paid for by taxes or levies, which will be opposed and evaded. Oceans are so enormous I can't see how useful amount of sea water could be processed at all, let alone cost effectively - or even do it in a way that is easier and cheaper than (not economically viable) Direct Air Capture. The top 1mm of Earth's oceans is 360 Gigatonnes and I doubt treating even that much (that little) would be sufficient. Having localised, probably coastal processing and expecting mixing by currents seems to require taking more CO2 out of some water, to well below an ideal concentration, to dilute the concentrations elsewhere, with ecological impacts of that. Then there is all that CO2 to temporarily store and transport and then permanently store somewhere. There are few ways it can be used that won't ultimately release the CO2 back again and those uses that could permanently lock up the carbon are not going to have markets big enough. I think low emissions energy to displace fossil fuel burning is both the most directly effective and the least cost action we can take. Studies to explore the novel 'solutions' are worthwhile but committing to schemes like this is not.

@Airbrush Yes, the 'floor' would need to be angled, like the sides of a pie dish to get the correct artificial horizontal. It would ideally be a curved surface in both directions although probably tolerable to have rooms with a flat floor if the diameter is very large. The weird Coriolis effects have effects on movements in particular directions, (but not other directions) and are going to be noticeable whilst moving around but the inner ear driven sensation of being unbalanced and turning around won't go away by staying still, it will be all the time. Sounds a bit like lying down drunk only you don't sober up and get over it. Little 'stones' in the ear canals as well as fluid motion make those sensations. Again, I would have to search for the specific experiments - I seem to recollect much larger diameter than 50m being needed to be turning slowly enough to be imperceptible. 100's of metres to kilometres? It did sound like it is hard to get used to and even people who seemed okay for a while usually found it harder to tolerate as time went on. The experiments used a rotating room in regular gravity - rotation but not in the same plane as would happen in space or as a centrifuge in different gravity - but the idea was that the ears detect that rotating motion in any direction.

The basic principles seem sound but the engineering and construction difficulties and costs seem prohibitive. Even doing a test version on Earth seems difficult. They would have to have a very large diameter or else the mismatch between what the eyes and ears say - an "unmoving" room - and what the inner ears say - turning around - can be nauseating. Ideally the rotation rate should be slower than the inner ears can detect, although some people may naturally cope better with higher rotation rates, and perhaps people can use anti-nausea medication. On the ground such a structure may be best done as using tilted circular railway rather than a wheel or centrifuge on an axle. Like bends on regular railways, the durability depends on the stability of the track and underlying groundwork. The entry/exit presents some serious challenges, as would connections for the air ventilation, plumbing and electrical supplies.

I'll be happy if I don't get shingles again (once only, but that was enough) - a few months until I have the follow up injection. Time and further studies will tell us whether it provides significant 'immunisation' against dementia.

Just read the late Octavia Butler's Patternmaster stories - Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, Patternmaster. I was always impressed by her Xenogenesis aka Lilith's Brood stories but am not normally a fan of horror/supernatural themes, which (barring Clay's Ark) these stories explore. That is an odd one out in the collection, being almost pure hard SF, with no supernatural elements but to my mind more disturbing in the themes even than the others that do have them - probably for an alien parasite/symbiont seeming more credible than magical powers. I might have said Butler's themes were about being on the losing side yet surviving and even finding optimism in their slavery - no heroes always winning against impossible odds in her stories - but I think they may be more about surviving sexual enslavement, where people not only have no choice but have to deal with acquired/imposed biological urges overwhelming them - becoming addicted and enjoying it whilst hating the powerlessness. Even the Master races in her stories can be powerless against their own biological needs.

Have Musk release the doge's to investigate the breaches? Even without such blatancy I don't expect much legal comeback on Trump. Given the inability to prosecute Trump himself in a timely manner (4 years) - and a Trump friendly Congress and a compliant Supreme Court I won't hold my breath waiting for the wheels of justice to turn on Trump's inner circle.

@toucana Everyone who participated had to know the use of Signal was a breach of security protocols in and of itself. Every one would know they may be called before a relevant Committee and have to answer questions; the politicals might consider lying under oath (in the absence of records) to be BAU but the others? Hard not to think the point of using Signal was to have a discussion that was unofficial, unrecorded (after someone presses 'delete all') and therefore deniable - and they could 'speak their minds' more freely. May even have been instructed by Trump himself to use Signal and push the boundaries of What The President Says is Always Legal? Seems to me like all the more reason to - like organised crime - be very clear who is in the loop. Big oops.

Well, incompetent people being careless of their security obligations might trust the convener and not be clear exactly who they are sharing information with. Actually I would expect organized criminals to want to be sure of who they are talking with before saying anything incriminating. The aides and spooks in the discussion didn't check who was on-line either? I kind of expected it would be an obligation (and a critically serious one) of every participant to know who is included before participating. The junior ones probably had a good grasp of the requirements - but chose not to, out of deference, Trump loyalty or to avoid notice? I wonder if the proper communications protocols - NOT Signal - would have provisions for confirming everyone involved had the requisite clearances. As well as keep records.

Not familiar with Signal but... wouldn't every participant know who every other participant is? Aren't they clearly listed? Wouldn't they check that list if only to be sure everyone who is supposed to be in the discussion is on-line before they start if only to not have to call another meeting? Or is that list only for the 'convener' and others can be kept unaware of the identity of some participants? Which sounds like it would be an absolute no-no for such a meeting to me. It does sound like a level of carelessness as well as disregard for proper procedures for a high level classified meeting that is incompatible with their duty for dealing with classified information.

Whilst not a Greenhouse Gas and displacing fossil fuel use with renewable Hydrogen will reduce global warming raising atmospheric Hydrogen concentrations slows the decay of methane, which undoes some of the gains. One thing to breed or genetically modify termites (or - seems more likely to me - their accompanying micro biota) to produce more Hydrogen, another thing to harvest and use the H2 cost effectively. Low cost enough that it's use will displace fossil fuel use is a major step that other ways of making Hydrogen have not done successfully; much of that due to the storage and transport difficulties. Adding in the requirements for the termite farms to be inside airtight facilities, for a means of extracting H2 from the air, for a supply of biomass to feed them - all the while maintaining an ideal (termite healthy) air mix and temperatures - makes it extraordinarily challenging. How do the costs compare to dedicated solar, wind, storage powered electrolysis? Meanwhile battery EV's are beating Hydrogen EV's by thousands to one, in part because there are electricity grids EV's are able to take advantage of. With Hydrogen the infrastructure for widespread use does not exist and has to be built from zero. I am cynical enough to think most of the leaders of industries that insist that Hydrogen will be best don't actually believe that themselves. Their Hydrogen efforts so far seem to work better as evidence that low emissions is too hard and expensive than as viable decarbonising.

I think most people don't care that much and don't so much have informed or even heartfelt opinions as tend to agree with their preferred pundits and what aligns with political views - and consistent messaging can change those opinions. I think actual policy has been more influenced by the opinions of captains of commerce and industry than by public opinion or the influence of 'green' activism on it - and mostly they have opposed emissions accountability or regulation or subsidy of low emissions energy - enough to be willing to engage in Doubt, Deny, Delay as their principle response. They have a comprehensive kit of tools for influencing government policy - Lobbying, Strategic Donating, Tactical Lawfare, Post Politics Payoffs, Tankthink. They have not used it to do emissions reductions with nuclear. I also suspect the nations that are best able to do nuclear did not and do not want every second nation in the world becoming nuclear competent, restricting it to prevent them building nuclear weapons (too). I am of the view that nuclear was (until RE costs got competitive) more impeded by climate science denial amongst pundits and parties that ostensibly like nuclear energy (no climate problem means no need, not with fossil fuel being abundant and cheaper) than by anti-nuclear activism. Now it is impeded by lack of cost effectiveness compared to renewable energy rather than being unable to compete with fossil fuels. The climate science denial made support for nuclear into a rhetorical blunt instrument for criticising and opposing 'green' climate policies without any requirement for building nuclear power plants themselves. I note that media organisations that have aligned with Doubt, Deny, Delay politics will play the 'they should support nuclear' card but make little real efforts to inform better or defend or promote nuclear, just criticise climate activists for not doing so. That the climate issue appears led and dominated by 'green' politics looks to me more like an enduring failure of mainstream politics to show leadership - a serious abrogation of their duty of care - than any kind of insidious, undue influence of 'green' politics. Handing the issue off to fringe politics like a hot potato and making it about opposing them instead of about the problem itself was a choice (or series of choices) and their failures to address it directly has never been the fault of 'green' (anti-nuclear) politics.

It probably was originally meant to be taken seriously, told by people with limited knowledge of the wider world and poor arithmetic to people not so good at arithmetic too, who would be expected to be awed and terrified of and submissive to a God so powerful and so inclined to harsh collective punishments... and submissive to God's priests (who were also inclined to brutal collective punishments?). Having details like how large would reinforce the idea that it was a true account of a real event but I doubt there was encouragement to think it through and indulge in criticism.

Five cubits away maybe.

Not an American here but energy matters everywhere and the best available advice on climate change says it really has to be low emissions energy. Any discussion of energy subsidies should not pass over and ignore the climate and other externalised consequences and the de facto subsidy that having no accountability for them provides to emissions intensive energy and industries. The impossibility of accurately accounting for how much that 'subsidy' adds to future costs should not be excuse to assume those costs are zero. A shift to EV's over oil for transport is worthwhile in ways that ICE being cheaper right now aren't. My own view re energy 'independence' is that the value of national self reliance without trade is greatly overrated; economies can and do benefit more from what they can produce out of what is inexpensive to import and paying the bills with that greater productivity and export trade than by insisting all their industries use more expensive local resources and impeding their growth. No successful developed nation, not even exceptionally resource rich USA has gotten that way by being isolationist. That said, having a lot of RE that is not subject to the cycles of fossil fuel global pricing and price volatility (and the greedy profiteering from energy crises) as well as having factories making what that takes is undoubtedly economically beneficial as well as necessary to regain climate stability. .

@Sensei Thank you, the sudo dmesg -w command fixed it first go. I was reluctant to enter Terminal (named Konsole in this case) because what is being done is incomprehensible to me, but I was at the point of abandoning it completely, so nothing to lose. But I am making a copy of that instruction where I can get to it easily, just in case the problem recurs. FWIW the usb sticks I tried were fat32 and one external drive shows as vfat (I though it was fat32?) but the other (2TB) external drive was NTFS. I will avoid the NTFS. I might keep going with the dual boot version and see how well it goes. (But I only gave Linux the minimum partition space, just to try it with minimum impact on Windows.) I will hold off for now on a standalone install on a different HDD; have to be a different distro, given the results with the Ubuntu-studio downloads I tried.

Not a usb device but every usb device... except the wireless mouse, that has a usb dongle (I just realised), so maybe just storage devices. And SD cards don't show/mount either. Haven't checked the cdr/dvd drive. I suppose if usb devices worked I might still use the dual boot version - but I would not trust it. Haven't checked every usb file but the ones I looked at seemed fine (on sticks and external hard drives, on Windows of course - can't access them on Linux to see). I had noticed ubuntu did not like the NTFS formatted external drive - it would not allow copying of files to that drive although I could open and read the document files on it. Was not so long after that I noticed I couldn't access any usb devices.

Mine would have been a variant of that distro. I can still use it dual-boot - just unable to use usb (where I like to keep backups of email addresses, important documents, browser settings etc).