1.4GW !

It helps if there is a viable idea in the first place. What you seem to be objecting to is the counter argument as to why it may not be a good idea, either for very good practical reasons or financially crippling reasons.

So many ideas are based on the mantra that we must stop using oil, irrespective of the financial cost. In the real world most of us have some idea about who is going to pay for this.

We have now been promised cheaper green energy although I'm not certain what price baseline is being used, the price before the Ukraine war or the current price. I suspect the latter. Soon the politicians will be claiming that energy prices will have quadrupled from the current level if we hadn't had the wind/solar generators to justify the green policy.

Many of the "suggestions" for the backup or infrastructure changes needed as a result of the nature of the UKs current green policy are not just simple overnight changes. Major changes are required to the infrastructure, and at a great cost. These costs will be factored into final cost of the energy that reaches the consumer either at roadside car charging facilities or to the home, and not come from the magic money tree.

Further, have no lessons been learnt? If we are reliant on China for our cheap solar panels and batteries what is going to happen when they invade Taiwan?

Boris is an ArtStdudent™ and married to yet another one. It's merely by accident that he was in the Tory party,

He was no conservative, Conservatism is the essence of pragmatism. Whatever *works*.

No 'fairness' no 'social justice' just getting on with making people know where they stand, what the limits are and letting them build the society *they* want inside those limits. Not the one you feel they

A classic example was apartheid. The Liberal Left screamed that what the South African peoples wanted was a political voice.

No, they didn't.

What they wanted was the ability to live in better places, crime free, have electricity, clean water and a refrigerator, and a TV.

Political emancipation has delivered none of those things.

Well said - and you said it much better than I could have done.

I've no objection to people coming here with ideas/suggestions, but it would be useful if in some cases at least a modicum of thought / analysis went into it first. Or a read through of "Renewable Energy without the hot air" which will almost certainly already have a neutral analysis of whatever suggestion is contemplated.

Agreed - I'd be more than happy if that was a reference text.

I think we know. Not just a self-important poser, but also a drunken gammon right whinger.

Sustainable Energy - without the hot air - David JC MacKay, is a good book. But it was written 15 years ago. It skips over Deep Sea - Floating Wind Turbines.

Are those the ones that are responsible for all the dead whales?

Nor are Unicorn farts. The latest thing in green energy apparently.

You are far too partisan about it. Even if you want to oppose renewable energy, you need to get your ducks in a row. I think the one comment MacKay makes about floating wind is that it could be a game changer.

It is quite right to point out the difficulty with corrosion in sea turbines, but I don't see this is fundamentally any more difficult than talking about problems with corrosion in liquid metal reactors, or things like neutron embrittlement. Problems we would face with nuclear reactors.

We do now have floating wind platforms - Hywind Scotland.

Deep sea wind is not low-energy nuclear reactions.

My general point was that one would have hoped similar people to MacKay would have emerged, to present simple arguments about the feasibility of renewables, but I don't know of any. Almost everything I read is hand wavy, or about very specific, small specialist areas.

David Mackay told you why renewables were infeasible. He and I spoke often about it. I was instrumenatl in getting his book publsihed with a friend of mine.

Itr was somewaht at his instigation that I wrote what I did about intermmittency.

His mission was to try and present the facts so that the green idealists would realise how impractical it was.

Just before he died he gave up pretending how renewables were possible and spoke out in favour of nuclear power.