OT: energy infrastructure

[Bernie]

ROLF!

[#Paul]

Which is a statement that rather nicely emphasises how totally out of touch you are with the technical demands of modern scientific research.

#Paul

[SteveW]

Our EV has a 63kWh battery and has an official range of 281 miles. In real life, it varies between about 220 miles and 320 miles depending upon type of journey, use of air-con, etc.

Short runs are generally more efficient than long ones - low speeds mean less drag and so less power usage, frequent stops allow for regeneration.

That's about right, although it could be less, as the miles per kWh can be better than that, especially with certain types of journey.

Is that to allow for charging losses?

The grid will have to supply more energy per year, but as most charging takes place off-peak, it will not have to provide a greater maximum instantaneous capacity - which is where the main problems are.

[SteveW]

Yes, but we also have only around 1% of the population - and large parts of the world uses little or no fossil fuels, due to living with almost no energy usage, we are already producin gmore than our fair share of CO2.

If every country works on the basis that their contribution alone is negligible, then none will take any action at all. Significant reductions rely on all countries doing their part.

Moving away from fossil fuels and the stranglehold of the Middle East is a good thing, regardless of CO2. The question is simply how fast a change is reasonable.

[alan_m]

Various manufacturer's web sites suggest if the ambient temperature falls closer to 5C and the journey speed is closer to 70mph their official published range figures halve.

Possibly a lot fewer miles per kWh in the winter months when energy usage will be higher when we all have electric only central heating.

The problem will be when we rely too much on intermittent electricity generation. If we carry on with the existing green policies there may be no off peak - or even on peak - just power cuts.

[Spike]

Thanks for the link to a very interesting article; although it’s a bit of a read.

Perhaps of a similar interest level are the comments, in parts almost amounting to a flame war, by people who appear to be experts in FFT.

[Animal]

the fair option would be to stop penalising people with this CO2 nonsense.

no. Really.

[Chris Hogg]

I don't see how else it could be done. Would it be sensible to have a neurosurgeon reviewing an article on sub-atomic physics? I think not, as I'm sure you would agree. What is needed is a good editor who has a list of experts in the field that the journal serves, and whose abilities are proven and whose views are fairly catholic (in the broad sense of the word). Unfortunately, with the pressures put on editors by people with financial interests, that doesn't always happen.

[RJH]

Agreed. A neat summary.

And that needs to be called out if/when it happens.

[Tim Streater]

A neurosurgeon is not a scientist, no matter how skilful.

Too much power in the hands of the editors. And who chooses them, anyway.

[Chris Hogg]

<sigh> YKWIM. OK, a zoologist then, or a metallurgist, whatever.

I don't know, but presumably the owners/board of the publishing house that publishes the Journal. And your alternative is?

[Tim Streater]

See my sig.

Perhaps for the more important journals, a frequent/regular rotation of editors. Maybe just scrap the review system altogether.

[Pancho]

Except, climate scientists do use statistical techniques. It is other people, on both sides, who like to draw graphs and fit curves to them. As we see in this thread.

“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”

They should teach the basic idea of a statistical hypothesis test for GCSE. How curve fitting complex statistical data can be inappropriate, and then hopefully these social media curve fitters will die out. But even the message that “Correlation does not imply causation” seems lost on most people.

Well, who should do it? Bricklayers, train drivers, art students?

Peers are the people who understand the issues well enough to raise sensible criticisms. Of course, any checking system will be gamed, for personal advantage.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Widespread adoption of EVs would mean there *is* no off-peak.

You seem to be a fuckwitted 'enthusiast' - anyone who runs the numbers for a bit more than the odd domestic shopping trolley owned by a deluded urban hipster with a private drive, brain damaged by a constant Vegan diet, and too stupid to be able to shave, will realise that to replace all the fossil fuel the nation consumes requires an upgrade of about 3:1 in the electricity grid.

Or a massive reduction in the quality of life.

Spiders on toast, anyone?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well yes. As I said Willis is not a mathematical genius. He calims more than he is capable of proving. And he doesn't understand the philosophy of science or the advanced mathematics of chaos theory.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Which is a statement that rather nicely emphasises how totally out of touch *you* are with the technical demands of modern scientific research.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The fact is it can't be done. Science is now a full public sector civil servant career. Only people who are on message get grants and only people who are on message get published and only people who are on message get to peer review.

I mean I have tried to explains all the issues to ArtStudents™ and all they say at the end of it is "Well, that's your *opinion* ", as if sound objective facts simply didn't exist, and for them, they truly do not!

As my green vegan utterly intolerant sister once said 'well it depends what websites you read!' which for her, was the literal truth. Despite a good degree in modern languages and the ability to speak and write at least five fluently, she has absolutely no mathematical or scientific ability to assess anything she reads critically.

But it doesn't stop her having unbelievably string *opinions*

[Spike]

Many years ago my colleague and I worked for some time under a scientist that was determined to get his FRS.

He once asked me to undertake a project, and wanted to know how I was going to approach the issue. I came up with a scheme, but the discussion of the data reduction part took an hour of his time, because I wasn’t going to use a control to test the effects against and he simply couldn’t see why. My assurances and explanations that the internal statistics would show up what we were looking for were a mystery to him. In the end he threw down his pen and in an exasperated voice said to go ahead. I did so, and when I showed him the results he was astonished; it showed exactly what was going on.

Moving on a few years, and the FRS-bound chap had left for another organisation. My colleague came to me to say he’d done some research and written a draft paper that he wanted to submit to a prestigious journal. The problem was that we strongly suspected the peer reviewer for the paper would be the FRS-bound chap, and although such things were supposedly secret, the field was quite a narrow one. To ensure there was no issue with his findings, my colleague asked me to work up the statistics, knowing that the FRS-bound chap would guess the source of this part of the paper and wouldn’t query the results. It worked like a charm, and the paper was duly published. Later it transpired our surmise about the identity of the peer-reviewer was correct…

The publication of scientific papers involves all sorts of game playing.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Cat-bellers of the world unite!

You have nothing to lose but your idiocy.

No one WANTS sound objective science. Certainly not those who fund research and subsidise journals. The only people who value sound science are :

- big companies who need to actually e.g. plonk a multimillion pound drilling rig where the oil *is*, not where some hand waving nitwit imaginess it *ought* to be.

- The military, who genuinely have a need for stuff that actually works, not just looks good on the website.

-professional and industrial customers who dont read adverts, but do cost benefit analysis and insists on penalty clauses.

I have a friend who was in California for many years doing research on flash memory. The solid state drives and the SIM cards you all use are things he helped design. I dont believe he had anything published ever in any scientific journal. Maybe a trade journal or two, but mostly what he did is company confidential and patented.

That kind of research still works., All *pure* research has been captured by the state, for the purposes of supporting the state's narrative.

[The Natural Philosopher]

There is a lot of free research being published on the net. Sadly its not even peer reviewed by cronies and so is often complete shit.

This is all an instance of a general philosophical problem that exists today even more acutely in this information age, and it is broadly speaking 'how can we tell when we are being bullshitted and lied to?'

And the answer for *most* people is 'you can't'.