OT Solar energy generated in the UK.overtook coal last Summer.

[pamela]

I don't wish to know any more about Turnip than he has chosen to make publicly available.

[Tim Streater]

It was harry that started with the TurNiP business - probably because TNP showed harry up as a (wilfully) ignorant twerp so often. It has subsequently been picked up by a number of the less imaginative from this ng.

TNP has mentioned personal matters here, usually in response to some dig like "Gosh, TNP, are you as mean as that to your wife?", but I pay no attention to any of that as from time to time we get long well-argued posts from him delivering a spanking to the ignorant, the starry-eyed-idealists, and shills.

This will include those of a lefty persuasion, renewable energy shills, and those who think that, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, the EU is a desirable democratic institution.

[bert]

He really has rattled your cage.

[Chris Hogg]

Two wrongs don't make a right. If you have too many qualifications to fit on your business card, I would have expected you to have the wherewithal to ignore his foul language and rise above it. It seems I was wrong. My apologies for overestimating you.

He calls himself The Natural Philosopher, usually abbreviated here to TNP, but I have no objection to Leo Smith, although he might prefer otherwise.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I have many identities all over the net.

My crime against pamela is refusing to take her seriously.

[pamela]

I don't read every post but I didn't notice you objecting when Turnip addressed others, such as Dave Plowman, using unduly foul language.

If I wish to know anything about Turnip then I will ask. In fact you replied to say:

"In case you didn't know, he set up and maintains Gridwatch among other things.

Look at the 'About' tab, and while you're in there, look at 'this paper', i.e.

If you don't wish to say any more then that's fine.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , pamela escribió:

To be fair to him, it's usual in scientific publications for the author to show s/he's qualified to comment on the subject at hand. This is easiest done by listing professional qualifications.

Whether a 30-40 year old theoretical degree is relevant to practical energy matters today is another matter.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

[apologies if yesterday's post wasn't up to standard, I rattled it out just as I as about to dash out for the day]

I agree we need a 'decent number of nukes', and in passing, don't think Hinkley C is the answer - a fleet of smaller stations would be a wiser choice. Possibly/preferably all the same model, so there is commonality of spares and training is greatly simplified. But the fragmented nature of the energy market with competing suppliers means that'll never happen.

I do think diversification in energy supply is important - we should have a mix of technologies and not be reliant on any one source. For example, if Thatcher's dash for gas had arrived at its logical conclusion, we (the UK) would now be entirely gas-powered and at the mercy of Russia.

With that in mind, it seems to me that battery farms could have their uses in our energy mix, as you go on to say...

Very unfortunate.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Magic thinkinhg from a cat belling idiot.

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.

We are right now overwhelmingly gas powered, (21.73GW (54.25%)) but of course simply checking facts is beyond you, so you wouldn't have noticed that the UK does not import Russian gas in any significant quantities. Our main suppliers are Norway and Qatar.

Diversity for its own sake is simply stupid as anyone with an ounce of nous would realise.

L3ets have cars wit triangular wheels, square wheels, and let's drive on diverse sides of the road FFS. Great idea.

Oh, and while we are at it, lets have three different UK grids in case two go down.

And utterly pointless really. The sort of duration that batteries could cope with is less than the rotational energy of the power stations can supply before frequency limits are exceeded.

And if you say 'larger batteries' there comes a point where its chepaer to build a proper power station.

That's because people like you were in charge of energy. People who bandied around hand wavy notions like 'diversity' and hadn't a clue about resilience analysis, cost benefit analysis, intermittency or dispatch, or where our gas actually comes from.

[The Natural Philosopher]

ER Mike, Your bigotry is showing again.

The Cambridge electrical sciences degree is not just 'theoretical'.

Oh, and by the way, the principles of steam turbines, water turbines and windmills have not changed in the last 70 years.,

[pamela]

To be honest, I almost never qualifications at the front of modern scientific papers. Perhaps in the olden days it was more common but not any more.

For example, none of these papers give any prominence whatsoever to the author's formal qualifications and usually don't mention qualifications at all.

"Assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies"

"Renewable energy strategies for sustainable development"

"Prices versus quantities: choosing policies for promoting the development of renewable energy"

[bert]

Nor have the principles of electrical power generation transmission and storage (lack of).

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , pamela escribió:

Having had a look at a few recent samples on arXiv.org, you're right. Maybe the practice has fallen out of favour.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , bert escribió:

"Practical energy matters", the phrase I used, covers a lot more than the theory of generation and transmission.

There's the economics, the politics, environmental regulations, legislation, financing, the market in power and numerous other factors I haven't thought of that a 30/40 year old degree in so-called "electrical sciences" wouldn't even begin to cover.

Touched a nerve there, I think.

A degree is a piece of paper; the experience gained in industry since is far more valuable.

[The Natural Philosopher]

So did my course.

But are adequately covered by 40 years designing and building things, running companies that build things and so on.

Not really. I just pointed out that, as usual, you are simply wrong.

How would you know?

It all depends on the type of problem.

I remember years ago I designed a bit of circuitry, and my boss said 'I still don't understand how it works' and I said' well its all about exploiting the quantum physics of a semiconductor junction to get a logarithmic amplification curve'. He said 'I still don't understand....'

Unlike today, my education was ultimately to teach me how to think, not what to think.

I try and pass that discipline on.

[pamela]

I didn't find Turnip's paper "Limitations of 'Renewable' Energy" to be sufficiently interesting to read closely but I notice his first footnote refers to Karl Popper:

"For a full treatment of the nature of irrefutable metaphysical statements and pseudo science, the seminal work is Karl Poppers 'Conjectures and Refutations, where he argues that the inductive reasoning of science is nothing but 'inspired guesswork' that happens to both fit the facts, and yet be conceivably refutable by other testable facts."

Why can't Turnip just leave out all that philosophical and metaphysical pseudo acamedic claptrap? It might faintly impress those who doesn't know what he's talking about but it just so happens I'm familar with Popper whose ideas were, amongst other things, once seen as a powerful criticism of Marxism. Maybe Turnip's infatuation with his ideas made him refer to Popper so unnecessarily.

Turnip also gets in his retaliation first, as he might say, when he writes on page 1 about an "ego-driven contrary opinion" and "extreme emotional attachment" to ideas. He seems worried of being accused of that.

The guy is priceless.

[pamela]

You were trying to blind him with science. Why didn't you give him a normal explanation?

Spare us here from those ministrations, please.

[whisky-dave]

Any idea what qualifications those that are 'responsible' for energy produc tion in the UK have.

[Tim Streater]

Because that's not what it is. The Philosophy of Science is quite important.

[pamela]

The philosophy of science might be quite important but it has it's place. It hardly belongs in practical discussions about practical matters.

Just how useful is mumbo jumbo like this in an D-I-Y group or an engineering paper:

"Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who fail apply themselves in the proper way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. Words are wise men's counters, they reckon by them; but they are the money of fools that value them by the authority of Korzybski, if but a man."