Debunking right wing myths: Ultra Low Emission Zones

daryanenergyblog

The political right is out of ideas and even the ideas they do still support (such as neo-liberal capitalism, i.e. the rich get richer while everyone else gets poorer), aren’t exactly very crowd friendly. So, while they have every intention of quietly pushing policies that serve the 1% while in power, they need to get into or hold onto power in the first place. Hence the plan is to fight various culture wars on invented controversies that appeal to their tribal base. And one of these culture wars appears to be the concept of Ultra Low emission Zones (ULEZ’s) that several cities are introducing. Which may have played a role in them retaining Boris Johnson’s old Uxbridge seat in a recent by-election.

Much like the 15 minute city concept, which is the subject of various right wing conspiracy theories, the same is true of ULEZ’s. Firstly, its…

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Rocket plane roulette and rich thrill seekers

daryanenergyblog

Amid the search for this submarine over the last week or so two things occurred to me. Firstly, why is the media hyper fixating on a couple of lost rich people when over the same period a boat full of migrants in the Mediterranean went down with hundreds of people killed?And secondly I remembered a Jeff Bell article from 2007 called “rocket plane roulette” in which he discusses the risks and ethics of sub orbital space tourism (at least for those wealthy and insane enough to go), which arguably also applies to expeditions to the Titanic.

The article is a bit dated, but still worth a read. TLDR, space flight, even sub orbital space flight, is very dangerous and some of those risks just can’t be engineered away. He points out that government run sub orbital programmes had catastrophic loss rates in the order of once every…

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Nuclear hatchet job

daryanenergyblog

A issue with working in the energy field is we get approached by people, who know nothing about the topic, trying to propose (on the basis of 5 minutes of google research) some cheap, easy solution that solves everything once and for all. And then we have to explain why that isn’t going to work. The water powered car is a common one, as I’ve discussed before. And yes, we do have to explain why this is a dumb idea more often than you think.

Here’s another example from Cleo Abrams and Johnny Harris regarding nuclear reprocessing. They attempt to argue that the US made a mistake by opting for once through processing of nuclear fuel, rather than the reprocessing methods adopted by countries like the UK, France or Japan. They even try to blame this decision on Jimmy Carter and hippies. And that apparently reprocessing…

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The wrong stuff – Musk and the 4/20 rocket drill

daryanenergyblog

So on the 20th of April (4/20, so at least we know what he was smoking), chief twit Elon Musk launched his ego rocket to cheering crowds, which was deemed a success. …despite blowing itself to bits and scattering debris over a wetlands habitat. I’m sorry, but that’s not what can even be considered a success. But it just goes to show the double standards the media applies to Musk and other tech bro’s. And how lazy most journalists are.

NASA’s first launch of the SLS went off without a hitch, as do most first launches of modern rockets. In fact when they do fail its considered a big deal (e.g. the first launch of Ariane 5 was a rather embarrassing failure due to a computer coding error). Yes this is why NASA space launches are boring compared to SpaceX, but that’s sort of the point, aerospace…

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The packaging dilemma

daryanenergyblog

The UK supermarket Sainsbury’s has been accused of rendering its meat “vile”, by using a new form of vacuum packaging. Sainsbury’s claims this is intended to reduce plastic waste, as this method of packaging halves the amount of packing needed. But customers seems to think it leaves the meat too heavily compressed. As one shopper stated “itfeels very medical – like I’ve just bought someone’s kidney to cook at home”. The company has also been warned that this new form of packaging isn’t generally accepted for recycling across the UK.

Firstly I’d note that, by chance, I happened to buy some meat from Sainsbury’s in this packaging and I don’t know what the fuss was about (I don’t eat mince meat that often, I just assumed this is how they package it these days, but seriously do people not know what meat looks like!)…

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Lineker, 15 minute cities & the age of the dark enlightenment

daryanenergyblog

So we have the situation in the UK where Gary Lineker is being disciplined for posting a tweet criticising government policy. And Sir David Attenborough has had an episode of his latest nature series pulled to avoid offending the government. Apparently this is to avoid questions about BBC impartiality. This despite the fact nobody objected when Lineker previous criticised Qatar…while in Qatar (yes Qatar can now claim to be more in favour of free speech than the UK!), or when he aired his views on Jeremy Corbyn (he’s not a fan), as did Alan Sugar and Laura Kuenssberg. And we are also going to ignore that the BBC chairman donated hundreds of thousands to the Tory party and basically paid a bribe to Boris Johnson to get his current job. But somehow that doesn’t violate impartiality rules. Welcome to the era of the dark enlightenment.

The answer…

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More expensive flotsam

daryanenergyblog

As I’ve discussed in a previous post, the US has developed something of a habit for embarking on wasteful military development projects. And how the mantra of “support the troops” is frequently used as an excuse to squander vast sums of money, often with more than a hint of corruption behind these money burning parties . And we will now look at yet another example, the Littoral Combat Ship…..or as some have started to call it “the grift that keeps on giving ” . Or, as another commentator put it “a beautiful disaster”.

Firstly, some background. The advent of stealth technology has lead to stealth ships. However the thing to understand about stealth is it doesn’t render an object “invisible” to radar, it merely reduces the radar signature (“low observable” technology would be a more…

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Holiday Catchup – the calm before the storm

daryanenergyblog

I’ve been on my holidays back in Ireland. It was nice to get away from the mad house that was the UK for a wee while. A lot seems to have happened since then.

Zombie government and the looming winter chaos

So the big story has to be the rise in energy prices, which are rising by 80% in October with a further rise of 50% expected in January. Keep in mind they also rose about 25% back in April, so this represents a near 4 fold rise in energy prices in the space of one year. As I’ve mentioned before, this is ultimately a consequence of the Tories not having any sort of firm energy policy, beyond a few empty slogans about going green, or whatever favours party donors.

But even in terms of putting in place a short term solution, we aren’t seeing a…

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Debunking right wing myths – The good old days

daryanenergyblog

A few weeks back Johnson, under pressure from a no confidence vote, made a bizarre announcement. That the UK would be re-introducing imperial units of measure. Now that we are out of the EU, we can buy beer and milk in pints again…..only you could do that in the EU…in fact you can still do that right now (the milk bottle in my fridge lists its contents as 1 pint or 568ml).

Metrication in the UK started in the 1960’s before the UK even joined the EU. And the EU never banned imperial units, they simply specified that you should be given the metric unit as well (important given that nobody born after the 1980’s probably has a clue how imperial units work). In fact, in some respects, this process started much earlier. In the 1860’s several scientists (notably Lord Kelvin) began lobbying for conversion…

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Debunking some Moggy myths

daryanenergyblog

The Tories have a new strategy – blame absolutely everything on someone else. How can anything be their fault?I mean its not like they’ve been in government for 12 years! Basically, their mantra now is the same as the lyrics of a certain Shaggy song. And they can get away with this because they know the tabloids will cover for them (hell even the BBC doesn’t ask awkward questions anymore….unless they are interviewing labour, in which case they’ll bring up beergate for the millionth time). And Tory voters have the attention span of a goldfish, so they will swallow these lies without question.

One of their recent problems has been the soaring price of fish and chips. What used to be a cheap working class supper, is now going to cost you £12 (so £40+ to feed a family of 4…definitely breaking that 30p per…

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