Posts by DJO

Where am I saying they should not have drones at all?

Here: "Cargo drones are a non-starter. For any situation"

They have roads, they may have medical professionals, what they won't have is a stock of refrigerated medicine which would never survive the arduous road journey. (That will still apply when every village has a super new road in and out - the long winding journey by road will still take too long for remote high altitude settlements, a drone can cover the same distance in a fraction of the time)

Just because they are looking at 150kg drones as the upper limit does not mean it is also the lower limit, for most medicines a 5 or 10kg payload limit would be adequate.

As for cost, well who is going to pay the several trillion USD it would cost to put metalled roads to every community? - A handful of drones would cost nothing in comparison. One emergency helicopter trip would cost more than buying and supporting a drone for it's expected lifespan of a few years.

You continue to overlook the scale of India, it has a land area more than 12 times that of GB and vertically it goes from below sea level to altitudes that make Mount Snowdon look like an anthill. Upgrading millions of tracks and dirt roads to fully metalled roads is a ludicrous proposition without unlimited funds and unlimited time.

So what you are saying is that people in remote areas which do not have roads yet should just die if they are ill?

So no drone should be allowed to deliver medicine to them.

Do you have the slightest idea how long it would take and how much it would cost to connect every settlement in India to the road network with fully metalled roads, including villages dotted around the Himalayas and other equally inaccessible regions. Well from your response obviously not.

I think it is an excellent interim solution until the roads get built which considering the land area in India is an Sisyphean task.

So what you are saying is that people in remote regions should wait for the roads to be improved, and there's no case to use drones as an interim measure in a country of over 3¼ million km².

User name checks out.

Like charges repel.

Opposite charges attract.

Re: There's hope yet.

And operating at about -60ºC.

Also "plaster, sand, cement dust and fine grit" have nothing on the ultra-fine charged dust on Mars.

Martian dust on average is 3 microns per particle, very fine sand is 100 times bigger.

...opposing electric charge which might help repel...

Oh dear, it's back to school for you.

Re: use of fusion

One day of reduced wind for every 10 to 20 of increased wind does not mean the overall wind is less.

If you think a warmer climate will be beneficial then you do not understand climate change at all and there is no point arguing with a closed mind.

Try reading some independent studies, not one financed by vested interests which from what you write must be the only stuff you read.

Look at the extreme weather events over the last 10 years and more importantly look at the severity trend over the same period. The damage caused by climate change runs into the trillions, any possible benefit will be dwarfed by many orders of magnitude by the harm.

Re: use of fusion

One (extremely unlikely) possibility out of dozens of possible outcomes.

What is your agenda, you reject evidence and promote talking points from vested interests that have almost no bearing on reality.

Do you want more CO2, do you think climate change will have advantages?

Re: use of fusion

Are you being deliberately disingenuous or just parroting what you read elsewhere?

Decommissioning nuclear site will cost at least 2 orders of magnitude more per acre than any windmill or solar plant. Also the amount of nuclear waste found in windmills and solar is zero, some hazardous stuff but all recyclable (in theory) unlike nuclear where the ongoing costs of containment will continue for generations.

Agriculture can and does coexist with wind and solar plants very successfully, not something you can say for any kind of thermal power generation.

Energy bills have not reduced because fossil fuels are getting more expensive, recently Russia raised the cost of gas so UK wholesale gas has gone from about 30p a therm this time last year to over £4.50 a therm in December, now dropped to £1.86 a therm but still very volatile. That's why fuel costs have risen.

I guarantee that without renewables fuel bills would have increased earlier and by a greater amount.

When they scrap the subsidies for nuclear, gas, oil & coal, then we'll talk about the subsidies the renewables get.

Re: use of fusion

Energy supply is an integrated market, there's space for multiple electricity generation and storage systems working together to provide a reliable supply.

Nobody is suggesting we switch to only renewables, that's just a stupid straw man put out by vested interests.

So when there is plenty of wind we only need that and the nuclear base supply, when there is less wind we may need to import power or fire up a gas generator or two.

Just because wind does not run 24/7 that's not a reason to dismiss it. And it does blow 24/7 somewhere on or off these islands, we are never completely becalmed.

Also your cost estimate for offshore wind is well out of date, now it's a bit over half that, more or less parity with nuclear but without the colossal decommissioning costs which are conveniently left out of the nuclear MWhr cost.

...fusion using interstellar hydrogen...

Unlikely to be viable. The interstellar medium has a density of about 1 hydrogen atom per cc so if you were thinking of a Bussard scoop it's have to be huge to collect much hydrogen.

The reactor needs deuterium and tritium, the tritium is surprisingly easy, use the shitload of neutrons the reaction spits out to convert lithium to helium and tritium, deuterium is the problem - there's not likely to be much to scoop up.

The mass of a few tonnes of deuterium would probably be lower than that of the collector and processing equipment and that's before you factor in the massive amount of energy a Bussard collector would consume.

Collectors would probably be more useful for gathering reaction mass than for fuel.

Re: Fingers crossed

1) As stated many times, even by you, the UK could have gone alone on that while in the EU. We have since fallen behind many states so any gains have dissipated. Yes lives were saved but nowhere near as many that were lost by government incompetence and corruption around PPE and delays in introducing measures and worst of all, inconsistency from the government.

2) Did you read the Guardian article you linked?

... in 2016 ... the European parliament had voted unanimously to start the regulatory process to allow any EU country to abolish any tampon tax ... actually, Brexit has made it worse, because if we were to have stayed in the EU, then this piece of legislation would have gone through… then any EU member would be able to axe the tax, not just the UK...

So without Brexit not only would women in the UK benefit but all over the EU. Definitely not a Brexit benefit for women in general. Had we remained this legislation could have been passed a few years ago.

3) Good grief, Sovereignty shared is not sovereignty lost. We gain nothing regards to sovereignty when in or out of the EU. It's a straw man argument.

Re: Fingers crossed

Hi, here's one from today:

UK flight compensation plan will slash average payouts

Government says move is a ‘Brexit win’ but figures suggest average sum will drop from £220 to about £23.60

A tremendous advantage, for the airlines, for consumers not so much.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/feb/05/uk-flight-compensation-plan-will-slash-average-payouts

Re: Fingers crossed

That you seem to consider the benefits intangible yet I am sure you wont say that about the losses.

What are the advantages, I have asked and asked and asked again for you to list them but you still cannot or will not, I wonder why?

The losses are far from intangible, £billions in regional development, common standards which are necessary if we want equal trade, economy of scale, freedom of movement and much more.

I remember what the UK was like before we joined the EU, a total economic disaster, then entirely due to our membership of the EU we rebuilt the economy enough for some people to forget or ignore the huge contribution the EU made to our recovery.

Re: Fingers crossed

FYI

2010 to 2018 EU grants to the UK exceeded £5b per year - that has stopped and will not be replaced from Westminster.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7847/

Re: Fingers crossed

...the benefits already seen...

This is getting ridiculous - what benefit already seen, there are none that I am aware of. Please enumerate them.

...What is that including?

Nothing, just the cost of detaching ourselves from the economy of scale so we now will need to pay far more just to replicate what was amortised over the whole EU.

We have now in the few years since the vote spent more money on Brexit than the sum of all our contributions to the EU in the 40 odd years we were a member, also we got a large proportion of that money back as regional development grants, billions of pounds to deprived regions like South Wales.

Quiz: if this government had a spare billion do you think it would go to A) Regional development or B) Cut the upper rate of tax.

You go on about the (intangible) gains of Brexit but how about the losses, we got a lot from the EU and very little of that will be reproduced by Westminster.

Re: Fingers crossed

So all the "advantages" are going to happen many years down the line, fat lot of fucking good that is, we were promised so much.

The City? what a laugh:

Pan-European exchange Euronext said it will clear all trades on its newly acquired Italian platform by 2024, helping the European Union cut its reliance on the London Stock Exchange for core financial activities after Brexit.

So UK as a trading capital for Europe is obviously history as being out of the EU we are at a significant disadvantage and no EU companies will want the extra expense when cheaper to use EU alternatives are available.

immediate advantages that were so blatant and readily available.

If they are so blatant and available how come nobody can enumerate them, not a single fucking one!.

It's a joke at your expense, so far the cost of Brexit is £800m per week, nearly 3 times as much as membership of the EU and for what, restricted trade, border controls, massively increased red tape etc. etc. etc.

Re: Fingers crossed

OK let's agree to disagree on that one.

So please list the myriad advantages unrelated to C-19 that Brexit has showered upon us ungrateful bastards.

Re: Fingers crossed

It was a bit selective too. There were a LOT of responses needed to tackle Covid, this government got all but one completely wrong and the one they did get right was such a trivial advantage it dissipated in under a month.

Unless you have a personal wealth in excess of £5m and are involved in offshore banking or tax evasion there is no benefit from leaving the EU.

Re: A Cool Billion ! Roll Up, Roll Up !

I simplified but the sentiment is valid.

Another vital issue is the government slashing the funding for enforcement - If the regulations can be ignored, they might as well not exist.

Re: A Cool Billion ! Roll Up, Roll Up !

Absolutely, we can see how well scrapping tedious regulations worked at Grenfell tower.

No they weren't and the number of UK residents still domiciled in the EU is almost exactly the same as the winning margin and there were more at the time of the vote.

Interestingly the one region of the UK with the most direct contact with the EU, Gibraltar voted 95.9% to remain.

There are a further 5 million UK citizens domiciled in other countries, if they should have had a vote is arguable but our citizens in the EU who were inevitably going to affected should have been given a say - that's what Democracy means.

Re: .....but in the "sunny uplands" this sort of c**k up never happens, does it?

So an advantage for about a month and a disadvantage for several years is a positive result?

The overall death rate per million in the UK is far higher - you think that is an advantage?

We spent about 10 times as much for a worse result - you think that is an advantage?

...UK got vaccinated and is opening back up...

Far far too soon, totally for political reasons, there is NO medical evidence to suggest opening up now is a good idea - I'll guarantee the infection rate will soar in the next month or so.

But this has little to do with Brexit more the staggering incompetence of the current Tory party "leadership", the same "leadership" that gave us Brexit just to placate a few back benchers.

Re: .....but in the "sunny uplands" this sort of c**k up never happens, does it?

Wait until you see the bill for that!

HMG ordered everything from everybody without setting any penalties for non-delivery or worrying about the cost.

Consequently we spent over 10 times as much per delivered dose.

We did have a short lead for a little while but within a month that narrow advantage had been completely squandered away.

We have the second highest rate of Covid deaths/million after the USA but I'll grant you that is more because of the morons in Westminster but overall we would have been a lot better off being part of the EU scheme.

Re: .....but in the "sunny uplands" this sort of c**k up never happens, does it?

OK tell me one single way in which the UK and the majority of UK citizens have benefited from Brexit - just one unequivocal advantage.

On the finance side, Brexit so far has cost ~£300b. This far exceeds our total contributions to the EU in the 40 odd years we were a member (£213b).

Had British citizens resident in the EU been given a vote as they were entitled to, we would not be in the stupid position we are in now.

Re: Supermoons

A person weighing 80kg on our blue planet will find themself battling against 160kg on a "super-Earth"

I know pantomime season is over but, all together now: "Oh no they wont!"

Surface gravity depends on the diameter and density of the planet, the further from the core, the lower the gravitational effect.

Due to our big Iron core Earth is the most dense planet in this solar system the gravity here is higher than might be expected for a planet of this size.

As a Super Earth by definition is larger than here the surface gravity will not be as strong as the total gravity implies.

Re: GDPR is awfully expensive to implement

Businesses are subject to the regulation of their home nation, NOT the EU.

NO - Businesses are subject to the regulation of the countries in which they do business.

You want to sell in the EU then those transactions are rightly subject to EU law.

Re: Occam's razor, indeed.

Nicely put, if there was an equation you could stick estimates for that lot in, who knows what it might drake up.

Re: Occam's razor, indeed.

Thinking about creation myths I realised that even us puny humans are capable of creating things that can out-perform us. So what's to say life on Earth was created by superior beings, it could equally be the product of "inferior" beings.

But either way I think the important word is "myth".

And for the OP: Occam's Razor is "Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate" "Do not needlessly multiply entities".

Introducing a God into the equation is exactly the sort of thing it warns against.

Re: Occam's razor, indeed.

...everything false neatly into place...

Some sort of Freudian slip perhaps?

As to your question, well obviously an even bigger and better one, and that was created by... ... ...

Pratchett was wrong, it's not turtles all the way down but divine beings. :-)

Re: Occam's razor, indeed.

If the planet didn't have the necessary ingredients life couldn't form, to say it's coincidence we just happened have the right ingredients is ridiculous (see "anthropic principle"). If the ingredients were different then maybe a different form of life would have developed or maybe none.

As far as probability goes, need I remind you, "Space is big..." - Billion to 1 odds are going to turn up every day in a universe as big as this one.