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Tag Archives: consciousness of sheep
What did they expect?
What did they expect? My house backs on to a railway line which is now exclusively for passenger trains. It wasn’t always this way though. There was a time when the relative peace was broken six times a day by the roar of freight trains heading up the Rhymney Valley. Their destination was the coal […]
Getting vacancies wrong
Getting vacancies wrong Like everything else that was shut down in 2020 and 2021, Britain’s job market was broken. As businesses attempted to reopen, they were faced with a massive labour shortage. Lorry drivers, for example, had all but disappeared. Skilled construction workers were also in short supply. But the biggest shortages were in traditionally […]
In Brief: The energy death spiral grows; Another bad omen; Hobsons choice
In Brief: The energy death spiral grows; Another bad omen; Hobsons choice The energy death spiral grows Although it is far from obvious, Ofgem – Britain’s energy regulator is supposed to act in the interest of energy consumers. As the UK government explains: “The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) regulates the monopoly companies which run […]
A small and deceptive word
A small and deceptive word In a previous post I referred to two “highly seductive and misunderstood words.” I dealt with one of these several years ago when considering the growing number of things that humans can do in theory but can no longer do in practice. This applied to highly expensive projects like sending humans to the moon […]
Green spin
Green spin Concern over the steep rise in the price of electricity this winter has paved the way for rehashing the old misinformation about the relative cost of generation. So it is that Carbon Tracker – a non-profit which seeks to focus financial investment on non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) – reports that electricity bills are far higher than […]
The age of dissonance
The age of dissonance As the surplus energy available to the economy declines, so the number of things that we can do in theory but can no longer do in practice will grow. This is the inverse of the technological efficiencies won in the course of three centuries of industrialisation – the peak of which […]
When they say money, think energy
When they say money, think energy The Indian government ruffled a few feathers at the COP this morning, by raising the thorny question of the £722bn they were supposed to receive to aid their transition away from fossil fuels. Because, when all is said and done, the proposed transition is all about money. Decommissioning the old fossil […]
Closer to the edge
Closer to the edge There may well be worse to come. With the end of the various government support schemes, redundancies have shot up once more. According to the BBC:Earlier this year when the establishment media was running fear stories about excess savings, the opening up of the economy was predicted to result in a massive […]
Is this peak gas?
Is this peak gas? The recent, spectacular increase in the price of gas has created a sense of crisis not seen outside the financial sector since the early 1980s. In Europe in general and the UK in particular, it has begun to expose the folly of having an economy entirely dependent upon imports; including imports […]
This isn’t going to work
This isn’t going to work If an energy policy sounds too good to be true, that is usually because it is. Take, for example, just one of the jigsaw pieces in current policy for reaching net zero by 2050: electric car batteries. Jillian Ambrose – who should know better – at the Guardian reports this weekend that: […]
Exergy-driven crisis
Exergy-driven crisis Media has little in the way of memory and the rest of us struggle to remember much of what happened more than a week ago. And so, the narratives we use in an attempt to make sense of the rapidly changing world we are living in, tend to revolve around short-term tribal talking […]
A rising tide sinks all boats… eventually
A rising tide sinks all boats… eventually Have you heard that ice cream causes murder or that global warming has led to an increase in piracy? Apparently in Maine, consuming more margarine leads to more divorces, while increased US spending on science, space and technology results in increases in suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation. Actually, these are […]
The only thing worse than an energy collapse
The only thing worse than an energy collapse We learned recently that one of the last coal power stations in the UK is bidding to become the first commercial nuclear fusion plant on Earth. The news should be taken with a large pinch of salt… nuclear fusion has been 25 years in the future since before I […]
Mere statistics
Mere statistics In the current political climate, fossil fuels are deemed to have no redeeming features. The fact that everything we take for granted, from abundant food to high life expectancy and from clean drinking water to an absence of slavery, is based on fossil fuels is entirely overlooked. The transition to non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies – […]
The everything death spiral
The everything death spiral Inflation is back in the establishment media headlines, as prices are rising across the economy. But rather like generals fighting the last war, business and economic journalists are dusting off models of inflation last used in the early 1980s. The idea, for example, that “inflation is always a monetary phenomenon” worked well […]
