Re: The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout

On 11/06/2025 17:19, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 11/06/2025 10:58 pm, David Brown wrote:

On 11/06/2025 13:03, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 11/06/2025 5:05 pm, David Brown wrote:

On 10/06/2025 19:01, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 11/06/2025 1:32 am, David Brown wrote:

On 10/06/2025 15:49, Bill Sloman wrote:

...

Why would the "fossil carbon extraction industry" even care about this book?  You seem to be imagining some shadowing conspiracy group that is directing a war on electricity and the earth's climate.  That's nonsense - there's just a bunch of companies trying to make a profit from their businesses and investments, and down-playing the risks in order to make a short-term profit.

 It is not nonsense. It has been going on for some twenty years now. George Monbiot in his 2006 book "Heat" devoted a chapter to it.
 https://www.monbiot.com/books/heat/
 In 2010 it was worth writing a whole book about it
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt
 It did point out that the same people who were lying about climate change had originally started their businesses to lie about the health risks of smoking tobacco, which made the story even better.
 People who want to keep on selling gasoline to car drivers don't want their customers to switch to electric cars, and they spread lying propaganda to discourage them.
 

It's just normal capitalism, and like any other branch of industry, it is a problem when they are too powerful.  But it doesn't help to be paranoid and imagine a conspiracy that does not exist.

 The "conspiracy" really does exist, and it is well documented. There's nothing paranoid about being realistic about the way consumers are misinformed. Ignoring the manipulation saves you from having to think about it, but that's a false economy.
 

Companies that make their living from fossil fuels do not care about some little book written by a journalist.  Why should they?

 Because well-informed customers do read that kind of book, and make choices that cost the fossil fuel companies sales,
 

You are /completely/ disconnected from reality.
How many potential car customers read books like that?  0.01% ?  Maybe 0.001% ?  Of those, how many people choose to buy an electric car rather than a fossil fuel car because they have read such a book?  In total, you could count the cases on the fingers of one hand.
People's thoughts on what is "right" - morally, environmentally, politically, religiously, etc., - are based on what they hear from friends, what they see on TV, Youtube, Tiktok, and the like.  Books are a tiny, tiny proportion of the influence - or rather, an influence on a tiny, tiny proportion of people.  And all these sources of influence can be highly biased, present a distorted view, or be completely wrong. Books are not immune to that, though they are usually be more factually reliable than Tiktok.
Once a potential customer has decided on their idealistic stance - they want to "go green", or they think climate change is all a conspiracy theory from the Chinese - they look at the practicalities and the economics.  And those override the idealism nine times out of ten - idealism typically only matters in the event of a tie.
Those small proportions do add up, gradually.  If one in ten buyers chooses the environmentally better option, then that will lead to greater availability, better infrastructure, lower prices, and more investment and development in the field - making it a more practical choice for others.
None of this is, however, affected by books by journalists "revealing" the "truth" about some industry.  Very occasionally, some politician might have read the book and ask challenging questions in parliament, or the author will appear on a panel show or debate show and raise awareness.  But that's rare.  Virtually all such books generate a few inches of newspaper column (for those that still read newspapers), then migrate to airport bookshops.  Most copies that are bought are unread - and for most that are read, the reader will think "that's interesting and thought-provoking" - then forget about them.  Again, the tiny levels of influence do add up, slowly, and it is a good thing that these kinds of books are written and published.  But to imagine that they directly affect companies' bottom lines through "informed customers" is ludicrous.
I say all this as a person who reads such books (though not those particular ones you happen to have read) - and who tries learn from many sources.

The people  who read a book like that have no influence of significance. The people that invest in their companies, or buy their products, wouldn't bother with such a book.

 The do get bothered when the sales volumes start to shrink. Oil companies used to advertise their products to get the sales volumes up.
That's what you do when you care about what your customers think.

Of course companies care what their customers think, and what influences them!  That is why they advertise.  But they do not care what books they read, because the influence is totally and completely negligible.

So saying "electric car owning households are tending to have both" is nonsense.

 Electric cars are becoming more popular and about 40% of new roof-top solar installation in Australia include a roughly car-sized battery.
It's not nonsense.
 

Yes, it is nonsense.
The reality is that in sunny places, people can get cheap (in amortized costs over time) electricity by putting solar panels on their roofs and such installations might include a battery so that the solar-generated energy is available through the night.  Other installations don't have a battery - they simply sell the solar power back on the grid, for use in industry and other customers during the sunlight hours.
People choose to have solar panels based on the cost - comparing the cost of installing them to the amount of electricity they will generate and the cost (or sale price) of that electricity.  And of course that requires that you own a house and live in a sunny place.
People choose to have a house battery based on the capital cost, the differences between electricity prices during the day and night, their electricity needs, and the reliability and stability of their grid-supplied power.
People choose to have electric cars because of costs (including tax breaks, subsidies, etc.), where they can use them (such as in low-emission zones in cities, collective traffic lanes, etc.), and personal preference.
Of course there will be a correlation between these three things.  In particular, if you have solar panels then it is quite likely that you will also have a house battery.
But the suggestion that "electric car owning households tend to have house batteries" is nonsense.  It is probably fair to say that there is a substantial correlation in Australia, at the moment - but as a general statement, it is flat-out wrong.
Australia is a rich country with a high proportion of home owners and a high proportion of stand-alone homes (rather than flats).  It is a very sunny country, and has high and volatile electricity prices.  So amongst the richer segment of the population, you will get a lot of solar panels, and a fair proportion of these will have batteries.  It is also amongst those richer people that you will see electric car ownership, probably in addition to fossil fuel cars.  Thus you see a correlation. If and when electric car ownership spreads significantly in Australia, that correlation will disappear as people living in flats, apartments, smaller houses, etc., get electric cars - they will not have solar panels, or house batteries.
When you look at most other countries, the correlation was never there in the first place.  (The exception might be the USA, where electric car ownership is mostly in California which has similarities with Australia.)  Norway is the country with far and away the highest per-capita electric car ownership - perhaps 50 times that of Australia (though Australia's rate is increasing faster).  Solar power, and house batteries, are very rare here - it is not the sunniest country on earth.

 The "environmentally damaging" line seems to come from the usual propaganda sources. Nobody seems to be much fussed about Australia's lithium mines, which is odd because our greenies get excited about most mining operations. Australia has quite a lot of lithium mines with many hard-rock, pegmatite-hosted lithium resources, largely in Western Australia.
 

Australia's lithium mining is a noticeably less environmentally damaging source than many other sources of lithium throughout the world.