Re: energy in UK

On 14/04/2025 9:41 pm, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
 [...]

It is worse than that. They have fanciful schemes that will get us to
net zero but only in their crazed imagination! The small problem of the
laws of physics and in particular conservation of energy get in the way.

 I switched on the radio a couple of days ago and almost immediately
heard someone say that adding two effects together gave the result
squared.  A few seconds later another 'expert'  said something like
"because the material of a building hadn't risen in temperature as much
as the surrounding air, it was working negatively, behaving as a
refrigerator".
 I immediately guessed that this was a BBC programme about the
environment and the contributers were qualified 'environmnetal experts'
brought into the studio to explain the science to us poor simpletons.
It turned out I was right.
 What hope is there when this sort of stupidity is used to bolster
political decisions based on ignorance and justify it as "science".

It's worse than that.
Advertisers have worked out that gullible people are a more profitable audience, and seem to have been able to subvert primary and secondary education so that it tends to churn out a lot of gullible people.
America is a distressing example of a place where the process has been very successful, and a lying cheat like Donald Trump can end up getting elected president. He screwed up badly enough during his first term that he didn't get re-elected, but once the pandemic was over the population forget just how many people his incompetent management had killed, and re-elected him for a second term, where he seems hell-bent on putting the economy into recession - it gets him the attention he craves, and he's too ignorant to realise that it isn't a good idea to wreck the economy.
The UK did trust Boris Johson, and got themselves stuck with Brexit, and followed him up with Liz Truss, but at least the UK political system makes it easier to dump a complete twit fairly quickly.
Australia isn't immune - one of our right wing politicians recently told us that she wants to make Australia great again, but it seems she did it inadvertently. The right-wing party has a slogan that says that it is going to put Australia "back on track" - which granting their long-term record would be to hell in a handbasket - and that is probably what she thought that she was saying. Once your head is full of meaningless slogans the wrong one will come out from time to time.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney