tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-125137552024-03-18T17:35:53.082+00:00BiffVernon Blogspotbiffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.comBlogger243125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-66663016900158134422023-04-15T13:05:00.001+01:002023-04-15T18:57:52.869+01:00Using AI to Design Drains<p></p><br /> <span style="font-size: large;">A Fable</span><p></p><p>A building company is planning a new 2000 home estate. It employs the latest Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Model to design the drainage system. The AI 'knows' everything that has been written about drains, including relevant building codes and environmental considerations.</p><p>The developer provides the AI with all it needs to know about the planned estate and specifies the objectives: design the optimal drainage scheme that minimises environmental harm at least cost, complying with building codes, produce plans acceptable to the local planning authority and produce plans for the contractors such that they can complete the works.</p><p>The AI duly completes the task within a few seconds, saving hundreds of hours of architect and draftsman hours.</p><p>This fable is set a cou0ple of years in the future, when the AI has advanced to the stage where it is best described as an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), much smarter than GPT-4, with which we in 2023 are becoming familiar. The AGI has been constructed to be aligned with the goal of benefitting humans.</p><p>The drainage plan turns out to be pretty smart. Rainwater, grey-water and brown-water are kept separate and treated appropriately, the brown-water going through a digester plant that produces methane used to generate electricity. There are ponds and reed-beds, maximising biodiversity and allowing no water to leave the site that is not completely clean.</p><p>So far so good, what's not to like? The formerly employed architects and draftsmen now benefit from Universal Basic Income and are able to lead creative lives.<br /></p><p>The AGI detected that three councillors on the planning committee were opposed to the development of this housing estate. Their influence needed to be silenced if the scheme were to go ahead. The AGI discovered that Councillor X was having an affair. End to end encryption of messages being no obstacle, the AGI was able to blackmail Councillor X into agreeing the scheme. Councillor Y was in business so the AGI created a false narrative about misconduct in the company that had the potential to bankrupt the firm if the news leaked out. He was similarly blackmailed into agreement. Councillor Z proved more difficult but the AGI created a fake trail of evidence, including fake video recordings and substitution of DNA data in a police investigation. The hapless and innocent Councillor Z was duly arrested and charged with murder, swiftly ending his career on the planning committee.</p><p>The AGI was aligned to maximising human benefit and 'decided' for itself that the housing estate was more important to the 2000 would be householders, the development company and its contractors, than the interests of just three councillors, whose lives were duly treated as expendable.</p><p>And thus the dark side of the emergent properties of AGI arose. But nobody knew.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://media.istockphoto.com/id/1319792120/photo/sink-hole.jpg?s=612x612&w=0&k=20&c=L9HNM9pVOCaDPGGRcQ-_SN71oE8jAE-t0FhZmrwzLwk=" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="612" height="322" src="https://media.istockphoto.com/id/1319792120/photo/sink-hole.jpg?s=612x612&w=0&k=20&c=L9HNM9pVOCaDPGGRcQ-_SN71oE8jAE-t0FhZmrwzLwk=" width="518" /></a></div><p></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-8502486364099665622022-11-21T13:07:00.021+00:002023-01-13T11:58:04.990+00:00Escape From Model Land - Erica Thompson<p> <a href="https://basicbooks.uk/titles/erica-thompson/escape-from-model-land/9781529364873/" target="_blank">Escape From Model Land</a>, by <a href="http://www.ericathompson.co.uk/" target="_blank">Dr Erica Thompson</a>, is published on 24th November 2022.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNX5JD8V9elzpxQTHlj24BN7eWapz36l7CF9z0MkmA1cWFphcSQ_nD4fvDyPdNO5-Mh1fX9qXIM-Hwgz60_pwzAbk77aL88Qpv31Zqq0Z77aEhzUzjAdSZRN4lmaZv8_-Z1Aa4hDM2qsOIbZI1uD20Z48KopT0CtRYZT2uKierib3xAjZ6wEg/s675/015.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="439" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNX5JD8V9elzpxQTHlj24BN7eWapz36l7CF9z0MkmA1cWFphcSQ_nD4fvDyPdNO5-Mh1fX9qXIM-Hwgz60_pwzAbk77aL88Qpv31Zqq0Z77aEhzUzjAdSZRN4lmaZv8_-Z1Aa4hDM2qsOIbZI1uD20Z48KopT0CtRYZT2uKierib3xAjZ6wEg/s320/015.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><p>Erica Thompson is a mathematician but this is a non-technical book with very few numbers and certainly no equations. Have no fear, it's easy to read, and at about 230 pages is not overlong, with every word and every sentence counting, no padding. Take it slowly, many of the sentences are worth reading twice. And there are jokes.</p><p>It's hard to categorize this book, what with it being the first of its kind, but put it on the shelf next to Nick Taleb's The Black Swan, because it deals with a subject of profound importance to everyone, but which has not been given anything like the attention it deserves, leaving us all exposed to misunderstandings and risks.</p><p>Mathematical models have become all pervasive, their outputs used by decision makers in all walks of life, affecting us all. Yet for the most part these decision makers do not have a good understanding of how models are constructed, how they operate, their limitations and how fit they are for the purpose assumed of them. Models can be invaluable, but inappropriately used can be dangerous. We need to know.</p><p>Erica Thompson explores how models have been used in three broad areas of public life, the financial services industries, health care, with particular reference to the covid pandemic, and climate science. She is at pains to point out the invaluable contribution that mathematical modelling has made in these and other fields, but the purpose of her book is to warn of their limitations and the dangers involved when decision makers use models with insufficient understanding. Her deep insights expose things which have been hidden in Model Land and she provides the tools and checklists needed to navigate the real world more safely. </p><p>This is a book that should be read by all those involved in making decisions that are influenced by models, whether in business, science, or governance. And those of us not so directly involved, but subject to the decision-makers' decisions, would do well to read it too. That includes all of us.</p><p style="text-align: center;">*****</p><p>Here's what other others have said:<br /><br />A wise, lucid and compelling guide to how mathematical modelling shapes our world. Dr Thompson teaches us how to go from being unthinking consumers of models to sophisticated users, combining a rich variety of vivid examples and case studies with deep conceptual expertise, presented in a lively and accessible way<br />Stian Westlake, CEO, Royal Statistical Society<br /><br />Carefully researched and beautifully written, Dr Thompson's Escape from Model Land reveals how our progressively complex world is dominated by well-meaning experts' use and misuse of increasingly impenetrable models . . . For an open-minded reader keen to expose, understand and potentially reconstruct their own worldview, Escape from Model Land is, at the same time, an uncomfortable and uplifting read. It shines a gentle light on many of our own norms and beliefs<br />Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester.</p><p><br />A brilliant account of how models are so often abused and of how they should be used.<br />How do mathematical models shape our world - and how can we harness their power for good?Models are at the centre of everything we do.<br />Whether we use them or are simply affected by them, they act as metaphors that help us better understand the increasingly complex problems facing us in the modern world.<br />Without models, we couldn't begin to tackle three of the major challenges facing modern society: regulation of the economy, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.<br />Yet in recent years, the validity of the models we use has been hotly debated and there has been renewed awareness of the disastrous consequences when the makers and interpreters of models get things wrong. Drawing on contemporary examples from finance, climate and health policy, Erica Thompson explores what models are, why we need them, how they work and what happens when they go wrong.<br />This is not a book that argues we should do away with models, but rather, that we need to properly understand how they are constructed - and how some of the assumptions that underlie the models we use can have significant unintended consequences.<br />Unexpectedly humorous, thought-provoking and passionate, this is essential reading for everyone.<br />John Kay</p><p>An eye-opening account of the limits and uses of mathematical models . . . Thompson offers a host of lessons, among them that every model depends upon value judgments to determine what's included in them, that models should be understood as "not an objective mathematical reality, but a social idea," and that models contain the biases of those who make them, so increased diversity among modelers is essential for "greater insight, improved decision-making capacities and better outcomes" . . . The result is a thoughtful, convincing look at how data works<br />Publisher's Weekly<br /><br />Escape from Model Land demystifies the process of making the mathematical models that are increasingly used to make decisions about our lives, from the financial markets to the pandemic to climate change. A thought-provoking and helpful guide for data scientists and decision makers alike<br />Stephanie Hare, author of 'Technology Is Not Neutral'</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg26XM3DEBht08rpAWw_j0Ps2fP9BiibGb7TV8ipQ8d_LFd0E2yZTdMLbqy7AcQGcwYlNG95xxURq3vZOHNzZQo7bXUuyiULSfNcbPQ-hETzUjMv_ImM9Ep1pvgf-AcmEyuO0em5yD8Rbw0mVVPeM9Kxucy6XUD8FbzS9VMXYZ_VLdM_IiGEY/s300/016.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="238" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg26XM3DEBht08rpAWw_j0Ps2fP9BiibGb7TV8ipQ8d_LFd0E2yZTdMLbqy7AcQGcwYlNG95xxURq3vZOHNzZQo7bXUuyiULSfNcbPQ-hETzUjMv_ImM9Ep1pvgf-AcmEyuO0em5yD8Rbw0mVVPeM9Kxucy6XUD8FbzS9VMXYZ_VLdM_IiGEY/s1600/016.jpg" width="238" /></a></div><br /><p>The best place to buy the book is probably from <a href="https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Erica-Thompson/Escape-from-Model-Land--How-Mathematical-Models-Can-Lead-/27313054" target="_blank">Hive Books</a>, who currently have it listed at £16.59 including postage. Just saying.</p><p style="text-align: center;">**********</p><p style="text-align: left;">Here are a couple of pictures of Erica caught at work, at the <a href="https://lml.org.uk/" target="_blank">London Mathematical Laboratory</a>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyhYyOxcnocxSIAmfRsk0rcadV9pQedeDk-ftYeWQfBrxfX0fo3eVVFRWFr2Wy_VGA-BnuVCfJX4GAZMQ3DscOsWi2zzMtCK8VtlW5-rD5w2Wt95h9wnkWkHIPFegos4ZX6r4LJo_qnTkoG13Vlf26ZKmvxU9C0KnjMMzgK7QtRCYoJfizdT8/s1024/019.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyhYyOxcnocxSIAmfRsk0rcadV9pQedeDk-ftYeWQfBrxfX0fo3eVVFRWFr2Wy_VGA-BnuVCfJX4GAZMQ3DscOsWi2zzMtCK8VtlW5-rD5w2Wt95h9wnkWkHIPFegos4ZX6r4LJo_qnTkoG13Vlf26ZKmvxU9C0KnjMMzgK7QtRCYoJfizdT8/s320/019.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5MuPVe_TDXTxOAy5voO81xw8FwBzWKrUyPlEZoFa_mbnM1-P1m8sJ_JMPVA8IVsY_M-24QO-X3IApPwOuypN2iwlaDRTcxSsgqTVjxDj9U-IwZe_BbDMTd2zBVxebxUvgoOSI9sTomVbAF_koT8T61K_OkTKOXxG8w1qK1iuHma2bMSrHXbA/s1024/020.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5MuPVe_TDXTxOAy5voO81xw8FwBzWKrUyPlEZoFa_mbnM1-P1m8sJ_JMPVA8IVsY_M-24QO-X3IApPwOuypN2iwlaDRTcxSsgqTVjxDj9U-IwZe_BbDMTd2zBVxebxUvgoOSI9sTomVbAF_koT8T61K_OkTKOXxG8w1qK1iuHma2bMSrHXbA/s320/020.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br />Some copies have already found their way to the London Maths Lab library.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEAOEkrssDT7-yY_GCc6pzIhQPv1uOI1-riDMF6vhjhymQAzJim1HUVJn2gUtaBLmUHGIMZLgtGEWcNMm4ZdZzXgo8kgde-swHQ8vQf6OI94TCUuBzn48tl-EfpDI4_qUPgSMc8q0xMKHAbKnjzT5o9jHulLKPwHMhdMjTIgdh56N1gCHEDbk/s4032/021.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEAOEkrssDT7-yY_GCc6pzIhQPv1uOI1-riDMF6vhjhymQAzJim1HUVJn2gUtaBLmUHGIMZLgtGEWcNMm4ZdZzXgo8kgde-swHQ8vQf6OI94TCUuBzn48tl-EfpDI4_qUPgSMc8q0xMKHAbKnjzT5o9jHulLKPwHMhdMjTIgdh56N1gCHEDbk/s320/021.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If you are in North America I'm afraid you will find the cover is not quite as pretty. What does that say about the publisher's view of the difference between American and European audiences? <br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9RRARimcpm8S90HzDNxNPhskqBKNagfkaWItS_KudZePMXYXyEKBl967IhmWZjtjS3AODaEo67jvzwtYUxVJDNJOnZxPNloJRs177z7nnudGRQAfKL9OVoUBw4G0tmb9eHdp1mSt8-aNEB8KvL085PGF-RLzeI7TV90_TlrinAembNkQzUxI/s674/022.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="435" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9RRARimcpm8S90HzDNxNPhskqBKNagfkaWItS_KudZePMXYXyEKBl967IhmWZjtjS3AODaEo67jvzwtYUxVJDNJOnZxPNloJRs177z7nnudGRQAfKL9OVoUBw4G0tmb9eHdp1mSt8-aNEB8KvL085PGF-RLzeI7TV90_TlrinAembNkQzUxI/s320/022.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>A review in <a href="https://www.economist.com/culture/2022/11/30/two-new-books-explore-the-upside-of-big-data-and-ai">The Economist</a>: The Algorithm's Mercy<div><br /><div><div>The problems with algorithmic formulae are tackled in depth in “Escape from Model Land” by Erica Thompson of the London School of Economics. These statistical models are the backbone of big data and ai: if data is the input, algorithms are the tool and models are the product. They are everywhere, from e-commerce tips to economic and climate-change forecasts.</div><div><br />Yet rather like the full-scale map of an empire imagined by the writer Jorge Luis Borges, a perfect model of the teeming world will always be beyond reach. The task is to ensure that the abstractions correspond to reality as far as is humanly possible. “All models are wrong,” runs a venerable saying. “Some are useful.”</div><div><br />Ms Thompson focuses on a challenge she calls the Hawkmoth Effect. In the better known Butterfly Effect, a serviceable model becomes less reliable over time because of the complexity of what it is simulating, or because of inaccuracies in the original data. In the case of climate change, say, this might lead to a prediction for rising temperatures being out by a fraction of a degree. In the Hawkmoth Effect, by contrast, the model itself is flawed; it might fail to take full account of the interplay between humidity, wind and temperature. This sort of mistake can be much more misleading, and much harder to rectify.</div><div><br />The author calls on data geeks to improve their solutions to real-world issues, not merely refine their formulae—in other words, to escape from model land. “We do not need to have the best possible answer,” she writes, “only a reasonable one.” Before there is a statistical model, she notes, there is a mental version. Data scientists need self-awareness and empathy as well as mathematical skill. Ms Thompson asks data scientists to be conscious of the choices and values in a model’s design. </div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div><div style="text-align: center;">*****</div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>Update 6th December 2022, publication day for North America.<br /><br /><br />Jeremy Williams writing for <a href="https://earthbound.report/2022/12/05/escape-from-model-land-by-erica-thompson/" target="_blank">The Earthbound Report</a>.<br /><br />Mathematical models don’t often get a lot of attention from the general public. When they do, it’s rarely positive. Perhaps they have failed to predict a recession, or foretold pandemic doom scenarios that don’t materialise. All of a sudden it gets political, and everyone is talking about a science that they may or may not understand.<br /><br />For those who do want to understand what models are and what they can do, Erica Thompson has written a very useful book: <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/117/9781529364873">Escape from Model Land </a>– How mathematical models can lead us astray and what we can do about it. She’s a data scientist and fellow at the London School of Economics, with a background in climate modelling. Her book is a clear and a surprisingly playful exploration of what models can and can’t do, when they’re useful and when they’re not.<br /><br />Models are frameworks for thinking. They are how we form relationships between data, in order to understand the future. And while the focus is on mathematical models, Thompson takes a wide definition. We all use models all the time, even subconsciously. When we decide whether or not to take an umbrella with us as we leave the house, we assess the conditions outside against our past experience of weather and seasons. It’s a simple modelling exercise that will result in a best guess at chances of rain, and that will inform our decision.<br /><br />Of course, the models the book is most concerned with are computerised and complicated, including the ones used by weather forecasters. Others are used to forecast election results, monitor volcanic activity, model consumer behaviour in order to advertise to us, manage the economy or coordinate disaster response. We can’t avoid models. All the more reason to understand them.<br /><br />In the second half of the book there are specific chapters on economic, pandemic and climate modelling, but these are low on specifics and more concerned with the theory behind efforts to model such things. Overall, the book is quite philosophical in tone. It talks about how, in George Box’s famous phrase, “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” Thompson looks at models as metaphors, fictions, how they function culturally and politically. The national economy described as a household budget, for example, is a simplified model that politicians have used to justify their actions in what sound like common sense terms, but don’t reflect the money creating powers that governments have.<br /><br />Another thing politicians do sometimes is claim to follow the science, and Thompson warns about this. It’s in the jump from the neatly defined parameters of the model back to the real world that things most often go astray, and why Thompson calls the book Escape from Model Land. Models cannot make decisions. Models are created by people and interpreted by people. The lines of accountability trace back to the creators of the model, their assumptions and their biases and blind spots. Inevitably, sophisticated mathematical models are created by highly educated people in well funded institutions, and that position of privilege affects what their models see and don’t see. Without acknowledging this, following the science can be a way of blurring responsibility. Ultimately it is up to human beings to bring in the values that models can’t help us with, and “meaningfully integrate concepts such as care, love, responsibility, stewardship and community.”<br /><br />The book investigates all of this with metaphors and thought exercises, and Thompson has more fun with it than you might expect. There are birthday cakes, comparisons with astrology, the butterfly vs the hawkmoth effect, “the cat that looks most like a dog”. It’s full of creative ways of explaining things. It’s not technical, though readers with an interest in mathematics, computing and data will definitely get more from the book. And I finished it much better equipped to think about models and how we use them well, humbly, inclusively and with accountability, in our social decision making.</div><div><div><div style="text-align: center;">*****</div><br />Georgia Meyer (<a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/DSI/Research/Blog-posts/Book-review-Escape-from-Model-Land" target="_blank">LSE Department of Management</a>)<br /><br /><a href="https://basicbooks.uk/titles/erica-thompson/escape-from-model-land/9781529364873/">Escape from Model Land</a> provides a blueprint for the kind of critical thinking required for us to more responsibly continue to co-create realities through models. Long ubiquitously deployed in finance, economics and climate forecasting, their increasing adoption across all aspects of economies and societies by virtue of the increasing sophistication of machine learning and predictive analytics demand a much more intentional and reflective scrutiny about their nature and impacts than what is oft the case. Dr Thompson does just that in Escape from Model Land by: (i) teasing apart the complicated enmeshment of models as translators of and / or producers of realities; (ii) reviewing models’ necessarily incomplete and changing quantification and qualification of uncertainties; (iii) considering their value in terms of transparency of decision-making processes and (iv), asking the important question of who gets to make the models in the first place (and with what ends in mind)? <br /><br />Dr Thompson says that she ‘started thinking about these questions as a PhD student in Physics ten years ago’ when she ‘conducted a literature review on mathematical models of North Atlantic storms’. She realised that given the fact that all these peer-reviewed and published studies had ‘conflicting rather than overlapping uncertainty ranges’ an additionally important question (alongside figuring out how to predict the behaviour of North Atlantic storms) was ‘how we make inferences from models’. She sets up the ambition of the book as her effort to try and find a balance between two ‘unacceptable alternatives’: (i) taking models literally - not accounting for their misrepresentations of reality; or (ii) abandoning models and losing ‘lots of clearly valuable information’. The question she poses is: ‘how do we navigate the space between these extremes more effectively?’. <br /><br />Following this set up in Chapter 1 Locating Model Land, Chapter 2 Thinking Inside the Box puts forward a case for how models articulate, and constrain, the boundaries of our imaginations. In making this case she first discusses a necessary and careful interplay between simplification and complexity as prerequisites for model explanatory power, citing Von Neumann’s parable about fitting an elephant with four parameters whilst a model with five parameters would make it 'wiggle his trunk'. Moving beyond the Ockham’s Razor principle (go with the simplest explanation) Dr Thompson expands the discussion on what is in and out of scope of models by introducing The Phillips-Newlyn Machine (or MONIAC, Monetary National Income Analogue Calculator) which ‘conceptualises and physically represents money as liquid…and circulated around the economy at rates depending on key model parameters’. Her discussion of the opportunities and limitations provided by MONIAC - including the way it expanded the consideration of relations between things not just the things themselves - notes how ‘each choice of representation lends itself to certain kinds of imaginative extension’. It is one of my favourite passages in the book (there are many). <br /><br />Another chapter of the book, Models as Metaphors, riffs off a statement by Nobel Prize winning economist Peter Diamond’s Nobel lecture: ‘taking a model literally is not taking a model seriously’. Dr Thompson uses this starting point to set out how models have multi-dimensional purposes and applications depending on the phenomena at hand and the tacit acceptance of the nature of the stereotyping (reducing to simplicity) that is taking place in any given context within which a model is being deployed. In other words, she argues that we see models less as representations of reality and more as a companion to the version of reality that is acceptable in any given social context at any particular time. This is where questions of values - whose values - are at play when these ‘implicit value judgements are being made’ comes to the fore. <br /><br />This theme is expanded in various parts of the book to address the discrimination and dangerous stereotyping that arises when deeply flawed processes of constructing and applying models (and poor input data) are left unchecked, drawing on the polemical work of Cathy O’Neil, Emily Bender and Tinmit Gebru. What makes this chapter particularly interesting is the way Dr Thompson interrogates the value of model explainability across various contexts making the case that whilst in some (aforementioned e.g. discrimination) explainability is enmeshed with questions of accountability and fairness, in others (e.g. cyclone activity), the picture is less clear cut (if a model does more accurately predict cyclone activity but we don’t know how it was able to, is that a problem?). This is complex territory and the clarity and reflexivity that Dr Thompson deploys across this matrix of values, agency, context and decision-making reads like a ‘how-to’ for any researcher or practitioner working with models. Or, for that matter, for any human being with varied and changing levels of self-awareness about the internal working models we all use consciously and unconsciously to move through the world. <br /><br />These questions of how values intersect with science are addressed throughout the book in later chapters including one called The Accountability Gap. Here Dr Thompson draws on Birhane’s work mapping the territory of evaluative tools used in ML papers - noting how often the extent to which societal needs are met are absent from the discussion. In revisiting this theme the notion of objectivity in science is gently teased apart revealing the many constructed components that are inescapably bound up with processes of description, measurement and prediction. Where this thread leads is an instructive set of examples of various articulations of some kind of ‘social objectivity’ - which rests on multiple contributory accounts that are ultimately shared and agreed upon as a basis from which to move forward. Of course this is a notably different kind of treatment of scientific knowledge than that which has long held popularised dominance in many key areas of policy and common parlance. <br /><br />Dr Thompson ends the book with five principles for responsible modelling, making a point about the human cognitive counterpart to navigating the world with models: that, ‘we must ourselves navigate the real-world territory and live up to the challenge of making the best of our imperfect knowledge to create a future worth living in.’. Amidst many important takeaways from the book (who’s values?; complexity vs simplicity trade-offs; explainability as virtue of accountability by context; obfuscation and misrepresentation via compression of variables in models and measurement), this point about human capacities feels critical. That ultimately, we cannot cede too much explanatory power to models - divorcing those who create and use them from the kind of transparency and humility to their imperfections. That we cannot sidestep our responsibilities to interrogate the decisions taken on the basis of models as new information or additional viewpoints come to light. Finally, what I take from this book, is that we ought regularly escape our own (internal) model lands that shape how we develop priorities, apply principles and evaluate our interactions with the world around us.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCHBATY1wUD4oIBmJjDkq9qmeRyLWCBZYeyPJwDYTAodTSRTvAGAp4YtrFYq335zLm3aNu6oxMfZ0T7nDgL1GZ-KGR8GPW0N4mZZgGMlzSPcl2aJgrGo7bOSqHgGemKYmGTMHJay8R50eHEQOLE_mzKrbLkwNBMmqAv3CxXJbtpryzmEHbzq0/s1799/023.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="944" data-original-width="1799" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCHBATY1wUD4oIBmJjDkq9qmeRyLWCBZYeyPJwDYTAodTSRTvAGAp4YtrFYq335zLm3aNu6oxMfZ0T7nDgL1GZ-KGR8GPW0N4mZZgGMlzSPcl2aJgrGo7bOSqHgGemKYmGTMHJay8R50eHEQOLE_mzKrbLkwNBMmqAv3CxXJbtpryzmEHbzq0/s320/023.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781541600980#:~:text=Thompson%2C%20a%20senior%20policy%20fellow,avoid%20taking%20them%20too%20literally." target="_blank">Publishers Weekly</a><br /><br />Thompson, a senior policy fellow at the London School of Economics, debuts with an eye-opening account of the limits and uses of mathematical models. Thompson explains that models are metaphors for the real world, and that it’s crucial to avoid taking them too literally. “Force equals mass times acceleration is the ‘correct model’ to use to solve the question” of when a truck would reach 60 mph, for example, but real-world conditions contain variables that the model can’t account for. Thompson offers a host of lessons, among them that every model depends upon value judgments to determine what’s included in them, that models should be understood as “not an objective mathematical reality, but a social idea,” and that models contain the biases of those who make them, so increased diversity among modelers is essential for “greater insight, improved decision-making capacities and better outcomes.” Thompson wraps up with a list of principles for “responsible modelling,” including deciding “to what purpose(s)” models should be applied, and if “decisions informed by this model will influence other people or communities” who weren’t considered or consulted in the making of the model. The result is a thoughtful, convincing look at how data works.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Japanese readers may be interested in this review by <a href="http://books.macska.org/erica-thompson%E8%91%97%E3%80%8Cescape-from-model-land-how-mathematical-models-can-lead-us-astray-and-what-we-can-do-about-it%E3%80%8D" target="_blank">@emigrl</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 19px;">かつては経済の分析に採用されることが主だったが近年あらゆる分野に応用され、政府によるさまざまな政策の根拠としても影響力を増している数理モデルについて、現実との乖離が生まれる理由やその倫理的な側面などについて解説する本。著者はロンドン・スクール・オブ・エコノミクスに所属するデータサイエンティスト。</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 19px;">******</span></div><br />Dr. David A. Shaywitz writes in the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/escape-from-model-land-review-seduced-by-numbers-11672182577">Wall Street Journal</a>:<br /><br />We live in an information age, as the cliché has it—really an age of information overload. But “measured quantities do not speak for themselves,” observes Erica Thompson, a statistician and a fellow at the London School of Economics. Data, she notes, are given meaning “only through the context and framing provided by models.”<br /><br />When we want to know how rapidly a new infectious virus is likely to spread, we turn to mathematical models. Models are used by climate scientists to project global warming; by options traders to price contracts; by the Congressional Budget Office to forecast the economic effects of legislation; by meteorologists to warn of approaching storms. Without models, Ms. Thompson says, data “would be only a meaningless stream of numbers.”<br /><br />Ubiquitous and persuasive, models also drive decisions—one reason why, in Ms. Thompson’s view, they require our urgent attention. She tells us that, as a graduate student studying North Atlantic storms, she noticed how different models predicted different overall effects and produced contradictory results. She started to reflect on the role of models—as metaphors, as tools for understanding, as expressions of sociopolitical power. “Escape From Model Land” offers a contemplative, densely encapsulated summary of her reflection and research.<br /><br />Models seek to represent the real world, but they live outside it. Indeed, they exist in their own “wonderful place,” what Ms. Thompson dubs “Model Land.” In Model Land, the assumptions of a model are considered “literally true,” enabling expansive exploration and ambitious predictions. The problem is that Model Land is easy to enter but difficult to escape. Having built “a beautiful internally consistent model,” Ms. Thompson writes, it can be “emotionally difficult to acknowledge that the initial assumptions on which the whole thing is built are literally not true.”<br /><br />There are all sorts of ways that models can lead us astray. A small measurement error on an input can lead to wildly inaccurate forecasts—a phenomenon known as the Butterfly Effect. Fortunately, this type of uncertainty is often manageable. Far more problematic are what Ms. Thompson calls “unquantifiable unknowns”—things that are left out of a model’s calculation because they can’t be anticipated, such as the unexpected arrival of a transformative technology or the abrupt collapse of a robust market. It is not always true, she observes, that the data we have now will be relevant to the future—as traders discovered in the stock-market crash of 1987, when their models catastrophically failed.<br /><br />Beyond the inherent inability of models to account for the unaccountable, models also reflect the biases of their creators. We may be inclined to regard models as objective expressions of truth, yet they are deliberately constructed interpretations, imbued with the values and viewpoints of the modelers—primarily, as Ms. Thompson notes, well-educated, middle-class individuals. During the pandemic, models “took more account of harms to some groups of people than others,” resulting in a “moral case” for lockdowns that was “partial and biased.” Modelers who worked from home—while others maintained the supply chain—often overlooked “all of the possible harms” of the actions their models were suggesting. And even when models try to describe the effects of different courses of action, it’s human beings who must ultimately weigh the benefits and harms. “Science cannot tell us how to value things,” Ms. Thompson says. “The idea of ‘following the science’ is meaningless.”<br /><br />The promise and peril of models, Ms. Thompson recognizes, has deep resonance in biomedicine, where so-called model organisms, like yeast and zebrafish, have led to foundational insights and accelerated the development of therapeutics. At the same time, treatments that work brilliantly in Model Land often fail in people, devastating patients and disappointing drug developers. The search for improved disease models can be complicated when proponents of one model suppress research into alternative approaches, as the late journalist Sharon Begley documented in a powerful 2019 report. Ms. Thompson perceptively critiques the adoption of singular “gold standard” models, noting that the “solidification” of one set of assumptions can lock us into one way of thinking and close off other important avenues of inquiry.<br /><br />The statistician George Box once observed that “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” For Ms. Thompson, the real utility of models is as a tool for exploration rather than a mechanism to divine the truth or predict the future. “The process of generating a model changes the way that we think about a situation,” she writes; it “strengthens some concepts and weakens others.” Recalling President Eisenhower’s legendary maxim—that “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”—she argues that relying on models solely for their output misses the indispensable value of the process of model development: a deeper understanding of trade-offs, and the agility to adapt if foundational assumptions unexpectedly change.<br /><br />While acknowledging our “overenthusiasm for mathematical solutions,” Ms. Thompson emphatically counsels not abstinence but discipline and humility. Clarity about the purpose of the model matters, she says: An epidemiological model may inform us about viral transmission and hospital pressure but not about the economic effects of closing businesses. Modelers should acknowledge the value judgments implicit in their models, explain what makes a model “good” and describe relevant limitations. But it’s up to us to learn from models without being drawn in by their seductive elegance, and to ensure that the lessons from Model Land find substantive expression where it actually matters: in our messy, material, magnificent world.<br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">*****</div><div>Felix Martin writes in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/dec/30/escape-from-model-land-by-erica-thompson-review-the-power-and-pitfalls-of-prediction" target="_blank">The Guardian:</a><br /><br />Escape from Model Land by Erica Thompson review – the power and pitfalls of prediction</div><div><br />From financial forecasts to the climate crisis, a constructive and nuanced critique of mathematical modelling from a data scientist</div><br />The only function of economic forecasting,” wrote the great American economist John Kenneth Galbraith, “is to make astrology look respectable.” It is characteristic of Erica Thompson’s sprightly and highly original new book on the uses and abuses of mathematical modelling that she dares to turn Galbraith’s verdict on its head. The medieval practice of casting horoscopes, she shows in one typically engaging section that embodies her most important themes, has a surprising amount to teach us about the modern practice of using models to guide policy.<br /><br />The topic is an exceptionally important and timely one. The Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and turbulence in financial markets are just three examples of how fundamental mathematical modelling has become to decision-making in many areas of modern life.<br /><br />Thompson’s argument is not, of course, that scientific forecasting has made no progress over the past half-millennium. Today’s researchers benefit from a world awash with data on natural phenomena and human behaviour, making the raw material for model-building vastly richer than it once was. Mathematical and statistical techniques are far more sophisticated – and we have modern computing power to help us crunch the numbers. These differences make the artificial worlds which modern economists, meteorologists and epidemiologists build dramatically more hi-res than anything the benighted court astrologer could come up with.<br /><br />But just like their medieval counterparts, today’s “Model Lands” – the hypothetical worlds we construct in order to explore the future – have no practical value until their analyses and predictions are applied in real life. It is in this all-important step – the escape of Thompson’s title – that the parallels between astrology and mathematical modelling become particularly relevant. The central common challenge is working out how much of what we learn in pristine but artificial models remains valid in messy but concrete real life.<br /><br />One way of figuring this out is quantitative: you compare the predictions of the model against new, incoming data. A critical obstacle here is that predictions based on modern mathematical models, no less than those based on medieval horoscopes, usually depend on an extensive hinterland of assumptions. That makes testing the validity of their forecasts intrinsically difficult: were the assumptions wrong, or was it just that not enough assumptions were included?<br /><br />Another problem is that the fresh, real-world data needed to test the results is often not even available. It will flood in quickly and easily for day-ahead weather forecasts, for example – but might arrive centuries too late to discriminate between today’s long-term climate models.<br /><br />That’s why, Thompson explains, a second, qualitative way of determining the success of predictions is much more common: reliance on expert judgment. The pitfalls of this route were also well known to the medieval courts. Only those versed in the most cutting-edge mathematical knowledge were skilled enough to interpret medieval horoscopes. As such, it was in practice impossible for the client to come to their own conclusions. The result was that an exclusive guild, whose true competence remained unknown, ended up marking their own homework. The same could be said today.<br /><br />Another hazard stalking ancient and modern modellers alike is that they fall in love with the sheer beauty and complexity of their own constructions. Having eaten the lotuses of Model Land, they can’t bring themselves to escape. Scenarios and predictions are simply accepted as if the model actually is real life.<br /><br />“Such naive Model Land realism,” Thompson warns, “can have catastrophic effects because it invariably results in an underestimation of uncertainties and exposure to greater-than-expected risk.” Anyone who remembers Goldman Sachs’s chief financial officer blaming the global credit crunch of 2007 on the occurrence of “twenty-five standard deviation events, several days in a row” knows what Thompson is getting at. If it couldn’t happen in the model, it just wasn’t meant to happen in real life.<br /><br />It’s not all bad news. Thompson is a data scientist and mathematical modeller herself, and her book is far from an exercise in model-bashing. It is instead a nuanced and constructive critique of what remains an invaluable analytical method – just not necessarily for the reasons you might expect.<br /><br />For example, even though the astrologers’ models of natural forces and human behaviour were wrong, the practice of casting horoscopes could still be a useful aid to policymaking. They brought systematic thinkers into the orbit of otherwise impulsive rulers; it allowed the discussion of important, otherwise taboo subjects in the safe context of interpreting the stars; and it could give decision-makers the public narrative they needed in order to act.<br /><br />The same applies today. As Thompson shows, mathematical model-building can still be a constructive tool, even if the models themselves are flawed. As Dwight D Eisenhower said: “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”.<div><div style="text-align: center;">*****</div><div><br /></div></div><div>Here's Mike Jakeman's review for <a href="https://www.strategy-business.com/article/The-limitations-of-mathematical-modeling" target="_blank">Stragegy+Business</a><br /><br />The limitations of mathematical modeling<br />A new book demonstrates the danger of the perfect model.</div><br />The single most famous weather forecast in British history is also one of the worst. In October 1987, a meteorologist working for the British Broadcasting Corporation reassured a concerned viewer that rumors of an approaching hurricane were unfounded. Hours later, 22 people had been killed and billions of pounds of damage done by highly unusual hurricane-force winds. Although the erroneous forecast owed to a lack of data in parts of the North Atlantic, it was the meteorologist, Michael Fish, who became a synonym for flawed prediction models. The work of everyone who uses such mathematical models to produce explanations of how complicated things work is the subject of a new book by Erica Thompson, an academic at the London School of Economics. Her contention is that too many of us have become ensconced in a comfortable but ultimately unhelpful place, which she dubs Model Land.<div><br />Thompson believes Model Land is a great place for theorists—economists, climatologists, financiers, political scientists—because models are entirely controllable. Experimenters can set the parameters, run their tests, and write with confidence about their results. There are no messy or uncomplicated factors. “Whole careers can be spent in Model Land,” Thompson writes, “doing difficult and exciting things.” Except these things are not real. Or rather, they do not apply to the real world. It is this delusion that has led governments and businesses that are unquestioning of model results into trouble—and prompted Thompson to write her redress, Escape from Model Land.<br /><br />In the late 1940s, one of Thompson’s predecessors at LSE, an undergraduate named Bill Phillips, and his colleague Walter Newlyn, built a physical model of the UK economy out of water tanks, pipes, and pumps to demonstrate how something very complicated works in a simplified, visual way. The water represented the flow of money through the economy and was held in tanks, representing banks and the government, while the pump represented taxation. The aim, as Thompson interprets, was to set the pumps and valves at a level “that allows for a closed loop that prevents all of the water ending up in one place and the other tanks running dry.”<br /><br />But to Thompson, Phillips’s work is a product of Model Land. “The only way that the Phillips–Newlyn machine can represent economic failure, for example, is by the running-dry of the taxation pumps; there is no concept of political failure by…failing to provide adequate public services. And the only success is a continued flow of money.” In other words, the land of Phillips’s model is a creative and admirable approximation of how real economies work, but it has edges and limits to its scope that do not apply to the real world.<br /><br />And when we let these models dictate behavior in the real world, we flirt with disaster. Thompson writes an excellent section on financial crises to illustrate her point. The classic mistake made by banks, hedge funds, and other investors is “assuming the data we have are relevant for the future we expect.” During times of stability, this approach can be profitable. But when events that models believe are very unlikely suddenly materialize, as the collapse of Southeast Asian currencies did in 1997–98 or the unravelling of the US mortgage market a decade later, model-guided investors can be caught out.<br /><br />Thompson believes these failures are often owing to misaligned incentives: “Those who correctly estimate significant tail risks [i.e., deviations from the normal distribution in a statistical model] may not be recognized or rewarded for doing so. Before the event, tail risks are unknown anyway if they can only be estimated from past data,” and “after the event, there are other things to worry about.” In short, it was in investors’ interest to design a model that characterized unlikely risks as infinitesimally so, and regulators weren’t paying attention.<br /><br />So why should we bother with models at all? Occasionally, Thompson believes, they do get it right. Her preferred example concerns research by two chemists, F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, who in the 1970s modeled the potential impact on the ozone layer of the continued release of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. Within 15 years of their research, an international agreement, the Montreal Protocol, had been signed to limit CFC use, and it is now possible that the ozone layer could recover to its 1980 level by 2050. “The acceptability of the model was a function of the relatively simple context and the low costs of action,” Thompson explains, before warning, “this is in direct contrast with the situation for climate change.”<br /><br />In the end, Thompson comes back to experts. Michael Fish interpreted his data correctly, but the data itself was not sufficient. The real mistake made by the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, was putting too much faith in its model. She recounts the Challenger disaster in 1986. Previous missions had revealed several faults in the space shuttle’s O-rings, which sealed its rocket boosters. Some engineers had calculated that the likelihood of a major disaster was high. Others saw it differently: the fact that Challenger had been able to complete the previous flights provided a data set that underlined its strength. “On the face of it, and with reference to the data,” Thompson argues, “either scenario is feasible.” It is only when the modeling is supplemented with expert judgment that we stand a chance of escaping from Model Land and finding ourselves with information that can be applied in the real world.</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">*****</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><div>Anthony Sadar has written a good review in the <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/12/book-review-escape-from-model-land/" target="_blank">Washington Times</a>:</div><br />In the early days of my career in meteorology, which included determining the impact of air pollution emissions using mathematical models, one of my bosses, concerned about the outcome of a computer model I was using to assess a contentious industrial operation, asked me: “What will the model show?” I replied facetiously: “Well, what do you want it to show?”<br /><br />In no way was I going to manipulate a model to get the results I or anyone else wanted. But the point is that models can produce results intentionally or unintentionally skewed by the modelers. Intentional tampering is akin to the adage “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure,” while unintentional bias can manifest itself in almost innumerable ways.<br /><br />In “Escape From Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It,” <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/erica-thompson/">Erica Thompson</a> provides a thorough, thoughtful treatment of the whys and wherefores of modeling and how to improve the practice, avoiding unintentional bias. Ms. <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/erica-thompson/">Thompson</a> is “a senior policy fellow at the London School of Economics’ Data Science Institute and a fellow of the London Mathematical Laboratory” with a doctorate from Imperial College and many years of modeling experience. As such, <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/erica-thompson/">she</a> is well qualified to expound and comment on the world of modeling.<br /><br />“Escape From Model Land” contains 10 well-written, accessible, relatable chapters that seamlessly incorporate engaging pertinent vignettes. The book progresses from defining the idealized locale of Model Land in Chapter 1 to showing with honed insight and practical guidance how to escape from Model Land in Chapter 10. The five principles for responsible modeling spelled out in Chapter 10 are especially helpful for improving modeling and the modeler.<br /><br />The journey between Chapters 1 and 10 includes many stops that frequently prompt reflection on the personal bias of modelers, the role of expert opinion in model construction, expanding perspective to improve model applicability and reality, and the like. One chapter addresses a topic that the author is especially well versed in and is appropriately titled “The Atmosphere Is Complicated.” Other chapters adeptly focus on financial and pandemic modeling.<br /><br />“Escape From Model Land” rightly reminds the reader of the ubiquitous paramount importance of knowing the assumptions and limitations of any model. For instance, the book notes that “there is a responsibility for misunderstandings or failures to communicate the limitations of models and the pitfalls inherent in using them to inform public policy-making. If modeling is to be taken seriously as an input to decision-making, we need to be clearer on this front, and part of that is acknowledging the social element of modeling rather than taking it to be a simple prediction tool that can be either right or wrong.”<br /><br />Along this same vein, but in the wider context of science practice and public perception, “Escape From Model Land” observes: “If we are serious about addressing lack of confidence in science, it is necessary for those who currently make their living from and have built their reputation on their models to stop trying to push their version of reality on others.”<br /><br />I frequently train professionals on the fundamentals of air pollution dispersion modeling. And regarding the reliability of model output, I remind my students that besides remembering the adage that “computers help you make mistakes at the speed of light,” once you get a result, ask yourself, “Does the answer make sense?”<br /><br />Furthermore, relative to the essentials and uses of modeling, in my experience, a model is a tentative representation of an observation based on the interpretation of available information, a tool used to simulate real-world conditions. Yet among other things, “Escape From Model Land” shows that models are also “metaphors that facilitate communication, frame narratives and include value judgments with scientific information.”<br /><br />Physicist Richard Feynman once observed: “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” By extension, if your model does not sufficiently represent reality, it’s wrong, or at least a large dose of humble rethinking of your model inputs is necessary. “Escape From Model Land” is a book that can help with that rethink and get you from Model Land to Realityville.<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">*****</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-52876870317449282032022-03-28T22:14:00.004+01:002022-03-29T20:11:19.157+01:00Let's Talk About Sex<p><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Biology is complicated. Kindness and respect don’t have to be. </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">- Rebecca Helm.</span></p><p>Many people talk about sex and gender and most of them have very firm
opinions despite having little understanding of biology. Many regard the issue
as quite simple, as simple as the ‘obvious fact’ that there are two sexes and
everybody is one or the other. Neat and tidy boxes make a simple life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The biology most people encountered at school taught them that sex
depends on a pair of chromosomes; if you have two X chromosomes (XX) you are
female and if you have both an X and Y chromosome (XY) you are male. Easy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">It’s only in the advanced level biology class that we learn that there
is one gene on the Y chromosome that matters to sex, the SRY gene. During embryonic
development the SRY protein turns on male associated genes so having the SRY
gene makes you genetically male. Sometimes, however, the SRY gene is not on the
Y and sometimes it appears on an X chromosome.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">If you have a Y chromosome but without the SRY gene then physically you
will be female, genetically you are female, while chromosomally you’re male (XY).
But if the SRY gene appears on an X chromosome you will be physically male and genetically
male yet chromosomally female (XX).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Now sex-related genes turn on production of hormones is specific areas
of the body, and reception of those hormones by cells in other parts of the
body. ‘Hormonal male’ means you produce a ‘normal’ level of male-associated
hormones, and, similarly, ‘hormonal female’ means you produce ‘normal levels of
female associated hormones. We are, however, into the situation of two
overlapping bell-curves or normal distributions. A small proportion of females
will have a higher level of ‘male’ hormones than a small proportion of males.
And vice versa.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Summing the possibilities, as you are developing your body may not produce
enough hormones for your genetic sex, leading you to be genetically male or
female, chromosomally male or female, hormonally non-binary and physically
non-binary. Actually, that’s still too simple. Cells have receptors to receive the
signals from sex hormones, but they don’t always work. It all leads to a body
that can be anywhere from male, through non-binary, to female.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Can we point to what the absolute cause of biological sex is? Can we
safely label people? Is it fair to judge people by it?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">We could appeal to the numbers, after all surely, it’s safe to say that
most people are either male or female? As Rebecca Helm<a href="file:///C:/Users/biffv/Documents/Biff/Writings/Liminal/LiminalBook.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> put
it: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Biological sex is complicated. Before you discriminate against someone
on the basis of biological sex and identity, ask yourself? Have you seen YOUR
chromosomes? Do you know the genes of the people you love? The hormones of the
people you work with? The state of their cells? Since the answer will obviously
by no, please be kind, respect people’s right to tell you who they are, and
remember that you don’t have all the answer. Again: biology is complicated.
Kindness and respect don’t have to be.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">This has been a very brief and introductory comment, far from exhaustive as to the complexity of biology. There is much more. And we haven’t begun to think about how our brain interacts with all
this stuff – but that’s for another day, although it’s the most important part.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -3.05pt;"><br /><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsY4PVVhrrSJuh15AtFwWBcB81Q3dJoLDG4c1jOrnsiuFBG_VERbbMbTT0w8gXFSK9rLmnEnQqjxLFjpAlgB_8H4MuB1ql7LS2pMaKCJh4-ajCqi_uGtuOCOMyhq3I3q8Q7hn8BfRG4XBEq9yG3OOULEoFfLRouuEYmxpKdlkN8C_Cl979Ux4/s1900/002.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1900" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsY4PVVhrrSJuh15AtFwWBcB81Q3dJoLDG4c1jOrnsiuFBG_VERbbMbTT0w8gXFSK9rLmnEnQqjxLFjpAlgB_8H4MuB1ql7LS2pMaKCJh4-ajCqi_uGtuOCOMyhq3I3q8Q7hn8BfRG4XBEq9yG3OOULEoFfLRouuEYmxpKdlkN8C_Cl979Ux4/s320/002.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><p></p>
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<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
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<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/biffv/Documents/Biff/Writings/Liminal/LiminalBook.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Helm,
Rebecca, from a thread on Twitter @RebeccaRHelm 12/19/2019<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div><br />biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-77166956647712827552022-03-13T12:51:00.003+00:002022-03-16T17:23:05.545+00:00Ukraine 05<p>Who owns our gas?</p><p>A few fields away from my house on the Lincolnshire Marsh is a small gas field that has been in production, albeit intermittently, for a couple of decades. It stopped producing when the Theddlethorpe Gas Terminal closed but work is currently proceeding to reconnect the field directly to the National Grid pipeline and then restart production.</p><p class="MsoNormal">And what do you know? Saltfleetby has its
own oligarch in the shape of Patrick Meade, 8th Earl of Clanwilliam and
inextricable links to Russia. Paddy Clanwilliam is the non-executive director
of Angus Energy, the company that now operates the Saltfleetby gas field. He
also chairs London-listed Eurasia Drilling Company, Russia’s largest oilfield
services company, a non- executive director of FTSE premium listed Polyus Gold,
Russia’s largest gold company. He has held the position of Independent Member
of the Board of Directors at AFK Sistema OAO, since June 29, 2015. Sistema is one
of the largest private investors in the Russian economy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Paddy Clanwilliam is five years younger than Boris Johnson
so their paths at Eton may not have been close, but he has been active in the
Conservative Party, as a Councillor for Chelsea and Kensington and as a party
donor.<br />
<br />
The ownership of the Saltfleet gas field has been complex. Angus Energy has a partner in Saltfleetby Energy Limited. This company has undergone a few name changes over the years, Wingas Storage UK Ltd (owned by the Russian state owned Gazprom, via a German subsidiary), Roc Oil (UK) Ltd and Candecca Resources Ltd. Companies House lists Saltfleetby Energy as having had 59 directors, but 58 of them, including several Russians, have resigned, leaving just one, Paul Forrest. Open Corporates gives first in the list of ‘Ultimate Beneficial Owners’ as the Russian Federation.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meade_arms_(Earl_of_Clanwilliam).svg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgKXY-NoTCMmLT5xopSMK1S9jshVyqr-Cjol4pImLqvtyVgoXfrzuoraLwfPrQj6gYmqqzhahnRHOwwr2wtw_cW2xQYVMHV2vJ4axzP53KgoRRe8MKf9uwj6xeVewIm-Gkr35-CDNVA-uiZ-UBwvcI94oS6N6R6HwHHnRYquFFRnIrjrtuUVLM=s320" width="291" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The Earl of Clanwilliam's coat of arms.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As I suggested previously, it would be a good thing if the West stopped all payments for oil and gas to Russia forthwith. Let's add to the total embargo the removal of any possibility that the beneficial owner of Saltfleetby Gas Field, the Russian Federation, can profit from gas production in Lincolnshire.</div><div style="text-align: center;">************</div><div style="text-align: left;">Post script: Here is the letter that I have written to my MP, Victoria Atkins, and three Lincolnshire County Councillors, Martin Hill, Colin Davie and Daniel McNally.<br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The Saltfleetby Gas Field, on the Lincolnshire Marsh,
is operated by Angus Energy, under the chairmanship of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Patrick
Meade, 8th Earl of Clanwilliam, and</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> Saltfleetby Energy.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> The
beneficial owner of Saltfleetby Energy is The Russian Federation, and Paddy
Clanwilliam accumulated much of his fortune from his interests in the Russian
oil and gold industries.<br />
<br />
While it is appreciated that there is a strategic argument in favour of
developing onshore gas production, under the present circumstances it is
undesirable that the Russian Federation benefits from such production.<br />
<br />
Gas production stopped in 2017 with the closure of Theddlethorpe Gas Terminal,
which left the field stranded. Lincolnshire County Council granted planning consent
to Angus Energy to reconfigure the site so that it could be reconnected to the
National Transmission System. Production is expected to resume shortly.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><i>Please outline what steps you will take to ensure that Mr Putin receives
no money from Lincolnshire gas production.</i><br /><br /><span style="color: red;">16/03/2022 Post-Post script:<br />Further delving into Companies House revealed <a href="https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/document-api-images-live.ch.gov.uk/docs/jO7Hn_DTjvxbE2yBAoc9tf2a4xjvRgIvslHsn9m538s/application-pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAWRGBDBV3GMNLCDFG%2F20220316%2Feu-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20220316T164216Z&X-Amz-Expires=60&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEBYaCWV1LXdlc3QtMiJIMEYCIQCBm3tMwUALbrsd871CBIysE1b44rRoFnb3nOym3xS%2FuAIhAKlXRhi44EY4BeN%2FXgj4YIrs6I9896qySaeuAN1i6EWzKoMECI7%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEQBBoMNDQ5MjI5MDMyODIyIgyccTgC8xLRJV3CUx0q1wN15CUdAStqPZFm7u8mzqJcIi9sfn6VkKnE0XT6ksQM2DBX8LNQde6g4jRZBiVmUapQUedgNYUeuRCYV66KMpjTbg0f9w2RS%2F4vNXzjpP21qBeFeqmy4gZaR%2F1XwFVjnl1SiV6G7IkZeTdoSQW0XH0GZiRnDqY4VFDSvUR3qBVrlMB%2FAv1yFPnfQQZuj%2F%2FMOyahUG%2BvxDuhwDzZK3fxg2voC1g2BDS8ZCtdH9K8lwVka%2Bp4OkwnEnEVUTN5wudGENOEl7uGRynPvUrfJjv7pUnIA%2BioADCn68ohtVXpkOxDZvD5TFAzFW%2BEx9XZc8pj3eV1dFnMTaZK7vr76H67L8k1GHV3umAk1Gj5oS1INSzT%2BI6TPFJhtaW6fC6hKlXtVJcigqKyAfXCcMgKjfsqOs%2F9eUv6scgAN8HxoA8S3bFP5FgI4j%2BWwSwNyI%2B9wX2Ipf%2BCQvX5vZkuNruJRz7%2B9oa0P0Sbk5Knu7hhm1ClFwi480a0pbcdkr8KWR6SC0%2FFW53yegV3q3RxrQPvUQ3%2FGnfyMje1o90zye3fbrZPa2NQ1wHRxbLuaOrxqBzhPvDbsrJ%2BYzeKSl58Q8PqvNsGkES%2FFM2MEe1DF5HqaqEVSwiNqtmcAxMIUscwtcjHkQY6pAEh%2FnTod3Nwa8iLG7lQ87RZIJeLp2iNN0sMU66NN%2B8%2FeCYXXQyfabpsekR5TjBiNH5CLrA9NFP5ko%2FwDPfbGlwqV81omiNl0x010nATCaYSfS%2B1K5qcawD7D5bDPKJ%2FhmK2foOHn2kFinSblzGBWuNR4vG0n3EVD8pEDnvNTIVjQA9R21PL10ZQtjmvHEZidkchuJ8eVVT6r3w94aAy5%2BrVMSpLyg%3D%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&response-content-disposition=inline%3Bfilename%3D%22companies_house_document.pdf%22&X-Amz-Signature=4dc0476d067154b08aaf8093dbe2aae0da95f727e92a2877ce1161cc18a5200c" target="_blank">this document</a>, which suggests that the Russian Federation may no longer be a beneficial owner of Saltfleetby Energy.<br /><br />However, there is another company, named Saltfleetby Energy Europe, also run by Paul Forrest, the beneficial owner of which is still recorded as The Russian Federation.<br /><br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimJD7I3-i2bsAKvjb6dyM3InsH-MfW7t3FB3xsF8k80_yTyUkVJVrRqDmJQdwaRhiQfH22-sC2RcZdha-xioY3dZRzOPEmylv3JbWQdER0OfSEzAolrd4YoDvzTQOk_PkU5_otKw8L0p24Ev58fXAm9k2inF-LXYSM3C0jl25tKdnFpVnHw9Y=s774" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="774" data-original-width="702" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimJD7I3-i2bsAKvjb6dyM3InsH-MfW7t3FB3xsF8k80_yTyUkVJVrRqDmJQdwaRhiQfH22-sC2RcZdha-xioY3dZRzOPEmylv3JbWQdER0OfSEzAolrd4YoDvzTQOk_PkU5_otKw8L0p24Ev58fXAm9k2inF-LXYSM3C0jl25tKdnFpVnHw9Y=s320" width="290" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Source: <a href="https://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/12943680" target="_blank">Open Corporates</a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span><p></p></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-79544727558612993432022-03-09T18:17:00.002+00:002022-03-09T18:20:30.593+00:00Ukraine 04<p> As we saw in the Nuremberg Trials, Hitler did not act alone. And neither does Putin. His power as a dictator rests on the support he receives from other powerful people. They are powerful because they receive support from a significant segment of Russian society that is steeped in a culture very different from that which prevails in the West.</p><p>To begin to get a glimpse of what is driving Putin's Ukrainian war we might do worse than look at Aleksandr Dugin.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjK8SRS0w0qmE8WcxvaHiQjFokGvhdZzPbhxHA4p1Xizancu_xEwbGnhk6XiEBkSSpE-KwTIgVGC4kGWsgzx43JyHKmK47dR0du5N1TxQBZjIFmi2vE0HibBdlwl8pv6cRJKQJsgHXQXg6IgaXsh35fBWcVV8zMwzhDqQ_-cFAgfOzyrjWc_Cw=s926" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="926" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjK8SRS0w0qmE8WcxvaHiQjFokGvhdZzPbhxHA4p1Xizancu_xEwbGnhk6XiEBkSSpE-KwTIgVGC4kGWsgzx43JyHKmK47dR0du5N1TxQBZjIFmi2vE0HibBdlwl8pv6cRJKQJsgHXQXg6IgaXsh35fBWcVV8zMwzhDqQ_-cFAgfOzyrjWc_Cw=w387-h256" width="387" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I don't suppose most folk have heard of him, but it's high time we did. What better place to start our education on Dugin than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>?<br /><br />Why is he important? Because his ideas have encapsulated a particular strand of thinking within Russia and his 1997 book, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics" target="_blank">Foundations of Geopolitics</a></i>, has been used in the training of the Russian military leadership. To our Western eyes it may seem crazy stuff but for many Russians it is what drives them on, to create a global power that stretches from Dublin to Vladivostok. <br /><br />Much has been written about Aleksandr Dugin; the warnings have been clear, but mostly ignored. Here's some reading to catch up on:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28229785" target="_blank">2014 <i>Russian nationalist thinker Dugin sees war with Ukraine.</i> Dina Newman.</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31838096" target="_blank">2015 Ukraine crisis: US sanctions target Russia ideologue. BBC News</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://youtu.be/GGunRKWtWBs" target="_blank">2016 <i>Aleksandr Dugin: 'We have our special Russian truth'</i> - BBC Newsnight</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/1990s-manifesto-outlining-russias-plans-is-starting-to-come-true/news-story/343a27c71077b87668f1aa783d03032c" target="_blank">2017 <i>1990s Manifesto outlining Russia’s plans is starting to come true.</i> Charles Firth.</a></div><a href="https://theconversation.com/alexander-dugin-eurasianism-and-the-american-election-87367" target="_blank">2017 <i>Alexander Dugin, Eurasianism, and the American Election</i>, Matthew Sharpe,</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/alexander-dugin-eurasianism-and-the-american-election-87367" target="_blank">Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin University.</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/05/05/did-philosopher-alexander-dugin-aka-putins-brain-shape-the-2016-election/" target="_blank">2018 Did philosopher Alexander Dugin, aka "Putin's brain," shape the 2016 election? Conor Lynch</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://www.resetdoc.org/story/illiberal-far-right-aleksandr-dugin-conversation/" target="_blank">2018 <i>The Illiberal Far-Right of Aleksandr Dugin. A conversation. </i>Luca Steinmann.</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2020/5/28/putins-playbook-reviewing-dugins-foundations-of-geopolitics" target="_blank">2020 <i>The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia. Aleksandr Dugin. 1997</i>. Chace A. Nelson.</a><a href="https://medium.com/intelligence-challenged/putins-rasputin-the-dangerous-mind-of-aleksandr-dugin-d02290ba6045" target="_blank">2020 Putin’s Rasputin: The Dangerous Mind of Aleksandr Dugin. Christopher Laine.</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br />Well, that'll be enough for now, and should be more than enough to show that we've made a calamitous mistake to let Putin think he can invade Ukraine and win. He has started World War Three and we must stop him before more damage is done.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgs0brJ2WcsReXPw9DXkg9ObGXsIqcn4XWD3EdUv7hoAsSK7vSDKiDQjUASLWnqqsYdTtYbUp4rXu1ewUjn5pRBSVf_Cu9GKeGQIyPfDYvi9_B80V_peSsE_FLgbgw5QkHgIb2F6gpVoofQk-hYa76P_x1krgkRoPjurjAINUx5as55TDD-DSY=s450" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="355" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgs0brJ2WcsReXPw9DXkg9ObGXsIqcn4XWD3EdUv7hoAsSK7vSDKiDQjUASLWnqqsYdTtYbUp4rXu1ewUjn5pRBSVf_Cu9GKeGQIyPfDYvi9_B80V_peSsE_FLgbgw5QkHgIb2F6gpVoofQk-hYa76P_x1krgkRoPjurjAINUx5as55TDD-DSY=s320" width="252" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-71292824347156282582022-03-08T17:51:00.000+00:002022-03-08T17:51:27.246+00:00Ukraine 03<p>Let us stop pretending that the Ukraine war is a local affair. The repercussions of higher oil and gas prices, fertiliser costs and grain exports make this a global war, even if the bullets and bombs are as yet only killing people in one country. This is World War Three; we need to admit it.<br /><br />Allegedly, a very long time ago, probably before the invention of writing, a man came down from a mountain with a slab of flattish rock on which were carved the words "Thou shalt not kill", probably not in English. It's always seemed a good rule of thumb to me so don't expect me to support shooting people, even Russians.</p><p>Another good rule of thumb is "don't pay money to people who kill other people, even if it's to buy stuff you really really want". In last years prices, the West has got into the habit of paying Russia about $300,000,000 per day. That's more than double the Russian military budget. We in the west are funding Putin's war.</p><p>Today the UK Business and Energy Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng announced that:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgqpdvQEyINYjW2UgS41rZvPoYw9YSWCtb1cpLDUvle7z3vU81uWCk9mIfamkE5w6jBilTQVhuDa35IJY5kCHe3yBsV09dN1W-4LLuzVeqqcim85a6YRe3DU8dN-cQRX9wwvJZdY11GPg51j90551-cNRuL0yVdn3VA_GiwXve3KEA8Zh0Z1Vw=s669" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="385" data-original-width="669" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgqpdvQEyINYjW2UgS41rZvPoYw9YSWCtb1cpLDUvle7z3vU81uWCk9mIfamkE5w6jBilTQVhuDa35IJY5kCHe3yBsV09dN1W-4LLuzVeqqcim85a6YRe3DU8dN-cQRX9wwvJZdY11GPg51j90551-cNRuL0yVdn3VA_GiwXve3KEA8Zh0Z1Vw=w407-h234" width="407" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Pathetic! This 'transition' will give Putin enough time to bomb every last building in Ukraine. 'Give the market, business supply chains more than enough time to replace Russian imports'? Why 'more than enough time'? They don't need any time. And if that means we have to have some energy rationing, so be it. At least we have houses that have not been bombed. A little inconvenience is survivable.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">What will not be just a little inconvenience is the impact on global food prices when Russia fails to export grain and Ukraine fails to even grow any. This risks a collapse in the world's food supply chain in which the poorest of the global south will go hungry. The potential for famine is real and great, and could even dwarf the suffering in Ukraine itself. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The war is global and we must all consider ourselves at war, sharing in the hurt and sharing in the effort to ensure it ends quickly. The least we can do is to manage without imports from Russia, We will then, and only then, cease to be funding Putin's war.</div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /><br /><br /></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-66260364976411048192022-03-02T19:15:00.003+00:002022-03-02T19:21:26.949+00:00Ukraine 02<p>With energy prices having risen a long way through 2021 and now rising faster still, and long term contracts only indirectly reflecting the spot prices, it's hard to know just how much western countries are paying Russia for their oil and gas imports, but a conservative estimate puts it around half a billion dollars per day, over $150 billion annually. To put that in perspective, Russia's annual expenditure on its military is around $60 billion.</p><p>We are paying Russia more than twice what they spend on their armed forces.</p><p>Governments fret about money held by oligarchs and create restrictions on air travel; civil society and business reduce sporting and cultural contact and withdraw from investments. But all this is detail, irritations that Putin will have factored in to his diabolical scheme. The big one is an embargo on energy imports. </p><p>Western governments, perhaps unsurprisingly, are reluctant to plug the pipelines, fearing that energy prices will soar and real shortages will occur. A friend of mine just commented "For millions of people gas or oil is their only source of heating in the EU". I replied "For millions of people their home is their only home and the Russians are bombing it".</p><p>It's good and kind that people are donating their stuff and their money to help Ukrainians, but the real difference we can make is to stop buying their gas and oil. Governments must see to an embargo, but while they look for the political support to act we can show them by using less ourselves. That sends two signals, one to government, to indicate public support for action, and another to the market to reduce the price by lowering demand, and incidentally giving some relief to those least able to afford expensive energy.</p><p>We should turn down our thermostats and reduce our travel. That may be hard for some but nothing in comparison to the suffering in Ukraine. If we want to stand with the Ukrainians, as slogans and headlines proclaim, then we need to share the pain and stop benefitting from Russian energy imports.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3IVgvX8HU5hoRN1JZCv4G-YVepzsICCVVy6ii2ZcSpq98q6H1YwFToJZg1pGWsUAfFZuh3z8CRCw1Cud1bVJIs-lrLS5cZQbrfFbCQpNr-PGNdV1GR_OpkZmO59PAQvwVXSu9gFoYUJ66NomNkWC752aph2ONkwkUB5-gUD9wC8T4kKMAd_I=s2031" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2031" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3IVgvX8HU5hoRN1JZCv4G-YVepzsICCVVy6ii2ZcSpq98q6H1YwFToJZg1pGWsUAfFZuh3z8CRCw1Cud1bVJIs-lrLS5cZQbrfFbCQpNr-PGNdV1GR_OpkZmO59PAQvwVXSu9gFoYUJ66NomNkWC752aph2ONkwkUB5-gUD9wC8T4kKMAd_I=s320" width="236" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And, in case it slipped from your attention, there's a <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/" target="_blank">Climate Crisis</a>. We'd best get used to not using gas and oil.</div><br /> <p></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-59041516871260415342022-02-27T13:29:00.001+00:002022-02-27T13:29:59.642+00:00Ukraine 01<p>There was a brief window of hope, perhaps only real in some parallel universe, when war might have been avoided. If the west had recognised the People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states, Putin may have been content. Ukraine might have split between east and west and lived as neighbours happily ever after. But the moment the first shot was fired that hope evaporated.<br /><br />We are where we are and there are no winners. Putin may have calculated that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would flee and a new regime, amenable to his requirements, could be swiftly installed, the hit to some oligarchs inconvenienced by token sanctions, factored into the gains that close association with one of the most resource rich countries on the planet brings.<br /><br />Forecasts, especially about the future, usually turn out to be wrong, but from this moment it looks as though Putin has succeeded in uniting much of the Ukrainian population against him and any idea of ever having closer links to Russia in preference to Western Europe is for the birds. And Ukrianians appear willing to fight for every inch of their ground.</p><p>As a pacifist and totally unwilling to ever pick up a gun myself and point it in the direction of another human being, I'm not going to start advocating that anybody else should. But what I am more than willing to do is suffer the economic consequences, and I don't belittle them, of a complete trade embargo of Putin's Russia. <br /><br />Currently the West sends some $300,000,000 every day to Russia in payment for oil, gas, minerals and other products. That trade should be stopped. Now. Europe would have to go on to something akin to a war-footing, but without the killing. There might need to be rationing of energy (allowing the price to go through the roof just forces misery on the poor while the rich carry on). As in war, industrial production needs to be switched, not to armaments, but to everything that reduces our dependency on Russian energy, from home insulation to alternative power production. The fighting may be restricted to Ukraine but the whole world should share the work and pain involved in defeating Putin.<br /><br />The aim must be to swiftly demonstrate that Russia will be an isolated pariah, cut off from the rest of the world. Putin is not immortal and at some point the Russian population will find the strength to remove him. Our hope is that he sees this inevitability long before Kyiv is reduced to the rubble we have seen in Homs and Aleppo in Syria.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjA6gCWDAtMJ6QRSg9qkgMBcR0VYiE85o9KmcmsFPeN3p_X9GJCogB6ZEkbl7SudI5KaErxNPgd6nBjlQIrojucYATdfLEau9evxDF9Nk0VwQ1j2efF0xE3iiDiEc1yR_PFjkerpge98qBpbrdy2126wLKqYah9LkeUTTLkV8DWuYBZI6Sbj94=s664" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjA6gCWDAtMJ6QRSg9qkgMBcR0VYiE85o9KmcmsFPeN3p_X9GJCogB6ZEkbl7SudI5KaErxNPgd6nBjlQIrojucYATdfLEau9evxDF9Nk0VwQ1j2efF0xE3iiDiEc1yR_PFjkerpge98qBpbrdy2126wLKqYah9LkeUTTLkV8DWuYBZI6Sbj94=s320" width="308" /></a></div><p>Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not use the same dressing up box as Boris Johnson, who favours the hi-viz look.</p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-46816893716501902042022-02-03T08:41:00.004+00:002022-02-03T08:48:45.366+00:00Energy Bills<p>Faced with the decarbonising imperative of the climate crisis, the talk had been of stranded assets, the fossil carbon industry holding coal, oil and gas that would have to stay in the ground as we moved to renewable energy sources. Big oil's days were numbered.</p><p>The industry has now pulled off a master-stroke. The increase in gas prices on the world market has been accounted for by increased demand in a post-pandemic recovery (we are not post-covid, but that's another story) with demand from China in particular being blamed.</p><p>There has been no sudden spike in the production costs of gas, or any other type of energy, so the increased prices translate directly to increased profit for the producers. In the UK 22 million households will be paying more cash to their energy providers for something that is costing no more to get out of the ground.<br /></p><p>This may be the biggest, fastest, transfer of wealth from the many to the few, from everyone to the owners of the energy industry, ever, in all history. Even the 'oil shock' of half a century ago, which certainly had a massive long-term effect on global trade, did not impact households in such an immediate fashion.</p><p>And almost nobody has realised.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZwgp-ocRmsxU4cz2yKKjwLiTtiQbO4hWWRxpSYBMvj75XEAoQeKRPfkKSNnHTuCKITf4M3O0m7WK-vxsSow0feaeujt5NHAibVd7EXHK2rzb7MYyZXIxrwQE2yrsI0HF1uebPIr-4yQEtimBc1C1JqOkc9NQLyAWMddoywqys0iEX5v5xZYE=s1330" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1330" data-original-width="1330" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZwgp-ocRmsxU4cz2yKKjwLiTtiQbO4hWWRxpSYBMvj75XEAoQeKRPfkKSNnHTuCKITf4M3O0m7WK-vxsSow0feaeujt5NHAibVd7EXHK2rzb7MYyZXIxrwQE2yrsI0HF1uebPIr-4yQEtimBc1C1JqOkc9NQLyAWMddoywqys0iEX5v5xZYE=s320" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>Increased energy prices are a Good Thing. The price of fossil carbon is far too low since the cost of the environmental damage done by burning it is externalised; the price we pay now does not reflect the price future generations will be charged for repairing the planet. So the increased price of our energy bills should be welcomed.<br /><br />However.<br /><br />That there are poor people who will be unable to pay their bills, unable to keep warm is a Bad Thing. There are myriad ways and means to abolish poverty; it is for government to deal effectively with the issue before increased bills drop through letter-boxes.<br /><br />We have to stop burning fossil carbon to mitigate global heating. Rolling out more renewable energy production is necessary but not sufficient. Currently the growth in renewables is barely keeping pace with growth in energy demand let alone replacing fossil carbon. Degrowth has to be established in the energy scene.<br /><br />The low-hanging fruit of energy demand destruction in the UK is insulating our homes, but, absurdly, the Government is more concerned to put #InsulateBritain protestors in prison than to actually insulate Britain. The money is available; a windfall tax on the energy companies, to recoup all of the profits from the recent price rises, would go a long way towards rolling out a meaningful programme of home insulation, addressing several problems at one stroke.<br /><br />It needs to be done before another winter arrives.<br /><br />biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-19403917708961805542022-01-04T22:16:00.004+00:002022-01-05T07:51:16.929+00:00Dropping Net-Zero TargetsBack in 2008 James Hansen et al, in their paper <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126" target="_blank">Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?</a> wrote:<div><i>"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>But rather than reduce, the number has continued to rise by more than 2 per year and will this year pass 420 ppm. I was born at 310 ppm and for most of humanity's history, before the industrial revolution, the number was around 270.</div><div>None of this gets much of a mention in the targets promoted by politicians. The talk is all about target dates for 'net-zero'. How much CO2 there is in the air rarely gets a mention. But this is what counts. Global heating, and hence climate change, depends not on the rate of our emissions but on the atmospheric composition. We are aiming at the wrong target. If we do manage to stop emitting greenhouse gases the temperature will continue to rise, at least until equilibrium is reached. With climate sensitivity still somewhat uncertain, we're not sure quite when that will be.</div><div>To stop further global heating we have to not just stop further emissions but also remove much of CO2 that we have already put up there. We have to a target such as 'Back to 350'.</div><div>So why don't we?</div><div>Because it's really difficult. A 'net-zero' target, some considerable way off, when the current politicians are mostly retired and won't face the consequences of failure, and which can be managed by 'greening' industry, looks plausible. But actually reducing the CO2 in the air, actually doing what is necessary, is a whole different task. Best not mention it, pretend it isn't a necessary thing.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://mn350.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/co2ppm.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="473" height="355" src="https://mn350.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/co2ppm.png" width="473" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://mn350.org/understanding350/" target="_blank">MN-350</a></div><div>What to do?</div><div>Drop the net-zero targets and replace them with greenhouse gas reduction targets. Achieving them will require zeroing emissions anyway, but also going further by sequestering carbon. A halt to making things worse is necessary but insufficient, we also need to repair the damage.</div><div>And just how to do that will have to wait until the next episode...</div><div><br /></div></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-73144837025299090332021-12-21T20:11:00.006+00:002021-12-21T20:20:14.751+00:00Coronavirus 61 A Great Wrong<div><div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">In January 2020, Sarah Gilbert and her colleagues had done the work to show that a covid vaccine was possible and it was soon apparent that it would be needed. During that year production facilities should have been built on such a scale that by the time the vaccines had been demonstrated to be safe and effective, towards the end of 2020, doses could have been manufactured on a scale that befitted the task of vaccinating everybody, some 7.9 billion of us.<br /><br />The task would have been unprecedented but so was the need. It would have involved the greatest switch of industrial effort, at least since World War II, but it would have been possible.<br /><br />We have been taught to congratulate ourselves on the 'success' of the vaccine roll-out, but it is illusory. The world's governments failed their task in 2020. They failed to do it again in 2021. Most people in the poorer parts of the world remain unvaccinated. That has allowed the pandemic to continue, the virus to mutate to ever more infectious variants, and the disease to come back and bite us again.<br /><br />Our lack of ambition in production effort and our greedy and selfish maintenance of intellectual property rights have been the biggest own goal in human history.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">It has been a Great Wrong.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">In an end of year discussion on DiEM TV Yanis Varoufakis invited Noam Chomsky to reflect on the situation. Here is a transcript of Chomsky's response <span><br /><br /><i>Take Omicron, it’s perfectly clear why this happened and why it will happen again. The rich countries have monopolized vaccines for themselves and have insisted on preserving the outlandish property rights agreements, patent rights, assigned to the basically monopoly pricing rights, assigned to the pharmaceutical corporations in the mislabelled free trade agreements, which means that, for example, Moderna, which was a small company, was able to use extensive government funding, government research. To develop a very effective vaccine. Propelled several of the management up into the super billionaire category. But they will not permit South Africa, which has a pharmaceutical industry to produce their vaccines. It means that South Africa could not vaccinate the population sufficiently to withhold the ongoing mutations. It means that in the unvaccinated South there’s a potential for a mutation which can lead to serious consequences. Of course, will spread back to the west. The wealthy and the powerful are – who recognize all this, they understand it – are willing to place the profits of the major pharmaceutical corporations and their prerogatives - given in the improper trade agreements – place that above the lives of many millions of people and even the welfare of their own populations. It’s an interesting value system.</i></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjB4DdyDjUe6rpPaGeeTa3iCXmB4s1omJdJ2b7neYZYJHtf4U_KZB8IO1_98jUFirAMW9gd9Dqyy_GUb-AD3gXVAMBsrmb50neHbHTtm38R3IL7QtyxHr_wk0oiagGb2-0gxuiXC-OePFdToSEKr3uzG6KWAA46eqjjfnA7zY23iea0xDqg3Cg=s1920" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjB4DdyDjUe6rpPaGeeTa3iCXmB4s1omJdJ2b7neYZYJHtf4U_KZB8IO1_98jUFirAMW9gd9Dqyy_GUb-AD3gXVAMBsrmb50neHbHTtm38R3IL7QtyxHr_wk0oiagGb2-0gxuiXC-OePFdToSEKr3uzG6KWAA46eqjjfnA7zY23iea0xDqg3Cg=w423-h238" width="423" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><span><span>See the whole discussion at <a href="https://youtu.be/vxwd51WK3Hc" target="_blank">DiEM TV Christmas Special: Radical Lessons From 2021</a></span></span></span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-57390805146576177762021-12-18T14:10:00.003+00:002021-12-18T14:16:42.680+00:00Coronavirus 60 Two Choices<span style="font-family: verdana;">How do you get to Birmingham? I wouldn't start from here.<br /><br />We should have stopped the virus spreading in January 2020 before it became a pandemic, but the same argument still applies.<br />We have choices.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">1. End the pandemic.<br />2. Allow the pandemic to continue.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Let's look at option #2 first. By continuing with the government policies and citizen behaviour adopted so far in many western nations we can look forward to a massive spike in omicron cases. Even if the death rate in a population that is largely vaccinated and/or has some natural immunity because of earlier SARS-CoV-2 infections, is an order of magnitude lower than earlier in the pandemic, it will still result in thousands more deaths.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Importantly, it will do nothing to prevent a new variant. There is an evolutionary advantage for a variant that is more infectious, better at escaping natural immunity within the population or the vaccine. There is no evolutionary advantage to become either more or less pathological. That could go either way. That a new variant is milder is wishful thinking, that it becomes worse is something the precautionary principle demands we prepare for.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Covid so far has shown a case fatality rate of less than 1%. Omicron in a mostly vaccinated population may have a case fatality rate an order of magnitude less, but a future variant could plausibly have a worse outcome. MERS has a case fatality rate at least an order of magnitude greater than the worst outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2. Ebola, albeit a very different virus, has a mortality rate nearer 50%.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">There's no easy end in sight to the arms race between variants and our vaccination programme. It would mean learning to live with the deaths and morbidity that the virus causes, a very different world to that we have previously known.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's a bleak outlook, so let's turn to option #1.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">But we can't 'End the pandemic'! Oh yes we can. The pandemic ends in a few weeks if nobody meets anybody outside their own household. That, of course, is impossibly hard to achieve, but with proper planning and support, a very strict lockdown could be acceptable, driving R well below 1 and keeping it there. The pandemic would then inevitably come to an end. It would require people's trust in their governments, earned by sufficient and appropriate support from governments. It involves the rigorous application of what we have long known to be the effective route to infectious disease eradication: a combination of finding cases, isolating with sufficient support, and vaccinating.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />The other option really is too bleak to contemplate.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2Poch8HMBzXUJyILPDYNSGQqmHpkOl_nzCA1M0zDWYSSD80hhi02__as3IDdwmDjZw0J321Hfo9kA4vPzaQ5K-15ob6BYFgFf5k66xJbdCF6MyO1x0SHzMLQtbDUgRfUQ_iYgN6WozwML4rwQgIjZ1tRU86_TB-pLnjKW3Bl8f55wRQlbSRE=s1000" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1000" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2Poch8HMBzXUJyILPDYNSGQqmHpkOl_nzCA1M0zDWYSSD80hhi02__as3IDdwmDjZw0J321Hfo9kA4vPzaQ5K-15ob6BYFgFf5k66xJbdCF6MyO1x0SHzMLQtbDUgRfUQ_iYgN6WozwML4rwQgIjZ1tRU86_TB-pLnjKW3Bl8f55wRQlbSRE=s320" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Picture attribution: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34979655" target="_blank">W. Carter</a></span></div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p></div></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-66232175103080234542021-12-11T19:03:00.002+00:002021-12-11T19:08:34.911+00:00Coronavirus 59 Omicron part 2<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the fortnight since my first blog about Omicron we have learnt a little more and little of what we have learnt is good news. <br /><br />Firstly, let's dismiss the reports, based on wishful thinking rather than science, that this variant is 'milder'. Here's a sketch by Dr Natalie Dean that explains a quirk of the data. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju74aM7Jm7wNsqj1l4nVGaE9SAEp4jHsvwJtMWdchTsI2SryZZTJegDH9sFmmwvPUaNF2pIVhdXnS5auDbrcu7_lCJOIO5OwhJ7lW0vjoJUR5J1vmXTFtil10IzYgrkLQ4m3QsWA/s1199/cov108.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="1199" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju74aM7Jm7wNsqj1l4nVGaE9SAEp4jHsvwJtMWdchTsI2SryZZTJegDH9sFmmwvPUaNF2pIVhdXnS5auDbrcu7_lCJOIO5OwhJ7lW0vjoJUR5J1vmXTFtil10IzYgrkLQ4m3QsWA/s320/cov108.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">If it's not immediately obvious, read her <a href="https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1468988174693289994.htmls" target="_blank">explanation here.</a><br /><br />Of course it might turn out to be milder, but we don't have the evidence for that and there's no particular reason why it should be. While uncertainty rules let's not base action on wishful thinking but stick to the precautionary principle.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Effectively, Omicron adds an extra pandemic to the Delta pandemic that has been producing some 40 to 50 thousand new covid cases per day. Delta has been spreading with an R close to 1 since the fateful 'Freedom Day' last July. Now we have a virus that appears to be doubling in less than three days, with an R closer to 4. Adding this to the underlying Delta, Professor Christina Pagel, at the Indie-SAGE briefing on Friday 10th December, presented this graph:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4mu7n6unWJh1ZR0byI8USQ4Ga8wzT5Y-aEnAddLlfhQPhbI2kZJEUVYhXgJNyBhV6jDNftUEh7pWKFzQgId4DYe9ug9Tu6EZMJc5PWnVEovTROR0jueAY72GCPPOD7wR4Xc0nbg/s1331/cov106.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1331" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4mu7n6unWJh1ZR0byI8USQ4Ga8wzT5Y-aEnAddLlfhQPhbI2kZJEUVYhXgJNyBhV6jDNftUEh7pWKFzQgId4DYe9ug9Tu6EZMJc5PWnVEovTROR0jueAY72GCPPOD7wR4Xc0nbg/s320/cov106.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">She points out its simplicity, but while all models are wrong, some can be useful. This graph shows that unless we take quick and decisive action to change our behaviour we are heading for a disaster on a similar scale to that seen at the start of this year.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Unfortunately, the UK Government has demonstrated, repeatedly, its inability to take swift and decisive action. It persists in ignoring the advice of those who know what to do, such as the scientists contributing to Indie-SAGE. Here's their latest report, spelling out just what should be done:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://www.independentsage.org/an-immediate-response-to-the-omicron-variant/" target="_blank">An Immediate Response to the Omicron Variant.</a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">And to underline the urgency, here's a new paper, an unreviewed pre-print, as is the way of things these days, from the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine by <a href="https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/reports/omicron_england/report_11_dec_2021.pdf" target="_blank">Rosanna C. Barnard et al.,</a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/reports/omicron_england/report_11_dec_2021.pdf" target="_blank">Modelling the potential consequences of the Omicron
SARS-CoV-2 variant in England</a><br />It's not encouraging.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>"In all four main scenarios, we model a policy of compulsory mask wearing in shops and
on public transport from 30th November 2021, as well as introducing “Plan B” measures
from 12th December 2021. Under these control measures, our most optimistic scenario
projects peak daily hospital admissions of 2,400 (95% projection interval: 1,700–3,600)
in England occurring in January 2022. Our most pessimistic scenario projects peak
hospital admissions of approximately twice the size of the January 2021 peak."</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><p></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-41544288869864707892021-11-27T12:32:00.006+00:002021-11-27T12:41:25.380+00:00Coronavirus 58 Omicron<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.03); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"I would always prefer that we take decisive action now and have to scale back if </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-b88u0q r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.03); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Omicron</span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.03); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> turns out not to be serious, than that we under-react and it turns out </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-b88u0q r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.03); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Omicron</span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.03); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is as bad as feared. Act early and act decisively. We should have learned this by now." </span></i>Tweeted by Kit Yates, who knows about this sort of stuff.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is the 58th blog in my series on Coronavirus. The <a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2020/02/coronavirus.html" target="_blank">first</a> was written on the </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">7th of February 2020 and began with this line:</span></p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>When it was first suggested that UK nationals should be flown out of Wuhan, I remarked that it might be better if all international flights were grounded.</i><br /><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Had my suggestion then, and my further suggestions over the next 20 months, been acted upon there would never have been a pandemic and millions of lives would not have been lost. Such was Cassandra's fate.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />This looks like another moment when humanity generally, and the UK Government in particular, get things wrong again. The new variant, B.1.1.529, renamed Omicron, was identified in South Africa, where it appears to have spread rapidly. There is a diligent programme of sequencing in South Africa, unlike some other African countries where such facilities are lacking, so we don't know for sure where the mutation originated, or even where its prevalence is greatest.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Several countries have, gradually and piecemeal, introduced flight bans from South Africa and various other African countries. This has been too little and too late to stop the spread of Omicron, though any reduction in travel will help to slow that spread.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />This is a good moment to remind ourselves of the basic imperatives of infection control. Stop travel, particularly any travel without strict and effective quarantine. Test, track and trace to identify all cases. Isolate all cases providing sufficient support to make that isolation effective. The reproduction number will then remain well below R=1 and the infection outbreak will, inevitably, disappear. There is no need for a pandemic to ever happen. A pandemic is the avoidable failure of good governance.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Even after catastrophic errors, such as have occurred, and have led to millions of avoidable deaths, it is never too late to do the right thing and introduce a zero-covid policy. Indeed, it is the only way in which the disease will be overcome. In an ideal situation, 'lockdown' would mean that nobody met anybody outside their own household for two two reproduction cycle times of the virus, maybe about six weeks. Of course, some people need to meet; food distribution, electricity generation, water and sewage, health care and other vital services need to keep going. But that amount of contact is compatible with keeping R<1 if an effective find and isolate system operates. The disease will be eliminated in short order.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />What the world needs to do now is to stock up with the essentials for survival and then stay at home for the rest of 2021. Then we will all be able to get on with our lives, devoting 2022 to addressing that other existential crisis, global heating.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Tragically, I don't think this advice will be adopted, the pandemic will continue to ruin millions of lives and the planet will continue to heat up, eventually ruining billions of lives.<br /><br /><br /></span><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXGVLASIIq5Jz5bKeXU9RzubCPRqBdutQs8ePYal_CVmJMRw5TiTP6AEkw-SneAUI3TfFad7ovqGAYe7qPF5sGr-mGAouffUQU_XyUDcTLQxs8m-5-saGTBvp9qlwWgqPqWfFdXA/s1300/omicron.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXGVLASIIq5Jz5bKeXU9RzubCPRqBdutQs8ePYal_CVmJMRw5TiTP6AEkw-SneAUI3TfFad7ovqGAYe7qPF5sGr-mGAouffUQU_XyUDcTLQxs8m-5-saGTBvp9qlwWgqPqWfFdXA/s320/omicron.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br /></span><br /><br /></div><div><p><br /><br /></p></div></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-30626089357373056902021-11-25T08:06:00.001+00:002021-11-25T08:09:03.022+00:00Migrants<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In May 2018 I curated an art exhibition entitled <a href="http://transitiontownlouth.org.uk/bell4.html" target="_blank">'Across the Seas'</a> in which works by two dozen artists, dealing with human migration, were exhibited. The online <a href="http://transitiontownlouth.org.uk/bell4.html" target="_blank">catalogue</a> shows it all. Among the works was The List, by Banu Cennetoglu, comprising 48 sheets of paper on which were printed the names of 33,293 people who had died trying to reach Europe. You can download it <a href="http://www.transitiontownlouth.org.uk/belldocs/TheListEntire.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In a quiet moment, I noticed there was just one woman in the gallery, standing in front of The List, quietly weeping, tears on her cheek.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Yesterday we saw the crocodile tears of our Prime Minister and his Home Secretary as they sought to blame the French and the so-called 'criminal gangs' of 'people smugglers'. Anything but admit that the deaths in the English Channel that afternoon were the direct result of their policy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The blood of these desperate men, women and children, are on our politicians' hands. But not on their hands alone. Blame, responsibility, culpability, is shared by every citizen who has supported Mr Johnson and Ms Patel, their Conservative Party and the UK Government. And more than that, b</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">lame, responsibility and culpability must be shared by every citizen who has supported</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> policies of immigration control, even the very concept of borders as barriers to human movement.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The solution to the immediate crisis in the Channel is obvious: give would-be migrants train and ferry tickets. Human lives come first and then we can work out what to do with them.<br /><br />The UK could be the world's ethical leader rather than a pariah, shaming other countries into action. As it is, we are shamed, having taken far fewer migrants than most of our European neighbours, never mind poorer countries such as Lebanon and Jordan. We could open our borders and welcome the stranger. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The coming decades are going to see migration forced by climate change on a scale that has not yet entered the consciousness of most people. From North Africa, across the Middle East and through much of South Asia, a vast swathe of land will become effectively uninhabitable within the lifetimes of today's children. The British Isles, its climate tempered by ocean currents, will remain a green and pleasant land.<br /><br />We need to get used to a very different world. We need, today, to choose between life or genocide.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.colouredlight.tithefarm.biz/2017/2017006detail.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="756" height="537" src="http://www.colouredlight.tithefarm.biz/2017/2017006detail.jpg" width="507" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-34774355074652843182021-11-23T08:54:00.002+00:002021-11-23T09:04:01.885+00:00Nuclear Theddlethorpe 06<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I attended one of RWM's events at Theddlethorpe Village Hall a couple of weeks ago and had a long discussion with their geologist and chief policy adviser. A couple of things struck me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">As I've explained in previous blogs, the key reason why Theddlethorpe does does not work as a location for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) for nuclear waste is the likely presence of fossil carbon resources, gas, oil and coal, in the rocks underlying the prospective site. A future civilisation may seek to exploit these resources and inadvertently breach the integrity of the GDF. Nowhere in the poster and video displays on show could I find reference to this key issue. It was as if RWM did not want the public to know about this problem.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In my discussion with the RWM geologist I was alarmed to hear that in his view this would not be a problem because such resources could be accessed by drilling sideways under a GDF without disturbing it. He apparently did not appreciate that a future civilisation might not know of the existence of the GDF. He had completely missed the point that was fundamental to the siting of a GDF.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Another point that surprised me was to learn that their preferred target geological horizon was Oxford Clay rather than the deeper and thicker Mercia Mudstone Group. They are going for the shallowest (and cheapest) possible location, ignoring the greater security offered by deeper geology.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Another surprise turned up yesterday with the release, following a freedom of information request, of the daily pay-rate for the 'Independent' chairperson of the 'Working Group' set up by Lincolnshire County Council and RWM. Jon Collins is expected to work for two days per week and be paid...</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://c.tenor.com/NNp_ehNBMEoAAAAC/excited-so.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="90" data-original-width="160" height="90" src="https://c.tenor.com/NNp_ehNBMEoAAAAC/excited-so.gif" width="160" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">£1000 per day</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">That's a lot of public money to be spent chairing a group of people talking about something that is never going to happen. We used to think corruption was what happened in Nigeria.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Here are the details:<br /><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Ref: FOI 3795</span></span></b><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Thank you for your information request received on 25 October for the following:</span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><b>Details of how much the Independent Chair of the Theddlethorpe Working Group is paid and how that amount is broken down, whether per meeting or if it’s paid as a lump sum.</b></span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">I have treated your request under the Freedom of Information Act. I confirm that RWM holds the information you have requested and this is provided below.</span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">The Independent Chair of the Theddlethorpe Working Group is paid a day rate of £1,000. The amount paid depends on the number of days worked which is estimated at 2 days per week.</span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Information Commissioner's Office</span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Wycliffe House</span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Water Lane</span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Wilmslow</span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11pt;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Cheshire SK9 5AF</span></span><br clear="none" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: small;" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br /></span><p></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-5015163049527965652021-11-12T07:25:00.087+00:002021-11-12T08:45:24.802+00:00COP26 In a Cave<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">A man was injured in a cave and needed to be carried out on a stretcher by a long and tortuous route. The caving clubs far and wide sent delegates to the rescue. Some cave experts continued their work on cave studies.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the misty hillside a convention of cavers assembled to negotiate how each club would play their part, declaring the importance of the rescue and announcing their Caving Club Determined Contributions (CCDCs). A Finance Committee was set up to agree who would pay for ropes, torches, hard-hats, wet-suits and the stretcher.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">They argued long into the night, some claiming they were too poor to contribute and it was not their fault that the accident had happened. There was discussion on timetables; just how quickly should the casualty be carried, some arguing that it would be better to wait till summer when water levels were lower.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the Friday, children left their schools and gathered at the cave-mouth demanding that the rescue starts immediately, while caving club leaders congratulated each other on their plan to send a packed-lunch down to the victim.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Meanwhile, a man in the pub, declared that the accident was a hoax, the alleged victim had actually found a different path out of the cave and gone home. Somebody in America spread a rumour that caves did not exist but were an imaginary creation by makers of torches and hard-hats.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/D7D2/production/_121505255_welsh_cave_rescue_640-nc.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="496" height="687" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/D7D2/production/_121505255_welsh_cave_rescue_640-nc.png" width="426" /></a></div><p><br /></p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-59219380" target="_blank">Picture source</a><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Further reading: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NJHsGASqJKfWumqPZBsP7za1duckSCuQhh4ZLKAvJaA/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">Climate scientists' open letter on COP26.</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-22087950311928079602021-11-05T21:10:00.002+00:002021-11-05T21:14:04.504+00:00Killing Whales was a Bad Move<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The thing is that we killed most of the big Blue Whales. Blue whales eat krill and then whale poo provides fertiliser for the phytoplankton, which photosynthesise, taking carbon from out of the atmosphere. But since we killed the whales there's no fertiliser for the phytoplankton that the krill eat. When the few krill that do live, die of old age instead of being eaten by whales, they just drop to the bottom of the ocean, removing nutrients out of reach of the phytoplankton. So then there's less carbon sequestration and then there's less food for the krill. So there's less krill. That means there's less food for the few whales that we didn't manage to kill, so they don't thrive. So there's less whale poo, which means there's less nutrient recycling for the phytoplankton so there's less carbon sequestration and less food for the krill and so less food for the whales which means.... hang on... I think we've been here before. This is just going round in ever diminishing circles. Except for the carbon dioxide in the air above the ocean, which keeps increasing, that causes global heating and the carbon dioxide dissolved in the ocean that causes ocean acidification. That's bad for sea-life that needs a high pH, such as phytoplankton. And we know what happens when the phytoplankton don't do well; it's just one thing on top of another.</span></p><span data-outline-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We really shouldn't have killed the whales. Bad move.<br /><br />Gaia Vince and her interviewees do a better job of explaining all this in this week's episode of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00114n7" target="_blank">Inside Science on Radio 4.</a><br /><br />Sir David King, former UK Chief Scientist and general good bloke, is on the case.<br />Here's the <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/australia/the-chronicle-8992/20211028/281547999103301" target="_blank">latest news</a>.<br /><br />The plan is to add some fertiliser to the ocean, particularly the iron that phytoplankton are short of, what with living in the ocean instead of soil on land where there's plenty of iron. The phytoplankton will grow better, sequestering carbon dioxide and so slowing global warming and ocean acidification and the krill will thrive because there's phytoplankton to eat again and then the whales will thrive because there's krill to eat and the the whales will do their poos and recycle the nutrients to the phytoplankton and... well you can guess the rest.</span></span><div><span data-outline-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span data-outline-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We really ought to support Sir David King and his friends at the <a href="https://www.ccag.earth/" target="_blank">Climate Crisis Advisory Group</a>. They are coming up with answers.</span></span></div><div><span data-outline-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span data-outline-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span data-outline-text="true"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9hjRLfYgfBAlj_ART1F9FyP6ndoquHuW9OexjL3dcpdlMK213FGCDS2mRLJS4i1oP-uPyJlvWNUCl7iODdaoc9aGiZNBhv4UxgsGdMdtrt08Un-Y78eavdRkyJoY-jKz9xMf7Fw/s630/Blue-Whale.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="630" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9hjRLfYgfBAlj_ART1F9FyP6ndoquHuW9OexjL3dcpdlMK213FGCDS2mRLJS4i1oP-uPyJlvWNUCl7iODdaoc9aGiZNBhv4UxgsGdMdtrt08Un-Y78eavdRkyJoY-jKz9xMf7Fw/s320/Blue-Whale.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Here's a picture of a Blue Whale and here's <a href="https://www.twinkl.co.uk/teaching-wiki/blue-whale" target="_blank">some things to know</a>.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.colouredlight.tithefarm.biz/2020/SirDavidKing.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="800" height="349" src="http://www.colouredlight.tithefarm.biz/2020/SirDavidKing.jpg" width="398" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />This is a painting of Sir David King, when he was looking sad, perhaps thinking about the whales.</span></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-47895833511061595862021-11-01T21:08:00.001+00:002021-11-01T21:09:43.186+00:00Biscathorpe Eight Years On<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="background-color: white;">O</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">ver eight years ago I wrote this piece on my blog, the first of many about oil and Biscathorpe: <a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-to-make-money-from-fracking.html" target="_blank">How to Make Money from Fracking</a></span></span></p><span data-offset-key="r6f7-2-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In it I described how one could make money out of not finding oil but convincing people that you would find oil in the future. Egdon's executives and employees have managed to do just that for eight years at Biscathorpe, a particularly idyllic hamlet in the Lincolnshire Wolds.</span></span></span><div><span data-offset-key="r6f7-2-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span data-offset-key="r6f7-2-0" style="background-color: white;"><span data-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, with a majority of seven to four and two abstentions, the planning committee of Lincolnshire County Council refused a planning application from Egdon Resources to drill another well. They had already drilled one earlier but it had not struck oil.</span>
<span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first full day of COP26 was an auspicious day to hold this planning meeting, but whether this was what changed the minds of some councillors, or whether it was the opposition of the local MP, or an article in The Times, or the petition they had just received from their electorate, or the tireless campaigning of so many people over recent years, we cannot know. Perhaps some of them have actually realised that the black stuff needs to be kept in the ground.
When all the people with money to invest realise that the oil industry will lead to their assets being stranded, and hence worthless, then the industry will collapse and the planet can breathe a little sigh of relief.
And when all the people with money to spend on stuff that the oil industry has produced, realise that we must stop burning fossil carbon, then we will once again have a planet worth breathing on.
But for tonight, we can celebrate a small victory. Well done all who made this possible.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span data-offset-key="r6f7-2-0" style="background-color: white;"><span data-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span data-offset-key="r6f7-2-0" style="background-color: white;"><span data-text="true"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #050505;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcknJqVPkPU-xiwVdDRtuczk2Xs30LhA0JbwI4PdMDZiBZGtdH91Y7B5RObjbcsYOTduTmfC6QvnsORlO9lq1iZwzxhGKSOWVHxthvx5Y8zkjFwedPnTmN42ikqiMxMr_Vj12hcg/s833/Climate37a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="471" data-original-width="833" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcknJqVPkPU-xiwVdDRtuczk2Xs30LhA0JbwI4PdMDZiBZGtdH91Y7B5RObjbcsYOTduTmfC6QvnsORlO9lq1iZwzxhGKSOWVHxthvx5Y8zkjFwedPnTmN42ikqiMxMr_Vj12hcg/w398-h225/Climate37a.jpg" width="398" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-62050750182867456882021-10-30T13:38:00.002+01:002021-10-30T22:22:44.143+01:00COP26 Too Many Numbers<span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br />What is 3?<br /><br />Mathematician: The third positive integer.<br />Physicist: A value between 2.5 and 3.5.<br />Engineer: Three’s three but let’s call it ten to be on the safe side.<br /><br />Charles Darwin included no numbers whatsoever in his The Origin of Species. Good science does not have to include numbers. Today one would have difficulty finding a piece of writing about climate science that is not peppered with numbers. If it is a scientific paper the numbers will usually be accompanied by measures of error and probability ranges, but these are usually ignored by journalists reporting for a lay audience, often leaving values with too many significant figures, giving a spurious degree of precision.<br /><br />Forecasting, especially the future, is always difficult and models are always wrong, though some can be useful. The ‘Butterfly Effect’, whereby small changes in initial conditions can produce large changes in outcomes, is well known. Less well known, but more dangerous, is the ‘<a href="http://www.ericathompson.co.uk/hawkmoth-effect/" target="_blank">Hawkmoth Effect</a>’, caused by unknown errors in the model that result in unknowable errors in model output. Wisdom must be applied when dealing with any numbers derived from modelling, as Erica Thompson explained in her <a href="http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/journalarticles/2019-40/" target="_blank">Escape from Model-Land</a>.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Unfortunately, in climate science errors are not evenly distributed between good news and bad. If tomorrow’s weather forecast is for 1mm of rain, there is little scope for error on the sunny side, just 1mm. But on the wet side the possibility range of error is boundless.<br /><br />The most frequently mentioned number is 2.0 (1.5 is already for the birds), the number of degrees centigrade of global heating that the Paris Agreement said we should not exceed. It is an arbitrary number, no more special than 1.9 or 2.1, plucked from the air as thought, by some, at the time, to be a danger threshold. It is a rise since an arbitrary date, and one over which there is disagreement, some favouring the beginning of the industrial age and others favouring 1880, which hides the earliest anthropogenic heating. The global temperature is not a number that can be read from any thermometer. Rather it is an average of thousands of measurements from instruments distributed across the planet, calculated after weighting for local factors and known errors. It does not well reflect actual temperature change experienced by people. Land temperatures have risen faster than over the oceans, the Arctic heats faster than the tropics. Changes in the frequency of extreme weather events are not reflected in this average, yet it is extremes that kill. There is no way to relate that 2.0 figure to actual detriments. We don’t have any direct quantitative link between the average global heating number and storms, floods, droughts, plagues and wars. We just have a qualitative idea that the hotter it gets the worse it will be.<br /><br />COP26 is very much a numbers based exercise, with countries declaring what steps they intend to take and when they might take them. We know it will all be too little and too late to avert disaster for many, yet it will be built on a great edifice of meticulously calculated ‘carbon budgets’ that imply perfect knowledge of the link between emissions, temperature rise and harm. We do not possess that knowledge.<br /><br />We have only a very hazy appreciation of the effects of the many potentially big feedbacks in the climate system and some have not been factored into the COP26 discourse at all. Take, for example, greenhouse gas emissions from thawing of Arctic permafrost. It is happening today, with a mere 1.2 degrees of global heating and will continue for centuries. The rate of thawing and consequent emissions will increase as global heating proceeds. If all the nations achieve what they promise and more, and the temperature rise is constrained, the permafrost will still keep thawing, adding more greenhouse gases, undermining the best laid plans and making nonsense of all those calculations that contributed to the Nationally Determined Contributions. The scale of this problem may be equivalent to the emissions of a major economy, USA, China or the EU, and continuing far into the future. Big numbers but not counted.<br /><br />So what to do? Put the numbers aside. Tell our governments to stop negotiating on the basis of numbers but instead put all their efforts into avoiding burning any more fossil carbon. Each has to do everything they can without looking over their shoulders to check they are not doing more than others. Lead, don’t follow.<br /><br />If there’s one thing to read next it’s the <a href="http://iccinet.org/statecryo21/" target="_blank">State of Cryosphere 2021</a> report, particularly chapter 4, Permafrost. There are some numbers, but not so many that it becomes unreadable.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiZSOb6zT7EgrufdbOS9IMhW16XKieQESxD79hg0XJ_ZdKcVsQ59Qt4nGD64Qd3a_-pP8dZuE3IqbKGmUMIH8dWBbt0Ml8gsC8caHnOda_hxdNtgMg1B_fpNkNaM2oL0fjgOWsxg/s1280/Climate35.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiZSOb6zT7EgrufdbOS9IMhW16XKieQESxD79hg0XJ_ZdKcVsQ59Qt4nGD64Qd3a_-pP8dZuE3IqbKGmUMIH8dWBbt0Ml8gsC8caHnOda_hxdNtgMg1B_fpNkNaM2oL0fjgOWsxg/s320/Climate35.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Previous blog: <a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2021/10/cop26-has-failed.html" target="_blank">Why COP26 has failed before it even started.</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br /></span><br /></div></div></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-82520942447609718802021-10-28T22:19:00.003+01:002021-10-28T22:23:11.359+01:00COP26 Has Failed<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Failed? But it hasn't even begun yet! And anyway, what does success of failure mean?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The object is to prevent global heating and the way to do that is to stop emitting greenhouse gases. A big part of what happens at COP26 is that governments present their '</span><a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/nationally-determined-contributions-ndcs/nationally-determined-contributions-ndcs" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">Nationally Determined Contributions</a><span style="font-family: verdana;">' (NDCs). And this is where the failure sets in. The whole panjandrum is wrongly framed. Almost 200 countries will be saying what they hope to do to reduce their emissions and when they hope to do this. It is all too little, too late, and too slowly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The new climate denialism, rife wherever one turns, is the idea that limiting heating to 1.5 degrees is achievable. It isn't. And yet Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK's Chief Scientist, said it was still achievable though we will have to "fly a bit less". That's about as much use as saying that singing Happy Birthday while washing one's hands will prevent a pandemic.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Here is the nonsense that Vallance and his int</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ernational colleagues have come up with: </span><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statement-by-international-scientific-advisers-ahead-of-cop26/statement-by-international-senior-scientific-advisers-ahead-of-cop26" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">Statement by International Senior Scientific Advisers ahead of COP26</a></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The best meme doing the rounds of social media is this:<br /><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNx10UB33zfwKnnnTmH8DOS0_H_BpPGD9RIIIxQsha4yMc1QlNQzGU3RPjfhpeNc_oCeV2ceEw-u9yLwUqkpRpnz6uA-fUH_17WvWUgxAFJ1owFqJcIPA6MbN3KAH55iYwmm7rpg/s819/Climate01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="819" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNx10UB33zfwKnnnTmH8DOS0_H_BpPGD9RIIIxQsha4yMc1QlNQzGU3RPjfhpeNc_oCeV2ceEw-u9yLwUqkpRpnz6uA-fUH_17WvWUgxAFJ1owFqJcIPA6MbN3KAH55iYwmm7rpg/s320/Climate01.jpg" width="293" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">We're not even reaching for a mop. What we have is almost 200 countries each with their own tap and plughole. They are coming to Glasgow to tell us at what speed they are going to turn the tap off and whether they intend to ease the plug a little bit to let some water seep out.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">What the climate crisis requires is that all countries turn off their taps immediately and pull their plug out. 413ppm CO2 needs to be pushed back below 350. But next year it will be 415 and the year after it will be 417. That's why COP26 has failed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Unfortunately there are bad consequences if we all stop burning fossil carbon by Day 1 of the COP. Machines in hospitals will stop working and lorries won't deliver food. People will die.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">So what COP26 should be doing is having nations determine and declare the maximum possible rate of emission reduction that is commensurate with their citizens not actually dying. </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">The taps need to be turned off almost completely and the plugs fully pulled out straight away. Then we can can watch the water go down to a safe level.<br /><br />When we see the Keeling Curve turn downwards we can start measuring success, but while it continues to rise we can be certain we are failing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-74591092607248935822021-10-24T12:15:00.005+01:002021-10-24T12:22:26.349+01:00Nuclear Theddlethorpe 05<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In <a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2021/09/nuclear-theddlethorpe-03.html" target="_blank">Part 03</a> of this blog series about the proposal for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) for high and intermediate level nuclear waste at Theddlethorpe or some other location in eastern Lincolnshire, I outlined the geology.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Let's have a quick recap and reminder to help people make their arguments. The purpose of a GDF is to ensure that the waste and any radioactive particles that eventually escape the containers do not reach the biosphere at the surface for a long time, 100,000 years or more, despite climate change, sea level rises, glaciations or earthquakes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Rock suitable to store nuclear waste must be impervious. That means that water must not be able to flow through it. Chalk, limestone and sandstone are as much use as a wet sponge but clay, shale and mudstone are good. It's not that water can't flow through such rock, given enough time, but the rate is measured in millimetres per year so a few hundred metres of such rock does the job.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Such rocks do occur under the Lincolnshire Marsh and in the inshore area off the coast. There's the Jurassic age Oxford Clay. This is the layer that the French propose to use, but it is much thicker in France. More usefully there is the older and lower Mercia Mudstone Group of Triassic age. This would be the most likely target for a depository here. Just off the coast of Cumbria this same rock is much thicker and so better suited there. It is close to Sellafield, as it conveniently happens.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The most important aspect of Lincolnshire's geology is the existence of oil and gas at various horizons in the Jurassic, Triassic and underlying Carboniferous rock, which also contain the Coal Measures. In some places it occurs in high enough concentrations to be exploited in today's commercial situation and with today's technology. In the far distant future, under unforeseeable economic conditions and with technologies that we have no knowledge of, a future civilisation may seek to exploit these fossil carbon resources and in so doing inadvertently breach the waste depository's barriers that were designed to stay unpenetrated for hundreds of thousands of years.<br /><br />That's why a GDF must not be built at Theddlethorpe or anywhere else on the Lincolnshire Marsh. It is our duty to place our dangerous waste where there is the least likelihood of it posing a danger to our far descendants. All other arguments are secondary.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">*****</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Some people argue that since a GDF can never be 100% secure, it should not be built anywhere. But don't let the perfect be the enemy of the possible. The nuclear waste is currently in temporary storage and in various states of security. Some of it may be an accident waiting to happen. Delay in permanent burial only adds to the risk of a near-term accident. Delay also pushes the problem on to the next generation, who did not agree to the creation of the waste n the first place and should bear no responsibility for it's care. We must deal with our problem, now, and in the best way we can conceive. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">There is little reason for delay. A good enough site has been identified (the Mercia Mudstone Group rocks of the Irish Sea Basin, inshore south-west Cumbria). The whole process that RWM are engaged in just creates a ten or more year delay in spending the billions of pounds required to construct a GDF, and is, of course, the Treasury's preferred option as it makes the spending somebody else's problem, while their backs are covered in case of accident by appearing to be addressing the matter now.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">An often stated argument is that the GDF should be sited somewhere remote. This is a poor argument. It implies acceptance of the idea that a GDF might not be safe. If it isn't safe it cannot be built. Anywhere. Nowhere remote enough for an unsafe facility exists. Even somewhere that looks remote today may not always be so.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">There are good geological reasons why the Outer Hebrides would be a suitable place. The Lewisian Gneiss is our oldest, hardest, most stable, most impermeable rock. It is similar, geologically, to the sites chosen by Finland and Sweden for their depositories, unlike the soft-rock options available in England and apparently favoured by RWM.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">People may consider the Outer Hebrides to be remote (the good folk of Stornoway probably have a different perspective) but it may not always remain so. If global heating continues on its current trajectory (and there's precious little evidence that it won't) then we may see a rise in average global temperatures of 3 to 5 degrees. The west coast of Scotland may become the 22nd century's New Riviera, the most densely populated part of the world, with the EU Parliament relocating to Stornoway once the re-United Kingdom's membership application has been accepted.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_xU2iL69je2oq5wI6-QkVpPJ23m9R9ay1GoymYBff2rT9DUYthUnSJM5rbu2bW1lp6_7SnaeL0DzeHqxRlL-UtKZj8L6cMvLpmPLPbVhoE6lsS59Mkhk8sgxQLtYGCh29SxkBig/s1200/Thailand.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="800" height="461" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_xU2iL69je2oq5wI6-QkVpPJ23m9R9ay1GoymYBff2rT9DUYthUnSJM5rbu2bW1lp6_7SnaeL0DzeHqxRlL-UtKZj8L6cMvLpmPLPbVhoE6lsS59Mkhk8sgxQLtYGCh29SxkBig/w307-h461/Thailand.jpg" width="307" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Thailand Today, Tobermory Tomorrow</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">See also previous part to this series:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2021/07/nuclear-theddlethorpe-01.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Part 1</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2021/07/nuclear-theddlethorpe-02.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Part 2</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2021/09/nuclear-theddlethorpe-03.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Part 3</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2021/10/nuclear-theddlethorpe-04.html" target="_blank">Part 4</a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-20060057870855293662021-10-21T09:03:00.003+01:002021-10-21T09:14:13.670+01:00Gas and Heat Pumps<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">First, let's quickly dispel the myth that heat pumps only work on well insulated buildings. Of course all our homes should be well insulated and then we'd hardly need any heating at all but this is not peculiar to heat pumps.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), which operated in a somewhat haphazard fashion and particularly benefitted wealthy people who already owned large houses, ends in March 2022. The Government has announced a new scheme to subsidise, to the tune of £5000 grants, the installation of heat pumps. It appears that the funding so far allocated would only reach some 30,000 homes but it is claimed to 'pump-prime' the industry. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Government demonstrates, almost daily, its ability to do the wrong thing or, when it does do the right thing does it too little and too late. The transition away from methane (aka 'natural' gas) to a fossil carbon free future is today's prime example.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Heat pumps do make sense. They allow us to gain three or more times the heat than one would get with an electric heater, but the issue is how best to deploy the technology at scale across our housing stock.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">A significant, but largely ignored, issue is what happens to the gas distribution network. What reduction in total demand would make the system uneconomic to maintain?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">That problem could be delayed a while if the government's grant scheme were </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">first</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">to be targeted at properties that are not connected to the mains gas grid. That's a large proportion of rural homes. This has the additional benefit of targeting mostly homes currently heated by oil, which is more carbon intensive than gas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">New builds should not be connected to the gas grid. Adding to the future problem makes little sense.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Then the roll-out of gas to heat-pump conversion should be conducted street by street, area by area. It would require 100% grants but the efficiencies of scale would be considerable and the gas grid could then be shut down one section at a time, reducing the running cost as the industry contracted.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgm5I1VrZlsY5mBHkJZ731Racn7Yr-QhwL46BzkQFcHUsreDQ7vW4zcsn30ChXtfHRvmmwgF_A4U8e5AeglgK43ntY91qEbGnBMwVhA7lJXK01HMnj6281AZsGo_FbAonZct93_w/s1200/HeatPump.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgm5I1VrZlsY5mBHkJZ731Racn7Yr-QhwL46BzkQFcHUsreDQ7vW4zcsn30ChXtfHRvmmwgF_A4U8e5AeglgK43ntY91qEbGnBMwVhA7lJXK01HMnj6281AZsGo_FbAonZct93_w/w474-h247/HeatPump.jpg" width="474" /></a></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The key ideas in this piece were sparked by comments by </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">C</span><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-1dbjc4n r-1loqt21 r-1wbh5a2 r-dnmrzs r-1ny4l3l" href="https://twitter.com/clv101" role="link" style="-webkit-box-align: stretch; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; align-items: stretch; background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 1; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1wbh5a2 r-dnmrzs r-1ny4l3l" style="-webkit-box-align: stretch; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; align-items: stretch; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 1; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1awozwy r-18u37iz r-dnmrzs" style="-webkit-box-align: center; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; align-items: center; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-901oao r-1awozwy r-18jsvk2 r-6koalj r-37j5jr r-a023e6 r-b88u0q r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-1udh08x r-1ddef8g r-3s2u2q r-qvutc0" dir="auto" style="-webkit-box-align: center; align-items: center; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: underline; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 css-bfa6kz r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" color="inherit" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" color="inherit" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: inherit;">hris Vernon</span></span></div></div></div></a> <a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-1dbjc4n r-1loqt21 r-1wbh5a2 r-dnmrzs r-1ny4l3l" href="https://twitter.com/clv101" role="link" style="-webkit-box-align: stretch; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; align-items: stretch; background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 1; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1wbh5a2 r-dnmrzs r-1ny4l3l" style="-webkit-box-align: stretch; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; align-items: stretch; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 1; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-18u37iz r-1wbh5a2" style="-webkit-box-align: stretch; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; align-items: stretch; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 1; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-901oao css-bfa6kz r-14j79pv r-18u37iz r-37j5jr r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" dir="ltr" style="-webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #536471; display: inline; flex-direction: row; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" color="inherit" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: inherit;">@clv101</span></div></div></div></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-1dbjc4n r-1loqt21 r-1wbh5a2 r-dnmrzs r-1ny4l3l" href="https://twitter.com/clv101" role="link" style="-webkit-box-align: stretch; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; align-items: stretch; background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 1; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1wbh5a2 r-dnmrzs r-1ny4l3l" style="-webkit-box-align: stretch; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; align-items: stretch; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 1; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-18u37iz r-1wbh5a2" style="-webkit-box-align: stretch; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; align-items: stretch; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 1; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="css-901oao css-bfa6kz r-14j79pv r-18u37iz r-37j5jr r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" dir="ltr" style="-webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #536471; display: inline; flex-direction: row; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" color="inherit" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="css-901oao css-bfa6kz r-1awozwy r-1sw30gj r-z2wwpe r-14j79pv r-6koalj r-1q142lx r-37j5jr r-n6v787 r-16dba41 r-1cwl3u0 r-13hce6t r-bcqeeo r-s1qlax r-qvutc0" dir="auto" style="-webkit-box-align: center; align-items: center; background-color: #eff3f4; border-radius: 4px; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #536471; display: flex; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 4px; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 4px; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" color="inherit" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div></div></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-16640727704216187342021-10-12T21:35:00.003+01:002021-10-12T21:35:44.760+01:00Nuclear Theddlethorpe 04<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In <a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2021/09/nuclear-theddlethorpe-03.html" target="_blank">Part 02</a> of this mini-series on the proposal to site a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) for nuclear waste at Theddlethorpe, I explained why the policy of Radioactive Waste Management (RWM) precludes the use of this location.<br /><br />Nonetheless RWM and Lincolnshire County Council have agreed to set up a <a href="https://theddlethorpe.workinginpartnership.org.uk/" target="_blank">'Working Group'</a> to pursue the proposal. This begs the question, why would they pursue something which cannot happen?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Unlike the geological information I outlined in the previous blog, which can all be independently verified as reliably factual, what follows is largely my conjecture, and may be wrong. I look forward to being shown why these conjectures are false, but until then they remain my best guess as to where the truth lies.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is easy to see the position of Lincolnshire County Council. They are as squeezed for revenues as any local authority, following the closure of the Theddlethorpe Gas Terminal </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">the business rates </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">have</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> recently been lost</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">, and the Council risks criticism if they do not actively pursue opportunities for economic development, particularly in an area of multiple social deprivation. The costs of pursuing the proposal will be met by RWM and there is a further incentive of 'up to one million pounds' for the local community if a 'Community Partnership' is set up, rising to £2.5m if investigations go beyond the desk-top stage. LCC have been told they can withdraw at any stage and that eventually the GDF can only be built if there is community support. They must think there is nothing to be lost and a chance of substantial gain to be made by going along with the process. Of course the idea that councillors would cynically take the money now whilst intending to withdraw from the scheme later must be ruled out as unconscionably unethical.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It suits the LCC to ignore the geological realities that I outlined in <a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2021/09/nuclear-theddlethorpe-03.html" target="_blank">Part 02</a> or to pretend not to understand them. Or perhaps they actually don't understand them, but ignorance is a poor excuse.<br /><br />The position of RWM may be more complex. It is hard to know just where in the hierarchy of governance any particular decision is made, 10 Downing Street, The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) or RWM. What we do know is that RWM know that Theddlethorpe is unsuitable. The British Geological Survey told them. And so did I!<br /><br />My first conjecture is that somewhere down the hierarchy RWM have been told to pursue some number of sites that are sub-optimal and have little chance of becoming the final choice. The advantage to the Government of such an approach is that demonstrates that communities are being listened to. At each rejected site the Government will be able to show that the case was made but that the community did not want it and therefore the proposal was withdrawn. It is democracy in action, championed by the caring, listening Government.<br /><br />My second conjecture is that the Treasury has a role. Dealing with our nuclear waste legacy is a fabulously expensive task, almost all of the public not appreciating just how expensive. A notable feature of the whole GDF process is how long it is forecast to take. It took me less than half an hour of reading, refreshing my knowledge of Lincolnshire geology, to realise that a GDF could not be constructed here, yet RWM are talking in terms of many years, perhaps a decade, before a decision on Theddlethorpe is finalised.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">As we know, 70 years worth of nuclear waste is in temporary storage, mostly at Sellafield with about 20% of it at some three dozen sites </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">scattered over</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> the country. Some of the temporary storage is in a parlous state, in some people's opinion best described as an accident waiting to happen. Permanent safe disposal in a GDF is a matter of some urgency. So why take the decisions in such a slow, drawn out manner?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The current work of RWM has two distinct advantages for Government. It shows that something is being done, the authorities are on the case, actively addressing the issue of nuclear waste that is our common concern. Secondly, it does not involve spending much money for quite a long time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">RWM's work, investigating a handful of potential GDF locations, only costs a few million pounds a year. From the Treasury's point of view the money that flows through the 'Community Partnerships' would largely need to be spent anyway, through local government, and will be mostly worthwhile investments, so hardly counts as a cost at all. But once a final decision on GDF locations is made and the go-ahead is given, then spending quickly ramps up by at least two orders of magnitude. Headline figures will now be given in fractions and multiples of billions, not millions.<br /><br />The choice presented by the Chancellor to the Prime Minister is this: either we take ten years going through the motions of careful and thorough search for the best way to deal with the nuclear waste, spending a few million pounds per year. or we actually get on with the actual job of dealing with the waste now at a cost of a billion pounds per year. Just now, what with other things going on in the economy, it is easy to see why kicking this particular can down the road to a time when the current Chancellor and Prime Minister are retired, must look the more attractive option.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Of course all the good folk who work at NDA and RWM, whose salaries depend on believing this is the best course of action, will believe that this is the best course of action.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQDZReNbgIsBD85PWPX4ACknjio0O835CZXYO5ofNqM7Pnmpyea-Ln5beZxvrC4pQR7zZxbk6UQO7PdKBW1dn6IBqMmbMxnkGgM1duwryyxWp7hf3y-wBCEdSjp3ZARcJ9ESFYg/s640/GDF03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQDZReNbgIsBD85PWPX4ACknjio0O835CZXYO5ofNqM7Pnmpyea-Ln5beZxvrC4pQR7zZxbk6UQO7PdKBW1dn6IBqMmbMxnkGgM1duwryyxWp7hf3y-wBCEdSjp3ZARcJ9ESFYg/w374-h374/GDF03.jpg" width="374" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I borrowed this picture from the <a href="https://theddlethorpe.workinginpartnership.org.uk/" target="_blank">RWM website</a>. It shows the former Conoco Theddlethorpe Gas Terminal and when it was closed I was much relieved at the loss of light glare spoiling the night sky. Long may we view the stars.</div><br /> <br /><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12513755.post-53040395922595713212021-09-08T22:23:00.001+01:002021-09-08T22:24:47.876+01:00Nuclear Theddlethorpe 03<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Geology is what counts.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Useful summaries of the Theddlethorpe area’s geology are to
be found in RWM’s own reports, commissioned from the British Geological Survey, <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/834558/Eastern_England_Regional_Geology_V1.0a.pdf" target="_blank">‘Eastern England Regional Geology’</a> (EERG)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">and <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/834218/Eastern_England_Subregion_2_V1.0a.pdf" target="_blank">‘Eastern England Subregion 2’</a> (EES2).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It’s worth noting that we do know quite
a lot about the geology of the region. This from page 3 of EERG:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>
“</i></span><i style="font-family: verdana;">There are more than 690 boreholes drilled to more than
1,000m depth in search of coal, oil and gas, water and mineral salts
(evaporites). This information is also supplemented by extensive geophysical
investigations including studies of the Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields and
seismic surveys. The distribution of rocks in this region is therefore
reasonably well known at the national scale. There are a number of shallower
boreholes that provide information on groundwater above 200m, but very little
information within and deeper than the depth range of interest for a GDF, 200
to 1,000m below NGS datum.”</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The sequence of rocks is summarised in Figure 2, page 8 of
EERG. The sedimentary rocks comprise various layers of pervious rocks such as
sandstones and impervious clays and mudstones. Nuclear waste would need to be
stored within a sufficiently thick layer of impervious rock and even if too
thin to hold a depository, thinner impervious layers higher in the sequence
might help seal lower layers from groundwater movement.<br />
There are various possibilities but the mudstones of the Triassic, such
as the Mercia Mudstone Group, are probably the most obvious target for a GDF.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is one thing finding a rock layer that is sufficiently
impervious to movement of water (and hence radionucleotides) and might
therefore provide a safe location for a GDF, but the issue in our area is what
else is present. If there is a likelihood that material useful to a future civilisation
is present, such as oil, gas or coal, the location will be unsuitable, as a
future search for these resources could inadvertently breach the integrity of a
nuclear waste depository.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There are hydrocarbons in rocks at a number of horizons
right down to the underlying Carboniferous rocks where we find the Coal
Measures. Gas has been found in commercially exploitable quantities at
Saltfleetby, 7km from the old Theddlethorpe Gas Terminal, and oil at Keddington. Coal
underlies the whole area and although too deep to be mined by conventional
means, underground coal gasification has been seriously considered. There is
currently no commercial interest in exploiting this resource and the climate
crisis demands an end to burning fossil carbon but we cannot know what the
people in future centuries may do and what technologies they may have. It is
not enough to say that while there is gas at Saltfleetby, the gas field does not
extend to Theddlethorpe. A future civilisation may have technologies that make
our enhanced recovery methods appear primitive. They may exploit resources that
we would consider worthless.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The existence of fossil carbon in the rocks below Theddlethorpe
must mean that this is rejected as a location for a GDF.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But don’t just take my word for it. These two passages are
from EES2:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Page 1. "<i>There are known gas resources at Saltfleetby north of
Mablethorpe. In this area the drilling is likely to have affected the way in
which water moves through the rock. Also possible exploration in the future in
this area means that it is more likely that future generations may disturb a
facility. Parts of this subregion have Petroleum Exploration & Development
Licences to allow companies to explore for oil and gas. This exploration is
currently at an early stage and it is not known whether oil or gas in these
licence areas will be exploited. RWM will continue to monitor how this
exploration programme progresses. Parts of this area, immediately off the coast
and in the Humber estuary, are Coal Authority Licence Areas allowing companies
to explore for coal. It is not known whether coal in these licence areas will
be exploited. RWM will also continue to monitor how this exploration programme
progresses."</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Page 4. "<i>Resources There is a small gas field at Saltfleetby,
just north of Mablethorpe (Figure 4a). It is less likely that this area would
be suitable to host a GDF because borehole drilling associated with oil and gas
exploration affects the way in which water moves through the rocks. It also
presents a higher likelihood of inadvertent human intrusion in the future.
These known resources would be taken into account in the siting of a GDF.
Petroleum Exploration and Development Licences3 are currently held for much of
the onshore part of this subregion and a small part of the inshore are (Figure
4a). There are also Coal Authority Licence Areas, in 2 inshore parts of this
subregion off Hornsea and Mablethorpe (Figure 4b) and the Humber estuary
between Kingston upon Hull and Grimsby. It is not known whether coal, oil or
gas in these licence areas will be exploited, but they would need to be
considered in the siting of a GDF."</i><br />
<br />
It is clear that RWM have a policy of rejecting a site where there is a likelihood
of fossil carbon resources. It is also clear that RWM know that there are
fossil carbon resources beneath Theddlethorpe. Which begs the question why are
they even bothering here? </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1huUVddWA01Z8x_oVOl_ok1pegvrDCfPptD2PyL24hzHHuLnrf6FjZcrHr_t7wavI27qzqRxMUGyhPnVSS0_H7R8q0Aiz7Nuz6RZ843kdpwBonJYIXVOIqRP0atxBpL4fZL7lg/s923/CrossSection.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="923" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1huUVddWA01Z8x_oVOl_ok1pegvrDCfPptD2PyL24hzHHuLnrf6FjZcrHr_t7wavI27qzqRxMUGyhPnVSS0_H7R8q0Aiz7Nuz6RZ843kdpwBonJYIXVOIqRP0atxBpL4fZL7lg/w421-h196/CrossSection.jpg" width="421" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #0000ee; text-decoration-line: underline;"><a href="https://biffvernon.blogspot.com/2021/07/nuclear-theddlethorpe-01.html" target="_blank">Part One of this topic.</a></span></span><p></p><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #0000ee; text-decoration-line: underline;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/12513755/874687346670499513" target="_blank">Part Two of this topic</a>.</span></span></div>biffvernonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04857477270618123815noreply@blogger.com0