tomo,

I shouldn't have said anything about the power system. Had a power cut here yesterday that lasted till 11am. When it's just the computer that's dead, there are plenty of things I can do. Less to choose from when there's no electricity: book reading and gardening worked ok. Would have been reduced to meditation if it had lasted into the night.

I see Jo has an item on a runaway MG in England though I thought the runaway Tesla a while back was a bit more spectacular. I don't blame EVs in either case; just drive by wire and cars that are not quite as smart as they pretend.

Jo's latest is on cabling troubles for offshore wind. No great surprises, but the cable cross-section is impressive. Also intrigued that they use copper (alloy?). I thought everything was aluminium-based these days. A quick Google suggests there's benefit in extra weight for undersea cables. Interesting.

tomo,
Big batteries here have also chiefly helped with stabilising frequency, but they were definitely sold to the public as filling the gaps when the wind didn't blow, etc. South Australia's big battery used to talk about MW of supply and MWh of storage, but I see the figures now include MWs of "inertial response" (timeframes of seconds being a bit more realistic than hours).

Now one might ask why we need hundreds of millions of dollars worth of this frequency control stuff that we never needed before. Here's the clearest explanation I've seen so far.

On the BBC megalomania, when I think of anyone trying to rule the world I come back to a picture from my childhood I think I've mentioned here before: the amusement park ride which followed a fixed path, but with each child having his own completely ineffectual steering wheel to play with. BBC's effect on world temperature will be much the same as Ireland's LNG status: 0 ± ε.

Perhaps those Nobel winners are wearing masks for a different reason. It's one thing to be recognised by a Nobel committee, quite another to be recognised by a lynch mob.

Those eBikes made quite a fireworks display as they went up. Good to see Cadogan calling them for what they are, despite his saying he's on the believers' side on climate alarm.

Besides climate, I'd quibble with him about criticising Morrison for wanting to continue his holiday during the 2020 bushfires. If Cadogan checks he'll find there's no "Australian Fire Department" — firefighting being a state duty — and if he puts his engineer's hat back on, it might occur to him that fires are better fought locally than nationally. Perhaps, for once, we should be pushing for localising responsibility rather than nationalising it.

That's just me swimming against the tide again (or turning my little steering wheel); Canberra has a strong magnetic attraction for authority and idiocy.

tomo,

Yes, I remember the hunt for "the list" too. The temperature hasn't gone up much since then, but as you say, the years have been mounting up at a scary rate. Might well be that they're the greater threat. Thanks for the link — enjoyed reading the comments there too.

That sense of "decolonisation" may well have been practised by many climate alarmists. Would explain their being full of shit.

On big-battery fires, yep, one in Victoria and another in Queensland. Let it burn while trying to keep the nearby ones cool seems to be the strategy. Not installing them in the first place might have been a better strategy.

Beats me why we need lithium batteries for these fixed installations anyway. Their light weight is pretty much wasted.

Not seeing many people still obsessing with masks, hand sanitiser, etc., around here. The media tried to gee it up a couple of months ago, but not much response. We're getting into the warmer weather now, so I expect they'll leave it and start pushing again next May or so. What the media here would really like is if you lot in the UK got into a proper tizz about it this winter so we'll be primed for a stampede.

Today Jo Nova has a piece on how insurance for evs has suddenly become expensive, citing a few UK prices.

All these headwinds for EVs, but they'll still be pushed. When it comes to big decisions, governments do seem to have a knack for picking losers and sticking with them. Maybe, to the list of literary parallels — 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 — we should add something lighter: Don Quixote.

Looking at Cadogan, saw

https://twitter.com/PaulineHansonOz/status/1707247958033645665