tomo,

Yes, the scam revelation is hardly a surprise, but the article was very well written.

A quote from that McArdle interview I mentioned yesterday:

... questions where if a scientist or a politician has gone wrong the results would be too horrific to contemplate, those are the parts where you should absolutely trust the science least — follow the science least — because that's the part where the scientist is going to be working hardest to fool themselves. It's the part where the politician is going to be working hardest to fool themselves. And, you have to take that with the biggest grain of salt.

John Campbell interviews Prof. Clancy on recent FOI revelations from Australia's TGA. Worthwhile listening. Some overlap with the above quote and Clancy's views on "new technology vaccines".

tomo,
She certainly didn't mince her words there, but what a mad world we're living in that she needs to say it at all!

Ross Lea,
Yes, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the arguments, it is reassuring to see that the minister has thought about it and is able to articulate his thinking. Let's hope the same can be said of a few of his cabinet colleagues. I don't think there are any Australian ministers who allow reason to interfere with the accepted practice: decision by opinion poll.

Listened to an EconTalk with Megan McArdle at the weekend. Went longer than necessary, but at the heart was a useful concept which she called the Oedipus Trap: that once you've acted on a decision, no suggestion that the result has been catastrophic will be entertained. Her main example was lobotomy, where surgeons who had performed the largest number of them continued to advocate its benefits — facing up to the fact that they had nuked thousands of minds was impossible.

Obvious parallels to COVID and renewable energy policies. Interestingly, a fair number of comments at EconTalk pointed out the parallel with "gender reassignment" surgery. Wouldn't have thought that would be a big topic with that audience.

IMHO it is good to hear from a Government Minister who knows what he is talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6hDfAIOScE

tomo,
The wording on that Last Energy announcement was a little odd ("signed a deal to sell 24 nuclear power plants" — they signed a deal agreeing to make a deal?). Turns out it was fair enough, since it is still all contingent on them getting UK regulatory approval for their kit. Cue bureaucrats.

On the GPT analysis, I'm glad someone is pointing these things out, not that it's surprising, but it's good for the hype to be deflated. AFAIK, there's nothing all that new in the recent AI stuff, it's old techniques applied with extra computing power and larger amounts of training data, but the problems in the past were that the algorithms couldn't explain their reasoning. Essentially, the machine tells you "that's my best guess", with no explanation why. Quite often it was a good solution, but would you trust it with life and death decisions? Not in the 1990s, but here we are in the 2020s...

Expanding on yesterday's reference to the Great Leap, Mao's plan included coaxing each village to run its own foundry, in the hope of boosting production of quality steel. Similar thinking today with urging small operators to stick up solar panels and windmills hoping to boost production of quality electricity. So far we've mirrored the Chinese plan to the extent that what has been produced has been expensive and inferior. Hoping we pull back before we mirror the other results of the Great Leap Forward.

Have been trying out a cold for the last week, maybe it was COVID, but how would you tell?

DaveS,
They hardly need to worry about an accelerated Net Zero schedule "stretching feasibility" since it's not feasible in any timeframe. That won't stop our governments making a strong push to de-industrialise. The lessons of Mao's Great Leap Forward seem to have changed. I learnt that it was a massively stupid idea, but it appears the current thinking is that it was a good idea badly done. Of course now we know how to do it better...

tomo,
I don't think it's any particular antipathy swamp creatures have towards SMRs, they're just behaving as swamp creatures always behave.