Sunday, December 8, 2013
Wind turbines trash the landscape for the benefit of billionaires
Energy policy is chaotic and incoherent. The myth that wind power is 'free' has driven Britain's politicians mad
Simon Jenkins
'George Osborne finances a tiny group of extremely wealthy men to let someone else put up wind turbines on their land, or at least he did until Thursday.' Illustration: Satoshi Kambayashi
Is it fair for the chancellor to cut pensions for the poor while offering a million pounds a year to the Duke of Roxburghe for letting the wind blow? Is it fair to offer half a million to the Earl of Moray, a third of a million to the Earl of Glasgow, and a quarter of a million to the Duke of Beaufort, Sir Alastair Gordon Cumming and Sir Reginald Sheffield, the prime minister's father-in-law? Is it fair to promise a reported £1bn to Charles Connell over the next 25 years?
I am not particularly egalitarian. I support austerity in the public finances and accept that this may require a bit of smooth with the rough. But George Osborne is going beyond smooth.
British energy policy is chaotic. It is intellectually incoherent, lurching from fashion to fad with each lurch breeding a pile of taxpayer cash and a carnival of lobbyists out to protect it. Never in the history of public subsidy can so much have been paid by so many to so few.
The chancellor's well-trailed announcement that money for onshore turbines will be cut in favour of offshore is welcome in part, but it makes no sense. While less intrusive on the eye, offshore turbines are even more expensive and inefficient than onshore ones. The bizarre plan to erect 240 down the middle of the Bristol Channel has already been abandoned as uneconomic, despite Osborne's subsidy. The huge East Anglian field may cost billions. It all makes nuclear seem a bargain.
I have sympathy with the wind lobby in one respect. Its members are trying to turn an honest penny and must plan ahead. Just a couple of years ago they were told by wind's most fanatical subsidiser, Chris Huhne, to plan for 10,000 onshore turbines. Contracts were promised. Public money was unlimited. Offshore wind alone would "generate 20,000 British jobs". It was rubbish. The giant Sheringham field is so Norwegian that the country's crown prince was invited to declare it open.
There are almost no British jobs. The German firm Siemens makes most British turbines and sensibly does not rely on British government policy for its investment. It builds on the continent. Its competitor Vestas has pulled the plug on a plant in Kent, and South Korea's Doosan has done likewise in Glasgow. The energy required to mine the turbines' rare minerals and build, import and erect them makes a mockery of their "greenness".
The industry lobby, RenewableUK, on Thursday deplored what it suspected was a "political decision" to cut subsidy, and it was right. The switch reeked of Downing Street's obsession with Ukip, which has shrewdly opposed wind turbines. But an industry that is effectively a state subcontractor must accept such whims. The golden goose would never last.
I have spent two years traipsing Britain in search of the finest views. It is hard to convey the devastating impact of the turbines to those who have not seen them, especially a political elite that never leaves the south-east except for abroad. Fields of these structures are now rising almost everywhere. They are sited irrespective of the wind, since subsidy is paid irrespective of supply, even if there is none. It makes EU agricultural policy a paragon of sanity.
Turbines are to surround Cornwall and stretch along the north Devon coast. They will form a wall off the Dorset shore. They will line Offa's Dyke from Gwent to Shropshire, with a single giant on Clyro Hill looking down the Wye Valley like Rio's Christ the Redeemer. The once desolate Cambrian Mountains are on the way to being an estate of 840 turbines filling views in every direction.
The shires of Northampton, Nottingham and Cambridge are already gathering turbines. Heckington Fen in Lincolnshire may have ones higher than Lincoln cathedral. They are to appear in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, in the Brontë country of Yorkshire and on Spurn point off the Humber.
The wildest coastline left in England, in Northumberland, is being flanked by 70 turbines. In Scotland the Roxburghe array of 400 turbines has turned the once lovely Lammermuir Hills into a power station. Inverness and Caithness are to lose their open vistas, as are the Shetlands and the islands off Argyll. Scottish aristocrats have not seen such a turn in fortune since the Highland clearances.
Britain's landscape has never before been subject to such visual transformation. Human hands have always refashioned the country, urban and rural alike, but they have not industrialised its appearance on remotely this scale. Roads, railway lines, quarries, even towns and cities, are inconspicuous compared to wind turbines. Few of Britain's greatest views will be free of the sight of them.
Mostly the gain is footling. Turbines seldom produce their declared capacity. The one that towers over the M4 at Reading generates just 16% of its capacity. What they really generate is money, up to £30,000 a year each in subsidy. The billions poured into wind would have been far better spent – as energy professor Dieter Helm, the consultants KPMG and others have long argued – in pursuing lower emissions through energy efficiency and cleaner carbon.
Yet the myth that wind is "free" has driven politicians mad. They have chased the length and breadth of the land showering quantities of public money on a tiny handful of the rich. Britain's modern landscape is their memorial.
I am not particularly egalitarian. I support austerity in the public finances and accept that this may require a bit of smooth with the rough. But George Osborne is going beyond smooth.
British energy policy is chaotic. It is intellectually incoherent, lurching from fashion to fad with each lurch breeding a pile of taxpayer cash and a carnival of lobbyists out to protect it. Never in the history of public subsidy can so much have been paid by so many to so few.
The chancellor's well-trailed announcement that money for onshore turbines will be cut in favour of offshore is welcome in part, but it makes no sense. While less intrusive on the eye, offshore turbines are even more expensive and inefficient than onshore ones. The bizarre plan to erect 240 down the middle of the Bristol Channel has already been abandoned as uneconomic, despite Osborne's subsidy. The huge East Anglian field may cost billions. It all makes nuclear seem a bargain.
I have sympathy with the wind lobby in one respect. Its members are trying to turn an honest penny and must plan ahead. Just a couple of years ago they were told by wind's most fanatical subsidiser, Chris Huhne, to plan for 10,000 onshore turbines. Contracts were promised. Public money was unlimited. Offshore wind alone would "generate 20,000 British jobs". It was rubbish. The giant Sheringham field is so Norwegian that the country's crown prince was invited to declare it open.
There are almost no British jobs. The German firm Siemens makes most British turbines and sensibly does not rely on British government policy for its investment. It builds on the continent. Its competitor Vestas has pulled the plug on a plant in Kent, and South Korea's Doosan has done likewise in Glasgow. The energy required to mine the turbines' rare minerals and build, import and erect them makes a mockery of their "greenness".
The industry lobby, RenewableUK, on Thursday deplored what it suspected was a "political decision" to cut subsidy, and it was right. The switch reeked of Downing Street's obsession with Ukip, which has shrewdly opposed wind turbines. But an industry that is effectively a state subcontractor must accept such whims. The golden goose would never last.
I have spent two years traipsing Britain in search of the finest views. It is hard to convey the devastating impact of the turbines to those who have not seen them, especially a political elite that never leaves the south-east except for abroad. Fields of these structures are now rising almost everywhere. They are sited irrespective of the wind, since subsidy is paid irrespective of supply, even if there is none. It makes EU agricultural policy a paragon of sanity.
Turbines are to surround Cornwall and stretch along the north Devon coast. They will form a wall off the Dorset shore. They will line Offa's Dyke from Gwent to Shropshire, with a single giant on Clyro Hill looking down the Wye Valley like Rio's Christ the Redeemer. The once desolate Cambrian Mountains are on the way to being an estate of 840 turbines filling views in every direction.
The shires of Northampton, Nottingham and Cambridge are already gathering turbines. Heckington Fen in Lincolnshire may have ones higher than Lincoln cathedral. They are to appear in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, in the Brontë country of Yorkshire and on Spurn point off the Humber.
The wildest coastline left in England, in Northumberland, is being flanked by 70 turbines. In Scotland the Roxburghe array of 400 turbines has turned the once lovely Lammermuir Hills into a power station. Inverness and Caithness are to lose their open vistas, as are the Shetlands and the islands off Argyll. Scottish aristocrats have not seen such a turn in fortune since the Highland clearances.
Britain's landscape has never before been subject to such visual transformation. Human hands have always refashioned the country, urban and rural alike, but they have not industrialised its appearance on remotely this scale. Roads, railway lines, quarries, even towns and cities, are inconspicuous compared to wind turbines. Few of Britain's greatest views will be free of the sight of them.
Mostly the gain is footling. Turbines seldom produce their declared capacity. The one that towers over the M4 at Reading generates just 16% of its capacity. What they really generate is money, up to £30,000 a year each in subsidy. The billions poured into wind would have been far better spent – as energy professor Dieter Helm, the consultants KPMG and others have long argued – in pursuing lower emissions through energy efficiency and cleaner carbon.
Yet the myth that wind is "free" has driven politicians mad. They have chased the length and breadth of the land showering quantities of public money on a tiny handful of the rich. Britain's modern landscape is their memorial.
Very Nice Post on Cosmic Rays
This week’s Ask Ethan has a very nice post on cosmic rays, their origins, and how they interact with the Earth. Recommended reading.
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/12/06/ask-ethan-14-the-highest-energy-particles-in-the-universe/
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/12/06/ask-ethan-14-the-highest-energy-particles-in-the-universe/
Jensen K, Karch A. Holographic Dual of an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Pair has a Wormhole. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2013;111(21)
Quoted from Brian Koberlein, Rochestor, NY.
Entanglement is a well-known property of quantum mechanics. It is perhaps most famously demonstrated through the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment. Suppose we have a mischievous mutual friend. She decides to prank us by sending sending each of us one member of a pair of gloves. She packs each glove in a box and mails one to each of us. We find out about the prank, so we both know that we’re getting one glove of a pair. But until either of us open our respective box, neither of us know which glove we have. Once the box arrives at your door, you open it up, and find you have the left glove. At that moment you know I must have the right glove.
This is the basic idea of the EPR experiment. For gloves it isn’t a big deal, because from the get-go the left glove was heading your way. You just didn’t know you were getting the left glove. That’s because gloves are not quantum things. In the quantum regime, things get much more strange. In quantum theory, things can be in an indefinite state until you observe them. It would be as if our boxes contained a pair of something (gloves, shoes, salt and pepper shakers, etc.) but it is impossible to know what specific something until one of us opens their box.
In quantum theory we would say the boxes contain a superposition of possible things, and the outcome only becomes definite when the outcome is observed. Now even though you can’t know what specific object you have, you know that I must have its pair. So if you open the box to find a red right shoe, you know immediately that I must have a red left shoe. We both know this without opening the box, so we can say that the outcomes of opening our boxes are entangled. Knowing the contents of one box tells us the contents of the other. We’ve actually done this experiment with photons, atoms and the like, and it really works.
Of course this is really hard to wrap your head around. If I’m thousands of miles away from you, and I open my box to find a salt shaker, I know you must have a pepper shaker. But your box couldn’t have known that until I opened the box. How is that possible? How can the opening of my box instantly affect your box thousands of miles away? Do the boxes communicate faster than light? (No.) Is there some secret (hidden variable) so that the boxes know what they will become when observed? (No.) That is part of what makes entanglement so strange, and the EPR experiment so popular. The one thing we can say is that entanglement is a very real physical effect in quantum mechanics. There isn’t anything magical going on, just something we humans find strange.
Wormholes come from general relativity. Unlike entanglement, there is no experimental evidence for wormholes. Instead, they are a hypothetical connection between two locations in space. Normally when people think of wormholes, they think of something out of science fiction (http://goo.gl/nz5SV2) where people use wormholes to travel to distant stars, but the hypothetical wormholes in general relativity aren’t traversible, nor do they have to be large.
This particular paper is looking at how there might be a connection between wormholes and quantum particles. This idea isn’t new, in fact the idea that fundamental particles could be wormholes dates back to the 1950s, when John Wheeler proposed a model known as geometrodynamics, where everything was empty space and charged particles were the mouths of wormholes. Wheeler was an excellent physicist known for coming up with a lot of wild ideas, some of which worked, and some of which didn’t. In the case of geometrodynamics, it never really worked, and after a while interest faded.
But with the rise of string theory, different versions of the idea have gained some popularity. Hence this new paper. What the authors did was to look at a specific case of the EPR experiment, dealing with two quark particles. What they were able to show is that the entangled quarks can be described in two ways. The first is the standard way in which entanglement is described in quantum theory, but the second (dual) way is as two particles connected by a wormhole. Both of these descriptions are equivalent.
Does this mean that entangled particles are wormholes? No. What it means is that there is an interesting connection between the mathematics of entanglement and the mathematics of quantum wormholes. Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with any new experimental evidence. But it is interesting, because it shows a connection between quantum entanglement and general relativity, and that may lead the way toward a better understanding of quantum gravity.
Entanglement is a well-known property of quantum mechanics. It is perhaps most famously demonstrated through the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment. Suppose we have a mischievous mutual friend. She decides to prank us by sending sending each of us one member of a pair of gloves. She packs each glove in a box and mails one to each of us. We find out about the prank, so we both know that we’re getting one glove of a pair. But until either of us open our respective box, neither of us know which glove we have. Once the box arrives at your door, you open it up, and find you have the left glove. At that moment you know I must have the right glove.
This is the basic idea of the EPR experiment. For gloves it isn’t a big deal, because from the get-go the left glove was heading your way. You just didn’t know you were getting the left glove. That’s because gloves are not quantum things. In the quantum regime, things get much more strange. In quantum theory, things can be in an indefinite state until you observe them. It would be as if our boxes contained a pair of something (gloves, shoes, salt and pepper shakers, etc.) but it is impossible to know what specific something until one of us opens their box.
In quantum theory we would say the boxes contain a superposition of possible things, and the outcome only becomes definite when the outcome is observed. Now even though you can’t know what specific object you have, you know that I must have its pair. So if you open the box to find a red right shoe, you know immediately that I must have a red left shoe. We both know this without opening the box, so we can say that the outcomes of opening our boxes are entangled. Knowing the contents of one box tells us the contents of the other. We’ve actually done this experiment with photons, atoms and the like, and it really works.
Of course this is really hard to wrap your head around. If I’m thousands of miles away from you, and I open my box to find a salt shaker, I know you must have a pepper shaker. But your box couldn’t have known that until I opened the box. How is that possible? How can the opening of my box instantly affect your box thousands of miles away? Do the boxes communicate faster than light? (No.) Is there some secret (hidden variable) so that the boxes know what they will become when observed? (No.) That is part of what makes entanglement so strange, and the EPR experiment so popular. The one thing we can say is that entanglement is a very real physical effect in quantum mechanics. There isn’t anything magical going on, just something we humans find strange.
Wormholes come from general relativity. Unlike entanglement, there is no experimental evidence for wormholes. Instead, they are a hypothetical connection between two locations in space. Normally when people think of wormholes, they think of something out of science fiction (http://goo.gl/nz5SV2) where people use wormholes to travel to distant stars, but the hypothetical wormholes in general relativity aren’t traversible, nor do they have to be large.
This particular paper is looking at how there might be a connection between wormholes and quantum particles. This idea isn’t new, in fact the idea that fundamental particles could be wormholes dates back to the 1950s, when John Wheeler proposed a model known as geometrodynamics, where everything was empty space and charged particles were the mouths of wormholes. Wheeler was an excellent physicist known for coming up with a lot of wild ideas, some of which worked, and some of which didn’t. In the case of geometrodynamics, it never really worked, and after a while interest faded.
But with the rise of string theory, different versions of the idea have gained some popularity. Hence this new paper. What the authors did was to look at a specific case of the EPR experiment, dealing with two quark particles. What they were able to show is that the entangled quarks can be described in two ways. The first is the standard way in which entanglement is described in quantum theory, but the second (dual) way is as two particles connected by a wormhole. Both of these descriptions are equivalent.
Does this mean that entangled particles are wormholes? No. What it means is that there is an interesting connection between the mathematics of entanglement and the mathematics of quantum wormholes. Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with any new experimental evidence. But it is interesting, because it shows a connection between quantum entanglement and general relativity, and that may lead the way toward a better understanding of quantum gravity.
John Lennon RIP
| C | Cmai7 | F | C | Cmai7 | F | |
| Im | agine | th | er | e's no | heaven, it's easy if you try |
| C | Cmai7 | F | C | Cmai7 | F | |
| No | hell | be | lo | w us, | above us only sky |
| Am | Dm | G | G7 | |
| Ima | gin | e | all the people, living for to day. A-ha.. |
| Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. |
| Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. |
| Imagine all the people, living for to day. You-u.. |
| F | G | C | F | G | C | E | |
| Yo | u | ma | y | sa | y | I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. |
| F | G | C | E | |
| I | ho | pe | some day you'll join us, |
| F | G | C | |
| An | d | the world will be one |
| Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can |
| No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man |
| Imagine all the people, sharing all the world. You-u.. |
| You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. |
| I hope some day you'll join us, |
| And the world will live as one http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=john+lennon&sm=3 |
Philosophy and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Nicholar Joll
http://books.google.dk/books?id=VuAgtqaPBvoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=subject:%22Philosophy%22&hl=da&sa=X&ei=LJSkUsSNFunJsQTqkYLADA#v=onepage&q&f=true
"Philosophy and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"
For full details go to the link above. Sounds utterly fascinating. I wasn't able to extract any info or pictures to show here. Another link is http://najoll.wordpress.com/hitchhiker-philosophy/. I got the following information:
"Philosophy and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"
For full details go to the link above. Sounds utterly fascinating. I wasn't able to extract any info or pictures to show here. Another link is http://najoll.wordpress.com/hitchhiker-philosophy/. I got the following information:
Nicholas Joll, philosopher
Philosophy and THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
‘[A] very readable and mind-expanding collection’ – The Guardian, 8/9/2012 (and online here)
News
Julian Baggini on the World Service’s Newshour programme (via BBC Listen Again) on Hitchhiker’s and how it is philosophical. That material starts 47 minutes through.
The slides from my Hitchhiker’s Towel Day talk (at Cambridge Central Library, May 25th 2013).
Radio interview from 12/09/2012: me talking about the Hitchhiker book with Sean Moncrieff on Newstalk Ireland.
Reviews
- The aforementioned Guardian review is here.
- The book has a 4.5 out of 5 rating on Goodreads.
- Another review.
- Reviews are forthcoming in (1) Philosophy Now magazine (and there is a sort of draft of that review here), (2) the journal Philosophical Quarterly.
Try and Buy
Buy the Hitchhiker book (in handsome paperback or rather nice e-book) from
- the UK’s Guardian newspaper
- the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan
- various independent U.K. bookshops (via ‘Hive’, a tool for shopping locally online)
- Amazon.co.uk
- Amazon.com
- or from one of the other Amazon sites such as Amazon.ca
and Amazon.de
- or (e-book only) Google Play
Excerpts (try before you buy!)
- the book’s front matter (PDF file) including the preface and the contents pages (the latter being separately available as a JPG) (and this whole bundle is the one available via the ‘send to’ link in the sidebar on the right of this page) ©
- part of the Introduction (PDF) ©
- the book’s index of ‘philosophers, sages, luminaries, and other thinking persons’ (webpage) ©
- a larger image of the cover (in a PDF) ©
Understanding psychology as a science: an introduction to scientific and statistical inference
An accessible and illuminating exploration of the conceptual basisof scientific and statistical inference and the practical impact this has on conducting psychological research. The book encourages a critical discussion of the different approaches and looks at some of the most important thinkers and their influence.
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