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1,570 thoughts on “Nuclear Nightmare

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  • Anon

    Of note there has been a recent bump up in UK wind-power as the London Array comes online. Although Phase 1 is not yet fully online it is already the largest operational offshore wind-farm in the world.

  • Mary

    DesRes Get it right. If you looked at the Wikipedia link, you would see that it is Shawcross who counts Perle amongst his friends. A most dangerous individual.

    Perle’s book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror which he coauthored with fellow neoconservative David Frum in 2004 criticizes American bureaucracy, civil service, and law. The book suggests that we as Americans must “overhaul the institutions of our government to ready them for a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy” including the FBI, CIA, armed forces, and State Department.[2] The book is also used as a defense of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and outlines important neoconservative ideas, including ways to abandon all Israeli-Palestinian peace processes, invade Syria, and implement strict US domestic surveillance with biometric identity cards and public vigilance to hinder potential terrorist immigrant or terrorist sympathizer threats.[7] Perle and Frum conclude: “For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation’s great cause … There is no middle way for Americans: it is victory or holocaust.” [2] These ideas are foundational elements of neoconservatism.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Perle

    PS Lord Forte is deceased.

    PS Shawcross, having the associations I listed, has a conflict of interest in his chairmanship of the Charity Commission.

  • resident dissident

    Mary – i take Berezovsky’s and Usmanov’s illgotten gains and trump it with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putin's_Palace

    Lets not start eulogising one branch of the Russian oligarchs over another – the real victims here are ordinary Russians for whom none of the oligarchs or those doging taxes by transferring money to Cyprus and elsewhere give a damm.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    Mary complains :

    “I have been looking up to see who’s who in the ECB. The very opposite of transparency viz

    http://www.ecb.int/ecb/pdf/orga/ECB_managers.pdf?97c405c53d5b4dd867b391c5901f5d41

    and a dead link to advisory board here, Just a tiny photo of the members.
    http://www.ecb.int/ecb/orga/orgachart/bas/html/directorate04.en.html

    ******
    I assume that Mary’s comment was made in the spirit of genuine enquiry and so would like to help her so that she can find the information she is looking for.

    The first link Mary provides is to an organogram of ECB officials (ie, ECB civil servants) exercising managerial functions. It seems perfectly clear to me.

    If Mary is interested in knowing more about the people in the two decision-making bodies of the ECB, then she has merely to go onto the ECB website and type in “Governing Council” and “Executive Board” and she can see who the members of these two bodies are.

    She will find there the names of the 6 members of the Executive Board. If Mary is interested, she can even find the names of all the members of this Board since the establishment of the ECB.

    As far as the members of the Governing Council are concerned, these are the 6 members of the Executive Board (see above), plus the governors of the Central Banks of the eurozone member states. As Mary is presumably aware of the members of the eurozone, she will merely have to google up, for instance, ‘governor of the Central Bank of Finland’, etc, to get the names of the governors.

    Quite simple really, isn’t it.

    I hope that helped you, Mary, and that we may soon be able to read a substantive post from you on the subject of the ECB, perhaps based on the info you’ll have been able to gather?

  • resident dissident

    @Mary

    “Shawcross’s third wife is Olga Polizzi, Forte’s daughter. He counts Richard Perle amongst his friends. Enough said.”

    I’m afraid Mary – I read what you wrote as life is too short to read all your links. So why was the superfluous reference made to Lord Forte? Perhaps he has reasons other than politics to be Perle’s friend – it is perfectly possible you know.

    If you wish to have a go at Shawcross then might I suggest you do the honest thing and critique what he actaully says himself – rather than seek to attack him through his friends and relatives – it isn’t as though he is silent when it comes to his own views http://www.williamshawcross.com/index.php?page=articles

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    @ Resident Dissident : game, set and match to you, I do think (re. “Putin’s palace”).

    Good to see you back.

  • Anon

    Gas update.

    Bacton pipeline remains operational but there appears (to me) to be unusual periodic flow fluctuations beyond what should be expected. Makes me continue to wonder if they are operating the pipeline with an unresolved fault condition. The USA restarted the Alaska pipeline from Prudhoe Bay with a hole in it a couple of years ago to avoid catastrophe (pipeline freezing solid).

    Hope I am wrong and fluctuations are within expected limits.

    Long Range forecast ahead remains abysmal. Mid range we may be buried under more snow about next weekend.

  • resident dissident

    Anon

    As I’ve said before I’m a republican – but to be fair to Liz Windsor it was one of her descendants that did the original pilfering and to the best of my knowledge I don’s think she ever professed to being a Communist.

  • Anon

    Given that Viva Palestine’s UK website has not been updated since November 2011, they seem to be inactive.

  • Mary

    Rather damned with faint praise there Villager. ‘Innocuous’? Moi? 🙂

    ~~

    Eddie Mair did not hold back this morning when interviewing Johnson on the Marr show. If only Marr could have done the same over the years with the war criminals like Bliar and Straw.

    Boris Johnson grilled on integrity ahead of TV documentary
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21916385

    ~~

    I see we have the double act working here (yet again) this afternoon.

  • Anon

    As I’ve said before I’m a republican – but to be fair to Liz Windsor it was one of her descendants that did the original pilfering and to the best of my knowledge I don’s think she ever professed to being a Communist.

    One of her descendents? You do realise that time travel from the future is highly classified? Keep talking like that and they will “un-birth” you.

    You are right about Liz’s politics. It is Charles who is the communist of course.

  • Anon

    Ok “Descendant” preferably I should have used but “descendent” will also do.

    Pedant out 🙂

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    “Given that Viva Palestine’s UK website has not been updated since November 2011, they seem to be inactive.”

    That’s as may be, and likely to make those who contributed to this “charity” when it was still active even more keen to learn how and on what their contributions were spent.

    Are there no legal sanctions on “charities” that fail to deliver their accounts within a certain time?

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    This is not good….http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/thats-reassuring-nasa-chief-charles-boldens-advice-on-asteroid-heading-for-earth-just-pray-8543224.html

    “Nasa chief Charles Bolden was somewhat less reassuring, however, when asked this week for advice on how to handle a large asteroid headed toward New York City.

    His suggestion: Pray.

    Mr Bolden gave his stark advice to lawmakers at a US House of Representatives Science Committee hearing on Tuesday, telling them that all that anyone in the US, or indeed anywhere, could do about unknown asteroids or meteors on a collision course with earth is offer up a prayer.”

  • Anon

    “People say all sorts of fantastical things whilst they are talking to their friends”

    Boris justifying to Eddie Mair his apparent agreement to provide the address of a journalist to Darius Guppy, who would arrange to have him beaten up.

    What next – Boris calling for the release of various people held as terrorists based on “fantastical” conversations they had with friends?

    Btw, Andrew Marr attended fee-paying, private Dundee High School. Eddie Mair was educated at Dundee state-funded comprehensive schools.

  • Anon

    Babbler,

    May I suggest you contact the Charities Commission and ask them what happened to that money you gave to Viva Palestine? Must have been a lot both you and DistRess donated to get you this worked up.

  • Anon

    Ben,

    There are rumours of something inbound – in fact someone has even invented its official name “DA2013 CL2”. I am working on the assumption this is a hoax just like all the previous hoaxes but one can never be absolutely certain!

    The name/classification implies discovered February 2013, coming in from deep space with low visibility. A number of posts with supposed orbit information and impact time/place have vanished now. But then if I was a hoaxer I would delete some of my posts after a time to make it look like they had been censored. The original hoax info did not seem to be describing a world-killer but something short of that.

    Extra heavy-duty tinfoil hats should be worn if worried.

    Due to (not) hit within the next week.

  • crab

    “a factor you ignored while over estimating the efficiency of your solar sells.”

    The only estimate of solar cell efficiency i mentioned was in relation to your “Man just can’t make a solar energy collector and storer more efficient than a tree.” Now your efficiency “rating” for trees would suffer exactly the same outages as solar cells would.

    The fact is trees photosynthesis 1-3% of light which falls on them, solar cells routinely convert 20-30% of light straight into electricity.

    And wood is really quite scarce today and will get much scarcer and fenced away if relied on for heating.

    http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_44.shtml

    So the maximum power available, ig-
    noring all the additional costs of growing, harvesting, and processing the
    greenery, is

    0.5 W/m2 × 3000 m2 per person = 36 kWh/d per person.

    Wow. That’s not very much, considering the outrageously generous as-
    sumptions we just made, to try to get a big number. If you wanted to
    get biofuels for cars or planes from the greenery, all the other steps in the
    chain from farm to spark plug would inevitably be inefficient. I think it’d
    be optimistic to hope that the overall losses along the processing chain
    would be as small as 33%. Even burning dried wood in a good wood
    boiler loses 20% of the heat up the chimney. So surely the true potential
    power from biomass and biofuels cannot be any bigger than 24 kWh/d per
    person. And don’t forget, we want to use some of the greenery to make
    food for us and for our animal companions.

    Could genetic engineering produce plants that convert solar energy
    to chemicals more efficiently? It’s conceivable; but I haven’t found any
    scientific publication predicting that plants in Europe could achieve net
    power production beyond 1 W/m2.

    Philip Wrote:
    “…It is also worth pointing out that nuclear power is price stable. The fuel costs are such a small part of the total cost that we know exactly what the future price of nuclear provided electricity will be.
    I ask you again to read the informed, balanced and clearly presented account of the dilemmas involved in a choice of energy supply described in the book ‘Sustainable Energy – without the hot air’ by David MacKay.

    It is a good collection of calculations, but its
    analysis of Nuclear power is inadequate. It does not approach the issue of detected and undetected and future Cancer from radioactivity, from existing and future nuclear accidents and errors, or the uniquely intense security demands required for nuclear infrastructure. Even in its light assessment of nuclear power options it still does not present an attractive picture. It may depend which bits you concentrate on.

    http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_167.shtml

    Nuclear Safety

    The safety of nuclear operations in Britain remains a concern. The THORP
    reprocessing facility at Sellafield, built in 1994 at a cost of £1.8 billion, had
    a growing leak from a broken pipe from August 2004 to April 2005. Over
    eight months, the leak let 85 000 litres of uranium-rich fluid flow into a
    sump which was equipped with safety systems that were designed to detect
    immediately any leak of as little as 15 litres. But the leak went undetected
    because the operators hadn’t completed the checks that ensured
    the safety systems were working; and the operators were in the habit of
    ignoring safety alarms anyway.

    The safety system came with belt and braces. Independent of the failed
    safety alarms, routine safety-measurements of fluids in the sump should
    have detected the abnormal presence of uranium within one month of the
    start of the leak; but the operators often didn’t bother taking these routine
    measurements, because they felt too busy; and when they did take mea-
    surements that detected the abnormal presence of uranium in the sump
    (on 28 August 2004, 26 November 2004, and 24 February 2005), no action
    was taken.

    By April 2005, 22 tons of uranium had leaked, but still none of the
    leak-detection systems detected the leak. The leak was finally detected by
    accountancy, when the bean-counters noticed that they were getting 10%
    less uranium out than their clients claimed they’d put in! Thank goodness
    this private company had a profit motive, hey?

  • resident dissident

    Anon

    We all give to charities which claim back tax relief from HMRC which Viva Palestina appear to have been doing.

  • Mary

    @DesRes ‘I’m afraid Mary – I read what you wrote as life is too short to read all your links. So why was the superfluous reference made to Lord Forte? Perhaps he has reasons other than politics to be Perle’s friend – it is perfectly possible you know.’

    I repeat (how many more times?) that William Shawcross is a friend of the paleocon Richard Perle. Lord Forte who is now deceased was NOT a friend of Richard Perle. Got it?

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    Anon; I know there are a lot of amateurs with optics trained on the skies, especially now with ISON and cohort, but this object is pretty small. I posted this as a kind of statement about NASA, who has never missed a funding opportunity, but they apparently passed up the federal bucks on this. because prayer doesn’t cost anything at all.

    There is a lot of activity from the asteroid belt, and it is possible the comets are throwing their weight around and whip-snaking some matter around their tails.

  • Anon

    On a live BBC astronomy show a few weeks ago Professor Brian Cox (known to everyone in the UK) talked about various asteroids and said “This one is about the size of the one due to hit us” he rapidly retracted that. Again I am assuming he misspoke!

    Trouble with this presumably fictitious asteroid is that it was very close to the sun as seen from earth when discovered and is now directly inline with the sun so cannot be seen by amateur telescopes. Most of what is on the web now is 2nd or 3rd hand versions of the first posts (now deleted) on “Above Top Secret” (not GLP where it came up later).

    Leaving conspiracy theory, the very real C 2013/A1 remains on course for possible Mars collision. This may have been what kicked off the latest round of upcoming earth-hit posts.

  • crab

    Anon your referencing and linking information on the National electric generation has been exemplary. The realtime generation and distribution display facilities provided by our systems is reassuringly proficient.

    Im pleasantly surprised that UK wind generation is just about on par with Nuclear already! It is similar cost if not cheaper than Nuclear, it is very safe in routine terms, and has none of Nuclears grave security or safety hazards and requirements. Wind turbines enhance marine environment, protect and cohabit over natural and farming environments, the only thing which they seem to trouble is old Radars and bees stuck in bonnets!

  • Anon

    Ben, re-reading NASA boss Bolden’s words

    Bolden told the committee: “From the information we have, we don’t know of an asteroid that will threaten the population of the United States but if it’s coming in three weeks, pray.”

    Hmm.. as the Independent says “That’s reassuring”!

    Bolden’s previous jobs include General in the United States Marine Corps and space shuttle pilot.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    Anon @ 5;28

    Monitoring systems are inadequate, is also reassuring. “if it’s in three weeks, pray’ is the same as saying ‘duck and cover’. They really don’t have a defense against such an event, regardless of how much notice is given.

  • Anon

    Ben,

    You mean we can’t just ask everyone in China to jump off a chair at the right moment and knock the earth sideways so it misses? Damn this physics.

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