Biostatistics Professor Jon Deeks has written a critical piece on the shortfalls of the current mass testing regime for children in schools. Of particular concern is the occurrence of false positives. UnHerd has the story.
The fitness for purpose [of the testing regime] is a combination of the sensitivity of the test (what percentage of infected cases it correctly identifies) and the specificity (what percentage of uninfected people it correctly says are negative). But it also depends on how, where and when a test is used.
Different studies of the UK Innova lateral flow test (the test being used in schools) have reported variously that its sensitivity is 78%, 58%, 40% and even 3%. The higher 78% and 58% figures come from using the test among people with symptoms, the lower 40% and 3% figures come from using it for mass testing among people without symptoms, as is being done in schools. (And none of these studies have assessed how well the test detects infection in children). So although the test can pick up people who have the infection, it will miss quite a few – so there is a risk that disinhibition after a negative test could actually exacerbate case numbers if children incorrectly think they are safe and the rules no longer apply.
But the more concerning aspect are the false positives, related to the specificity. The original Government studies found only around 3 in 1,000 people were getting false positives, and this dropped to 1 in 1,000 in the Liverpool study. Doesn’t sound like a lot, right?
But consider the problem from the perspective of a pupil who has just got a positive test result. The reasonable question for them (and their parents) to ask is “what are the chances that this is a false positive?” Given that a positive test result means the pupil, their family and their school bubble will have to isolate for 10 days, a high false positive probability is a real problem.
Jon, who is a Senior Researcher in the Institute of Applied Health Research at Birmingham University, goes on to outline three scenarios regarding the prevalence of the disease and the accuracy of the tests.
Where 1 in 100 pupils have the infection (Scenario A), by testing a million we would find 5,000 cases but get 990 false positives. This ratio of true to false positives is quite favourable – 5 out of every 6 with positive results actually would have COVID-19 infection – so the probability that the pupil genuinely has the infection is over 80%.
However, the picture becomes less favourable as the infection becomes rarer: if only 1 in 1,000 pupils were infected (Scenario B) we would detect 500 cases but get 999 false positives. The ratio of true to false positives is now unfavourable – one true result for every two false results.
If only 1 in 10,000 had the infection there would be one true result for every 20 false results (Scenario C). Why would anybody consent to a test where the chances that a positive result is wrong are so much higher than it is right? This isn’t the fault of the test – it’s the application in a low prevalence setting. Using any test – even one with an incredibly high specificity – will lead to more false than true positive results when the disease becomes rare.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Government’s refusal to let pupils use follow-up tests to confirm positive Covid results is “ruining” their return to school, parents say.
Stop Press 2: Professor Deeks made the same point in an interview for Radio 5 Live.
— BBC Radio 5 Live (@bbc5live) March 11, 2021
"Most of the positive results we’re seeing at the moment are probably false positives and not true positives"
@deeksj Professor of Biostatistics tells @rachelburden that using lateral flow tests won't make schools completely safehttps://t.co/JGGyzav25c
@BBCSounds pic.twitter.com/DbfEme8lYn
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Sky are now beyond the pale for me with their connivance with the notorious nudge unit (and the woke head of ofcom, soon to be policing psychological online harms apparently) to indoctrinate us with net zero propaganda.
I remember how the late, great Christopher Booker (obviously not knighted) used to get heckled by the great moonbat (George Monbiot) over his position on the climate scare, people who I suspect would have banned his columns if they could get away with it.
Incidentally. I recognise that picture. The Maldives I think (human rights abusers), holding out the begging bowl. It didn’t matter if it was really a case of subduction causing the “rising sea levels”, it was held out as proof of catastrophic manmade climate change for which we would have to pay our Danegeld of trillions of pounds.
And I’ll tell you another thing. People pushing net zero are not people desperate for energy to keep warm through the Winter in war torn areas of the Ukraine.
Oh, and “settled science” strikes me as a political slogan.
Settled science has been quite a successful approach. To those who seek out certainty, it provides all they need. They feel right, they are on the side of truth. To people who lack a belief system but have been taught that organized religion is backward, it is perfect.
Yes, “scientism”, but only scientists who support their views. That’s why I genuinely welcome all scientific views on here. Let them prove it in fair debate if they are so sure…
Exactly. The public forum. Let the cream rise to the top.
You dont need to be a scientist to prove that climate alarmists are liars. Just view a webcam of the Maldives now to see the islands never went underwater in 2000 – which was just one of many such outlandish claims made in the eighties.
‘Settled science’ is an oxymoron. People who believe it are without the ‘oxy’.
Certainly it’s (oxy)moronic.
But for someone prone to that kind of belief, it comes wrapped in scientific language. That’s good enough.
Ah yes, what I have described as “advanced fantasising”.
It’s not scientific language that does the damage, it’s propaganda that’s convinced people.
Less than 10% of the planets population have a higher level of scientific education, the rest just don’t understand it.
The greens recognised this and adopted propaganda to convince 90% of the worlds democracies there was a problem.
The sceptical scientific community squabbles science amongst themselves and never had any chance of convincing the common man. That’s why we are where we are.
Basic, rational Common Sense would have helped but that it seems is now rebranded as ‘Hate Speech’
Gramsci complained that “Common Sense” served the status quo Conservatism of the Bourgeois “Right” and argued that the left had to conquer it to achieve power by winning the argument.
They have done that not by placing their Marxist narrative at the centre of the debate and winning, but by demolishing all political narrative and coherent debate in favour of emotion, hysteria and fear propaganda in every possible area of human activity – now including even the assault on individual Human Rights and and basic human community relationships, gender identity, basic parental roles and and family security.
In this, they have been helped along by the unchallenged triumph of Extremist Marxist Feminism and the demonising of the male and all things masculine.
The “deconstruction’ of society begun by the embittered Marxist Frankfurt School ‘Critical Theory’ that now rampages through our Education System is complete.
Creating fear, chaos isolation, and insecurity in people’s minds is the basis of the great success of their scam “Covid Project” and it has demolished rationality in those who regarded themselves as “rational”.
The consequences of the unprecedented mRNA Gene Therapy vaccine campaign – imposed on the Covid shell-shocked world and always the real objective of the ‘scamdemic ‘- are yet to be seen. – but not currently looking good for humanity.
Chaos and anarchy and the trashing of cool experience based Common Sense and all belief systems ( including rational, evidence based, reputable and trusted science) is opening the door for constant ever changing brainwashing to serve their devilish schemes – many really are approaching the Jonestown’. level of irrational belief with the Kool Aid in their hands -( even giving it to their reluctant children!)
For this the model of those psychotic Globalists, entirely responsible for it all, has been their inscrutable Chinese Communist Party ‘ally’ – of this there can be no doubt.
China though always has its own agenda – which involves revenge on the West for centuries of humiliation and exploitation. The new Great Game is not over
“Common Sense” trans. “Ill-informed and discredited preconception”. Not an alternative for ‘propaganda’ (as we’ve vividly seen over the last two years. The disguise of the weak intellect.
Hear, hear!
Spot on and efficient – your 4 words tell the whole truth!
Sky are scum.
Have you thought of cancelling your subscription?
I just did. Never had Sky TV (who the heck watches TV these days?), but I had their broadband. I am cancelling my contract to go to another provider, getting 30 times better speeds for 2 quid extra.
Shame we don’t have the same choice with the BBC…
You do have a choice. Pay or not to pay. Join the millions who simply don’t pay.
Yes that is a photo of the Maldives government holding a ‘meeting’ underwater to show the UN IPCC how their islands would be underwater by the year 2000. That was just before they built three new runways to welcome even more visitors!
I just looked at a live Maldives webcam and lo and behold – the islands are still there with people sunning themselves on the beach just the same as they were in the eighties.
Its almost like the whole global warming due to carbon emissions narrative is just another big fat lie perpertrated by the private jet/superyacht/multiple mansion owning elite to further line their pockets while turning the rest of us back to a Stone Age existence.
“it’s almost like”
It is a fact —- there I fixed that ! Cornubian
Yes that is a photo of the Maldives government holding a ‘meeting’ underwater to show the UN IPCC how their islands would be underwater by the year 2000. That was just before they built three new runways to welcome even more visitors!
I just looked at a live Maldives webcam and lo and behold – the islands are still there with people sunning themselves on the beach just the same as they were in the eighties.
Its almost like the whole global warming due to carbon emissions narrative is just another big fat lie perpertrated by the private jet/superyacht/multiple mansion owning elite to further line their pockets while turning the rest of us back to a Stone Age existence.
I have not watched any MSM TV News for 18 months – it pollutes the mind with blatant lies.
About 20 % of GBNews is getting somewhere . Farage has massive blind spots. Mark Steyn is required viewing!
You are 100% correct.
Some may not know you can now get GB News on your car radio too (DAB)
Between climate alarmism and the more recent covidmania, surely we have enough material to start ridiculing the self-appointed elites and their obsessions?
I think that is the only route now. Science has been thoroughly corrupted. At some level most readers here understand how these narratives can be propagated even by the doubters; no one in a major university can really speak out even against obvious lies. An instant career ender.
So that leaves us with ridicule. From stand up comedians to popular memes, I’d argue that is our best bet to convince people of the nonsensical nature of all the panicky crap we have to deal with; climate, covid, systemic racism etc.
That makes the real focus the government’s online harms bill. Their attempt to ensure anything that goes against their narrative is banned. They have the mainstream media in their pocket. But the internet is the great wilderness that threatens to derail their grand plans because of articles like the one above.
Will we succeed? I see very little analysis or even awareness of the government’s slow capture of the instruments of censorship. I think that is the real battle, not climate, as expensive as the policies may be.
Our existential threat is a cabal controlling the narrative, like the BBC group mentioned in the article, using the platform of state-funded media to pursue their own goals. Few here will doubt this kind of backroom conference to decide what the plebs will be exposed to happens. It probably happens all the time. A Pravda mentality. But it is ridicule that can stop it.
Yes indeed, ridicule or satire has been used to good effect by many great writers in the past e.g. Chaucer, Erasmus, Voltaire, Gogol to subtly undermine the ruling regimes of the day in times when the penalties for dissent were extremely harsh.
“So that leaves us with ridicule. From stand up comedians to popular memes,”
Why do you think the phenomenon of cancel culture has manifested itself? This is no coincidence. If the elite can crush dissent they get to do what they want.
I agree that humour serves us better than indignation. But where are the professional comedians who will take it on? They are signed up to the woke agenda and their ridicule is directed at anyone who questions the “consensus”.
“science” is scare buying with selective approval of grants
What is needed is good investigative journalism to follow the money trail – who gives the grants, buys the ads, supports the Party. I think the public would be amazed at how the truth gets distorted by such money. But alas we have no such journalists or where we do have them no-one (MSM) will publish because of the money-go-round. But at least we have some minority “outlets” like the sceptic, unherd, etc.
Obama’s “97% of scientists agree that climate change is manmade” is a classic example of politicians telling “the truth” (i.e. not technically telling a falsehood). It doesn’t matter if most of them think that this change is insignificant, or if trying to stop this change would be ruinous (and I once read that the measures promoted by the likes of Obama would be rejected by standard economic principals as not worth while), it “proves” his political point.
But, technically, he was telling a falsehood, since the blatant implication is that all climate change is due to human activity.
If it’s only implied he can’t be convicted for perjury. At least, I think that’s how it works.
Did Obama not say “97% of scientists agree that climate change is real, manmade and dangerous”? The word “dangerous” definitely takes it out of any argument that 97% of scientists agree.
It’s a down right, out and out lie and Obama knew it.
The real number isn’t 97% it’s 0.3%.
No, he is not telling the truth by any stretch of the imagination.
https://youtu.be/ewJ6TI8ccAw
Never was an adage more apposite…
When do you know when a politician is lying…?
Politicians with an agenda to pursue look for or commission a ‘study’ which they can quote to support their aim regardless of its accuracy or veracity.
It is commonplace and has been exhibited during the Covid “pandemic”.
It has been the strategy of the UN and IPCC from day one and is easily exposed as such – the instruction to the IPCC.was not to find out if earth is warming and if so what are the causes but was to show how much mankind’s CO2 emissions were warming earth. So every penny spent on studies had that sole aim, small wonder that science gets corrupted.
Climate change is a geopolitical play.
Western nations used to control oil and gas supplies.
They are now in the hands of nations that are not controlled by us any more. And they are becoming phenomenally rich and powerful from it.
This is just a power play by elites over who runs the world going forward.
It has the added benefit of being about energy. This aspect of society is under considerable government control, even with “privatized” companies. It is heavily regulated.
The real goal of western society should be to focus on the thing that made us number one, innovation. New ideas, invention, flying cars, jetpacks.
But the innovators by their nature don’t want a regulated, controlled world. Real innovation ushers in new people who upset the status quo. Anathema to the control freaks and social engineers who now dominate.
Perhaps a therapeutic collapse will help.
This is the problem with Schwab and the rest of the Davos Deviants, ( DD’s)their intentions to stifle free speech will of course also stifle innovations. The only “problems” which will be solved will be those they have identified, but of course these won’t be the real problems afflicting humanity.
Pissing about with so called renewable energy won’t provide the power needed for manufacturing or heating homes but the yes men will still be pushed to solve such problems.
Not only are we facing a Fascist cul-de-sac we are also risking a dead end for mankind. Literally.
I’m not sure I agree. The US is energy independent in terms of shale gas, as is the UK if it wanted to be. If we throw coal into the mix, many western nations would be energy independent (and definitely so if we look at western nations collectively). Have they not simply (for political virtue signalling reasons) fallen in behind the false narrative? That definitely seems to be the case with Boris Johnson, given he has been recorded talking about “climate change nonsense” – as was David Cameron. The Conservatives can’t go against climate change or the NHS because of ludicrous political constraints (“the nasty party” etc).
Boris is a product of the Davos Young Leaders organisation, as are Macron, Trudeau, Ardern, Putin, Merkel and thousands of others who infest governments across the world. This isn’t a matter of conjecture, Klaus Schwab boast’s of it.
Ah but that’s disinformation. I heard it in the Canadian Parliament, where a Zoomed MP asked about Schwab’s boast about owning half the cabinet as well as Trudeau in 2017.
The speaker said it was a good question but the sound and video was very poor (he didn’t quite remember to hiss and crackle behind his hand). But a cabinet member replied angrily anyway to what was supposed to be inaudible and said it wasn’t debate, but pure disinformation. So now you know.
But why was Schwab allowed to spread disinformation?
Before destroying the lives of billions of people, the net zero fanatics need to be sent to an island to live the way they want us to for a few years. We need a working experiment with proof before we move further with this extreme behaviour.
I suspect that they don’t care, like the people who brought us lockdowns without a thought for the millions of people who would go hungry in the third world as a result (or for that matter the 100,000 who could die from cancer alone in the UK as a result).
History should tell us that there’s no such thing as “settled science”. What recent history now confirms, is that science can be bought by nefarious actors with malevolant intentions and deep pockets!
Scientific consensuses:
The Sun and planets go round the Earth.
The Earth is flat
Stress causes ulcers
Washing hands from the disection room to the delivery room is pointless.
Atoms are atoms. i.e. indivisible
Rats! I was going to post much the same.
You could also cite the aether, the stomach as a sterile environment because of the very low pH and the cosmos being filled with crystal spheres that make music as they rotate.
I hate to be contentious, but that was never, ever, a scientific consensus, or even a religious one. It’s in fact a myth dreamed up in the nineteenth century to bolster the idea that science is the infallible enlightener of ignorance … in other words that there is a scientific consensus.
I did a detailed blog on the sociology of the “mediaeval flat earth myth” here.
The globus cruciger tells us that Europeans knew the Earth was round, but what about the rest of the world?
Would that be the non-European scientific consensus? Essentially every educated person exposed to Greek thinking after around 400BC knew it was round. the Chinese and Indians – maybe not.
South sea bubble, tulip mania,the Moonies, model worship. Humans like to have faith even if it is misguided.
Don’t forget the “Pyramid” schemes.
Do you mean this?
I didn’t but it’s very apt.
People are very easily gulled into their own demise and seem quite content to keep drinking the Kool – Aid. The fact that Johnson, Whitty and Vallance can get clean away with last nights Kim Jong-un esq performance tells you all you need to know about the captive mind.
“Settled Science” – The oxymoron of the century.
Science is a journey, not a destination.
Who even measures the Net Zeroness of a thing?
It’s subbed out to professor Pantsdown.
I thought the Maldives were meant to be under water by now. How many airports are they building to encourage more tourism, is it 5?
Net zero may be rubbish but that doesn’t mean that global warming is nonsense. (Cue loads of downticks.
Anyway, here is an interesting article on the Welsh government’s financial links to wind turbine companies. As the author says, corruption is an ugly word, but I can’t think of any other way to describe it. I think this needs to be in Toby’s news round up.
https://jacothenorth.net/blog/bute-energy-selling-wales-for-danegeld/
It’s only the climate change fanatics who claim ‘denial’ of the phenomenon by those who oppose their hysterical bleating.
The climate changes. I don’t know of anyone who disputes that. What is in dispute is whether the wholly beneficial trace gas CO2 is responsible and whether the 3% – 4% man contributes to the atmosphere is wholly to blame.
All total nonsense of course, as I have posted on here before, a straightforward Arithmetical calculation reveals mankind’s CO2 emissions would take 25,000 years to raise the earth’s temperature by 2ºC, always assuming CO2 is wholly to blame and there are no other contributing factors such as the Sun and Milankovitch cycles etc.
So, what caused the increase of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to rise from 315ppm in 1958 to 415ppm in 2021?
It is true that climate always changes but before the advent of human civilisation based on agriculture that did not really matter. The advent of the Holocene at the end of the last ice witnessed a period of remarkable stability upon which agriculture relies. Take away agriculture and civilisation collapses.
But a glance through the article above may make some people wonder whether “climate change fanatics” really believe what they are saying, or whether they have a financial incentive to think the way they do.
I have no idea. We might have had numerous undersea volcanic eruptions for all we know. Do you know how many undersea volcanoes there are?
So what does it matter what the cause was? As mother nature has designed C3 plants (95% of all plant life) to thrive at 1,000ppm – 1,200ppm atmospheric CO2 it suggests, as many claim, that the planet is CO2 deficient.
Volcanic eruptions, the sun’s fluctuating temperature increasing the warmth of the planet, resulting in more CO2 being produced by plants – which is a wonderful thing, as it increases crop yields. Here’s a big fact: temperature increases and then CO2 concentrations go up! CO2 is the effect – the sun is the cause.
Natural processes remove around 3% of human emissions from the atmosphere every year via the carbon cycle. The trouble is that the 3% is accounted for by natural processes such as volcanoes. Prior to the Holocene, for several million years CO2 levels alternated between 180ppm and 280ppm (with a noticeable exception during the Eemian. Going back further CO2 was much higher, but so were temperatures – too high though for large mammals.
The temp changing and thus the trace gas emerging from now less soluble sea water.
This quite a long video, it’s testimony being given at the Coronavirus Investigative Committee on what’s really going on. This is just one of many credible, professional witnesses called for the public to scrutinise precisely what’s been going on over the last two years – and more.
You need only watch the initial 20 minute presentation from this guy to understand where society is headed if people doesn’t wake up. As you’ll see, this isn’t some crackpot conspiracy theory, every part of this guys claims are documented at one time or another by prominent players on the global stage.
Just bear in mind H. L. Mencken’s memorable Quote:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
https://odysee.com/@GrandJury:f/Grand-Jury-Day-5-online_1:4
A good article with one major mistake. The idea that the Earth would be 33º cooler without co2 is erroneous. This calculation was made by assuming that the Earth is a black body disc that doesn’t rotate, all of which is incorrect! If you do the calculations correctly you will see that the sun heats the Earth. Full stop!
But what stops it freezing at night like the Moon?
Not the 0.04% of CO2 in the atmosphere, that’s for sure!
Actually it is – that and water vapour. CO2 lets in visible light which hits the ground is re-radiated back. CO2 increases atmospheric opacity to infra red. This is basic physics. It was first discussed in the 1820s when CO2 was first discovered and was demonstrated in a laboratory in 1862.
It’s change in water vapour that allows the climate to change.
But the volume of atmosphere is what buffers the heat change
It’s widely known (though not acknowledged) and proven that moving to “renewables” increases both energy costs and emissions. An increase in energy costs will disproportionately impact the poor. The eco-nuts still dream about large battery centres storing peak solar and wind power and distributing it at night, but they fail to take into account the fact there isn’t enough minerals on the planet to build so much battery capacity, and the environmental devastation that such a mining operation would create would be unbelievable.
Electric vehicles are proving themselves to be more of a burden on society than anything else, with energy consumption already skyrocketing. The charging network is barely developed, there’s only a handful of electric vehicles around, and the authorities are already concerned about how much energy they use. And yet, the government is steaming ahead at full power towards their plan to get everyone into an electric vehicle, despite the physical impossibility of such a task (see above).
Up until relatively recently, the cost of energy was going down. Technology was getting better, energy generation was becoming more efficient and cheaper, nuclear power was firmly taking hold, and the biggest beneficiaries of this were the lower classes. Instead of freezing in the winter, trying to conserve coal for those cold, dark nights, they could turn up the heat a little, stay a bit warmer, and be healthier all year round, increasing life expectancy. It is therefore strange (sarcasm) that energy prices should increase so much as of late. The cost of living is going up, energy costs are going up, fuel prices are going up. Everything is going up except our pay checks. The globalist elite are currently in control. They are getting their way in all respects. They implemented all these measures which they told us would lead to a better life, and the only thing that happened is that our lives got worse. I am having trouble remembering a year in the past 2 or so decades which was better than the last. Every year is just a bit worse than the previous. So how long until people see that this cabal of globalists are driving us into the ground? Too long, I think.
There are two forces at play (leaving aside geo-political games like the Russian pipeline etc).
Firstly the cost of extraction of raw materials for energy production has increased and is increasing. Its costing a lot more than it used to to create a useable GJ than it used to. This has been balanced to a large extent by the decreasing costs of technological items, mainly because of reduced costs of manufacture in China and other F East locations.
That balance is over. Manufacturing costs are inflating, shortages are occuring. Yet useable GJ energy costs continue to rise. This is exacerbated by the adoption of low intensity electricity production replacing high intensity fossil fuels. Unreliable renewables rather than coal and gas.
Secondly the financial forces behind the events you describe. They see the disruptive opportunities opening up because of the above. the likes of BlackRock looking for investment that guarantees returns with governments and the tax payer covering the risk. This dovetails with Central Banks led by the BIS looking to reinvent the financial system before it collapses.
So these two forces coincide to increase costs overall, increase energy costs enormously, increase taxes; all to be paid for by the tax payer of more affluent nations.
Some of the factors are ‘real’ the increased cost of energy extraction, but these are dwarfed by the opportunistic factors deliberately engineered to make the rich supremely richer and everyone else on the planet pay for it. The side effect is to bring down the standard of living of the more affluent nations to that of the rest. This is a planned side effect.
That is only because of the forced stagnation of energy production technology. Since the industrial revolution, energy production has been continuously advancing. When the forests were nearly gone, coal mining started ramping up. When coal was chocking whole towns to death, whale blubber came along. When the whales were nearly gone, oil made an appearance. And when towns were being choked in smog, and oil was running low, along came nuclear power. Except they completely put an end to it and moved us all backwards. Had the progress into nuclear energy been allowed to progress naturally, we would have had abundant, cheap energy.
What we’re experiencing today is akin to boycotting coal mines and then marvelling at how expensive wood is.
No its not,it really isn’t. Nuclear is great baseload generation, but its not cheap. Not if its measured by full cost per kwh, capital, fuel and disposal.
With increases of gas prices, coal is the cheapest fuel and its very flexible.
Coal wasn’t cheap either. Petrol wasn’t cheap. Computers running at 1MHz weren’t cheap. Nothing is ever cheap when it is first introduced, especially if there is a concerted effort to malign it as a technology. I specifically said “had the progress into nuclear energy been allowed to progress” and you’re talking about a situation in which it was not allowed to progress.
Its really not as simple as you are trying to say. In the UK in the 80s Thatcher promoted nuclear as hard as any PM could, mainly to wipe out coal dependency and destroy the miner’s union. But when she privatised the electricity industry she stopped being able to force through nukes under the auspices of the CEGB.
(Incidentally also bought nuclear weapons from the US rather than develop them ‘in house’ so took away a big part of the economic upside from producing nuclear materials)
When the electricity industry was split up and private companies had to invest they naturally turned to gas generation, the fuel was cheap and plentiful and capital costs were low. Nuclear was never remotely an option. Even British Energy the nuclear generation co spun out of CEGB could never make the numbers work.
That is the private business side. Of course private businesses will go for the most effective option, and of course at the time the cheapest option was gas.
What I am talking about is research and development. There hasn’t been major innovation in nuclear power since the ’60s, only refinements. CANDU reactors were invented back then, and they still remain an extremely safe means of nuclear power generation that is virtually meltdown-proof and no one is talking about it. Everyone pretends like there is no option other than Chernobyl. Molten salt reactors were also created in the ’60s and they even had working reactors. But due to the corrosive nature of the salts used, the technology was abandoned until recently, when China (not the West) started looking into it.
If there wasn’t such an anti-nuclear push in government and academia, research and development would have continued at a more accelerated pace and today we would have had much cheaper nuclear power plants. Imagine if all the effort that has been invested in renewables was invested in nuclear instead.
Quite a few articles in the current issue of the IET magazine that might be of interest, e.g. this one: https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/02/could-nuclear-power-help-get-us-to-net-zero/ Not exactly independent, after all one of the articles is essentially from Rolls Royce, which would like to sell loads of small modular reactors (SMR). Also a bit on the concept of using them in shipping in lieu of diesel engines – after all, they are used in certain submarines already.
In theory using a number of RR SMRs instead of the ‘French/Chinese’ nukes makes sense. Economics are probably better. But NIMBY will probably put paid to the idea from a vote hungry government.
I don’t really know why the S Korean ones aren’t pushed more.
“if” is a big word; in reality, they only get paid low rates during the hours of low demand, but they prefer to run continuously to meet base load, and leave the spikes in demand to things like combined cycle gas and hydroelectric.
Nations can make capital investments using tax payers money, they can write off decommissioning costs , again at tax payers cost. They can then justify both with the low SRMC of a nuke running 24/7/365.
My ‘if’ describes having no tax payer subsidy, which is what a private company faces. None would even bother to start doing the financial appraisal.
Nuclear energy is fine if you realise it has to be subsidised. Given that all of the unreliable renewables are similarly subsidised by the tax payer and even by other generators, its not too difficult to create a case for nukes in the battle of which gives the tax payer a better bang for its buck.
But please don’t mistake this for market forces. Only gas and coal give a return on investment.
Oh and ‘prefer’ is not the right word. ‘have to’ is better. You can’t load follow with a nuke, well at least its wise to get well away from upwind if you try.
You could ask EDF across the channel if their output is “abundant, cheap energy” – after all, roughly 75% of it is nuclear, with a large slice of it being hydroelectric or renewable in various other ways.
France has some of the cheapest electricity in Western Europe, under the European average.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics
Yes and EdF are currently having to raise about 5Bn Euro in the market to keep afloat including a bung of 2bn Euro from the French government.
Whichever way you cut this, you need tax payer subsidies to pay for nukes.
And you don’t need taxpayer subsidies to pay for renewables?
Please read my response to JohnK above.
Nukes are preferable to unreliables in the battle for subsidies.
Net Zero is ideological, not scientific, the result of Net Zero is the return of primitivism and this is also the desired result, no matter what rubbish is spouted to the contrary.
It is an anti-human ideology.
There’s research and there’s development/technology.
Latter starts with a something and progresses from there. Research starts in total unknown, explores into it without ‘comfort blanket’ of pre-conceived ideas.
Research sets out to ‘find whatever it can find, if anything’; development sets out to ‘show’ or ‘prove’ something, usually either self right or others wrong.
Researchers exploring unknown are so fascinated by beyond self, self gets forgotten. Hence no ‘comfort blanket’.
In last 2 decades, fewer able to do that. Many now in ‘research’ posts have mind-set of developers/technologists, not researchers.
Having a specific objective gets most funding and most easily. Real research doesn’t know, thus, can’t offer ‘money-men’ any ROI.
When researchers return from exploring without having found anything, it gets recorded by developers as nothing. Whereas, to researchers, nothing found is not nothing; it’s an interim result, not a nil or negative, nor an absolute or end.
Real researchers don’t view self as infallible, knowing or able to see into future. Thus, comfortable with uncertainty; accepted as a fact of life, simply the way it is.
‘Certainty’ is a false comfort for fallible humans.
For researchers, that it’s all an infinite continuum is breath-takingly, amazingly fascinating. Every question has a plethora of possible answers and each of those has a plethora of further questions.
There’s no end to it and, each tiny find’s a delight in itself.
Digital development can neither fathom life’s continuum, nor conceive of infinite, nor function without ‘certainty’.
‘Me, me, me, fast-buck instant gratification’ and ubiquitous digitalisation with loss of ability to ‘think outside box’; ‘bundled’ products in lieu of real research feeding development and, popularity of ‘selfies’. Most ‘discoveries’ in last 20 years been re-discoveries of previously discovered wheels.
What people forget, or don’t know, is that IPCC, the UN body responsible for all the ‘climate change’ narrative and modelling etc was set up with a specific remit
To answer ,what is the effect of MAN MADE climate change on the planet.
It has never questioned this remit and the underlying assumption behind it.
This was never ‘science’, it was and is, the unquestioning attempt to justify the assumption.
What a brilliant job was done by the lobbyists in that non air conditioned meeting room in 1988. Out of which immediately came the European Council edicts on power station limits of CO2 emissions, which directly led to our current situation.
The UN ‘s roll in all this is now crucial:
.Reset: The UN is not benign, is now ‘occupied’ by Globalists and an enemy of the Anglo Sphere Nation States in its pursuit fo Global “Government”..
So many Lies in so many directions in a country run by the ‘King of Liars’ – the Truth its advocates and those who seek it out are suffocated and rational objectivity is dead – welcome to the New Dark Age!
Suddenly Tolkien takes on a new dimension – the Dark Lord’s “All Seeing Eye” is watching us all as he cunningly demolishes our world!
Spot the politicisation – use of phrases such as ‘settled science’, ’the’ science’ or scientific ‘consensus’. Since science is a dynamic field of enquiry these phrases are unscientific statements.
A lecturer in physics told a friend of mine that most people are about 120 years out of date on the current direction of physics which is indicating that we do not exist in a deterministic universe. Scientific ‘discoveries’ are, by nature, provisional pending the rigour of peer review and alternative hyposises.
Apparently, Einstein’s response to a journalist when presented with a headline which stated that a few hundred scientists disagreed with him was this, ‘It only takes one’. Whether he actually said this or not the statement defines how science works!
As one of the commentators said much higher up the page, it is oxymoronic.
The thing that is ridiculous about ‘settled science’ is why the scientists still need to get paid if it is all settled? Surely once it is settled, the Governments can spend the research money on open questions??
‘Settled science’ emerges when specific predictions made based on the hypothesis are correct so often that the probability that the hypothesis is wrong drops to a very low level.
My take on what is ‘settled’:
James Delingpole was right. Greens are watermelons: communists in green jackets
A great piece. More like this needed as this will become a bigger battleground in years to come.
Anyone else noticed how all these agendas, tech and target dates are always 2030, 2045or 2055. I’m sure this is nothing
Quick and simple points which rather contradict the IPCC, scientactivist and eco-activist narratives:
UN IPCC spokespeople have publicly stated that this has nothing to do with climate but is all about redistributing wealth from developed nations. What they gloss over is it being intended to produce an unelected and unaccountable global government as the infamous Copenhagan COP let slip in the annex to the proposed resolution which, had the treaty been agreed, would have created this Global Government in embryo form with powers to overrule all Nations’ sovereignty in many areas..
The modern temperature rise was chosen by IPCC to have a start date of 1850, coincidentally (a coincidence which seems highly unlikely) the tail end of the ~300 year Little Ice Age [LIA] when temperatures are known to have been 2C and potentially far more below ‘normal’. So, with a temperature rise since 1850 of around just 1.4C, we are still within the very cold temperatures of the LIA. Which, for solely political reasons, the UN IPCC claim they want maintained ….
The climate cabal have tried to deflect from that by claiming the LIA was only a European phenomenon, despite big numbers of peer-reviewed published studies from around the globe showing it was a Globally very cold era. An indication of just how cold it was – and suggesting it was much worse than just 2C colder – can be found in documented UK diary entries during this 300+ year period – sea ice off the east coast of England saw ships stuck in sea ice up to a mile offshore; huge oak and elm trees split from top to bottom as the sap froze throughout the trunk, the River Thames saw ice 6ft and more thick in London, there were years “without summer” seeing crop failures anad famines.
The IPCC, and particularly scientactivists, claim that a rise of more than 2C from 1850 – despite not being a full recovery from the LIA – will cause devastation to earth with vast species loss. That is based purely on scientactivist modelling despite it being modelling which history falsifies and shows to be totally wrong. Mankind’s known and partly recorded history from both the Medieval Warm Period [MWP] and Roman Warm Priod [RWP] demonstrate that during these warmer periods mankind and the environment flourished in the very benign warmer-than-today temperatures and some of the greatest advances in civilisation occurred during those periods.
Multiple published studies have shown the MWP to have been around 1C or more warmer than current temperatures and the RWP was around 2C or more warmer. These warmer periods have been roughly 1,000 years apart and lasted for several hundred years before earth again cooled. If you look further back, around 1,000 years before the RWP, there was the even warmer Minoan Warm period. Climate history shows that since the warming which followed the end of the last ice age earth has been slowly cooling again and since the Minoan Warm Period this has been at a rate of approximately -1C every 1,000 years with partial recovery in between the cooling during the warmer periods of RWP and MWP .
As a final observation, by way of a question, if the earth as climactivists claim, is seeing unprecedented warming then why have the temperature “record keepers” at HADCRUT, NASA GISS, BOM and the like felt the need to revise temperature records from the early 20th century on multiple occasions in recent years? Coincidentally (or not) these revisions have Always cooled earlier temperatures giving the appearance of more significant increases at the time this was done. They have also seemed to occur only during “pauses” when for a decade or more there was no statistically significant increase in global temperatures.
If you look at the original recorded temperatures you will find that the early 20th century had temperatures which on occasion were warmer than today. Of course those temperatures, which were carefully recorded at the time, letf records which are not very helpful if you are pushing the claim that current temperatures are “unprecedented”, but revising them down changes the facts and the picture very helpfully.
The science is settled up to the point when Bill and Melinda stop funding it.
The big lie that net zero is settled science is itself based on an even bigger lie that increased human CO2 emissions will have a warming effect on the climate. Not only is the planet not getting any warmer on average but the increased amount of CO2 we see is greening the planet and improving crop yields.
Climate is driven by the energy from the Sun modified over thousands of years by the Milkankovitch cycle variations in Earth’s orbit, tilt and rotational wobble and the distribution of the Sun’s energy by ocean currents and air masses. The function of the so-called greenhouse gases makes life viable. Without them the average temperature on Earth would be -18ºC and there would be no life. Without CO2 there would be no life. It is the very stuff of life itself and there was much, much more of it in the atmosphere in the distant past than there is today.
Bear in mind that the Pleistocene Ice Age has not ended. We are still in it evidenced by the presence of ice-caps and mountain glaciers. We are in a warm interglacial period of which there have been about 45 in the 2.6 million years which have passed since the Pleistocene Ice Age began. This current interglacial period started about 11,700 years ago and contains the whole of human civilisation from our rise from being simple hunter-gatherers to the modern age.
There is no climate crisis. Climate change has gone on since the dawn of time. It is entirely natural and there is nothing we can do about it except adapt if we have to. This is politics-based junk science and it is now way past time to call it out before we are all irrevocably impoverished and our civilisation destroyed.
The next glaciation should be along in about 85,000 years.
Great post
When most politicians or journalists hear someone is a “scientist” they seem to believe that they have the knowledge and right to proclaim expertise in a far wider field than they are likely to have in practice. Virtually all scientists spend their lives researching in an extremely narrow compass. A “climate” scientist for example may specialise in fluid dynamics, ocean currents, solar radiation, cloud formation, atmospheric chemistry, land use, thermodynamics, orbital dynamics, particulates, weather patterns etc etc and more likely in even narrower sub-fields . They will have little more expertise outside their specialism than most interested, well educated “generalists”. In reality then, there is no such thing as “climate science” other than as a portmanteau term or as a useful mis-direction for journalists and politicians into thinking modelling is science. A climate modeller has to make decisions how to incorporate the most appropriate recent reportage from the many and varied papers published within each of these specialisms, make judgements about their contribution and predict how they will all interreact. The modeller must then incorporate them (with their own assumptions) into a statistical model than can supposedly forecast a chaotic climate for decades ahead. The modeller cannot be an “expert” in the dozens and dozens of specialist fields that are contributing to research into climate forcings. Look how well Covid models did modelling just a few months ahead.