exchemist

Yes there's a lot of pious nonsense talked by Truss about not putting companies off investing. But the business cases on which these oil and gas, or renewable generation, investments were made never envisaged profit margins anywhere close to what they are earning at present, thanks to Putin and the war. I am convinced the major fossil fuel companies expect to have some of it clawed back. But they are not going to volunteer to hand it back, obviously, because of duty to their shareholders.

Yes, you're right about 3.7. I was quoting only an approximate figure. I used to make "nitrogen tri-iodide" * at school, which we painted on the stone steps to the lab. When the teacher arrived his heels crackled and emitted little puffs of purple smoke, which was most gratifying and psychedelic (this was 1971). * More properly an adduct: NI3.NH3, apparently. My tutorial partner at university had made picric acid at school, which was the basis for a rather a good end of term prank. The school song would be sung, to piano accompaniment, and there was a bridging passage between the verses, employing one note that was not otherwise in the piece. So they painted that piano hammer with picric acid and when the moment came there was a satisfying BANG, accompanied by a cloud of dust, dead ladybirds etc., from the interior of the piano, followed by an eerie pause, before the pianist hesitantly took up the tune again.

On this forum, the names seem a bit different from the one I listed, viz. MeredithLesly, BlueSpike, Frank_Baker, LisaLiel.

It's obviously possible, but how would the community have confidence in it? Furthermore the issue is not so much integrity, but quality control. There is plenty of poor science done in good faith, i.e. with integrity, but also little or no value. There are occasional scandals of bad faith or fraudulent science but the main job of peer review is to maintain quality, isn't it?

About 4.

Yes it’s LisaL, Gaiagirl etc etc, back again. The funniest one from this person was the man allegedly strangled by his own thymus gland. And the various spontaneous combustion ones (Frank Baker et al). http://www.sciforums.com/threads/a-biologist-told-me-that-the-water-molecule-is-too-small-to-cause-an-immune-reaction-is-he-correct.165491/page-3#post-3703935

This is unfolding just as I predicted. I hope everyone is enjoying their turn on the Theorist magic roundabout. He can keep it revolving almost indefinitely. I'm saving my remaining 50p coins for something else.

All modern neonazi movements (German, Austrian, Italian, Danish and now Swedish) are far-right, so far as I am aware. Normally, xenophobia is the bedrock of their appeal.

Well it's nice to have a right wing party that espouses democracy, I suppose. Though as it has neonazi roots, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. For a long while, it seems the Scandinavian countries were largely insulated from immigration by their languages, and by their relative lack of a colonial past. But now for some reason they are getting their share, and seeing some disturbance to their traditional social cohesion. This is the reaction. A similar story is playing out in many countries.

This poster is Theorist, or Pbob or countless sock puppets, back again to waste everybody’s time. He’s using the usual method: make a garbled sciency-sounding assertion to start the ball rolling, and then lob in further chunks on other topics at intervals, to keep respondents dancing and struggling to keep up with the deluge of errors and misconceptions. He has no interest in learning, so you are wasting your time. The sole object is to make the scientists dance and exploit their goodwill for his amusement.

Ah, Theorist, a.k.a. Pbob. 😁 I don't suppose you will be with us for long.

I think you are a deliberate waster of our time.

In science, a hypothesis has value only if it can at least in principle be tested by an observation that could be made. Can you conceive of an observation that could test your hypothesis? If not, it probably isn’t scientific.

For a moment I misread that as womble:-

Galaxies would be a lot brighter.

You mean a neutron activation process in which the nucleus re-emits only a neutron, thereby returning to its former state, a bit like an atom absorbing and re-emitting a photon? I'd have thought there might be such a process, but I must admit I have not found any examples.

I'm not sure how that idea can work. Fossil fuels, on which we will continue to have some need for decades, are by nature internationally traded commodities, exploitation and supply of which is controlled already by national governments. There's no way any nation can control the price of stuff they get from other countries, and no prospect at all of any global agreement among them all. Where I suppose you raise an interesting question is if, as we move progressively to renewables, those at least can be state-controlled, and if they were, would that be a good thing. My inclination is to think not. Experience seems to show the best route normally is to allow commercial enterprise a role but under a controlling framework set by government. That's what I think the current crisis has exposed in the UK: a free-for all in the electricity market may not be good for the country or - I was very interested to read - for the electricity producers, who are exposed to wild swings in profitability and can't formulate a robust business plan without building in massive risk premia - for which consumers, in the end, have to pay.

Now you're just talking crap. I'm out.

There have been attempts, for instance the "tired light" hypothesis, but nothing that fits all the observations.

I was interested to read today that Goldman Sachs believes the spot price of gas may halve by the end of this N hemisphere winter, as a result of the alternative supply and stockbuilding measures being implemented by the EU. Appears the EU is ahead of their stockbuild target, floating LNG gasification plants are already in place in the Netherlands with more to follow in Germany, and there has been some success in curtailing gas demand. So this may be a fairly short-lived spike, in which case government borrowing to tide us over may not be quite as foolhardy as it first seemed. And then Russia will be screwed, as not only will the price come down dramatically, but nearly all their gas pipelines are West-facing and nobody in Europe will ever rely on them again. But a very hard winter could change the calculation.......

According to the currently dominant model of cosmology, there was a beginning to time and space.

Where do you get that idea from? It's quite wrong. For most Christians, baptism simply brings you into the Christian community. What is needed for an individual to get to heaven starts from there.

I'm afraid I don't know much about the "born-again" sects. They are a minority in Christianity.

Haha, yes indeed. Now that’s a really evil scam, preying on the hopes of the poor to impoverish them further.

Indeed. Nor do they teach you how to become a millionaire, or how to fly. Scandalous, isn’t it?