Confusion of VIs

I forced myself to watch it all the way through, she came across as uncertain and in a weak position. In summary can kicked at least two years down the road, status quo prevails. After that ideally not much changes.

So we are staying in the EEA then?

I am pretty sure you would have said that two years ago if someone said they were going to half the price of offshore wind by 2017. You seem to spend all your time looking for problems, rather than at the vast progress being made in overcoming or bypassing them. If Toyota does manage to produce solid state batteries by 2020, that will be a real game changer. If they don't maybe BMW will, or maybe some new technology will overtake both of them.

Made perfect sense when I wrote it, must be the brain enhancing power of alcohol.

Believe it or not the world has moved on since then, going back to the 70s is not a viable option.

People forget that outside the self serving millennium bug industry most of the IT people in charge of the systems were confident that everything had been updated/tested and nothing would happen. Despite telling this to my CEO he insisted I had my team available and on call for 2 weeks over the Christmas/New Year period - I was a bitt miffed that he didn't trust my advice but the obscene amount of money we extracted for agreeing made up for that.

How can I enlighten what happens after Brexit is unknown. In out of the single market, who knows. In out of the customs union. who knows. EU free trade deal who knows. Will we keep FoM (in everything but name) Will we keep Euro clearing, who knows. How much will we pay to mitigate the impact of leaving, who knows Will we get good trade deals with other countries, who knows. Are the economic forecasters right and we will become a permanently poorer country Will Brexit even happen, who knows. These are just some of the things nobody knows. If you do know the answers please feel free to enlighten all of us.

You think it isn't, now that really is funny. How can you have spent so much time on this thread and learnt so little.

Give him his due........ at least he is still trying.

The difference with fusion is that no one knows if it will ever work (we don't yet have the maths to describe how plasma will behave at the necessary temperatures/density). We are proceeding with spending billions in the belief that by taking baby steps we will eventually reach our goal but at the risk that our developing knowledge shows that the goal is unobtainable. You could say that is a pretty good analogy for Brexit except that, rather than taking baby steps, we might end up taking one great leap into the unknown.

1. Did someone say that they didn't.. 2. Would you bet your house, on the basis fusion abstract, on an implementation proposal, or even think you had enough knowledge to cast a vote .

Maybe, I don't know.

1. What progress, and why would all these countries who had signed up to the A50 process have sought to undermine it before it had even started. 2. No it isn't, while there were reports of what May was prepared to offer there wasn't a formal government paper setting it out (or at least not one that I saw). 3. Without details the statement is meaningless so what is there to rebut - of course we would all like to see reciprocal protection of citizen rights, but which rights. 4. Exactly and that was what Merkel, and others, told May. Invoke A50 and we can make sure that citizen rights are the first item to be discussed.

Air quality has always been an issue it' just that now we are more aware and less accepting of it. Part of the problem is that we have found out that the very fine particles emitted by clean private vehicles are much more dangerous than the larger sooty particles emitted by older vehicles.

The first part of the first statement is correct for existing batteries, and it's this knowledge that has enabled Tesla to increase their warranty to 8 years and unlimited mileage. The second part is incorrect, in fact it is a fast moving field of Chemistry/Physics where huge investment in improving our knowledge is being made and is driving the continuing improvement in battery capacity, power density, lifespan and fire safety (Toyota is sounding increasingly confident of having a solid state battery in large scale production by 2020 - at least 30% more capacity, unlimited lifespan and non flammable). For the reasons above there won't be cars with shot batteries on the road. I believe ICE's are also susceptible to knobs not filling up, in fact more so as their fuel gauges are much less accurate.

On what basis. Tesla has recently increased its warranty on the battery and drivetrain to 8 years and infinite miles. Their confidence is such that they have retrospectively applied the increase to all of the model S cars ever made. The reason they have this confidence is that batteries in even the earliest 2012 cars are degrading much slower than expected and now have a predicted life in excess of 340k miles, the batteries in cars built after 2015 are showing little or no degradation at all. Their electric drivetrain is now expected to last over 1m miles. The rest of an electric car tends to have a much easier life than an ICE car, it has to cope less vibration, without the extreme underbonnet heat cycling, regenerative braking means the brakes are rarely used in normal driving. You are right that eventually taxation will be applied to electric vehicles but that won't be until switchover becomes a no brainer decision maybe 5-10 years away.

Thanks, I will do some more research on the reliability.

The Flexit paper is not intellectually challenging, anyone who can not understand it or cannot be bothered to read it probably shouldn't have been asked for their opinion on Brexit. I have a degree in Physics but couldn't even begin to understand the mathematics that defines plasma containment/instability that is central to making fusion work, some things are inherently complicated and not amenable to simplification. If you try you end up effectively just saying trust me.

I believe at the time NASA thought the chance of them making it to the moon and safely home was about 50-50, this is now thought to have been over optimistic- they got lucky. However, they didn't stake the future of the country on it, just the lives of 3 astronauts who were expendable Re the poetry, there is a long tradition of people resorting to emotion when they cannot make a sensible case. In WW1it certainly helped fill the trenches (although not the quoted text obviously).

I haven't got it yet, at the moment just looking at the numbers with a view to buying one secondhand early next year. NB First year depreciation for electric cars is still very high, making them much more affordable, especially so when you consider that their expected lifetime is several times that of an ICE car.

I agree with your reservations. Unfortunately, there is a good chance that party politics will trump common sense causing us to be led over the cliff edge.

The problem is if you provide the Janet and John version of fusion, people would think that's a great idea and say go for it. We have been going for it for 30 years and are probably still 30 years away from making it work. Good job we didn't stake the future of the country on making it work, that would have been very silly wouldn't it.

In life some things just are very complicated and Brexit is one of them. The pamphlet and video are both pretty concise descriptions of a very complex subject and well worth the time it take to read/watch them., They provide about the minimum amount of knowledge required, of the leave option, to have cast an informed vote in the referendum.

My view for some time been that we will not be leaving the EU on 29th March 2019. Assuming "Brexit" proceeds (despite us having no clear idea of our final destination or even how to get to wherever it turns out to be) we will enter an open ended transition period, that is in reality an extension of our membership and will remain in this state until either Brexit is cancelled or the government comes clean about the true complexity of leaving and develops and promotes its own version of flexit (quite how it would sell the idea to the public is another matter). After thinking that Brexit was now unstoppable, I now think that at some point in the near future the government (or parliament) will realise just how big a hole it is digging for itself and begin looking for a way out - the most cowardly option would be to kick the problem back to the electorate to decide via a second referendum. The EU must know that (assuming they still want the UK to remain) a well timed offer to allow restriction of FoM will most likely be grabbed at as a justification for that referendum, which takes us back to the post referendum rumors that presumed exactly this scenario would develop and an offer, to allow restrictions to be placed on FoM, made to the UK if we decided to Remain.

Problem is for most people that is counter intuitive, they think that living in the small village in the countryside is greener than living in a city. Trying to convince people that the reality that living in a city is less damaging to the environment than a rural life is always going to be difficult.