weekly stories of more than passing note
Striking Truth It’s always been a trope of the British Right that our decline was due to endless strikes. Hence the unions were ruthlessly crushed. But a surprisingly counter-intuitive piece from the The Conversation suggests that the truth may be more subtle and complex. There’s three concepts likely to cause problems in editorial meeting at The Sun!
Ice, Right? Scientists seem to have discovered a new form of ice, more akin to that found in such locations as the moons of Saturn and other exotic locations. Should we try some in our Friday Night Cocktail recipes? The Mail explains
Power Down Why go to all that trouble building fusion reactors on earth, when you canget for next to nothing from our nearby fusion reactor, i.e. the sun? The most likely way ahead would be to beam down microwaves, as Nature explains, Can a Solar Farm be built in Space?
The first orbiting solar power station could be operational by 2040. Until then, huge technical hurdles remain. The arrays would need to be more than one square kilometre in size, and would have to be assembled in space — an incredibly complex engineering challenge. Arguably the biggest problem: beaming the power generated in space back to Earth. The most promising option is to convert energy into microwaves that will be captured by receiving stations that are even larger than the solar-panel arrays.Nature | 6 min read
Green growth, the rushes show Back in about 2015 climate change deniers were fond of saying that the economy could not afford the change-over to to renewable technologies. It’s early days yet, but the indications are that a green switch will be good for jobs and growth. This is the BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64440827
Batteries Flattened The price of not adopting green technology may be high indeed While the EU and USA forge ahead with state crafted schemes for green transport factories, the UK has started to fall terminally behind. In thrall to right wing think tanks who were ever-hostile to state intervention and evidence of climate change, UK Ministers seem to have been blindsided. And now it may be too late to save our automotive industry
And this week’s music It’s always good when two of the Greats manage to put aside their egos and work together, although it probably helps when one of them has been dead for seventy years. That’s why this Shakespeare-Purcell jam session, The Fairy Queen has survived the test of time. Although it got lost after the 1690s and only resurfaced in in 1910! here’s a brief but delightful extract, showcasing Baroque harmonies and singing at their enlightened best!
#british decline #economics #ice #solar power #nuclear fusion #renewables #growth #henry purcell #william shakespeare
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