Are you looking forward to the spooky season in 2025
332 days until Halloween 2025
Daily video:
Proverb: Ghosts in the night bring festive delight.
(Image created using AI technology provided by Fooocus v2.5.5)
UK Parliament petition: "An independent evaluation of the Cass review on child gender services":
Are you looking forward to the spooky season in 2025
333 days until Halloween 2025
Daily video:
Proverb: Snowflakes fall like whispers from the hall.
(Image created using AI technology provided by Fooocus v2.5.5)
New calls to increase personal tax allowance from 12,570 to 45,000
Hedgehog feeding box.
Ouch and on point. While I do actually find the new Type 00 attractive as a design study, it should not be the cornerstone of a reimagined Jaguar. Just tossing out 80 years of heritage and stunning coachwork for a fancy toaster is a crime. #cars #automotive #UK
Ouch and on point. While I do actually find the new Type 00 attractive as a design study, it should not be the cornerstone of a reimagined Jaguar. Just tossing out 80 years of heritage and stunning coachwork for a fancy toaster is a crime.
An Spider (with a petrol engine) caught in car park in - the Fire Brigade state it was due to a fault and not arson
Not sure if I'd call it a "luxury car" these days, you can pick one up for a few grand. They are prone to perishing of rubber fuel lines, which if not dealt with can result in the above happening...
A newly approved skyscraper will join 's skyline as the s tallest building.
will stand at 309.6 meters tall, matching the Shards height to the centimeter. A 74-story office tower, which will be Western Europe's tallest building.
you think you have problems
Some Irish pubs in Great Britain have told the BBC they ran out of Guinness this week, after limits were imposed on supply in the run up to Christmas.
Ukraine, US agree to deepen cooperation in cybersecurity (PHOTOS and more)
Intelligence: DPRK military has already suffered first losses in Kursk region and inflicted them on Kadyrovtsi (more)
Number 1 for Free UK WillsPM calls on leaders to increase sanctions pressure on
With showing no signs of relenting, support for needs to be stepped up to put the country in the best possible position for the future, Prime Minister told a video conference of leaders.
He also called for continuing to inflict "maximum pain" on by increasing economic pressure, including by imposing additional sanctions where possible.
Ukraine adds over 860 MW of renewable energy capacity in two years (more)
President Zourabichvili attends stolen election protest in Tbilisi with pro-western demonstrators (more)
Russians invaders attack Nikopol district 25 times throughout day injuring civilian (PHOTOS and more)
Power outage schedules to operate from 08:00 to 22:00 on Sunday Ukrenergo (more)
UK PM urges G7 leaders to ramp up economic pressure on Russia, bolster support to Ukraine (more)
Russian war criminals drone attacks civilian Ukrposhta vehicle in Mykolaiv region, driver in critical condition (more)
Suspected terrorist attack in Dnipro kills 1, injures 4 (more)
Ukraine sending humanitarian aid to Syria to prevent 'food crisis,' President Zelensky says (more)
Kyiv is delaying minerals deal with US to let Trump take credit, NYT reports (more)
North Korean troops joining Russian assaults in Kursk, President Zelensky says (more)
'Campaigners call out Norways complicity in Israels genocide. Yes, you read that right. On Thursday 12 December, campaigners from Fossil Free London staged a demonstration outside the Norwegian embassy in Belgravia, condemning Norway and its governments role in developing the controversial Rosebank oil field, which will see millions flow towards Israeli fuel giant, Delek Group, blacklisted by the UN for human rights violations.'
Hedgehog feeding box.
12,57045,000
Large fire breaks out in Bristol
European Lawmakers Ask UK to Reconsider Interchange Fee Cap 'sHot
Everywhere goes it causes trouble. , , , , and the . Either they funnel money to their political supporters there, influence elections or just plain out cause a war. There are many who do not support this. But it is time for the current regime and their new
neighbour to face the music.
Giant 5kg mushroom feeds family for a week
Some notes from reading about the UKs plan for clean power by 2030
For me at least, one of the most politically exciting things that happened this year was seeing the UK finally get rid of a conservative government and elect one that had to extremely ambitious climate promises in its manifesto. More specifically the goal to reach clean power by 2030 really caught my attention, and coincidentally is somewhat much aligned with one of the demands we have in my day job, of a fossil free Internet by 2030.
I have just finished reading about the plan that was published this week. Here are some key thing that leapt out at me.
So much wind
I knew that the UK was a windy place, but wow when you look at the expected power mix in 2030 the amount of wind and in particular offshore wind that the UK will be relying on is just staggering.
More than half of the power that the UK relies on will come from gigantic offshore winter turbines see the chart below to give you an idea of how things are right now and how they are expected to work in the future.
Offshore wind is one of the success stories for the UK (assuming we look past the scenario under the previous government where one year zero bits were made for one of the offshore wind auctions). And the 2010s, offshore wind was incredibly expensive and made up a tiny proportion of generation and now within 20 years it is making up more than half of all power and one of the major economies of the world.
Not entirely fossil free
One other thing to take into account is that the clean power definition here is not actually 100%. This might sound strange coming from someone calling for a fossil free Internet at work, but to be honest, there are two things to take into account here that make it a slightly easier pill to swallow:
- The final a few percent of decarbonising a grid in most modelling I am familiar with show an incredibly steep increase in cost, as you reach 100% clean power. Given this is only five years away, I can imagine having the 5% wiggle room significantly brought down the cost that policy makers had to sign off on.
- It looks like there would be no new gas generation being built instead there would still be capacity but the amount is actually used every year (i.e. the capacity factor) would be much much lower. As far as I am aware if you have a system that relies on variable renewables then in the 2020s to early 2030s at least it looks like having some degree of chemical storage appears to be unavoidable. The fossil-free chemical options that Im aware of, like green hydrogen or green methanol, even if their price was right are not available at the scale necessary yet.
Swapping fuel for finance
The final thing that I think is worth paying attention to is how people say it will be paid for. There is a commonly used line by people talking about the energy transition, about it very much being a transition from relying on fuel to relying on finance this is because renewables like wind and solar have an upfront cost but once they are built, there is no fuel to pay for.
I think its quite encouraging that this is the line being used to explain how its being paid for the comms appears to be very much about protecting people from the volatility of fossil gas prices, (which have been a source of acute financial pain for so many people in Britain in the last few years), and also saving money by not having to pay for gas in the first place.
This is all probably modelled in Python somewhere, and possibly on a public repo on GitHub
One thing I learned after speaking to lots of energy modellers and listening to lots of podcasts is that the initial 2030 target was at least somewhat informed by reports from the think tank Ember Energy, and those reports relied on energy modelling using some open source software called PyPSA.
There is a , and I would be surprised if next year there is not some similar project to model this out, even if it is not the official one from the UK government.
I really hope we see more modelling like this in the public domain to inform public discourse about how we can get off fossil fuels I know it is increasingly in use outside of the UK too.
Oh! This reminds me. I opened an issue a while back on that repo, largely because when I read Embers reports that had informed the policy decision, I had a bunch of questions about how much flexibility there were relying on. In my day job one thing I hear all the time is how data centres can be a potentially helpful source of this flexibility so I was curious about how that could be modelled. If you know your way around PYPSA and youd be up for collaborating with me on figuring out how to model this, do please get in touch.
Where to learn more
There is some .
I first found out about this I first found out about this from , detailing the different designs of a recent scheme to purchase of your wind by the government of Denmark and the UK respectively.
You can .
Rest in Peace Lennie De Ice (Lenworth Green) >
A kid found an unusual rock on a southern beach six years ago.
It turned out to be a rare ax made by
Loch Ness anchorage85mm f/9 1/1250 Sek. ISO 400 10/2018
European Lawmakers Ask UK to Reconsider Interchange Fee Cap 'sHot
2 BBC
Pictures from a walk around Branton Lakes today. I believe the large black birds are double-crested cormorants.
Edit: I've been messaged telling me it's extremely unlikely to be a pair of doublr-crested cormorants in the UK, so I don't know what they are. Great cormorant pictures don't show orange patches. If anyone knows please tell me!
14/12/2024 - Initially clear southeast- Evening Weather Forecast UK Met Office Weather
I saw an advisement for a charity in the UK to help homeless people, asking for 3 per month from the public to stop 22,000 young people being on the streets at Xmas, the patron was HRH the Prince of Wales.
For a second there I forgot that he could eradicate the issue completely with a tiny fraction of his fortune.
What a great patron he could be..