We loved our heatpump -- provided the bulk of our seasonal heating and cooling for 15 years. Was an air source unit -- cost us roughly $10,000 installed. Would have preferred ground source, but the rock drilling required to sink the collection wells would have added another $40,000 to the cost. The heat collection and transfer process becomes less efficient as the air gets colder -- at -10C (14F) the system shuts off. From that point we had to rely on our electric baseboards. Ground source would have been warmer and we might not have needed the baseboards, but uneconomic. As one can probably guess, replenishment rate governs both sources -- the air is always refreshed so cooling it is not a problem. Being in a rural area we had no close neighbors -- which might be a big problem in a crowded urban area. Too many ground source units in a small area could lead to ground freeze-up which would shut everyone down. Glad that Germany thinks this is a solution -- certainly our experience as long as the power stays on.

When the imperative is to publish to sustain funding or maintain employment and quantity trumps quality this result should come as no surprise. (I have long time friends in academia and have just a hint of how vicious this can get). But wait, there is more. Not only is there a photoshop problem but more seriously there is a fake data problem. More than a few research papers cannot be reproduced by others carefully following the described methodologies in the paper. So photoshop is just one part of the fake research problem. The windows of our understanding are getting obscured by the bird splats of fake research. Are we being harmed by this? Probably -- but the medical industry has been successful in hiding its actual data so we just have their word that this latest expensive pill produces results -- beyond a higher bottom line. Suspect that the entire research industry needs to be rethought to focus on real results -- maybe with less hype. But in a world where 'how much money did we make this afternoon' has become the only result that matters -- fakery to keep the money flowing is just part of the problem.

In case anyone happens to look out the window, the US has been having a drought as well, its not just Africa. And if anyone can remember as far back as last summer, there was a bit of a heatwave that compromised air travel. Not only were the cheap asphalt runways getting sticky but airplanes don't get as much lift in hot air. This will impact travel plans. And for comic relief, just look around at how passenger trains have fared in North America. Folks can scoff all they want, but the times they are a changing. The economic cost of recent heatwaves is in the trillions. And the longer we collectively wait before trying to adapt, the more expensive it becomes. And change mitigation? That train left the station some time ago -- no one noticed.

Having ridden the bullet train in Japan in a few places -- there is damn little flat land in that country. But the Japanese engineers were very thoughtful and factored in the frequency of earthquakes in their design. They were no strangers to railroad building. But like the US of old, 'yes we can' was their mantra. Nothing kills a project like 'no we cant' -- no matter how much money gets poured over it.

Japan does have a high speed rail system -- and a lot of tunnels to minimize winding around the landscape.

Sadly, yes. The USA used to do big projects because there was collective interest in getting them done. Things like the Hoover Dam or the transcontinental railway. Or WW2 projects to produce aircraft and ships at rates not seen since.

But looking at this project is seems the current focus is how much can be liberated from the public budget into select private hands. Whether there is any benefit for the rest of us is irrelevant. But that is very much the focus of these troubled times.

It should not be ignored that modern (any, really) diesel trains are hybrids. The diesel engine drives a generator that provides electricity to the traction motors embedded in the wheel sets. And modern engines have dynamic brakes where momentum is converted into heat and dissipated at the top of the engine. Why the things are so efficient. So hybrid-electrics are what we have been using for a long time.

We have three desktops and three laptops here -- all running Win10 pro. Most of them were acquired in the last three years. All fail the compatibility test for Win11. Doesn't matter what new and improved bugs and features Win 11 has over Win 10 -- its not worth a major hardware upgrade across the board. And new versions of applications that for one reason or another need 'upgrading'. And discovering new gotchas. Just no...

In the early 1970s, Heathkit offered a computer kit where one assembled a power supply, case and card cage, paper tape reader-shredder and a glass TTY that roughly looked like an ADM. The DECUS library became available for Fortran, Basic and Focal. Over the years this grew -- paper tape replaced by a Heath dual 8" floppy -- made saving programs much less exciting. This was replaced by an 11/23+ in a 60" cabinet -- needed to support two huge 3mb RK05 hard drives that Bell scrapped (at 80# each). Ran RT11... a nice single user os. Did everything for me until it was finally replaced by a PC in the 1990s -- no place in the new house for the beast. But none of the newer machines have had the reliability and stability of that gear.

Perhaps, after all the nepotism is swept aside, the explanation is a tad different? A friend of mine some years ago discovered that lizards inhabiting a tropical rainforest divided up the hunting surfaces in such a way that they were never in competition with each other. Some hunted the leaf top surfaces, some the underside and others the stems. It occurred to me that people behave much the same way -- our upbringing and experiences develop a framework that we use to interact with the world as we move through life. And since sensory stimulus is filtered through memory, we see what we expect, to a great degree. A poor person may look on a situation and form a set of expectations that are quite different from a rich person. I like to think of this as a delusional framework -- it shapes what we see of the world and our expectations of what it is possible for us to achieve. Someone from a wealthy background might see more opportunities -- and interacting with such folks might broaden the scope of what a poor person sees as possible. Just changing perceptions of what is possible in this world without sliding into criminality -- another set of possibilities.

Funny. The most interesting articles I read about Brexit in the Guardian and Economist were talking about dodging the EU banking laws that were making it inconvenient for certain kinds of banking. Now that the EU is out of the picture the government is free to run whatever sort of laundry they wish. And driving out the skilled trades -- like doctors, nurses and lorry drivers will create lots of opportunities for anyone willing to acquire the skills. From a distant perspective (Canada) it seems like someone got sold a bill of goods.

Yes, I have read the papers... but the researchers mentioned small amounts over the lifetime of the concrete -- nothing close to being carbon neutral. And where we live there are a lot of large solar farms -- every single row of panels sits on a concrete foundation. Not the case for a few panels screwed to a roof. And the wind farm that went in across the road from us used an average of 300 cubic meters of concrete per turbine -- mostly buried so limited access to atmospheric CO2.

You might care to look at the history of rare earth mining. The US used to be a major producer but the mines were shutdown for environmental reasons. China is not so picky. And yes, solution mining is used for some of the production -- but not all of it.

Ever see a strip mine for coal?

There is nothing that we do that is free of consequences -- sure, cover the planet with billions of solar panels and wind generators, and ignore the massive GHG produced by the cement needed, the environmental devastation from the rare earths consumed and so forth. Same applies to electric cars -- great idea... I want one myself. But not much will be done for the environment when the resources required are taken into consideration. Nukes are the same -- current plants follow the model of huge installations with massive costs and lengthy construction times. And of course an equally vast distribution network. In the days of coal, power was local for obvious reasons. So when a storm swept through the damage was localized, not taking out a chunk of the continent due to cascading failures. But nukes have special maintenance problems -- the idea that the hot part of the plant could be collected for processing in a specialized plant and a new core dropped in has some attraction. And the amount of fuel required is vanishingly small compared to the bulk of coal and oil now being burned. And compared to 'renewables' or 'unreliables' as some would tag them -- whether we cook dinner would not be dependent on the weather and the state of the community battery bank (also not resource free). We pay our money and take our chances -- but we should look at the whole process, not just the piece we like.

There is a mineshaft gap. Better start digging.