Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Aston Martin uses sock-puppet PR company to "debunk" EVs (twitter.com)

Submitted by DamonHD
DamonHD writes: "A new report claims it takes 50,000 miles for EVs to earn back their embodied emissions. The report turns out to be a pamphlet by a sock-puppet PR company, working from a property owned by Aston Martin's Director of Government Affairs."

Submission + - Cambridge University Says Darwin's Iconic Notebooks Were Stolen (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two notebooks written by the famed British naturalist Charles Darwin in 1837 and missing for years may have been stolen from the Cambridge University Library, according to curators who launched a public appeal Tuesday for information. The notebooks, estimated to be worth millions of dollars, include Darwin’s celebrated “Tree of Life” sketch that the 19th-century scientist used to illustrate early ideas about evolution. Officials at the Cambridge University Library say the two notebooks have been missing since 2001, and it’s now thought that they were stolen.

“I am heartbroken that the location of these Darwin notebooks, including Darwin’s iconic ‘Tree of Life’ drawing, is currently unknown, but we’re determined to do everything possible to discover what happened and will leave no stone unturned during this process,” Jessica Gardner, the university librarian and director of library services, said in a statement. The lost manuscripts were initially thought to have been misplaced in the university’s enormous archives, which house roughly 10 million books, maps and other objects. But an exhaustive search initiated at the start of 2020 — the “largest search in the library’s history,” according to Gardner — failed to turn up the notebooks and they are now being reported as stolen. Cambridge University officials said a police investigation is underway and the notebooks have been added to Interpol’s database of stolen artworks.

Submission + - Scotland Makes Period Products Free

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: Scotland has passed a bill that has made period products such as tampons and pads free to all who need them, and becomes the first country in the world to make period products free. The Period Products Bill, which passed unanimously, requires local authorities to ensure that period products are generally obtainable free of charge. Schools and colleges must ensure period products are freely available to students, and designated public places must also make the products available. The debate over the bill spurred what was at times a remarkable public discussion of issues rarely spoken about in government chambers. Members of the Scottish Parliament discussed endometriosis and heavy bleeding, why toilet paper and bins for menstrual products are required in restrooms but not menstrual products themselves, and the wide base of support the legislation had drawn from men as well as women.

A BBC video is also available.

Comment Re:Energy is always political. Not greens, origina (Score 1) 287

by DamonHD (#59374456) Attached to: Germany's Giant Windmills Are Wildly Unpopular

So, while it is (currently) useful for the grid for me to move load to times of lower demand, I'm simply pointing out that the claimed invariable 'baseload' is not really a thing. Humans tend to be most active during the day because we're diurnal. If we absolutely had to strip demand back at night, eg because we put more solar PV in the system and/or wind is low for a few days, we could.

I'm in favour of nukes in the mix too, BTW, but the claim that they're "needed because baseload" is spurious IMHO.

Rgds

Damon

Comment Re:Energy is always political. Not greens, origina (Score 1) 287

by DamonHD (#59374372) Attached to: Germany's Giant Windmills Are Wildly Unpopular

Base load isn't really a thing IMHO (nor the optimion of the previous CEO of UK's National Grid)... It was in effect invented (as domestic demand) to use some of the electricity from plants that could not easily ramp down when industrial demand fell daily, eg at night.

About the most obvious thing that typically "needs" to run overnight in a home is a fridge/freezer, but people leave all sorts of unnecessary crap on such as cable TV boxes (would be half the load of our fridge/freezer if we didn't turn it off at the wall because it's standby mode is only 1W less than "on").

After we get people to just turn stuff off, we can neuter the residual load with a small amount of thermal or electrical storage if we want to. For example, I have the smallest-possible Enphase battery (~1kWh) installed as an experiment, and because it is very nimble we present virtually no load to the grid at night for most of the year:

        http://www.earth.org.uk/Enphas...

Note that I do choose to run some loads such as dishwasher some nights to do my bit to help flatten the grid demand curve and effectively supplement grid-attached storage, but that's elective, not base load.

Rgds

Damon

Comment Re:To clarify on Verspargelung (Score 1) 287

by DamonHD (#59374354) Attached to: Germany's Giant Windmills Are Wildly Unpopular

"Farmland needs to look like farms."

I used to live on a farm and I have no objections to farms per se, far from it.

But nothing much about a farm, even a small one, is "natural". Nothing about the hills that we've stripped of natural cover to put sheep on, or woods that we've turned into flat monoculture fields is "natural". No more natural in any case than a wind or a solar farm.

And if every household reduced consumption by a factor or 2 or 3 as I have (while adding children to mine) we could get by with a lot less of all sorts of farms while leading pleasant lives.

Rgds

Damon

Slashdot Top Deals

"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid." - Martin Mull

Close