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Comment Re:Before someone says it (Score 1) 88

That's how they convince you that everything is false, except what they are telling you.

In reality there are things that are true and widely agreed upon, and there are things that journalists can check before presenting. The classic example bendy bananas, if you want to look that one up. It was never true, in fact it was an example of how the UK had great influence in the EU, but the lie was used to justify leaving. The day after the voter, someone on a national TV debate show said that they were going to vote to remain, but at the last moment they remembered that lie and changed their mind.

Organizations like the BBC are not perfect, but they can usually get that stuff right.

Submission + - Europe: The World's Fastest-warming Continent (barrons.com)

fjo3 writes: The latest heatwave sweeping across Europe is a stark reminder that it is the world's fastest-warming continent, stretching into an Arctic that is heating at an even greater pace.

Britain, France, Italy and Spain have issued red alerts and health warnings for much of their territory this week as the region endures its second heat episode since May.

Comment Before someone says it (Score 5, Informative) 88

I know what this looks like, the government wants to make sure you read its narrative on everything first.

And I'm sure it will be abused for that.

But there is actually another, more genuine, reason for wanting it. We have a huge problem with misinformation in the UK. Much of it coming from Russia, and the far right, and grifters. It's actually quite lucrative, and devastatingly effective.

It's 10 years since the Brexit vote today. The amount of misinformation is hard to comprehend. Even today, people still believe those lies. Even back then, we were decades into debunking some of them. One of the biggest liars, Boris Johnson, transitioned from publishing lies in newspapers to telling lies as Prime Minister. Misinformation became the most effective political strategy.

This probably isn't the right way to go about it, but I also find it hard to believe that e.g. Facebook can't label Russia trolls easily enough. Whenever information leaks from those sites, the fake Russian accounts are very easy to spot. Twitter had to remove their public location information because as soon as they enabled it everyone noticed that many of the top accounts were Russian, pretending to be European or American.

Comment Re: What's the motivation? (Score 1) 147

Accounting for risk just means they looked at the design and decided that the probability of a meltdown was low, which incidentally is exactly what the Soviets did. Even assuming that their evaluation was correct and we get lucky and none of the failure modes they found actually happen, there is also a chance that it wasn't built exactly to spec and that causes problems.

Molten salt is a bad idea. Liquid sodium ignites on contact with air, so if there is any small leak you have a really nasty fire. The ones in China are tiny research reactors.

Comment Re:What's the motivation? (Score 2) 147

Betting on international markets developing seems unwise. There are proliferation issues, and countries we do trust to have civilian nuclear tend to want it to buy the technology in and run it themselves, so they aren't dependent on someone else to keep it operating, and so that the huge investment goes back into their own market.

And since you mention climate change making some types of generation fail, France is shutting down nuclear plants again due to the extreme heat.

Solar and wind are fine with climate change. The sun isn't going to stop rising, the wind if anything will get stronger. It may shift around a bit, but wind turbines have a lifespan measured in decades so will simply follow it. That said, it's unlikely that currently prime locations will ever stop being good for wind.

Comment Re: What's the motivation? (Score 3, Interesting) 147

If they can put nuclear there, they can put other stuff there. The Chinese have solved the terrain issues too, they install wind turbines and solar panels on the sides of mountains with drones.

https://noticiasambientales.co...

Nobody wants a nuclear plant in their back yard either.

Comment What's the motivation? (Score -1, Flamebait) 147

What's the real motivation here? Are they thinking that they missed the bus on renewables and that nuclear might be an export industry one day in the distant future? Or just back handers for politicians making this decision? Surely they don't want weapons.

Because by 2050 nuclear is going to be completely irrelevant and look like an even worse economic deal than it is today.

Comment Re:The purpose of a factory is not to provide jobs (Score 1) 149

sure, these are choices that stem out of another choice, namely out of the choice to have private ownership and operation of property. If the factory is private property, then it is operating in an environment that promotes and defends private property rights. This means nobody us forced to work there also, not just that nobody is owed a job there. In this environment competition is inevitable and it is competition for the purchasing power of individual buyers. So the demand and purchasing conditions are at least partially dictated by the totality of individual choices of all market participants. This is a policy choice, this is the choice I personally prefer as well.

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