Jeremy Harris

If I had to guess, I'd say that any pressure rise seen during curing was entirely caused by the concrete warming up, as the curing reaction is exothermic.

I didn't bother, mainly because when I looked at the pipe and the way it was laid and tied to the steel fabric it seemed pretty clear that there was no easy way to damage it. You will probably have an evening when the pipe's tied in before the concrete pour the next day. Ask the chaps when they get on site what their schedule is, as they usually like to get the concrete pour done in the morning, so they can let it go off enough to start to power float it before it gets too late in the day. Do you know who from MBC is doing your slab? If it's any of the guys that did ours I might pop over and say hello.

Welcome. First off, no water softener actually puts salt into the water at all, all an ion exchange softener does is replace calcium and magnesium ions in the incoming water with sodium ions. There have been lots of stories circulating about the adverse impact of having a tiny amount of sodium ions in softened water, but the reality is that milk has a heck of lot more sodium in that softened water. I've been on a low sodium diet for over 30 years now, and I keep my daily sodium intake down to around 1.5g (the recommended daily limit is 6g, IIRC), so have a personal interest in making sure that I don't ingest too much sodium. We have an ion exchange water softener, which works very well indeed. Water conditioners vary from being expensive snake oil devices that do little or nothing, through devices that seem to be based on pseudo science to devices that do seem to be able to temporarily change the way that calcium carbonate forms when water is heated or evaporates. These conditioning devices don't soften the water at all, it's just as hard, so needs the same amount of soap/detergent, they just tend to reduce the amount of scale that builds up. The third type of device is a phosphate dosing system. These work well at making the water appear softer, so making soap/detergent work a bit better, but again they don't actually remove calcium and magnesium ions from the water, so they don't soften it as such. Finally, there are reverse osmosis systems that can remove pretty much everything from the water, but they are only really suitable for low flow applications, and the water they produce may not be everyone's cup of tea (literally, it doesn't seem to make a decent cup of tea). There are one or two long threads on here that discuss, in depth, water conditioners and water softeners: There are probably other threads as well, these were just the first three I found doing a quick search.

I think that what happened within Toyota was that they realised that they had spent an enormous amount of money in the 1990's, developing the hybrid synergy drive, and then they haven't seen enough profit from it to justify continued development of pure EVs (which was always the intention of the "car for the millenium" project). The hybrid programme was very much driven by the personality of Chairman Shoichiro Toyoda. When he retired, just after the launch of the Prius, in 1999, Toyota changed direction. They withdrew from their battery vehicle programme in 2003, then made a half-hearted effort, in collaboration with Tesla (Tesla supplied the drive train) for a couple of years between 2012 and 2014. The fact that Toyota teamed up with Tesla speaks volumes for the inability of Toyota to engineer a pure electric drivetrain, something that I strongly suspect was a consequence of their desire to try and recover the R&D money from the HSD programme first. An interesting book was written on the design and development of the HSD, "The Prius that Shook the World". It was given away free with the cars in the early days; I have a copy as a .pdf if anyone wants to read it (it's a bit stilted, but a fascinating insight into the way Japanese car design works).

Government ministers can only sack those that they've employed directly, most commonly as advisors. They cannot sack Civil Servants, such as scientists working on climate research.

I've seen dozens, maybe hundreds, of controversial research outcomes over the years. I've never heard of anyone being sacked for anything other than gross misconduct (which has never related to their work). I've seen explosions of rage from senior military officers when they've been told that research doesn't fit their preconceptions; for some reason this sort of reaction seems far more prominent in officers of 1* or above. I've also been told to wind my neck in by at least one minister, and on one occasion told my minister that he may not like what I'd said, but that he could, with respect, f*ck himself for all I cared, as I knew that what I'd said was correct. Not only was I not sacked, but the ministers PPS grinned at me and subsequently bought me a drink in the bar.

I'm not sure that the evidence supports such a conclusion. How many ordinary people feel beholden to their employer, to the extent that they would discard their own personal views, in order to kow tow to their employers demands for obedience? I can say with certainty that it never happened in the Scientific Civil Service, for the simple reason that we were beholden to the Crown, not any particular political party (in fact we were all prohibited from having any political affiliations). When research tasks are handed out (and as I was the person programme managing the UK Defence Research Programme for several years I'm familiar with the process) they are in the form of questions that have been raised, almost always as a result of a process of seeking answers to future policy decisions. In the case of climate research, the questions aasked were pretty non-specific, and centred on seeking to determine what the government needed to do in the next few decades in order to ensure that certain defence capabilities could be maintained. The impact of climate change on defence is significant, as apart from the obvious changes to defence equipment and tactics (for example, if sea levels rise what impact would that have on amphibious warfare?) there are much more significant defence-related peacetime challenges that might arise (like civil unrest, famine and flood driven military aid requirements, etc). Why would the state try to force a research outcome that might waste many billions of taxpayers money if it turns out to be wrong? Surely the logical position for a state to take would be to deny that AGW is happening, suppress any research into it and so, in the short term, save a great deal of taxpayers money. Quite apart from anything else, the UK is far from being alone in reaching very similar conclusions to every other major climate research programme around the globe. Having sat on international working groups (not related to climate research) I can say that it's hard enough getting supposed allies to cooperate. The idea that many states could all be cooperating to create a false narrative, for some unknown objective, is frankly ludicrous. There's a very common saying in government, which reflects the general incompetence of politicians in general, "cock up is much more probable than conspiracy". This has been proven time and time again over the years to stand up to scrutiny as far as the UK government is concerned. The inability to organise a serious drinking session in a brewery is often muttered in the "corridors of power". Or, as my old boss said (in his previous job) "We're all f*cked. I'm f*cked. You're f*cked. The whole department is f*cked. It's the biggest cock-up ever. We're all completely f*cked." .

It is in Scotland, I believe, but not (yet) in England and Wales (not sure about NI).

Equally vociferous are the AGW climate change deniers, though. I have spent an hour or two looking through the background of some of the groups that claim to be independent reviewers of evidence, and who claim that the evidence from mainstream climate research does not support the conclusion that the activities of man are having a significant impact on climate change. For supposedly "open" organisations, it is surprisingly hard to gain access to verifiable data, or even the credentials of their key members. That latter point, alone, rings an alarm, as few credible and well-qualified people in the field of climate science choose to be coy about their qualifications, publications and experience. Some groups are also coy about where they get their funding from, or what has motivated them to re-examine evidence that has already been reviewed many times. Dig down, and it becomes apparent that often the key members contributing and funding these groups are connected with the energy industry in some way. Digging into the background and funding like this reminds me very much of the efforts that the US motor industry went to in order to try and discredit Toyota, back in 2007. CNW published a supposedly scientific paper that concluded that the Hummer H3 had a lower life cycle energy cost than a Toyota Prius. CNW were extremely effective in promulgating their "Dust to Dust" report, and it was widely accepted as being credible, perhaps in part because a lot of Americans wanted to believe that a Hummer was an "eco vehicle". It took some time to uncover what was going on, but apart from the really poor science underpinning the conclusions in the report (such as assuming a Hummer H3 had a life of 35 years/397,000 miles, whereas a Prius had a life of less than 12 years/109,000 miles), it turned out that it had been funded by US automotive companies, albeit indirectly, via marketing payments made to CNW (who are an automotive marketing company working almost exclusively for US motor manufacturers). The major groups that claim that AGW is false show much the same trend. For example, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), founded by Nigel Lawson, focusses on politics, rather than science. GWPF adopts the same selective reporting tactic that CNW did in it's infamous Dust to Dust report, by studiously ignoring any data that doesn't fit the preconceptions of its founders, and focussing on misrepresenting any data that they feel supports their view. It's no great surprise that these groups that are intent on denying the clear evidence of mainstream climate science reinforce their own views by only encouraging presentations from those in other similar political or industrial lobby groups. They even get away with openly lying on mainstream media, with statements like "conventional energy is reliable and cheaper" (it isn't cheaper, even ignoring any subsidies), or "according to the official [IPCC] figures, during this past 10 years, if anything, mean global temperature, average world temperature, has slightly declined" (it hasn't, according to the IPCC data). Taking a look at funding reveals that there are dozens of inter-connected policy influencing bodies that all use the same address, and all of whom seem to be inextricably linked with UK business interests, many of whom would suffer if further legislation reducing emissions etc was introduced. What seems clear is that most of the mainstream climate science is being conducted by people with no axe to grind, whereas many of the groups denying that AGW is real are associated with business or political lobby groups that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

The HiFiBerry library should work with that DAC, I think, as it uses the same PCM5102A DAC chip. FWIW, the PhatDAC also uses the PCM5102A and works fine with the HiFiBerry DAC library.

Sounds ideal to me. A couple of days or so in that should see off anything in the sofa.

Hydrogen, as an energy storage medium, is an interesting topic in itself. The process of generating hydrogen is pretty simple and relatively non-toxic, but the efficiency is not great, either at the hydrogen generation end or the other end, converting hydrogen back into usable energy. However, efficiency isn't everything, as if there is a surfeit of electricity generation in one area, and a demand for energy in another location, then it can make sense to use hydrogen as the storage medium. A good example would be areas of Scotland and the distant isles, where there is often a surfeit of electricity generation from renewable sources (primarily wind and hydro). Generating hydrogen from excess electricity generation, then transporting it for use as road fuel, may be a less polluting way of powering vehicles. However, using normal grid power to generate hydrogen doesn't seem to make sense, as the net CO2eq would probably end up being much the same to using diesel or petrol for vehicle fuel. As a fuel for use in urban areas, then it has some merit, but whether or not it makes more sense than using rapidly evolving BEV technology is debatable. BEVs are now becoming mainstream, with practically every motor manufacturer (with the notable exception of the biggest, Toyota) either currently selling, or planning to sell, BEVs.

We had a privacy issue raised by one neighbour. It turned out that a large part of the problem was that they couldn't visualise the true sight lines from the plans, and were assuming that there would be a direct line of sight from their bedroom windows to ours. For other reasons (all associated with the inability of people to interpret plans) I chose to make a scale model, which worked really well in damping down possible objections. Being able to see on the model that our detached garage effectively screened the view caused the privacy objection to be withdrawn. This is the model I made:

Arguably my car has locked up a fair bit of carbon in its carbon fibre bodyshell/chassis...? The downside is that carbon fibre has an EE of around 180 - 280 MJ/kg, so a lot higher than steel or aluminium, although being a lot less dense, and a lot stronger and stiffer, there's less of it for a given strength/stiffness requirement. On a more serious note, as the car has very little metal in it (just the suspension, wheel, brake components, plus the drive train) it'd be interesting to see what the whole vehicle embodied energy is. One challenge with working out the total embodied energy is how to account for the R&D effort over the years. Conventional cars have had well over a century of R&D effort, whereas electric cars have only had a couple of decades or so.

Very true. I've owned three Prius cars, the last being a plug in, and none needed new brake pads. I did ~65k miles in the first one, and the pads were around 60% warn when I traded it in. The i3 I have now very rarely uses the friction brakes, and most of the time I drive without ever touching the brake pedal, as regen is strong enough to slow the car in normal traffic.

EVs are a lot simpler mechanically, with no clutch, usually no gearbox (at least no changeable ratios usually) and none of the mechanical complexity of an internal combustion engine. They do have complex battery management and motor control systems though, so in terms of parts count (at the component level) there are probably more parts in an EV than in a conventional car. The reduction in mechanical moving parts has led to a reduction in servicing intervals. Two year servicing intervals are now fairly common, as there's nothing much to do on an EV other than check the brakes and tyres and perhaps change the battery/motor controller/motor coolant every few years.

A year or so ago I dug out the UK vehicle "well to wheel" CO2 equivalent emissions figures: Average for petrol engined vehicles = 178g CO2eq/km Average for diesel engined vehicles = 145g CO2eq/km Average for grid-powered electric vehicles = 90g CO2eq/km

I doubt it, as dry timber doesn't generally suffer from any ill effects for being frozen.

I think you may well be on the right track, as RPi's do seem a bit sensitive to the way that the SD/µSd card is imaged. Part of the problem seems to be that the card seems to have a Windows-compatible partition, AFAICS, so isn't wholly formatted as a Linux-like file system. I believe this was done to allow Windows users to be able to access the boot part of the file system, but may be wrong. The SD card section of this page may help, as you can write the image to the SD card using dd from the command line, which should faithfully create it on the card OK: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/filesystem/backup.md

There's a good chance that the Pi Music box version of Raspbian (I'm guessing it will be a cut down version of Raspbian) may not natively have an enabled desktop. Might be worth trying to load an image file of Raspbian to the SD card and see if that boots, as by default the "full fat" version of Raspbian has a desktop and keyboard/mouse interface. Best bet once you can connect it to Ethernet is to SSH into it and see what's going on, but there's a trick needed to do that. By default, newer versions of Raspbian (and I'd guess variants of it) don't enable SSH, so you need to create an empty file in the root directly of the SD card called SSH (no suffix). You can create this file using Notepad on a Windows machine, just save an empty file as SSH, then edit it to remove the .txt extension. When the SD card is put into the Pi and booted it will automatically enable SSH and delete the blank file. Having done this, you should be able to connect to the Pi by finding it's IP address on your router, then using a terminal programme, like PuTTY, to SSH in and see what's going on from the command line. I have a feeling that there may be a way to SSH in to a Pi from USB, but it's not something I've done, as all mine have Ethernet. Might be worth digging around on the Pi support forums to see if you can find anything out about using USB to connect to a Pi directly.

The standard treatment for woodworm years ago was to just put the affected furniture outside during a severe frost. Seemed to work well, as there aren't many bugs or eggs that will survive being frozen. Personally, I'd prefer treating something this way than trying to spray it with insecticide, especially as it's really hard to be sure that insecticide has reached every nook and cranny. Leaving it in a big freezer for a couple of days should pretty much guarantee that all bugs and eggs will be killed off, I think. PS: Just been checking, and I was right, freezing works well, needs 48 to 72 hours in a deep freeze to kill the blighters: https://www.jgpestcontrol.co.uk/freeze-treatment-for-bed-bugs-insects/

Having shared an office with a climate scientist, who had no axe to grind at all [1], I'd say that there seems to be an overwhelming body of evidence to show that anthropogenic climate change is both real, and is having a very rapid effect (in climate terms). The evidence, from multiple sources, of a rapid increase in global temperature, the very tight correlation between that and atmospheric CO2 concentration and the tight correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and the activities of man, is very hard to ignore. The large scale removal of terrestrial CO2 sinks and the large quantity of CO2 released from burning fossil fuel (that had locked up that CO2 for millions of years) over the past couple of centuries, matches the increase in atmospheric CO2. Although I'd be the first to say that predictive climate modelling isn't that accurate, the one thing that all the various climate models show is that the CO2 concentration and mean temperature will continue to increase; what's uncertain is the rate of change of that increase. The lowest rate of change looks pretty dire, and the highest rate of change prediction looks close to catastrophic. The rate of change may well be more significant than the actual values, as nature takes time to evolve and adapt, and it seems we are forcing change at a rate, even at the lowest estimates, that may be too fast for natural evolution to deal with. [1] No axe to grind in the sense that his work, and that of his colleagues, was intended to inform government decision making, so there was no bias one way or the other from those paying his salary, and a strong pressure to produce advice that was as accurate as possible.

Probably not forecast based, though, I think. The present system involves selling wholesale energy on a 30 minute spot market, with widely varying prices from one 30 minute slot to another. The suppliers can't control this, as they just have to pay whatever the spot price is at that moment. As a consequence, suppliers are exposed to a fair bit of risk, as they have to set their tariff rates without knowing what they'll end up paying for wholesale energy. "Smart" meters reduce that risk, as they will allow suppliers to vary the retail price in line with the variations in the wholesale price, so they switch from being fixed price retailers to being cost-plus retailers, with little or no business risk.

The snag is that "smart" meters have been proven to not make any significant changes to patterns of usage, for the simple reason that the major energy consumption devices in the home have to run when they have to run (typically heating and hot water). Consumers can nibble around the edges and make tiny changes, but overall these don't appear to make any significant difference. "Smart" meters aren't being introduced to reduce CO2, anyway, the reason for rolling them out is everything to do with grid peak demand management. The idea is that once there are enough of them installed, then variable rate tariffs can be rolled out, to increase and decrease the price on the fly. The hope is that using dynamic pricing will drive consumers (more likely drive appliance manufacturers in reality) to change their pattern of use so that they consume less energy at peak times and more energy at off-peak times. There isn't expected to be a net reduction in energy consumption, if anything the chances are that energy consumption may rise slightly, as a consequence of the use of storage systems to allow time-of-use offsetting.

It's also possible that the author of that paper is conducting an experiment related to the way his apparent views are received, and he may well be monitoring the reaction as part of some other study he's undertaking. If so, then it wouldn't be the first time that something off the wall has been published, just to see how others react to it.