Bishop Hill FT on the 2050 calculator
Jan 2, 2012 Climate: other The Financial Times has picked up on David Mackay's 2050 energy calculator, noting some of the oddities in the assumptions used - assumptions that I think it's fair to say many people assume were made with Guardian headlines in mind.
Strikingly, the renewables option is the cheapest of these with the nuclear the most expensive. As a result, in contrast to the Telegraph, the Guardian takes a different line: it’s headline is “Low-carbon energy ‘no dearer than doing nothing‘”. (Although, curiously, it’s online version mirrors the Tel with “UK switch to low-carbon energy will cost £5,000 per person per year“).
But matters are still not perfectly straightforward. The key question for DECC is why the “higher renewables” scenario is combined with “more energy efficiency” when the other options are not to the same degree?
...
Why is there a presumption that if we move towards wind/solar power then people will use more insulation? It does not necessarily follow. Presumably if you combined the extra energy efficiency to nuclear or fossil fuels they may no longer come out as the most expensive options.
Mackay himself has commented on the article, which can be read here.
Reader Comments (48)
"Why is there a presumption that if we move towards wind/solar power then people will use more insulation?"
Because electricity will become so bloody expensive & intermitant, that we'll all need to save every little bit we can!
I have looked at reviewed capital investment proposals within manufacturing businesses for over twenty years. The larger the proposal, the greater the degree of scrutiny. When they are of large value and complex projects, it is normal to have a critical and independent review of any proposals, and then to have multiple layers of authorization, with detailed questions asked at each level. The estimated energy investment over the next 40 years is £2.4 trillion (£2,400,000,000,000), or twenty times the government deficit this year, or more than double the national debt (but not for long). Given that much of the benefit / cost justification comes from the 2006 Stern Review, which (a) chose the more extreme assumptions and studies of the time (b) had a dubious discount rate (c) since then we have learnt much to indicate that the worst case scenarios are without proper justification.
A robust review is needed by those who are capable of analyzing the model's underlying assumptions, before this mega investment is put before Parliament for approval.
I wonder does the renewable option included all the money that has to be spent to supply a back-up power source to cover renewable major issues with inconstancy of supply or does it just use some 'fantasy' of which this constancy is ?
Adam Gallon (Jan 2, 2012 at 3:55 PM). Good point!
It is so easy to imagine a malevolent type looking forward to intermittent, unreliable and expensive electricity supplies. I wonder if such a type is more likely to be found on the left or the right of the conventional political spectrum? I wonder if that view makes it easier, in terms of sleeping at night, than any other view for those involved in the promotion of so-called renewables as mass-energy sources? I think it does. A more neutral view, perhaps one which assumes people, and electricity supply engineers in particular, will somehow find ways to cope with the challenge, would do, but there would always be appreciable doubt leading, in the case of more sensitive souls at least, to the odd sweat-soaked awakening with dread at 3 in the morning. For a full night's untroubled sleep, far far better to have the full malevolence.
Sounds like one more of those Greenpeace scenarios.
Nuclear is superior to wind/soalr in any honest assessment. But honesty was the first casualty when big green took over the public square.
Britain is sitting on huge natural gas reserves, but the big greens, as they are seeking to do everywhere, are seeking to shut that down. natural Gas is much cleaner than coal and develops good high paying jobs that do not require govt. subsidy to exist.
The victory of big green policies/AGW policies is a victory agasint the interests of the people.
KnR
If you go to the following two DECC documents and are able to read them without your brains falling out or dissolving, you will see that building and operating backup plants to counter the effect of the intermittency of wind power will (by the usual magic of DECC accounting) reduce our bills.
But our electrciity bills will be lower (than they otherwise would be) because:
I have a feeling that Sir Humphrey had a big hand in these documents.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/consultation/cap-mech/3883-capacity-mechanism-consultation-impact-assessment.pdf
http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/meeting-energy-demand/energy-markets/3884-planning-electric-future-technical-update.pdf
As the greenest scenario assumes (or mandates?) the fact that we will each consume half the electricity of the do nothing scenario then the result is hypothetical. The cost per kWh is the true metric. As these are DECC released 'scenarios' and that correct metric is not directly stated then DECC stand accused of spin.
Of course, there is an alternative that is ignored, and that is to buy LNG from the US. Currently at about $3.50 (USD) per MMMBtu, it appears to be going even lower as more and more Fracking comes on line
Nat Gas pricing
It is no wonder the Greenies are trying to stop Fracking, it is ruining their little scheme. LNG can be used easily in present fossil fuel plants with very minor modifications. LNG is not yet available for export from the US, but it could be in a few years. It could even make the US a massive exporter of energy.
To add to my previous, I think what DECC are saying (without spelling out the truth) is as follows:
Our electricity bills will be huge because of the subsidies paid to wind generators. Because of the intermittency of wind power, unless something else is done, consumers will face frequent brownout/blackouts. The costs to consumers and the economy of frequent brownout/blackouts will be enormous. Therefore the consumers and the economy will be better off if, in addition to paying huge subsidies for wind power, they also have to pay the additional huge costs of building and inefficiently operating extra power plant to backup the wind generators.
It's simple really.
Only a Sir Humphrey could provide the mangled words to make something very expensive sound as if it is a bargain that you can't do without.
Opps -- MMBtus -- must have stuttered.
Interestingly, a tool catalog available at US Home Depots (DIY store) has 3 pages of standby genset offerings ranging in oomph from 7kw to 48kw and clearly intended for permanent installation. The smaller units look like Air Conditioner condensers. Lengthy outages in the US are generally due to downed lines, sometimes flooded below-ground service.
I suspect that Home Depot sees its market in Connecticut where there were some lengthy service interruptions due to storms in the late summer.
Don Pablo:
Don't forget that we have considerable reserves of shale oil/gas in the UK, particularly in NW England and Scotland. Worldwide, shale oil/gas reserves are probably around three times greater than 'traditional' oil and gas reserves (including what we've already used). Of course the warmists like to gloss over this as it doesn't fit with their agenda. There is also developing technology for in situ gassification of coal deposits and converting them to syngas or synoil. A lot of the early work on this was carried out in Shropshire, but now the Chinese seem to be the leaders.
Don Pablo de la Sierra
To have cheap LNG we do not need the US to start exporting it, LNG is available now from places like Trinidad, Nigeria etc. They sell LNG at prices related to the US Henry Hub price (HH prices have dropped from 9.5 $ to the 3.5 $ price that you quote) BG and others already have LNG import terminals in the UK (Dragon LNG in Wales - and Ilse of Grain in England). We are already being supplied with "cheap LNG" - but we are hard pressed to notice, the savings must be going straight to the bottom line of the companies involved!
Robert
I think it's getting quite close. This angst riven green propaganda article claims several US gas import terminals had already applied for permission to convert to export by July this year.
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/gasexport07032011/
The DECC calculator can be assumed to have gone through multiple iterations, like climate models, to generate the politically correct results. Racheting subsidy/carbon credit fiscal burdens and notional carbon cost assumptions have all had to be fabricated to nobble the fossil fuel thoroughbreds and give the renewables nags a chance. Sweep all this away, as could and should be done by an enlightened sovereign UK administration, and the cost/benefit energy resource comparison would be dramatic and compelling.
Interesting on-topic book highlighted by JC here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/02/beyond-smoke-and-mirrors-the-middle-ground/
It's won a science book prize in the US.
IMHO government science advisers should be acknowledged experts in "hard" science fields directly related to the problem in hand - and should have backgrounds with zero involvement in any form of political activism.
Why DECC would want to recruit a "neural networks" specialist to pontificate about our future energy sources is odd - but the fact that they chose someone with an extensive history of anti-war/anti US/anti-car and pro drug tolerance campaigning is simply bizarre......
....unless, of course, the choice was made by people with activist leanings themselves.
Remembering the history of Miliband E recruiting FOE activist Bryony Worthington to draft the original Climate Change Act, and the fact that Huhne's diary has shown daily meetings with environmental activist groups, makes me wonder if our DECC has been subject to the same sort of infiltration that Donna Laframboise's book exposed at IPCC
Don Pablo
As yet there are virtually no exports of LNG from the USA, and when they start the US price is likely to rise - say to $6 per Deutsche Bank although that increasingly looks high. To that has to be added liquefaction, shipping and regasification - closer to $8.5 in the end perhaps. Very little European gas seems to be priced against Henry Hub yet - you cannot even get Henry Hub indexation in the Caribbean. Nigerian domestic gas prices have been cross checked against Henry Hub netback, but exports are more likely still to be at a Brent discount. But the link to Brent prices in Europe is weakening quickly.
I think Tim Worstall has it right - he says (Forbes 30/12/11)
"And that’s where our lie is. They are not saying that producing the same amount of energy is going to be about the same price with the new technology. They’re saying that producing half the amount of energy is going to be about the same price."
Philip Bratby
I love the bit about capacity payments and volatility. Of course if you split prices into 2 parts the energy bit is less volatile - that's why there are long term contracts. And having a separate capacity payment does not lead to lower prices per se - it is just a more cost reflective pricing structure. Smoke and mirrors.
Prof Mackay wants us to use the calculator, but Nick Grealy has noted that you cannot change the gas price - which is the most important variable in all the simple modelling that I do for generation profiles in the medium to long term. I have to say that I will not be using the calculator as my own simple models have proved accurate enouugh and have no Government spin built in.
Don Pablo, doom and gloom about gas prices is so yesterday. Gas will be below 3$ when the Marcellus hits its stride.
http://www.nohotair.co.uk/2011/52-media/2318-coal-to-gas.html
Ooops. I meant to say to jheath , not Don Pablo, that gas will be below 3$ soon.
Can I ask a silly question, please?
If we have to build back-up power station to back up all those fabulous wind turbines - why can't we just build those back-up stations and use them, without ever building those wind turbines?
It would save quite a bit of money, wouldn't it?
Why is there a presumption that if we move towards wind/solar power then people will use more insulation?
Very good question! We live in what I think is a nice Victorian house, large rooms and windows and 10'6" ceilings. Its in a conservation area. The walls are 20" thick and solid stone. We cannot insulate outside due to the conservation area, so we have to do it inside. We managed it in the attic bed rooms with 2" Kooltherm drylining and 6" of Kooltherm in the lowered ceilings, even put in new modern sash windows with Pilkington thermal glass but the rooms where basic and needed doing. But you try doing that in the more public rooms with all of the original features to cope with. It would cost us about £20K to do the rest of the house. I wonder who is going to subsidise that? I wouldn't mind but we put heating in in 1990 with a condensing boiler and a full boiler management system, our gas bill is based on a gas usage of 38,000 kWh per year (say £1,500) which I don't consider bad for a 3000 square foot house. There is not a lot more we can do that is economically viable for us, we even changed to a more modern variable output condensing boiler at a cost of £1,500 which saves us an additional 3000 kW a year (£100) thats going to take 15 years to pay back, or the estimated life of the boiler.
I just wish these "politicians, C Huhne would just **** *** & die"
Viv Evans
Yes. They didn't think of that.
Viv Evans
Everyone asks that question. No answer is forthcoming from the Government because the renewable energy targets cannot be met without building the wind turbines as well as the backup power stations, even though there would be fewer emissions with just the backup power stations.
It's not reducing emissions that counts, it's meeting EU targets. Without meeting those EU targets, how can our politicians ever hope to get on board the EU gravy train?
Here's a comment I placed on Spencer's blog today: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/12/why-atmospheric-pressure-cannot-explain-the-elevated-surface-temperature-of-the-earth/
'GHGs do not cool the atmosphere as you claim. By restricting the amount of IR that travels directly through the atmosphere [increasing IR optical depth], they increase the temperature of the surface by increasing IR optical path length therefore raising the IR impedance of the atmosphere.
The surface sees this as an increase in emissivity and absorptivity of the atmosphere. If there were no GHGs, there would still be aerosols and these would cause significant optical depth because of the highly sloping part of Beer’s law.
The main GHG, water, also causes the atmospheric temperature gradient to fall thus raising the tropopause hence raising the limit of convective cooling. Apart from this there can be no deviation from the lapse rate driven temperature gradient in the atmosphere.
To estimate present GHG warming, use the IPCC’s thought experiment. Remove the atmosphere and the surface would be colder. However the IPCC is wrong in one key issue: remove H2O and you have no clouds or precipitation so no ice. You still have seas though. Do the radiation calculation for 0.07 albedo [instead of 0.3] and the result is 0°C so maximum GHG warming is 15 K. I have seen a modelled estimate of 9 K.
The claim of 33 K present GHG warming is bunkum. The other 24 K is lapse rate. The 9 K represents GHG warming offset by cloud cooling.
Any thought that convection causes deviation from lapse rate has to be resisted because thermodynamics will simply rearrange total heat content between vapour and liquid or ice forms of water…….:o)
Finally, ‘back radiation’ cannot exist. Imagine a vacuum containing two parallel, infinite identical plates at the same temperature with perfectly insulated faces pointing away from each other. Put a radiometer between them so it measures radiant flux perpendicular to one plate. Then rotate the radiometer by 180° to face the other plate. Subtract the first signal from the second and you get zero as must be the case at constant temperature equilibrium.
Now repeat the experiment with one plate initially at a higher temperature. The net signal will be higher in the direction hotter to colder and according to accepted heat transfer theory will decay exponentially to zero with time as the two plates equilibrate in temperature.
Yet according to climate science, the ‘back radiation’, colder to hotter, heats up the hotter plate thus creating heat energy and increasing its temperature hence maintaining a temperature difference. Because the enclosure is perfectly insulated, the temperature of the plates never equilibrate and will in time become infinite. This is impossible.'
The basic assumptions underlying the CAGW scare are being questioned. We can't let activists like MacKay seems to be to set the agenda on what seems to have been fraudulent science.
compelling.. :)
but can we run the risk?
Entropy and statistical mechanics is just probabilities so there is a probability radiation indeed global skimming sorry global warming goes from cold to hot once in a while.
we cannot run the risk you know.
(snip- O/T. BH)
Jan 2, 2012 at 10:27 PM |mydogsgotnonose
quote
Finally, ‘back radiation’ cannot exist. Imagine a vacuum containing two parallel, infinite identical plates at the same temperature with perfectly insulated faces pointing away from each other. Put a radiometer between them so it measures radiant flux perpendicular to one plate. Then rotate the radiometer by 180° to face the other plate. Subtract the first signal from the second and you get zero as must be the case at constant temperature equilibrium.
unquote
The idea that back radiation is the problem is causing me... err... problems.
What happens with CO2 warming is not back radiation, it is a slowing of cooling rate -- like putting a drink in a vacuum flask. Imagine a world that sits at a constant temperature because it has a tiny heating element. Then we put the whole thing into a flask. Less heat will flow out. The temperature will rise until the new temperature is high enough to radiate/emit/whatever through the insulation the same as the previous amount and a new equilibrium will be reached at that higher temperature.
A fun experiment, if you have the facilities: put an ice block at the focus of a parabolic reflector. This will emit rays of cold in a parallel beam. Into that beam put another parabolic reflector which will focus the beam onto a thermometer. Watch the thermometer cool.
Then use your brain.
HTH.
JF
Bruce
While I noticed your correction, I left your original posting as it was.
Yes, you are quite right. The price of Natural Gas will probably go to 3 USD per MMBtu and stay there because it is so damn easy to get out of the ground that the production will have to be cut simply to keep the prices up to that. And as for the various comments about gas production elsewhere, I know. My point is that if the USA is a major producer of LNG then it will set the world price and that price appears to be about $3-4 per MMBtu for the next 20 to 30 years, if not longer.
If that is the case, why build windmills in the middle of the North Sea where the Queen Mary and any other size able ship can run into it?
Total fraud.
Julian Flood
Yes, exactly. Works on the same principal as how the Dark Sucker works .
Julian Flood:
You are wasting your time trying to get mydogsgotnonose to see the potential insulation effect of back radiation.
Should you get him to agree that it is at least theoretically possible, it won't matter. Next thread he will be off again about how "back radiation in not possible" (citing equilibrium situations and no temperature gradients, as if those somehow had any bearing at all on the earth's atmosphere).
He can do the physics. He just chooses not to. He is a stuck record.
@Mooloo - mdgnn's link to the head post and discussion at Roy Spencer's is quite interesting, but it reminds of that non-stop discussion seen on some websites about whether a plane could plane take off if the runway was a (negatively) velocity matched conveyor belt. ;-)
eg http://www.kottke.org/06/02/plane-conveyor-belt
The Daily Mail pitches in with a pessimistic report by a former Conservative adviser on the impact of green taxes, advocating nuclear:
http://tinyurl.com/82mey9w
No mention of fracking though...
Don Pablo -
I appreciate your link above (11:47 PM) to the Dark Sucker article. The author therein shows that "dark is faster than light." I believe this is a clue to the faster-than-light neutrino question -- surely neutrinos contain a dark component. Glad we've got that sorted.
Julien Flood: "What happens with CO2 warming is not back radiation, it is a slowing of cooling rate -- like putting a drink in a vacuum flask."
How much slower does the heat leave earth? 1 second later? 1 millionth?
"Imagine a world that sits at a constant temperature because it has a tiny heating element."
It never has sat at a constant temperature. Ever.
quote
"Imagine a world that sits at a constant temperature because it has a tiny heating element."
It never has sat at a constant temperature. Ever.
unquote
And no cow was ever spherical. However, it makes the thought experiment easier.
JF
To Julian Flood: assuming 1 atmosphere pressure and we have no convection, the thermometer initially hotter than the ice block radiates net energy towards the ice until the thermometer temperature is 0°C! The energy transfer is hotter to colder then equilibration.
Slowing of cooling rate by GHGs is fine due to the increase of optical depth. The problem is that most people fail to understand heat transfer to and from gases. Being a metallurgical engineer tasked with designing heat transfer I was acquainted with the works of Hoyt C. Hottell at MIT in the 1950s, 60s. He worked out how to calculate the emissivity and absorptivity of GHG mixtures in air.
Only yesterday a warmist argued that because clear sky 'back radiation' shows the spectral emission lines of the GHGs, it proves back radiation. It doesn't in the least; there are two ways to prove it. One is to point the detector in the reverse direction sufficiently high above the ground that all its IR has been absorbed and the difference signal is zero. The corollary to this is a recent Dutch experiment which showed that shinning up an 800 foot radio mast at night, the up-down signal fell exponentially to zero - Beer's Law.
So, repeat after me. There is no such thing as back radiation, easily proved experimentally by reversing the detector so you measure net radiation. The presence of spectral lines in Prevost exchange Energy from the atmosphere is simply a function of the high optical path length.
Back radiation is our equivalent of Phlogiston. The Dutch student has played the part of Antoine Lavoisier in slaying this Sky Dragon.
mooloo and Julian - you need to read a good textbook on heat transfer. Any process engineer who sees what climate science has done laughs and says 'The bloody idiots, this is the most elementary mistake possible'.
PS the great unanswered question about climate science is whether the assumption of 100% thermalisation is true. I don't think that can be true. The reason is the Law of Equipartition of Energy which means that once an IR photon is absorbed, almost at the same time, another one is emitted from an excited state [5% of CO2 ,molecules at RT] to ensure the statistical thermodynamics is correct. [There is a caveat - pressures high enough to broaden IR bands, also band saturation with self absorption].
If this is true, there is no direct GHG warming; all warming is indirect via the absorption of primary and scattered IR photons by second phases, mostly cloud droplets. This also explains the PET bottle with CO2 experiment - the warming is from the container.
So, my conclusion is the a bunch of relatively low grade minds cobbled climate science together wrongly and have for 30 years been using the models to disguise poor science. So long as it was thought that CO2 drove the end of ice ages, there were good grounds for a high feedback process. Since 1997 the subject has fallen increasingly into systematic deception - fake hockey sticks and prevent publication of the truth.
Back Radiation is the new Phlogiston. You can explain all palaeo and modern warming by other processes, and I and many others are on the trail.
Don Pablo
Jan 2 at 5.17pm
British Gas has already concluded a deal to buy US gas
http://www.bg-group.com/MediaCentre/Press/Pages/26Oct2011.aspx is the relevant press release. Note that it says "for the international market", no immediate suggestion that this intended for UK consumption necessarily.
I'm sure that when I first read this story there was a price quoted considerably higher than what you are speaking of here. In any event it is worth asking why BG Group plans to buy US production with 200 trillion cu ft (or whatever the precise figure is) right underneath us.
PPS: experimental proof that GHG-AGW is less than natural cooling processes: N. Atlantic OHC: http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/figure-101.png
It's better for 30N-75N. Thus substantial heating in the 1990s now cooling is the result of the melting phase of the 50-70 year Arctic oscillation.
The cause is biofeedback via iron occluded as dust in old ice. The same mechanism cause the end of ice ages. No CO2 is needed.
Meanwhile the price of emissions allowances has fallen to E 3.50. This is making Big Oil scream because the shills aren't working hard enough:
Last week, 19 companies, including oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Philips Electronics NV and supermarket chain Tesco PLC, sent a letter to the European Commission urging it to ... protect the market from future economic shocks ...
"The lower price is really undermining the development of technologies that will be needed in the decades to come," said David Hone, Shell's climate change adviser.
Shell, which is mostly known for selling oil and gas, has been one of the pioneers of carbon capture and storage ... But investing in new technologies like carbon capture and storage only becomes commercially viable at a carbon price of between euro25 and euro30, Hone said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jHnPHbSeW5DPq0GwjbCGXhs0n4UQ?docId=235bce9f5a0c4f9897d888f6da4b5823
What a squalid little racket, really.
Norway exported 2,830,360 mt of LNG in January-November period, according to the trade statistics.
LNG exports in January-November period rose 23%, compared with the same period last year, when the country exported 2,300,359 mt of LNG.
Norway exports liquefied natural gas through Hammerfest LNG terminal, located on the island Melkøya.
The Hammerfest LNG terminal has a design capacity of 4.2 million tonnes per annum (mtpa).
Commissioned in 2007, it processes gas transported through 143-km pipeline from the subsea facilities on the Snøhvit and Albatross fields, which comprise the first offshore developments in the Barents Sea.
@Jan 2, 2012 at 10:27 PM | mydogsgotnonose
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
One significant problem in this branch of 'science' is that they do not conduct experiments to obtain empirical data on the theories they propose..
I would suggest a slight alteration to your experiment. Instead of using a vacumn, one uses an insulated non IR absorbing tube filled with non IR absorbing/emitting gas such that an increase in temperature of the gas can only take place via conduction and convection such that in effect the plate can only give up its heat by conduction.
First, set the plate at say 350K and the non absorbing IR gas at 300K and measure the time taken for the plate to lose temperature.
Repeat the experiment but this time introduce a second plate set at the same temperature as the gas, ie., at 300K parellel but some distance from the 350K plate and measure the time taken for the 350K plate to lose temperature.
Compare the rate of temperature loss in both ninstances. In particular ascertain whether in the second instance the 350K plate loses temperature more slowly..
In the first experiment although the 350K plate radiates it cannot lose energy via radiation since it is surrounded by a blanket of non IR absorbing gas such that all heat loss from the plate is via conduction (and convection).
In the second experiment, the second cooler plate can radiate 300K photons and some of these will strike the warmer 350K plate and according to cAGW 'theory' this should slow the cooling of the 350K plate.
Ideally, of course the 300K plate should have a similar latent heat capacity to that of the gas if not to bring some uncertainty into the results.
Good idea Richard, here's another take on things: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/12/why-atmospheric-pressure-cannot-explain-the-elevated-surface-temperature-of-the-earth/
Latest comment.
'If we examine how Cp changes with temperature for two different gases the point will become clearer.
A range of 250K to 350K will cover most atmospheric situations.
For Nitrogen (N2) the values vary by 0.2% i.e. almost constant
For CO2 the values vary by 13.1%
Why does CO2 change so much?
Because other degrees of freedom besides translational become possible for CO2 as the temperature changes.
These extra degrees of freedom correspond to the 4um and 15um thermal em wavelengths
Point being that if accurate values of Cp are used as the temperature changes then all the radiative effect are included!'
The data are already available for those with the thermodynamics knowledge to devise the truth. Nahle thinks from partial molar Cp of mixture data that at CO2 IR band saturation, what has happened, the emissivity of the atmosphere facing the Earth falls and increases in the opposite direction.
This reduces the impedance to IR transmission so is incremental reduction of climate sensitivity. The phenomenon we are viewing is that the people in climate science are poor scientists without knowledge of the basics. So they plucked ideas out of the air and hope by modelling with fudge factors they'll continue to get paid.
This is not science, it's alchemy and they now realise that real scientists are homing in on them to kill off the chimera.
HaroldW
Absolutely. If there is Dark Matter and Dark Energy along with Black Holes, it only makes sense that there be a Dark Sucker. Ever wondered why when "light bulbs", as we incorrectly call them, turn black when they "burn out" -- well, it is because of all the Dark that the poor thing sucked up.
Perhaps Mooloo and Julian Flood will turn their obvious talents to one of the burning questions in the Standard Model for Quantum Mechanics. And that is the Paparazzi Effect that the Higgs Field appears to display. How do they know who to hang out with? I never knew that bosons were groupies, but that just goes to show you.