UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned • Hacker News Board

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#201

Post by kkfx » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:49 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #160

kkfx wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under the sea who know for sure who made what? Even an ally can do such sabotage just to generate a military response against a common enemy he want to aggress but can't do without allies and those allies are not much interested if not forced or even a simple self-inflicted damage to justify a war the public do not accept but some in the government/élites want... Did you remember just Britannia to cite something from…

Conspiracy thinking isn't going to stop infrastructure projects from happening. For now. Fortunately.

Classify normal prudence as conspiracy is a classic move from those who try selling freezers to the Eskimo, if we follow such line why having an army and keep radar-monitoring the country and it's surrounding? Why put defibrillators anywhere, why put fire-extinguishers etc, why even design electrical wiring with as much sectioning and breakers as we do?

Such "infra projects" are like, much like, the Desertech scam, a project to deliver p.v. from north-Africa to Europe able just to detour significant amount of public funds to a small set of private players. This one is just a bit smaller but essentially copy the same plot.

Other large infra projects, nearly 99% of all large ones, results in public money black holes for very limited results. At a smaller and more technical size we have had a period where anything must be big, after we learn that many small things are better than few big ones, that's happen for ship (with the sole exception of tourism), planes (777/A380 fiasco), giant road infra and so on. No conspiracy, at least if your vocabulary do not classify "economy" as "conspiracy" and rationality as plot.

Did you remember why we have switched from mainframes to cluster?

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#202

Post by dmitriid » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 5:58 AM UTC

gizajob wrote: post #148

dmitriid wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which clearly need improving. Indeed, they do. So you really have no right to point fingers at "non-democratic EU bureaucracy" when at worst it's the same system as in the UK. > The EU failed to make a case for the importance of its democratic process You realise that the UK was in the EU? That it was one of its founding members? That the perceived failure to do anything about this process is shared by the UK as we…

The UK wasn't a founding member of the EU, but I see your point. Regardless of the UK's role, I feel that many in the UK regard it's parliament as the highest authority in law- and decision-making. Any body resting higher than that is going to face difficulty when attempting to claim greater and greater control over laws, and running them from "far away" even if that far away place was Brussels. The UK also wasn't pa…

> The UK wasn't a founding member of the EU

Ah, my mistake. I was pretty sure the UK was a founding member.

> I feel that many in the UK regard it's parliament as the highest authority in law- and decision-making. Any body resting higher than that is going to face difficulty when attempting to claim greater and greater control over laws, and running them from "far away" even if that far away place was Brussels.

That is basically the failure of UK politicians, too. But, as Yes, Minister very rightly put it, perhaps the UK wasn't in there for any kind of unity to begin with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE :)

> The UK also wasn't part of the Euro, and so one of the main benefits of EU membership and coherence was missing

The UK isn't the only country without the Euro though.

> amongst the working classes that the low-wage sector was being undermined by labour coming in freely from abroad, mainly eastern Europe, and this wasn't reciprocal, i.e. they couldn't go to eastern Europe, or basically anywhere else in Europe, and get the same benefit from doing so.

"They took our jobs" is also a failure of the politicians. Though, for them it's not a failure, it's votes for the next election.

---

In the end, "the EU wants us to be subservient to undemocratic bureaucracy" ends up being "there was a general feeling perpetuated and encouraged by our own politicians and that doesn't really have much to do with reality" ;)

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#203

Post by gizajob » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 7:24 AM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #202

gizajob wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK wasn't a founding member of the EU, but I see your point. Regardless of the UK's role, I feel that many in the UK regard it's parliament as the highest authority in law- and decision-making. Any body resting higher than that is going to face difficulty when attempting to claim greater and greater control over laws, and running them from "far away" even if that far away place was Brussels. The UK also wasn't pa…

> The UK wasn't a founding member of the EU Ah, my mistake. I was pretty sure the UK was a founding member. > I feel that many in the UK regard it's parliament as the highest authority in law- and decision-making. Any body resting higher than that is going to face difficulty when attempting to claim greater and greater control over laws, and running them from "far away" even if that far away place was Brussels. That…

I feel you're misreading what I said, and just seeing your own angle in it.

"They took our jobs" isn't exactly true, but what has happened is that wages stayed low and conditions got worse due to capitalism's demand for lower costs and greater efficiency. So a source of cheap labour from Eastern Europe only served that process and made it such that companies didn't have to invest in people locally, because anyone could come in and do the job, and in the case of people from Eastern Europe, our minimum wages were higher than those provided by skilled professions. (I worked with a guy whose mother was the head nurse of a hospital in Hungary, and on a wage of £400 per month, so he was earning a small fortune in comparison even though that came at the cost of working to hours and conditions that UK workers would reject). So levelling all the blame for this phenomenon at UK politicians is moot because there is really little they could do about it, the EU comes with complete freedom of movement, which many in the UK saw as not really providing them with any benefit while coming with big downsides that affect them on a daily basis.

> That is basically the failure of UK politicians, too. But, as Yes, Minister very rightly put it, perhaps the UK wasn't in there for any kind of unity to begin with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE

I'm well aware of Yes, Minister. While it gives a humourous take on the eccentricity and backwardness of our process, my point nevertheless stands. The UK has long-since developed a system where we defer our individual sovereign rights into the figurehead of our monarch, through which we act collectively, controlled by parliament and the house of Lords. While this corrupt pyramid scheme is deeply flawed, it's nevertheless the one we've got and has developed a consensus in law lasting 1000+ years, and adding novel supranational layers above this was fraught with difficulty, even if they were just perceptual and conceptual difficulties.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#204

Post by tinco » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 7:31 AM UTC

tremon wrote: post #182

tinco wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop being so adverserial. Parent hasn't stated any pro-brexit sentiment so just assume they're arguing in good faith. The whole idea of the EU is that all nations in it are subservient to the commission. We like it that way because that makes the collaboration more rational and it makes the rising tide lift all the boats. Wether you agree with it or not, the idea of the Brexit is that the UK can be strong without th…

The whole idea of the EU is that all nations in it are subservient to the commission. How is that statement different from stating that the whole idea of the UK is that all countries in the UK are subservient to the Cabinet?

It's not, that's why the UK felt their sovereignty was compromised and they took it back. The EU allows for that to happen without violence.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#205

Post by mike_hearn » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 7:58 AM UTC

arinlen wrote: post #184

mike_hearn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember doing a bit of spare time research into getting power from the Sahara desert when I was a school kid. The idea is obvious - solar power requires lots of sunshine and land that isn't being used for anything. The UK doesn't have that, the Sahara desert does. If it's an idea obvious enough to occur to a teenager 20 years ago it hardly requires politics to explain why it comes up now, does it? At the time I ga…

> I remember doing a bit of spare time research into getting power from the Sahara desert when I was a school kid. The idea is obvious (...) I'm afraid you failed to understand the point. There is no question that Morocco has an impressive potential in solar power. Morocco's hydrogen production project is very exciting. But that's besides the point, and not the issue being discussed. What clearly is a bonkers idea an…

The project isn't funded so currently the UK isn't wasting or spending any resources on it at all, it's just a company that'd like people to give it money.

Nonetheless, adding more windmills isn't going to materially change anything at this point. To push renewables further requires them to be reliable enough to start displacing base load.

I don't personally think this cable idea is good either but more because of the costs and risks of cable cuts (possibly deliberate), than the belief that it can be done in other ways.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#206

Post by WastingMyTime89 » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:38 AM UTC

nbevans wrote: post #83

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the UK's best efforts to forge a genuinely strong relationship Last time I checked the UK was still the sole country in the world refusing an official ambassador status to the representative of the EU and the sole country to have threaten to unilaterally withdraw from an international treaty with the EU in clear breach of international law. I think your definition of genuine and mine differ substantially.

Check again - the ambassador status was granted last year. The genuine best efforts spanned from 2017-ish (negotiations didn't start in 2016 after the vote) to 2019. It took a while for the UK to realise the EU no longer wanted to be friendly and cordial, and that's when the UK's own stance finally changed. A bilateral treaty between the UK and EU is not "international law". A bilateral treaty contains exit clauses t…

> The genuine best efforts spanned from 2017-ish (negotiations didn't start in 2016 after the vote) to 2019. It took a while for the UK to realise the EU no longer wanted to be friendly and cordial, and that's when the UK's own stance finally changed.

The UK wasted everyone time during 3 years asking for things which it was told at the beginning were impossible and kept reneging on their agreements during the whole thing. The UK never made genuine best efforts. You have to be a die-hard brexiter and far removed for reality to start believing that.

I was specifically speaking about the Irish agreement which the UK threatened to withdraw from without respecting the exit clauses.

Anyway, I just wanted to re-establish a modicum of truth regarding the way the negociations went. I propose I now go back to my usual attitude towards the UK - general disinterest.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#207

Post by WastingMyTime89 » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 8:40 AM UTC

blibble wrote: post #92

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s conveniently forget that Gibraltar is actually territorially part of Spain, most essential facilities are provided by Spain, that a significant proportion of jobs necessary to it are held by Spaniard and that Gibraltar economy is due to it being a tax haven which would stop if it was part of Spain. Oversee territories are a shame on every countries that still hold them be it the UK or France.

> Let’s conveniently forget that Gibraltar is actually territorially part of Spain it is most definitely not it handed it over in the peace treaty that ended the war > The Catholic King does hereby, for himself, his heirs and successors, yield to the Crown of Great Britain the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar, together with the port, fortifications, and forts thereunto belonging; and he g…

> it handed it over in the peace treaty that ended the war

The fact that it was taken by force in 1701 didn’t magically teleport it from Spain to anywhere where it made sense for it to be part of the UK.

> meanwhile Spain has two enclaves of the exact same type of in Morocco, Ceuta and Melilla

It’s not less shameful.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#208

Post by sofixa » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 9:30 AM UTC

anamax wrote: post #170

sofixa wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the Spanish claim on Gibraltar weak? They border it, it was taken from them at gunpoint, and it's extremely dependent on Spain for services and labour.

Sharing a border isn't a claim. (France and Spain share a border - which one has a claim as a result?) Every border is a result of "taken from them at gunpoint." (It's not hard to find folks who had large pieces of Spain taken from them at gunpoint.) Dependency isn't a claim. It is, however, a tool for taking.

You're misrepresenting the situation. Gibraltar was Spanish for a few centuries ( after the Reconquista), and after it lost a war the UK annexed it. It's not some colony far away, for Spain, it's a part of the Iberian peninsula, and is entirely dependent on Spain.

It's like Hong Kong, in a sense. Land the UK took because it could from a weaker country due to its strategic location, but which is mostly integrated with it's former country in terms of labour and services.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#209

Post by Retric » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:17 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #198

Retric wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t easy to just dump unlimited money into panels, you need a distribution network to support such instillations and these batteries are leveraging that. Storage closer to consumers has a huge number of issues being more expensive to manage, harder to scale, less efficient, etc etc. It sounds vastly more useful than it is because you end up increasing failure modes and make failing safe much harder.

Remarkably, all of those assertions are wrong.

Try and back up what your saying. What do you think happens if you build a 100GW solar panel farm without talking with the local electric utility?

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#210

Post by Retric » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 10:28 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #199

Retric wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody builds GW-scale anything that is just a "research project". Plenty of experimental GW scale nuclear reactors have been built, just look at the history of CANDU design for an example. That’s just the scale this stuff operates at, you need real world data to demonstrate it’s actually cost effective at scale and actually building stuff still requires actual R&D. Further, you don’t want to just build one you wan…

We will need hundreds of GW-scale ammonia synthesis plants. Thousands, maybe. Fortunately, there are no impediments to operating them at any required scale. You just add on more units. Nuclear reactors have very difficult engineering problems unknown in most other technologies. For a nuke, you might actually need to build a GW-scale pilot plant to discover the failure modes that show up there. Not so, most things. A…

Everything you mentioned ran into new issues at scale.

Scale always brings new problems. The difference between hosting a website from your personal internet connection and building TickTock’s infrastructure isn’t simply writing a bigger check to someone.

How many people know how to build X. Where do you get the raw materials or parts etc, all to often the answer is you build a factory or a mine. Many basic assumptions break down with scale. You don’t use even close to the same equipment to connect your houses solar panels to the grid as you would a 1GW solar farm.