Utopia, you are standing in it!

Chinese electric car [image credit: scmp.com]
China already has 250 million electric scooters and around 3 million electric cars, most of which face battery replacements in the next decade or so. But high costs have opened the door to ‘cowboy’ operators.

Researchers estimate it will cost nearly US$3 million to reverse the damage caused by just one illegal plant, says the South China Morning Post.

Authorities in eastern China are turning to the courts to raise the millions of yuan needed to rehabilitate water and land polluted by dumping from an illegal lead-acid battery recycling plant.

Now that a draft withdrawal agreement has been settled with the European Commission, the next step is a ‘meaningful vote’ in the House of Commons pursuant to s 13 European Union Withdrawal Act (‘EUWA’) which I analysed recently on this blog with Gavin Phillipson. This post seeks to explore what the Prime Minister might do if the draft agreement is voted down. Three potential scenarios are suggested. The theme of this post is that the ripple effects of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (‘FTPA’) mean that previously accepted constitutional norms may have been affected and it may be helpful to explore what could happen as a result.

Scenario 1 – Theresa May resigns as party leader but not Prime Minister

If Theresa May were to lose the “meaningful vote” on her proposed agreement, a central plank of her premiership will have been rejected by her party and by the House…

As we saw in a previous post, the lead item in the November 13^th edition of the BBC World Service radio programme OS – formerly ‘Outside Source’ – was described in its synopsis thus:

“It’s the heaviest exchange of aerial fire between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants since the full-blown conflict in 2014. The violence follows an Israeli special forces operation inside Gaza which went wrong late on Sunday, causing the deaths of Palestinian militants and an Israeli soldier. We hear from local people living in Gaza.”

After listeners had been given some bizarre and entirely one-sided ‘context’ to that story (with no mention whatsoever of the fact that Hamas has been attacking Israeli civilians with rockets and mortars for 17 years), presenter Ben James introduced (from 04:35 here) his first inadequately identified interviewee in what he had previously described as “your guide to the important stuff…

Credit: quora.com

The energy that went into making the impact crater is thought to be equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima A-bombs, as BBC News explains. Nowhere to run/hide/escape.

Scientists who drilled into the impact crater associated with the demise of the dinosaurs summarised their findings so far in a BBC Two documentary on Monday.

The researchers recovered rocks from under the Gulf of Mexico that were hit by an asteroid 66 million years ago. The nature of this material records the details of the event.

It is becoming clear that the 15km-wide asteroid could not have hit a worse place on Earth.

Topographic map of Greenland
Something creating a 19-mile wide dent in the Earth’s surface would clearly have been a major strike. If confirmed it would be the most northerly impact crater on Earth.

What looks to be a large impact crater has been identified beneath the Greenland ice sheet, reports BBC News.

The 31km-wide depression came to light when scientists examined radar images of the island’s bedrock.

Investigations suggest the feature was probably dug out by a 1.5km-wide iron asteroid sometime between about 12,000 and three million years ago.

The headline at Stuff – playing on emotions that have been running high for years on the West Coast – highlighted a “victory for families and the little people”. 

The headline quote was provided by “an elated Anna Osborne” after the Government gave the all-clear for a $23 million manned re-entry into Pike River Mine, where 29 men died in an explosion eight years ago.

The aim of re-entry, as the Stuff report explained, is to gather any evidence of what might have caused the methane explosion (which implies there can be no certainty the evidence will be found).

by Judith Curry

The scary emergence of Nye’s Quadrant in dominating the public discourse on climate change.

As you’ve probably noticed in past years, American elections take a while to finalise their results. A number of seats are still doubtful from Tuesday’s midterms; the Democrats look to have won a majority of about 25 in the House of Representatives, 230-205 (a gain of 35 seats), but that could still vary by a couple either way.

The Senate is more definite. Three seats are officially still doubtful: Arizona, Florida and the Mississippi by-election. But the first two look unlikely to shift from Democrat and Republican respectively, and while Mississippi is going to a runoff on 27 November, it’s as certain as anything can be that Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith will win it.

Recall that the Republicans started with a 51-49 Senate majority (counting the two independents in the Democrat column), so the Democrats needed to win two seats to take control.

They did indeed win two seats…

by Andy West

A narrative propagated by emotive engagement, not veracity.