#grauniad

We find it deeply difficult to believe that a lack of “AI start–ups” is a sign, much less a cause, of economic malaise. Very little of “start–up culture” is what its advocates would have you believe, the use of novel technology to create the products and services of tomorrow. The prominence of the “founder exit” as goal helps to indicate what it really is : a grand machine of financial pump–and–dump schemes, not so very different from the watered stock issues of the late 19th century.

Has Germany made a mis–step by its reluctance to reorient its heavy manufacturing sector away from gasoline cars? Probably, but we might suggest that battery–electric cars are more a delusion than a solution — a different wrong turn, but wrong either way.

Germany was particularly exposed to the higher cost of gas on global markets triggered by Russia’s invasion in 2022, not least because of its high concentration of energy–intensive industries.

Now this… this is a clear misrepresentation. Germany’s dependence on Russian gas was a deliberate policy choice, called the “Energiewende”, made under a Chancellor who went to work for Gazprom as soon as he left office. Before that policy was brought in, Germany had been on a path to divorce its energy–intensive industries from turmoil and disruptions in world energy markets, and decarbonize them, too.

The Grauniad is certainly laying it on thick here, referring to Indian Point as “deteriorating and unloved”.

Certainly, anti-nuclear campaigners (calling themselves “environmentalists”, or “peace activists”, or whatever else suited their purpose) spent decades cultivating public opinion that the plant was environmentally damaging to the Hudson River, and a danger to New York City. But, as should be well known by now, they themselves do not care whether their claims are true, and the press tends to repeat those claims uncritically far more often than it subjects them to critical examination.

An example of the shameless propaganda against Indian Point

As for how anyone could be surprised that fossil fuels took up the load when nuclear was taken out of the picture, we are at a loss. Renewables, thinly spread in space and time, are obviously a very poor match for the dense load of “the city that never sleeps” — but in any case, anti-nuclear has always meant pro-fossil, and pretty explicitly, too.

Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average. “From a climate change point of view it’s been a real step backwards and made it harder for New York City to decarbonize its electricity supply than it could’ve been,” said Ben Furnas, a climate and energy policy expert at Cornell University. “This has been a cautionary tale that has left New York in a really challenging spot.”

Gee, who’d’a thunk it?

Among them were two newlyweds visiting from New York who said their plans to spend New Year’s Eve at Disneyland Paris were “ruined”.