Re: Storm hitting Chinese ports is a wakeup call for climate risk to markets

Well, Al Gore does, for one. But this barb aside, the overall picture is far too complicated for a finite Usenet article. (Unless your name is Don. Sorry, couldn't resist that quip.)

As one example, energy is made more expensive by the combined effects of additional taxes, calls for action from climate activists, public money (ab)used to fund projects of questionable efficacy, propaganda and politics, and that ripples through to everything else. The end consumer pays the tag and every intermediary takes a share of the proceeds.

Jeroen Belleman

Vague; what is the exact nature of the 'current hoopla'?

Not complicated, so much, as poorly defined.

Yes, politics doesn't exclude some measure of controversy; some people think politics is ABOUT controversy (that's wrong; properly, politics is about public policy in democratic places, and about control measures in other places).

... meaning, specialists?

OK, so meaning specialists who are visionary

So, John Larkin has no use for... who? Why does he think 'losers' are on a path to wealth?

I'm thinking that was all bafflegab.

Or batteries and pumped storage.

And it will be just as successful as the one reactor powered merchant ship the Americans built.

Mostly from one-eyed thorium molten salt reactor enthusiasts who don't know what they are talking about. The single Chinese example exists to breed U-233 - which is what the reactor fissions to generate heat - from thorium (which doesn't fission). The thorium cycle produces much the same dangerous fission products as U-235 based reactors, but at least it doesn't produce Pu-239 (by neutron capture by U-238).

It's not a big difference. The technology is un-tried, and is going to be just as expensive any other nuclear fission based system.