JBowyer,
> the Chief Scientist actually admitted he had got diesel completely wrong and it should all be reversed
>and diesel made more expensive.
>This is after millions bought diesel cars. He admitted that he trusted the car company figures!
Yes. He didn't do his job properly. On this we are agreed.

>You have a real difficulty with the truth here.
A very Trump-like statement! You have made false accusations which I called you out on.

>He lied,
Dubious: though he didn't tell the truth, it was not because he intended to deceive, but because he himself had been deceived. As you said, he admitted that he trusted the car company figures!

>he never engaged "Peer review" which is mostly meaningless, with these frauds anyway.
Peer review is far from meaningless: it's an important part of the process of publishing scientific papers. However AFAIK publishing scientific papers wasn't what he was doing so it's not applicable. With the benefit of hindsight, of course, we can say there should have been some sort of scrutiny process for what he was doing; I don't know if they've since applied one.

Aiden you are apologising for a disgusting excuse for an overpaid, overblown fraudster who should lose his knighthood, his pension and be jailed. Sorry I should not get so irate but this thief is now responsible for everyone who bought a diesel car losing money whilst he rakes it in.
You are making a very semantic point where dishonest, lazy thieves like him are given some sort of defence when there is none.
He told the government to encourage diesel car ownership to allay this global warming nonsense. Now he is throwing the people who trusted him under the proverbial bus. This sloppy and dishonest action is normal for research nowadays and "Peer review" means what it says. If it had been peer reviewed this would have been seen to be wrong. There is no science and no honesty and I await the admission of this in the future.
Both you and I will pay for this but you obviously are happy to have your pocket picked.

Aiden said; But nobody's going to extend the grid hundreds (let alone
thousands) of km just to connect a wind farm!

If you do not have the grid where the wind farms can get the wind when
needed then the system will fail.

>but you could gain a bigger technical advantage at lower cost by using batteries.

That would require a very intense modelling to see if the batteries
could be afforded. It would certainly make a hole in the cheapness
of actually running wind & solar. Batteries will never be cheap
especially when those batteries might have to supply say NSW and Victoria
for say 20 hours.
Neither of us can actually determine that without modelling the whole
system as a live virtual network, but my guess is the size of the
batteries would have to be repeatably increased in gwhr until it
became obvious we just could not afford the electricity it produced.

JBowyer,
I am merely telling you my understanding of the situation, as you requested on Tuesday at 1717.

The guy made a big mistake. And it did have policy consequences that adversely affected a lot of people. But you have no evidence at all of him engaging in criminal activity, yet you say he should be in jail. You falsely accuse him of being guilty of fraud, even though you acknowledge he admitted his mistake rather than trying to cover it up.

And when I pointed out your intellectual dishonesty, you hypocritically accused me of having a real difficulty with the truth. And that makes you worse than him!

Maybe he should lose his knighthood, but that's a matter for the palace not the police.

BTW your attitude to peer review is also illogical. You seem to be pointing out the problem of a lack of peer review while trying to tar peer reviewed science with the same brush!

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Bazz,
It should go without saying that another of the criteria to determine wind farm location is how windy the site is.

Batteries are profitable under current economic conditions, and are likely to get a lot cheaper as science enables us to make them out of cheaper elements. But for large scale storage, hydro is still better. And for storage on a longer timescale, fuel synthesis is likely to be a better strategy.

Aiden you think you are so clever with your deliberate obfuscating and just being argumentative. I will respond no further to your stupidity but mark you down as a dolt and an apologist for the theiving public servants infesting our public service. Like rats on a sinking ship.
Same with with your answers to Bazz you really get off on trying to appear so smart but I just think you are a typical puff piece.