I was drinking at the bar Elsabe used to call A Touch of Sadness. I was with an architect and Pierre F, a brilliant French fine artist and great conversationalist. Oh, yes, he has a doctorate in oceanography and used to work for the US’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The architect mentioned how gratified he was about the signing of the new 24 renewable-energy contracts. I was not that enthusiastic. He was a bit shaken but told me that, surely, I should be happy, since the renewables contracts would “wean us away from the pollution of the coal mines”. I said that, bearing in mind that the sun did not shine at night and that the wind did not always blow and the grid cannot store energy, something would have to supply power on a windless night. This could be a gas turbine, but there are not nearly enough, and to build enough to take over the whole renewables load would cost a fortune. It would also cost a fortune to run them.

The discussion continued until the subject of climate change arose.

Pierre raised a number of points, one of which was that, apparently, only eight temperature measuring devices are used to measure the whole of the temperature of Antarctica.

We now leave that story to where I am at a children’s party. I had thought that the kids would be happy with a magician and some candy floss. Oh no. They had to have music and dancing and candy floss. And slush puppies (oh, yes, two slushes – one bright blue for the kids and the other whitish into which you add a bottle of tequila. Then both adults and kids have a great time).

The music came from a sound system connected to a laptop. The sound system consisted of a powered mixer, which can accept a signal from the laptop through the jack plug, the laptop by means of Bluetooth or a signal by means of a USB flash drive.

At some stage, the music stopped. By the time I wandered over, a small crowd was giving advice on what to do and the consensus was to try to change the signal source from the jack plug to Bluetooth. The most handsome of the men guests was explaining to all how to do this. After five minutes of no success, I said, hey, plug the jack plug in, turn the Bluetooth off and make sure the laptop volume is turned up. After another five minutes, this was done and all worked again. But only, mark you, when the efforts of Handsome Man and others had failed. It turned out that the 13-year-old operator of the system had decided to turn the laptop volume down and forgot about it.

Of all those trying to restore the sound, I was way the best qualified. I have been an electrical engineer for 40 years and a registered professional engineer for 34 years. If the problem had been a medical one, nobody would have done anything until a doctor arrived. But not so in this case. The person with the most knowledge is perceived to be the best looking guy there, I guess because he has no difficulty persuading people that he is knowledgeable. But on the basis of? His looks?

The kids party sound system is an exact analogy of what is happening in power generation. In the world of electricity and engineering, matters are increasingly decided by popular vote, often by those who know little about the subject. If qualified engineers criticise some new electrical generation fad, they are howled down. Engineering opinions by highly qualified people are pushed aside in favour of what seems to be green and good by those who know little about the subject. This will end. Wait and see, watch and learn.