In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

Malcom "Mal" Reynolds wrote:
In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

Uh, there are many things wrong with a government subsidizing
anything. I don't have much problem with research grants, but
subsidizing production is an outrage. Poor Mexicans are almost
starving because the cost of tortillas is almost prohibitive, thanks
to our ethanol subsidies!

Not true. The corn used to produce ethanol is what is fed to beef and
pork (as well as poultry)

which is then fed to them as DDGS

If the poor Mexicans are almost starving because of the cost of
tortillas, it's because they aren't growing enough corn...they aren't
producing ethanol

It was my understanding that, before the ethanol cultists took over the U.S.
government, we exported corn to Mexico. Now, corn growers turn their corn
into fuel, much to the despair of Mexicans.

Then your understanding is wrong. Once again and slowly: corn used as feedstock
for ethanol is corn that was used as animal feed...and is still used as a higher
protein feedstock in the form of DDGS.




As a result, literally millions of Mexicans are crossing our borders in what
has become known as "The Great Tortilla Quest"!

In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

At the population density of Hong Kong, the earth's population, some six
billion people, would fit in the state of Georgia.

and there would be no land to provide food

Malcom "Mal" Reynolds wrote:
In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

Malcom "Mal" Reynolds wrote:
In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

Uh, there are many things wrong with a government subsidizing
anything. I don't have much problem with research grants, but
subsidizing production is an outrage. Poor Mexicans are almost
starving because the cost of tortillas is almost prohibitive,
thanks to our ethanol subsidies!

Not true. The corn used to produce ethanol is what is fed to beef
and pork (as well as poultry)

which is then fed to them as DDGS

If the poor Mexicans are almost starving because of the cost of
tortillas, it's because they aren't growing enough corn...they
aren't producing ethanol

It was my understanding that, before the ethanol cultists took over
the U.S. government, we exported corn to Mexico. Now, corn growers
turn their corn into fuel, much to the despair of Mexicans.

Then your understanding is wrong. Once again and slowly: corn used as
feedstock for ethanol is corn that was used as animal feed...and is
still used as a higher protein feedstock in the form of DDGS.

farmer's switched corn types to feed corn, making both of you right.




As a result, literally millions of Mexicans are crossing our borders
in what has become known as "The Great Tortilla Quest"!

On 7/21/2011 8:00 AM, Home Guy wrote:
....

Similarly, wind that wants to move past the blade must push it
aside, and in doing so it will rotate the hub. The more surface
area you present to the wind (ie the wider the blade) the more
rotational force you transmit to the hub.

Explain what's wrong with my concept.
....

The interaction between blades and the competing design factors (weight,
strength, speed control, etc., etc., etc., ...)

A ceiling fan is built to keep the occupants of a room comfortable by
moving air gently. A primary design consideration is to minimize noise
while the fan rotates at low speed and to keep the construction costs,
and therefore the purchase price, low. Energy efficiency is not a
primary concern, because operation is inexpensive so most ceiling fans
incorporate blades that are comparatively inefficient drag devices;
rotating the pitched blades pushes air vertically out of the way. Wide,
flat blades are inexpensive to build and work well as drag devices. More
blades are better, up to a point, and the usual layout of four or five
blades is the result of balancing trade-offs between efficiency and expense.

OTOH, a wind turbine must capture the energy in fast-moving air and
rotate at relatively high speed. Slow rotation would increase the
torque and require heavier and more expensive drivetrain components.
For high-efficiency energy conversion lift-type turbine blades, similar
to airplane wings, of twisted and tapered airfoil shapes are used. The
blade design creates a pressure difference in wind—high pressure on one
side and low pressure on the other—that causes the blades to turn.

The reason for taper is the same as that for the shape of airplane wings
and/or props--Bernoulli lift/pull. The longer path over a wing surface
causes the velocity to rise and that lowers pressure on the upper
(behind in the case of the prop/blade) which "pulls" the rotor in that
direction for rotation.

A combination of structural and economic considerations drives the use
of three slender blades on most wind turbines—using one or two blades
means more complex structural dynamics, and more blades means greater
expense for the blades and the blade attachments to the turbine.

As noted before (and referenced in the Wikipedia article I bookmarked
earlier), the increase in effectiveness of two over only a single blade
fan is surprisingly little and the relative gain after that is smaller yet.

Also, again as noted, designs were within 75-80% of the theoretical
limit when I last had actual performance data some dozen years or so
ago; I'd expect continued refinements have pushed that to the upper
value or perhaps even higher for current and next-generation blades
(altho that's pretty closely held proprietary data, obviously, and not
readily passed out over the 'net). What I'm aware of is what vendor
provided to our electric co-op generation unit when evaluating the
build/purchase decision to meet the mandated "green" generation reqm'ts
coming. In the end, we chose to simply buy what we have to and keep
conventional low-cost generation in our pool to minimize our customer
costs as much as possible.

Following are some links that may be of interest; they don't delve into
the real intricacies of blade design; that's pretty complex but do have
some real-world design information and discussion of what actual design
efficiencies are, etc., etc., etc, ...

http://www.asr.org.tr/pdf/vol10no1p147.pdf
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy00osti/27143.pdf
http://practicalaction.org/docs/tech..._from_wind.pdf
http://www.bringaboutgreen.com/build...peed-ratio-tsr
http://www.raeng.org.uk/education/di...nd_Turbine.pdf


More than the above requires reading far more technical literature than
I'm prepared to try to reproduce for usenet; if you're really, really
interested, there are engineering texts but you'll need quite a lot of
background.

Probably one of if not the standard...

http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Energy-Explained-Theory-Application/dp/0470015004

Enjoy...

--

wrote in :

Jim Yanik writes:

wrote in :

Jim Yanik writes:

wrote in :

harry writes:

On Jul 20, 12:23ÀšÃ‚Â*am, jamesgangnc
wrote:
On Jul 19, 7:02ÀšÃ‚Â*pm, Frank
wrote: All power plants have
maintenance costs.

PV?

Pretty low maintenance costs.

solar uses a lot of water,gotta keep the panels clean.

Just watched a video.
Every 2 weeks:
Wipe off dust with dry towel.

That video isn't telling you everything.
wiping without water means scratches that lower output.
It also doesn't remove bird crap or tree sap.

Dust lightly with soft towel.

Wash with towel dampened in water, vinegar, detergent.

That doesn't sound like a lot of water.

for all those panels?
it has to be done more often than every two weeks,too.

Yes, all those panels.
The video said every 2 weeks.
How much dirt is in the air where you live?
In places with no rain, just dusting will do the job.
Downwind of a coal plant, maybe more than every 2 weeks.
I still see no evidence that more often than 2 weeks is required.

So I still don't see a lot of water being used.

"you don't see";
there's the problem.

BTW,how often do you need to wash a car that's left outside? Or just run
your windshield wasers? If I leave my car outside for 2 weeks,no rain,it's
COVERED in dirt,along with tree sap and bird crap.
You can write your name in the dirt,and pranksters often do.

that lowers solar panel output significantly.


then there's inverter maintenance,and if storage
batteries used,battery maintenance. Plus,the hazards of battery
chemicals and lead,along with fire hazard.

Just looked up maintenance procedure for a solar panel
inverter.

"replace every 10 years".

what about dust,power surges,electrolytic capacitor dryout,etc?
Cap failure is a common occurrence in power systems.

Yeah, what about them. They're also subject to random meteorite hits.
Anything can go wrong. Still the cost of maintenance remains replace
every 10 years unless you have some other source to cite.

BTW,I note that the system you cited uses TRACKING solar panels,so
there's maintenance on the mechanicals that move the panels.Then
there's snow/ice removal,seeing as it's up North(N.Jersey?).

The system at Bell Labs is not tracking.

read the article again. that is where I got it from.

They could remove snow if they want, or just wait until it slides off.
We get snowfall in Central NJ but it's not going to stick to a slick
glass panel for long.

Denial.
besides,the fact that your panels ARE covered by snow means you get ZERO
output from them,for some length of time.
So,that power has to come from some other,more reliable source.

Anyway, it mostly just sits there and pours electricity into the
grid. Pretty cool, especially with this heat, you can imagine
all the air conditioners it's running.

"POURS" electricity? how big a plant is it? how many MW?

1.2MW:

http://newprovidence.patch.com/artic...-system-to-pow
er -bell-labs-campus-3 http://tinyurl.com/3srexrm

It probably runs THEIR AC and maybe the building lights.

The building is pretty big. The article says it's enough power to
power 200 homes.

Is that peak or average output?

Read the article or do more research.

Likely peak output.

I don't get it. Are you against power generation or does it just
feel good to point out that someone has to push the snow off the
panel.

MY point is that it's a "feel good" action,not truly practical.
With a lot of money spent,and probably with Federal tax credits,or as the
"progressives" call them;"loopholes" to be plugged.
And you end up with an intermittent power source,not reliable,won't output
it's rated power consistently or at night.And 20 years later,you have to
buy all new panels,sooner if there's a hailstorm.

Sure there are problems, I'm well aware of all the issues, I've heard
it all before. I still see an open field that wasn't doing anything
but growing grass, still growing grass but now also pushing some power
into the grid. It's going to take a lot of fancy BS to convince me
this is a bad thing.


Wait until that grass grows high enough.
It appears from the picture included in that article that mowing would be a
problem.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

On 7/21/2011 2:47 PM, chaniarts wrote:
....

farmer's switched corn types to feed corn, making both of you right.
....

I don't believe that's so in any great acreage amounts (see other
response that I don't have actual production numbers in hand but the
areas that grow sweet corn aren't the areas that grow the large amounts
of field corn). If you have actual production acreage data that shows
otherwise, I'd like to see it.

OTOH, there has been some shifting of acres from beans and wheat, but
overall not huge amounts; in the few percentage points kinds of numbers,
not like in doubling or halving.

Again, individual growers are limited in what their production practices
will tolerate; they can't just willy-nilly shift acres for a multitude
of reasons including pest control (both plant and insect), ground
fertility and crop rotation, inputs availability and field preparation,
etc., etc., etc., ...

Despite the Green Acres appearances, farming is _not_ a vocation for the
unskilled any longer... And, producers aren't going to risk their
longer-term viability for one or two crop years; just ain't a'gonna'
happen. Many of these folks have been on the same ground for 100 or
more years in the family; they have very deep commitments and intentions
their heirs are going to be there for another 100 or so.

We're in a relatively recent area in the US; iff'en I can hang on for
another 3 years or so we'll be a "century farm", too...there are some
around who got started a few years ahead of granddad that have already
achieved that distinction. Of course, farther east (and west) they've
been there a long time already.

--

harry wrote:
In other words, CO2 ain't much (one three-hundredths of one
percent).

That is a fake statistic,
The increase in atmospheric CO2 since pre-industrial times is 35%.
From 280 to 382 parts per million.
You are either devious or stupid.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/recentac.html

I know maths is hard, but in simple terms:

382 / 1,000,000 = 0.000382 = 0.03%

Which is what I said.

And anybody who takes what the EPA reports as Gospel is trying to
play Chinese checkers with only three marbles.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Both devious and stupid. Never thought it possible.

Oh, anything's POSSIBLE.

Just ask the EPA.

wrote in :

"chaniarts" writes:

wrote:
Jim Yanik writes:

wrote in :

Jim Yanik writes:

wrote in :

then there's inverter maintenance,and if storage
batteries used,battery maintenance. Plus,the hazards of
battery chemicals and lead,along with fire hazard.

Just looked up maintenance procedure for a solar panel
inverter.

"replace every 10 years".

mine are warranteed for 25 years for failure and will produce 95% of
new power ratings.

"warranteed for 25 years";the company probably will not be in business when
you need to replace your failed inverter. B-)
If it fails,you are without an inverter until you send yours to the
company,have it repaired,and then returned.
Or you have to buy TWO,and keep one as backup.




what about dust,power surges,electrolytic capacitor dryout,etc?
Cap failure is a common occurrence in power systems.

Yeah, what about them. They're also subject to random meteorite
hits. Anything can go wrong. Still the cost of maintenance remains
replace every 10 years unless you have some other source to cite.

the converter has a 10 year warrantee. that doesn't mean the need
replacement at that time. they could last 25 years or more.

your a/c has a 5 year warrantee. do you replace it every 5 years?

No I don't.

Just trying to be generous. The original statement was that inverters
required "maintenance". I thought maintenance on a piece of
electronics sounded weird so I looked it up. The only thing I could
find is someone saying to replace them every 10 years.


Do you think high power inverters don't produce heat,don't have cooling
fans,or don't collect dust?

If it was my PV array, I'd take that as a cue to have a replacement on
hand around year 10 if I really had to keep the array going.

You need a backup in case of ANY potential failure,that could happen at ANY
time. Otherwise,you're "down" until you get yours repaired or replaced.
"down" is bad,it means "NO power".

Just because they say "10 years" doesn't mean they all last that
long.there's infant failures, and longer term failures.


Like you, I wouldn't be surprised at 25 years.

Anyway, all these arguments about the draw backs of PV arrays strike
me as weird. As if someone had a belief system that wouldn't survive
if they admitted that PV arrays generate power.



Oh,I know solar panels generate power,but how much,how reliable,and how
cost-effective is the problem.IOW,how PRACTICAL they are.
For specialized apps,they're fine.I see them all around Orlando,on poles
powering small devices,such as school crossing signs,that are only on a
short time.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

wrote:

If you look at the old stereotypical "prairie" style windmills,
that's how they are. A disk with pie-shaped blades angled at 45
degrees, facing directly into the wind with the help of a fin.

All that surface area catches a lot of wind, but it also creates
a lot of aerodynamic drag which makes it require higher wind
speeds to turn.

I believe that drag is a function of the surface area of either the
front or rear (or maybe both) trailing edges of the blade.

Which if you look at the ratio of blade area to frontal or trailing edge
area, the conventional long thin blades have a horrible ratio.

The reality is that what makes a good propeller or helicopter
rotor also makes a good windmill blade.

Those blades are operating in a wind-speed regime that far exceeds the
design profile of capturing low-speed terrestrial wind currents. So
again I don't know why airplane propeller blades (or in general the
long, thin blades) are being thought of as the most optimal to capture
energy from 5 to 25 mph wind currents.

Look at the cross-sectional area of a jet turbine. Lots of surface area
there. Ever sit on a jet parked at the gate and watch it's turbine
rotate as it catches the calm breeze wafting by?

I think that in the future your going to see more of these helical-based
turbines:

http://www.caleta2.com/video/spirala...-/4vSD8z4fzNg/

http://www.bnet.com/blog/energy/thre...ind-power/2827

http://www.groovygreen.com/groove/?p=2060

http://www.azocleantech.com/news.aspx?newsID=10611

http://www.mywindpowersystem.com/200...bines-designs/

"Helical structured wind turbines are the future of wind mill
technology. These amazingly unique looking twists and turns
will replace those long and boring blades which represent the
conventional image of a windmill. These new and sleek looking
windmills are designed much like the old ones when it comes to
converting their circular motion in to mechanical work, but it
is the structural design that makes them unique and special.

In fact, they logically should function better than the traditional
windmills as the helical structures seems to not just utilize the
energy of the wind, but maximize it by containing the wind."

On Jul 21, 1:11*pm, dpb wrote:
On 7/21/2011 8:00 AM, Home Guy wrote:
...

Similarly, wind that wants to move past the blade must push it
aside, and in doing so it will rotate the hub. *The more surface
area you present to the wind (ie the wider the blade) the more
rotational force you transmit to the hub.

Explain what's wrong with my concept.

...

The interaction between blades and the competing design factors (weight,
strength, speed control, etc., etc., etc., ...)

A ceiling fan is built to keep the occupants of a room comfortable by
moving air gently. A primary design consideration is to minimize noise
while the fan rotates at low speed and to keep the construction costs,
and therefore the purchase price, low. *Energy efficiency is not a
primary concern, because operation is inexpensive so most ceiling fans
incorporate blades that are comparatively inefficient drag devices;
rotating the pitched blades pushes air vertically out of the way. Wide,
flat blades are inexpensive to build and work well as drag devices. More
blades are better, up to a point, and the usual layout of four or five
blades is the result of balancing trade-offs between efficiency and expense.

OTOH, a wind turbine must capture the energy in fast-moving air and
rotate at relatively high speed. *Slow rotation would increase the
torque and require heavier and more expensive drivetrain components.
For high-efficiency energy conversion lift-type turbine blades, similar
to airplane wings, of twisted and tapered airfoil shapes are used. The
blade design creates a pressure difference in wind—high pressure on one
side and low pressure on the other—that causes the blades to turn.

The reason for taper is the same as that for the shape of airplane wings
and/or props--Bernoulli lift/pull. *The longer path over a wing surface
causes the velocity to rise and that lowers pressure on the upper
(behind in the case of the prop/blade) which "pulls" the rotor in that
direction for rotation.

A combination of structural and economic considerations drives the use
of three slender blades on most wind turbines—using one or two blades
means more complex structural dynamics, and more blades means greater
expense for the blades and the blade attachments to the turbine.

As noted before (and referenced in the Wikipedia article I bookmarked
earlier), the increase in effectiveness of two over only a single blade
fan is surprisingly little and the relative gain after that is smaller yet.

On Jul 21, 12:31*am, harry wrote:
On Jul 20, 7:50*pm, jamesgangnc wrote:





On Jul 20, 2:05*pm, Harry K wrote:

On Jul 20, 8:14*am, jamesgangnc wrote:

On Jul 20, 10:41*am, Harry K wrote:

On Jul 19, 7:46*pm, "HeyBub" wrote:

wrote:

I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having
a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me.
The rest of the page deals with CO2.

I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute.
I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit.

You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant.

Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there
would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve.

CO2 is poisonous to us in excessive quantities, just as is Oxygen,
Water, etc. *Nature has adjusted to the what was the average CO2
content back before the industrial revolution. *It is now adjusting to
our adding to it and we are not going to like the result.

As to reducing our part in it? *Ain't gonna happen. *Best we can do is
not increase our contribution above what it is today. *Nothing we can
do will reduce it withough totally wrecking industry.

But the real issue is being prepared for the future.

We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a
problem for our children. *I think using up resources on the only
planet we have is much more important.

We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but
we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known
reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago.

Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with
a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities
(picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten
years. Ehrlich lost.

Availability of resources has zip to do with whether we are depleting
them. *We are. *The supply of any mineral, oil, etc. resource you can
name is finite.

The truth of the matter is that we (humankind) meet every definition
of a parasite. * All take and no give. *Even our funeral practices do
everything possible to keep even our worn out bodies from decomposing
thus denying even that little bit from returning to nature. *The world
would be a much better place without us.

Harry K- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree we are depleting resources but the mining for materials and
fossil fuels is two completely different categories. *Mineral
resources are not actually being depleted. *For the most part all the
elements on the planet are still on the planet. *Just because we dig
up some copper, use it for something, and then bury it in a landfill
doesn't reduce the copper. *We could dig it back out of that landfill
and use it again. *Or we could quit burying it in the landfill and
start recycling it which is more practical than digging it back up.
But who knows, maybe some day our descendants will be setting up mines
where we buried stuff.

Fossil fuel is a energy resource. *It is the result of plants
capturing the energy in sunlight and it being turned into
hydrocarbons. * Which is the chemical storage of energy. *Like a
battery. *We are converting that stored energy into heat energy for
the most part. *Energy like matter is never lost but after we're
finished, the heat energy contributes to the gradual equilibrium of
the energy state in the universe which makes it of no further use to
us. *The issue is that we're converting that stored energy at a
tremediously faster rate than it was stored. *Years of our use equals
millions of years of capture. *So no matter how good we get at finding
the hydrocarbons we will eventually use them all up. *Will that happen
in 50 years or 500 years is debatable but most people would agree the
practical number is somewhere between those two. *Bottom line we
really are using up the energy in fossil fuels.

As to the co2, we are also raising the co2 level. *That's a fact. *The
bydrocarbons were buried in the ground. *We're releasing them and
breaking them up and combing the freed carbon with oxygen to produce
co2. *Who knows maybe we will be the start of the next cycle that
produces new hydrocarbons for some other lifeform to dig up a couple
hundred million yeasr from now. *On the short term the consequences
might not be so good for us.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Mostly true but we never recover 100% of the original elements and
never will. *The 'pie in the sky' types keep pointing to new
discoveries as if those "new discoveries' will continue to be made for
infinity.

Harry K- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

We can recover enough that we don't really have to worry about running
out of things like copper and iron.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You need to be re-cycling it, not recovering it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

There is still loss even in recycling. First _all_ of a recyclable is
never recoved. I suspect iron and copper probably get the highest
percentage back while stuff like aluminum and plastic are a low
percentage return. Second, even whil processing there is loss.

Harry K

On Jul 21, 12:46*am, harry wrote:
On Jul 20, 10:00*pm, "HeyBub" wrote:





Harry K wrote:

Mostly true but we never recover 100% of the original elements and
never will. *The 'pie in the sky' types keep pointing to new
discoveries as if those "new discoveries' will continue to be made for
infinity.

Nothing lasts forever. The Romans denuded all of North Africa and much of
Europe and used the wood for charcoal. Just as the trees were about to run
out, it became practical to mine and exploit coal. (The industrial
revolution was fueled by coal).

While in some places coal is still very economical, oil proved to be more
versatile and, in many instances, cheaper.

Heck, the archetype villain, John D. Rockefeller, and his example of
monoply, Standard Oil, drove the price of Kerosene down from $3.00/gallon to
a nickle. In less than three years. Of course the people who sold
"renewable" energy (i.e., whale oil) squealed and were eventually put out of
business, but for the rest of us, the night was brightened.

Point is, as with trees and whales, even renewables face the same problems
as truffles. There is only so much and only so many pigs to find it.

Whale oil is not renewable, or sustainable when you use up the whales
faster than they breed.
Oil and is still being produced today but obviously at a far less rate
thn we consume it.
So, more drivel.

Solar power and wind are renewable.They can't be depleted.

However, the one being largely ignored is geothermal power.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

And water power. Here in Wa state the power companies must by law
include a certain percentage of 'renewable power'. But water power is
specifically exempted.

Harry K

On Jul 21, 4:44*am, "HeyBub" wrote:
Harry K wrote:

It ain't the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that counts. *It is the
_effect_ it has.

I hope you aren't in the "CO2 isn't a gsreenhouse gas" crowd. *Or like
my old man "if a little bit is good, a bunch more lot is better".

The climate is warming. *Whether due to nature, to man or a
combination of both can be argued but the basic fact is that it _is_
warming.

Possibly. Some analysts demonstrate that the planet has NOT warmed by any
detectable amount since 1998.


"some analysts" as in denialists cherry picked data.


Even if the planet IS warming, it is far, far better - according to some
computations - to deal with the consequences than try to mitigate a possible
cause.

So do nothing and continue screwing up the atmosphere? Sounds like a
good plan to me...not!

Harry K

On Jul 21, 4:38*am, "HeyBub" wrote:
Harry K wrote:
On Jul 20, 8:01 pm, "HeyBub" wrote:
wrote:

The predictions may have been wrong, but the ultimate outcome is
based on logic.

Ultimately we'll have a standing room only future.

But it'll be a while. A long while.

At the population density of Hong Kong, the earth's population, some
six billion people, would fit in the state of Georgia.

Which, come to think on it... would be a terrible thing.

So we should just ignore the problem and go along procreating at an
unsupportable rate? *Just sentence our future off spring to starvation
and subsistance living?

Alarmist! The people in Hong Kong aren't starving!

And even if your projections of gloom do appear on the horizon, there's
always sustenance in the form of sea plankton energy bars.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

let me guess, was it two or three times your momma dropped you on
your head?

Harry K

On 7/21/2011 3:25 PM, dpb wrote:
On 7/21/2011 2:47 PM, chaniarts wrote:
...

farmer's switched corn types to feed corn, making both of you right.
...

I don't believe that's so in any great acreage amounts (see other
response that I don't have actual production numbers in hand but the
areas that grow sweet corn aren't the areas that grow the large amounts
of field corn). If you have actual production acreage data that shows
otherwise, I'd like to see it.
....

OK, so I shoulda' looked first...

What I found shows an 8% drop in harvested acres between 1978 and 2007,
although the total acres peaked temporarily in the '90s. _BUT_, the
total US sweet corn production acreage is 1M A (650,000, roughly) as
compared to field corn acreage in the 90M A range or nearly a 100:1
ratio. Sweet corn is simply noise in the overall corn production market.

Also, if one looks at actual production instead of just acres, the fresh
corn US production has doubled since 1978 from 14,000 to 28,000 and has
continued to rise since 1990.

Sweet corn for production has also actually increased significantly
despite the acreage drop; from roughly 2.5M T to 3.24M T in 2009. The
increase has been continual w/ only a few yearly fluctuations that
represent weather and other crop conditions, primarily, I'm certain.

So, worrying about ethanol diverting needed sweet corn acreage to
feed/field corn production just isn't borne out by the data. While
there might be some acres lost (altho I suspect the bulk of those aren't
owing to switching to field corn but to things like urban expansion,
other truck crops, etc. because the commodity grain producers don't do
perishable crops in general), increased yields have more than made up
for that.

Hmmm....that raises a question...I don't even know how sweet corn
(canning, processing, freezing, etc.) is priced. Let's see--oh, ok,
it's on a $/T basis, not $/bu. as field corn.

Wow!!!! Those are average of about $100/T -- $2.80/bu (corn is 56
lb/bu; wheat is 60). So, there's even more ammunition about the runup
in corn not being real for consumer food prices--they're paying only a
third of the bandied corn market price. While that's increased over the
years it's only about 20% last year (annual average) as compare to 2007.
It's really true in spades for those guys that the producer gets the
short end of the stick for the commodity; the processor/retailer is the
one making the money. I'll leave on that note--in the early 1990s farm
fraction of food dollar was in the 24-27% range, it's now down to under
20%. Complain to somebody in the system other than the producer about
the food cost.

--

On 7/21/2011 1:29 PM, wrote:
On Jul 21, 9:00 am, Home wrote:
A flat blade angled at 45 degrees will probably get you the
most torque and rotational speed out of a given breeze of air (but it's
totally possible that optimal blade angle is a function of RPM), and the
more surface area your blade has, the more of that wind energy it can
convert into rotational energy.

If you look at the old stereotypical "prairie" style windmills, that's
how they are. A disk with pie-shaped blades angled at 45 degrees,
facing directly into the wind with the help of a fin.

All that surface area catches a lot of wind, but it also creates a lot
of aerodynamic drag which makes it require higher wind speeds to turn.
The air pushing through the "fan" creates rotational energy, but the
air AROUND the fan is creating drag as the tips of the blades contact
it.

The reality is that what makes a good propeller or helicopter rotor
also makes a good windmill blade. Maximum lift with minimum drag. THAT
is why we have thin blades. The cross-section of a modern wind turbine
blade is a high lift, low drag airfoil that will catch air and turn
the rotor at far lower wind speeds than a solid disk of 45 degree flat
plates.

Have you seen the eight bladed props on the Airbus A400M Military
transport plane? The propellers look quite a bit different from
what you'd expect to see on a turboprop engine. I remember seeing
pictures of NASA developing such a prop years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-V5jzSslZo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTFitHATBWc

TDD

Jim Yanik writes:

wrote in :

Jim Yanik writes:

wrote in :

Jim Yanik writes:

wrote in :

harry writes:

On Jul 20, 12:23ÀšÃ€šÃ‚Â*am, jamesgangnc
wrote:
On Jul 19, 7:02ÀšÃ€šÃ‚Â*pm, Frank
wrote: All power plants have
maintenance costs.

PV?

Pretty low maintenance costs.

solar uses a lot of water,gotta keep the panels clean.

Just watched a video.
Every 2 weeks:
Wipe off dust with dry towel.

That video isn't telling you everything.
wiping without water means scratches that lower output.
It also doesn't remove bird crap or tree sap.

Dust lightly with soft towel.

Wash with towel dampened in water, vinegar, detergent.

That doesn't sound like a lot of water.

for all those panels?
it has to be done more often than every two weeks,too.

Yes, all those panels.
The video said every 2 weeks.
How much dirt is in the air where you live?
In places with no rain, just dusting will do the job.
Downwind of a coal plant, maybe more than every 2 weeks.
I still see no evidence that more often than 2 weeks is required.

So I still don't see a lot of water being used.

"you don't see";
there's the problem.

BTW,how often do you need to wash a car that's left outside? Or just run
your windshield wasers? If I leave my car outside for 2 weeks,no rain,it's
COVERED in dirt,along with tree sap and bird crap.
You can write your name in the dirt,and pranksters often do.

that lowers solar panel output significantly.

Don't leave my car outside.
Still see 2 weeks.


then there's inverter maintenance,and if storage
batteries used,battery maintenance. Plus,the hazards of battery
chemicals and lead,along with fire hazard.

Just looked up maintenance procedure for a solar panel
inverter.

"replace every 10 years".

what about dust,power surges,electrolytic capacitor dryout,etc?
Cap failure is a common occurrence in power systems.

Yeah, what about them. They're also subject to random meteorite hits.
Anything can go wrong. Still the cost of maintenance remains replace
every 10 years unless you have some other source to cite.

BTW,I note that the system you cited uses TRACKING solar panels,so
there's maintenance on the mechanicals that move the panels.Then
there's snow/ice removal,seeing as it's up North(N.Jersey?).

The system at Bell Labs is not tracking.

read the article again. that is where I got it from.

It does say that.
I drive by the panels frequently, they sure look like the
are rigidly mounted...


They could remove snow if they want, or just wait until it slides off.
We get snowfall in Central NJ but it's not going to stick to a slick
glass panel for long.

Denial.
besides,the fact that your panels ARE covered by snow means you get ZERO
output from them,for some length of time.
So,that power has to come from some other,more reliable source.

Anyway, it mostly just sits there and pours electricity into the
grid. Pretty cool, especially with this heat, you can imagine
all the air conditioners it's running.

"POURS" electricity? how big a plant is it? how many MW?

1.2MW:

http://newprovidence.patch.com/artic...-system-to-pow
er -bell-labs-campus-3 http://tinyurl.com/3srexrm

It probably runs THEIR AC and maybe the building lights.

The building is pretty big. The article says it's enough power to
power 200 homes.

Is that peak or average output?

Read the article or do more research.

Likely peak output.

I don't get it. Are you against power generation or does it just
feel good to point out that someone has to push the snow off the
panel.

MY point is that it's a "feel good" action,not truly practical.
With a lot of money spent,and probably with Federal tax credits,or as the
"progressives" call them;"loopholes" to be plugged.
And you end up with an intermittent power source,not reliable,won't output
it's rated power consistently or at night.And 20 years later,you have to
buy all new panels,sooner if there's a hailstorm.

Sure there are problems, I'm well aware of all the issues, I've heard
it all before. I still see an open field that wasn't doing anything
but growing grass, still growing grass but now also pushing some power
into the grid. It's going to take a lot of fancy BS to convince me
this is a bad thing.


Wait until that grass grows high enough.
It appears from the picture included in that article that mowing would be a
problem.

Yes, that's the one issue I saw with their setup.
I thought they'd put down mulch or something.
Maybe if they're motorized they'll just move them perpendicular and then
be able to run a mower down the lanes.


--
Dan Espen

On 7/21/2011 1:29 PM, wrote:
....

If you look at the old stereotypical "prairie" style windmills, that's
how they are. A disk with pie-shaped blades angled at 45 degrees,
facing directly into the wind with the help of a fin.
....

None I've seen were actually flat, though. All ours had a curve built
into the blades; steeper front attack angle than rear. Dated from
roughly 1910 on thru the 20's...

The old Delco Windcharger (mid-1910s when ours installed; not sure when
they were actually introduced) did have a three-bladed hub; not quite so
aerodynamic as current but certainly reminiscent.

--

On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:57:20 -0700 (PDT), harry wrote:

On Jul 21, 1:00*am, "
wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:45:28 -0500, "HeyBub" wrote:
harry wrote:

I mis-remembered. There were five (picked by Ehrlich). The wager was
$1,000 each. Whatever the differential in price after a decade would
go to the winner.

chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten

"Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800
million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history. But by
September 1990, without a single exception, the price of each of
Ehrlich's selected metals had fallen, and in some cases had dropped
significantly. Chromium, which had sold for $3.90 a pound in 1980,
was down to $3.70 in 1990. Tin, which was $8.72 a pound in 1980, was
down to $3.88 a decade later."

Why does costing more make them harder to find?

It doesn't. Being harder to find makes them cost more. Price is a
convenient metric for scarcity.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ah,you got it mixedup *:-)

Population is the main problem I think.
Everything comes back to that.
Nature will soon organise a cull.

That's what Malthus thought. He was wrong. That's what Ehrlich thought. He,
too, was wrong. In fact, EVERYBODY who has EVER predicted that
over-population spells our doom has been wrong.

By the principle of inductive reasoning, I suggest that you, too, are wrong.

harry? *Wrong? *You don't need induction to come to that conclusion!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I think you need to look up inductive reasoning.

No, you don't, harry. That's the problem.

& BTW that would not be an example of it.

If F(n) where n=0 is true
AND if F(n) = F(n+1) is true
Then F is true.

....almost as simple as you are, harry.

In article ,
"DGDevin" wrote:

Wrong again, unless you think having a pile of debt is the same thing as
being broke (which of course it isn't). When we bought our house we had a
big mortgage (long since paid)--that debt didn't mean we were broke. When
you cannot afford to pay your bills then you're broke, and the U.S. can
afford to pay its bills despite the willingness of its elected
representatives to spend more than the govt. takes in. However that
situation can be fixed, only a little over a decade ago the U.S. actually
had a balanced budget, and then the Republicans got back into power and
spent like drunken sailors.
Nope. First of all the Clinton surpluses had already peaked and
indeed vanished by the time the GOP got there. There were only surpluses
because of the accounting for the SS "surplus" where in that was counted
as income (even though it went by law only into non-marketable
treasuries... only in Washington can a long-term liability be turned
into a short term asset. After you back these out, the surplus is no
more. In fairness Clinton was the beneficiary of the system and not due
to any nefariousness on his part.. at least in this context)

The only years where the year-over-year increases in spending went down
under Clinton(but not nearly vanished) was the first five years after
the GOP took over in '94. Over that time frame they cut average spending
increases by a full percentage point from the five years before. Of
course, after that, they found out how much fun it was to spend money
and started in on it again. They, like teetotaler having his first
drink, went overboard and there was an additive effect with the Dems.
More recently they have been acting like many reformed substance abusers
and have overcompensated back the other way.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz

On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:33:04 -0700, "DGDevin" wrote:



"harry" wrote in message
...


Democracy can't be given. I thought even you would see that by now.

Seems to have worked in Japan, hasn't it.

S. Korea

On Jul 21, 8:33*pm, "DGDevin" wrote:
"harry" *wrote in message

...

Democracy can't be given. *I thought even you would see that by now.

Seems to have worked in Japan, hasn't it.

How long was Japan occupied for? Fifty years?
It was enforced there too, not given.

On Jul 21, 9:29*pm, Jim Yanik wrote:
wrote :





"chaniarts" writes:

wrote:
Jim Yanik writes:

wrote :

Jim Yanik writes:

wrote :

then * there's * inverter * maintenance,and * if * storage
batteries used,battery maintenance. * Plus,the hazards of
battery chemicals and lead,along with fire hazard.

Just looked up maintenance procedure for a solar panel
inverter.

"replace every 10 years".

mine are warranteed for 25 years for failure and will produce 95% of
new power ratings.

"warranteed for 25 years";the company probably will not be in business when
you need to replace your failed inverter. B-)
If it fails,you are without an inverter until you send yours to the
company,have it repaired,and then returned.
Or you have to buy TWO,and keep one as backup.







what about dust,power surges,electrolytic capacitor dryout,etc?
Cap failure is a common occurrence in power systems.

Yeah, what about them. *They're also subject to random meteorite
hits. Anything can go wrong. *Still the cost of maintenance remains
replace every 10 years unless you have some other source to cite.

the converter has a 10 year warrantee. that doesn't mean the need
replacement at that time. they could last 25 years or more.

your a/c has a 5 year warrantee. do you replace it every 5 years?

No I don't.

Just trying to be generous. *The original statement was that inverters
required "maintenance". *I thought maintenance on a piece of
electronics sounded weird so I looked it up. *The only thing I could
find is someone saying to replace them every 10 years.

Do you think high power inverters don't produce heat,don't have cooling
fans,or don't collect dust?



If it was my PV array, I'd take that as a cue to have a replacement on
hand around year 10 if I really had to keep the array going.

You need a backup in case of ANY potential failure,that could happen at ANY
time. Otherwise,you're "down" until you get yours repaired or replaced.
"down" is bad,it means "NO power".

Just because they say "10 years" doesn't mean they all last that
long.there's infant failures, and longer term failures.



Like you, I wouldn't be surprised at 25 years.

Anyway, all these arguments about the draw backs of PV arrays strike
me as weird. *As if someone had a belief system that wouldn't survive
if they admitted that PV arrays generate power.

Oh,I know solar panels generate power,but how much,how reliable,and how
cost-effective is the problem.IOW,how PRACTICAL they are.
For specialized apps,they're fine.I see them all around Orlando,on poles
powering small devices,such as school crossing signs,that are only on a
short time.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Most commercial PV panels are between 11% and 14% efficient. (A tree
BTW is around 2% efficient.) There are PV panels in the pipeline of
almost 40%efficiency.
Grid tie transformerless inverters are around 95% efficient.
Although the installation cost per Kw is high, the energy source is
free and maintenanceis zero. This makes them comparable with fossil
fuel.
The subsidies paid in various places are to encourage private
individuals to invest their money.

The utilisation valueis not high but they help by lopping the daytime
electricity peak, so increeasing the utilisation of conventional power
stations.

On Jul 21, 9:34*pm, Home Guy wrote:
wrote:
If you look at the old stereotypical "prairie" style windmills,
that's how they are. A disk with pie-shaped blades angled at 45
degrees, facing directly into the wind with the help of a fin.

All that surface area catches a lot of wind, but it also creates
a lot of aerodynamic drag which makes it require higher wind
speeds to turn.

I believe that drag is a function of the surface area of either the
front or rear (or maybe both) trailing edges of the blade.

Which if you look at the ratio of blade area to frontal or trailing edge
area, the conventional long thin blades have a horrible ratio.

The reality is that what makes a good propeller or helicopter
rotor also makes a good windmill blade.

Those blades are operating in a wind-speed regime that far exceeds the
design profile of capturing low-speed terrestrial wind currents. *So
again I don't know why airplane propeller blades (or in general the
long, thin blades) are being thought of as the most optimal to capture
energy from 5 to 25 mph wind currents.

Look at the cross-sectional area of a jet turbine. *Lots of surface area
there. *Ever sit on a jet parked at the gate and watch it's turbine
rotate as it catches the calm breeze wafting by?

I think that in the future your going to see more of these helical-based
turbines:

http://www.caleta2.com/video/spirala...-spiralairfoil...

http://www.bnet.com/blog/energy/thre...in-biofuels-so...

http://www.groovygreen.com/groove/?p=2060

http://www.azocleantech.com/news.aspx?newsID=10611

http://www.mywindpowersystem.com/200...ng-wind-turbin...

* * "Helical structured wind turbines are the future of wind mill
* * *technology. These amazingly unique looking twists and turns
* * *will replace those long and boring blades which represent the
* * *conventional image of a windmill. These new and sleek looking
* * *windmills are designed much like the old ones when it comes to
* * *converting their circular motion in to mechanical work, but it
* * *is the structural design that makes them unique and special.

* * *In fact, they logically should function better than the traditional
* * *windmills as the helical structures seems to not just utilize the
* * *energy of the wind, but maximize it by containing the wind."

There are two sorts of drag. That due to friction (decreases with air
speed) and that due to shape (increases with airspeed) so there is an
optimal speed when drag is lowest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-in...drag_sourc es

On Jul 21, 10:51Â*pm, wrote:
Jim Yanik writes:
wrote :

Jim Yanik writes:

wrote :

Jim Yanik writes:

wrote :

harry writes:

On Jul 20, 12:23ÀšÃ€šÃ‚Â*am, jamesgangnc
wrote:
On Jul 19, 7:02ÀšÃ€šÃ‚Â*pm, Frank
wrote: All power plants have
maintenance costs.

PV?

Pretty low maintenance costs.

solar uses a lot of water,gotta keep the panels clean.

Just watched a video.
Every 2 weeks:
Wipe off dust with dry towel.

That video isn't telling you everything.
wiping without water means scratches that lower output.
It also doesn't remove bird crap or tree sap.

Dust lightly with soft towel.

Wash with towel dampened in water, vinegar, detergent.

That doesn't sound like a lot of water.

for all those panels?
it has to be done more often than every two weeks,too.

Yes, all those panels.
The video said every 2 weeks.
How much dirt is in the air where you live?
In places with no rain, just dusting will do the job.
Downwind of a coal plant, maybe more than every 2 weeks.
I still see no evidence that more often than 2 weeks is required.

So I still don't see a lot of water being used.

"you don't see";
there's the problem.

BTW,how often do you need to wash a car that's left outside? Or just run
your windshield wasers? If I leave my car outside for 2 weeks,no rain,it's
COVERED in dirt,along with tree sap and bird crap.
You can write your name in the dirt,and pranksters often do.

that lowers solar panel output significantly.

Don't leave my car outside.
Still see 2 weeks.







then Â* there's Â* inverter Â* maintenance,and Â* if Â* storage Â*
batteries used,battery maintenance. Â* Plus,the hazards of Â*battery
chemicals and lead,along with fire hazard.

Just looked up maintenance procedure for a solar panel
inverter.

"replace every 10 years".

what about dust,power surges,electrolytic capacitor dryout,etc?
Cap failure is a common occurrence in power systems.

Yeah, what about them. Â*They're also subject to random meteorite hits.
Anything can go wrong. Â*Still the cost of maintenance remains replace
every 10 years unless you have some other source to cite.

BTW,I note that the system you cited uses TRACKING solar panels,so
there's maintenance on the mechanicals that move the panels.Then
there's snow/ice removal,seeing as it's up North(N.Jersey?).

The system at Bell Labs is not tracking.

read the article again. that is where I got it from.

It does say that.
I drive by the panels frequently, they sure look like the
are rigidly mounted...





They could remove snow if they want, or just wait until it slides off.
We get snowfall in Central NJ but it's not going to stick to a slick
glass panel for long.

Denial.
besides,the fact that your panels ARE covered by snow means you get ZERO
output from them,for some length of time.
So,that power has to come from some other,more reliable source.

Anyway, it mostly just sits there and pours electricity into the
grid. Â*Pretty cool, especially with this heat, you can imagine
all the air conditioners it's running.

"POURS" electricity? Â*how big a plant is it? how many MW?

1.2MW:

http://newprovidence.patch.com/artic...-system-to-pow
er -bell-labs-campus-3http://tinyurl.com/3srexrm

It probably runs THEIR AC and maybe the building lights.

The building is pretty big. Â*The article says it's enough power to
power 200 homes.

Is that peak or average output?

Read the article or do more research.

Likely peak output.

I don't get it. Â*Are you against power generation or does it just
feel good to point out that someone has to push the snow off the
panel.

MY point is that it's a "feel good" action,not truly practical.
With a lot of money spent,and probably with Federal tax credits,or as the
"progressives" call them;"loopholes" to be plugged.
And you end up with an intermittent power source,not reliable,won't output
it's rated power consistently or at night.And 20 years later,you have to
buy all new panels,sooner if there's a hailstorm.

Sure there are problems, I'm well aware of all the issues, I've heard
it all before. Â*I still see an open field that wasn't doing anything
but growing grass, still growing grass but now also pushing some power
into the grid. Â*It's going to take a lot of fancy BS to convince me
this is a bad thing.

Wait until that grass grows high enough.
It appears from the picture included in that article that mowing would be a
problem.

Yes, that's the one issue I saw with their setup.
I thought they'd put down mulch or something.
Maybe if they're motorized they'll just move them perpendicular and then
be able to run a mower down the lanes.

--
Dan Espen- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You must live in a filthy place.
I very rarely wash my car. Most of the dirt is thrown up by traffic
in wet weather whilst I/m driving and the rain washes it off.
In any event, the rain washes the dirt off near horizonatal surfaces,
(such as solar panels) less so vertical surfaces.
How dirty does the roof of your car get?

On Jul 21, 11:00*pm, dpb wrote:
On 7/21/2011 1:29 PM, wrote:
...

If you look at the old stereotypical "prairie" style windmills, that's
how they are. A disk with pie-shaped blades angled at 45 degrees,
facing directly into the wind with the help of a fin.

...

None I've seen were actually flat, though. *All ours had a curve built
into the blades; steeper front attack angle than rear. *Dated from
roughly 1910 on thru the 20's...

The old Delco Windcharger (mid-1910s when ours installed; not sure when
they were actually introduced) did have a three-bladed hub; not quite so
aerodynamic as current but certainly reminiscent.

--

The multi-bladed windmills were designed to develope a high torque at
low speed, most were for pumping water. Avoided the need for a
gearbox.

Electricity production is an entirely different matter.

On Jul 21, 9:43*pm, Harry K wrote:
On Jul 21, 12:31*am, harry wrote:





On Jul 20, 7:50*pm, jamesgangnc wrote:

On Jul 20, 2:05*pm, Harry K wrote:

On Jul 20, 8:14*am, jamesgangnc wrote:

On Jul 20, 10:41*am, Harry K wrote:

On Jul 19, 7:46*pm, "HeyBub" wrote:

wrote:

I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having
a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me.
The rest of the page deals with CO2.

I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute.
I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit.

You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant.

Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there
would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve.

CO2 is poisonous to us in excessive quantities, just as is Oxygen,
Water, etc. *Nature has adjusted to the what was the average CO2
content back before the industrial revolution. *It is now adjusting to
our adding to it and we are not going to like the result.

As to reducing our part in it? *Ain't gonna happen. *Best we can do is
not increase our contribution above what it is today. *Nothing we can
do will reduce it withough totally wrecking industry.

But the real issue is being prepared for the future.

We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a
problem for our children. *I think using up resources on the only
planet we have is much more important.

We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but
we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known
reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago.

Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with
a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities
(picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten
years. Ehrlich lost.

Availability of resources has zip to do with whether we are depleting
them. *We are. *The supply of any mineral, oil, etc. resource you can
name is finite.

The truth of the matter is that we (humankind) meet every definition
of a parasite. * All take and no give. *Even our funeral practices do
everything possible to keep even our worn out bodies from decomposing
thus denying even that little bit from returning to nature. *The world
would be a much better place without us.

Harry K- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree we are depleting resources but the mining for materials and
fossil fuels is two completely different categories. *Mineral
resources are not actually being depleted. *For the most part all the
elements on the planet are still on the planet. *Just because we dig
up some copper, use it for something, and then bury it in a landfill
doesn't reduce the copper. *We could dig it back out of that landfill
and use it again. *Or we could quit burying it in the landfill and
start recycling it which is more practical than digging it back up.
But who knows, maybe some day our descendants will be setting up mines
where we buried stuff.

Fossil fuel is a energy resource. *It is the result of plants
capturing the energy in sunlight and it being turned into
hydrocarbons. * Which is the chemical storage of energy. *Like a
battery. *We are converting that stored energy into heat energy for
the most part. *Energy like matter is never lost but after we're
finished, the heat energy contributes to the gradual equilibrium of
the energy state in the universe which makes it of no further use to
us. *The issue is that we're converting that stored energy at a
tremediously faster rate than it was stored. *Years of our use equals
millions of years of capture. *So no matter how good we get at finding
the hydrocarbons we will eventually use them all up. *Will that happen
in 50 years or 500 years is debatable but most people would agree the
practical number is somewhere between those two. *Bottom line we
really are using up the energy in fossil fuels.

As to the co2, we are also raising the co2 level. *That's a fact. *The
bydrocarbons were buried in the ground. *We're releasing them and
breaking them up and combing the freed carbon with oxygen to produce
co2. *Who knows maybe we will be the start of the next cycle that
produces new hydrocarbons for some other lifeform to dig up a couple
hundred million yeasr from now. *On the short term the consequences
might not be so good for us.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Mostly true but we never recover 100% of the original elements and
never will. *The 'pie in the sky' types keep pointing to new
discoveries as if those "new discoveries' will continue to be made for
infinity.

Harry K- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

We can recover enough that we don't really have to worry about running
out of things like copper and iron.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You need to be re-cycling it, not recovering it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

There is still loss even in recycling. *First _all_ of a recyclable is
never recoved. *I suspect iron and copper probably get the highest
percentage back while stuff like aluminum and plastic are a low
percentage return. *Second, even whil processing there is loss.

Harry K- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Every household over here has a separate bin for recyclable waste.
Some places, they have four or five.
There is also recycle centres that typically have twenty or thirty
different containers for recycleable stuff

The problem is separating out the different stuff. They are bringing
out laws about composite plastic containers for example to help in
recycling plastics.

On Jul 22, 12:01*am, "
wrote:
On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:33:04 -0700, "DGDevin" wrote:

"harry" *wrote in message
....

Democracy can't be given. *I thought even you would see that by now.

Seems to have worked in Japan, hasn't it.

S. Korea

Part of Japan Pre-WW2. Intermittant democracy since.

On 7/22/2011 1:52 AM, harry wrote:
On Jul 21, 11:00 pm, wrote:
On 7/21/2011 1:29 PM, wrote:
...

If you look at the old stereotypical "prairie" style windmills, that's
how they are. A disk with pie-shaped blades angled at 45 degrees,
facing directly into the wind with the help of a fin.

...

None I've seen were actually flat, though. All ours had a curve built
into the blades; steeper front attack angle than rear. Dated from
roughly 1910 on thru the 20's...

The old Delco Windcharger (mid-1910s when ours installed; not sure when
they were actually introduced) did have a three-bladed hub; not quite so
aerodynamic as current but certainly reminiscent.

--

The multi-bladed windmills were designed to develope a high torque at
low speed, most were for pumping water. Avoided the need for a
gearbox.


Electricity production is an entirely different matter.

You don't say...what a revelation.

--

DGDevin wrote:

Your position is curious: on the one hand you acknowledge that
resources are limited, but on the other you display apparent contempt
for the idea that blind consumption with both fists is maybe not a
good policy because you figure at the last minute somebody will
discover a cure for this self-inflicted disease. Of course either
way you won't be around to see it, so you're rolling the dice with
the future of our children and grandchildren all in the name of you
being able to run the air conditioning full blast. Short-sighted
greed really isn't a flattering characteristic.

I think you read my position improperly. I do not acknowledge that the
product of resources are limited (e.g., when we run out of whales, we use
Kerosene).

I do display contempt that reductions in a better life now for some
evanescent, gossamery future goal is a good idea.

While you are correct that I won't be around to see what my
great-great-grandchildren have to contend with, I am around now. That I
should swelter in the current heat wave - thereby risking heat stroke - so
that electricity usage will be reduced because we need to conserve coal so
that our progeny may need it, is insane.

Even IF the claims of "running out" are correct, conservation now is merely
a delaying tactic.

On 7/21/2011 1:14 PM, dpb wrote:
On 7/21/2011 8:08 AM, Kurt Ullman wrote:
....
You have any data on how the make up of the corn crop has changed?
FOr example (and example only as this is n=1 "study", some of the
farmers in our area changed from growing sweet corn to yellow field corn
precisely because of the extra money they could get.
...

Nationally, no I don't have any...

See the other posting...note that if all the sweet corn production went
to field corn it would only be a blip in the total acres planted that
would be well within the statistical uncertainty of total acres planted
(650,000 out of some 92,000,000 is 1%).

Also, production data indicates fresh corn production has double over
the last 30 years on slightly reduced acres while the processed sweet
corn production is up some 25% on roughly the same acreage so what
transferring to field corn there has been has been more than made up for
in increased yields.

I'm curious as to the size, location and general type of operation of
your sample--is this a large producer of sweet corn that switched or a
small producer? Does the operation generally raise commodity products
or is it primarily (or all) perishables? My (admittedly pretty limited
as everything out here is large operation commodity grains and/or
cattle) experience w/ those who have perishables is that they're
(relatively) smaller operations and concentrate on those to the (near)
exclusion of commodities owing to the required intensive labor and
operational differences between the two types of production.

Hmmmm....another thought--wonder how much of the acreage lost is owing
to the shutting down/off of water to sizable areas in CA over the
conservation and endangered species fights as well as the diversion to S
CA (LA)??? I wonder if in fact a major portion of the production
acreage might not have gone away in that move altho I don't know exactly
how to find that out in that detail.

Well, what I can see in the data at hand is that in the early 90's
roughly 20,000A, then nearly 30,000A in late 90's thru early 2000s, and
then down to 25,000A in 2007. That isn't strong enough to know for
certain but timing is somewhat coincidental...

--

On Jul 21, 11:57*pm, harry wrote:
On Jul 21, 9:43*pm, Harry K wrote:





On Jul 21, 12:31*am, harry wrote:

On Jul 20, 7:50*pm, jamesgangnc wrote:

On Jul 20, 2:05*pm, Harry K wrote:

On Jul 20, 8:14*am, jamesgangnc wrote:

On Jul 20, 10:41*am, Harry K wrote:

On Jul 19, 7:46*pm, "HeyBub" wrote:

wrote:

I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having
a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me.
The rest of the page deals with CO2.

I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute.
I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit.

You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant.

Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there
would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve.

CO2 is poisonous to us in excessive quantities, just as is Oxygen,
Water, etc. *Nature has adjusted to the what was the average CO2
content back before the industrial revolution. *It is now adjusting to
our adding to it and we are not going to like the result.

As to reducing our part in it? *Ain't gonna happen. *Best we can do is
not increase our contribution above what it is today. *Nothing we can
do will reduce it withough totally wrecking industry.

But the real issue is being prepared for the future.

We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a
problem for our children. *I think using up resources on the only
planet we have is much more important.

We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but
we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known
reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago.

Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with
a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities
(picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten
years. Ehrlich lost.

Availability of resources has zip to do with whether we are depleting
them. *We are. *The supply of any mineral, oil, etc. resource you can
name is finite.

The truth of the matter is that we (humankind) meet every definition
of a parasite. * All take and no give. *Even our funeral practices do
everything possible to keep even our worn out bodies from decomposing
thus denying even that little bit from returning to nature. *The world
would be a much better place without us.

Harry K- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree we are depleting resources but the mining for materials and
fossil fuels is two completely different categories. *Mineral
resources are not actually being depleted. *For the most part all the
elements on the planet are still on the planet. *Just because we dig
up some copper, use it for something, and then bury it in a landfill
doesn't reduce the copper. *We could dig it back out of that landfill
and use it again. *Or we could quit burying it in the landfill and
start recycling it which is more practical than digging it back up.
But who knows, maybe some day our descendants will be setting up mines
where we buried stuff.

Fossil fuel is a energy resource. *It is the result of plants
capturing the energy in sunlight and it being turned into
hydrocarbons. * Which is the chemical storage of energy. *Like a
battery. *We are converting that stored energy into heat energy for
the most part. *Energy like matter is never lost but after we're
finished, the heat energy contributes to the gradual equilibrium of
the energy state in the universe which makes it of no further use to
us. *The issue is that we're converting that stored energy at a
tremediously faster rate than it was stored. *Years of our use equals
millions of years of capture. *So no matter how good we get at finding
the hydrocarbons we will eventually use them all up. *Will that happen
in 50 years or 500 years is debatable but most people would agree the
practical number is somewhere between those two. *Bottom line we
really are using up the energy in fossil fuels.

As to the co2, we are also raising the co2 level. *That's a fact. *The
bydrocarbons were buried in the ground. *We're releasing them and
breaking them up and combing the freed carbon with oxygen to produce
co2. *Who knows maybe we will be the start of the next cycle that
produces new hydrocarbons for some other lifeform to dig up a couple
hundred million yeasr from now. *On the short term the consequences
might not be so good for us.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Mostly true but we never recover 100% of the original elements and
never will. *The 'pie in the sky' types keep pointing to new
discoveries as if those "new discoveries' will continue to be made for
infinity.

Harry K- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

We can recover enough that we don't really have to worry about running
out of things like copper and iron.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You need to be re-cycling it, not recovering it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

There is still loss even in recycling. *First _all_ of a recyclable is
never recoved. *I suspect iron and copper probably get the highest
percentage back while stuff like aluminum and plastic are a low
percentage return. *Second, even whil processing there is loss.

Harry K- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Every household over here has a separate bin for recyclable waste.
Some places, they have four or five.
There is also recycle centres that typically have twenty or thirty
different containers for recycleable stuff

The problem is separating out the different stuff. *They are bringing
out laws about composite plastic containers for example to help in
recycling plastics.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

No individual bins here but we do have a central one in town. The
problem is that people can't read apparently. "plastic milk jugs
only" seems to mean "thow anything at all in here, stupid".

Hawrry K

On Jul 22, 5:41*am, "HeyBub" wrote:
DGDevin wrote:

Your position is curious: on the one hand you acknowledge that
resources are limited, but on the other you display apparent contempt
for the idea that blind consumption with both fists is maybe not a
good policy because you figure at the last minute somebody will
discover a cure for this self-inflicted disease. *Of course either
way you won't be around to see it, so you're rolling the dice with
the future of our children and grandchildren all in the name of you
being able to run the air conditioning full blast. Short-sighted
greed really isn't a flattering characteristic.

I think you read my position improperly. I do not acknowledge that the
product of resources are limited (e.g., when we run out of whales, we use
Kerosene).

I do display contempt that reductions in a better life now for some
evanescent, gossamery future goal is a good idea.

While you are correct that I won't be around to see what my
great-great-grandchildren have to contend with, I am around now. That I
should swelter in the current heat wave - thereby risking heat stroke - so
that electricity usage will be reduced because we need to conserve coal so
that our progeny may need it, is insane.

Even IF the claims of "running out" are correct, conservation now is merely
a delaying tactic.

So your view is "I got mine, later generations can go **** up a wall".

Harry K

On Jul 21, 11:52*pm, harry wrote:
On Jul 21, 11:00*pm, dpb wrote:





On 7/21/2011 1:29 PM, wrote:
...

If you look at the old stereotypical "prairie" style windmills, that's
how they are. A disk with pie-shaped blades angled at 45 degrees,
facing directly into the wind with the help of a fin.

...

None I've seen were actually flat, though. *All ours had a curve built
into the blades; steeper front attack angle than rear. *Dated from
roughly 1910 on thru the 20's...

The old Delco Windcharger (mid-1910s when ours installed; not sure when
they were actually introduced) did have a three-bladed hub; not quite so
aerodynamic as current but certainly reminiscent.

--

The multi-bladed windmills were designed to develope a high torque at
low speed, most were for pumping water. *Avoided the need for a
gearbox.

Electricity production is an entirely different matter.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You _are_ aware that wind turbines, at least those honkin big ones,
are slow speed?

Harry K

"harry" wrote in message
...


S. Korea

Part of Japan Pre-WW2. Intermittant democracy since.

Tell a Korean that his nation was part of Japan prior to WWII--go on, I dare
you.

"harry" wrote in message
...


Democracy can't be given. I thought even you would see that by now.

Seems to have worked in Japan, hasn't it.

How long was Japan occupied for? Fifty years?

Your ignorance is truly breathtaking. You barge around making assumptions
that have absolutely no basis in fact, but when your errors are pointed out
you either ignore them as if they never happened or pretend they don't
matter.

The occupation of Japan ended early in 1952 when a treaty signed the
previous year came into effect. So no, Harry, Japan was not occupied for
fifty years, it was occupied for less than seven years.

It was enforced there too, not given.

Ah, so now you make up a new meaningless category in hopes of explaining
away your previous foolishness. "Enforced" democracy doesn't count, it
isn't the same as the mythical "given" democracy you referred to earlier.

Meanwhile India is still a democracy, a status it gained only when Britain
finally ended its centuries-long occupation of that country. So it would
appear there is another kind of democracy in addition to "given" and
"enforced"--it's called We Finally Got Rid Of Those Limey Colonialists.
Say, come to think of it the same thing happened in the United States of
America too, only in that case the Brits left at the point of a bayonet
rather than because they were bankrupt and could no longer afford to hold
onto their empire.

On 07/22/11 12:21 pm, DGDevin wrote:

snip

Meanwhile India is still a democracy, a status it gained only when
Britain finally ended its centuries-long occupation of that country. So
it would appear there is another kind of democracy in addition to
"given" and "enforced"--it's called We Finally Got Rid Of Those Limey
Colonialists. Say, come to think of it the same thing happened in the
United States of America too, only in that case the Brits left at the
point of a bayonet rather than because they were bankrupt and could no
longer afford to hold onto their empire.

Back in the 1960s, while I was traveling through India, many locals told
me, "Things were much better when the British were here."

Perce

"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...

I think you read my position improperly. I do not acknowledge that the
product of resources are limited (e.g., when we run out of whales, we use
Kerosene).

I do display contempt that reductions in a better life now for some
evanescent, gossamery future goal is a good idea.

Your definition of a better life is driven by selfishness. And you ignore
that it isn't some fairy-tale future that needs protecting, it is a future
of any kind.

While you are correct that I won't be around to see what my
great-great-grandchildren have to contend with, I am around now. That I
should swelter in the current heat wave - thereby risking heat stroke - so
that electricity usage will be reduced because we need to conserve coal so
that our progeny may need it, is insane.

We had a ceiling fan installed in our bedroom last year, it allows us to
sleep comfortably without relying on air conditioning nearly as much which
saves money on electricity. The new insulation we put in the attic some
years back helps too both in summer and winter, again it paid for itself
very quickly. I'm not asking you to die of heat stroke, I'm suggesting that
there are ways to go about keeping cool other than simply running the A/C
full blast.

Even IF the claims of "running out" are correct, conservation now is
merely a delaying tactic.

Like I said, selfishness.

"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...


The increase in CO2, since 1900, could be represented by the stain left on
the astoturf as he slowly bled out without a single person coming to his
aid.

As always your illustrations are colorful and even amusing while being
devoid of meaningful value.

I'm not a climate scientist, and neither are you. But the overwhelming
majority of people who are climate scientists agree that manmade climate
change is real and represents an accelerating threat.

Who to believe, who to believe...?

"HeyBub" writes:

DGDevin wrote:

Your position is curious: on the one hand you acknowledge that
resources are limited, but on the other you display apparent contempt
for the idea that blind consumption with both fists is maybe not a
good policy because you figure at the last minute somebody will
discover a cure for this self-inflicted disease. Of course either
way you won't be around to see it, so you're rolling the dice with
the future of our children and grandchildren all in the name of you
being able to run the air conditioning full blast. Short-sighted
greed really isn't a flattering characteristic.

I think you read my position improperly. I do not acknowledge that the
product of resources are limited (e.g., when we run out of whales, we use
Kerosene).

I do display contempt that reductions in a better life now for some
evanescent, gossamery future goal is a good idea.

While you are correct that I won't be around to see what my
great-great-grandchildren have to contend with, I am around now. That I
should swelter in the current heat wave - thereby risking heat stroke - so
that electricity usage will be reduced because we need to conserve coal so
that our progeny may need it, is insane.

Even IF the claims of "running out" are correct, conservation now is merely
a delaying tactic.

Gonna pile on here, you deserve it.

Me, I don't have any descendants.
I still have the decency to worry about the future of other peoples
children.

As for the air conditioner, yeah sometimes I turn it on but
I'm only a mile away from this big field of solar panels...

--
Dan Espen