Don, I am curious--do you win many converts with the line of argument
you are using?

Converts?

It is my assumption that you have a viewpoint that you wish others to
accept rather than that you are arguing just for the sake of argument.
Correct me if I am in error on this point.

I'd like for others to understand that the rate of increase in
atmospheric CO2 is proportional to the rate of release by all
processes minus the rate of removal by all processes. I don't see why
that's so hard for some to understand.

It's not a religious issue with me, I just think we have a better
chance of solving problems if we understand the underlying processes.

The important thing is that we agree that release of CO2 by combustion
of fossil fuels is bound to increase atmospheric CO2 unless somehow
mitigated.

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 06:19:00 -0700, Winston
wrote the following:

On 7/25/2010 11:16 AM, Steve Ackman wrote:
, on Sat, 17 Jul 2010
07:56:22 -0700, Stu Fields, wrote:
I forgot to mention in 6 days of operation, our new solar panel system
claims to have saved: Are you ready?

300# of Co2

It takes a LOT of energy to produce PV panels. From
what I've read, a PV panel will never make up the
carbon it cost in its expected 25 year life span.

How much energy is required to plant crops and
create oil from the harvest?

Does it take longer than 25 years?

Not much at all, and no, respectively. Any other questions?

--
It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness;
poverty and wealth have both failed.
-- Kin Hubbard

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:16:02 -0500, Don Foreman
wrote the following:

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:41:13 -0400, "Phil Kangas"
wrote:

Looks like I'll have to admit to starting this heated
discussion and apologize to all concerned. I did
not mean for this to go so far as to cause hard
feelings among posters to this fine group. I hope
you can just let it go and get on with more important
things we _can_ control. Once again, I'm sorry if I
caused trouble here.....I didn't mean to... :((
phil kangas

Hard feelings? Hardly! Ed's always calling folks names, doesn't
mean a thing. G

That's right. Just plonk him, as many of us have.

--
It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness;
poverty and wealth have both failed.
-- Kin Hubbard

On 7/26/2010 7:10 PM, Don Foreman wrote:


Don, I am curious--do you win many converts with the line of argument
you are using?

Converts?

It is my assumption that you have a viewpoint that you wish others to
accept rather than that you are arguing just for the sake of argument.
Correct me if I am in error on this point.

I'd like for others to understand that the rate of increase in
atmospheric CO2 is proportional to the rate of release by all
processes minus the rate of removal by all processes. I don't see why
that's so hard for some to understand.

So why are you arguing at length with people who essentially hold that
viewpoint but express it in different terms?

It's not a religious issue with me, I just think we have a better
chance of solving problems if we understand the underlying processes.

The important thing is that we agree that release of CO2 by combustion
of fossil fuels is bound to increase atmospheric CO2 unless somehow
mitigated.

So why are you arguing with people who hold that viewpoint?

On 7/26/2010 7:48 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 06:19:00 -0700,
wrote the following:

On 7/25/2010 11:16 AM, Steve Ackman wrote:
, on Sat, 17 Jul 2010
07:56:22 -0700, Stu Fields, wrote:
I forgot to mention in 6 days of operation, our new solar panel system
claims to have saved: Are you ready?

300# of Co2

It takes a LOT of energy to produce PV panels. From
what I've read, a PV panel will never make up the
carbon it cost in its expected 25 year life span.

How much energy is required to plant crops and
create oil from the harvest?

Does it take longer than 25 years?

Not much at all, and no, respectively. Any other questions?

Sure!

It has taken many times the carbon released by oil to
grow its precursor plants and convert them to petrochemicals
over a time scale of millions of years, yes?

When is the carbon cost recovered, if we applied the same
bookkeeping techniques to oil as we do to alternative solar?

Plant and harvest hundreds of acres. Seal the crops in a super
pressure chamber for say 5 million years. Decant, refine
and enjoy. When will that oil make up the carbon it cost to
produce? Let's go with 'never', yes?

Let's break the horses legs *after* the race. Then our
performance comparisons might have some validity.

--Winston

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:40:15 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

On 7/26/2010 7:10 PM, Don Foreman wrote:


Don, I am curious--do you win many converts with the line of argument
you are using?

Converts?

It is my assumption that you have a viewpoint that you wish others to
accept rather than that you are arguing just for the sake of argument.
Correct me if I am in error on this point.

I'd like for others to understand that the rate of increase in
atmospheric CO2 is proportional to the rate of release by all
processes minus the rate of removal by all processes. I don't see why
that's so hard for some to understand.

So why are you arguing at length with people who essentially hold that
viewpoint but express it in different terms?

Doesn't look to me like they understand or accept that description of
the processes. To wit:

----

I didn't speculate about that at all. To which CO2 do you refer: that
which was added by burning fossil fuel, or that which you insist
wasn't added because it came from respiration? I didn't and don't
differentiate.

Then you have muddled the issue until it's no longer comprehensible,
because
the the CO2 that comes from respiration is 100% from short-term
sequestration, and the CO2 that comes from burning fossil fuels is
100% from
multi-million-year sequestration. So you can distinguish the two, as
you
well know, and would focus on, if you didn't have too much time on
your
hands and weren't engaging in obfuscatory pedantry. d8-) at all.
----


It's not a religious issue with me, I just think we have a better
chance of solving problems if we understand the underlying processes.

The important thing is that we agree that release of CO2 by combustion
of fossil fuels is bound to increase atmospheric CO2 unless somehow
mitigated.

So why are you arguing with people who hold that viewpoint?

I haven't argued against that view. I've made that quite clear
several times.

On 7/27/2010 2:11 AM, Don Foreman wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:40:15 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

On 7/26/2010 7:10 PM, Don Foreman wrote:


Don, I am curious--do you win many converts with the line of argument
you are using?

Converts?

It is my assumption that you have a viewpoint that you wish others to
accept rather than that you are arguing just for the sake of argument.
Correct me if I am in error on this point.

I'd like for others to understand that the rate of increase in
atmospheric CO2 is proportional to the rate of release by all
processes minus the rate of removal by all processes. I don't see why
that's so hard for some to understand.

So why are you arguing at length with people who essentially hold that
viewpoint but express it in different terms?

Doesn't look to me like they understand or accept that description of
the processes. To wit:

----

I didn't speculate about that at all. To which CO2 do you refer: that
which was added by burning fossil fuel, or that which you insist
wasn't added because it came from respiration? I didn't and don't
differentiate.

Then you have muddled the issue until it's no longer comprehensible,
because
the the CO2 that comes from respiration is 100% from short-term
sequestration, and the CO2 that comes from burning fossil fuels is
100% from
multi-million-year sequestration. So you can distinguish the two, as
you
well know, and would focus on, if you didn't have too much time on
your
hands and weren't engaging in obfuscatory pedantry. d8-) at all.
----


It's not a religious issue with me, I just think we have a better
chance of solving problems if we understand the underlying processes.

The important thing is that we agree that release of CO2 by combustion
of fossil fuels is bound to increase atmospheric CO2 unless somehow
mitigated.

So why are you arguing with people who hold that viewpoint?

I haven't argued against that view. I've made that quite clear
several times.

So why don't you find some people who hold a different view to argue
with instead of finding people who agree with you and beating them up
over nitpicky details? These details may be of vast importance to you
but I assure you that in the greater scheme of things nobody gives a
rat's ass but a few pedants.

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:53:42 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Don Foreman" wrote in message
. ..
On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:59:02 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:



Don, that wasn't the question I addressed. Once again, there are two
questions: whether human respiration adds CO2 to the atmosphere (no),
and
whether burning fossil fuels adds CO2 to the atmosphere (yes).

Are we agreed on this?

No. Both processes immediately add CO2 to the atmosphere.

We aren't talking about "immediately." We're talking about spans of time
shorter than a human life, as I've said repeatedly and to which you
haven't
objected until now, in your search for some justification to extend your
pedantic argument. d8-)

Meanwhile,
photosynthesis consumes CO2 from the atmosphere. If the rate of
photosynthesis consumption matches the rate of natural production,
then there is no net change in atmospheric concentration. There may
be seasonal variance, but the volume of the atmosphere would make that
unmeasurable.

I'm not sure if seasonal variation *is* unmeasurable, but it's irrelevant
to
the point, anyway. The subject, to remind you, was human respiration, and
we
expell CO2 from what we eat.


The only time constant here is the rate of concentration
change, which is proportional to the net increase of atmospheric CO2
per unit time divided by the total atmospheric volume.

No, that wasn't the question. That's a larger question, but my responses
are
true, regardless of what you may want to speculate about what happens to
that CO2 after it's in the atmosphere.

I didn't speculate about that at all. To which CO2 do you refer: that
which was added by burning fossil fuel, or that which you insist
wasn't added because it came from respiration? I didn't and don't
differentiate.

Then you have muddled the issue until it's no longer comprehensible,
because
the the CO2 that comes from respiration is 100% from short-term
sequestration, and the CO2 that comes from burning fossil fuels is 100%
from
multi-million-year sequestration. So you can distinguish the two, as you
well know, and would focus on, if you didn't have too much time on your
hands and weren't engaging in obfuscatory pedantry. d8-)





CO2 from animal respiration doesn't magically migrate to trees while
CO2 from fossil fuel combustion goes directly to greenhouse. It may
be politically expedient to represent things that way, but that isn't
what happens.

It doesn't matter which CO2 goes where.

My point. Thank you.

But what does your "point" mean in relation to the original question?

Let me remind you again what's being discussed. Larry made a comparison
between the CO2 we exhale and that released from burning fossil fuel:

"Rich, please now compare how many extra breaths that carload or busload of
people would expend hoofin' it from place to place for that
liter of gas. I'll bet the gas is more efficient in the long run, not to
mention getting people to work on time, getting all errands done in the same
day, etc."

To which I responded:

"Remember that CO2 exhaled by humans -- or any animal -- does not add to
atmospheric carbon. Part of it is CO2 you breathed in. The rest of it is
part of the short-term, closed carbon loop: the oxidation product of carbon
in plants and animals that you ate.

"The carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels is a release to the atmosphere
of long-term sequestration of carbon in petroleum, gas, or coal."

Which is unequivocally true. The point is, the two processes produce
different results, so they shouldn't be compared. But you wanted to mix them
all together so you *could* make a comparison, and build a larger
theoretical model. Which muddied the waters beyond all recognition.

Let me say this one more time: Eating food, and exhaling the products,
including CO2, adds NOTHING to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Even if
you produce food that's never eaten, the CO2 is returned to the atmosphere
when it rots, or is burned, or is eaten by other animals. So the net effect
of human respiration on CO2 emitted to the atmosphere is zero. It neither
adds nor subtracts any CO2. And that was the issue.

To make that comparison to fossil fuels confuses the fact that you're
talking about two completely different cycles. You don't have to mitigate
the production of CO2 by humans -- it takes care of itself, over the span of
a very few years. Eat and breathe all you want; you add nothing to emitted
CO2. It doesn't matter if the whole world goes on a diet, or half the people
in the world are killed off by disease. You just change the time the CO2 is
released, by a trivial amount. Because growing and eating, worldwide, is a
continuous process, it's carbon-neutral.

Not so with burning fossil fuels. That's on a completely different cycle,
and that DOES have consequences for how much CO2 is emitted. That CO2 was in
the ground, sequestered, possibly for the rest of human existence, until it
was extracted and burned. So a lot of CO2 was captured millions of years
ago, and now we're releasing it over a relatively short period of time. That
has consequences that we DON'T experience with human metabolizing and
respiration.

Again, that was the issue. Separating the processes and recognizing how they
are different clarifies the importance of the distinction. Mixing them all
together, and putting it all into a model of total emission and total
sequestration, confuses it.

At this point I'll make another comment about engineers that you and Dan
won't like, based on my experience interviewing them, and re-writing their
explanations, and sharing those experiences about engineers' behavior with
other writers of technical subjects, over a period of decades. Academic
engineers -- professors of engineering, and those with a scientific bent --
sometimes fall in love with "rigor" and forget that the job of communicating
technical information is to clarify practical questions, rather than to
build mountains of equations that are internally consistent. In the case of
university engineering profs, it's tied to the inferiority they feel in
comparison to their peers in the pure sciences. And that is widespread and
universally recognized by people who deal with them.

Give an engineer a pen or a keyboard, and tell him to write something that
will be published, and that streak of rigor in all well-trained engineers is
likely to come out. He's almost at likely as not to produce a God-awful
verbal and mental quagmire that's the equivalent of a rat's nest on a
fishing-reel spool. I can't tell you how many I've had to pick apart and
re-organize over the years. By the time he's done, you can't figure out what
it is that he's trying to explain. I'll guess that it happens one time out
of three.

Engineering is a practical field, not an abstract one like pure mathematics,
and rigor can be the enemy of understanding about practical subjects. We
have such a case here. When you talk about total emission and total
sequestration -- rigorously satisfying, but conceptually entangling -- you
lose sight of the fact that different processes work in different ways. And
then you get statements (and misunderstandings) like Larry's, in which one
tries to compare the effects of using human power versus engines that burn
fossil fuel, directly comparing the proximate emission of both, as if they
mean the same thing in terms of atmospheric CO2. Which I was trying to
correct. And which you confused with an irrelevant application of rigor --
something like rigor mortis. d8-)

Given that common misconception about the effects of breathing CO2 versus
producing it by burning fossil fuel, whose explanation do you think it
likely to help clarify it, yours or mine? I'm asking the wrong person here,
I know, but I do this for a living, and I'm confident that your explanation
either will leave him right where he is -- thinking that they're really the
same, in terms of effects -- or leave him feeling that it's all too complex
and interactive to figure out, anyway.

It's not. All you have to do is to recognize there are many different
processes that produce CO2, and cycles thereof, and that one that's
essentially self-mitigating over a period of a few years produces a vastly
different result than one that suddenly releases CO2 that was sequestered
underground for millions of years. The distinction clarifies the issue.
Mixing it all together muddies it.

I'm going to snip the rest, because we're going around in circles, and this
cycle, like the carbon cycle involved in producing food, eating it, and
emitting carbon back into the atmosphere, has zero net effect, world without
end, amen. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:16:02 -0500, Don Foreman
wrote the following:

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:41:13 -0400, "Phil Kangas"
wrote:

Looks like I'll have to admit to starting this heated
discussion and apologize to all concerned. I did
not mean for this to go so far as to cause hard
feelings among posters to this fine group. I hope
you can just let it go and get on with more important
things we _can_ control. Once again, I'm sorry if I
caused trouble here.....I didn't mean to... :((
phil kangas

Hard feelings? Hardly! Ed's always calling folks names, doesn't
mean a thing. G

That's right. Just plonk him, as many of us have.

You're suggesting that he join the rogues' gallery of seditionists, avowed
racists, and hopeless, mentally lazy ideologues.

Maybe he can join you for the online meetings of the Sons of Timothy
McVeigh. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

On Jul 27, 7:29*am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


Give an engineer a pen or a keyboard, and tell him to write something that
will be published, and that streak of rigor in all well-trained engineers is
likely to come out. He's almost at likely as not to produce a God-awful
verbal and mental quagmire that's the equivalent of a rat's nest on a
fishing-reel spool. I can't tell you how many I've had to pick apart and
re-organize over the years. By the time he's done, you can't figure out what
it is that he's trying to explain. I'll guess that it happens one time out
of three.

Many engineers gravitate to math and science because they can not
write well. So it is not surprising that when they are required to
write something , they do not do a good job.



Engineering is a practical field, not an abstract one like pure mathematics,
and rigor can be the enemy of understanding about practical subjects.


Rigor is never the enemy of understanding about practical subjects.
Descriptions of practical subjects without rigor simply shows there is
no understanding. For example averaging percentages.

Dan


Ed Huntress

On Jul 27, 3:25*am, "J. Clarke" wrote:



So why don't you find some people who hold a different view to argue
with instead of finding people who agree with you and beating them up
over nitpicky details? *These details may be of vast importance to you
but I assure you that in the greater scheme of things nobody gives a
rat's ass but a few pedants.

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

Dan

On 7/27/2010 8:56 AM, wrote:
On Jul 27, 7:29 am, "Ed wrote:


Give an engineer a pen or a keyboard, and tell him to write something that
will be published, and that streak of rigor in all well-trained engineers is
likely to come out. He's almost at likely as not to produce a God-awful
verbal and mental quagmire that's the equivalent of a rat's nest on a
fishing-reel spool. I can't tell you how many I've had to pick apart and
re-organize over the years. By the time he's done, you can't figure out what
it is that he's trying to explain. I'll guess that it happens one time out
of three.

Many engineers gravitate to math and science because they can not
write well. So it is not surprising that when they are required to
write something , they do not do a good job.



Engineering is a practical field, not an abstract one like pure mathematics,
and rigor can be the enemy of understanding about practical subjects.


Rigor is never the enemy of understanding about practical subjects.
Descriptions of practical subjects without rigor simply shows there is
no understanding. For example averaging percentages.

Calculus is a very practical subject. Rigor makes it difficult to learn
because it cannot be proven rigorously from the intuitive infinitesimal
model, instead one must take a detour into the land epsilons and deltas.
Someone finally did prove it rigorously using the infinitesimal model
but that proof had to redefine the real numbers. If Newton had insisted
on rigor then we wouldn't have physics as we know it.

wrote in message
...
On Jul 27, 7:29 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


Give an engineer a pen or a keyboard, and tell him to write something that
will be published, and that streak of rigor in all well-trained engineers
is
likely to come out. He's almost at likely as not to produce a God-awful
verbal and mental quagmire that's the equivalent of a rat's nest on a
fishing-reel spool. I can't tell you how many I've had to pick apart and
re-organize over the years. By the time he's done, you can't figure out
what
it is that he's trying to explain. I'll guess that it happens one time out
of three.

Many engineers gravitate to math and science because they can not
write well. So it is not surprising that when they are required to
write something , they do not do a good job.

True enough. There is a pattern to their machinations, however.


Engineering is a practical field, not an abstract one like pure
mathematics,
and rigor can be the enemy of understanding about practical subjects.


Rigor is never the enemy of understanding about practical subjects.
Descriptions of practical subjects without rigor simply shows there is
no understanding. For example averaging percentages.

Dan

With all due respect, Dan, you've frequently demonstrated exactly what I'm
talking about. d8-)

Rigor often leads one to involve arcane or obscure relationships. If you're
creating theories, or dotting the "i" on an existing one, it's necessary to
keep the whole theoretical system straight. But it often leads one off onto
issues that obscure the practical problem at hand.

For example, the one involved in this thread. Don can make a case for
accounting for all inputs and outputs together, but it obscures the fact
that there are vastly different carbon cycles involved, which have
significantly different consequences. In fact, that's what the question was
about, and Don's "rigorous" explanation (in which you've also dabbled)
implies that the necessity for some active mitigation of CO2 produced from
burning fossil fuel and that for human respiration should be considered in
the same pot. But that "rigorous" explanation misses the point that human
respiration is already taken care of. You can't emit more carbon than you
consume, and all that you consume comes from plants that have already
absorbed at least as much carbon from the air, or you would have nothing to
consume.

In other words, rigor is the enemy of understanding the key point, and that
point precisely addresses the original question. The "rigorous" explanation
does an end run around it -- in fact, it ignores and obscures it.

--
Ed Huntress

wrote in message
...
On Jul 27, 3:25 am, "J. Clarke" wrote:



So why don't you find some people who hold a different view to argue
with instead of finding people who agree with you and beating them up
over nitpicky details? These details may be of vast importance to you
but I assure you that in the greater scheme of things nobody gives a
rat's ass but a few pedants.

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

But the particular details raised by lumping together all sources and sinks
of CO2, in this case, lead to a mistaken understanding of the problem.
That's not unusual.

--
Ed Huntress

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:29:39 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:



It's not. All you have to do is to recognize there are many different
processes that produce CO2, and cycles thereof, and that one that's
essentially self-mitigating over a period of a few years produces a vastly
different result than one that suddenly releases CO2 that was sequestered
underground for millions of years. The distinction clarifies the issue.

Continously repeating your strongly-held belief emphasises it, but
clarifies nothing.

Mixing it all together muddies it.

I'm going to snip the rest, because we're going around in circles
repeating your strongly-held belief, bashing engineers for a while to
discredit me, and conveniently snipping questions I posed that your
cycle viewpoint cannot address like how might a change in the total
vegetative mass (and carbon entrained therein) affect atmospheric
carbon. The editor's snip, remove pesky questions.

It is true that all CO2 emitted by breathers (and spoilers) was
entrained in vegetative matter a short time previously. You've
asserted this several times.

It is true that burning fossil fuels introduces CO2 that has been
sequestered for millions of years. You've asserted this several times.

It is true that plants remove CO2 from atmosphere, converting it to
biomass for awhile. How much or at what rate? Depends on how many
plants there are. I submitted, thus far without refutation or even
comment (other than to rail at engineers and scientists as writers
inferior to yourself) that a greater amount of biomass must remove CO2
from atmosphere at a greater rate.

Considering this as a continuous interactive process with rates of
introduction and rate of removal accomodates this variable, and that
of change in atmospheric CO2 quantity or concentration.

This model accomodates your notion of a cycle. Unlike that notion,
this model can deal with the processes quantitatively. Your view does
not, other than to insist (with no defense) that respiratory CO2 is
"different" from fossil-fuel combustion product. Again, I stipulate
that all resiratory carbon was sequestered in biomass a relatively
short time ago. That leaves the matter moot of how much carbon being
emitted now will be removed by biomass extant now, if the total
biomass is not constant. For that matter, rates of growth (and
assimilation) can be positively influenced by atmospheric CO2 level.

Your cycles assume that everything is constant. That isn't so.
Atmospheric CO2 has varied signicantly over the centuries long before
anyone was burning fossil fuels. If all CO2 cycles between biomass
and atmosphere in a closed system with no net change, this couldn't
happen.

Along comes fossil fuel. You handle this by labelling that CO2 as
"different", with an attendent "different" cycle for exactly the same
gas. Sounds a bit like the rationalizations of a worried wizard,
nevermind science.

Engineers and scientists with whom I have discussed this understand
how accounting must be done in a closed system to properly understand
it and get meaningful answers. I'd like for you and others to at
least try to understand it. I don't need to be "right" here on this
forum, but I think we have a better chance of making good decisions if
we bother to understand what is going on.

On Jul 27, 9:55*am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

But the particular details raised by lumping together all sources and sinks
of CO2, in this case, lead to a mistaken understanding of the problem.
That's not unusual.

--
Ed Huntress

Lumping all the sources and sinks of CO2 may lead you to a mistaken
understanding of the problem.

However it does not cause Don or I to have a mistaken understanding of
the problem. In fact it does exactly the opposite. For example I
have not seen you address the fact the food production involves the
use of a great deal of energy that is obtained from fossil fuels. So
the cycle you describe as atmosphere CO2 converted to food by plants
and then the food converted back to CO2 is way too simplistic and
leads to a mistaken understanding of the problem.

Dan

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:29:39 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:



It's not. All you have to do is to recognize there are many different
processes that produce CO2, and cycles thereof, and that one that's
essentially self-mitigating over a period of a few years produces a vastly
different result than one that suddenly releases CO2 that was sequestered
underground for millions of years. The distinction clarifies the issue.

Continously repeating your strongly-held belief emphasises it, but
clarifies nothing.

That was in response to you reiterating yours. The difference is, one
clarifies the distinction in what Larry implied by his question; the other
obfuscates it in the name of scientific rigor. d8-)


Mixing it all together muddies it.

I'm going to snip the rest, because we're going around in circles
repeating your strongly-held belief, bashing engineers for a while to
discredit me....

Don, it's not to discredit you. It's to point out an underlying pattern of
pedantry that many people recognize as one that's characteristic of academic
"rigor" -- something that many engineers, particularly older ones, are very
fond of.

It's like a secret handshake among those who take pride in their
"scientific" thinking. You see the same thing in the writings of medical
researchers. They can be even worse. I spent close to five years untangling
those, too. That's why people hired me.

Years ago, when people asked me what I do for a living, my answer was that
"I vulgarize science and technology." g

You may recall that some time ago you pointed out that you are an engineer,
and that I'm a writer, and that as a result I just don't understand
single-phase motors. You said so in much more disparaging terms. But it was
apparent to me from the time you first commented that you must have been
absent the day they explained internal phase relationships and force in
single-phase motors. g You went so far off base, contending that those
motors operate in quadrature and so on (most inentionally do *not* operate
in quadrature; it's part of their design to have partially-shifted phases)
that I didn't even respond to much of it.

I ignored it. I've been hit by that argument many times before. I shrug it
off.

, and conveniently snipping questions I posed that your
cycle viewpoint cannot address like how might a change in the total
vegetative mass (and carbon entrained therein) affect atmospheric
carbon. The editor's snip, remove pesky questions.

If I snipped it, I didn't even read it. Once you tripped over a key error (I
found two big ones, one of which you acknowledged), I stopped right there
until the point is cleared up. Rather than compound an error, I gave it a
chance to be cleared up rather than to be repeated.

As for the effect of changing the total vegetative mass, that's an
interesting point -- but one that has NOTHING to do with the issue, on which
I've tried to retain focus. Increasing vegetative mass has NO effect
whatever on the net contribution (which is zero) to atmospheric CO2
represented by human eating and breathing. Again, we emit only as much
carbon as was recently captured and entrained within the food that we eat.
It doesn't matter how much more or less vegetation you grow. That cycle is
unalterable -- until we all die.

To state it another way, if you increase total vegetation, any effect due to
it, on the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere, has NO releationship at all
to the percentage effected by growing food and respirating. You still need
the same amount of CO2 entrained in food. You still emit the same amount.
Any effect due to extra (or less) vegetation occurs outside of that cycle.
Mixing all of the CO2 together doesn't change that. The molecules are all
mixed up and exchangeable, but their quantities are not. Your point is a
distraction, and an obfuscation.


It is true that all CO2 emitted by breathers (and spoilers) was
entrained in vegetative matter a short time previously. You've
asserted this several times.

Yes, I have. And I just did it again.


It is true that burning fossil fuels introduces CO2 that has been
sequestered for millions of years. You've asserted this several times.

Yes, I have. And it's as true, and as essential to clarifying the original
question, as it was then.


It is true that plants remove CO2 from atmosphere, converting it to
biomass for awhile. How much or at what rate? Depends on how many
plants there are. I submitted, thus far without refutation or even
comment (other than to rail at engineers and scientists as writers
inferior to yourself) that a greater amount of biomass must remove CO2
from atmosphere at a greater rate.

True. Also irrelevant to the question. If one is wondering how much CO2 is
added to the atmosphere by eating and breathing (the underlying question in
the original assertion), then the rates of sequestration by total biomass is
totally irrelevant. It won't reduce emission of CO2. Nor will it reduce the
amount that must be entrained by growing food. Tha amount of vegetation may
increase, but the amount of "food" -- that is, vegation that is eaten,
metabolized, and exhaled as CO2 -- does not increase or decrease. Changing
total quantities of vegetation has no effect on the food and respiration
cycle.


Considering this as a continuous interactive process with rates of
introduction and rate of removal accomodates this variable, and that
of change in atmospheric CO2 quantity or concentration.

But it has no relation to the effects of growing food and respiring. It
CAN'T. You can't exhale CO2 that you didn't take in, and the part you take
in from food must be the same amount at that which you exhale.


This model accomodates your notion of a cycle. Unlike that notion,
this model can deal with the processes quantitatively. Your view does
not, other than to insist (with no defense) that respiratory CO2 is
"different" from fossil-fuel combustion product.

See above. The whole issue hinges on how that CO2 became sequestered in the
first place. Adding other vegetation doesn't change the quantities entrained
or emitted in the food cycle.

Again, I stipulate
that all resiratory carbon was sequestered in biomass a relatively
short time ago. That leaves the matter moot of how much carbon being
emitted now will be removed by biomass extant now, if the total
biomass is not constant.

Again, it's an interesting question, but it has nothing to do with the
quantities of carbon entrained or emitted in the food cycle. It's a separate
issue.

For that matter, rates of growth (and
assimilation) can be positively influenced by atmospheric CO2 level.

Now you're getting into an issue that only our post-doctorate scientific
fellows on RCM should address. g


Your cycles assume that everything is constant. That isn't so.
Atmospheric CO2 has varied signicantly over the centuries long before
anyone was burning fossil fuels. If all CO2 cycles between biomass
and atmosphere in a closed system with no net change, this couldn't
happen.

Yes, it could, for reasons you've already brought up yourself. To list a
few, there's carbonic (or carbolic -- don't ask me) acid in the oceans that
depends on temperature and perhaps other factors that infuence absorption
and retention rates; carbon entrained in carbonates; carbon emitted by
volcanos (I think); relative efficiency of different types of vegetation as
carbon sinks; retention in polar ice; etc., etc. I'll leave those to the
experts. They're just distractions from the issues we were talking about.


Along comes fossil fuel. You handle this by labelling that CO2 as
"different", with an attendent "different" cycle for exactly the same
gas.

Same type of gas, entirely different cycle.

Sounds a bit like the rationalizations of a worried wizard,
nevermind science.

Engineers and scientists with whom I have discussed this understand
how accounting must be done in a closed system to properly understand
it and get meaningful answers. I'd like for you and others to at
least try to understand it.

I understand exactly what you're saying. And I understand why it's a
peripheral, distracting issue to the one being discussed. Your vegetation
issue has nothing to do with the food cycle. That's determined by the amount
of food that's eaten, and no more is eaten than the amount produced. Growing
more trees won't reduce or increase those amounts.

I don't need to be "right" here on this
forum, but I think we have a better chance of making good decisions if
we bother to understand what is going on.

I doubt if there are many people here who don't understand your point. My
hope is that they recognize that the process of entraining carbon, and the
length of the cycle in which it's released, is the core issue in comparing
human respiration with running engines on fossil fuel. That comparison has
nothing at all to do with other influences on CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
That was the only issue.

--
Ed Huntress

wrote in message
...
On Jul 27, 9:55 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

But the particular details raised by lumping together all sources and
sinks
of CO2, in this case, lead to a mistaken understanding of the problem.
That's not unusual.

--
Ed Huntress

Lumping all the sources and sinks of CO2 may lead you to a mistaken
understanding of the problem.

However it does not cause Don or I to have a mistaken understanding of
the problem.

Which problem? The question is what is the relative addition of CO2 by human
respiration versus burning fossil fuels.

In fact it does exactly the opposite. For example I
have not seen you address the fact the food production involves the
use of a great deal of energy that is obtained from fossil fuels.

An irrelevant distraction. Much of the world's food is produced with human
and animal power, and the fossil fuel used to help produce food in advanced
countries is not part of the basic equations. It's a circumstantial issue,
not a basic one.

So
the cycle you describe as atmosphere CO2 converted to food by plants
and then the food converted back to CO2 is way too simplistic and
leads to a mistaken understanding of the problem.

You've expanded the problem into irrelevancies. The key question is whether
human respiration adds to atmospheric CO2. It does not. If you use
fossil-fuel-burning machines to produce your food, that's a complication
that you'll want to consider if you're analyzing the whole system.

But we weren't doing that. Nor is anyone here qualified to do it. We were
just dealing with the simple question of whether you have to consider human
respiration when you're looking at the total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere, versus additions that are the result of burning fossil fuel. And
the answer is no, you don't.

--
Ed Huntress

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:19:15 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

But it was
apparent to me from the time you first commented that you must have been
absent the day they explained internal phase relationships and force in
single-phase motors. g You went so far off base, contending that those
motors operate in quadrature and so on (most inentionally do *not* operate
in quadrature; it's part of their design to have partially-shifted phases)
that I didn't even respond to much of it.

Engineers refer to a quadrature component in any case where there is
phase difference. It's standard notation. However slight the phase
difference is, a quadrature component is necessary to develop torque.

I ignored it. I've been hit by that argument many times before. I shrug it
off.

I see that!


As for the effect of changing the total vegetative mass, that's an
interesting point -- but one that has NOTHING to do with the issue, on which
I've tried to retain focus.

That's because your focus is too narrow to be meaningful.

Increasing vegetative mass has NO effect
whatever on the net contribution (which is zero) to atmospheric CO2
represented by human eating and breathing. Again, we emit only as much
carbon as was recently captured and entrained within the food that we eat.

Do you define net contribution as amount exhaled minus amount captured
and entrained?

It doesn't matter how much more or less vegetation you grow. That cycle is
unalterable -- until we all die.

To state it another way, if you increase total vegetation, any effect due to
it, on the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere, has NO releationship at all
to the percentage effected by growing food and respirating. You still need
the same amount of CO2 entrained in food. You still emit the same amount.
Any effect due to extra (or less) vegetation occurs outside of that cycle.

Replace "percentage" with "amount" and that's correct. The effect is
outside of that cycle, but still within the closed system of planet
Earth. You're starting to get it.

Mixing all of the CO2 together doesn't change that. The molecules are all
mixed up and exchangeable, but their quantities are not. Your point is a
distraction, and an obfuscation.

That is key to my point: how much carbon is where. Now that you claim
it, perhaps we're making progress. The next step is accounting for
how much is being added and how much is being withdrawn. The
difference (net) acts to change atmospheric content.


It is true that all CO2 emitted by breathers (and spoilers) was
entrained in vegetative matter a short time previously. You've
asserted this several times.

Yes, I have. And I just did it again.


It is true that burning fossil fuels introduces CO2 that has been
sequestered for millions of years. You've asserted this several times.

Yes, I have. And it's as true, and as essential to clarifying the original
question, as it was then.

We seem to be in violent agreement on those points.


It is true that plants remove CO2 from atmosphere, converting it to
biomass for awhile. How much or at what rate? Depends on how many
plants there are. I submitted, thus far without refutation or even
comment (other than to rail at engineers and scientists as writers
inferior to yourself) that a greater amount of biomass must remove CO2
from atmosphere at a greater rate.

True. Also irrelevant to the question. If one is wondering how much CO2 is
added to the atmosphere by eating and breathing (the underlying question in
the original assertion), then the rates of sequestration by total biomass is
totally irrelevant. It won't reduce emission of CO2. Nor will it reduce the
amount that must be entrained by growing food. Tha amount of vegetation may
increase, but the amount of "food" -- that is, vegation that is eaten,
metabolized, and exhaled as CO2 -- does not increase or decrease. Changing
total quantities of vegetation has no effect on the food and respiration
cycle.

Given constant population. Therefore, since rate of entrainment does
not depend upon census, it must have net effect on atmospheric content
since rate of entrainment and amount of entrained CO2 obviously
depends upon total biomass.

But you can't see this with a myopic view, you must examine at system
level. If you are focussed exclusively on respired CO2 than your zero
sum game argument is valid as far as it goes -- but when you introduce
fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric content then you enlarge the
scope well beyond the "cycle" upon which you base your entire case.

Considering this as a continuous interactive process with rates of
introduction and rate of removal accomodates this variable, and that
of change in atmospheric CO2 quantity or concentration.

But it has no relation to the effects of growing food and respiring. It
CAN'T. You can't exhale CO2 that you didn't take in, and the part you take
in from food must be the same amount at that which you exhale.

That's true. You don't seem to be averse to the notion of tracking
input and output at that level.


This model accomodates your notion of a cycle. Unlike that notion,
this model can deal with the processes quantitatively. Your view does
not, other than to insist (with no defense) that respiratory CO2 is
"different" from fossil-fuel combustion product.

See above. The whole issue hinges on how that CO2 became sequestered in the
first place.

If the issue you're discussing is limited to "quantities of carbon
entrained or emitted in the food cycle" (your words, cut and pasted)
then how is fossil fuel at all relevant regardless of how long
sequestered?

Adding other vegetation doesn't change the quantities entrained
or emitted in the food cycle.

Agreed, if and only if population remains constant and stipulating
that you only consider amounts entrained "...in the food cycle."

If there is more biomass, then there is more entrained CO2. But you
assert that all CO2 entrained in biomass is arguably part of your food
cycle over the course of a fairly short time. Therefore, adding
vegetation must change the quantity entrained or emitted. How can
this be? Because the population isn't constant. If there is more
biomass, then there will be more emission by processes such as rotting
and fermentation. Are those part of your food cycle? Lots of details
to keep track of.

In any case, if there is more biomass extant then there is, at any
given time, more carbon entrained in it. Since the amount of carbon
in a closed system is constant, that carbon must have come from
somewhere outside of your zero-sum cycle.

The larger model of continuous interacting processes in a closed
system doesn't require keeping track of such implicit
definitions,assumptions and caveats.

Again, I stipulate
that all resiratory carbon was sequestered in biomass a relatively
short time ago. That leaves the matter moot of how much carbon being
emitted now will be removed by biomass extant now, if the total
biomass is not constant.

Again, it's an interesting question, but it has nothing to do with the
quantities of carbon entrained or emitted in the food cycle. It's a separate
issue.

Well, it kinda does, but I'm beginning to understand your arguments
now that I understand the scope of your focus.

For that matter, rates of growth (and
assimilation) can be positively influenced by atmospheric CO2 level.

Now you're getting into an issue that only our post-doctorate scientific
fellows on RCM should address. g

Ya mean those that can use Google?


Your cycles assume that everything is constant. That isn't so.
Atmospheric CO2 has varied signicantly over the centuries long before
anyone was burning fossil fuels. If all CO2 cycles between biomass
and atmosphere in a closed system with no net change, this couldn't
happen.

Yes, it could, for reasons you've already brought up yourself. To list a
few, there's carbonic (or carbolic -- don't ask me) acid in the oceans that
depends on temperature and perhaps other factors that infuence absorption
and retention rates; carbon entrained in carbonates; carbon emitted by
volcanos (I think); relative efficiency of different types of vegetation as
carbon sinks; retention in polar ice; etc., etc. I'll leave those to the
experts. They're just distractions from the issues we were talking about.

Carbonic, not carbolic. They certainly are to the issues that I now
understand you want to talk about.


Along comes fossil fuel. You handle this by labelling that CO2 as
"different", with an attendent "different" cycle for exactly the same
gas.

Same type of gas, entirely different cycle.

Sounds a bit like the rationalizations of a worried wizard,
nevermind science.

Engineers and scientists with whom I have discussed this understand
how accounting must be done in a closed system to properly understand
it and get meaningful answers. I'd like for you and others to at
least try to understand it.

I understand exactly what you're saying. And I understand why it's a
peripheral, distracting issue to the one being discussed. Your vegetation
issue has nothing to do with the food cycle. That's determined by the amount
of food that's eaten, and no more is eaten than the amount produced. Growing
more trees won't reduce or increase those amounts.

I don't need to be "right" here on this
forum, but I think we have a better chance of making good decisions if
we bother to understand what is going on.

I doubt if there are many people here who don't understand your point. My
hope is that they recognize that the process of entraining carbon, and the
length of the cycle in which it's released, is the core issue in comparing
human respiration with running engines on fossil fuel. That comparison has
nothing at all to do with other influences on CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
That was the only issue.

OK, I'll buy that. My apologies for not suitably limiting my
attention.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:09:10 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Jul 27, 9:55*am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

But the particular details raised by lumping together all sources and sinks
of CO2, in this case, lead to a mistaken understanding of the problem.
That's not unusual.

--
Ed Huntress

Lumping all the sources and sinks of CO2 may lead you to a mistaken
understanding of the problem.

However it does not cause Don or I to have a mistaken understanding of
the problem. In fact it does exactly the opposite. For example I
have not seen you address the fact the food production involves the
use of a great deal of energy that is obtained from fossil fuels. So
the cycle you describe as atmosphere CO2 converted to food by plants
and then the food converted back to CO2 is way too simplistic and
leads to a mistaken understanding of the problem.

Dan

But Ed has just made clear that he wants discussion limited to
"the core issue in comparing human respiration with running engines
on fossil fuel", however simplistic that might be.

I dislike the term "cycle", preferring "process" but that's another
side trip. A cycle is the set of events in one period of a repeating
event or process with periodicity. The CO2 exhange between breathers
and plants occurs in continuous processes which, from a macro
viewpoint, are not periodic. Breathers are always exhaling somewhere,
and plants are always growing somewhere. But nevermind that.

Anyway, I think Ed has cleared things up here.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:35:34 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


wrote in message
...
On Jul 27, 9:55 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

But the particular details raised by lumping together all sources and
sinks
of CO2, in this case, lead to a mistaken understanding of the problem.
That's not unusual.

--
Ed Huntress

Lumping all the sources and sinks of CO2 may lead you to a mistaken
understanding of the problem.

However it does not cause Don or I to have a mistaken understanding of
the problem.

Which problem? The question is what is the relative addition of CO2 by human
respiration versus burning fossil fuels.

In fact it does exactly the opposite. For example I
have not seen you address the fact the food production involves the
use of a great deal of energy that is obtained from fossil fuels.

An irrelevant distraction. Much of the world's food is produced with human
and animal power, and the fossil fuel used to help produce food in advanced
countries is not part of the basic equations. It's a circumstantial issue,
not a basic one.

So
the cycle you describe as atmosphere CO2 converted to food by plants
and then the food converted back to CO2 is way too simplistic and
leads to a mistaken understanding of the problem.

You've expanded the problem into irrelevancies. The key question is whether
human respiration adds to atmospheric CO2. It does not. If you use
fossil-fuel-burning machines to produce your food, that's a complication
that you'll want to consider if you're analyzing the whole system.

But we weren't doing that. Nor is anyone here qualified to do it. We were
just dealing with the simple question of whether you have to consider human
respiration when you're looking at the total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere, versus additions that are the result of burning fossil fuel. And
the answer is no, you don't.

.... while actually refusing to consider "total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere" but only "the core issue in comparing
human respiration with running engines on fossil fuel".

Apparently the U.S.A. doesn't have any expertise/experience to offer
concerning extinguishing underground coal fires (or landfill fires, either),
try those terms in a search engine.

Centralia PA, burning since 1962, not only CO2, but a variety of toxic
gasses. A concerned citizen apparently offered to put the fire out for less
than $200, but the local officials couldn't approve the offer.

http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkHfnp2czZQ

So what it comes down to, is that fires somewhere else are evil, or worse
than..

--
WB
..........


wrote in message
...
Well I think CO2 from coal mine fires counts. But I have not seen
anyone saying that we should do the sensible things to reduce the
amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It seems to be all about how can we
spend a bunch of money for not too much effect.

Coal mine fires can be extinguished. You have to cut off the oxygen
and cool the site so it does not reignite in the future. It isn't
easy, but a lot easier than getting 100% reduction in the amount of
CO2 going into the atmosphere from autos and light trucks.


Dan

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:35:34 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


wrote in message
...
On Jul 27, 9:55 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

But the particular details raised by lumping together all sources and
sinks
of CO2, in this case, lead to a mistaken understanding of the problem.
That's not unusual.

--
Ed Huntress

Lumping all the sources and sinks of CO2 may lead you to a mistaken
understanding of the problem.

However it does not cause Don or I to have a mistaken understanding of
the problem.

Which problem? The question is what is the relative addition of CO2 by
human
respiration versus burning fossil fuels.

In fact it does exactly the opposite. For example I
have not seen you address the fact the food production involves the
use of a great deal of energy that is obtained from fossil fuels.

An irrelevant distraction. Much of the world's food is produced with human
and animal power, and the fossil fuel used to help produce food in
advanced
countries is not part of the basic equations. It's a circumstantial issue,
not a basic one.

So
the cycle you describe as atmosphere CO2 converted to food by plants
and then the food converted back to CO2 is way too simplistic and
leads to a mistaken understanding of the problem.

You've expanded the problem into irrelevancies. The key question is
whether
human respiration adds to atmospheric CO2. It does not. If you use
fossil-fuel-burning machines to produce your food, that's a complication
that you'll want to consider if you're analyzing the whole system.

But we weren't doing that. Nor is anyone here qualified to do it. We were
just dealing with the simple question of whether you have to consider
human
respiration when you're looking at the total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere, versus additions that are the result of burning fossil fuel.
And
the answer is no, you don't.

... while actually refusing to consider "total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere" but only "the core issue in comparing
human respiration with running engines on fossil fuel".

Don, I'm not "considering" it because it has nothing to do with human
respiration. It *does* have a lot to do with running engines on fossil fuel.
But you've been trying to lump the two together, even making a point that
you think it doesn't matter where the CO2 comes from. It does matter.

--
Ed Huntress

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:09:10 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Jul 27, 9:55 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

But the particular details raised by lumping together all sources and
sinks
of CO2, in this case, lead to a mistaken understanding of the problem.
That's not unusual.

--
Ed Huntress

Lumping all the sources and sinks of CO2 may lead you to a mistaken
understanding of the problem.

However it does not cause Don or I to have a mistaken understanding of
the problem. In fact it does exactly the opposite. For example I
have not seen you address the fact the food production involves the
use of a great deal of energy that is obtained from fossil fuels. So
the cycle you describe as atmosphere CO2 converted to food by plants
and then the food converted back to CO2 is way too simplistic and
leads to a mistaken understanding of the problem.

Dan

But Ed has just made clear that he wants discussion limited to
"the core issue in comparing human respiration with running engines
on fossil fuel", however simplistic that might be.

You can take the discussion anywhere you want to, Don. But you've been
"discussing" it by responding to me, starting off by talking about sources
and sinks, as if you could make some change in the balances of CO2
entrainment and emission in the food cycle by altering those sources and
sinks. You cannot, which is the basic error in your argument.

As I say, go anywhere you want to with this discussion. But when you respond
to me, don't expect me to go along with you. You're just going to confuse
the dynamics of the situation, and I won't join in. Maybe you and Dan can
have fun with it.


I dislike the term "cycle", preferring "process" but that's another
side trip. A cycle is the set of events in one period of a repeating
event or process with periodicity. The CO2 exhange between breathers
and plants occurs in continuous processes which, from a macro
viewpoint, are not periodic. Breathers are always exhaling somewhere,
and plants are always growing somewhere. But nevermind that.

Anyway, I think Ed has cleared things up here.

I don't know if you're sincere about that or not, but if you are, thank you.
d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:50:10 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


But we weren't doing that. Nor is anyone here qualified to do it. We were
just dealing with the simple question of whether you have to consider
human
respiration when you're looking at the total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere, versus additions that are the result of burning fossil fuel.
And
the answer is no, you don't.

... while actually refusing to consider "total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere" but only "the core issue in comparing
human respiration with running engines on fossil fuel".

Don, I'm not "considering" it because it has nothing to do with human
respiration. It *does* have a lot to do with running engines on fossil fuel.

I'm merely illustrating, with quotes, inconsistency in your
statements. Not an attack, just an observation.

But you've been trying to lump the two together, even making a point that
you think it doesn't matter where the CO2 comes from.

I have indeed, in the context of a system-level view. I now understand
that I was thinking beyond the scope in which you'd like to confine
this thread.

This is the second time I've given you that. If you'd like me to shut
up and shoot myself, let's talk about calibers. G

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:55:31 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Don Foreman" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:09:10 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Jul 27, 9:55 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:

People that do not understand the details, generally do not understand
the problem.
Understanding the problem is important.

But the particular details raised by lumping together all sources and
sinks
of CO2, in this case, lead to a mistaken understanding of the problem.
That's not unusual.

--
Ed Huntress

Lumping all the sources and sinks of CO2 may lead you to a mistaken
understanding of the problem.

However it does not cause Don or I to have a mistaken understanding of
the problem. In fact it does exactly the opposite. For example I
have not seen you address the fact the food production involves the
use of a great deal of energy that is obtained from fossil fuels. So
the cycle you describe as atmosphere CO2 converted to food by plants
and then the food converted back to CO2 is way too simplistic and
leads to a mistaken understanding of the problem.

Dan

But Ed has just made clear that he wants discussion limited to
"the core issue in comparing human respiration with running engines
on fossil fuel", however simplistic that might be.

You can take the discussion anywhere you want to, Don. But you've been
"discussing" it by responding to me

Usenet threads tend to work that way, Ed.

starting off by talking about sources
and sinks, as if you could make some change in the balances of CO2
entrainment and emission in the food cycle by altering those sources and
sinks. You cannot, which is the basic error in your argument.

I cannot per your ground rules that constrain scope of discussion.
That isn't an error in argument, merely violation of arbitrary ground
rules for discussion.

As I say, go anywhere you want to with this discussion. But when you respond
to me, don't expect me to go along with you. You're just going to confuse
the dynamics of the situation, and I won't join in. Maybe you and Dan can
have fun with it.

Try not to pout, Ed.


I dislike the term "cycle", preferring "process" but that's another
side trip. A cycle is the set of events in one period of a repeating
event or process with periodicity. The CO2 exhange between breathers
and plants occurs in continuous processes which, from a macro
viewpoint, are not periodic. Breathers are always exhaling somewhere,
and plants are always growing somewhere. But nevermind that.

Anyway, I think Ed has cleared things up here.

I don't know if you're sincere about that or not, but if you are, thank you.
d8-)

I am.

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:19:15 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

But it was
apparent to me from the time you first commented that you must have been
absent the day they explained internal phase relationships and force in
single-phase motors. g You went so far off base, contending that those
motors operate in quadrature and so on (most inentionally do *not* operate
in quadrature; it's part of their design to have partially-shifted phases)
that I didn't even respond to much of it.

Engineers refer to a quadrature component in any case where there is
phase difference. It's standard notation. However slight the phase
difference is, a quadrature component is necessary to develop torque.

The engineers I know, and the electronics I learned when studying for both
my amateur and commercial radiotelephone licenses, mean a 90-degree phase
shift -- pi/2. Anything else is a phase shift of different proportions --
not quadrature.

What kind of engineers call any phase shift "quadrature"? Mathematicians use
different meanings for the term, referring to different processes of
integration, but I've never heard that usage in engineering applications.


I ignored it. I've been hit by that argument many times before. I shrug it
off.

I see that!


As for the effect of changing the total vegetative mass, that's an
interesting point -- but one that has NOTHING to do with the issue, on
which
I've tried to retain focus.

That's because your focus is too narrow to be meaningful.

Not in reference to the question of whether the net effect of a carbon cycle
that's wholly dependent upon short-term trapping and sequestration of carbon
can be compared to one that depends on burning fuel that entrained its
carbon millions of years ago. For that comparison, it's right on the mark.


Increasing vegetative mass has NO effect
whatever on the net contribution (which is zero) to atmospheric CO2
represented by human eating and breathing. Again, we emit only as much
carbon as was recently captured and entrained within the food that we eat.

Do you define net contribution as amount exhaled minus amount captured
and entrained?

Yes, if the exhalation depends upon a like amount of entrainment, occurring
over a short enough period of time that it has no long-term effects. Which
is the case with human food consumption and respiration. It has no net
effect over short periods of time, and thus no effects on atmospheric CO2,
as I've said at least a dozen times.


It doesn't matter how much more or less vegetation you grow. That cycle is
unalterable -- until we all die.

To state it another way, if you increase total vegetation, any effect due
to
it, on the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere, has NO releationship at
all
to the percentage effected by growing food and respirating. You still need
the same amount of CO2 entrained in food. You still emit the same amount.
Any effect due to extra (or less) vegetation occurs outside of that cycle.

Replace "percentage" with "amount" and that's correct. The effect is
outside of that cycle, but still within the closed system of planet
Earth. You're starting to get it.

Don't be condescending. Your argument doesn't justify it. I know perfectly
well what you're talking about, and I'm sure that anyone with the patience
to read this nonsense does, too. The question is whether you've contributed
to understanding the issue by lumping together all "sources" and all
"sinks." Because of the hugely different time scales involved, you've done
the opposite.

An analogy to your argument is that we can't understand how a transistor
amplifies unless we understand the quantum mechanics and statistics
involved. In a rigorous, pedantic sense, that's true. It's also irrelevant,
because millions of us have a practical understanding of transistors that
allows us to design and build circuits that work. We know how the system
behaves in practical terms and approximately what the net voltage and
current values will be. The net effects, the ones that matter in practice,
are much simpler than understanding which atomic particles are where, and
where they're going, at some point in time.


Mixing all of the CO2 together doesn't change that. The molecules are all
mixed up and exchangeable, but their quantities are not. Your point is a
distraction, and an obfuscation.

That is key to my point: how much carbon is where. Now that you claim
it, perhaps we're making progress. The next step is accounting for
how much is being added and how much is being withdrawn. The
difference (net) acts to change atmospheric content.

In the case of food and respiration -- which, you may remember, was the
point of discussion -- the answer to that "next step" is simple. The amount
added and the amount withdrawn are exactly the same, and must necessarily
be. So growing food, eating it, and exhaling COs has absolutely NO effect on
what other carbon is where and when. None. Zero.



It is true that all CO2 emitted by breathers (and spoilers) was
entrained in vegetative matter a short time previously. You've
asserted this several times.

Yes, I have. And I just did it again.


It is true that burning fossil fuels introduces CO2 that has been
sequestered for millions of years. You've asserted this several times.

Yes, I have. And it's as true, and as essential to clarifying the original
question, as it was then.

We seem to be in violent agreement on those points.


It is true that plants remove CO2 from atmosphere, converting it to
biomass for awhile. How much or at what rate? Depends on how many
plants there are. I submitted, thus far without refutation or even
comment (other than to rail at engineers and scientists as writers
inferior to yourself) that a greater amount of biomass must remove CO2
from atmosphere at a greater rate.

True. Also irrelevant to the question. If one is wondering how much CO2 is
added to the atmosphere by eating and breathing (the underlying question
in
the original assertion), then the rates of sequestration by total biomass
is
totally irrelevant. It won't reduce emission of CO2. Nor will it reduce
the
amount that must be entrained by growing food. Tha amount of vegetation
may
increase, but the amount of "food" -- that is, vegation that is eaten,
metabolized, and exhaled as CO2 -- does not increase or decrease. Changing
total quantities of vegetation has no effect on the food and respiration
cycle.

Given constant population.

Given ANY population. More people, more growing of food. More entrainment of
carbon. More exhaling of carbon. And vice versa.

The food/respiration system is always in balance, even if we all overeat or
we're all on starvation diets, or if half of us are killed off by mortal
tedium. d8-)

Therefore, since rate of entrainment does
not depend upon census, it must have net effect on atmospheric content
since rate of entrainment and amount of entrained CO2 obviously
depends upon total biomass.

Not the food/respiration cycle. It has nothing to do with the rest of the
world's biomass. We still, necessarily, entrain as much CO2 in growing food
as we exhale after metabolizing it.


But you can't see this with a myopic view, you must examine at system
level. If you are focussed exclusively on respired CO2 than your zero
sum game argument is valid as far as it goes -- but when you introduce
fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric content then you enlarge the
scope well beyond the "cycle" upon which you base your entire case.

Of course. The system as a whole is enormously complex. But no matter how
complex it is, it is relatively easy to determine how much carbon is
entrained in food, and how much of it humans exhale into the atmosphere. And
the values are always the same, so you can isolate that cycle from the rest
of the system and identify what's going on *within that part of the system*.

It's like diagnosing a problem with a car. If you know the battery is dead,
you don't have to know the pressure in your spare tire to understand why the
engine won't turn over.


Considering this as a continuous interactive process with rates of
introduction and rate of removal accomodates this variable, and that
of change in atmospheric CO2 quantity or concentration.

But it has no relation to the effects of growing food and respiring. It
CAN'T. You can't exhale CO2 that you didn't take in, and the part you take
in from food must be the same amount at that which you exhale.

That's true. You don't seem to be averse to the notion of tracking
input and output at that level.

Not when the question is about the effects of eating and breathing on total
CO2 in the atmosphere. You can isolate and identify that answer without
entangling it in issues that are unrelated to that question.



This model accomodates your notion of a cycle. Unlike that notion,
this model can deal with the processes quantitatively. Your view does
not, other than to insist (with no defense) that respiratory CO2 is
"different" from fossil-fuel combustion product.

See above. The whole issue hinges on how that CO2 became sequestered in
the
first place.

If the issue you're discussing is limited to "quantities of carbon
entrained or emitted in the food cycle" (your words, cut and pasted)
then how is fossil fuel at all relevant regardless of how long
sequestered?

It becomes relevant when you COMPARE it to the effects of the food cycle. It
enables you to see why they have very different effects. Lumping it all
together not only confuses the comparison (makes them equivalent, by your
source/sink description), but it obscures the difference itself -- a cycle
that closes within a few years, versus one that may never close, but that
certainly is millions of years long.


Adding other vegetation doesn't change the quantities entrained
or emitted in the food cycle.

Agreed, if and only if population remains constant and stipulating
that you only consider amounts entrained "...in the food cycle."

Again, it doesn't matter WHAT the population is, or how much they eat.
They'll always exhale as much as they consume, and the amount consumed will
always be the amount that entrained carbon in the first place.


If there is more biomass, then there is more entrained CO2. But you
assert that all CO2 entrained in biomass is arguably part of your food
cycle over the course of a fairly short time.

No, I made no such assertion. The percentage of biomass devoted to producing
food for humans is a trivial proportion of total biomass. I pull more
seaweed biomass off my fish hooks than I could ever eat, for example. d8-)

Therefore, adding
vegetation must change the quantity entrained or emitted.

It does, but only over a short cycle -- hours for some algae, decades for
some trees. Then the carbon goes back into the atmosphere. Zero sum.

If you substantially increase total biomass, all you've done is provide
additional sequestration for some amount of CO2. I can't even guess at the
real numbers, but if the current amount of biomass sequesters 10% of the CO2
that otherwise would be in the atmosphere (or in the oceans, or entrained in
ice, or in carbonate rocks, etc.), then doubling it entrains 20% of that
CO2. If you keep re-planting, you can maintain that additional amount of
sequestering.

But adding more CO2 by burning more fossil fuel overcomes that additional
entrainment. You've bought yourself a little time (how much, I can't guess),
but you haven't stopped the process that leads to increasing atmospheric
CO2.

How can
this be? Because the population isn't constant. If there is more
biomass, then there will be more emission by processes such as rotting
and fermentation. Are those part of your food cycle?

Nope. The only part that we emit is the part that we actually eat. The rest
just goes through other cycles, as you have described.

Lots of details to keep track of.

Yup, if you let it happen, you can detail yourself into total stupifaction
in no time. That's the price of "rigor." d8-)

The way to overcome it is to look deeply into the individual processes, and
see if there are some that you can cut out from the herd so you don't have
to add them to your complex formulas. Like the food/respiration cycle, for
example. You can put numbers on it and measure the total effect -- made
simple by the fact that the net is always zero. They probably can put
numbers on the sequstration amounts and periods for different types of
non-food biomass, too, but that's for the experts to deal with.


In any case, if there is more biomass extant then there is, at any
given time, more carbon entrained in it. Since the amount of carbon
in a closed system is constant, that carbon must have come from
somewhere outside of your zero-sum cycle.

It does. It's the Biomass Not Eaten By Humans. That's a lot of biomass.


The larger model of continuous interacting processes in a closed
system doesn't require keeping track of such implicit
definitions,assumptions and caveats.

And it leads you up a creek, where you can't even see that adding other
biomass won't have ANY effect at all on the amount entrained in food, or
re-emitted to the atmosphere when we breathe. Large models can really mask a
lot of things that you could otherwise identify and measure.


Again, I stipulate
that all resiratory carbon was sequestered in biomass a relatively
short time ago. That leaves the matter moot of how much carbon being
emitted now will be removed by biomass extant now, if the total
biomass is not constant.

Again, it's an interesting question, but it has nothing to do with the
quantities of carbon entrained or emitted in the food cycle. It's a
separate
issue.

Well, it kinda does, but I'm beginning to understand your arguments
now that I understand the scope of your focus.

sigh But this is so painful. d8-)


For that matter, rates of growth (and
assimilation) can be positively influenced by atmospheric CO2 level.

Now you're getting into an issue that only our post-doctorate scientific
fellows on RCM should address. g

Ya mean those that can use Google?

Those who can separate the quackery from the real science. Some here live on
quackery. Google gives them cover.

Within the past few years, I've noted news stories that bring up arguments
among experts over the actual net entrainment from different kinds of
biomass. It would take some time just to figure out if there's a real
controversy, or if it was just a reporter looking for an outlier to produce
a story.



Your cycles assume that everything is constant. That isn't so.
Atmospheric CO2 has varied signicantly over the centuries long before
anyone was burning fossil fuels. If all CO2 cycles between biomass
and atmosphere in a closed system with no net change, this couldn't
happen.

Yes, it could, for reasons you've already brought up yourself. To list a
few, there's carbonic (or carbolic -- don't ask me) acid in the oceans
that
depends on temperature and perhaps other factors that infuence absorption
and retention rates; carbon entrained in carbonates; carbon emitted by
volcanos (I think); relative efficiency of different types of vegetation
as
carbon sinks; retention in polar ice; etc., etc. I'll leave those to the
experts. They're just distractions from the issues we were talking about.

Carbonic, not carbolic. They certainly are to the issues that I now
understand you want to talk about.

Don, I'd love to discuss the big issues here -- the entire system. But I'm
not qualified. Neither is anyone here, from what I've seen. They all just
pick out a few things they've read and conclude that it explains the whole
story.

All I can address here with competence is the original point I made, in
response to Larry's suggestion that there's some equivalence in terms of
total atmospheric CO2 over short periods of time between CO2 emitted by
breathing and that emitted by burning fossil fuel. That's clearly, and quite
simply, not the case.

As for what happens to that CO2 once it's in the atmosphere, I can read
well-written scientific papers, too, but I don't have the background on
these subject to evaluate their significance or their completeness. One
handicap is that I don't do atmospheric fluid dynamics, thermodynamics above
an elementary level, or chemistry. I can dabble in the quantum mechanics of
photoemission from greenhouse gases, but it's only dabbling. And as for the
consequences, in terms of global warming (or not), I think it's laughable
that non-experts would even assert an opinion. This gets me in hot water
with Larry. I laughed at one of his favorite quack books, and my goose was
cooked from that point onward. d8-)

When we have to take a position, all we're really doing is deciding whose
authority we'll accept. We don't really understand the *significance* of the
data.



Along comes fossil fuel. You handle this by labelling that CO2 as
"different", with an attendent "different" cycle for exactly the same
gas.

Same type of gas, entirely different cycle.

Sounds a bit like the rationalizations of a worried wizard,
nevermind science.

Engineers and scientists with whom I have discussed this understand
how accounting must be done in a closed system to properly understand
it and get meaningful answers. I'd like for you and others to at
least try to understand it.

I understand exactly what you're saying. And I understand why it's a
peripheral, distracting issue to the one being discussed. Your vegetation
issue has nothing to do with the food cycle. That's determined by the
amount
of food that's eaten, and no more is eaten than the amount produced.
Growing
more trees won't reduce or increase those amounts.

I don't need to be "right" here on this
forum, but I think we have a better chance of making good decisions if
we bother to understand what is going on.

I doubt if there are many people here who don't understand your point. My
hope is that they recognize that the process of entraining carbon, and the
length of the cycle in which it's released, is the core issue in comparing
human respiration with running engines on fossil fuel. That comparison has
nothing at all to do with other influences on CO2 levels in the
atmosphere.
That was the only issue.

OK, I'll buy that. My apologies for not suitably limiting my
attention.

g Don, the argument is all the result of our different habits of mind. You
know mine, and I know yours. Let's hope we don't ever have to team-teach a
technical subject together...

--
Ed Huntress

On Jul 28, 12:21*pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


Engineers refer to a quadrature component in any case where there is
phase difference. *It's standard notation. *However slight the phase
difference is, a quadrature component is necessary to develop torque.

The engineers I know, and the electronics I learned when studying for both
my amateur and commercial radiotelephone licenses, mean a 90-degree phase
shift -- pi/2. Anything else is a phase shift of different proportions -- *
not quadrature.

What kind of engineers call any phase shift "quadrature"? Mathematicians use
different meanings for the term, referring to different processes of
integration, but I've never heard that usage in engineering applications.


Ed, you need to know more engineers. Any phase shift can be expressed
in terms of in phase and quadrature components. Take a look at

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...e10117563240db

or just read this quote from there.

Abstract

The use of multiplier circuitry is shown to provide a simple way of
simultaneously measuring the in-phase and quadrature (phase-angle)
components of the signal in alternating current polarography. When
used with previously developed circuitry an extremely versatile
instrumental approach is available for detecting the second harmonic
and intermodular (frequency difference) components in addition to the
in-phase and quadrature components of the fundamental harmanic.

Dan

On Jul 28, 4:20*pm, " wrote:

Ed, you need to know more engineers. *Any phase shift can be expressed
in terms of *in phase and quadrature components. *

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Dan

Sorry should have signed that

Dan AD7PI

On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:21:12 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Don Foreman" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:19:15 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

But it was
apparent to me from the time you first commented that you must have been
absent the day they explained internal phase relationships and force in
single-phase motors. g You went so far off base, contending that those
motors operate in quadrature and so on (most inentionally do *not* operate
in quadrature; it's part of their design to have partially-shifted phases)
that I didn't even respond to much of it.

Engineers refer to a quadrature component in any case where there is
phase difference. It's standard notation. However slight the phase
difference is, a quadrature component is necessary to develop torque.

The engineers I know, and the electronics I learned when studying for both
my amateur and commercial radiotelephone licenses, mean a 90-degree phase
shift -- pi/2. Anything else is a phase shift of different proportions --
not quadrature.

Any phasor may be thought of as having two components, i and q,
inphase and quadrature. The resultant, or phasor, is the vector sum
of the two components. For a phasor of magnitude M at phase angle a,
i = M cos(a) and q = M sin(a).

What kind of engineers call any phase shift "quadrature"?

No kind. From above: "Engineers refer to a quadrature component in
any case where there is phase difference."

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:21:12 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Don Foreman" wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:19:15 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

But it was
apparent to me from the time you first commented that you must have been
absent the day they explained internal phase relationships and force in
single-phase motors. g You went so far off base, contending that those
motors operate in quadrature and so on (most inentionally do *not*
operate
in quadrature; it's part of their design to have partially-shifted
phases)
that I didn't even respond to much of it.

Engineers refer to a quadrature component in any case where there is
phase difference. It's standard notation. However slight the phase
difference is, a quadrature component is necessary to develop torque.

The engineers I know, and the electronics I learned when studying for both
my amateur and commercial radiotelephone licenses, mean a 90-degree phase
shift -- pi/2. Anything else is a phase shift of different proportions --
not quadrature.

Any phasor may be thought of as having two components, i and q,
inphase and quadrature. The resultant, or phasor, is the vector sum
of the two components. For a phasor of magnitude M at phase angle a,
i = M cos(a) and q = M sin(a).

What kind of engineers call any phase shift "quadrature"?

No kind. From above: "Engineers refer to a quadrature component in
any case where there is phase difference."


Right. Except, perhaps, for Dan's Australian friends. g That's why I said
that most single-phase motors do not run with an induced, second phase that
is in quadrature. The second phase can be at a wide variety of phase angles,
and many single-phase motors are made specifically to produce a second phase
that is NOT 90 degrees out of phase with the primary phase. It has to do
with producing better starting torque, but I forget the details.

I said this was a "partially shifted" phase, or something like that, in our
original discussion. That's exactly what it is. And you jumped all over me
for being an ignorant writer. g

--
Ed Huntress

wrote in message
...
On Jul 28, 4:20 pm, " wrote:

Ed, you need to know more engineers. Any phase shift can be expressed
in terms of in phase and quadrature components.

Dan

Sorry should have signed that

Dan AD7PI

That's OK.

--
Ed -- KC2NZT

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:50:10 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


But we weren't doing that. Nor is anyone here qualified to do it. We
were
just dealing with the simple question of whether you have to consider
human
respiration when you're looking at the total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere, versus additions that are the result of burning fossil fuel.
And
the answer is no, you don't.

... while actually refusing to consider "total additions of CO2 to the
atmosphere" but only "the core issue in comparing
human respiration with running engines on fossil fuel".

Don, I'm not "considering" it because it has nothing to do with human
respiration. It *does* have a lot to do with running engines on fossil
fuel.

I'm merely illustrating, with quotes, inconsistency in your
statements. Not an attack, just an observation.


Well, maybe I should hire a copy editor. g If you really took that long to
fully understand what I was saying, I'm surprised. The way I've described it
is a common one in discussions about greenhouse gasses.

But you've been trying to lump the two together, even making a point that
you think it doesn't matter where the CO2 comes from.

I have indeed, in the context of a system-level view. I now understand
that I was thinking beyond the scope in which you'd like to confine
this thread.

This is the second time I've given you that. If you'd like me to shut
up and shoot myself, let's talk about calibers. G


G! Please, God, not that. At least spare us the lengthy debates about
terminal ballistics in people. g

--
Ed Huntress

On Jul 28, 6:24*pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


Right. Except, perhaps, for Dan's Australian friends. g That's why I said
that most single-phase motors do not run with an induced, second phase that
is in quadrature. The second phase can be at a wide variety of phase angles,
and many single-phase motors are made specifically to produce a second phase
that is NOT 90 degrees out of phase with the primary phase. It has to do
with producing better starting torque, but I forget the details.

I said this was a "partially shifted" phase, or something like that, in our
original discussion. That's exactly what it is. And you jumped all over me
for being an ignorant writer. g

--
Ed Huntress

You and Don are really saying the same thing. Don is saying that
there is an in phase current and a quadrature current, which is
exactly the same thing as saying the current lags the voltage, or
saying that the current is not in phase with the voltage, but is
shifted.

Don did not say all the current was in quadrature. He said there was
quadrature current. Don was using cartesian coordinates and you are
using polar coordinates. Engineers tend to think in cartesian
coordinates because it makes solving problems easier. It is somewhat
like thinking in terms of frequency or in terms of time.

If he jumped on you and called you an ignorant writer, it was because
you were saying there was no quadrature current, but the current was
not in phase with the voltage. And if the current is not in phase
with the voltage, there is quadrature current.

In what you say above about a second current in addition to the in
phase is true. And one could use a convention of say a current that
is 60 degrees out of phase with the voltage and in phase current. But
it would make the math very complicated. The usual convention is
either the current is xx amps lagging the voltage by yy degrees. Or
the current is ww - j v v amps. Where j is the same as i. ( i^2 =
1 ).

Dan

There are fires like that world wide. The issue is they are complex and
self feeding. One would think you could seal off the outlets and the CO2
would smother the fire. Apparently not.

Water will do it but with massive pollution. It is best to let them
go and if possible isolate the fire into a pinch-out.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
"Our Republic and the Press will Rise or Fall Together": Joseph Pulitzer
TSRA: Endowed; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Originator & Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member. http://lufkinced.com/

On 7/27/2010 5:49 PM, Wild_Bill wrote:
Apparently the U.S.A. doesn't have any expertise/experience to offer concerning
extinguishing underground coal fires (or landfill fires, either), try those
terms in a search engine.

Centralia PA, burning since 1962, not only CO2, but a variety of toxic gasses. A
concerned citizen apparently offered to put the fire out for less than $200, but
the local officials couldn't approve the offer.

http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkHfnp2czZQ

So what it comes down to, is that fires somewhere else are evil, or worse than..

On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:24:32 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:




No kind. From above: "Engineers refer to a quadrature component in
any case where there is phase difference."


Right. Except, perhaps, for Dan's Australian friends. g That's why I said
that most single-phase motors do not run with an induced, second phase that
is in quadrature. The second phase can be at a wide variety of phase angles,
and many single-phase motors are made specifically to produce a second phase
that is NOT 90 degrees out of phase with the primary phase. It has to do
with producing better starting torque, but I forget the details.

I said this was a "partially shifted" phase, or something like that, in our
original discussion. That's exactly what it is. And you jumped all over me
for being an ignorant writer. g

I was objecting to your explanation of an AC induction motor by
describing a "driving pulse". And I didn't call you an ignorant
writer. I was actually complimentary:

"Ed, I'm surprised at you presenting such handwaving floobydust.
Driving pulse indeed! Such hubris from thee, editor and illucidator
of obscure contributions by the technically competent, champion of
rigorous research and questor of truth? Shame on you! :) "

What I get from stories like these, is that there frequently has not been,
any effective immediate response to many of the
once-small-now-turned-catastrophic type of emergencies.

It seems that the end result is frequently the same.. why should we (this
agency/branch) respond to, or pay for that?
Pass it on.. form a committee, etc.

Centralia PA is just one fairly common example of Inaction Equals
Catastrophy.
It was a small trash fire at the town dump that started the coal fire.
There very likely was a solution when it started in 1962.

I believe you're correct about the self-feeding mode. Nearly everything
burns at extreme temperatures.

--
WB
..........


"Martin H. Eastburn" wrote in message
...
There are fires like that world wide. The issue is they are complex and
self feeding. One would think you could seal off the outlets and the CO2
would smother the fire. Apparently not.

Water will do it but with massive pollution. It is best to let them
go and if possible isolate the fire into a pinch-out.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
"Our Republic and the Press will Rise or Fall Together": Joseph Pulitzer
TSRA: Endowed; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal.
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On 7/27/2010 5:49 PM, Wild_Bill wrote:
Apparently the U.S.A. doesn't have any expertise/experience to offer
concerning
extinguishing underground coal fires (or landfill fires, either), try
those
terms in a search engine.

Centralia PA, burning since 1962, not only CO2, but a variety of toxic
gasses. A
concerned citizen apparently offered to put the fire out for less than
$200, but
the local officials couldn't approve the offer.

http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkHfnp2czZQ

So what it comes down to, is that fires somewhere else are evil, or worse
than..

"Wild_Bill" wrote in message
...
What I get from stories like these, is that there frequently has not been,
any effective immediate response to many of the
once-small-now-turned-catastrophic type of emergencies.

It seems that the end result is frequently the same.. why should we (this
agency/branch) respond to, or pay for that?
Pass it on.. form a committee, etc.

Centralia PA is just one fairly common example of Inaction Equals
Catastrophy.
It was a small trash fire at the town dump that started the coal fire.
There very likely was a solution when it started in 1962.

I believe you're correct about the self-feeding mode. Nearly everything
burns at extreme temperatures.

I lived 20 miles north of Centralia until 1963. I used to play against their
Little League team in baseball. When the fire started, everyone thought it
would be extinguished without much trouble. Heh-heh.

There wasn't much inaction. Once they realized it was burning in an old
mine, they really tried to put it out. It just didn't work.

--
Ed Huntress

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:19:15 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

But it was
apparent to me from the time you first commented that you must have been
absent the day they explained internal phase relationships and force in
single-phase motors. g You went so far off base, contending that those
motors operate in quadrature and so on (most inentionally do *not* operate
in quadrature; it's part of their design to have partially-shifted phases)
that I didn't even respond to much of it.

Engineers refer to a quadrature component in any case where there is
phase difference. It's standard notation. However slight the phase
difference is, a quadrature component is necessary to develop torque.

The engineers I know, and the electronics I learned when studying for both
my amateur and commercial radiotelephone licenses, mean a 90-degree phase
shift -- pi/2. Anything else is a phase shift of different proportions --
not quadrature.

What kind of engineers call any phase shift "quadrature"? Mathematicians use
different meanings for the term, referring to different processes of
integration, but I've never heard that usage in engineering applications.

The critical word is "component". Any angle can be resolved into the sum of an
in-phase component and a quadrature component.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_%...ature_.28I.26Q.
29_components

Joe Gwinn

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:19:15 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

But it was
apparent to me from the time you first commented that you must have
been
absent the day they explained internal phase relationships and force in
single-phase motors. g You went so far off base, contending that
those
motors operate in quadrature and so on (most inentionally do *not*
operate
in quadrature; it's part of their design to have partially-shifted
phases)
that I didn't even respond to much of it.

Engineers refer to a quadrature component in any case where there is
phase difference. It's standard notation. However slight the phase
difference is, a quadrature component is necessary to develop torque.

The engineers I know, and the electronics I learned when studying for
both
my amateur and commercial radiotelephone licenses, mean a 90-degree phase
shift -- pi/2. Anything else is a phase shift of different proportions --
not quadrature.

What kind of engineers call any phase shift "quadrature"? Mathematicians
use
different meanings for the term, referring to different processes of
integration, but I've never heard that usage in engineering applications.

The critical word is "component". Any angle can be resolved into the sum
of an
in-phase component and a quadrature component.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_%...ature_.28I.26Q.
29_components

Joe Gwinn

Of course. But to be "in quadrature" means that the phases are displaced by
90 degrees. Anything else is some other phase shift.

For example, in one of the most common types of single-phase motors, the
basic split-phase, the starting phase lags the primary phase by, typically,
around 30 degrees.

--
Ed Huntress