The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Jerry wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
snip

[ in reply to someone else ]
well at least 5 posters agree with me, none with you. So who
looks a
dickhead?


The you and the other five, were is the proof that you (and they)
are correct?

Claiming that you're correct just because others agree doesn't
mean that you are correct, many pages on Wikipedia are wrong but
because the consensus between those who shout the loudest on the
talk pages think that they are correct the page holds incorrect
information...

Because relativity says its so. ANY release of energy is accompanied
by a loss of mass.

Its vanishingly small for typical mechanical and chemical energy, but
its there just the same.

If it isn't, relativity is falsified, and there is a huge hue and cry
out for an alternative.

Then you have completely misuderstood relativity. Energy and mass are
interconvertible but only under specific circumstances you will not find on
earth outside nuclear reactions. If release of energy is accompanied by a
reduction in mass then what you've got is nuclear fission. If you haven't
got nuclear fission then you don't get reduction of mass.

Outside of nuclear reactions, all you have is energy conservation and mass
conservation, and they are entirely separate. One form of energy can be
converted into another, but not into mass, and mass can never be converted
into energy.

Storing electrical energy in a battery is actually a conversion of
electrical energy into chemical energy. Discharging the battery is the
reverse. Mass is not involved in any way, even infinitessimally. If you
think it is, you are just wrong, wrong, wrong.

In article ,
Ron Lowe wrote:
Owain wrote:
but in Britain
we'd just create a few New Towns in Glencoe or the Brecon Beacons.


Ah, well.

Perhaps we'd get some decent competition to the lazy unwelcoming
hostelries at the Clachaig and Kingshouse.

I've always found Kingshouse very welcoming - what were you doing wrong?

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.11

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:12:14 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

isn't it 2.7 absolute or summat?

Sounds about right.

However on doing a quick web search that in fact
is the estimated current background temperature.

According to

http://www.advancedphysics.org/forum/showthread.php?t=8749

the posters there think the final temperature would be below 1 K.

And according to Wikipedia, any guess is dependent on whether one
uses a closed or ever expanding model of the universe.

"Tim S" wrote in message
...
: Jerry coughed up some electrons that declared:
:
:
: Claiming that you're correct just because others agree
doesn't
: mean that you are correct, many pages on Wikipedia are wrong
but
: because the consensus between those who shout the loudest on
the
: talk pages think that they are correct the page holds
incorrect
: information...
:
: Please feel free to refute the Wikipedia article I cited with a
sound
: reasoned argument, because it fits with everything I was taught
by doctors
: and professors in the subject field.

I just said some pages, not all, but what would stop someone
changing that page and then citing it here as being 'wrong' [1] -
that is how daft WP is!

[1] with luck the changes will be picked up upon by knowledgeable
people and reverted back but there is no certainty it will.
--
Regards, Jerry.

Kennedy McEwen wrote:
In article , Norman Wells
writes

Atmospheric extraction is totally unfeasible. Have you _any_ idea
how big the atmosphere is, and how small in comparison any man-made
extractor would be?

Yes, at surface density, it is equivalent to a uniform layer a little
less than 5 miles thick over the surface of the globe, some 200million
square miles, making the atmosphere approximately 1billion cubic miles
at surface density.

How many would we need do you think?

That depends on how fast you think we need to do it. The argument,
whether you believe it or not, is that we have managed to cause the
problem simply by a few hundred large CO2 producers over a couple of
hundred years. So a similar number of capture units should be capable
of sweeping it all up in a similar time, probably faster.

At a few hundred feet per minute a single atmospheric extraction unit
with a scrubber area of only 1 square mile, would take around 20,000
to remove all CO2 from the atmosphere, so a distributed system of 50
such systems around the planet would clear the problem in less time
that it took to create it in the first place - and we don't WANT to
get rid of all of the CO2 or we'd be in for a very cold future.

And wouldn't it be better to use trees as we always have?

No, because trees rely on natural air movement to access the
atmosphere, not forced air movement. And they tend to decay or be
burned, releasing their captured CO2 in the timescale.

How much energy do you think that will involve? How will these 'scrubbers'
work exactly, and how will they be powered? To extract anything that
constitutes just 0.04% of the atmosphere by passing it _all_ through
scrubbers, at speeds sufficient to suck in all the atmosphere of the planet
rather than wait for it to come to you, seems enormously wasteful.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
snip
:
: I personally think all fat stupid people should be shot., and
used to
: make heating oil. Is there a name for that?
:

Suicide?...

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I personally think all fat stupid people should be shot., and used to
make heating oil. Is there a name for that?

Extraordinary rendition, isn't it?

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:21:05 +0100, Norman Wells wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I personally think all fat stupid people should be shot., and used to
make heating oil. Is there a name for that?

Extraordinary rendition, isn't it?

LOL!




--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:48:29 +0100, "Norman Wells"
wrote:

If the whole of the UK sank overnight, never to inconvenience another
electron, China's increase in electricity generation at present rates would
negate that in under a year.

There are some *hoary* old chestnuts coming out in this debate.

"It's not worth taking any action, ever, because China cancels it all
out, always" is, if you will forgive me saying so, not the freshest of
arguments.

--

J G Miller wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:11:53 +0100, Tim S wrote:

The photon is considered to have zero mass *at rest*

This is something that has always bewildered me.

If something has zero mass, does it exist?



Well how much mass is there in the theory of gravity, so does it exists?

You can't look at the quantum world through neoclassical spectacles..it
simply makes no sense.

How do you know something has mass anyway? it resists motion. If its
resistance to motion is non linear, then one way to express that is to
say its mass changes with velocity.

Howver velocity is relative motion, so the question is, how can
something have a different mass depending on whether you are moving at
the same speed as it in the same direction, or more if you are moving in
the opposite direction?

I suppose what Einstein is really saying is that a things apparent mass
changes depending on the speed of it *relative to the observer*. There
is no such thing as absolute mass, there is only rest mass.. and of
course since a photon ALWAYS travels at the speed of light, it aint a
photon if it stops and gives up its energy to something else..



*If* that is the case, then presumably photons can never be at rest,
otherwise they would cease to be.


Indeed. It is considered that they sort of do when they interact with
something.

I suppose the other point of view is that outer space exists yet it
has effectively no mass.

But does it really have zero mass since even outer space
is not a pure vacuum and there are still one or two atoms
per large volume?


Space without anything at all in it, may be said not to exist at all.

Its a philosophically empty concept anyway, since without anything in
it, it cant be observed, measured, or talked about.

However, outer space must be composed of something in certain theories
since in those theories it is argued that it is bent by gravity, and
one cannot bend something which is not there.


Why not?

I am reliably informed that Peter Mandelson is bent, and thank the Lord,
he certainly isn't here, or indeed I suspect. all there, either ;-)

Anyway, you are 'confusing the map with the territory'.

Theories about the world, and indeed our perception of the world, are
not what the world IS. They are diagrams of aspects of it.


(Corrections or further explanation of my misapprehension gratefully awaited.)

Not much to say that greater minds than ours struggle to really pictrure
relativity and quantum physics ..I retreat into philosophy: Its easy for
me. I know absolutely nothing about anything for sure, and that's the
one sure thing. the rest is ideas about things: Those ideas rest on
assumptions many of which are metaphysical, and can neither be proved
nor disproved. They are just intellectual and perceptual sticks hammered
in the ground. Starting points for a suite of schemata that 'describe
the way stuff is'.

For example, in an infinite flat plain, wher am I? If its featureless, I
dont know, and it doesn't matter. Only when I put a stick in somewhere
and use another to measure against it, can I say things like 'I am three
sticks away from the One True Stick' If I put another stick in, I can
say 'I am three sticks away at an angle of 30 degrees to the One True
Stick and the One True Line' etc etc.

Classical physics relies on a simplistic world view in which mass is
conserved, and energy is conserved separately. Eisntein theorised that
this was an approximation that would break down in the limit, into mass
being an form *of* energy, and interchangeable with it. The proof of the
pudding was, amongst other things, that atom bombs and nuclear power
stations worked. The implications were that a would clock spring is a
few femto grams heavier than an unwound one. And that caesium clocks
orbiting the earth would run a tad slow - which they do.

So he had a choice: ditch the classical view altogether or modify it. He
chose to express it in the latter terms, by saying that energy and mass
are interchangeable and part of the same thing. Rather than dreaming up
a new thing and making them both expressions of that. He may have done
us a disservice there.

The finally important thing to understand is that you get into a heck of
a mess using the wrong worldview on a problem. We are born with, or
maybe we just learn, to look at the world in a single way, and call what
we see fact..real..if I kick it, and it hurts its not an illusion is
it? It's there! Or *is* it?..Kant certainly felt that his philosophical
reasonings removed any certainty about space, time, energy, mass..as
actual real world entities..no, he supposed them to be qualities by
which we apprehended the world and divided it into entities whose
relationships could be measured and whose interactions observed..there
was no evidence to suppose that they actually existed in the real world
at all, they existed merely as a common language we all shared (or just
some of us, it appears) to describe the world.


If you actually look at the modern quantum worldview philosophically,
that's pretty much the way it is. Something certainly is somewhere, but
what it is, and where it is is a LONG way from Fred Flintstone stubbing
his toe on a 'massive' rock. And the certainty that if he always kicks
it, it will always hurt..

The important thinmg to realise is that a set of accepted theories about
the world, and yea, even your perception of said world are not 1:1
apprehensions of what is 'really there' They are maps, one drawn by the
intellect, the other by the subconscious, to help you get around it in a
reasonable way. Science is an attempt to precisely define the terms of
all the elements it finds in a particular worldview. The 'what you see
is what it is' worldview. The problem is as it gets deeper and deeper,
it finds the whole thing unravelling, and gets patched with first
Newton, then Einstein in a desperate attempt to preserve the normal
experience of the world and describe the ultra fine or ultra coarse
detail of it in the same terms as you would describe a rock you stub
your toe on. With remarkable lack of success.

It is probably true to say that science at the Quantum level has almost
completely given up trying to provide a coherent picture of the world in
terms a normal person can understand: It has mathematical relationships
that seem to work, but the implications of making them 'true' pictures
of the world are so intellectually destructive that people simply don't
bother any more. Time and space are, it seems, no longer subject to the
same restraints we thought they were. Things can be anywhere and
everywhere at the same time, outcomes may cause events, and the present
arguments are whether there are 10, 12, 13 or more universes of which
this one is just random bits of all the others poking through. People
could go mad..

I console myself with the thought that since I didn't know what the
world was in the first place, not knowing what it is in ever more
complex ways doesn't REALLY bother me at any more.. ;-)


Whilst the average Joe, to judge by things I read on the 'net - hasn't
even really understood the way Newtonian physics says the world is, let
alone relativistic physics, and don't even go NEAR quantum physics. Even
the physicists doing it don't know. I understand it JUST enough to see
where the philosophical problems are. I have no solutions to them. Other
than the metaphysical as outlined here. Namely taht science cabnnot
continue to use a rational materialist worldview in pursuit of
science..which Kant's 'critique of Pure Reason' said what - 300 years
ago? but has been largely ignored or misunderstood (and I wouldn't say I
understand it totally either).

Jerry wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
snip
:
: I personally think all fat stupid people should be shot., and
used to
: make heating oil. Is there a name for that?
:

Suicide?...


Nope.

Definitely not fat, and stupid..no. Even total modesty wouldn't have me
describing myself thus. Not on a permanent basis anyway,..

Or were you talking to yourself?

Norman Wells wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I personally think all fat stupid people should be shot., and used to
make heating oil. Is there a name for that?

Extraordinary rendition, isn't it?

First funny thing you have said all day.,.:-)

Bill Wright wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Kennedy McEwen wrote:
In article , Java Jive
writes
Unless it's fed by gravity, like the Chatsworth one that was
mentioned, and does not use mains water that is thereby wasted, which
instead you could have drunk or used to shower, it is, as you say, not
strictly necessary, and is consuming CO2.

Isn't consuming CO2 meant to be a GOOD THING? ;-)

We need more consumption of CO2!

Carbon Capture is the way to go and it is the ONLY way that Britain will
make a significant difference.
The energy to capture all that CO2 will need a dozen nuclear power plants
to drive it.

Or 86 million windmills.


Oh no, no more than 20,000 at most.

Bill

J G Miller coughed up some electrons that declared:

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:11:53 +0100, Tim S wrote:

The photon is considered to have zero mass *at rest*

This is something that has always bewildered me.

If something has zero mass, does it exist?


It's a bit moot with a photon as it cannot be at rest in vacuo in normal
space[1] - and if it were, it would have zero energy and thus zero
frequency so nothing would be able to "see" it anyway.

[1] Better check with Hawking and others for the latest theories in weird
environments like black holes. Physics has always been about having a
theory, then there's a better theory that deals with edge cases the old one
didn't, ad infinitum probably...

I always chuckle when that Star Trek (I forget which sub series) wiffled on
about creating a photon decelerator that could harness the power of light
by bringing a photon to a dead halt. Many folk here have such a device - a
solar heating panel!

*If* that is the case, then presumably photons can never be at rest,
otherwise they would cease to be.

That would be a reasonable interpretation in the Einstein/Planck world. Feck
knows what theories abound now.

I suppose the other point of view is that outer space exists yet it
has effectively no mass.

Even there, weirdness abounds - I don't understand that stuff...

But does it really have zero mass since even outer space
is not a pure vacuum and there are still one or two atoms
per large volume?

That's not "space" so much as the contents of "space".

However, outer space must be composed of something in certain theories
since in those theories it is argued that it is bent by gravity, and
one cannot bend something which is not there.

Space (and time) are dimensions, so are conceptually different to matter.

(Corrections or further explanation of my misapprehension gratefully
awaited.)

Einstein's own book is surpisingly readable. Feynman wrote some pretty good
stuff too and a really fun book is "Mr Tompkins in Wonderland" which is a
fictional (but scientifically valid) look at how the world would be if the
speed of light were 30mph.

Cheers

Tim

Norman Wells wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Jerry wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
snip

[ in reply to someone else ]
well at least 5 posters agree with me, none with you. So who
looks a
dickhead?


The you and the other five, were is the proof that you (and they)
are correct?

Claiming that you're correct just because others agree doesn't
mean that you are correct, many pages on Wikipedia are wrong but
because the consensus between those who shout the loudest on the
talk pages think that they are correct the page holds incorrect
information...

Because relativity says its so. ANY release of energy is accompanied
by a loss of mass.

Its vanishingly small for typical mechanical and chemical energy, but
its there just the same.

If it isn't, relativity is falsified, and there is a huge hue and cry
out for an alternative.

Then you have completely misuderstood relativity. Energy and mass are
interconvertible but only under specific circumstances you will not find
on earth outside nuclear reactions. If release of energy is accompanied
by a reduction in mass then what you've got is nuclear fission. If you
haven't got nuclear fission then you don't get reduction of mass.


Oh dear me no.

You do. Its just almost unmeasurable, due to the fact that C squared is
a frigging big number.

Outside of nuclear reactions, all you have is energy conservation and
mass conservation, and they are entirely separate. One form of energy
can be converted into another, but not into mass, and mass can never be
converted into energy.


Oh yes it can, it is and it does, BUT the changes are virtually
undetectable.


Storing electrical energy in a battery is actually a conversion of
electrical energy into chemical energy. Discharging the battery is the
reverse. Mass is not involved in any way, even infinitessimally. If
you think it is, you are just wrong, wrong, wrong.

No, you are wrong wrong wrong.

A chemical compound does not weigh QUITE the same as its elements taken
separately.

If you use the pseudo relativistic Newtonian model of electrons orbiting
the nucleus in the valency shells, they have changed their orbits when
involved in a compound. That change amounts to a quanta of energy gained
or lost and a corresponding quantum of mass gained or lost.


You can see the effect described and IIRC tested in terms of light
pressure on a sail ..photons - things with no rest mass at all, are
emitted by even chemical reactions, and can exert momentum changes on
things.

J G Miller wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:12:14 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

isn't it 2.7 absolute or summat?

Sounds about right.

However on doing a quick web search that in fact
is the estimated current background temperature.

According to

http://www.advancedphysics.org/forum/showthread.php?t=8749

the posters there think the final temperature would be below 1 K.

And according to Wikipedia, any guess is dependent on whether one
uses a closed or ever expanding model of the universe.

Ah. A bit like how much money will we end up with at the end of the
world. 2.7p or 1p, depending on whether infinite economic expansion is
possible (the Ponzi cosmology) or the latter, the Malthus cosmology..

Norman Wells wrote:
Kennedy McEwen wrote:
In article , Norman Wells
writes

Atmospheric extraction is totally unfeasible. Have you _any_ idea
how big the atmosphere is, and how small in comparison any man-made
extractor would be?

Yes, at surface density, it is equivalent to a uniform layer a little
less than 5 miles thick over the surface of the globe, some 200million
square miles, making the atmosphere approximately 1billion cubic miles
at surface density.

How many would we need do you think?

That depends on how fast you think we need to do it. The argument,
whether you believe it or not, is that we have managed to cause the
problem simply by a few hundred large CO2 producers over a couple of
hundred years. So a similar number of capture units should be capable
of sweeping it all up in a similar time, probably faster.

At a few hundred feet per minute a single atmospheric extraction unit
with a scrubber area of only 1 square mile, would take around 20,000
to remove all CO2 from the atmosphere, so a distributed system of 50
such systems around the planet would clear the problem in less time
that it took to create it in the first place - and we don't WANT to
get rid of all of the CO2 or we'd be in for a very cold future.

And wouldn't it be better to use trees as we always have?

No, because trees rely on natural air movement to access the
atmosphere, not forced air movement. And they tend to decay or be
burned, releasing their captured CO2 in the timescale.

How much energy do you think that will involve? How will these
'scrubbers' work exactly, and how will they be powered? To extract
anything that constitutes just 0.04% of the atmosphere by passing it
_all_ through scrubbers, at speeds sufficient to suck in all the
atmosphere of the planet rather than wait for it to come to you, seems
enormously wasteful.

well you could use the wind that all the sucking does to power the
windmills to generate the power needed to do the sucking!

After all, with your worldview, perpetual motion is a snap, surely?

Tim S wrote:
J G Miller coughed up some electrons that declared:

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:11:53 +0100, Tim S wrote:

The photon is considered to have zero mass *at rest*
This is something that has always bewildered me.

If something has zero mass, does it exist?


It's a bit moot with a photon as it cannot be at rest in vacuo in normal
space[1] - and if it were, it would have zero energy and thus zero
frequency so nothing would be able to "see" it anyway.

[1] Better check with Hawking and others for the latest theories in weird
environments like black holes. Physics has always been about having a
theory, then there's a better theory that deals with edge cases the old one
didn't, ad infinitum probably...

I always chuckle when that Star Trek (I forget which sub series) wiffled on
about creating a photon decelerator that could harness the power of light
by bringing a photon to a dead halt. Many folk here have such a device - a
solar heating panel!

*If* that is the case, then presumably photons can never be at rest,
otherwise they would cease to be.

That would be a reasonable interpretation in the Einstein/Planck world. Feck
knows what theories abound now.

I suppose the other point of view is that outer space exists yet it
has effectively no mass.

Even there, weirdness abounds - I don't understand that stuff...

But does it really have zero mass since even outer space
is not a pure vacuum and there are still one or two atoms
per large volume?

That's not "space" so much as the contents of "space".

However, outer space must be composed of something in certain theories
since in those theories it is argued that it is bent by gravity, and
one cannot bend something which is not there.

Space (and time) are dimensions, so are conceptually different to matter.

Ah, but without matter, space doesn't exist..theres nothing to bend it..

Philosophically, space and time is the relationship between objects. No
objects=no relationship.

It takes two to tango..




(Corrections or further explanation of my misapprehension gratefully
awaited.)

Einstein's own book is surpisingly readable. Feynman wrote some pretty good
stuff too and a really fun book is "Mr Tompkins in Wonderland" which is a
fictional (but scientifically valid) look at how the world would be if the
speed of light were 30mph.

Dont worry, Nu Laber are working on it..

Cheers

Tim

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:37:56 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:



"Stephen" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:18:29 +0100, charles
wrote:

In article ,
Stephen wrote:
On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:38:14 +0100, "tim....."
wrote:


"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , Andrew
scribeth thus
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:43:54 -0700 (PDT), "alexander.keys1"
wrote:

There have been a lot of comments recently about the waste of energy
due to appliances being left on standby, and various gizmo's that
are
on offer to turn them off automatically, or otherwise purporting to
save energy. What everybody seems to be forgetting is that an
energy-
saving device comes with most UK socket outlets, it's called a
'switch', and when put into the 'off' position, power cosumption is
zero! None of my appliances, including computers, digital TV
receivers, etc. have come to harm through this practice, I always
switch off at the wall, back in the day when there were fewer
appliances this was standard procedure to avoid fire risk.

They can't switch the power stations off overnight, so they may as
well power the 1W my TV takes to be in standby.

I seem to remember that some hydro electric plant is powered down and
some gas fired .. but coal is rather long winded to slow down and
restart..

basically anything that is high power and heat driven doesnt
appreciate lots of heating up and cooling down.

used to be some of the really big generators needed to be left
spinning while cooling off......

They use the spare overnight power to pump the water back up in a
stored
hydro power station so that it's full in the morning when everyone
turns
their kettles on, so it isn't wasted.

except you only get back maybe 75% of what you put into the pumping
during generation.

And then you lose some more pushing all the power to N Wales and
getting it back again to somewhere useful.


but it was very close to a couple of nuclear power stations (probably now
closed) so the distribution losses would actually be rather low.

it is still running, but nt for much longer
http://www.magnoxnorthsites.com/abou...ts-and-figures

even then the pumped scheme is a bit bigger scale than the local
nuclear station - Dinorwic can generate at over 2 GW.

http://www.fhc.co.uk/dinorwig.htm

all this green electricity that seems a lot more reliable than all
those dinky toy wind turbines....

There is nothing green about dinorwic as far as co2 is concerned.
It is a net producer of co2, far more than the nuclear plant .

It is just a "rechargeable battery" nothing more.

true, but not the whole storey.

Dinorwic is there to improve the operation of the grid as a whole.

What it does is allow the grid to operate with a higher base load from
the more efficient plants and do something useful with the excess as
the load varies.

It is there to satisfy peaks in demand and uses more energy to recharge
overnight than it can ever deliver during the day. In doing so it may reduce
the co2 output from the total generating capacity, it may not depending on
the conditions at the time.

Yes - because the big stations take a lot of time to bring up and even
longer to shut down cleanly.

The biggest innovation in Dinorwic was not using it as a battery, but
how fast it can react to load changes.

Operating the grid with dinorwic in place is supposed to be equivalent
to having another 2 big nuclear stations in operation

To be more green we would just drop the supplies to some areas when the peak
demand got to high, however the customers may revolt.

the assumption here is that shedding load doesnt cause side effects,
and can be done quickly enough without causing stability issues to the
grid itself.

In reality there are lots of sites where unexpected shudowns cause
issues (data centres, hospitals ?).

also many sites where power continuity is critical have backup
generators - now those really are inefficient compared.

then we have all those widely varying input devices that cause
instability and so cannot be relied on within the base generation -
windmills for example.....
--
Regards

- replace xyz with ntl

The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:


Ah, but without matter, space doesn't exist..theres nothing to bend it..

Philosophically, space and time is the relationship between objects. No
objects=no relationship.

It takes two to tango..



When we did Special Relativity, a group of us did invite a fellow philosophy
student to share his opinions over a beer (they had recently been doing
something on space/time/existance or somesuch). We all got headaches... Was
fun though.


(Corrections or further explanation of my misapprehension gratefully
awaited.)

Einstein's own book is surpisingly readable. Feynman wrote some pretty
good stuff too and a really fun book is "Mr Tompkins in Wonderland" which
is a fictional (but scientifically valid) look at how the world would be
if the speed of light were 30mph.

Dont worry, Nu Laber are working on it..

At least the speed of light is uniform (in vacuo) so there are no over
achievers to have to hold back!

"J G Miller" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:52:07 +0100, Java Jive wrote:

After all, it was primarily built as a source of weapons-grade plutonium,
not to supply electricity, which was just a public cover story,
and the programme stated that it was sometimes drawing power from the
grid rather than supplying power to it!

Excellent points to keep in mind, and presumably the government thought
that it was in the best interests of the citizens of the UKofGB&NI to
produce plutonium rather than electric power.

It would seem that the French do thing differently though, as France
produces 77% of its electricity by nuclear power, and thus they are
not held hostage to coal, gas, and oil supplies in the same way as
UKofGB&NI electric power generators.


The important thing is the French have run their Nuclear power industry
on military lines, if something needs fixing it's done.

The EU now want it privatised, which is worrying as Three mile island
was run that way.

Remember the theme of the movie the China Syndrome was it costs
money to do things properly, so under a privatised regime it's tempting
to cut corners.

Whereas the Russian way is, what corners?

Steve Terry

In article o.uk,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
Did you know that the figure used by the UK government in the car
scrappage white paper for the CO2 impact of manufacturing a new car is
ONE TENTH that claimed by Ford? If Ford are correct, and making a
new car actually generates ten times as much CO2 as the government
believes, then the car scrappage scheme would be an environmental
faux pas.

er the car scrappage scheme isn't a "green" measure it's an economic
one to help the car companies through the downturn without giving
them a direct cash hand out.

Wonder why we're helping other countries when we're in such a state
ourselves?

--
*Reality is the illusion that occurs due to the lack of alcohol *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:14:48 +0100, Norman Wells wrote:

And wouldn't it be better to use trees as we always have?

No, because trees rely on natural air movement to access the
atmosphere, not forced air movement. And they tend to decay or be
burned, releasing their captured CO2 in the timescale.

How much energy do you think that will involve? How will these 'scrubbers'
work exactly, and how will they be powered?

Electricity... coming from power stations... powered by coal or gas.
It's bleedin' obvious innit?

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...
"Steve Terry" wrote in message
...
"Java Jive" wrote in message
...
snip
The only way we are ever going to get out of it is by acting together
each to do what we can.

Only way we are ever going to get out of it is if we put the goal
of Nuclear fusion on the same resource and priority footing
as the Manhattan project

I hope not we have already spent more than the Manhattan project
and I don't want to see fusion research stopped.


Nonsense, Manhattan between 1942 and 1945 took over 130,000 people,
70,000,000 pounds of silver from the U.S. Treasury reserves was used for
coils, and god know how many other resources

Projects at over thirty US sites, cash cost was only around $2B, but in real
terms
probably around 10% of the US's war time production capability.

If we put 10% of the industrialised worlds resources into fusion,
it would either be proved or disproved very quickly

But it's accountants that run the 21st century

Steve Terry

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Kennedy McEwen wrote:
In article , Java Jive
writes

Unless it's fed by gravity, like the Chatsworth one that was
mentioned, and does not use mains water that is thereby wasted, which
instead you could have drunk or used to shower, it is, as you say, not
strictly necessary, and is consuming CO2.

Isn't consuming CO2 meant to be a GOOD THING? ;-)
We need more consumption of CO2!

Carbon Capture is the way to go and it is the ONLY way that Britain will
make a significant difference.

The energy to capture all that CO2 will need a dozen nuclear power plants
to drive it.


Or with the Severn and Mersey tidal barriers only 8 nuclear power stations

Steve Terry

In article , Bill Wright
writes

Of course my grandparents' generation used the word for the room (or shed)
with the lavatory in it.

Derr, isn't that the origin of "coming out of the closet", as in
"cottaging"?
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's ****ed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

In article , The Natural Philosopher
writes
I personally think all fat stupid people should be shot., and used to
make heating oil. Is there a name for that?

Common sense. ;-)

At school, over 40 years ago, we used to debate the dubious value of
exams and whether being sent to the glue factory on failure should be
real or allegorical.

I still think we'll have to do it sooner or later, its only conflict and
plague that have avoided it so far and we haven't had enough of that
lately.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's ****ed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

In article , Norman Wells
writes

How much energy do you think that will involve?

Does it matter, as long as the CO2 it produces is less than the CO2
taken out of the atmosphere during the life of the facility?

BTW, this is only one atmospheric extraction concept.

Simply dropping the mean ocean temperature by 1/500th degC compensates
for the entire annual anthropgenic CO2 production (a fact that itself
questions the anthropogenic argument). There are may ways of
implementing that and the oceans have a huge area.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's ****ed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

In article , J G Miller
writes
On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:12:14 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

isn't it 2.7 absolute or summat?

Sounds about right.

Doesn't that depend on the final volume of the universe, which in turn
depends on the unresolved question of whether the universe is concave,
convex or flat. Most recent measurements suggest it is nearly flat, but
the error in those measurements isn't enough to conclude that it won't
collapse to a singularity again.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's ****ed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Adrian wrote:
English is the de facto international language.

One thinmg taht did come over

That sounds more like Esperanto!

Bill

In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
I personally think all fat stupid people should be shot., and used to
make heating oil. Is there a name for that?

What about thin stupid people, or fat intelligent people?

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

Bill Wright wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Adrian wrote:
English is the de facto international language.

One thinmg taht did come over

That sounds more like Esperanto!

Mi esporas ke kiam vi venos la vetero estos milda.

--
Enzo

I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.

"Zero Tolerance" wrote in message
...
: On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:48:29 +0100, "Norman Wells"
: wrote:
:
: If the whole of the UK sank overnight, never to inconvenience
another
: electron, China's increase in electricity generation at
present rates would
: negate that in under a year.
:
: There are some *hoary* old chestnuts coming out in this debate.
:
: "It's not worth taking any action, ever, because China cancels
it all
: out, always" is, if you will forgive me saying so, not the
freshest of
: arguments.
:

But it's an *honest* argument! All we (the UK and EU) are doing
is harming ourselves (economically) whilst making not one jot of
difference environmentally, it's a bit like someone ****ing into
the ocean and trying to claim that they have caused an increase
in sea levels - or in this case, a decrease...
--
Regards, Jerry.

"Kennedy McEwen" wrote in message
...
: In article , Bill
Wright
: writes
:
: Of course my grandparents' generation used the word for the
room (or shed)
: with the lavatory in it.
:
: Derr, isn't that the origin of "coming out of the closet", as
in
: "cottaging"?

Err, no, I think you are thinking of "Skeletons (secrets) in the
closet".

AIUI the Homosexuals "came out (into the open)", after the many
years of having to hide their sexual orientation from the law and
society (even post '67 to one degree or other, many still have to
'hide').

Few homosexuals would not want to admit to "cottaging", even
today, as it's still an illegal act...
--
Regards, Jerry.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
: Jerry wrote:
: "The Natural Philosopher" wrote in
message
: ...
: snip
: :
: : I personally think all fat stupid people should be shot.,
and
: used to
: : make heating oil. Is there a name for that?
: :
:
: Suicide?...
:
:
: Nope.
:
: Definitely not fat, and stupid..no. Even total modesty wouldn't
have me
: describing myself thus. Not on a permanent basis anyway,..

In other words, you're not fat nor stupid at the same time! ;-)

:
: Or were you talking to yourself?

I was answering *your* question, if you killed me it would be
murder, or at least manslaughter on the grounds of diminished
responsibility...

"Norman Wells" wrote in message
...
: The Natural Philosopher wrote:
:
: I personally think all fat stupid people should be shot., and
used to
: make heating oil. Is there a name for that?
:
: Extraordinary rendition, isn't it?

I'm larding by head off at that 'joke'... Please don't give the
ultra-right in the USA ideas. :~(

"Jerry" wrote in message
...
:
snip
:
: Few homosexuals would not want to admit to "cottaging", even
: today, as it's still an illegal act...

Oops, a stray "not" in the above...

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Norman Wells wrote:

Because relativity says its so. ANY release of energy is accompanied
by a loss of mass.

Its vanishingly small for typical mechanical and chemical energy,
but its there just the same.

If it isn't, relativity is falsified, and there is a huge hue and
cry out for an alternative.

Then you have completely misuderstood relativity. Energy and mass
are interconvertible but only under specific circumstances you will
not find on earth outside nuclear reactions. If release of energy
is accompanied by a reduction in mass then what you've got is
nuclear fission. If you haven't got nuclear fission then you don't
get reduction of mass.


Oh dear me no.

You do. Its just almost unmeasurable, due to the fact that C squared
is a frigging big number.

Outside of nuclear reactions, all you have is energy conservation and
mass conservation, and they are entirely separate. One form of
energy can be converted into another, but not into mass, and mass
can never be converted into energy.


Oh yes it can, it is and it does, BUT the changes are virtually
undetectable.

sigh

Education today.

Steve Terry wrote:
"J G Miller" wrote in message
news

The important thing is the French have run their Nuclear power
industry on military lines, if something needs fixing it's done.

The EU now want it privatised, which is worrying as Three mile island
was run that way.

Remember the theme of the movie the China Syndrome was it costs
money to do things properly, so under a privatised regime it's
tempting to cut corners.

Yes, we should all pay full attention to a fictional work whose main premise
is that a nuclear meltdown in the USA would burrow its way through the earth
all the way to China, shouldn't we? Particularly since any knowledge at all
of gravity renders that impossible, and any knowledge of geography means it
should have been called The Indian Ocean Syndrome.

Steve Terry wrote:
"dennis@home" wrote in message
...
"Steve Terry" wrote in message
...
"Java Jive" wrote in message
...
snip
The only way we are ever going to get out of it is by acting
together each to do what we can.

Only way we are ever going to get out of it is if we put the goal
of Nuclear fusion on the same resource and priority footing
as the Manhattan project

I hope not we have already spent more than the Manhattan project
and I don't want to see fusion research stopped.


Nonsense, Manhattan between 1942 and 1945 took over 130,000 people,
70,000,000 pounds of silver from the U.S. Treasury reserves was used
for coils, and god know how many other resources

Projects at over thirty US sites, cash cost was only around $2B, but
in real terms
probably around 10% of the US's war time production capability.

If we put 10% of the industrialised worlds resources into fusion,
it would either be proved or disproved very quickly

What do you mean 'proved or disproved'? It exists. It just is.

What we have to do is develop it into a workable system for energy
production here on earth. And that's a bottomless pit. It has no end.

At the moment, actually, it sadly doesn't have a beginning either.