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If this is global warming...
On Feb 17, 12:12 pm, wrote:
On Feb 14, 1:02 pm, "Robatoy" wrote: Up to my groin in snow. Just a few drifts. *poke, poke, poke* "There's a car in here somewhere..." http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2798.htm GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE FOR JANUARY HIGHEST ON RECORD, U.S. TEMPERATURE NEAR AVERAGE FOR MONTH ...and how will that help me find my car? I had NO idea that this would trigger such an avalanche of responses. But, as with every thread which explodes, a nugget pops out which wins the thread. This is the winner: I see little difference between using fuel burned 93 million miles away and using fuel burned ten feet away. On the left, our sun, source of all life on earth, on the right a Kawaswaki weed-whacker. Sun, Kawaswaki weed-whacker Sun, Kawaswaki weed-whacker Little difference.... other than the fact that I can turn off the weed- whacker. *bangs head on desk* r |
If this is global warming...
Robatoy wrote:
| On Feb 17, 12:12 pm, wrote: || On Feb 14, 1:02 pm, "Robatoy" wrote: || ||| Up to my groin in snow. ||| Just a few drifts. ||| *poke, poke, poke* ||| "There's a car in here somewhere..." || || http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2798.htm || || GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE FOR JANUARY HIGHEST ON RECORD, U.S. || TEMPERATURE NEAR AVERAGE FOR MONTH || | ..and how will that help me find my car? | | I had NO idea that this would trigger such an avalanche of | responses. But, as with every thread which explodes, a nugget pops | out which wins the thread. | | This is the winner: | || I see little || difference between using fuel burned 93 million miles away and || using fuel burned ten feet away. | | On the left, our sun, source of all life on earth, on the right a | Kawaswaki weed-whacker. | Sun, Kawaswaki weed-whacker | Sun, Kawaswaki weed-whacker | | Little difference.... other than the fact that I can turn off the | weed- whacker. | | | *bangs head on desk* Think how much we'd save by turning off the sun at night. 8-) Hope you find your car. -- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 17, 12:30 pm, "Morris Dovey" wrote:
Think how much we'd save by turning off the sun at night. 8-) The Canuckistani Space Exploration program suggested we send some of our astronauts to the sun. So we wouldn't burn up, we'd go at night. Hope you find your car. Thanks The remote starter helped me find it. r |
If this is global warming...
In article , J. Clarke wrote:
Fusion is a "fueled technology". Considering that the amount of hydrogen in the solar system is many times the mass of the Earth, if we ever need to move beyond fusion we're screwed anyway. Never mind the hydrogen available in the rest of the solar system -- there's more than enough available right here. The main obstacle to getting from here to there is the same people who are demanding that we abandon "fueled technologies". They seem to think that solar power is not "fueled" or something. I see little difference between using fuel burned 93 million miles away and using fuel burned ten feet away. I've seen estimates of the sun's remaining lifespan ranging from a few hundred million years, to a few billion years. Either end of this range constitutes an effectively infinite resource. With respect to the *mass* available for fuel (whether chemical or nuclear), this planet is for all practical purposes a closed system, and therefore the fuel available ten feet (or ten miles, or ten thousand miles) away must be considered a finite resource. Until we develop a practical means of generating power by nuclear fusion, that is. -- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com) It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again. |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 16, 3:55 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
... No - I am suggesting that the reason that the full debate about GW is not being held in the refereed journals is because it currently serves more people to preserve the claimed scientific orthodoxy than not to. How? But first you need to define 'scientific orthodoxy' (one of your favorite terms) and explain how it is established. The models are so complex and multi-variate that there is no "fact of GW" there is simply a variety of positions to explain currently observed phenomena - none of which is indisputable or clearly refutes the other. My objection is not to the study of GW and its causes/effects. My objection is the vast overstatement about just how much we really *know* about it. To listen to you and others, one would thing there is little left to debate. It's simply not so. Would not a vigorous debate in serious scientific circles HELP to raise more funding? Who is going to fund a program to study something that is already well- established? And who, exactly are the "patrons" who stand to gain from all this cooking of the books by advocates of GW? Exxon? GM? Utilities? Truckers? Big Oil? Oh, sorry--they're the Other Guys. The government has a lot more money to spend on research than the big eeeeeevil oil companies. Government with lots of money is a recipe for corruption. Who has the money to fund the politicians who budget the government research? Unless you can provide hard evidence of your position, like maybe 10.000 scientific papers to offset those that have been published, your argument is completely invalid. No - *your* position is bogus. Science is NOT about consensus or who has the most papers published. It is about *data*. The fact that there remains a vibrant discussion among serious scientists about these issues but that this debate is NOT being published ought to give you a hint as to how corrupted the GW debate has become by politics. In the absence of publication, how did you establish the existence of significant debate among serious scientists? And you can send it to Gore and his crowd who by every measure have been far worse in their prostitution of science of political gain. The Bush administration are pikers by comparison. Gore's global whining campaign bears no resemblance to science, data, or logic, but gets lots of traction among he earth worshipers. Gore has''t run for office since 2000 and plainly has no plans to ever run again. If he has ulterior motives for what he is promoting, what are they? -- FF |
If this is global warming...
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 11:23:43 -0600, "Morris Dovey"
wrote: J. Clarke wrote: | On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:28:00 -0600, "Morris Dovey" | wrote: || Ultimately, we'll need to move beyond fueled technologies || altogether. | | Fusion is a "fueled technology". Considering that the amount of | hydrogen in the solar system is many times the mass of the Earth, if | we ever need to move beyond fusion we're screwed anyway. Umm - ok. I was fairly sure that /someone/ was bound to muddy the water if I didn't provide anti-nitpick definitions. Let's limit the discussion to the planet on which we (well, most of us) find ourselves; and just stipulate that the planet is the recipient of a bounty of energy produced by a remote fusion reaction for which we need not provide the fuel. Why stipulate that? Sounds like you're saying to put all our research eggs into the solar basket and ignore every other possibility. || The path from where we are to there appears to me to be bumpy and || uphill - and our largest challenge appears to be that of preparing || our offspring to make that journey and produce sound decisions en || route. My biggest worry is that we're not meeting that challenge. | | The main obstacle to getting from here to there is the same people | who are demanding that we abandon "fueled technologies". They seem | to think that solar power is not "fueled" or something. I see | little difference between using fuel burned 93 million miles away | and using fuel burned ten feet away. I've never actually encountered even a single person who demanded that we abandon fueled technologies in the sense I used the phrase. I can understand that you are concerned about our hydrogen budget; but I try to restrict my attention to those things that'll have greatest impact in the more immediate (say, within the next million years or so) time frame. Huh? With the time frame so restricted, the difference between fuel supply 10' away from you and that being consumed by our sun should be clear even to the most obtuse among us... Perhaps you can explain it. ||| Even if we had an alternative planet to live on and the means to ||| get there, would it make sense to use this one up? || || Perhaps - perhaps not - but until we know enough to answer that || question it seems reasonable to pass it on in at least as good || condition as we found it. | | Define "good condition". If you mean "exactly the same" you will | eventually end up fighting natural processes to keep it there. Yes - I can see that I really should have been more specific about the time frame. But what is the time frame? What if right now we are seeing the transition from cyclic glaciation to steady-state without glaciers? |
If this is global warming...
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 11:30:47 -0600, "Morris Dovey"
wrote: Robatoy wrote: | On Feb 17, 12:12 pm, wrote: || On Feb 14, 1:02 pm, "Robatoy" wrote: || ||| Up to my groin in snow. ||| Just a few drifts. ||| *poke, poke, poke* ||| "There's a car in here somewhere..." || || http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2798.htm || || GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE FOR JANUARY HIGHEST ON RECORD, U.S. || TEMPERATURE NEAR AVERAGE FOR MONTH || | ..and how will that help me find my car? | | I had NO idea that this would trigger such an avalanche of | responses. But, as with every thread which explodes, a nugget pops | out which wins the thread. | | This is the winner: | || I see little || difference between using fuel burned 93 million miles away and || using fuel burned ten feet away. | | On the left, our sun, source of all life on earth, on the right a | Kawaswaki weed-whacker. | Sun, Kawaswaki weed-whacker | Sun, Kawaswaki weed-whacker | | Little difference.... other than the fact that I can turn off the | weed- whacker. | | | *bangs head on desk* Think how much we'd save by turning off the sun at night. 8-) Hope you find your car. And now we see the fundamental problem with the solar or nothing loons. They don't grasp that regardless of where the energy comes from some resource is being used up to provide it. The energy that that Kawasaki uses came from "our sun, source of all life on earth" (actually that's hardly true), it's just stored in a convenient form. |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 17, 12:09 pm, Mark & Juanita wrote:
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 14:12:48 GMT, (Doug Miller) wrote: In article , "Leon" wrote: wrote in message groups.com... Which amounts to about 1 percent of the total CO2 in the atmosphere, the remainder of which is put there by natural processes that are dynamic in nature. If, as you suggest, we are putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere that the total increases by 1% per year that adds up pretty fast, doesn't it? Um, he said, 1% of the total. Not 1% per year extra. And adding 1% of the total, every year, is different from 1% per year extra, exactly how? Let's not lose site of the fact that the earth is not an open-cycle system. CO2 is added and subtracted due to photosynthesis and other mechanisms. Those processes themselves are complex, closed-loop systems, thus making a purely "addition-driven" computation show only part of the equation. The biggest uncertainty seems to be in the ocean's capacity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphe http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/...sti_id=5285590 Here's an interesting discussion of why that matters: http://sedac.ciesin.org/mva/TW1993/TW1993.html And here is something else to worry about: http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/g...tes/title.html -- FF |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 17, 2:39 pm, J. Clarke wrote:
And now we see the fundamental problem with the solar or nothing loons. Where did I say 'solar or nothing'? They don't grasp that regardless of where the energy comes from some resource is being used up to provide it. Used up...as in.. when I heat my pool with a solar heater, the sun will glow dimmer? The energy that that Kawasaki uses came from "our sun, source of all life on earth" (actually that's hardly true), it's just stored in a convenient form. If that isn't true, where _did_ it come from, directly or indirectly? And drilling thousands of feet in some cases, to fetch this energy is hardly 'convenient', especially when you include the transportation, refining, and further distribution. Speaking of loons, I didn't even touch on the geopolitical/military consequences to the fetching of this convenient source. Nor did I touch on the noise and the stink of this convenient form. r |
If this is global warming...
Larry Blanchard wrote:
wrote: On Feb 16, 11:05 pm, Mark & Juanita wrote: On 16 Feb 2007 19:01:56 -0800, wrote: On Feb 17, 12:36 am, (Doug Miller) wrote: In article . com, wrote: C'mon folks, we've beaten this topic to death. Nobody is changing anyone else's mind any more, if ever. Let's drop it. Gee, just when I thought I was winning. You're right about the multi-screen thread, Larry, and about people's minds not being changed, but the discussion was generally mature and thoughtful, and at the least it may lead to some serious rethinking. Now back to the astronomy newsgroup where the resident troll wants us to boycott the Bank of America. Bob |
If this is global warming...
wrote:
On Feb 16, 3:55 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote: ... No - I am suggesting that the reason that the full debate about GW is not being held in the refereed journals is because it currently serves more people to preserve the claimed scientific orthodoxy than not to. How? Because its easier to get funding that way. But first you need to define 'scientific orthodoxy' (one of your favorite terms) and explain how it is established. We've been down this road before, you and I. You like to believe in the pure priesthood of science wherein the only debate is that about dispassionate acquisition of knowledge. But the history of science is unfortunately rather clear that more emotional human issues frequently cloud the environment. Yes, the scientific method itself - when followed - minimizes bias. But it cannot operate when funding is denied to those who oppose the currently regnant beliefs of the scientific establishment, such that no research can even take place. The cause, severity, and consequences of GW are hardly established indisputably, yet funding remains primarily available to those expressing the anthropogenic argument. The models are so complex and multi-variate that there is no "fact of GW" there is simply a variety of positions to explain currently observed phenomena - none of which is indisputable or clearly refutes the other. My objection is not to the study of GW and its causes/effects. My objection is the vast overstatement about just how much we really *know* about it. To listen to you and others, one would thing there is little left to debate. It's simply not so. Would not a vigorous debate in serious scientific circles HELP to raise more funding? Who is going to fund It might, but it's far from certain. Again, you assume a certain purity within the priesthood that I do not think is supported by the history of science. The methods of science are dispassionate (more or less), the people using and funding them are not. a program to study something that is already well- established? Oh, I don't know. You would argue that evolutionary theory is "well established" but it manages to continue to get lots and lots of funding. And who, exactly are the "patrons" who stand to gain from all this cooking of the books by advocates of GW? Exxon? GM? Utilities? Truckers? Big Oil? Oh, sorry--they're the Other Guys. The government has a lot more money to spend on research than the big eeeeeevil oil companies. Government with lots of money is a recipe for corruption. Who has the money to fund the politicians who budget the government research? Let's see ... hmm, the biggest lobbying group in Washington is the AARP so at least in the US, the biggest funding for politicians comes from old people who want to burden the rest of society with the expenses they themselves did not save for. Is that what you mean? How about the endless parade of other special interests who want "exceptions" made into law for their special "needs". About the only large lobbying group in the US that does NOT want any exception is the NRA - the #2 lobbying organization. They want the bill of rights of the US *left intact*. I suppose you were trying to lead me to the big eeeeeeevil corps. as the source of political funding, but they are just one of many voices. More importantly, for the most part, funding is determined by professional bureaucrats who survive political change like roaches survive nuclear fallout. Notwithstanding the recent Bush administration pressure on the climate researchers, for the most part politicians have actual little day-to-day say in what does or does not get funded. For that we have DARPA, NASA, EPA, and all the rest of the government alphabet soup. And *that's* where the scientific status quo gets preserved more than any other place. Unless you can provide hard evidence of your position, like maybe 10.000 scientific papers to offset those that have been published, your argument is completely invalid. No - *your* position is bogus. Science is NOT about consensus or who has the most papers published. It is about *data*. The fact that there remains a vibrant discussion among serious scientists about these issues but that this debate is NOT being published ought to give you a hint as to how corrupted the GW debate has become by politics. In the absence of publication, how did you establish the existence of significant debate among serious scientists? By listening to dissenting scientific voices elsewhere. These are well documented. Serious climatologists have spoken vigorously in opposition to today's overstated certainty about causes, severity, and results of GW and have been shunned from overtly political tomes like the IPCC through more serious peer-reviewed journals. The absence of journal presence does not imply the absence of dissent, merely the inability to get the dissent aired in an open way. DAGS if you really don't believe there are serious opposing voices. And you can send it to Gore and his crowd who by every measure have been far worse in their prostitution of science of political gain. The Bush administration are pikers by comparison. Gore's global whining campaign bears no resemblance to science, data, or logic, but gets lots of traction among he earth worshipers. Gore has''t run for office since 2000 and plainly has no plans to ever run again. If he has ulterior motives for You are seriously kidding yourself. He is drooling the shadows waiting for Mrs. Bill and Barak Obama to eviscerate each other in the primaries and then wants to ride in as a "healing candidate" to "save" the libs. what he is promoting, what are they? Like all lifelong politicians, he is self-important a full of his own myths. Deep down inside he certainly thinks he knows what's good for the rest of us. So much so that he permits himself latitude that he would never grant others. He's so very important that it's OK for him to fly in private jets - a clearly inefficient method of carrying one or two people - while hectoring the rest of us for buying SUVs. He and his ilk are prostitutes, parasites, hypocrites, and scoundrels. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ |
If this is global warming...
............................I FOUND MY CAR, DAMMIT!!!!!
Now everybody TO YOUR ROOM!!! ....and think about what ya'll just did here. When the post count hits 300, it will be like an episode of LOST in here...KABOOM! So no more posting... I'm telling ya,,, she'll blow!!! |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 17, 11:55 am, Larry Blanchard wrote:
wrote: On Feb 16, 11:05 pm, Mark & Juanita wrote: On 16 Feb 2007 19:01:56 -0800, wrote: On Feb 17, 12:36 am, (Doug Miller) wrote: In article . com, wrote: C'mon folks, we've beaten this topic to death. Nobody is changing anyone else's mind any more, if ever. Let's drop it. But the Earth is poised to kill us all with a giant fart bubble: http://www.mnforsustain.org/energy%2...tes%20Collapse (Who says I don't have a sense of humor?) -- FF |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 17, 7:21 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
wrote: On Feb 16, 3:55 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote: ... No - I am suggesting that the reason that the full debate about GW is not being held in the refereed journals is because it currently serves more people to preserve the claimed scientific orthodoxy than not to. How? Because its easier to get funding that way. But first you need to define 'scientific orthodoxy' (one of your favorite terms) and explain how it is established. We've been down this road before, you and I. As I recall, you didn't define it then either. ... In the absence of publication, how did you establish the existence of significant debate among serious scientists? By listening to dissenting scientific voices elsewhere. Such as? These are well documented. Please point us to that documentation. Serious climatologists have spoken vigorously in opposition to today's overstated certainty about causes, severity, and results of GW and have been shunned from overtly political tomes like the IPCC through more serious peer-reviewed journals. The absence of journal presence does not imply the absence of dissent, merely the inability to get the dissent aired in an open way. DAGS if you really don't believe there are serious opposing voices. DAGS on variation of the solar constant. You'll find an awful lot of work is being funded and published, contrary to your assertions of repression. Gore has''t run for office since 2000 and plainly has no plans to ever run again. If he has ulterior motives for You are seriously kidding yourself. He is drooling the shadows waiting for Mrs. Bill and Barak Obama to eviscerate each other in the primaries and then wants to ride in as a "healing candidate" to "save" the libs. More conspiracy nonsense. -- FF |
If this is global warming...
"Robatoy" wrote in message
oups.com... Up to my groin in snow. Just a few drifts. *poke, poke, poke* "There's a car in here somewhere..." If I built a shop SWMBO could get the garage back. http://www.markjerde.com/Photos/2007...s/040-Car.html -- Mark |
If this is global warming...
"Morris Dovey" wrote in message ... Think how much we'd save by turning off the sun at night. 8-) WHOA! YEAH! We'll call it DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME! Get it? -- NuWave Dave in Houston |
If this is global warming...
J. Clarke wrote:
No? Then how do you propose to move large numbers of people to another planet? Bill I don't. That's Hawkings idea. I propose that we take really, really good care of the one we have until we are CERTAIN we have found another and KNOW how to get there. I don't call that 'earth worship' ... but simple prudent stewardship. -- Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world. Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881) http://nmwoodworks.com |
If this is global warming...
On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:29:11 -0700, "DouginUtah"
wrote: "Swingman" wrote in message [Snip of Swingman's opinions] I do not understand the thought processes of people who believe that we can dump 20+ billion tons (Gt) of CO2 gases into the atmosphere every year, year after year, and not believe that it is going to have a major effect on the earth's climate, considering that there is a definite direct positive correlation between temperature and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. You know, there may very well be global warming- I'm not a climate scientist, and I can't make the assertion that there is not. *But* there is absolutely nothing at all that we are going to be able to do about it. If every man, woman and child in the US, Canada and Europe do everything that is being suggested to remedy the situation, China will continue to have it's industrial revolution. And we are not going to war to stop them- we depend on them too heavily, and they hold far too much of our outstanding debt. Even if that were not the case, there is no moral grounds for holding them back from doing what our own country has already done and largely passed through. I've got a fuel-efficient car. It was to save money at the gas pump, and not to placate eco-nuts. But that's about the extent of what I'm willing to do before the Orient decides they're going to stop burning coal like it's going out of style and erecting cities the size of Detroit every week. I'm not willing to freeze to death in the dark so that I can wear a green t-shirt and hang out with hippies. Whether the whole deal is true or not, the US is not the major culprit in this- if you're talking about emmissions from the early 1900's, then yes, mea culpa. But we've already cleaned up our acts, despite the attempts to make everyone feel guilty about using lights at night and having the audacity to drive a car to work every day. So cross your fingers and hope for the best. That's what you can do about it, just like most of the things in the world. |
If this is global warming...
|
If this is global warming...
Prometheus wrote in
: *snip* You know, there may very well be global warming- I'm not a climate scientist, and I can't make the assertion that there is not. Like most things, it's something we can't prove for sure until someone comes up with a reliable way to test it. Perhaps the solution is to teach two (a master and apprentice) people how to take proper weather measurements and go back in time so we've got all the proper data we need for several thousand years, not just the 100 or so we've got now. (Then, this would upset the timeline and we'd skew from this 1985 into an alternate 1985.) *snip: Paragraph I'm not interested in commenting on besides to comment that I'm not interested in commenting on the paragraph that I refused to comment on except for this comment and lengthy sentence.) I've got a fuel-efficient car. It was to save money at the gas pump, and not to placate eco-nuts. But that's about the extent of what I'm willing to do before the Orient decides they're going to stop burning coal like it's going out of style and erecting cities the size of Detroit every week. I'm not willing to freeze to death in the dark so that I can wear a green t-shirt and hang out with hippies. I'm all for "Goin' green" (no "greenage" here... sorry Dusty,) but I don't want to give up anything for it. My primary light sources at home happen to be flourescent. I'm getting more light at less wattage, it's a winning situation. I'm looking into buying a Prius now, the main selling points being gas mileage and design (it looks like a very well designed car). The environmental aspects just a minor selling point. It's kinda a "eh, that's nice" rather than a "got to get into the Nexus ribbon" feeling. *snip* So cross your fingers and hope for the best. That's what you can do about it, just like most of the things in the world. Oh, and movie references. Be sure to reference movies. Can you tell I haven't been to bed yet? It's 20 minutes to 7:00 where I live... Puckdropper -- Wise is the man who attempts to answer his question before asking it. To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm |
If this is global warming...
On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:55:45 -0600, Tim Daneliuk
wrote: Bob Schmall wrote: Tim Daneliuk wrote: Charles Koester wrote: On 2007-02-15, J Clarke wrote: On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 08:46:18 -0700, "DouginUtah" wrote: I'm not saying that scientist are, as a group, dishonest. They are merely practical when it comes to funding. You have to keep your patron happy. When the subject is so complex and dense that what is "right" is not yet known, you can cook up the model that makes your patron happy. Are you actually suggesting that EVERY ONE of the scientists who believe in the facts of global warming is doing so to make money? Please provide some evidence. And are further suggesting that EVERY ONE of the very few scientists who disbelieve in global warming is incorruptible? No - I am suggesting that the reason that the full debate about GW is not being held in the refereed journals is because it currently serves more people to preserve the claimed scientific orthodoxy than not to. The models are so complex and multi-variate that there is no "fact of GW" there is simply a variety of positions to explain currently observed phenomena - none of which is indisputable or clearly refutes the other. My objection is not to the study of GW and its causes/effects. My objection is the vast overstatement about just how much we really *know* about it. To listen to you and others, one would thing there is little left to debate. It's simply not so. And who, exactly are the "patrons" who stand to gain from all this cooking of the books by advocates of GW? Exxon? GM? Utilities? Truckers? Big Oil? Oh, sorry--they're the Other Guys. The government has a lot more money to spend on research than the big eeeeeevil oil companies. Government with lots of money is a recipe for corruption. Don't forget that there are plenty of ways in which corporate entities can benefit from global warming legislation if they play their cards right. If they put money in the right pockets, and a "carbon surcharge" is added to every gallon of gasoline, an oil company would stand to make a lot of money- maybe not as a direct 1-1 payment for every gallon of gasoline sold, but certainly in the form of grants intended to help them research ways to "clean up" their acts. Dividing the government and global corporate structures into two distinct and opposing groups is a fool's task. Who do you think ponyied up the cash to get the politicians elected in the first place? Before anyone jumps on me for it, yes, I am aware of the contridiction between this and a previous post. I had a moment of foolishness when thinking about business, and considered that some of those companies may be being attacked by this- no doubt some are, but I don't imagine you have to scratch very deep to find a whole lot of connections to corporate lobbies. Rest assured, it is and will continue to be "business as usual". The big boys beat their drums to confuse things, they make out, and the rest of us get screwed while we continue to pay their bills. |
If this is global warming...
On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:53:19 -0500, J. Clarke
wrote: Uh, what's wrong with being an "earth worshiper"? We do _live_ here after all. Nothing, unless you begin to believe that unaltered nature is more important and valuable than human life or society- which is what that particular slander stems from. I believe in keeping my area clean as I can, and trying to be kind to the other living things around me- but I'll be damned if I would consider knocking down my own house to plant trees for the birds to live in, or any other such nonsense. I support the parks and forest and water conservation- but I also support new power plants and parking lots. Everything has it's place- and that includes us. The damn frogs just are not more important to me than my own family and neighbors, and that's the way it should be. |
If this is global warming...
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:22:16 GMT, "George" wrote:
"Bill in Detroit" wrote in message ... And there are hard economic decisions attached to ANY move large enough to have an impact. Yet ... it seems that most here fear that the US will be unfairly hindered. Is that true? The developing nations of China and India look to be harder hit than the US. The US has already gone through its coal stage, but those other countries are just now amping up to an industrialized society. The US needs to move beyond coal and perhaps even move beyond petroleum fuels. But it is dumping its money into wars to secure the supply of petroleum stocks rather than investing similar sums in obsoleting those fuels. Hey Bill, care to speculate on the fate of any politician who said he was going to take your car away? Neat thing is that manufacturers and power generating companies will gladly use or provide power generated from whatever source we want. Ought to be easy for an intelligent individual like yourself to chose one. Care to do so? I'd be happy to- put a nuclear power plant in my town. No NIMBY here- that would provide plenty of jobs and cheap electricity. Even so, we don't really need it in the context of this debate- the power here is mainly hydroelectric, and has been for some time. Just wanted to make the point that I have absolutely no problem with one in my backyard- I'd get a nice fuzzy feeling about it every time I saw the cooling towers. I'd be even better if that plant provided low-cost power for a decent train system that connected cities that had usable bus lines. None of those things are for environmental reasons- I would just really enjoy being able to read a book when travelling instead of having to watch the road- especially with the cost savings that would entail if I did not need to fill up my gas tank every week and my car insurance was lower. And I would certainly have no problems at all with a lower electric bill- especially if that translated into a cheap enough source of electricity that would make shutting off the gas a good option and going with baseboards as a cost-saving measure. Considering the safety record of nuclear power, they could put the sucker across the street, and I'd have no objections (unless they had too many really, really, bright lights shining through my windows) |
If this is global warming...
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 07:46:16 -0600, Prometheus
wrote: On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:55:45 -0600, Tim Daneliuk wrote: Bob Schmall wrote: Tim Daneliuk wrote: Charles Koester wrote: On 2007-02-15, J Clarke wrote: On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 08:46:18 -0700, "DouginUtah" wrote: I'm not saying that scientist are, as a group, dishonest. They are merely practical when it comes to funding. You have to keep your patron happy. When the subject is so complex and dense that what is "right" is not yet known, you can cook up the model that makes your patron happy. Are you actually suggesting that EVERY ONE of the scientists who believe in the facts of global warming is doing so to make money? Please provide some evidence. And are further suggesting that EVERY ONE of the very few scientists who disbelieve in global warming is incorruptible? No - I am suggesting that the reason that the full debate about GW is not being held in the refereed journals is because it currently serves more people to preserve the claimed scientific orthodoxy than not to. The models are so complex and multi-variate that there is no "fact of GW" there is simply a variety of positions to explain currently observed phenomena - none of which is indisputable or clearly refutes the other. My objection is not to the study of GW and its causes/effects. My objection is the vast overstatement about just how much we really *know* about it. To listen to you and others, one would thing there is little left to debate. It's simply not so. And who, exactly are the "patrons" who stand to gain from all this cooking of the books by advocates of GW? Exxon? GM? Utilities? Truckers? Big Oil? Oh, sorry--they're the Other Guys. The government has a lot more money to spend on research than the big eeeeeevil oil companies. Government with lots of money is a recipe for corruption. Don't forget that there are plenty of ways in which corporate entities can benefit from global warming legislation if they play their cards right. If they put money in the right pockets, and a "carbon surcharge" is added to every gallon of gasoline, an oil company would stand to make a lot of money- maybe not as a direct 1-1 payment for every gallon of gasoline sold, but certainly in the form of grants intended to help them research ways to "clean up" their acts. Dividing the government and global corporate structures into two distinct and opposing groups is a fool's task. Who do you think ponyied up the cash to get the politicians elected in the first place? Before anyone jumps on me for it, yes, I am aware of the contridiction between this and a previous post. I had a moment of foolishness when thinking about business, and considered that some of those companies may be being attacked by this- no doubt some are, but I don't imagine you have to scratch very deep to find a whole lot of connections to corporate lobbies. Rest assured, it is and will continue to be "business as usual". The big boys beat their drums to confuse things, they make out, and the rest of us get screwed while we continue to pay their bills. The big issue with "global warming" is the Kyoto Accord, in which everyone but the US is saying in effect "the US must clean up its act but the rest of us don't have to". If the US signed it then they wouldn't have anything to whine about, at least not until they started freezing to death in the dark. But who in his right mind would agree to such a thing? |
If this is global warming...
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:28:00 -0600, "Morris Dovey"
wrote: Bill in Detroit wrote: | We are between a rock and a hard spot. By the time there are enough | facts to draw incontrovertible conclusions there may not be any | opportunity to alter those conclusions. An observation worthy of consideration. It seems to me that a wise person might well consider the consequences of all courses of action (as well as the special case of "do nothing"). In the absence of "hard" information, we do well to consider all the scenarios we can imagine - with an eye toward avoiding the seriously adverse outcomes. To reinforce Bill's point, I'll point out that avoidance is not a strategy that can be applied retroactively. Knowing your particular line of work makes me inclined to agree with you here- I'm not so interested in having the government or activist groups beat me on the head about what bad people we are, but finding new and better ways to do things is usually a good strategy, especially if the old way depends on finite resources. | And there are hard economic decisions attached to ANY move large | enough to have an impact. Yet ... it seems that most here fear that | the US will be unfairly hindered. Is that true? The developing | nations of China and India look to be harder hit than the US. The | US has already gone through its coal stage, but those other | countries are just now amping up to an industrialized society. The | US needs to move beyond coal and perhaps even move beyond petroleum | fuels. But it is dumping its money into wars to secure the supply | of petroleum stocks rather than investing similar sums in | obsoleting those fuels. Whether we'll be hindered or not is immaterial to the making of the decisions. If we find that we _need_ to travel from "here" to "there", the fact that the trip might be uphill or downhill is a secondary consideration. Ultimately, we'll need to move beyond fueled technologies altogether. The path from where we are to there appears to me to be bumpy and uphill - and our largest challenge appears to be that of preparing our offspring to make that journey and produce sound decisions en route. My biggest worry is that we're not meeting that challenge. I don't know that that is accurate- even with your projects, the sun is used as fuel. Can't get something from nothing, but some things are free, while others are not. When I say I'm not going to do anything to change my habits, I mean just that. I don't think we're going to change what is happening at this point, and it may not be in our best interests to do so in any case. It's time to look at the possible results of climate change, whatever the causes may be, and plan accordingly. Who knows, global warming might be the best thing that has happened in ages- what if it translates into longer growing seasons to feed us all, and opens up the Antartic for settlement while making the winters less bitter and solar power a more viable option? Or, it may be a really rough road for us all. In either case, we need some ideas about just what the hell we're all going to do about it when it comes rolling along, instead of moping and pointing fingers. Not every change is bad. I have serious trouble swallowing some sort of "waterworld" senario where we all have to live on boats and the sun will fry us all without spf5000 sunblock. Some things just change no matter what you do, and we've got to roll with those changes or lay down and die. |
If this is global warming...
Prometheus wrote:
| On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:28:00 -0600, "Morris Dovey" | wrote: | || Ultimately, we'll need to move beyond fueled technologies || altogether. The path from where we are to there appears to me to || be bumpy and uphill - and our largest challenge appears to be that || of preparing our offspring to make that journey and produce sound || decisions en route. My biggest worry is that we're not meeting || that challenge. | | I don't know that that is accurate- even with your projects, the sun | is used as fuel. Can't get something from nothing, but some things | are free, while others are not. Yes, the sun consumes fuel - let's get past that. It consumes it's fuel and will continue to do so no matter what. It was doing so before humans appeared on the scene and will probably still be doing so long after we're gone. The practical difference is that the fuel cost of solar radiation is nil; and that the supply is (for practical purposes) inexhaustable. The energy delivered is limited to roughly a kilowatt per square meter over half of the planet's surface at a time. We can expect that at some point, we'll have exhausted the planetary supplies of petroleum, coal, natural gas, and uranium. Long before they're gone, their prices will increase to the level where ordinary folks won't be able to afford to buy either the commodity or the energy produced from it. I'm _not_ an advocate of converting everything to solar for the simple reason that it isn't the best source of energy for all applications. All energy sources have their own unique set of advantages and disadvantages; and I've found it interesting to search for applications and problems that match up with the particular advantages and disadvantages of low-to-moderate temperature (100F-1000F) solar heating. What I'm doing has nothing intentional to do with global warming/cooling. It has to do with finding more cost-effective ways of doing things already being done with other technologies. I see economic and social benefit in significantly reducing heating costs, in pumping liquids, and providing refrigeration with simple (few or no moving parts) devices and using freely available energy. | When I say I'm not going to do anything to change my habits, I mean | just that. I don't think we're going to change what is happening at | this point, and it may not be in our best interests to do so in any | case. It's time to look at the possible results of climate change, | whatever the causes may be, and plan accordingly. Who knows, global | warming might be the best thing that has happened in ages- what if | it translates into longer growing seasons to feed us all, and opens | up the Antartic for settlement while making the winters less bitter | and solar power a more viable option? Or, it may be a really rough | road for us all. In either case, we need some ideas about just | what the hell we're all going to do about it when it comes rolling | along, instead of moping and pointing fingers. FWIW, global warming won't make solar power a more viable option - except, possibly, for wind applications. -- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 18, 6:04 am, Prometheus wrote:
On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 05:32:14 +0000 (UTC), (Larry) wrote: Just a question for those debating the issues here, would anyone care to conjecture on what motivation a scientist might have for affirming or denying global warming? I don't know many scientists, so it's a wild-assed guess. But could it have something to do with a scientist studying something like global warming depends on government funds for grants to pursue their research, and somebody has a politically motivated say on who gets that money and who does not? Even without overt pressure, I could imagine some unconcious skewing in the data to help ensure next year's grants. You would have a strong argument if climatologists studied global warming. They do not. They study climate and climate change. Global warming is a conclusion culled from that study. Climate would still be studied even if the conclusions were more mundane. Surely there is a tendency for a scientist to hype the importance of his work, he/she HAS to 'hype' it as a routine part of the grant proposal process. So you do have an argument in that respect. For a scientist to bias his results in order to obtain more funding is a different matter. That would be like a doctor faking test results in order to treat a patient for the wrong illness. Unconscious bias is always a concern, indeed, in science the word bias is defined broadly, to include all systematic effects, known and unknown, that confound a conclusion. We certainly have seen 'epidemics' of caesarian sections and multiple personality disorder sweep through the medical industry. But historically we have also seen scientists criticized for hyping the dangers of smoking, silicosis, nonsterile surgical conditions, hiv/aids, and for promoting fluoridation, immunization, and pollution abatement. What separates the grain from the chaff? Left to to its work, science does. One of the most 'popular' alternatives to anthropogenic causes that is suggested for global climate change is variation in the solar constant. Even a casual web search shows that research in that area is funded and published. No fewer than five (5) satellites have contributed to the data base. I agree that one should regard with skepticism a scientist who hypes global warming, but the same skepticism should be applied to equally vocal people who hype the opposite. Fund the vast quiet (not silent, but quiet) majority and they will do the hard work to sort things out. -- FF |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 18, 9:24 am, J. Clarke wrote:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 07:46:16 -0600, Prometheus ... The big issue with "global warming" is the Kyoto Accord, in which everyone but the US is saying in effect "the US must clean up its act but the rest of us don't have to". If the US signed it then they wouldn't have anything to whine about, at least not until they started freezing to death in the dark. But who in his right mind would agree to such a thing? People who have more confidence in American Industry. -- FF |
If this is global warming...
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 10:58:06 -0600, "Morris Dovey"
FWIW, global warming won't make solar power a more viable option - except, possibly, for wind applications. You know, if the sun was an energy source that was more under the direct control of man, like coal or oil, we would probably seek to legislate it out of existence due to its harmful side effects such as skin cancer, drought, extreme storms, etc. This could be a convenient argumentum ad absurdum for the coal, oil and nuke flacks. |
If this is global warming...
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 10:58:06 -0600, "Morris Dovey"
wrote: Prometheus wrote: | On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:28:00 -0600, "Morris Dovey" | wrote: | || Ultimately, we'll need to move beyond fueled technologies || altogether. The path from where we are to there appears to me to || be bumpy and uphill - and our largest challenge appears to be that || of preparing our offspring to make that journey and produce sound || decisions en route. My biggest worry is that we're not meeting || that challenge. | | I don't know that that is accurate- even with your projects, the sun | is used as fuel. Can't get something from nothing, but some things | are free, while others are not. Yes, the sun consumes fuel - let's get past that. It consumes it's fuel and will continue to do so no matter what. It was doing so before humans appeared on the scene and will probably still be doing so long after we're gone. The practical difference is that the fuel cost of solar radiation is nil; and that the supply is (for practical purposes) inexhaustable. The energy delivered is limited to roughly a kilowatt per square meter over half of the planet's surface at a time. The fuel cost of fusion in a terrestrial power plant should also be nil or close to it. So why do you want to push solar instead of continuing to work on fusion? We can expect that at some point, we'll have exhausted the planetary supplies of petroleum, coal, natural gas, and uranium. And by that time we should have fusion reactors online. Long before they're gone, their prices will increase to the level where ordinary folks won't be able to afford to buy either the commodity or the energy produced from it. And when that point is reached, then it will become economically viable to use some other source. But until that happens a crash program to go to some alternate energy source will _increase_ the cost to those consumers, not _decrease_ it. I'm _not_ an advocate of converting everything to solar for the simple reason that it isn't the best source of energy for all applications. All energy sources have their own unique set of advantages and disadvantages; and I've found it interesting to search for applications and problems that match up with the particular advantages and disadvantages of low-to-moderate temperature (100F-1000F) solar heating. What I'm doing has nothing intentional to do with global warming/cooling. It has to do with finding more cost-effective ways of doing things already being done with other technologies. I see economic and social benefit in significantly reducing heating costs, in pumping liquids, and providing refrigeration with simple (few or no moving parts) devices and using freely available energy. Well, all of this is nice if you can make reliable equipment to do those things with operating and maintenance costs and initial purchase price low enough that the average person can afford them. But even if the lifecycle cost of a solar house is less than a conventional one, if the up front purchase price is twice as high then many people just plain can't dig up that much money at one go. The fuel cost is not the only cost. | When I say I'm not going to do anything to change my habits, I mean | just that. I don't think we're going to change what is happening at | this point, and it may not be in our best interests to do so in any | case. It's time to look at the possible results of climate change, | whatever the causes may be, and plan accordingly. Who knows, global | warming might be the best thing that has happened in ages- what if | it translates into longer growing seasons to feed us all, and opens | up the Antartic for settlement while making the winters less bitter | and solar power a more viable option? Or, it may be a really rough | road for us all. In either case, we need some ideas about just | what the hell we're all going to do about it when it comes rolling | along, instead of moping and pointing fingers. FWIW, global warming won't make solar power a more viable option - except, possibly, for wind applications. |
If this is global warming...
J. Clarke wrote:
| On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 10:58:06 -0600, "Morris Dovey" | wrote: | || Prometheus wrote: ||| On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:28:00 -0600, "Morris Dovey" ||| wrote: ||| |||| Ultimately, we'll need to move beyond fueled technologies |||| altogether. The path from where we are to there appears to me to |||| be bumpy and uphill - and our largest challenge appears to be |||| that of preparing our offspring to make that journey and produce |||| sound decisions en route. My biggest worry is that we're not |||| meeting that challenge. ||| ||| I don't know that that is accurate- even with your projects, the ||| sun is used as fuel. Can't get something from nothing, but some ||| things are free, while others are not. || || Yes, the sun consumes fuel - let's get past that. It consumes it's || fuel and will continue to do so no matter what. It was doing so || before humans appeared on the scene and will probably still be || doing so long after we're gone. || || The practical difference is that the fuel cost of solar radiation || is nil; and that the supply is (for practical purposes) || inexhaustable. The energy delivered is limited to roughly a || kilowatt per square meter over half of the planet's surface at a || time. | | The fuel cost of fusion in a terrestrial power plant should also be | nil or close to it. So why do you want to push solar instead of | continuing to work on fusion? You're being a bit free with your assumptions. Get in contact with Greenough at PPPL and ask him who the person was with no project connection who pushed him hardest for progress _NOW_ (starting in '76) on Princeton's tokamak. If he hadn't a really good sense of humor (and been a very gentle kind of person) I'd probably be missing teeth. I asked what it'd take to expidite commercialization and was told that it'd take on the order of a billion and a half (1976) dollars; and that PU couldn't find it. /I/ certainly didn't have it; so all I could do was beg the guys to work faster and smarter with what they did have. When the first toroid was built, they invited me to stop by and have a look see. (To imagine the magnetic pinch bottle and the annhilation of atoms produced in an object that size inspired real awe.) I never saw the finished reactor. I understand it was assembled and run at Tom's River for ten years or so before being dismantled. When I saw that announcement I called one of the engineers and asked him to say "Hi" to the guys I'd known and tell them that they'd dazzled the hell out of me. BTW, there's a guy who worked on the project after I left the east coast who lurks here on the wreck and can certainly provide better info than I. Fuel for the tokamak (if I understand it's operation properly) is tritium (as in heavy heavy water) - not something one can order up in bulk from any existing source. If you can supply the tritium and the construction money, I think the guys with the real-world experience (not to mention myself!) would probably be pretty happy to help make it happen... || We can expect that at some point, we'll have exhausted the || planetary supplies of petroleum, coal, natural gas, and uranium. | | And by that time we should have fusion reactors online. Eh? They should be online _now_! We just have more "important" things to spend the money on. || Long before || they're gone, their prices will increase to the level where || ordinary folks won't be able to afford to buy either the commodity || or the energy produced from it. | | And when that point is reached, then it will become economically | viable to use some other source. But until that happens a crash | program to go to some alternate energy source will _increase_ the | cost to those consumers, not _decrease_ it. Hmm. Other than the wild (but usually silent) enthusiasm for fusion to which I just confessed, who's advocating a crash program to go to some alternate energy source? Not I - nor has anyone else I've read here. || I'm _not_ an advocate of converting everything to solar for the || simple reason that it isn't the best source of energy for all || applications. All energy sources have their own unique set of || advantages and disadvantages; and I've found it interesting to || search for applications and problems that match up with the || particular advantages and disadvantages of low-to-moderate || temperature (100F-1000F) solar heating. || || What I'm doing has nothing intentional to do with global || warming/cooling. It has to do with finding more cost-effective || ways of doing things already being done with other technologies. I || see economic and social benefit in significantly reducing heating || costs, in pumping liquids, and providing refrigeration with simple || (few or no moving parts) devices and using freely available energy. | | Well, all of this is nice if you can make reliable equipment to do | those things with operating and maintenance costs and initial | purchase price low enough that the average person can afford them. | But even if the lifecycle cost of a solar house is less than a | conventional one, if the up front purchase price is twice as high | then many people just plain can't dig up that much money at one go. | The fuel cost is not the only cost. Well then - by your criteria all this is pretty nice indeed. You may surprised to learn that the up-front construction cost /can/ be considerably lower. Whether or not that translates into a lower _purchase_ price is a different matter entirely. The up-front purchase price for solar equipment is all over the place. If you want to hammer /me/ on this one, you'd better look up panel prices at my web site and do some comparisons with similar products from elsewhere. This isn't a subject I feel I should be discussing in a newsgroup (but I'm tempted.) I'm not sure how too say this as gently as I'd like; but your comments indicate that you have considerable catch-up reading to do. -- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 18, 1:15 pm, J. Clarke wrote:
The fuel cost of fusion in a terrestrial power plant should also be nil or close to it. So why do you want to push solar instead of continuing to work on fusion? The capital cost is astronomical and considering that there are so many unanswered questions in regards to operating costs (assuming we can keep one lit) a ROI is so far into the future, that in comparison, current proven fission technology will reign for a very long time. For fusion to be a net producer, the scale of the undertaking is so enormous that it boggles the mind. The energy required to produce the parts, to contain the plasma, and the uncertainty of its service- ability and maintainability make this nothing more than an experiment. The fusion proponents are trying to lift a 500,000 pound sledgehammer to kill a gnat. And by that time we should have fusion reactors online. Keep dangling the carrots of 'free' energy and keep those research grants coming folks. We need to develop what we know. The billions allotted for experimental research in fusion is terribly misplaced, IMHO. Fusion is pie-in-the-sky. That does not mean that I don't believe we can make it work... I do believe that the 'free' fuel won't enter into the spreadsheet as a cost-savings for a long, long time... if ever. The costs involved to re-face the interior of an abraded tokamak is estimated to be a billion... and we don't know how long it takes for a thermonuclear plasma to take the skin off the inside of the toroid...could be a matter of a few minutes....we have no idea. The sun-in-a-can...ya right. Keep taxing the peasants so that the guys in the white coats can promise the king ultimate control. (There may have been a little extra cynicism in my cereal this morning.) The real sun is here...free...now. Hanging outside my window. Every day. The comparative pittance we need to make it usable for all of us, is within reach. Let's spend a few bucks thinking about ways to store energy as well. ....and how about those small nuclear powerpacks we use to run some satellites? Can't we build one to power a subdivision? The size of a trailer? How about smaller ones for each home? Or would that mean that the 'power' is going to get away from the controlling robber-baron's interests? Stay tuned. Film at 11. I hope you're enjoying the show, I'l be here all week, try the veal. |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 18, 2:36 pm, "Morris Dovey" wrote:
[biggie snip] I see from your post ( 7 minutes ahead of mine G) that you do see a future in fusion. I do want to clarify, that I see a future there as well. My stance is that we shouldn't stop developing alternative energy sources with the thought in mind that the fusion reactor will save us all in the end. I'm a proponent of developing what works, What gives us known data, so we can predict costs and ROI. That, in today's world, is already quite difficult. A 5 billion dollar fission reactor ended up costing 14 billion. Still, at a steady 2500 MW with known maintenance costs, there's a pay-back horizon somewhere before the life-span of the unit. Fusion looks like a black hole to me, financially speaking. r |
If this is global warming...
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 13:36:33 -0600, "Morris Dovey"
wrote: J. Clarke wrote: | On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 10:58:06 -0600, "Morris Dovey" | wrote: | || Prometheus wrote: ||| On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:28:00 -0600, "Morris Dovey" ||| wrote: ||| |||| Ultimately, we'll need to move beyond fueled technologies |||| altogether. The path from where we are to there appears to me to |||| be bumpy and uphill - and our largest challenge appears to be |||| that of preparing our offspring to make that journey and produce |||| sound decisions en route. My biggest worry is that we're not |||| meeting that challenge. ||| ||| I don't know that that is accurate- even with your projects, the ||| sun is used as fuel. Can't get something from nothing, but some ||| things are free, while others are not. || || Yes, the sun consumes fuel - let's get past that. It consumes it's || fuel and will continue to do so no matter what. It was doing so || before humans appeared on the scene and will probably still be || doing so long after we're gone. || || The practical difference is that the fuel cost of solar radiation || is nil; and that the supply is (for practical purposes) || inexhaustable. The energy delivered is limited to roughly a || kilowatt per square meter over half of the planet's surface at a || time. | | The fuel cost of fusion in a terrestrial power plant should also be | nil or close to it. So why do you want to push solar instead of | continuing to work on fusion? You're being a bit free with your assumptions. Get in contact with Greenough at PPPL and ask him who the person was with no project connection who pushed him hardest for progress _NOW_ (starting in '76) on Princeton's tokamak. If he hadn't a really good sense of humor (and been a very gentle kind of person) I'd probably be missing teeth. I asked what it'd take to expidite commercialization and was told that it'd take on the order of a billion and a half (1976) dollars; and that PU couldn't find it. /I/ certainly didn't have it; so all I could do was beg the guys to work faster and smarter with what they did have. When the first toroid was built, they invited me to stop by and have a look see. (To imagine the magnetic pinch bottle and the annhilation of atoms produced in an object that size inspired real awe.) I never saw the finished reactor. I understand it was assembled and run at Tom's River for ten years or so before being dismantled. When I saw that announcement I called one of the engineers and asked him to say "Hi" to the guys I'd known and tell them that they'd dazzled the hell out of me. BTW, there's a guy who worked on the project after I left the east coast who lurks here on the wreck and can certainly provide better info than I. Fuel for the tokamak (if I understand it's operation properly) is tritium (as in heavy heavy water) - not something one can order up in bulk from any existing source. If you can supply the tritium and the construction money, I think the guys with the real-world experience (not to mention myself!) would probably be pretty happy to help make it happen... Uh, the Princeton Large Torus was an experiment. "Expediting commercialization" was not feasible 30 years ago and if someone knowledgeable gave you a number for it he was very likely trying to get you to go away--there was not enough known then to produce a commercial reactor and most of the scientists and engineers working on the project _knew_ that not enough was known. Currently the largest working fusion device other than weapons is JET I believe, which has achieved theoretical breakeven. The next step, for which something like 2.5 billion dollars has been committed, is ITER, which should produce fusion energy at the level of 10 times breakeven in the 2010-2015 time frame. Once it is running and if it works as designed, then the next step would be to use that fusion energy to generate electric power resulting in a self-sustaining system--that would be in the 2030 time frame. After that a commercial prototype would be developed in maybe the 2045 timeframe. Attempting commercialization in 1976 could have swallowed the entire US GDP with no result. As for burning tritium, the D-T cycle is the easiest, so that's what the development designs are working on. Once there are reactors actually running in commercial service development to the point of burning ordinary hydrogen should be possible. The thing is, we don't need a new energy source now, today. Fission will carry us for several hundred years, at which point commercial fusion should be commonplace if the econuts don't find some way to kill them. || We can expect that at some point, we'll have exhausted the || planetary supplies of petroleum, coal, natural gas, and uranium. | | And by that time we should have fusion reactors online. Eh? They should be online _now_! We just have more "important" things to spend the money on. All the money in the world would not have them online now. Too much research that depends on the results of other research that needs to be done yet. || Long before || they're gone, their prices will increase to the level where || ordinary folks won't be able to afford to buy either the commodity || or the energy produced from it. | | And when that point is reached, then it will become economically | viable to use some other source. But until that happens a crash | program to go to some alternate energy source will _increase_ the | cost to those consumers, not _decrease_ it. Hmm. Other than the wild (but usually silent) enthusiasm for fusion to which I just confessed, who's advocating a crash program to go to some alternate energy source? Not I - nor has anyone else I've read here. Then what, exactly, _are_ you on about? || I'm _not_ an advocate of converting everything to solar for the || simple reason that it isn't the best source of energy for all || applications. All energy sources have their own unique set of || advantages and disadvantages; and I've found it interesting to || search for applications and problems that match up with the || particular advantages and disadvantages of low-to-moderate || temperature (100F-1000F) solar heating. || || What I'm doing has nothing intentional to do with global || warming/cooling. It has to do with finding more cost-effective || ways of doing things already being done with other technologies. I || see economic and social benefit in significantly reducing heating || costs, in pumping liquids, and providing refrigeration with simple || (few or no moving parts) devices and using freely available energy. | | Well, all of this is nice if you can make reliable equipment to do | those things with operating and maintenance costs and initial | purchase price low enough that the average person can afford them. | But even if the lifecycle cost of a solar house is less than a | conventional one, if the up front purchase price is twice as high | then many people just plain can't dig up that much money at one go. | The fuel cost is not the only cost. Well then - by your criteria all this is pretty nice indeed. You may surprised to learn that the up-front construction cost /can/ be considerably lower. Whether or not that translates into a lower _purchase_ price is a different matter entirely. Huh? How does one build a solar house that is cheaper than a conventional house? The up-front purchase price for solar equipment is all over the place. If you want to hammer /me/ on this one, you'd better look up panel prices at my web site and do some comparisons with similar products from elsewhere. This isn't a subject I feel I should be discussing in a newsgroup (but I'm tempted.) "Solar equipment"? A proper solar house doesn't use "solar equipment", it uses design. I'm not sure how too say this as gently as I'd like; but your comments indicate that you have considerable catch-up reading to do. Coming from someone who thinks that fusion could have been commercialized in 1976 for a couple of billion dollars, that's actually humorous. |
If this is global warming...
Robatoy wrote:
| On Feb 18, 2:36 pm, "Morris Dovey" wrote: | | [biggie snip] | | I see from your post ( 7 minutes ahead of mine G) that you do see | a future in fusion. I do want to clarify, that I see a future there | as well. My stance is that we shouldn't stop developing alternative | energy sources with the thought in mind that the fusion reactor will | save us all in the end. I'm a proponent of developing what works, | What gives us known data, so we can predict costs and ROI. That, in | today's world, is already quite difficult. A 5 billion dollar | fission reactor ended up costing 14 billion. Still, at a steady | 2500 MW with known maintenance costs, there's a pay-back horizon | somewhere before the life-span of the unit. | Fusion looks like a black hole to me, financially speaking. Like you, I like things that /work/. By a fluke, I happened to be in the Princeton area (working on Tiros-N at RCA's Astro Engineering Lab in Hightstown) and gabbing on VHF during off-hours. One of the hams I met on-air turned out to be a neighbor and he introduced me to a bunch of other hams he worked with - all at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab and all likeable people with similar interests. I think they were pleased that a systems geek could be so enthusiastic about what they were doing. I'm not sure that some measure of my enthusiasm about their project didn't stem from my resonance with the people (since I'm nowhere near being a physicist); but the enthusiasm was - and is - very real. The end game, as I understood it, is to build a ring of tokamaks capable of being fueled on ordinary water (not heavy heavy water or even heavy water); and using power from reactor[n] to power the firing of reactor[n+1]. From their comments, it seems do-able; but that, because of the energy levels involved and the newness of the technology, work needed to proceed in "baby steps". There was never any question that it'd be enormously expensive; but they were certain of both technology and payback. [ For anyone not in the know, tokamaks were a Russian development and produce energy by zapping a droplet of tritium oxide (water where the hydrogen nucleus contains two neutrons in addition to the usual proton) so hard that the atom shatters, liberating gazooba energy - that c-squared multiplier kicks pretty hard. ] I do have one reservation: it makes me nervous to convert planetary mass to energy. Sol-3 isn't particularly short on water; but water mass converted to energy is gone _forever_ - and I suspect that humanity's hunger for free (or really cheap) energy might result in an incredibly accellerated reduction in one of our most important planetary resources. I wonder how many thousands (or tens of thousands) of years it might take before Earth bore more than a passing resemblance to Sol-4. Fission is ok, but fuel looks like a long-term problem. I particularly liked a German design I saw a while back - in which fuel pellets were wrapped in a ceramic jacket which controlled spacing between pellets and, as the reactor heated up, the jackets expanded to increase pellet spacing to reduce reaction rate. From a nuclear physics standpoint, I don't know enough to pronounce the design "good" or "bad"; but I liked the simple elegance of the approach. :-) The solar stuff I work on seems pretty tame by comparison; but it _is_ something that can be managed at an individual level without major funding. Best of all, it works. -- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto |
If this is global warming...
J. Clarke wrote:
| Uh, the Princeton Large Torus was an experiment. "Expediting | commercialization" was not feasible 30 years ago and if someone | knowledgeable gave you a number for it he was very likely trying to | get you to go away--there was not enough known then to produce a | commercial reactor and most of the scientists and engineers working | on the project _knew_ that not enough was known. There were even a few (intellectually conceited) folk who knew it couldn't be done at all. | Currently the largest working fusion device other than weapons is | JET I believe, which has achieved theoretical breakeven. The next | step, for which something like 2.5 billion dollars has been | committed, is ITER, which should produce fusion energy at the level | of 10 times breakeven in the 2010-2015 time frame. Once it is | running and if it works as designed, then the next step would be to | use that fusion energy to generate electric power resulting in a | self-sustaining system--that would be in the 2030 time frame. | After that a commercial prototype would be developed in maybe the | 2045 timeframe. Interesting. | Huh? How does one build a solar house that is cheaper than a | conventional house? By careful design and selection of appropriate materials, of course. I have a photo that I'll post to ABPW for you of one for which I've been asked to quote heating panels. The house was built by a contractor who wanted a test case for some non-conventional methods and materials. The house shown has no heating plant and is in an area where winter night time temperatures drop to 20F. The lowest indoor temperature this winter has been 65F. The contractor would like to add solar panels to raise that somewhat. For more detailed how-to info, you should probably ask this question in alt.solar.thermal - and if your interest extends to having such a home built, I can foreward your contact info to the contractor. | "Solar equipment"? A proper solar house doesn't use "solar | equipment", it uses design. It would seem, then, that many houses with retrofitted solar heat aren't "proper". Fortunately for the folks living in "improper" homes, there are off-the-shelf products that can reduce their heating costs in a way they find satisfying. | Coming from someone who thinks that fusion could have been | commercialized in 1976 for a couple of billion dollars, that's | actually humorous. Re-read for comprehension. -- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto |
If this is global warming...
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 15:26:46 -0600, "Morris Dovey"
wrote: Robatoy wrote: | On Feb 18, 2:36 pm, "Morris Dovey" wrote: | | [biggie snip] | | I see from your post ( 7 minutes ahead of mine G) that you do see | a future in fusion. I do want to clarify, that I see a future there | as well. My stance is that we shouldn't stop developing alternative | energy sources with the thought in mind that the fusion reactor will | save us all in the end. I'm a proponent of developing what works, | What gives us known data, so we can predict costs and ROI. That, in | today's world, is already quite difficult. A 5 billion dollar | fission reactor ended up costing 14 billion. Still, at a steady | 2500 MW with known maintenance costs, there's a pay-back horizon | somewhere before the life-span of the unit. | Fusion looks like a black hole to me, financially speaking. Like you, I like things that /work/. By a fluke, I happened to be in the Princeton area (working on Tiros-N at RCA's Astro Engineering Lab in Hightstown) and gabbing on VHF during off-hours. One of the hams I met on-air turned out to be a neighbor and he introduced me to a bunch of other hams he worked with - all at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab and all likeable people with similar interests. I think they were pleased that a systems geek could be so enthusiastic about what they were doing. I'm not sure that some measure of my enthusiasm about their project didn't stem from my resonance with the people (since I'm nowhere near being a physicist); but the enthusiasm was - and is - very real. The end game, as I understood it, is to build a ring of tokamaks capable of being fueled on ordinary water (not heavy heavy water or even heavy water); and using power from reactor[n] to power the firing of reactor[n+1]. From their comments, it seems do-able; but that, because of the energy levels involved and the newness of the technology, work needed to proceed in "baby steps". There was never any question that it'd be enormously expensive; but they were certain of both technology and payback. [ For anyone not in the know, tokamaks were a Russian development and produce energy by zapping a droplet of tritium oxide (water where the hydrogen nucleus contains two neutrons in addition to the usual proton) so hard that the atom shatters, liberating gazooba energy - that c-squared multiplier kicks pretty hard. ] I think you're confusing the tokamak, which is a magnetic confinement scheme, with inertial confinement devices such as Shiva, Nova, NIF, and HiPER. In fusion no atoms "shatter", two hydrogens combine to form helium (or any other two ligher nuclei combine to form a heavier one) plus an amount of energy equal to the mass deficit between the two elements. I do have one reservation: it makes me nervous to convert planetary mass to energy. Sol-3 isn't particularly short on water; but water mass converted to energy is gone _forever_ - and I suspect that humanity's hunger for free (or really cheap) energy might result in an incredibly accellerated reduction in one of our most important planetary resources. I wonder how many thousands (or tens of thousands) of years it might take before Earth bore more than a passing resemblance to Sol-4. If the population of the earth was ten times what it is and the per capita energy consumption was 100 times what is is in the United States today, the amount of hydrogen in the oceans is sufficient to last for approximately 10 million years. In 10 million years, with fusion energy available, one would hope that the ability to travel easily to other planets would have been developed. If Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were accessible that would provide a quantity of hydrogen equal to approximately 300 times the entire mass of the Earth (each of those planets is many times the size of Earth and each is mostly hydrogen). At the same level of consumption that quantity would be sufficient to last approximately several million times the age of the universe. If humanity manages to hang around that long then I suspect that running out of hydrogen in Earth's solar system will be the least of their worries. Fission is ok, but fuel looks like a long-term problem. I particularly liked a German design I saw a while back - in which fuel pellets were wrapped in a ceramic jacket which controlled spacing between pellets and, as the reactor heated up, the jackets expanded to increase pellet spacing to reduce reaction rate. From a nuclear physics standpoint, I don't know enough to pronounce the design "good" or "bad"; but I liked the simple elegance of the approach. :-) The solar stuff I work on seems pretty tame by comparison; but it _is_ something that can be managed at an individual level without major funding. Best of all, it works. |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 18, 4:26 pm, "Morris Dovey" wrote:
[snipped for brevity, although very interesting indeed.] [ For anyone not in the know, tokamaks were a Russian development and produce energy by zapping a droplet of tritium oxide (water where the hydrogen nucleus contains two neutrons in addition to the usual proton) so hard that the atom shatters, liberating gazooba energy - that c-squared multiplier kicks pretty hard. ] I have always enjoyed the 'spoonful' vs 'coal train' analogies. It's particularly interesting when the spoonful contains water. How many MW per gazooba? I do have one reservation: it makes me nervous to convert planetary mass to energy. Sol-3 isn't particularly short on water; but water mass converted to energy is gone _forever_ - and I suspect that humanity's hunger for free (or really cheap) energy might result in an incredibly accellerated reduction in one of our most important planetary resources. I wonder how many thousands (or tens of thousands) of years it might take before Earth bore more than a passing resemblance to Sol-4. I think if we convert all the oceans directly to energy, we could give the sun a run for its money..well..not quite, but global warming would take on a whole new meaning. Maybe more like Sol 5. I get a kick out of some of the sizes that different suns come in. Ours is but a pipsqueek. Betelgeuse doesn't quite fit in between our earth and our sun. Blows my little mind. Fission is ok, but fuel looks like a long-term problem. I particularly liked a German design I saw a while back - in which fuel pellets were wrapped in a ceramic jacket which controlled spacing between pellets and, as the reactor heated up, the jackets expanded to increase pellet spacing to reduce reaction rate. From a nuclear physics standpoint, I don't know enough to pronounce the design "good" or "bad"; but I liked the simple elegance of the approach. :-) That's pretty clever. I like the idea of fusion, not only because fuel is plentyful, but the radiation products are very short-lived. The solar stuff I work on seems pretty tame by comparison; but it _is_ something that can be managed at an individual level without major funding. Best of all, it works. I have been snooping around a bit, as I am having a new roof put on the house where I live. I would like some minimal PV power as a back-up. I'm not really interested in making the meter spin backwards. The more I read, the more I discover that there is so much to learn. That is what makes it fun. .....and now back to some cold fusion. r |
If this is global warming...
On Feb 18, 6:36 pm, J. Clarke wrote:
If the population of the earth was ten times what it is and the per capita energy consumption was 100 times what is is in the United States today, the amount of hydrogen in the oceans is sufficient to last for approximately 10 million years. Please post the worksheet which allowed you to arrive at those numbers. If quoted from another source, please cite. r |
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