Imagine a group of 100 fisherman faced with declining stocks and worried about the sustainability of their resource and their livelihoods. One of them works out that the total sustainable catch is about 20% of what everyone is catching now (with some uncertainty of course) but that if current trends of increasing catches (about 2% a year) continue the resource would be depleted in short order. Faced with that prospect, the fishermen gather to decide what to do. The problem is made more complicated because some groups of fishermen are much more efficient than the others. The top 5 catchers, catch 20% of the fish, and the top 20 catch almost 75% of the fish. Meanwhile the least efficient 50 catch only 10% of the fish and barely subsist. Clearly, fairness demands that the top catchers lead the way in moving towards a more sustainable future.
The top 5 do start discussing how to manage the transition. They realise that the continued growth in catches – driven by improved technology and increasing effort – is not sustainable, and make a plan to reduce their catch by 80% over a number of years. But there is opposition – manufacturers of fishing boats, tackle and fish processing plants are worried that this would imply less sales for them in the short term. Strangely, they don’t seem worried that a complete collapse of the fishery would mean no sales at all – preferring to think that the science can’t possibly be correct and that everything will be fine. These manufacturers set up a number of organisations to advocate against any decreases in catch sizes – with catchy names like the Fisherfolk for Sound Science, and Friends of Fish. They then hire people who own an Excel spreadsheet program do “science” for them – and why not? They live after all in a free society.
After spending much energy and money on trying to undermine the science – with claims that the pond is much deeper than it looks, that the fish are just hiding, that the records of fish catches were contaminated by being done near a supermarket – the continued declining stocks and smaller and smaller fish make it harder and harder to sound convincing. So, in a switch of tactics so fast it would impress Najinsky, the manufacturers’ lobby suddenly decides to accept all that science and declares that the ‘fish are hiding’ crowd are just fringe elements. No, they said, we want to help with this transition, but …. we need to be sure that the plans will make sense. So they ask their spreadsheet-wielding “advocacy scientists” to calculate exactly what would happen if the top 5 (and only the top 5) did cut their catches by 80%, but meanwhile everyone else kept increasing their catch at the current (unsustainable rate). Well, the answers were shocking – the total catch would be initially still be 84% of what it is now and would soon catch up with current levels. In fact, the exact same techniques that were used to project the fishery collapse imply that this would only delay the collapse by a few years! and what would be the point of that?
The fact that the other top fishermen are discussing very similar cuts and that the fisherfolk council was trying to coordinate these actions to minimise the problems that might emerge, are of course ignored and the cry goes out that nothing can be done. In reality of course, the correct lesson to draw is that everything must be done.
In case you think that no-one would be so stupid as to think this kind of analysis has any validity, I would ask that you look up the history of the Newfoundland cod fishery. It is indeed a tragedy.
And the connection to climate? Here.
I’ll finish with a quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, one the founders of the original conservative movement:
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
See here for a much better picture of what coordinated action could achieve.
Jim Bullis @ 883:
Yes, that’s obvious at a highly abstracted level. What I’m referring to is more like an instruction manual with step-by-step instructions. My hunch — and it’s just a hunch — is that when you start looking at what it would take to turn a car into a home electric CHP plant, you’ll start to see why perhaps it isn’t such a hot idea.
When my patent team was doing our thing we looked at Vehicle-to-Grid and concluded it was also a not so hot idea and turned our attention elsewhere. Vehicle motors work best at much higher voltages — often in the range of 300 to 400 VDC. Adding the electronics to produce 120/240 single phase for a residence seems a bit much. One area where I did think there was room for invention, but that I’m not interested in pursuing (so I hereby disclaim all rights, etc. to anything I scribble here on the subject — unless someone wants to step up and provide IP lawyer money), is getting away from AC charging solutions and using high voltage DC instead.
As regards utility scale inverters, they also exist. My recollection is that Seimens is the #1 manufacturer, with companies like SMA also manufacturing large-scale “string” inverters that can be combined to get up to utility scale.
Frequency lock and phase lock are bound at the generator — a multi-pole generator can produce two or more phases, depending on the number of poles and how the windings, etc. are connecting. Maintaining frequency lock is simple — a slow generator speeds up naturally because it has an “easier” task of outputting power on the rising side of the waveform, and gets a boost on the falling side. A fast generator sees the opposite effect and naturally slows. Inverters maintain lock by detecting the zero crossing point and adjusting accordingly. Left to their own devices, inverters can be very stable — mine run at an almost perfect 59.987HZ, and all the AC line frequency based clocks slow accordingly (the rest of the clocks in the house are either monitor atomic clocks or use NTP to synchronize to atomic clocks …)
Rod B @ 878:
I’d expect him to contact one of the businesses listed below and submit an application.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/large_wind_turbines_generators_manufacturers.htm
The skill that’s required is called “Mechanical Aptitude”, not “Can build a Ford Explorer (or some other vehicle)”. Even still, given the millions of women who — knowing nothing of heavy manufacturing previously — entered the industrial workforce circa WWII, I’m thinking this really isn’t so hard. If us weak women can build those new-fangled flying machines, I’m sure big strong men can build wind turbines …
#816 I David Cooke,
I think I missed your point about “competing free market choices” versus “scientific analysis of alternatives.” If we could move the discussion to the level of analysis rather than advocacy of different alternatives we might be more productive. The little blog box with text only sort of leaves us short for the kind of technical discussion that is needed. (I have been complaining bitterly for many years about the morphing of computers more into typewriters than computing machines and the awkwardness of adapting text to fit the need for even such a simple thing as writing an equation. Remember when a graph was lines of asterisks trying to look like a bar chart? Needless to say, the world has ignored my pleas.) All we can do is try to get readers to look at sources that have real graphics. Example: See Figure 81 on http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/0383(2009).pdf (Caution, it looks like ECXCEL does not tell these folks that the sum of the bars should equal the respective totals. Checking this makes it clear that CO2 from electricity generation shows up in two places, thus giving a distorted perspective. Still the chart is useful, and that is not always the way things turn out.)
So on to “scientific analysis.” Starting with The Chart, we can clearly see where emphasis should be placed and the what the impact of various alternatives might be. I looked at a fore-runner of this chart and concluded that I could impact things the most by cutting energy waste in transportation. Dividing the transportation bar into about 64% for cars and light trucks (big cars) and transport (mostly big trucks). If we are of a mind to not be constrained by present ways of doing things, it then can be shown that the biggest gains could be in aerodynamics.
First looking at cars and light trucks, it looks like we could cut energy waste due to churning the air by 90% and still provide rapid personal transportation. This comes with a requirement mostly for adjustment to the public perception of automotive fashion, including realistic appraisal of how cars are actually used versus the way advertising has long portrayed their use. Perception of what is safe is also important, though real safety has to be paramount in basic design thinking.
Probably, the waste of energy in braking is the next big thing, and there is wide awareness of the importance of regenertive braking which we know how to do with electric machines and storage devices. Efficiency depends on equipment design at the detail level and there is greater cost associated with more efficient implementations.
The third waste is in the rolling resistance which is mostly due to tires. The rolling resistance is a friction like force that is a function of a rolling resistance coefficient which is more or less subject to improvement and overall vehicle weight. Weight can be greatly reduced, but it impacts both real and perceived safety. Thus, reducing rolling resistance requires some bigger thinking if big gains are to be made.
It looks like a goal could be reasonably set for 90% reduction of energy use in light trucks and cars.
A similar story is applicable for heavy transport.
A caution is appropriate. Simply shifting to coal as the energy source will not accomplish CO2 reduction, and could actually make things quite a lot worse.
If we could accomplish a 90% reduction of CO2 in transport, based on the Figure 81 chart, we could cut emissions in the USA due to fossil fuel use by about 30%.
Would 30% be worthwhile if the cost would be absorbed in the usual replacement cycle for vehicles?
Maybe the alternative of shifting massively to nuclear power. This could work with simply fitting out our present national fleet of vehicles with batteries and electric motors. The cost would be large for the nuclear power plants, though batteries and motors could get affordable some day.
It might not be easy to overcome 100 years of mind control by automobile advertising, but I would prefer changing our idea of automobile fashion.
Next chapter needs to be about chopping down the CO2 bar for electric power generation, as shown on the Figure 81 chart. There have been some clues in previous comments on how that might come about.
I wonder if there might be technical comments that could help bring the previous discussion up to a good “scientific” level.
#887, #895, #864, #857, #835, #820, #816 and so on,
Some time back our good friend Furry alluded to frequency control of a back up generator relating this somehow to operation of generators on the grid. I tried to draw out some discussion that would show how frequency control would not work for making generators work together. Instead I got a reading assignment (to a reference I do not have, though it sounds interesting) and the subject was shifted to inverters, which brought us around to the fact that small sources such as solar and wind mills will not interface in the same way as the traditional big sources on the grid interface. This leads to a significant issue which is the way small sources are integrated into a very large grid. As I recall, the utilities objected bitterly to having to buy solar power from unpredictable sources at top dollar rates. That seems to have been accepted, probably due to the lubricating powers of money from the various public utility commissions. My interest in cogenertion will probably face similar opposition, even though this mode is considered a form of “renewable” at least in California.
Just to reiterate briefly, the basic requirement for interfacing of large generators is phase control, not frequency control. Inertia will only momentarily help and throttle control is way too slow to keep phase lock. From my recollections, the only way to keep the operations in phase lock under variable load conditions is with the relatively quick variation of current in the magnetizing windings of the generator. The action that results would be to vary the output voltage, for better or worse, but whatever, it would be far better than allowing significant phase shift. We are talking AC circuits here, and under violation of fixed phase relationships, things go rapidly to disaster.
I was particularly surprised that the ERCOT reference by Furry showed occassional though very slight shift of frequency which was then remedied, I assume, by bringing on other generator systems. Note of course that every generator in that ERCOT system has to be phase locked to the whole, so every one had to go slightly off frequency. It looks like from the reported frequency number that, from time to time, the whole Texas power grid goes off frequency slightly, which would make it ineligible for help from outside sources. Interesting, it does not seem that the futures market for electricity could work very well here.
Then we got off on a discussion of “megaWatts per hour” which seems to have been misinterpreted. That expression of units could simply be due to illiteracy of the community, though not too likely. Rather it might mean what it says, which indicates that it refers to a rate at which a given source can increase output.
#901 Furry
When it comes to inverters, I think you have it about right. However, I suspect that the “utility scale” you speak of is more that of wind turbine power levels, and it would seem such would be essential in that application.
As far as big rotating machines, when you say they “naturally speed up,” I think you are not recognizing how phase lock has to work. “Speed up” is kind of not the right terminology when it comes to overcoming a slight phase lag, though it is technically what happens when the system requires a delta phi/delta time form of adjustment. Absolutely there are outputs of different phase, and we might think that phase control could involve varying the summation of these; it seems not a place where voltage control would be very manageable.
Of course I am interested in your thoughts about cogeneration. At the moment we differ on your conclusions about what is a “hot” idea (chuckle chuckle) I guard against assumptions like “vehicle motors work best at –,” and though that might or might be true, the right answer is a complicated trade off. We can get quite good efficiencies out of DC systems at lower voltages in vehicles, though these might not be configured according to some analysis assumptions. I rather like lower voltage DC motors which are certainly coming into being in rather good quality. (See Perm Motors for some examples)
From a basic DC assumption using motors it seems relatively ideal to go through an inverter which would look much like that needed for solar panels, they also being somewhat low voltage devices. Of course one person’s great inverter can be another persons inefficient piece of junk. All I am saying is that a whole system design is the place to start an evaluation, where all parts of the system are subject to some innovative development. In the end we might find that some combination of AC systems works best. However, there is such a big gain in system efficiency that comes from beating the Second Law (sort of) with a cogeneration system that it would be worth working out the generally much more efficient conversion processes needed to get DC to AC and such. And by the way, if the heat from conversion inefficiencies is captured and used, then the system does not lose energy due to these losses.
Thanks for the discussion.
Mark Says (24 mai 2009 at 6:10 AM):
“James 887. I a word: WFT?”
OK, if you don’t like my simple 2-paragraph explanation, you’ll have to do your own research into how the electric power grid operates. But that really is approximately how it works :-)
Hank Roberts Says (24 mai 2009 at 11:20 AM):
“People like James who persist in ignoring the future…”
From my perspective it’s people like you who are… not ignoring the future exactly, but seeing it (if indeed you bother to look beyond supporting your lifestyle for the next few years) as a vision of endless cities, separated only by the spaces you’ve covered over with your solar farms and wind turbines. Even if that could somehow work, if human life could survive without the rest of the biosphere, why would anyone want to bring about that vision out of Dante?
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. Says (24 mai 2009 at 3:10 PM):
“It looks like a goal could be reasonably set for 90% reduction of energy use in light trucks and cars.”
“A caution is appropriate. Simply shifting to coal as the energy source will not accomplish CO2 reduction, and could actually make things quite a lot worse.”
I don’t quite follow your logic. So you build cars that use 90% less energy per mile – aerodynamic, electric or hybrid so you have regenerative braking, 3-wheeled to cut rolling resistance (I think I’ve just described an Aptera :-)), and you claim that powering them electrically rather than through IC engines (with maybe 15% efficiency in their usual duty cycle) won’t reduce CO2 emissions?
Even accepting for the sake of argument your ridiculous contention that all the electricity’s going to come from coal-fired generation, that seems to stretch the boundaries of logic well past the breaking point.
Er, James, it’s not going to be that simple — either your way or the exploiters’ way. We have to watch out for fission industry promoters pretending to be environmentalists who really just want to hustle for their industry. Those are the ones likely to be sloppy.
The “good for wildlife” notion is insupportable because it assumes a future that doesn’t fit either the physics or the ecology we know.
Americium is increasing — and will continue increasing — at Chernobyl. It moves through food chains. That’s not an improvement.
You can understand that without suddenly wanting to pave the desert with solar arrays. It’s not a binary choice between stupid extremes.
The biosphere is between the extremes and at risk with either condition. Focus in between — alternatives that put less at risk.
“Don’t let the best be the enemy of the good.”
RE: 903
Hey Jim,
First the URL you shared did not seem to work correctly. Personally, I like this section myself: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/forecasting.html 5-24-09 herein we get to see a chart in the upper right that you can actually click on to see the approximate values of US utilization from 1980 with projections through 2030. (If you look at the earlier URL I shared regarding the UN World Energy Assessment you can see the approximations on a Global Scale as projected in 1996. There was supposed to be a follow on report in 2007; however, I have not seen a copy or a reference to it.) What follows is a rough top down that can become a beginning point if any would like to pursue.
As to the balance of energy and the growth of each sector you can easily project the amount of fossilized carbon that will be added in the current biosphere as compared to the current rates. (An interesting aside would be the review of the liquids. (You can see the table of the approximate values under the graph to the right.) You have to also remember that the carbon content of the liquids is not effectively represented as depending on the carbon density of the liquid will effect the values. To get around the density values I suspect you have to consider it on the basis of raw crude and then divide the values per barrel across the liquids cracking plan ranging from Bunker Oil through Benzene or Naptha and Methane.
The point is that given the amount of energy to be generated you can project the greatest potential for carbon generation and propose systems to help restrict the forecast growth. Generally, according to texts within the last 4 years the percentage distribution will remain fairly equal to the current balance with the given technology. Demand will apparently remain similar with Transportation accounting for about 33%, Heating and Electricity about 55% with plastics, byproducts and special applications accounting for the roughly last 12%.
As to over all potential the options are to keep the current technology and generate more resources, ration the current resources, or change the technology.
From a high level the option of generating more resources is a proven falsehood, we cannot simply drill or pump our way out of the current dependency with an ever increasing demand, human demand will out pace energy extraction.
Secondly rationing of resources will result in only the wealthy having resources. (A problem with conservation, can be seen in the 1980’s experiment of a vapor barrier house to prevent heat loss, because the vapor was retained the houses would mold and rot. We do not do a good job of separating water vapor from heat in most of the systems I have seen to date. Nor do we do a good job extracting more energy economically from the current technology, because the embedded technology does not include that option in the design.)
Thirdly the option that appears to offer the best alternative is to change the technology. The question is which technologies would you change and can you provide rough figures that significantly differ from the recommendations of Dr. Chu or the UN?
So if any are interested I think this may be a point at which we could attempt a reasonable discussion. If you prefer we could attempt a bottom up approach; however my concern is can we keep the discussion within the logical bounds and prevent off shoots or off topic threads from permeating the discussion. (Note: Of the variations in the fore mentioned graph, the greatest deviation appears related to liquids and probably follows the economic trend as it relates to changes in transportation and energy required for both industry and homes. (Generally, during down turns or high fuel costs the market for liquids drops between 3-5% as the lower middle class drops out of the competition in the demand race. Also, utilities may drop in their demand for coal as the demand to light heat and cool industries drops along with the jobs or industrial activity, sad to say the recent downturn now seems to also be spreading to homes as well.)
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
re 908 James,
Just to quickly counter some of your assumptions.
The 90% energy reduction per mile involves aerodynamics, regenerative braking and some improvement in rolling resistance. The number of wheels has nothing to do with rolling resistance, since the formula (first order effects) is F = Crr x force. Increasing the number of wheels by a factor affects the force on each wheel as the inverse of that factor.
15% efficiency might be right for lawnmower engines but most engines do better, probably 20% to 25% for gasoline and about 35% or more for good diesels. If you want to really see the kind of number I am expecting for engine efficiency see the link to the Argonne paper at http://www.miastrada.com/references. There is only one place where the truth leaked out in that Argonne paper, which is shown as 38% for the urban UDDS driving cycle.
I claim that electric power for plug-ins, including my plug-in approach, will come from coal, however if you use only 90% as much energy the difference between CO2 from coal versus that from oil (about 33% more) for the same heat energy will have to be included in the tally. Roughly the CO2 reduction would then be 87%. Ok, since I round off, and none of this is all that precise, we still can call this 90% CO2 reduction.
However, though I did not mention it in that comment, I go further with the concept by making electricity from natural gas when efficient cogeneration is possible, and using this to charge batteries for the car, then contribute to household needs, and then to the grid if there is any left. Efficiency of making electricity from heat by this method is double or triple that of producing electricity from heat in central power plants where heat is thrown away. If this gets to the point that it is the more economic choice, then it will be fully used whether or not the car batteries need electricity. Strangely, when the car battery calls for charge, it will dip into the coal fired capacity. The CO2 reduction for the car itself is still 87%. However, due to its existence in a form that is useful for power genertion, whatever power it produces, there is a factor of about two for using natural gas rather than coal and there is another factor of at least two for using that natural gas at least twice as effectively. This could take a big chunk out of the total CO2 from power generation. (This system would still need some help from government, either to require that this form of power be purchased, or with some sort of tax on coal use.)
Maybe you would explain how an economic business entity would choose not to use coal fired sources for electricity when such capacity is available and coal is $1 per million BTU?
Re #909 by myself,
Oops, “– if you use only 90% as much energy–” should be “–if you use 90% less energy–“
Hank Roberts Says (24 mai 2009 at 8:24 PM):
“We have to watch out for fission industry promoters pretending to be environmentalists who really just want to hustle for their industry.”
Sure, just as we have to watch out for those who’ve turned anti-nuclearism into a religion, making their objections impervious to facts.
“The “good for wildlife” notion is insupportable because it assumes a future that doesn’t fit either the physics or the ecology we know.”
You know, you can say all you want about the physics & ecology you know, but there are a bunch of trees & critters around Chernobyl that seem to be using a different physics & ecology. Doesn’t that make you stop and think a bit? And if not, why not?
Re #911
Hi David,
It seems like we are trying to go down a similar path.
My discussion does not make any sense though if you don’t get to see the chart I refer to. The URL got cut off but if you copy and paste the whole thing as I repeat it here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/0383(2009).pdf and do not let the editor cut off the last part, it seems to work.
I looked at your reference, and while there is nothing wrong with your approach, I think the chart Fig. 81 that I reference gives the overall picture for CO2 a little more clearly. At least from the point of view of my proposed solutions it does.
Please try again to connect to the link by using the copy and paste rather than just the click. Or if the whole thing is now underlined that should work.
I see in the preview that the editor here will not assemble the whold address correctly. Anyway, the reference is the EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2009, March 2009. It is a useful report.
I will look some more at your reference.
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. Says (24 mai 2009 at 9:29 PM):
“The number of wheels has nothing to do with rolling resistance, since the formula (first order effects) is F = Crr x force.”
I don’t think it quite works like that – or else the second-order effects are larger than you think. Otherwise you’d find that (all else being equal) wide tires would have the same rolling resistance as narrow ones. Lots of empirical evidence to the contrary.
“15% efficiency might be right for lawnmower engines but most engines do better, probably 20% to 25% for gasoline and about 35% or more for good diesels.”
Maybe when running at optimum BSFC, but most automobile engines seldom run anywhere close to optimum. See here, for instance: http://autospeed.com.au/cms/title_Brake-Specific-Fuel-Consumption/A_110216/article.html As an extreme case, consider idling in traffic: isn’t your IC engine running at zero efficiency then? That’s the main reason current generation hybrids get better gas mileage: the electric assist helps with acceleration, allowing a smaller engine that runs closer to optimum efficiency in cruising.
“Efficiency of making electricity from heat by this method is double or triple that of producing electricity from heat in central power plants where heat is thrown away.”
Even if you could cogenerate at home with the same efficiency, you’d still be throwing the heat away about 2/3 of the year. On the other hand, if you have a large central heat source, that becomes a potentially useful resource, which could be used for distilling ethanol, dehydrating potatos or warming ponds to raise tilapia fish. (The last two were being tested back when I worked for the local power company. They did turn down the guy who wanted to use the waste heat to warm ponds for alligator farming, though, which I thought was pretty short-sighted.)
“Ok, since I round off, and none of this is all that precise, we still can call this 90% CO2 reduction.”
Sure. I think you’re understating a bit, but so what? You’ve still reduced automotive CO2 by 90%, even if you draw all the electricity from coal.
“Maybe you would explain how an economic business entity would choose not to use coal fired sources for electricity…”
If I had an electric or plug-in car, I’d have a strong incentive to put some solar panels on my roof so I could drive for free. Multiply my decision by some fraction of electric car owners, and you’d have a significant part of transportation energy coming from a non-fossil source.
#900: “open competition in the power utility industry is a pipe dream once one gets below the ethereal clouds. The cost of entry vs. expected return is massively prohibitive.”
Rod B, consumers benefit greatly just by allowing/making existing large utilities to compete. Even potential competition forces innovation. There are huge gains to be made in electricity conservation/efficiency, now all block by outdated pricing and cost-recovery rules.
#911 and #913
Which chart we use is not all that important. Either one shows transportation at 33% and this is just for the USA.
But lets get on with it. You say,
“Thirdly the option that appears to offer the best alternative is to change the technology. The question is which technologies would you change and can you provide rough figures that significantly differ from the recommendations of Dr. Chu or the UN?”
I reply:
It is discouraging that you would start with technologies that Dr. Chu or the UN recommend. This approach is guaranteed to kill innovation.
Actually, I am not sure of exactly what Dr. Chu recommends and what the UN recommends. There is a good chance that I dismissed some of such recommendations as being not very good ideas.
For example, going back a few years, corn ethanol was all the rage. I thought this sounded good at first, but then started protesting about the impact on food supplies. Yes, I think the UN was for that, but maybe not. They should have figured it out before I did. Cellulosic ethanol rates only slightly better as a solution.
Of course, what could be better than “carbon” capture? I rate this to be unproven and based on developments that are far from proven; really even, new science is required for this. I think barnacles, like I have scraped off boats, will capture more CO2 and turn it into calcium carbonate than will ever be captured by trying to stuff power plant exhaust down a hole in the ground. (Actually, has anyone thought about barnacles? They grow like, well heck, and the warmer the water, the faster they grow. I know; I have scraped barnacles that grew in San Francisco bay, San Diego bay, and Bermuda coastal waters. But this gets off the track.)
I am aware of Dr. Chu’s support of the smart grid, but I find it quantitatively pathetic as far as reducing CO2. The core idea seems to really be that transmission line improements will help bring wind power to useful places, and this is ok, but there is no real quantitative analysis that I know of that can be meaningfully discussed. If we rely on the EU reference from Anne van der Bom, it appears that wind power is definitely not inexpensive.
Our government getting behind the smart grid seems like a good example of government acting under prodding by wind turbine manufacturers and the likes of Boone Pickens. These folks know how to act in their best interests, but they are not all that inspiring as creative forces.
I bring to the table some technological possibilities that are more like resurrections of well known techniques than advances. There are some key new elements, but they are not at all dependent on scientific or engineering breakthroughs.
Neither Dr. Chu nor the UN knows of or is unwilling to recognize the kind of aerodynamic improvements that I am suggesting, and by the way, promoting. Numerical data supporting my analysis are in the report by Freeman 1933 which is wind tunnel data from test on a scale model of the USS Akron airship. The realization that this airship form can be combined with a new kind of wheel system is definitely not on their list.
But all this loses your main idea that we should be scientific in looking at alternatives.
The first step should be to look carefully at our wants and needs and to differentiate the things that are real needs from the things that are really fashions and fads which have been imposed on us by many years of attitude shaping advertising. I also look for ways that we do things that are simply a result of excessive caution.
Of course there is a problem in the big differences in how we might think people should live. Trying to not get bogged down on this, I take as a basic assumption that transportation should support the way people have chosen to live as evidenced by the present state of affairs. I do not advocate solutions that would herd people into clustered living and working situations such that train transportation is workable. I also know of the time penalty in traveling from home to work place where one must transfer from car to train or bus etc. and would seek to not force that on people who have busy lives and are hard pressed for time.
I also suggest that innovation can fairly demand some minor changes in how things are done as long as basic functions are adequately enabled.
Thus, I conclude that cars should provide safe, comfortable, and fast transportation from door to door.
Where there is a very large difference in efficiency that can be achieved by simply asking people to ride in tandem rather than side by side, that should be a trade-off worth evaluating. As far as possible we should reject those aspects of the automobile that mostly are for purposes of ego satisfaction, fashion statements, or demonstrations of wealth.
At the same time, promoting large scale adoption of new systems can be reasonably aided by making such new systems attractive.
With this prelude, I am suggesting the answer of the strange looking car that you can see by clicking my name. I would be interested in hearing your reaction. (David as well as any other interested folks.)
Then we might get on to the part where this car which is equipped with an auxilliary engine-generator could also be used for cogeneration of heat and power. That is neatly addressed in reference to the Fig 81 of the hard to link to EIA “Annual Energy Outlook,” March 2009 See(use copy and then paste to get the whole link.) http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/0383(2009).pdf
Thanks to all for reading. Jim Bullis
James writes:
James, why do you hate Ray Bolger?
RE: 917
Hey Jim,
First your reference, when you include the 2009.pdf you go to the forecast report in the same section. If you look at fig. 80 you will recognize the chart as the one I referenced. Interestingly in the chart you referenced did you notice the ratio of fuel sources for Electricity Generation, if you notice the Coal and Natural Gas appear absent. I suspect there must be a reason for this are you aware of the reason?
Next when you talk of aerodynamics and start recommending Tandem versus SbS you ignore aircraft design. Granted the purpose of SbS in aircraft is for alternative piloting if the primary fails, the point is if we look at historic transportation almost all include SbS as the preferred configuration, hence that is built into the “historic effectiveness” that we need to consider in design. As to the issue of aerodynamics the biggest change you can offer is a reduction in speed. You reduce the speed by 50% and you reduce the resistance to move through the air by a factor of 8.
Also in your design you have to remember that the biggest waster of energy is not run on or general inefficiencies once moving, it is the getting up to speed. Overcoming inertia eats up nearly 10 times the energy as steady state for a given distance. (For the average 5 mile one way trip, you use up nearly 3/4ths of your fuel getting up to speed.)
As to your discussion of wheel resistance you seem to be leaving out the issue of inertia again. If you wish to distribute the force per axle so that you could reduce the weight required to support a reliable rolling system, you also will want to reduce the diameter of the wheels. It is the amount of acceleration of the rotating mass that offers a good portion of the reasoning in the reduction of axles. (Quality wise you also want to reduce the source of potential failure. Hence more components the higher probability of failure.)
Now disregarding your alternative technology discussion for now, would you like to continue reviewing the ratio of fossil carbon per energy resource? Are you sure you want to disregard the issues of current technology? Are you prepared to pay attention to historic effectiveness ( or human nature) as a trade off for efficiencies? (For instance, if every office worker worked from home what would the balance of energy be? The same demand would exist only that you do not need to double living space and comfort just to exert administrative control. Granted if you presence is required, personal service businesses (IE: Medical) or manufacturing (whether printing out words and images on paper, or assembling recycled steel into a new automotive person or cargo carrier.)
As to the use of various fuels you have to be very careful as to the sources of the ideas. (Ethanol was not a inspiration of most Ecologists I have spoken with.) If you look further then the headlines there are several different technologies being experimented with. (For instance the use of Copper Chloride and Chromium Chloride at 120 Deg. C (Using a device such as a solar heater) you can break down cellulose into the basic building blocks of long chain hydrocarbons.) In short there are a lot of current developments happening that can upset the apple cart quickly. So before we go in search of the new technologies I would suggest we first rank order the fossilized carbon sources and then begin to collect up to the minute technological alternatives that can help reduce the impact of those sources. Are you still willing to go down this path?
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
Jim Bullis @ 904, et cetera …
Ah! Now I get it! You didn’t know that there can never be a phase angle difference. So, “frequency regulation” is what it’s called.
Simple. They decide that coal is a horrible idea and then contract with their electric utility to only purchase power from renewable sources. Which is what me and my business do.
“Going back a few years, corn ethanol was all the rage” – Jim Bullis.
You mean 1979? That was the last time biofuels were “all the rage”, largely due to the oil shock-related rise in oil prices. The same thing happened in Brazil:
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.eg.10.110185.001031
Since then, biofuels persisted in the Midwest because of local agricultural support – while tariffs remained in place to keep Brazilian sugarcane ethanol out, as it had lower costs of production than corn does.
So, what are the realistic replacements for exhausted reserves of domestic cheap oil? Solar, wind, biofuels – or tar sand oil from Canada and more coal?
Alberta tar sand oil is neither cheap nor secure; further expansion is only possible via new thousand-mile gas pipelines from Alaska or Fort Mackenzie.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/mackenzievalley_pipeline/index.html
The pipeliners include Transcanada (of “Made in India” fame), Enbridge (for export to California, etc.), and Mid-American (an original backer of a BP-Conoco pipeline proposal).
Those are natural gas pipelines, largely, because the tar sands require large quantities of heat for hot-water extraction of tar sand bitumen. 750-1500 cubic feet of gas is needed to process two tons of tar sands, the result being one barrel of crude oil. Water use quotes vary from 140 to 500 gallons per barrel of oil (clay content seems to matter). A “barrel of oil equivalent” is about 6000 cf of natural gas, so the EROEI might look positive. However, add in the cost of shipping gas from Canada, add the cost of the heavy machinery needed, assign a cost to the water, to the labor required, to transport, refining, etc. – i.e. do exactly what Jacobson, Pimental, Patzek and others do with “ethanol EROEIs” and see if to comes up positive. It doesn’t.
The level of “booked reserves” that BP, Exxon, ConocoP and others are claiming as a result of tar sand holdings is a matter of speculation – but the bottom line is that at $60/barrel production costs, this is not “cheap oil”. The era of cheap light fossil oil is not coming back – so from here on out, almost all “new production” is going to come from the dirtiest and most expensive fossil sources, both ecologically and economically.
Considering that, say the following is true: ‘Cars all electric in 20 years’: Evan Thornley, The Australian, May 13 2009
Put that in the spreadsheet, look at future demand issues, and ask if tar sand oil makes any sense. Of course not. What if the ecological costs are taken into account, on top – say, the cost of water cleanup for each barrel of oil produced?
Does the same argument apply to ethanol and biodiesel? This is a question of path-dependent and state-dependent thermodynamic issues. For example, the fruit you pick from your backyard tree has the same state-dependent energy content as one flown in by plane from 1000 miles away – but the path-dependent energy histories of the two are wildly different.
As far as short-term costs of solar electricity, the issue used by the DOE to justify refusing to finance solar projects? Consider Nokia:
It took Nokia 17 years to earn any profit from its electronics subsidiary, which is now the biggest mobile phone company in the world. If Finland had liberalized foreign investment from early on, Nokia would not be what it is today. Most probably, foreign financial investors who bought into the Nokia would have demanded the parent company stop cross-subsidizing the no-hope electronics subsidiary, thus killing off the business…
or,
Nokia subsidized its fledgling electronics business for 17 years with money from its businesses in logging, rubber boots and electric cable… Likewise, countries should defy the market and enter difficult and more advanced industries if they want to escape poverty
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang
Re #919 L. David Cooke,
Hi David,
We sure are having trouble getting on the same page. In the report I am talking about, Figure 80 is Minemouth Coal Prices. So something is clearly wrong.
The full reference: Annual Energy Outlook 2009 With Prljections to 2030 . The text in the upper right corner of the title page is: DOE/EIA-0383(2009) March 2009.
But thanks for going ahead.
“Historic effectiveness” sounds like “that’s the way we always did it.” I call those “fighting words.” Sure its ok if things are going well; but they are not. Tradition is the enemy in our present situation. Actually, traditional practice is an ok starting point but it has to be justified in more basic requirements. Most objections to tandem seating related to the hoped for social interaction enabled by side by side seating. (I suggest video technology can solve this problem.)
Nope, you can not reduce speed because time is important to people’s lives. Especially since there are other things to reduce. (Actually the drag force goes as velocity squared, not cubed. Power expended goes as velocity cubed.) F = Cd x A x rho x vel^2 /2 so fix A, the projected frontal area and then fix Cd. Tandem seating cuts A in half, but even more it enables body of revolution aerodynamics in a road capable form, which brings us to the airship form. Can’t get much more historic effectiveness in that. Fuhrman with his professor Prandtl worked out the basic shape in 1906 and spent some years refining it before they went to work on the modern airplane wing. (Curiously, they made sure that UK and USA shared in this German development.) (And Prandtl is called the father of modern aerodynamics.) The 1933 NACA test report on the scale model of the USS Akron by Freeman (get this through the NASA reports server or link more easily through http://www.miastrada.com/references) shows, after adjustment for their different force formula, that Cd is .05 for the velocity close to 80 mph without scaling. Luckily, the scale model itself is about the size we need for an automobile. It is really important to keep free flow conditions in order to not mess up the body of revolution effects and thereby lose the low Cd. Here is where 100 years of “historic effectiveness” has locked us in to the low, “bluff” body shape that rarely gets a Cd less than .26. ( The newest Prius is said to have worked this down to .25.)
Getting up to speed is no waste if getting back down is not thrown away in braking heat. Regenerative braking is absolutely required in any sensible vehicle. There will always be some losses, so if you were willing to cut travel speed in half, why not be satisfied going from 0 to 60 mph in 10 seconds rather than 4 seconds (which the Tesla proudly claims)? Maybe even 12 seconds would be ok.
Inertia of the wheels rotating is not a part of rolling resistance as usually discussed; rather it is a minor part of the overall vehicle inertia, which is again not a loss if recaptured.
Reliability is certainly related to number of parts, especially moving parts. However, wheels and axles are about the most reliable things in existence. How ever could we venture onto a two way road where a single wheel failure of an on-coming car could mean death, if this were a weak point in automobiles. Still, in the end, it is fair to chalk up a small negative for six wheels instead of four.
CO2 per BTU is in ratio of 110:155:210 for natural gas, oil based fuel, and coal respectively. This is important.
I see you equate historic effectiveness with human nature. That changes things. Human nature is the hardest part of the problem to deal with. We have 100 years of automobile tradition which long ago degenerated into a thing more about fashion than technology. There has been lots of discussion about how the Detroit system would mold the public taste for how cars should look. And there has always been the effect of ego satisfaction, whether the car is a statement of affluence or way of implying sexual prowess. In spite of every possible technical and scientific reason why a given car is superior, these human things will not simply go away.
Sure working and living patterns can reduce the need for door to door daily travel. I do not see the Utopian world where we all stayed home as being on the near horizon. When it is, there will not be much CO2 from personal transportation. Problem solved.
I quite agree about being careful of the sources of ideas. However, I have looked fairly carefully at each alternative fuel, or other scheme that has come up. Solar seems to me to be the main thing to keep an eye on, and when it gets in economic range, I stand ready to go completely plug-in. Oh, and I think the task of getting rid of coal power plants will have first dibs on solar output, and coal capacity will take a while to clear up.
Meanwhile, there will be a call for up to the minute technological alternatives. Which is the subject at hand. No need for a search as far as I am concerned. And of course, all I suggest could be knocked away by something completely new. But then, have you noticed, cars have really not changed much in really basic ways since the Model T. Real innovation comes slowly.
The only thing close is the Aptera (see http://www.aptera.com). They are definitely ahead of me, but I see this as a good thing because they can help break down the resistance of traditional expectations. Miastrada will ultimately win out over the Aptera if there is a sustained or expanding public concern about global warming.
Thanks for all the good points.
Best regards, Jim Bullis
#921 Ike Solem, #919 L. David Cooke,
I think you can shorten the discussion of fuels to one word: coal.
A recent USGS study of coal reserves in the Powder River Basin showed what looked to me like a thousand year supply at current rates of usage. Throw on a big shift from oil to electricity as the way to power cars, and that reserve base might drop to 500 years. There are powerful forces moving in this direction.
Thanks for the thoughts, Best regards, Jim Bullis
It solves the foreign oil dependency problem. Watch out, global environment.
Thus my endless rant about plug-in cars.
The only way plug-in cars would not be a disaster would be if they were very efficient in the use of energy. I am sure I have worn out everyone’s interest in looking at the Miastrada car, but this is what is called for in the situation, or something like it.
Optimism is waning since due to the abundance of coal, there will not be pressure to go beyond stuffing motors and batteries in cars like the present sized cars we now love and enjoy. Thus there is no strong reason to make people adapt to anything significantly different.
My main hope is that there will be a failure in trying to make big batteries cheap enough to be generally affordable. Then we might get to make some better choices.
James, you’re persistently ignoring what we know about the radiation type and dose _over_time_, bioaccumulation, and transport.
Look past the snapshot you keep giving us of Bambi and the butterflies romping at Chernobyl. Read the published science.
Otherwise you’re just repeating industry PR well documented.
There are many concerned people who’d agree with you about protecting desert ecology.
Have you found _anyone_ who agrees with your notion about Chernobyl being an improvement? Are you repeating it because you’re all alone?
Barton Paul Levenson Says (25 mai 2009 at 4:13 AM):
“James, why do you hate Ray Bolger?”
Err… If you really want an answer, you’re going to have to give me a little more information. Like for instance who this Ray Bolger is – the only references that come up in a search are to a mid-20th century movie actor?
L. David Cooke Says (25 mai 2009 at 8:58 AM):
“Next when you talk of aerodynamics and start recommending Tandem versus SbS you ignore aircraft design. Granted the purpose of SbS in aircraft is for alternative piloting if the primary fails…”
In fact, there are quite a few examples of airplanes with tandem rather than side-by-side seating. The Citabria & Piper Cub, most military fighter aircraft, all but a few sailplanes… In fact, just about anything where performance is really an issue. It’s also perfectly possible to fly from either the front or rear seat, so that’s hardly the reason for side-by-side seating.
I think the real reason is psychological, if not overtly sexual: the guy that’s just spent umpteen thousand on his new airplane wants to use it to impress/seduce members of the opposite sex, which is a lot easier to do if you’re sitting side-by-side.
Hank Roberts Says (25 mai 2009 at 12:56 PM):
“James, you’re persistently ignoring what we know about the radiation type and dose _over_time_, bioaccumulation, and transport.”
Who exactly is “we” here? And why can’t you at least entertain the possibility that what “we” know is in fact wrong?
“Otherwise you’re just repeating industry PR well documented.”
Now there’s another question – no, two questions – for you. First, does calling something “industry PR” prove that it’s wrong? Seems to me that’s a blatant resort to the old ad hominem (ad industriem?) argument tactic.
Second, why shouldn’t I respond by saying that everything you’ve said is just recycled antinuclear PR? Then we can go round & round in an endless cycle of finger pointing & name calling.
I’d much rather deal with facts. Bambi & the butterflies, though you may try to trivialize them, are facts.
> rather deal with facts
What do you consider a fact? Can you give citations to the science journals to back your opinions? That’s the best I can offer you to support my opinion, and in my opinion what “we” know is what’s in the journals.
The radioactive isotopes — cesium, americium, or any of the other radioisotopes now or in the future course of radioactive decay — aren’t an improvement. The longterm results we know are in the studies from Hanford and Oak Ridge and the various Russian sites.
Claims that there is no problem aren’t supported in the literature.
Want to protect the desert environment? So do a lot of people.
Use published research if you want to be credible arguing about ecology.
As to Ray Bolger — why do you keep attacking straw men?
Whoever said this is not about limited resources is completely wrong.
The “resource” being depleted is the capacity of the atmosphere to act as our garbage dump for the gaseous by-products of our fossil fuel consumption. Maybe that’s too abstract for you, but despite its vastness the atmosphere most certainly does have limits.
I suppose that to the fishermen of the Grand Banks, the concept of the vast ocean having limits was also too abstract, but ultimately they found our just how real those limits are.
Worth reading in full:
“Shepherd and Sailors, Pirates and Prophets
by Captain Paul Watson
In the Spring of 1990, during a lecture at the University of California at Los Angeles I predicted that by the turn of the century, we would be in danger of losing 75% of the world’s fisheries. The oceans were under siege by industrialized fishing operations both legal and illegal and unless the world’s governments took international action, I predicted that fish populations worldwide would crash.
I was of course labeled a pessimist and a doom and gloom Cassandra.
But unfortunately like Cassandra, I was right. In fact it turns out I was optimistic. According to the Pew Foundation report on the State of the World’s fisheries released in June of 2003, over 90% of the world’s large fish have been removed from the oceans and commercial fisheries have crashed worldwide….”
excerpt from:
http://www.seashepherd.nl/editorials/editorial12.html
Who pays for this?
http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/2007/02/no_fish_no_cry.php
says:
To further prove the economic futility of a deep-sea fishery.
Out of AAAS in San Francisco…
Rashid Sumaila and Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia in Canada recently studied the subsidies paid to bottom trawl fleets around the world. They found that the fleets receive over $152 million each year and that without these funds, the deep-sea fisheries industry would operate at a $50 million annual loss.”From an ecological perspective we cannot afford to destroy the deep-sea,” says Sumaila. “From an economic perspective, deep-sea fisheries cannot occur without government subsidies. The bottom line is that current deep fisheries are not sustainable.” Pauly adds: “There is surely a better way for governments to spend money than by paying subsidies to a fleet that burns 1.1 billion litres of fuel annually to maintain paltry catches of old growth fish from highly vulnerable stocks, while destroying their habitat in the process.”
So what countries subsidize?
* Japan
* South Korea
* Russia
* Spain
* Australia
* Ukraine
* Faroe Islands
* Estonia
* Iceland
* Lithuania
* Estonia
* Latvia
* France
citing: http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11206-deepsea-trawling-neither-green-nor-profitable.html
___________________
“generally lenient” says ReCaptcha
#926 James
At least we are getting an insight into your myopia and ignorance.
Apparently you have not considered the idea of cockpit resource management capacity that is enhanced by side by side seating. Sure guys like to impress women, but if that is a significant reason for an aircraft purchase, rather than utility, then the problem may be size related, or some other insecurity. Maybe with you, “performance is really an issue”.
#927 James
Silly boy, how ‘tiny’ your reasoning capacity appears to be. Non sequitur arguments do not make you a ‘bigger’ man. You can’t alter what is reasonably understood with your unsupported opinion. Increased radiation levels and longer exposure times increase cancer risks and mutation probability. If you can present evidence that has survived peer response to contradict this, please do.
Hank is talking about what is well understood in the science literature (the ‘we’ he is referring to is the scientific understanding but you are a little to slow to pick up on such subtleties). You, on the other hand, are talking about talking points.
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/rad-exposure-cancer.html
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/high-rad-doses.html
James, since you have such a hard time with simple reasoning, I will point out that when they (the NRC) says “their effects tend to be less severe” that does not mean ‘no effects’.
You might also want to look at:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1570049
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8761289
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1088700&blobtype=pdf
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1469938
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=33858
But really you can google too. It’s not difficult. http://scholar.google.com
The fact that you are using Bambi and butterflies as a red herring is starting to smell more than fishy, it’s smelling more like rotten fish now.
Now if you think that thyroid cancer did not increase due to Chernobyl then you can join the holocaust deniers and stop irritating people here. Come back when you have relevant substance to back your opinion.
Oh and in case you still don’t get it (based on your record, I’m assuming you don’t), Ray Bolger played the straw man in the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Hmm, not a great analogy. By your own words the least efficient 50% catch 10% of the fish and barely subsist.
But the “sustainable” catch is only 20% of what is presently harvested.
So it seems the “right” approach would be to have 100% catch 20% and everyone barely subsists. What a delightful result.
#921 Ike Solem
It turns out that Thornley is in charge of Project “Better Place” in Australia.
I can go on forever about why this is a bad idea from the CO2 emission point of view, but the EPRI-NRDC study found here
http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/public/000000000001015325.pdf tells it all quite well. Look at Figure 5-1. Look at the effect of making a hybrid into a plug-in where the electricity comes from coal.
For those who understand why coal will be the source of electricity as long as there is available coal fired capacity, this should make it clear that electric cars are a bad idea. And then it should be clear that the only green thing about Project Better Place is the cash being sunk into it.
If that is not enough look at the fuel for electricity in the country where “Better Place” started. http://www.iea.org/textbase/stats/pdf_graphs/ILELEC.pdf
Note that the little natural gas part has dried up since this chart was made. How could anyone pretend that coal will not be the source of electricity here?
Allow me to stir the pot a bit, as it doesn`t appear that anyone has noticed Chip Knappengerger`s response to Gavin, in tbe form of his own climate parable, using the “Emperor`s new clothes” theme.
http://masterresource.org/?p=2751
Waxman-Markey appears as the new clothes, with Chip apparently taking on the role of the bright and persistent voice of the insufficiently jaded little boy who can`t help but to see the truth, and bravely refuses to be cowed.
Some of the criticisms of W-M seem fair to me – after all, they manifest precisely the reasons that Jim Hansen has taken a strong stance in favor of more transparent and rebated carbon taxes over the pork and bureaucracy that comes with cap and trade.
1. But Chip is still failing to address the main premise of Gavin`s tragedy of the commons fisheries analogy: there is a commons problem that requires coordinated action (a multi-player, repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma), and the only way out requires initial measures at trust-building, with more effective measures to follow when the parties can agree on burden sharing and enforcement.
Thus Chip is simply perpetuating the problem that I have noted here:
“Unfortunately, what passes for discussion on climate change (and other environmental issues) is too often people talking past each other (frequently with all of the hallmarks of a tribal battle): some correctly see a looming commons problem that requires government regulation but ignore the risks of pork, partiality and wasted resources in the policies themselves, while others, not anxious for government to expand its regulatory purview, downplay or dismiss the resource problem and focus on the downsides of government action or the motives of those calling for government action (while ignoring those invested heavily in a status quo that is replete with moral hazard).
Capitalism, the destructive exploitation of the Amazon and the tragedy of the government-owned commons
2. Further, while Chip has good reason to criticize all of the pork that is loaded into the W-M hairshirt – there certain ARE plenty of corporate interests seeking to use climate policy to get sweet deals from government – it`s more than a bit coy of him to paint the critics of W-M as relative innocent truth-tellers, while somehow failing to note all of the sweet deals built into the status quo that fossil fuel firms, utilities, automakers and their investors have long enjoyed. (Not to mention that these interests have hardly been turned away from the W-M and other pork troughs.)
Chip`s convenient oversight might have something to do with the fact that the public advocacy firm he shares with Pat Michaels is funded by coal interests, as Marion Delgado points out in #677, and as I have previously discussed directly with Chip: Pat Michaels – scientist AND paid advocate. Correspondence with Chip Knappenberger.
It doesn`t end there, unfortunately, as Chip is posting on the “MasterResource” blog run by Rob Bradley, who is CEO of the coal-industry-funded Institute for Energy Research. For the sin of pointing out the political-favor-protection game that IER and MasterResource are engaged in, Rob Bradley has exercised his Constitutional right to ban me from the MasterResource blog (mid-conversation with, but without notice to, Chip, as it turns out).
So sure, let`s fight the pork as best we can, Chip, but let`s not ignore the fact since there are NO property rights in the atmosphere or climate, markets are not protecting it, but instead steadily producing an ever-growing tragedy of the commons. Care to acknowledge that, or to offer any suggestions?
James writes:
Ray Bolger played the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. He was made out of straw.
Hank Roberts,
Here is a list of the World Nuclear Power Reactors: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html, not including the 200 plus that power about 150 ships.
Will you kindly identify which of these reactors are designed in a way that allows the fundamental physical processes that occurred in the Chernobyl reactors to be attained.
To make the task easier, you’ll note that all these reactors fall into maybe four or five classes so you need only identify the classes that allow the processes to occur.
Absence information to the contrary from you, I will assume that I am correct and that the processes that allowed the Chernobyl accident to occur cannot occur in power reactors.
If you agree that the processes cannot occur, then of what usefulness is the continued focus on the Chernobyl accident?
freespeech demonstrates an amazing lack of imagination:
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the most successful fishermen could buy out the less successful, who could then go about some other line of work and add to the economy in other ways. Nah! That’s just crazy talk!
#937 Ray Ladbury
Right. They can go make cars in Detroit. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
Anyway, wasn’t the problem about the fish stock being depleted, not the number of fishermen?
There is real experience with how things come out when the more successful farmers buy out the least successful. This has been going on since WWII in our farm country. Productivity has gone up amazingly due to the economies of scale; some call it factory farms. So far so good. But our lack of imagination caught up with us since we lost the power to innovate in our industrial world, and certainly we should not be expected to work as hard as the Chinese.
And of course it is not that simple.
James wrote: “… a vision of endless cities, separated only by the spaces you’ve covered over with your solar farms and wind turbines.”
According to a peer-reviewed study by the CSP manufacturer Ausra, “covering over” ONE PERCENT of America’s deserts with concentrating solar thermal power plants could provide one hundred percent of the USA’s electricity.
And in James’s mind, that somehow becomes “endless cities, separated only by spaces covered with solar farms and wind turbines”.
And the Chernobyl disaster was a “net improvement” to the environment.
And anyone who is concerned about the very real problems and dangers of nuclear power is engaging in “religion” (and I suppose that includes the advocates of a large-scale nuclear expansion who authored MIT’s study, which found that nuclear waste was a serious, dangerous and unsolved obstacle to any such expansion).
And back-of-the-envelope figuring based on made-up numbers, or on the first page a Google search happens to turn up, is superior to the “garbage” found in peer-reviewed studies.
OK. I know when I’m beat.
#915 James,
The formula for rolling resistance is correct and the variations in tires shows up in the Crr value. As to real data on rolling resistance of wide or narrow tires, that is very hard to find. There are a lot of things that affect rolling resistance. After the radial belting stopped the tires from expanding due to centrifugal force, the remainder is mostly a form of drag force that has nothing to do with speed. Truck companies pay a lot of attention to this, but it is really hard to get much below Crr = .01 for truck tires, or most other kind for that matter.
Toyota originally used tires with Crr = .065 on the Prius, but it has been said that they later backed off a little since these very low Crr tires were found to give a harsh ride. ( I am cautious about things that “have been said” but that’s all I have on that.)
Yes, engines are bad the way we mostly use them. However, Toyota demonstrated enormous improvement with the way they run the Prius engine, getting an average efficiency of 38% on the urban driving schedule which is the US standard for “urban.”
And do not throw away the diesel just yet. Cummins says they have successfully made large truck engines that are diesel that run on natural gas. Here Boone Pickens is not simply blowing smoke. (His claim that natural gas is abundant is still under study.)
You get the point about cogeneration, including that if it is not workable part of the year, don’t do it and use the central power plants as your source. However, there are ways to use heat that make the useful fraction much greater. First, by starting with a small engine, finding good uses for heat is not that hard, though the formula breaks down if you start using it where you did not do so before. But the real interesting thing for warmer climates is the possibility of absorption chillers for air conditioning and refrigeration. Does anyone remember the gas powered refrigerator by Servel? (Incidentally, our energy regulating folks here in California banned these because they were not correctly calculating efficiency.) Anyway, by using car heat to run air conditioners, we can greatly extend the useful cogeneration periods. (Absorption chillers are the heart of many commercial air conditioners.)
Now let’s get to the electric car stuff. Let’s say you have a hybrid car like a Prius or the Ford Fusion Hybrid. Both are good as they are. Now someone comes along and wants you to stuff $10,000 worth of batteries in the trunk of the car and put a $20,000 solar array on your roof. Do not do that out of concern for glogal warming!!!
However, if you want to put a $20,000 solar array on your house, fine, but try to work with the utility to sell excess power to them since you really might not need much power during the day. If the price is set right, the utility will make good use of your power, though they will start out complaining a lot since it is messes up their planning and might put big machines into idle mode (does not good on accounting reports). Wherever possible the utility will idle the machines having the highest operating cost. Yes, natural gas machines will go off wherever possible. Whatever, this becomes the status quo, with your solar system in the mix.
Now that this is all in operation, study hard on whether to stuff batteries in your hybrid. When these are plugged in to the mix, including your solar system, it represents a new load. The utility company is obligated to keep costs down, so they will try to fill this new load from the cheapest systems that have available capacity. That is not your solar system; it does not have available capacity since its output is entirely being used in the status quo. What is the cheapest available capacity? It is certainly coal at night. (When the utility is willing to give your a cheap rate for electricity-surprise surprise.) If there is a shred of available coal fired capacity in the daytime it will be coal then as well. So if you plug in your $10,000 bank of batteries you might get a good rate and you might even save money, and you might even be helping to shift away from foreign oil, but DO NOT think you are doing anything for the global climate.
Things sometimes are not as we might think.
Re #919 L. David Cooke,
I think I might have left you with the impression that I added two extra wheels out of a perverse intention to make reliability worse.
My poor answer can only be excused by laziness, of which I sometimes can be charged.
More importantly, I missed the opportunity to point out the key to the whole system, which is the stabilizing-steering articulated vehicle combination system.
I started out trying to make a narrow car that would have the advantages of a motorcycle as to taking up less space on roads and in parking lots. Yup, twice as many cars in lanes half as wide. Much of the motivation was from observing the mostly empty right front seats that are being dragged around. I expected some aerodynamic improvement due to reduced frontal area.
An answer turned out to be the stabilizing system that operates as a part of the steering action. Thus, you can not start to turn without concurrently setting stabilizing wheels in position, like an outrigger, to counter roll tendency due to radial acceleration of the turning circle path.
So now I had a tall thin vehicle which I thought people might like to ride in, since they would have the viewing height of an SUV but the frontal profile about like that of a motorcycle. Hm, a little like riding a horse?
Then I got going on the aerodynamics issue, and soon realized there was a special opportunity due to the height that the stabilizing system enabled. Having had some fluid dynamics in my background I knew the advantages of a body of revolution for purposes of getting a low drag coefficient. It was only when I found the USS Akron test data that I fully realized the potential for something really different in this new kind of machine.
Before the Model T there were many start-up companies making narrow cars, some with tandem seating, that could have led to much better configurations than we now see in cars. Henry Ford, stomped these out with the help of mass production and cheap oil. Clearly, the Miastrada car sets automotive history back 100 years. Maybe we can get it right this time.
Jim (941), excellent explanation for the argument against increasing your electric load even after you have added intertied solar panels to your house. Folks in the US interested in following through on this train of thought may be interested in how clean (both carbon wise and otherwise) their electricity is. This handy site from the EPA lets you know where (based on 2005 averages) your electric company’s mix comes from and how it compares nationally.
http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/how-clean.html
Arch
BTW Jim, at first I thought you were just a spammer, but I have come to appreciate your posts here ;-)
Jim Bullis said, “Right. They can go make cars in Detroit.”
Well, I suppose they could if Detroit made anything people actually wanted to buy. I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of pity for the Big 3. They’ve repeatedly come up with innovations only to strangle them in the crib–not just electric vehicles, but Stirling engines… They’ve been so busy concentrating on their “core business” they’ve left themselves with no business at all.
Jim Bullis @941:
Have you ever built one of these vehicles? You’ve made a lot of fantastic claims about this vehicle, while trashing solar power all the while. I at least have worked with utilities and researchers and built the things I patent. I’d like to see some real video, and real published data, on this car of yours.
(reCaptcha says: “cynical childs”. Go figure)
#944 Ray Ladbury,
Now we are getting to the problem. My oft repeated snide comment is that Detroit long ago became a fashion industry guided by marketing and organized to enable planning that is comfortable to manage. Thus, innovation means a cute new outfit every now and then on the same four wheeled horseless carriage.
Advertising has long practice in establishing the standard against which we evaluate cars.
Curiously, the Society of Automotive Engineers published a standard for measuring performance of electric cars based on the belief that electricity is a fuel. They seem to think electricity is a fuel because you can make heat from it. Amazing, but they would have us judge car performance using the pretend fuel in comparison with gasoline that powers cars that carry their own heat engines.
Our Argonne National Laboratories similarly advocates this approach, and accordingly advocates for plug-in electric cars.
No wonder we are headed for a world of plug-in Hummers.
#945 Furry
Ouch ouch, there you go again goading the old guy.
But first, if you think I am trashing solar power we are not communicating very well; I will cheerfully take the blame. However, I do bring a serious concern about affordability, and primarily due to that cost, scalability. I react strongly to misleading cost estimates. (Does anyone get really annoyed when BMW announces there are absolutely no maintenance costs, and then only on the TV screen it says 4 years, 50,000 miles. — My car is 18 years old so you might understand my point of view.)
As to fantastic claims: Yup, at least you noticed they are big. Whether they are fantasies remains to be seen, though analytically they seem well grounded to me, and they are completely open to discussion. It is rare that anyone actually brings up a technical issue and offers counter analysis, or even penetrating questions, which are certainly welcome. I really welcome serious criticism. After all, this is something I want to get right.
As far as published data, time gets short when there is design and construction work going on and when furry folk continue to apply discipline. Thus, what is on the website ( http://www.miastrada.com ) is about all I have been able to manage. Most people don’t begin to get through that.
I do have a coaster model that I ride on down the driveway. Maybe I should make a movie of that and give everyone a good laugh.
RECaptcha is clearly psychic driven. I got “insane” the last time.
Look at the article on the Wired Magazine, Autopia page:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/volkswagen/#respond
Read my comment there.
Then check out the 100 MPG Hummer, the 100 MPG Fisker, the 100+MPG Calcars vehicles, and the 100 MPG Bright Van.
Perhaps there is a pattern shaping up. I do not think it is consistent with a real effort to cut CO2.
I hope I haven’t worn out our moderator, who I believe deserves much thanks for enabling all this conversation.
Continuing my #948
Then look at page 18 of
http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/PDF/presentation-sm.pdf
to see the lineup of plug-ins that GM is planning to deliver.
Notice that the only kind of pollution they really address is the kind the causes smog, and their study is with regard to smog in Southern California.
John P. Reisman (OSS Foundation) Says (25 mai 2009 at 8:34 PM):
“Apparently you have not considered the idea of cockpit resource management capacity that is enhanced by side by side seating.”
Cockpit resource management? In small planes, when flying VFR? Sorry, but I can still, after maybe three decades, remember my first flying instructor telling me to “get your !#$@ head out of the cockpit”. Even single-pilot IFR is quite doable. For higher workloads, the military seems to use tandem seating for fighter aircraft.
There are some other reasons to go to side-by-side seating in general aviation aircraft, though. Most of the side-by-siders are actually 4-place (or derivatives, like the Cessna 150-152 from the 172), so it simplifies construction and weigh & balance.