KIA 490: Oh, and just give total control of the world to the One World Goobermint – that will surely turn the planet into utopia.
BPL: Don’t forget the UN black helicopters which will take all the white Christian patriots to FEMA detention camps. Everybody here but you is advocating just that.
KIA deflects (#490), with hooha about North American fire acreage and arson.
The latter is pretty silly. Mega-fires aren’t about the source of ignition! They’re about the response of the environment to flame. And does he really mean to suggest–he doesn’t, apparently, have sufficient brass to actually claim it–that there’s some sort of trend in arson?
The former is an argument against his own deflection: warming is global, but what odds that alleged land use issues or putative arson trends span 3 nations, 2 hemispheres and tens of thousands of miles?
I was good at rote leaning as well. School is the time for rote learning. You need a lot of basic information to navigate life.
Starting with vocabulary. The local schools here stopped teaching “Jabberwocky” some time in the not-too-distant past. I run into people who don’t know the word “tedium”. If this reminds you of Newspeak, it ought to.
As you get older rote learning gets less important, because you “know where to look” and use flavours and hooks.
I used to know the electrical permittivity ε0 of free space, but I haven’t used that number in years and I’d have to look it up. The magnetic permeability μ0 is much easier:
4*pi*1e-7 Henries per meter (I had to look up the units). It’s easy to remember because it’s obviously set by definition, which I never bothered to dig into.
I have a head full of other facts and constants. 1 BTU = 1054.4 J. 1 ton oil equivalent = 41.868 GJ. Horsepower = torque (ft-lb) times speed (RPM) / 5252. What gets used all the time is what gets stuck in memory.
Our education system moved away from rote leaning of facts, times tables even, and has downplayed the importance of spelling and grammar. Its been a disaster. When kids get to university they can’t even write a coherent, organised essay and have needed remedial classes. Professors are disgusted and fed up. Our PISA rankings have dropped badly.
There are a host of reasons for this, but the biggest three are feminism opening more lucrative careers to women, the end of educational tracking and flunking/explusion of failures and behavior problems, and the insistence that “every child can learn” which limits the pace of an entire class to the slowest student therein (who is no longer in the “dummy class”). In the USA, “Common Core” reduces even the brightest students to “learning” multiplication by drawing grids of dots and counting them. It’s child abuse.
We can see right here that some people can’t learn. zebra implies rubbing elbows with academics and engineers, but can’t do algebra or trigonometry.
carbon fee and dividend is quite good in principle, except the problem is America has this huge anti tax ideology, particularly the GOP. You might be be better off promoting something like the GND
Tax and dividend is getting a hearing in Washington, just not winning as fast as we’d like (I was part of Citizens Climate Lobby for a while until it was made clear to me it was fine with shutting down carbon-free generation faster than it could be replaced). Anything resembling the GND would set off a civil war within months, and if implemented it would make the USA envy Venezuela. AAMOF, were it implemented most of Venezuela would move to the USA as one of its provisos is open borders.
On top of this, the GND is guaranteed to fail the same way the Energiewende has failed. We could make some serious progress with the Fearless Green Deal, but “Greens” are hysterically opposed.
@486: “Renewable energy” has had its day. It was supplanted two centuries ago for reasons which have not changed and will not change. No amount of wishful thinking is going to reverse this; if you want a solar-powered industrial society, you’re going to have to do it in space where you don’t have a planet blocking your energy supply half the time.
Another tax that will save the world. Oh, and just give total control of the world to the One World Goobermint – that will surely turn the planet into utopia.
Heh, heh, there you go with your strawman rhetorical tactics again. It’s not as though you’ve offered a way to save any of what’s left of the world, now that AGW is taking a conspicuous toll. And I have yet to see any posts here seriously advocating One World Goobermint[sick]. Nobody here believes in utopia except you, with your false memories of a country that wasn’t. I’ve been there all along, and although my life has been tolerable enough, America never was the utopia you’ve claimed. Nor will any future be utopia, no matter what the trajectory of atmospheric CO2 is. Nonetheless, this is my home and I want to save as much of it as I can, by capping the net cost of global warming as low as politically possible. Either you know that perfectly well and are only here as a gadfly, to draw our blood (moo!) and deposit eggs that hatch into loathesome larvae burrowing into our flesh (gotta love analogy); or you really are the dolt you present yourself as. Which is it?
nigeljsays
The simplicity / permaculture experts like Killian ideally want us to stop using fossil fuels generation, and they only want us to build a tiny little bit of new electricity generation (wind or solar power). That means we have to make huge cuts to our per capita use of electricity.
I do appreciate they seem to say even small changes help, but Killian constantly posts material suggesting quite large changes.
Imho you would need to go without almost all consumer appliances to get your electricity consumption right down to the sort of levels required. In places that rely on coal power, you are talking about a 80% or more reduction in electricity generation. The maths is obvious. If there’s a lot of hydro and nuclear power like France, maybe less reduction, but the permaculture crowd hate these sources of power and want them gone.
You wont do it by eliminating low wattage devices alone it wont be enough, many of the big high wattage devices would also have to go. Most electrical appliances would have to go.
You would have to do an awful lot of one pot cooking on a little single element electric stove and eat a lot of cold meals. One shower a week maybe. You would have to have a fridge, but no microwave, vacuum cleaner, large audio system, television, dishwasher, no electric heaters, only maybe a wood burner heater (someone mentioned the problems of finding enough timber when everyone does this).
Heat pumps don’t use much electricity, but they use a lot of resources and require double glazing etc to provide sufficient heating, and the simplicity people don’t like this because its resource intensive.
Permaculture can teach us something, and maybe we can do without some of the things I listed, but it seems obvious we need to stop burning fossil fuels, and build plenty of new clean electricity generation of one sort or another.
Do me a favor and show me his “analysis”… I have yet to see any analysis addressing and contradicting what I said.
What you said is at once erroneous and irrelevant. You are fixated on “energy storage” when the most trivial arithmetic effort would prove to you that the amount is so small as to be ignored. You won’t do the math because you are not interested in facts, you are trying to “win” despite being totally incompetent. Ain’t gonna work.
In my world, “understanding the physics” means being able to explain it in your own words. He hasn’t…
the citation I gave is an excellent example; it goes through the math and gives a concise, clear description of what is happening physically.
Your tank circuit does not have either a power connection or a load, which is why it is irrelevant as a direct example. It could be used to explain power-factor correction to you… but you are too pig-headed to even try to understand.
Maybe someone else is not so lost, though. Consider zebra’s tank circuit. It runs current in a circle; the top wire has exactly as much current coming in as going out at all times. Now connect the bottom wire to ground and the top wire to AC power at the resonant frequency. Nothing comes in through the AC connection; the current from the capacitor and to the inductor, or vice versa, still balances out. It draws zero current from the line.
Now connect a resistor from power to ground. Only the resistor draws power. Now disconnect the capacitor. Now you have the same current in the inductor, but NOT being cancelled by the capacitor. The real power remains the same but the total current goes up. That’s what most loads, especially induction motors, “look like” electrically: both resistive and inductive.
Capacitors cancel out inductive current and, ideally, make the load look purely resistive.
nigeljsays
zebra @487 says some stuff as follows “There’s a factory with lots of electric motors, The motors, being inductive, create reactive power, The reactive power heats up the transmission lines (including transformers), Installing the capacitors results in the transmission lines not heating up. Forget metaphors…what are the capacitors doing? (my note: implying they must store the reactive power).
Adding to my previous comment, this is virtually all wrong. Didn’t ring true to me, so I checked. No expertise in this, not even slightly, but can read and am analytical.
So the facts are motors consume reactive power, (so the magnetic fields can form) and capacitors produce reactive power (simplifying a bit) so are put in the circuit to do this function. No idea where heating up of wires comes from. From AC power on wikipedia “Conventionally, capacitors are treated as if they generate reactive power and inductors (eg motors) as if they consume it.” Other sources say the same.
Zebra probably means ‘generators’ which can produce both active and reactive power (despite being inductors, confusingly, ain’t life complicated), and this can heat up wires sometimes. However capacitors are not used to absorb this energy its resolved in other ways.
Reactive power is mostly a nuisance but is needed locally for motors, power factor correction and voltage regulation, as I said way back. Of course capacitors work by storing energy and everything comes from this, Eg capacitors block DC and pass AC. Factoids are sometimes quite important. :)
E-P 505: feminism opening more lucrative careers to women
BPL: Oh, no! What a catastrophe! Everyone knows women are only suited to kinder, kuche, und kirche. Oh, if only women had stayed in the home and not demanded irrational privileges like voting and having careers!
So the facts are motors consume reactive power, (so the magnetic fields can form) and capacitors produce reactive power (simplifying a bit) so are put in the circuit to do this function. No idea where heating up of wires comes from. From AC power on wikipedia “Conventionally, capacitors are treated as if they generate reactive power and inductors (eg motors) as if they consume it.” Other sources say the same.
The key word in that second last sentence is “conventionally.’ Either a capacitance or an inductance creates reactance in an AC circuit; the difference is the sign of the phase shift. (A charging capacitor shows maximal current flow initially, with the voltage increasing gradually; the opposite is true with an inductance such as a transformer or generator coil.)
The ‘wire heating up’ bit arises because although the reactive power does not accomplish work, it does dissipate energy, which ends up as heat somewhere in the system.
zebrasays
#510 EP,
EP, I’m still waiting for an answer to what I asked, not rambling recitations that avoid the question. As I said to AB, a competent EE would be able to write a few sentences at most to explain it.
1. There’s a factory with lots of electric motors.
2. The motors, being inductive, create reactive power.
3. The reactive power heats up the transmission lines (including transformers).
4. Installing the capacitors results in the transmission lines not heating up.
fascism : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government
Calling me fascist shows just what an empty shill you are.
Perhaps I should have said “Nazi”. The entire purpose of “lebensraum” was to get the German people out of the degenerate cities and let them pursue lives of bucolic bliss. That’s what your whole “permaculture” thing is about. It’s the same romantic vision of “back to the land”.
I want to let most of the land just be the land, by removing human energy demands from it.
how many people can be supported by said permaculture systems?
I minimum of 12 billion, depending on how far we allow climate to get out of control. But, then, if the world is permacultural, we’ll be back to <300ppm in anywhere from 20 to 100 years.
The persistent myth of the uber-productivity of forest gardens, perennial plants and polycultures, amongst other sacred cows, are why I have a lot of sympathy for Peter Harper’s critique on the lack of controlled trials and measured experiments. It’s not that there aren’t any instances of these types of food production being successful (though those that are, are rarely in this country), but how do you know that polycultures provide a higher total yield than comparative mono cropping, if you don’t measure it? How many people who have planted a forest garden have actually been able to feed themselves from it? When I watched the Youtube clip of Mike Feingold’s PC allotment, I was appalled at how little food was being grown on such a lush looking bit of land. I’ve heard it too often now; this over emphasis on salad leaves, berries, “beneficial plants” and lack of calorie crops. It is an ongoing weakness of many PC gardens, especially seen against the bigger picture of a world where food will be a lot less abundant than it is right now. With increasing demand on food banks in the UK you could say that we are now getting there. Mike’s plot is in an urban area, where clean, fertile soil is even more precious. How do gardens like that, full of salad and beneficial plants in cities where people go hungry, check out against people care or even fair shares?
Given examples where food production seems a mere afterthought, you can’t blame people for thinking that PC gardens are just another “right-on” pursuit for the well off.
Do you ask your dentist to repair your car engine? Your doctor to build your house? Appeal to Authority Fallacy.
Lie:
Multiple options exist to reduce energy supply sector GHG
emissions (robust evidence, high agreement). These include energy
efficiency improvements and fugitive emission reductions in fuel
extraction as well as in energy conversion, transmission, and distribution
systems; fossil fuel switching; and low-GHG energy supply technologies
such as renewable energy (RE), nuclear power, and carbon
dioxide capture and storage (CCS). [7.5, 7.8.1, 7.11]
Nothing in that quote states nuclear is needed. It is stated as an option.
Sweden has decarbonized its electricity. France mostly decarbonized its electricity (though it is backsliding, as the demand for more “renewables” requires more fossil-fired generation for “balancing”). Ontario has mostly decarbonized its electricity and closed its last coal-fired generator; the CO2 intensity as I write this is 6.36 g/kWh.
“Renewable” Germany has missed its 2020 goal of 40% CO2 reduction by roughly 8% and has per-capita CO2 emissions close to double those of France.
This is why I ignored you for so long; talking to nuclear freaks is every bit as useless as talking to climate denialists.
Yet when you saw my views getting mindshare, you were compelled to jump in. Funny how that works.
There are currently NO countries which have decarbonized fossil-based energy systems using any combination of RE or CCS, and the poster child for such a transition (Germany) is failing badly. If you claim otherwise, SHOW ME.
Stuff your Straw Man.
<uncontrollable laughter> Someone demands evidence, and that’s your response? Calling it a “straw man”? Can you be any more pathetic?
A straw-man argument is setting up a weak claim to knock down, ignoring the opponent’s stronger claim. Demanding support for claims isn’t even an argument. If a simple demand for facts reduces you to impotent sputtering, it doesn’t say very much for you does it?
Correct. Indefinite abundance for all.
I live on 2.6 acres. The average annual energy capture of temperate forest as wood is about 30 watts per tree, so even with a full acre devoted to energy crops just for me my situation would be marginal at best.†
There is nothing keeping any household, community or country from transitioning to regenerative systems within 5 years.
If that’s true, you must have PILES of examples. Let’s have three, and those people have to satisfy ALL their energy needs without fossil fuels AND support whatever industrial base is required to replace worn-out equipment.
Nuclear, in the best case scenarios, would never get to 100% of needs.
About 90% nuclear and 10% biomass would do it. You could substitute wind and PV for part of the nuclear that goes into upgrading biomass to refined fuels and chemical feedstocks, but nuclear could do it all.
You are useless. Your presence here has destroyed the usefulness of these fora.
“Shut up,” he explained. <more laughter>
† This page states 193 lb/yr CO2 consumed by a 30-yr-old white pine. Figuring CO2 is 27% carbon by weight and dry wood is 45%, that comes to 117 pounds per year. Using EPA emissions factor of 17.48 million BTU per short ton, I get a figure of almost exactly 1 million BTU/year/tree. That comes to about 34 watts per tree… after it’s spent 30 years getting that big. At 435 trees/acre that’s just under 15 kW/acre of energy stored as wood. Getting my full 10 kW/capita of primary energy from wood would take almost 3 times as much land, with nothing left over to e.g. grow food.
My 100,000 BTU/hr furnace is currently cranking away getting the house up to the daytime setpoint. 100,000 BTU/hr is 29.3 kW. True, it doesn’t use that continuously… but I also have to run the refrigerator, well pump and of course the computer and modem. Then there’s all the energy involved with getting food and goods, and the energy involved with the transport and manufacturing. Trying to account for all of that is why I decided to throw out all the details of what-from-where and just see what it would take to get 100% of the USA’s 3.3 TW of primary energy consumption from nuclear. It turns out to be surprisingly easy.
nigelj busts zebra @511. You got him. Either he’s never looked at the power engineering stuff he’s been referred to, or is so bound to his misconceptions that he can’t get past them to understand the material.
No idea where heating up of wires comes from.
If you have 800 watts of real power and 600 VAR going into a motor, you have a total of 1000 VA (square root of sum of squares). That extra 200 VA heats up the wires upstream (and increases hysteresis and eddy-current losses in transformer cores). Generate 600 VAR to offset the inductive load and you’re back down to a net 800 VA (all of it watts).
Zebra probably means ‘generators’ which can produce both active and reactive power (despite being inductors, confusingly, ain’t life complicated)
You produce VARs in a synchronous machine by over-exciting the field. This works for synchronous motors as well as synchronous alternators. The math is straightforward but again… complex numbers.
A synchronous condenser is an over-excited synchronous motor running without a load on the shaft. Useful buggers, aren’t they?
I’m not going to try to teach the pig (that’s you) to sing.
nigeljsays
Kevin Donald McKinney @514, yes good points, but if we are having a conversation should it not use the conventions? It will lead to misunderstandings otherwise.
I was aware of that stuff about positive and negative phases shifts. I did say “simplifying a bit” in relation to capacitors. Bit of a learning experience for me.
And what Zebra says is still wrong on this issue. Full stop. I own my mistakes, I dont go on defending the indefensible making a fool of myself.
nigeljsays
Killian @491 the angry man who spits acid pontificates.
“Hmmm… just nuclear power (in the right corner).”
Put whatever you want in the right corner. I dont care. Once again you miss the basic point. You have no sense of humour.
“Hmm… yet here we have an attempt to diminish simplification by attatching the concept to a single individual.”
Oh for gods sake how ridiculous and paranoid. It was stated that way so people might at least have some idea what the hell simplification means, nothing more.
“You, sir, are a dishonest man, a bit disgusting.”
That’s you standard stock answer to all criticism isn’t it. To make false accusations of dishonesty and throw in an ad hominem for good measure. I stick the the facts and I’m subtly persuasive, that of course is what bothers you and why you respond to aggressively.
“Stop posting.”
Get stuffed.
Crikey I just realised I’m starting to sound like BPL.
nigeljsays
Killian @496
“I’m not stupid, you’re (BPL) an ass making excuses. You included my statement.”
BPL included your statement because it included the frigging subject matter, the word ‘nuclear’ you paranoid idiot :)
nigeljsays
Engineer-Poet @505
“There are a host of reasons for this, (bad spelling and basic maths etc) but the biggest three are feminism opening more lucrative careers to women, the end of educational tracking and flunking/explusion of failures and behavior problems, and the insistence that “every child can learn” ….”
Our educational hierarchy that decides policy is still dominated by male baby boomers. Got to say I agree with BPL about women so Ill leave it there, and its not smart to make yourself look like a mysogynist.
Finland eliminated a lot of testing at primary and early secondary school level and have excellent educational results. But they keep testing at upper secondary school level, its all about timing and whats age appropriate.
Agree about the rest.
—————–
Engineer-Poet @506
“On top of this, the GND is guaranteed to fail the same way the Energiewende has failed. We could make some serious progress with the Fearless Green Deal, but “Greens” are hysterically opposed.”
The GND does seem to try to do too many things all at once, although I’m ok with the social policies in principle. The point I was making was that carbon taxes aren’t looking too popular so infrastructure spending and rules might have more of a future. I could have been clearer.
A massive and rapid phase out of coal fired power and replacement with either nuclear power or renewables would not happen by waving a magic wand. You could force generating companies to change over, but the consequences could be chaotic and costs would be passed onto consumers and they would be frightening.
A better idea is big injection of government money so they pay for a large part of new generation. It has to be smoothed out as much as possible and government funds would help do that. Some of the money could come from taxes, some from “quantitative easing” and some from borrowing. Infrastructure bonds might be another possibility.
Of course its naive to think any climate mitigation plan can rely on just one mechanism. You would still need some environmental rules etc and even a bit of killianism.
The point is there are not infinite financing answers and they all hurt. We are running out of time to pick one and run with it. The type of generation is another matter. I’m flexible on that.
nigeljsays
Killian @492 posts some stuff:
EP: Your scheme (permaculture, simplicity etc) requires that some billions of people die.
Killian: Because you say so? You’re an idiot. 2/3 of the world already lives simply, liar.
Nigelj: Its stretching things to say 2 / 3 already live simply. About 2 billion people in developing and poor countries live on small farms (subsistence agriculture wikipedia). One billion people live in urban slums. So less than half the worlds population live “simply” and whether urban slums fits the definition is debatable anyway.
So billions would either have to die or be seriously at risk with some rapid simplification / permaculture plan.
And many of these people already living simply are intent on leaving simple lifestyles anyway, so that is a huge thing to turn around.
We have a massive juggling act on our hands that is going to require population growth stopping, economic growth stopping in some places at least, a lot of new energy, but a lot of frugality and wasting less and recycling more, so a bit of simplicity where it actually works and makes sense.
Industrial agriculture has some bad environmental impacts, but is more productive than subsistence farming, so phasing out or changing industrial agriculture will need a lot of thought.
Like EP says you try to get heating mostly just from timber and there wont be enough. You would kiss the Amazon rainforest goodbye real fast in decades along with many other forests. Remember timber for burning is competing with building timber and reaforestation used as a carbon store. You cant do all these things at once at massive scale, not in a sane world.
You could build in steel framing, but guess what the simplification guys hate that because its using mineral resources and requires mines.
So a heavy and rapid application of simplicity and we are in big trouble. Knackered. Like I’ve always said a light application of simplification / permaculture makes a bit of sense.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Since this is the mitigation thread, how about a short break from the “Insult and Smart-Ass World Championships” and talk renewable energy:
Leftist “Deep Green Resistance” sides with Killian!!! Renewable energy is a hoax that will solve nothing:
475 – Karsten V. Johansen
“As his soulmate Rex Tillerson said about Trump: “He is a fucking moron”. But unfortnuately he is far from alone, there are lots and lots of morons out there,…”
After a nice discussion of the problem, we get to:
“How does a capacitor help in improving the power factor? In an AC circuit, magnetic reversal due to phase difference between current and voltage occurs 50 or 60 times per second. A capacitor helps to improve the power factor by relieving the supply line of the reactive power. The capacitor achieves this by STORING the magnetic reversal ENERGY.”
Gosh, that sounds exactly like what zebra said way back there, but EP said was wrong, doesn’t it?
This illustrates the problem with rote learning. Instead of thinking through the question based on an understanding of physics, a rote learner is “stuck”, because they have gotten good grades on tests only because they have memorized a set of problems and what to plug in where. Even people without an EE degree, but with basic physics comprehension about the nature of energy, had probably figured it out by now.
Ray Ladburysays
EP: “There are a host of reasons for this, but the biggest three are feminism opening more lucrative careers to women, the end of educational tracking and flunking/explusion of failures and behavior problems, and the insistence that “every child can learn” which limits the pace of an entire class to the slowest student therein (who is no longer in the “dummy class”).”
Holy forking shirtballs, there’s a lot of misinformation, bad propaganda and prejudice to unpack there.
Rather than do that and take you to task for your seeming willingness to consign 50% of humanity to low-paying or nonpaying work, I will just say that your view does not do justice to the complicated nature of education.
Ultimately, the problem with education is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach that works. The best education happens when a good teacher and an interested student combine to make a teachable moment and kickstart a young brain. This is a rare and fickle condition to realize. As a result, education is much more difficult to make “efficient” than most human endeavors (medicine is another such field–also forked up). Since we cannot even agree on the goals of education (e.g. to educate the majority efficiently or to inspire the next generation of visionaries), and since many of these goals cannot be realized under the same regimes of educational technique, what we get is a mess.
This has nothing to do with feminism. It has little to do with school discipline (which disproportionately affects minority students as currently implemented). It has everything to do with trying to apply a “business” model to make efficient a sector that doesn’t conform to this model.
These materials might not only save on electricity bills, say enthusiasts, but also reduce a surge in demand for power-hungry refrigeration and air conditioning as the world warms. “My belief is that in four to five years, daytime radiative cooling systems will be the number one technology for buildings,” says Mattheos Santamouris at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who himself is working to improve such materials. “It is the air conditioner of the future.”
Sounds promising, with a “but”:
Dreams of using the super-cool materials for geoengineering to mitigate global warming seem further off, and unlikely from a practical perspective. Last September, Munday used “back-of-the-envelope calculations” to suggest that current rising temperatures could be balanced by covering 1–2% of Earth’s surface with existing materials that generate around 100 Wm–2 of cooling power in the daytime11. But because solar panels still don’t reach that level of cover after decades of development, it seems impossible that this nascent technology could do so in time to be useful, says Mark Lawrence, a climate scientist at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany. As with any geoengineering proposal, Munday acknowledges the possible unintended consequences of disturbing precipitation patterns and local climates — which Ürge-Vorsatz agrees are likely to be a problem.
Has everybody seen the Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence from Disney’s Fantasia (1940)? Humanity is like Mickey Mouse, only there’s no sorcerer to save us.
zebrasays
#528 Ray Ladbury,
Since we cannot even agree on the goals of education (e.g. to educate the majority efficiently or to inspire the next generation of visionaries), and since many of these goals cannot be realized under the same regimes of educational technique, what we get is a mess.
Yep!
It isn’t a new problem, but the vehemence with which any attempt to adapt to how technology has changed things is indicative of what a big problem it is becoming.
I’m not sure that “technique” is the issue, but rather that those who are far from the category of potential “visionaries” are increasingly afraid and resentful that they have less of a role to play. It used to be possible for the plug-and-chug types like EP to feel superior to people who would do the “menial” physical tasks; now we have the physical and the creative, but much less use for the in-between. The in-betweens are being “replaced”, but it isn’t by humans who look different, although they are used as convenient scapegoats.
nigeljsays
Zebra @527 yes Zebra capacitors store energy, its what they do and your source looks excellent. You completely confused this whole issue by talking about inductors (eg motors) as supplying reactive power and by implication capacitors consume reactive power, when the industry convention says the DIRECT OPPOSITE, even although its a bit counter intuitive. There will be reasons why they use this convention. Power factor correction on wikipedia explains it all based around the conventions. All quite interesting I have to say.
nigeljsays
Ray Ladbury @528, read up on Finlands education system. They get a lot of things right and they try hard to accommodate individual differences. Teachers have to have very good qualifications, are well paid, and are given a lot of freedom to teach as they wish. Testing is minimised until later in secondary school. Students achieve world leading standards and its a wealthy country, the ultimate proof of the education system.
nigeljsays
Mr. Know It All @525 “Leftist “Deep Green Resistance” sides with Killian!!! Renewable energy is a hoax that will solve nothing:”
The article attacking renewable energy posted by KIA is full of ignorance and exaggerations. Written by a doofus driven by emotion. Not going to do a point by point rebuttal because this stuff is easily googled, but wind and solar power is now economic without needing subsidies. They are kept in place simply to make the transition go faster.
And by implication we do what? Stay with burning fossil fuels and wreck our future? Do the whole full on simplification thing? This involves huge lifestyle changes that are not looking too appetising, refer my comment at 508. A full on nuclear grid doesn’t bother me but faces public resistance.
No we need to move to a new electricity grid perhaps combining nuclear power and renewables and a bit of light weight Killianesqe simplification, nothing else makes any makes sense. Anyone want to dispute this?
Problems with renewables will be solved, although its all much easier if you have about 25% nuclear power in the mix because this hugely reduces the need for storage. That level of nuclear power might be acceptable to the public. I like to look at what looks publicly acceptable, otherwise you risk promoting things that are total non starters.
nigeljsays
Mal Adapted @529 says “Humanity is like Mickey Mouse, only there’s no sorcerer to save us.”
The trouble is quite a lot of god fearing people think god will save us and they have the ear of presidents, along with fossil fuel companies. (I’m more in the athiest camp btw).
What a damn mess. The whole climate thing is starting to feel more and more like The Titanic about to go down. However, on a more positive note, even moderate success with mitigation would stop the worst business as usual scenario (RCP8.5?) and thus the worst extinction level events etcetera. That gives some hope.
Killiansays
Re #524 nigelj said …
Nothing at all. Ever. Doesn’t have a clue what simplicity even is. An intellectual diletante knowing nothing, but running around repeating what he heard others say as if they were his ideas.
And KIA (525) quotes the “American Thinker.” Let those who know what this is figure out why it’s a bad source for anything useful.
zebrasays
#528 Ray Ladbury,
I noticed a typo in my #530
“It isn’t a new problem, but the vehemence with which any attempt to adapt to how technology has changed things {is opposed} is indicative of what a big problem it is becoming.”
I’ll take the opportunity to expand a bit, since I just saw this:
I’ve always seen the math wars and CC stuff as strongly linked to politics as well; rote learning reinforces the Authoritarian psychology precious to the Right (and some Left extremes), while teaching people to think obviously creates a population that is comfortable with complexity, nuance, diversity, and individual freedom and expression.
Much easier to lead and exploit sheep.
nigeljsays
Killian @535 says “Re #524 nigelj said …Nothing at all. Ever. Doesn’t have a clue what simplicity even is. An intellectual diletante knowing nothing, but running around repeating what he heard others say as if they were his ideas.What? Three years of this tripe? Good lord.”
Usual Killianesque nonsense and bile. And this is Killians entire post. Isn’t it more correct to say that Killian has said nothing at all? His post is just fact free handwaving, but that is a fairly common event with our Killian.
And what is Killians definition of simplicity? He has never provided a clear one that I have seen. He now has a golden opportunity to write a cogent post defining it with reasonable precision. Bet he can’t and won’t.
What I have done is some healthy scepticism. I have taken some of Killians statements and show people what the implications are. Nobody has faulted me on this, and even Killian cant explain where I’m wrong. I have also acknowledged where I think he gets things right.
“but running around repeating what he heard others say as if they were his ideas”
Lies. For example I have mentioned Zebras population ideas as a part of a good mitigation plan, but have always acknowledged they are his ideas.
nigeljsays
Zebra @537 philosophises “I’ve always seen the math wars and CC stuff as strongly linked to politics as well; rote learning reinforces the Authoritarian psychology precious to the Right (and some Left extremes), while teaching people to think obviously creates a population that is comfortable with complexity, nuance, diversity, and individual freedom and expression. Much easier to lead and exploit sheep.”
True enough as far as it goes, and it also goes back to the militaristic roots of education.
But there’s more to it. Zebra is a teacher. He sees everything from that perspective, (fine profession by the way.) He (or she) hasn’t had to apply knowledge in a job like engineering. I work in a design profession, and I can tell you I couldn’t do the job without a lot of facts in my head, or if I had to figure everything out from first principles. I would be googling stuff every five seconds otherwise.
However I do google quite a lot of stuff, or use reference books, you don’t need to learn every fact obviously, and times have changed a bit. So Zebra is at least partly right.
The problem is the crazies go to the other extreme, and say rote learning (and grammar and spelling) is so ‘dated’, lets get rid of it completely. The results in my country have been a disaster. The saddest thing is they haven’t adequately replaced the void they created with anything useful like lessons in logic, and thinking from first principles.
nigeljsays
BPL @536 re “The American thinker”. Do I detect a double meaning in your comments? :)
Mr. Know It Allsays
533 – nigelj
“The article attacking renewable energy posted by KIA is full of ignorance and exaggerations. Written by a doofus driven by emotion.”
Nah, he merely pointed out that even a greenie organization said that RE would not save the planet. He pointed it out by quoting from their FAQ page.
536 – BPL
“And KIA (525) quotes the “American Thinker.” Let those who know what this is figure out why it’s a bad source for anything useful.”
I know the answer to that: it’s bad because it doesn’t agree in lock step with your viewpoint – because leftists are so tolerant of other views. NOT! The article just pointed out the viewpoint of Deep Green Resistance, and it rubbed in the hypocrisy of Algore. How’d you like that entertaining video?
Killian @535 criticises me for an alleged lack of originality, a cardinal sin apparently. Must give myself a spanking (or a lating).
He regularly claims to have “original ideas” on mitigation, but the only one I’ve seen was on something called “regenerative governance”, a core part of simplicity and combating the climate problem and so on. I cant find the link now but the page had a couple of things on it:
Firstly there was a list of tweets. Defining your ideas with tweets simply isn’t good enough especially as they were nearly indecipherable.
Secondly there was also a graphic that depicted a management pyramid of some sort, with one person at the head, somewhat detached looking from the group, and about 7 people at the base, with double sided arrows between each one. There was no explanation or labels leaving me to have to guess what was meant.
The intent of this graphic seemed to suggest that most decisions would be made by a fairly egalitarian looking group of people, by mutually consulting each other and the head of this structure has a guiding role. All well and good if I have it right, but that’s how family owned farms sometimes work. While humans have a pecking order (much to Killian apparent frustration, and amusing given how often he pecks) people in family farms sometimes minimise this and treat each other as equals. Business partnerships work the same way to some extent. But the point Killians small egalitarian looking structure is hardly an ORIGINAL idea.
Perhaps I’m wrong. It would greatly help if Killian would please provide a description of regenerative governance in his own words, in plain language. Like BPL says “show your work”. But Killian probably wont. He will just spit acid at me.
The other thing is such a simple management structure would work ok for small enterprises, but as enterprises get big its usually found that middle management is needed etc. So its not clear how Killian deals with larger enterprises that manufacture complex components like his computer.
Personally I support equal opportunity etc, and don’t like rigid class structures, but promoting egalitarianism doesn’t look like the key sort of issue. It’s hard to completely get rid of pecking orders. Financial inequality looks a bit more problematic to me.
zebra @527 shows exactly how ineducable he is. He QUOTES THE FUNCTION OF THE CAPACITOR (“relieving the supply line of the reactive power”) but FOCUSES ON THE INCIDENTAL ENERGY STORAGE (which I acknowledged waaaay back @247 with the proviso “not energy storage devices per se” (IOW, they do some of that but that isn’t essential to their purpose). Further, if zebra wasn’t a flaming hypocrite he would go after his own gross error @236 where he stated “They store energy once the motors are going“. No. They store (small amounts of) energy whenever the voltage across them is non-zero. Reactive power consumption is greatest at stall, meaning at start; it falls off quite a bit when running.
Had zebra been able to do the trig problem @420, he would have learned something very interesting: the net energy of the power-factor correction capacitors in the 3-phase system is a constant. It does not vary with time; the energy being taken up by one is 100% offset by energy being discharged elsewhere. The capacitors could be replaced by some kind of voltage-converter which moves energy back and forth between the 3 phases with negligible stored energy of its own, performing exactly the same function. We don’t do it because capacitors are cheap and reliable and having some trivial amount of unusable energy stored in the system is a rounding error.
All of this enlightenment could have been his, but zebra is ineducable and apparently shameless as well.
Holy forking shirtballs, there’s a lot of misinformation, bad propaganda and prejudice to unpack there.
Rather than do that….
Point-and-splutter, but never actually demonstrate that any part of it is false. Typical of our sick, twisted post-truth majority culture. Shameful too, but shamelessness is part of the deal (see zebra).
take you to task for your seeming willingness to consign 50% of humanity to low-paying or nonpaying work
Robots can already run a fast-food grill better than humans (https://misorobotics.com/flippy/). Very soon there will be no jobs anyone CAN hire these people for, because fixing their mistakes will cost more than their output is worth even if they worked for free.
It has little to do with school discipline
You can track both falling academic performance and rising crime with lax standards of behavior. In the USA, AP classes are one of the few refuges for students who actually want to learn.
(which disproportionately affects minority students as currently implemented).
Because if they are not disciplined according to their misbehavior rather than by racial quota, you get classrooms in utter chaos like this. Do you think those girls are served by being allowed to get away with it? They’re going to expect to be able to behave that way on the job. They are going to turn out completely unemployable. “Disproportionate” discipline is the only thing that could save them.
Ironically, you claim that one-size-fits-all approaches don’t work, but deny that some students require “disproportionate” discipline to make education work.
This has nothing to do with feminism.
Applicants to “education school” have about the lowest standardized test scores of all university students. Feminism, by devaluing women who work with children, has everything to do with this.
No we need to move to a new electricity grid perhaps combining nuclear power and renewables and a bit of light weight Killianesqe simplification, nothing else makes any makes sense. Anyone want to dispute this?
Always up for a dispute (but you knew that already and were probably betting on it).
The problem with anything involving “renewables” is buffering their unreliability. This is currently done by reducing the capacity factor of fossil-fired plants. However, those plants must still be there and must be either ready to run on short notice or kept on-line (burning fuel). In a world where GHG emissions need to halt and go negative, this implicit subsidy from fossils to “renewables” cannot be allowed to continue.
Using nuclear gets rid of the supply and emissions problems but replaces them with contention between nuclear and “renewables” for grid priority. Non-military reactors generally can’t ramp fast enough to deal with the ups and downs of wind and PV. If there’s a solution, it’s going to come in the form of “dump loads” which can take excess electric power and convert it to something both useful and storable. This is a tall order and there is not yet any serious talk about anything but hypedrogen, which has a round-trip electric efficiency under 50%. We have a late entrant from HighView Power’s Liquid Air Energy Storage scheme, but it remains to be seen just how far it will go and appears to have a stand-alone efficiency around 60%.
My own opinion is that concepts which only address electricity buffering are missing synergies which can come from addressing other problems at the same time. We also have to address heating fuel, motor fuel, and a host of other environmental issues. Excluding them from consideration of how to handle the grid is a huge mistake.
Problems with renewables will be solved
The problem of unreliability has no feasible solution. There is no way to make wind and solar reliable and dispatchable without making them bank similar amounts of stored energy as our nuclear, fossil and hydro systems have. That is a HUGE amount of energy, and will cost an equally huge amount of money and resources to construct.
It’s a problem that could not be more fiendish if it was designed to be, so it almost certainly was. In other words, Mr. KIA hit the nail on the head.
‘American Thinker has published an excessively complimentary piece on a white nationalist, claimed women ruined public discourse by complaining about rape, and asserted that rainbow-colored Doritos are a “gateway snack to introduce children to the joys of homosexuality.”‘
zebrasays
#544 EP,
EP, you really are embarrassing yourself.
“He QUOTES THE FUNCTION OF THE CAPACITOR (“relieving the supply line of the reactive power”) but FOCUSES ON THE INCIDENTAL ENERGY STORAGE (which I acknowledged waaaay back @247 with the proviso “not energy storage devices per se” (IOW, they do some of that but that isn’t essential to their purpose).”
Let’s try reading the source again… it doesn’t even require physics, just English:
“A capacitor helps to improve the power factor by relieving the supply line of the reactive power. The capacitor achieves thisBY storing the magnetic reversal energy.”
How is energy storage not “essential to their purpose”?
You know, EP, lots of people here get stuff wrong from time to time, but they are secure enough to admit it… they’re not happy about it, but they don’t depend on a fake aura of infallibility and bluster/bluff to try to gain respect, so it’s OK.
Your response comes off pretty much in the Victor range of nonsense.
Applicants to “education school” have about the lowest standardized test scores of all university students. Feminism, by devaluing women who work with children, has everything to do with this.
1) I searched for any empirical evidence supporting the assertion in the first sentence, but found nothing. Cites, please?
2) Re “Feminism, by devaluing women who work with children…” is IMO a grotesque distortion. Women who work with children have *always* been devalued by a patriarchal system. Feminism has energetically attempted to reverse this reality, albeit with regrettably limited success. (For instance, by promoting wages for housework, by supporting female-dominated ‘caring professions’ of all sorts in the quest for better wages and work conditions, and by seeking to correct implicit biases in the system that result from things like the ‘child-care differential burden’ that holds back women in the workplace.)
3) I can nevertheless think of one way in which feminism has indeed likely helped to lower the mean aptitude of incoming education students: that is that feminism has spectacularly succeeded in opening up the spectrum of jobs open to women. It seems plausible that thereby a great many talented women who, in previous generations had basically to choose between teacher, nurse or secretary may now opt for entrepreneur, administrator, scientist, engineer, artist, financier, business professional and so on (and on, and on).
4) Probably a bigger factor–albeit one that synergizes with #3–is the systematic underfunding of public education, including but not limited to teachers’ salaries. It’s a big problem, and is much more severe than many people realize. The teacher strikes of the last couple of years are a result of that dynamic–here in South Carolina they put well over 10,000 teachers on the statehouse lawn on May 1st, 2019. (The result? A 3% pay raise, with 3-5% proposed for next year. Pretty marginal help, if you ask me, but better than the better part of a decade without a raise, which was the reality in many states during this brave new millennium.)
Bottom line: if we’re worried about the quality of education, the best response we could make would be to pay teachers better, and to treat them as actual professionals. (I could explain something about the myriad ways that that latter bit does NOT often happen today, but that would be a whole other comment.)
/END OT
In #546, E-P responded to nigel with his usual fare about the impossibility of ‘solving the problems of renewable energy’.
He’s still wrong, and for the same reasons already discussed. Intermittency is a real issue, but he greatly overhypes it. Wind and solar will be the backbone of the generation system, with hydro and nuclear supporting, as well as various forms of energy storage and management. Bottom line: nigel was right.
Now, it is true that we should look for synergies within the overall system; it’s true that it’s not just electrical generation that we need to decarbonize; and it’s true that transforming our energy systems to make them emissions-free is going to be very expensive, no matter what strategy we adopt. But from everything I can see, the ‘nuclear as silver bullet’ strategy that E-P proposes is apt to be about the most expensive possibility of all–if ‘possibility’ is even the right word, given how politically toxic nuclear power is generally.
Ray Ladburysays
EP@545
Wow! How do you cram so much wrong, not to mention wrong-headedness, into just a few paragraphs. I’ll start with this:
EP: ” Feminism, by devaluing women who work with children, has everything to do with this.”
Find me even one serious feminist who has done this. This is an utter straw man. And moreover, why the hell is it only the job of women to work with children? The teachers who made a difference for me included both men and women. Good lord, man, have you even been in a classroom since you left high school?
Education is complicated. The answers are not easy. I will tell you what the answer is not, though. The answer is not turning the fricking clock back to the Eisenhower administration. Pay teachers what they are worth, and you will see quality applicants. Give them respect and decent workplaces (where they do not have to buy school supplies for students themselves) and they will stay in the field. But most of all, keep people like you who are convinced that their ignorant opinions contain the solution to all problems out of the class room and out of any role in the educational system.
Karsten V Johansen,
True, except it isn’t a “capital accumulation project” but a “your descendents will be my descendents’ slaves” project.
_____
Zebra, as I said, your stance smells like legalese. Legalese is designed so as to state irrefutable irrelevancies.
Unimpressive, dude.
Zebra,
Please drop this. E-P is smarter and more vicious. He’s also a bulldog.
And I’ve gone from blaming E-P for beating up on my friend to asking you if you really want to go to to toe against the pair of us.
KIA 490: Oh, and just give total control of the world to the One World Goobermint – that will surely turn the planet into utopia.
BPL: Don’t forget the UN black helicopters which will take all the white Christian patriots to FEMA detention camps. Everybody here but you is advocating just that.
KIA deflects (#490), with hooha about North American fire acreage and arson.
The latter is pretty silly. Mega-fires aren’t about the source of ignition! They’re about the response of the environment to flame. And does he really mean to suggest–he doesn’t, apparently, have sufficient brass to actually claim it–that there’s some sort of trend in arson?
The former is an argument against his own deflection: warming is global, but what odds that alleged land use issues or putative arson trends span 3 nations, 2 hemispheres and tens of thousands of miles?
nigelj wrote @22²:
Starting with vocabulary. The local schools here stopped teaching “Jabberwocky” some time in the not-too-distant past. I run into people who don’t know the word “tedium”. If this reminds you of Newspeak, it ought to.
I used to know the electrical permittivity ε0 of free space, but I haven’t used that number in years and I’d have to look it up. The magnetic permeability μ0 is much easier:
4*pi*1e-7 Henries per meter (I had to look up the units). It’s easy to remember because it’s obviously set by definition, which I never bothered to dig into.
I have a head full of other facts and constants. 1 BTU = 1054.4 J. 1 ton oil equivalent = 41.868 GJ. Horsepower = torque (ft-lb) times speed (RPM) / 5252. What gets used all the time is what gets stuck in memory.
There are a host of reasons for this, but the biggest three are feminism opening more lucrative careers to women, the end of educational tracking and flunking/explusion of failures and behavior problems, and the insistence that “every child can learn” which limits the pace of an entire class to the slowest student therein (who is no longer in the “dummy class”). In the USA, “Common Core” reduces even the brightest students to “learning” multiplication by drawing grids of dots and counting them. It’s child abuse.
We can see right here that some people can’t learn. zebra implies rubbing elbows with academics and engineers, but can’t do algebra or trigonometry.
nigelj wrote @485:
Tax and dividend is getting a hearing in Washington, just not winning as fast as we’d like (I was part of Citizens Climate Lobby for a while until it was made clear to me it was fine with shutting down carbon-free generation faster than it could be replaced). Anything resembling the GND would set off a civil war within months, and if implemented it would make the USA envy Venezuela. AAMOF, were it implemented most of Venezuela would move to the USA as one of its provisos is open borders.
On top of this, the GND is guaranteed to fail the same way the Energiewende has failed. We could make some serious progress with the Fearless Green Deal, but “Greens” are hysterically opposed.
@486: “Renewable energy” has had its day. It was supplanted two centuries ago for reasons which have not changed and will not change. No amount of wishful thinking is going to reverse this; if you want a solar-powered industrial society, you’re going to have to do it in space where you don’t have a planet blocking your energy supply half the time.
Mr. Ironically Anosognosic Typist:
Heh, heh, there you go with your strawman rhetorical tactics again. It’s not as though you’ve offered a way to save any of what’s left of the world, now that AGW is taking a conspicuous toll. And I have yet to see any posts here seriously advocating One World Goobermint[sick]. Nobody here believes in utopia except you, with your false memories of a country that wasn’t. I’ve been there all along, and although my life has been tolerable enough, America never was the utopia you’ve claimed. Nor will any future be utopia, no matter what the trajectory of atmospheric CO2 is. Nonetheless, this is my home and I want to save as much of it as I can, by capping the net cost of global warming as low as politically possible. Either you know that perfectly well and are only here as a gadfly, to draw our blood (moo!) and deposit eggs that hatch into loathesome larvae burrowing into our flesh (gotta love analogy); or you really are the dolt you present yourself as. Which is it?
The simplicity / permaculture experts like Killian ideally want us to stop using fossil fuels generation, and they only want us to build a tiny little bit of new electricity generation (wind or solar power). That means we have to make huge cuts to our per capita use of electricity.
I do appreciate they seem to say even small changes help, but Killian constantly posts material suggesting quite large changes.
Imho you would need to go without almost all consumer appliances to get your electricity consumption right down to the sort of levels required. In places that rely on coal power, you are talking about a 80% or more reduction in electricity generation. The maths is obvious. If there’s a lot of hydro and nuclear power like France, maybe less reduction, but the permaculture crowd hate these sources of power and want them gone.
You wont do it by eliminating low wattage devices alone it wont be enough, many of the big high wattage devices would also have to go. Most electrical appliances would have to go.
You would have to do an awful lot of one pot cooking on a little single element electric stove and eat a lot of cold meals. One shower a week maybe. You would have to have a fridge, but no microwave, vacuum cleaner, large audio system, television, dishwasher, no electric heaters, only maybe a wood burner heater (someone mentioned the problems of finding enough timber when everyone does this).
Heat pumps don’t use much electricity, but they use a lot of resources and require double glazing etc to provide sufficient heating, and the simplicity people don’t like this because its resource intensive.
Permaculture can teach us something, and maybe we can do without some of the things I listed, but it seems obvious we need to stop burning fossil fuels, and build plenty of new clean electricity generation of one sort or another.
Apparently one “forced response” is to lie about arson:
https://www-nbcnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1112736?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Fscience%2Fenvironment%2Faustralia-s-wildfire-crisis-faces-new-foe-misinformation-n1112736
(Sorry for the long URL.)
zebra lied @487:
What you said is at once erroneous and irrelevant. You are fixated on “energy storage” when the most trivial arithmetic effort would prove to you that the amount is so small as to be ignored. You won’t do the math because you are not interested in facts, you are trying to “win” despite being totally incompetent. Ain’t gonna work.
You’re lying your ass off. I keep an archive of my comments which makes it very easy for me to point out exactly what I said and where I said it. I gave you an explanation in my own words weeks ago back @247. It’s also useful to point out things like you claiming I said wires would explode and using terms like “steam generators” which you obviously do not understand.
Your tank circuit does not have either a power connection or a load, which is why it is irrelevant as a direct example. It could be used to explain power-factor correction to you… but you are too pig-headed to even try to understand.
Maybe someone else is not so lost, though. Consider zebra’s tank circuit. It runs current in a circle; the top wire has exactly as much current coming in as going out at all times. Now connect the bottom wire to ground and the top wire to AC power at the resonant frequency. Nothing comes in through the AC connection; the current from the capacitor and to the inductor, or vice versa, still balances out. It draws zero current from the line.
Now connect a resistor from power to ground. Only the resistor draws power. Now disconnect the capacitor. Now you have the same current in the inductor, but NOT being cancelled by the capacitor. The real power remains the same but the total current goes up. That’s what most loads, especially induction motors, “look like” electrically: both resistive and inductive.
Capacitors cancel out inductive current and, ideally, make the load look purely resistive.
zebra @487 says some stuff as follows “There’s a factory with lots of electric motors, The motors, being inductive, create reactive power, The reactive power heats up the transmission lines (including transformers), Installing the capacitors results in the transmission lines not heating up. Forget metaphors…what are the capacitors doing? (my note: implying they must store the reactive power).
Adding to my previous comment, this is virtually all wrong. Didn’t ring true to me, so I checked. No expertise in this, not even slightly, but can read and am analytical.
So the facts are motors consume reactive power, (so the magnetic fields can form) and capacitors produce reactive power (simplifying a bit) so are put in the circuit to do this function. No idea where heating up of wires comes from. From AC power on wikipedia “Conventionally, capacitors are treated as if they generate reactive power and inductors (eg motors) as if they consume it.” Other sources say the same.
Zebra probably means ‘generators’ which can produce both active and reactive power (despite being inductors, confusingly, ain’t life complicated), and this can heat up wires sometimes. However capacitors are not used to absorb this energy its resolved in other ways.
Reactive power is mostly a nuisance but is needed locally for motors, power factor correction and voltage regulation, as I said way back. Of course capacitors work by storing energy and everything comes from this, Eg capacitors block DC and pass AC. Factoids are sometimes quite important. :)
E-P 505: feminism opening more lucrative careers to women
BPL: Oh, no! What a catastrophe! Everyone knows women are only suited to kinder, kuche, und kirche. Oh, if only women had stayed in the home and not demanded irrational privileges like voting and having careers!
E-P 506: Anything resembling the GND would set off a civil war within months, and if implemented it would make the USA envy Venezuela
BPL: Right, that’s exactly what happened in Denmark and Spain. Oh, wait…
#511, nigel–
The key word in that second last sentence is “conventionally.’ Either a capacitance or an inductance creates reactance in an AC circuit; the difference is the sign of the phase shift. (A charging capacitor shows maximal current flow initially, with the voltage increasing gradually; the opposite is true with an inductance such as a transformer or generator coil.)
The ‘wire heating up’ bit arises because although the reactive power does not accomplish work, it does dissipate energy, which ends up as heat somewhere in the system.
#510 EP,
EP, I’m still waiting for an answer to what I asked, not rambling recitations that avoid the question. As I said to AB, a competent EE would be able to write a few sentences at most to explain it.
1. There’s a factory with lots of electric motors.
2. The motors, being inductive, create reactive power.
3. The reactive power heats up the transmission lines (including transformers).
4. Installing the capacitors results in the transmission lines not heating up.
What are the capacitors doing?
Kill-Ian gets indignant @492:
Perhaps I should have said “Nazi”. The entire purpose of “lebensraum” was to get the German people out of the degenerate cities and let them pursue lives of bucolic bliss. That’s what your whole “permaculture” thing is about. It’s the same romantic vision of “back to the land”.
I want to let most of the land just be the land, by removing human energy demands from it.
So you claim, but permaculture doesn’t seem to have any proof that it actually works:
I believe the term is “rekt.”
Kill-Ian hand-waves hard enough to rival a hurricane @497:
One of only two options which is actually proven to work, and wind and PV are not on the list. “There is one country that has done a good job: Sweden. Sweden has decarbonized its electricity, which is provided by nuclear power and hydropower.” Nothing has changed since Hansen’s 2014 testimony.
Sweden has decarbonized its electricity. France mostly decarbonized its electricity (though it is backsliding, as the demand for more “renewables” requires more fossil-fired generation for “balancing”). Ontario has mostly decarbonized its electricity and closed its last coal-fired generator; the CO2 intensity as I write this is 6.36 g/kWh.
“Renewable” Germany has missed its 2020 goal of 40% CO2 reduction by roughly 8% and has per-capita CO2 emissions close to double those of France.
Yet when you saw my views getting mindshare, you were compelled to jump in. Funny how that works.
<uncontrollable laughter> Someone demands evidence, and that’s your response? Calling it a “straw man”? Can you be any more pathetic?
A straw-man argument is setting up a weak claim to knock down, ignoring the opponent’s stronger claim. Demanding support for claims isn’t even an argument. If a simple demand for facts reduces you to impotent sputtering, it doesn’t say very much for you does it?
I live on 2.6 acres. The average annual energy capture of temperate forest as wood is about 30 watts per tree, so even with a full acre devoted to energy crops just for me my situation would be marginal at best.†
If that’s true, you must have PILES of examples. Let’s have three, and those people have to satisfy ALL their energy needs without fossil fuels AND support whatever industrial base is required to replace worn-out equipment.
About 90% nuclear and 10% biomass would do it. You could substitute wind and PV for part of the nuclear that goes into upgrading biomass to refined fuels and chemical feedstocks, but nuclear could do it all.
“Shut up,” he explained. <more laughter>
† This page states 193 lb/yr CO2 consumed by a 30-yr-old white pine. Figuring CO2 is 27% carbon by weight and dry wood is 45%, that comes to 117 pounds per year. Using EPA emissions factor of 17.48 million BTU per short ton, I get a figure of almost exactly 1 million BTU/year/tree. That comes to about 34 watts per tree… after it’s spent 30 years getting that big. At 435 trees/acre that’s just under 15 kW/acre of energy stored as wood. Getting my full 10 kW/capita of primary energy from wood would take almost 3 times as much land, with nothing left over to e.g. grow food.
My 100,000 BTU/hr furnace is currently cranking away getting the house up to the daytime setpoint. 100,000 BTU/hr is 29.3 kW. True, it doesn’t use that continuously… but I also have to run the refrigerator, well pump and of course the computer and modem. Then there’s all the energy involved with getting food and goods, and the energy involved with the transport and manufacturing. Trying to account for all of that is why I decided to throw out all the details of what-from-where and just see what it would take to get 100% of the USA’s 3.3 TW of primary energy consumption from nuclear. It turns out to be surprisingly easy.
nigelj busts zebra @511. You got him. Either he’s never looked at the power engineering stuff he’s been referred to, or is so bound to his misconceptions that he can’t get past them to understand the material.
If you have 800 watts of real power and 600 VAR going into a motor, you have a total of 1000 VA (square root of sum of squares). That extra 200 VA heats up the wires upstream (and increases hysteresis and eddy-current losses in transformer cores). Generate 600 VAR to offset the inductive load and you’re back down to a net 800 VA (all of it watts).
You produce VARs in a synchronous machine by over-exciting the field. This works for synchronous motors as well as synchronous alternators. The math is straightforward but again… complex numbers.
A synchronous condenser is an over-excited synchronous motor running without a load on the shaft. Useful buggers, aren’t they?
zebra, you’re nothing but an ankle-biter. There’s a perfectly good explanation right there @510, but you could not or would not understand it exactly as I predicted.
I’m not going to try to teach the pig (that’s you) to sing.
Kevin Donald McKinney @514, yes good points, but if we are having a conversation should it not use the conventions? It will lead to misunderstandings otherwise.
I was aware of that stuff about positive and negative phases shifts. I did say “simplifying a bit” in relation to capacitors. Bit of a learning experience for me.
And what Zebra says is still wrong on this issue. Full stop. I own my mistakes, I dont go on defending the indefensible making a fool of myself.
Killian @491 the angry man who spits acid pontificates.
“Hmmm… just nuclear power (in the right corner).”
Put whatever you want in the right corner. I dont care. Once again you miss the basic point. You have no sense of humour.
“Hmm… yet here we have an attempt to diminish simplification by attatching the concept to a single individual.”
Oh for gods sake how ridiculous and paranoid. It was stated that way so people might at least have some idea what the hell simplification means, nothing more.
“You, sir, are a dishonest man, a bit disgusting.”
That’s you standard stock answer to all criticism isn’t it. To make false accusations of dishonesty and throw in an ad hominem for good measure. I stick the the facts and I’m subtly persuasive, that of course is what bothers you and why you respond to aggressively.
“Stop posting.”
Get stuffed.
Crikey I just realised I’m starting to sound like BPL.
Killian @496
“I’m not stupid, you’re (BPL) an ass making excuses. You included my statement.”
BPL included your statement because it included the frigging subject matter, the word ‘nuclear’ you paranoid idiot :)
Engineer-Poet @505
“There are a host of reasons for this, (bad spelling and basic maths etc) but the biggest three are feminism opening more lucrative careers to women, the end of educational tracking and flunking/explusion of failures and behavior problems, and the insistence that “every child can learn” ….”
Our educational hierarchy that decides policy is still dominated by male baby boomers. Got to say I agree with BPL about women so Ill leave it there, and its not smart to make yourself look like a mysogynist.
Finland eliminated a lot of testing at primary and early secondary school level and have excellent educational results. But they keep testing at upper secondary school level, its all about timing and whats age appropriate.
Agree about the rest.
—————–
Engineer-Poet @506
“On top of this, the GND is guaranteed to fail the same way the Energiewende has failed. We could make some serious progress with the Fearless Green Deal, but “Greens” are hysterically opposed.”
The GND does seem to try to do too many things all at once, although I’m ok with the social policies in principle. The point I was making was that carbon taxes aren’t looking too popular so infrastructure spending and rules might have more of a future. I could have been clearer.
A massive and rapid phase out of coal fired power and replacement with either nuclear power or renewables would not happen by waving a magic wand. You could force generating companies to change over, but the consequences could be chaotic and costs would be passed onto consumers and they would be frightening.
A better idea is big injection of government money so they pay for a large part of new generation. It has to be smoothed out as much as possible and government funds would help do that. Some of the money could come from taxes, some from “quantitative easing” and some from borrowing. Infrastructure bonds might be another possibility.
Of course its naive to think any climate mitigation plan can rely on just one mechanism. You would still need some environmental rules etc and even a bit of killianism.
The point is there are not infinite financing answers and they all hurt. We are running out of time to pick one and run with it. The type of generation is another matter. I’m flexible on that.
Killian @492 posts some stuff:
EP: Your scheme (permaculture, simplicity etc) requires that some billions of people die.
Killian: Because you say so? You’re an idiot. 2/3 of the world already lives simply, liar.
Nigelj: Its stretching things to say 2 / 3 already live simply. About 2 billion people in developing and poor countries live on small farms (subsistence agriculture wikipedia). One billion people live in urban slums. So less than half the worlds population live “simply” and whether urban slums fits the definition is debatable anyway.
So billions would either have to die or be seriously at risk with some rapid simplification / permaculture plan.
And many of these people already living simply are intent on leaving simple lifestyles anyway, so that is a huge thing to turn around.
We have a massive juggling act on our hands that is going to require population growth stopping, economic growth stopping in some places at least, a lot of new energy, but a lot of frugality and wasting less and recycling more, so a bit of simplicity where it actually works and makes sense.
Industrial agriculture has some bad environmental impacts, but is more productive than subsistence farming, so phasing out or changing industrial agriculture will need a lot of thought.
Like EP says you try to get heating mostly just from timber and there wont be enough. You would kiss the Amazon rainforest goodbye real fast in decades along with many other forests. Remember timber for burning is competing with building timber and reaforestation used as a carbon store. You cant do all these things at once at massive scale, not in a sane world.
You could build in steel framing, but guess what the simplification guys hate that because its using mineral resources and requires mines.
So a heavy and rapid application of simplicity and we are in big trouble. Knackered. Like I’ve always said a light application of simplification / permaculture makes a bit of sense.
Since this is the mitigation thread, how about a short break from the “Insult and Smart-Ass World Championships” and talk renewable energy:
Leftist “Deep Green Resistance” sides with Killian!!! Renewable energy is a hoax that will solve nothing:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/progressive_ecogroup_admits_it_renewable_energy_is_a_hoax_that_benefits_its_greenie_elmer_gantries_like_al_gore.html
475 – Karsten V. Johansen
“As his soulmate Rex Tillerson said about Trump: “He is a fucking moron”. But unfortnuately he is far from alone, there are lots and lots of morons out there,…”
Karsten, is this you working at the vape shop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG6VqJunOOw
:)
Sometimes, Even One-on-One Tutoring Doesn’t Work,
Since EP has again run away from a simple question that a first-semester, third-year EE student could answer, let’s go to an unimpeachable source:
https://passive-components.eu/an-introduction-to-capacitor-based-power-factor-correction-circuits/
After a nice discussion of the problem, we get to:
“How does a capacitor help in improving the power factor? In an AC circuit, magnetic reversal due to phase difference between current and voltage occurs 50 or 60 times per second. A capacitor helps to improve the power factor by relieving the supply line of the reactive power. The capacitor achieves this by STORING the magnetic reversal ENERGY.”
Gosh, that sounds exactly like what zebra said way back there, but EP said was wrong, doesn’t it?
This illustrates the problem with rote learning. Instead of thinking through the question based on an understanding of physics, a rote learner is “stuck”, because they have gotten good grades on tests only because they have memorized a set of problems and what to plug in where. Even people without an EE degree, but with basic physics comprehension about the nature of energy, had probably figured it out by now.
EP: “There are a host of reasons for this, but the biggest three are feminism opening more lucrative careers to women, the end of educational tracking and flunking/explusion of failures and behavior problems, and the insistence that “every child can learn” which limits the pace of an entire class to the slowest student therein (who is no longer in the “dummy class”).”
Holy forking shirtballs, there’s a lot of misinformation, bad propaganda and prejudice to unpack there.
Rather than do that and take you to task for your seeming willingness to consign 50% of humanity to low-paying or nonpaying work, I will just say that your view does not do justice to the complicated nature of education.
Ultimately, the problem with education is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach that works. The best education happens when a good teacher and an interested student combine to make a teachable moment and kickstart a young brain. This is a rare and fickle condition to realize. As a result, education is much more difficult to make “efficient” than most human endeavors (medicine is another such field–also forked up). Since we cannot even agree on the goals of education (e.g. to educate the majority efficiently or to inspire the next generation of visionaries), and since many of these goals cannot be realized under the same regimes of educational technique, what we get is a mess.
This has nothing to do with feminism. It has little to do with school discipline (which disproportionately affects minority students as currently implemented). It has everything to do with trying to apply a “business” model to make efficient a sector that doesn’t conform to this model.
I cross-posted this at ATTP:
A news item about a new building cooling technology, reported in Nature: The super-cool materials that send heat to space.
Sounds promising, with a “but”:
Has everybody seen the Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence from Disney’s Fantasia (1940)? Humanity is like Mickey Mouse, only there’s no sorcerer to save us.
#528 Ray Ladbury,
Yep!
It isn’t a new problem, but the vehemence with which any attempt to adapt to how technology has changed things is indicative of what a big problem it is becoming.
I’m not sure that “technique” is the issue, but rather that those who are far from the category of potential “visionaries” are increasingly afraid and resentful that they have less of a role to play. It used to be possible for the plug-and-chug types like EP to feel superior to people who would do the “menial” physical tasks; now we have the physical and the creative, but much less use for the in-between. The in-betweens are being “replaced”, but it isn’t by humans who look different, although they are used as convenient scapegoats.
Zebra @527 yes Zebra capacitors store energy, its what they do and your source looks excellent. You completely confused this whole issue by talking about inductors (eg motors) as supplying reactive power and by implication capacitors consume reactive power, when the industry convention says the DIRECT OPPOSITE, even although its a bit counter intuitive. There will be reasons why they use this convention. Power factor correction on wikipedia explains it all based around the conventions. All quite interesting I have to say.
Ray Ladbury @528, read up on Finlands education system. They get a lot of things right and they try hard to accommodate individual differences. Teachers have to have very good qualifications, are well paid, and are given a lot of freedom to teach as they wish. Testing is minimised until later in secondary school. Students achieve world leading standards and its a wealthy country, the ultimate proof of the education system.
Mr. Know It All @525 “Leftist “Deep Green Resistance” sides with Killian!!! Renewable energy is a hoax that will solve nothing:”
The article attacking renewable energy posted by KIA is full of ignorance and exaggerations. Written by a doofus driven by emotion. Not going to do a point by point rebuttal because this stuff is easily googled, but wind and solar power is now economic without needing subsidies. They are kept in place simply to make the transition go faster.
And by implication we do what? Stay with burning fossil fuels and wreck our future? Do the whole full on simplification thing? This involves huge lifestyle changes that are not looking too appetising, refer my comment at 508. A full on nuclear grid doesn’t bother me but faces public resistance.
No we need to move to a new electricity grid perhaps combining nuclear power and renewables and a bit of light weight Killianesqe simplification, nothing else makes any makes sense. Anyone want to dispute this?
Problems with renewables will be solved, although its all much easier if you have about 25% nuclear power in the mix because this hugely reduces the need for storage. That level of nuclear power might be acceptable to the public. I like to look at what looks publicly acceptable, otherwise you risk promoting things that are total non starters.
Mal Adapted @529 says “Humanity is like Mickey Mouse, only there’s no sorcerer to save us.”
The trouble is quite a lot of god fearing people think god will save us and they have the ear of presidents, along with fossil fuel companies. (I’m more in the athiest camp btw).
What a damn mess. The whole climate thing is starting to feel more and more like The Titanic about to go down. However, on a more positive note, even moderate success with mitigation would stop the worst business as usual scenario (RCP8.5?) and thus the worst extinction level events etcetera. That gives some hope.
Re #524 nigelj said …
Nothing at all. Ever. Doesn’t have a clue what simplicity even is. An intellectual diletante knowing nothing, but running around repeating what he heard others say as if they were his ideas.
What? Three years of this tripe?
Good lord.
And KIA (525) quotes the “American Thinker.” Let those who know what this is figure out why it’s a bad source for anything useful.
#528 Ray Ladbury,
I noticed a typo in my #530
“It isn’t a new problem, but the vehemence with which any attempt to adapt to how technology has changed things {is opposed} is indicative of what a big problem it is becoming.”
I’ll take the opportunity to expand a bit, since I just saw this:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/12/us/texas-vs-california-history-textbooks.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
I’ve always seen the math wars and CC stuff as strongly linked to politics as well; rote learning reinforces the Authoritarian psychology precious to the Right (and some Left extremes), while teaching people to think obviously creates a population that is comfortable with complexity, nuance, diversity, and individual freedom and expression.
Much easier to lead and exploit sheep.
Killian @535 says “Re #524 nigelj said …Nothing at all. Ever. Doesn’t have a clue what simplicity even is. An intellectual diletante knowing nothing, but running around repeating what he heard others say as if they were his ideas.What? Three years of this tripe? Good lord.”
Usual Killianesque nonsense and bile. And this is Killians entire post. Isn’t it more correct to say that Killian has said nothing at all? His post is just fact free handwaving, but that is a fairly common event with our Killian.
And what is Killians definition of simplicity? He has never provided a clear one that I have seen. He now has a golden opportunity to write a cogent post defining it with reasonable precision. Bet he can’t and won’t.
What I have done is some healthy scepticism. I have taken some of Killians statements and show people what the implications are. Nobody has faulted me on this, and even Killian cant explain where I’m wrong. I have also acknowledged where I think he gets things right.
“but running around repeating what he heard others say as if they were his ideas”
Lies. For example I have mentioned Zebras population ideas as a part of a good mitigation plan, but have always acknowledged they are his ideas.
Zebra @537 philosophises “I’ve always seen the math wars and CC stuff as strongly linked to politics as well; rote learning reinforces the Authoritarian psychology precious to the Right (and some Left extremes), while teaching people to think obviously creates a population that is comfortable with complexity, nuance, diversity, and individual freedom and expression. Much easier to lead and exploit sheep.”
True enough as far as it goes, and it also goes back to the militaristic roots of education.
But there’s more to it. Zebra is a teacher. He sees everything from that perspective, (fine profession by the way.) He (or she) hasn’t had to apply knowledge in a job like engineering. I work in a design profession, and I can tell you I couldn’t do the job without a lot of facts in my head, or if I had to figure everything out from first principles. I would be googling stuff every five seconds otherwise.
However I do google quite a lot of stuff, or use reference books, you don’t need to learn every fact obviously, and times have changed a bit. So Zebra is at least partly right.
The problem is the crazies go to the other extreme, and say rote learning (and grammar and spelling) is so ‘dated’, lets get rid of it completely. The results in my country have been a disaster. The saddest thing is they haven’t adequately replaced the void they created with anything useful like lessons in logic, and thinking from first principles.
BPL @536 re “The American thinker”. Do I detect a double meaning in your comments? :)
533 – nigelj
“The article attacking renewable energy posted by KIA is full of ignorance and exaggerations. Written by a doofus driven by emotion.”
Nah, he merely pointed out that even a greenie organization said that RE would not save the planet. He pointed it out by quoting from their FAQ page.
536 – BPL
“And KIA (525) quotes the “American Thinker.” Let those who know what this is figure out why it’s a bad source for anything useful.”
I know the answer to that: it’s bad because it doesn’t agree in lock step with your viewpoint – because leftists are so tolerant of other views. NOT! The article just pointed out the viewpoint of Deep Green Resistance, and it rubbed in the hypocrisy of Algore. How’d you like that entertaining video?
If you don’t like reading it from the AT article, read it directly from the Deep Green Resistance FAQ page:
https://deepgreenresistance.org/en/who-we-are/faqs/green-technology-renewable-energy
;)
Killian @535 criticises me for an alleged lack of originality, a cardinal sin apparently. Must give myself a spanking (or a lating).
He regularly claims to have “original ideas” on mitigation, but the only one I’ve seen was on something called “regenerative governance”, a core part of simplicity and combating the climate problem and so on. I cant find the link now but the page had a couple of things on it:
Firstly there was a list of tweets. Defining your ideas with tweets simply isn’t good enough especially as they were nearly indecipherable.
Secondly there was also a graphic that depicted a management pyramid of some sort, with one person at the head, somewhat detached looking from the group, and about 7 people at the base, with double sided arrows between each one. There was no explanation or labels leaving me to have to guess what was meant.
The intent of this graphic seemed to suggest that most decisions would be made by a fairly egalitarian looking group of people, by mutually consulting each other and the head of this structure has a guiding role. All well and good if I have it right, but that’s how family owned farms sometimes work. While humans have a pecking order (much to Killian apparent frustration, and amusing given how often he pecks) people in family farms sometimes minimise this and treat each other as equals. Business partnerships work the same way to some extent. But the point Killians small egalitarian looking structure is hardly an ORIGINAL idea.
Perhaps I’m wrong. It would greatly help if Killian would please provide a description of regenerative governance in his own words, in plain language. Like BPL says “show your work”. But Killian probably wont. He will just spit acid at me.
The other thing is such a simple management structure would work ok for small enterprises, but as enterprises get big its usually found that middle management is needed etc. So its not clear how Killian deals with larger enterprises that manufacture complex components like his computer.
Personally I support equal opportunity etc, and don’t like rigid class structures, but promoting egalitarianism doesn’t look like the key sort of issue. It’s hard to completely get rid of pecking orders. Financial inequality looks a bit more problematic to me.
nigelj wrote @521:
Sometimes circumstances do not allow you to do anything but. Experience is like that; admit it and move on.
zebra @527 shows exactly how ineducable he is. He QUOTES THE FUNCTION OF THE CAPACITOR (“relieving the supply line of the reactive power”) but FOCUSES ON THE INCIDENTAL ENERGY STORAGE (which I acknowledged waaaay back @247 with the proviso “not energy storage devices per se” (IOW, they do some of that but that isn’t essential to their purpose). Further, if zebra wasn’t a flaming hypocrite he would go after his own gross error @236 where he stated “They store energy once the motors are going“. No. They store (small amounts of) energy whenever the voltage across them is non-zero. Reactive power consumption is greatest at stall, meaning at start; it falls off quite a bit when running.
Had zebra been able to do the trig problem @420, he would have learned something very interesting: the net energy of the power-factor correction capacitors in the 3-phase system is a constant. It does not vary with time; the energy being taken up by one is 100% offset by energy being discharged elsewhere. The capacitors could be replaced by some kind of voltage-converter which moves energy back and forth between the 3 phases with negligible stored energy of its own, performing exactly the same function. We don’t do it because capacitors are cheap and reliable and having some trivial amount of unusable energy stored in the system is a rounding error.
All of this enlightenment could have been his, but zebra is ineducable and apparently shameless as well.
Ray Ladbury writes @528:
Point-and-splutter, but never actually demonstrate that any part of it is false. Typical of our sick, twisted post-truth majority culture. Shameful too, but shamelessness is part of the deal (see zebra).
Robots can already run a fast-food grill better than humans (https://misorobotics.com/flippy/). Very soon there will be no jobs anyone CAN hire these people for, because fixing their mistakes will cost more than their output is worth even if they worked for free.
You can track both falling academic performance and rising crime with lax standards of behavior. In the USA, AP classes are one of the few refuges for students who actually want to learn.
Because if they are not disciplined according to their misbehavior rather than by racial quota, you get classrooms in utter chaos like this. Do you think those girls are served by being allowed to get away with it? They’re going to expect to be able to behave that way on the job. They are going to turn out completely unemployable. “Disproportionate” discipline is the only thing that could save them.
Ironically, you claim that one-size-fits-all approaches don’t work, but deny that some students require “disproportionate” discipline to make education work.
Applicants to “education school” have about the lowest standardized test scores of all university students. Feminism, by devaluing women who work with children, has everything to do with this.
nigelj writes @533:
Always up for a dispute (but you knew that already and were probably betting on it).
The problem with anything involving “renewables” is buffering their unreliability. This is currently done by reducing the capacity factor of fossil-fired plants. However, those plants must still be there and must be either ready to run on short notice or kept on-line (burning fuel). In a world where GHG emissions need to halt and go negative, this implicit subsidy from fossils to “renewables” cannot be allowed to continue.
Using nuclear gets rid of the supply and emissions problems but replaces them with contention between nuclear and “renewables” for grid priority. Non-military reactors generally can’t ramp fast enough to deal with the ups and downs of wind and PV. If there’s a solution, it’s going to come in the form of “dump loads” which can take excess electric power and convert it to something both useful and storable. This is a tall order and there is not yet any serious talk about anything but hypedrogen, which has a round-trip electric efficiency under 50%. We have a late entrant from HighView Power’s Liquid Air Energy Storage scheme, but it remains to be seen just how far it will go and appears to have a stand-alone efficiency around 60%.
My own opinion is that concepts which only address electricity buffering are missing synergies which can come from addressing other problems at the same time. We also have to address heating fuel, motor fuel, and a host of other environmental issues. Excluding them from consideration of how to handle the grid is a huge mistake.
The problem of unreliability has no feasible solution. There is no way to make wind and solar reliable and dispatchable without making them bank similar amounts of stored energy as our nuclear, fossil and hydro systems have. That is a HUGE amount of energy, and will cost an equally huge amount of money and resources to construct.
It’s a problem that could not be more fiendish if it was designed to be, so it almost certainly was. In other words, Mr. KIA hit the nail on the head.
BPL: And KIA (525) quotes the “American Thinker.” Let those who know what this is figure out why it’s a bad source for anything useful.
KIA 541: I know the answer to that: it’s bad because it doesn’t agree in lock step with your viewpoint.
BPL: No, KIA, it’s bad because it’s a far-right crackpot source which prints all kinds of garbage. Here’s some more info for those who are interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Thinker
‘American Thinker has published an excessively complimentary piece on a white nationalist, claimed women ruined public discourse by complaining about rape, and asserted that rainbow-colored Doritos are a “gateway snack to introduce children to the joys of homosexuality.”‘
#544 EP,
EP, you really are embarrassing yourself.
“He QUOTES THE FUNCTION OF THE CAPACITOR (“relieving the supply line of the reactive power”) but FOCUSES ON THE INCIDENTAL ENERGY STORAGE (which I acknowledged waaaay back @247 with the proviso “not energy storage devices per se” (IOW, they do some of that but that isn’t essential to their purpose).”
Let’s try reading the source again… it doesn’t even require physics, just English:
“A capacitor helps to improve the power factor by relieving the supply line of the reactive power. The capacitor achieves this BY storing the magnetic reversal energy.”
How is energy storage not “essential to their purpose”?
You know, EP, lots of people here get stuff wrong from time to time, but they are secure enough to admit it… they’re not happy about it, but they don’t depend on a fake aura of infallibility and bluster/bluff to try to gain respect, so it’s OK.
Your response comes off pretty much in the Victor range of nonsense.
Now that I can see recent posts…
OT ALERT!
E-P flies his anti-feminist flag proudly at #545:
1) I searched for any empirical evidence supporting the assertion in the first sentence, but found nothing. Cites, please?
2) Re “Feminism, by devaluing women who work with children…” is IMO a grotesque distortion. Women who work with children have *always* been devalued by a patriarchal system. Feminism has energetically attempted to reverse this reality, albeit with regrettably limited success. (For instance, by promoting wages for housework, by supporting female-dominated ‘caring professions’ of all sorts in the quest for better wages and work conditions, and by seeking to correct implicit biases in the system that result from things like the ‘child-care differential burden’ that holds back women in the workplace.)
3) I can nevertheless think of one way in which feminism has indeed likely helped to lower the mean aptitude of incoming education students: that is that feminism has spectacularly succeeded in opening up the spectrum of jobs open to women. It seems plausible that thereby a great many talented women who, in previous generations had basically to choose between teacher, nurse or secretary may now opt for entrepreneur, administrator, scientist, engineer, artist, financier, business professional and so on (and on, and on).
4) Probably a bigger factor–albeit one that synergizes with #3–is the systematic underfunding of public education, including but not limited to teachers’ salaries. It’s a big problem, and is much more severe than many people realize. The teacher strikes of the last couple of years are a result of that dynamic–here in South Carolina they put well over 10,000 teachers on the statehouse lawn on May 1st, 2019. (The result? A 3% pay raise, with 3-5% proposed for next year. Pretty marginal help, if you ask me, but better than the better part of a decade without a raise, which was the reality in many states during this brave new millennium.)
Bottom line: if we’re worried about the quality of education, the best response we could make would be to pay teachers better, and to treat them as actual professionals. (I could explain something about the myriad ways that that latter bit does NOT often happen today, but that would be a whole other comment.)
/END OT
In #546, E-P responded to nigel with his usual fare about the impossibility of ‘solving the problems of renewable energy’.
He’s still wrong, and for the same reasons already discussed. Intermittency is a real issue, but he greatly overhypes it. Wind and solar will be the backbone of the generation system, with hydro and nuclear supporting, as well as various forms of energy storage and management. Bottom line: nigel was right.
Now, it is true that we should look for synergies within the overall system; it’s true that it’s not just electrical generation that we need to decarbonize; and it’s true that transforming our energy systems to make them emissions-free is going to be very expensive, no matter what strategy we adopt. But from everything I can see, the ‘nuclear as silver bullet’ strategy that E-P proposes is apt to be about the most expensive possibility of all–if ‘possibility’ is even the right word, given how politically toxic nuclear power is generally.
EP@545
Wow! How do you cram so much wrong, not to mention wrong-headedness, into just a few paragraphs. I’ll start with this:
EP: ” Feminism, by devaluing women who work with children, has everything to do with this.”
Find me even one serious feminist who has done this. This is an utter straw man. And moreover, why the hell is it only the job of women to work with children? The teachers who made a difference for me included both men and women. Good lord, man, have you even been in a classroom since you left high school?
Education is complicated. The answers are not easy. I will tell you what the answer is not, though. The answer is not turning the fricking clock back to the Eisenhower administration. Pay teachers what they are worth, and you will see quality applicants. Give them respect and decent workplaces (where they do not have to buy school supplies for students themselves) and they will stay in the field. But most of all, keep people like you who are convinced that their ignorant opinions contain the solution to all problems out of the class room and out of any role in the educational system.