nigelj: One of the principles of “simplicity”is apparently “Every element has *at least* two functions.”
The idea is presumably to minimise use of scarce resources, but does it actually make much sense?
AB: O yes. And every undesirable side effect must be incorporated into a positive function, such as when a species turns a toxin into a resource or when that bit of unusable wasted volume becomes the key to solving something else, such as when a gap becomes a place to temporarily store secondary air.
If it does’t sing you ain’t finished yet. Speaking of singing, those “single function” hand saws make grand musical instruments. However, I’m not disagreeing, just flavoring. As you said, “Utopian philosophising and very strict sets of principles don’t do much for me.” The perfect isn’t just the enemy of the good but also is limited to a myopic version of “perfect”.
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nigelj: Christ I bet you were a difficult child.
AB: “were”?
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nigelj: Maybe we could send it into space and dump it inside an asteroid,
AB: nothing like adding nuclear waste to that doomsday asteroid!
The sun is perfect except for the energy cost to get stuff there (and rockets spew quite spectacularly when they fail). Ocean trenches are wonderful. The only way back from them is through a volcano, and the dilution rate in that scenario is beyond comprehension. And as EP noted, the ocean itself is a fantastic diluter. It can’t handle the mercury emissions of coal plants but the non-useful and long-lived part of nuclear waste is orders of magnitude less bad both by quantity and longevity.
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patrick027,
I’m thinking that saturated brine is fatal to everything. Those natural marine brine rivers and lakes are how salty?
Ok wind and solar go further back than nuclear, however its a spurious argument because there was no need to develop wind and solar way back, because we had energy dense fossil fuels
Follow that thought just a little further.
What, exactly, was wrong with wind and solar? We used them first, and they were as “free” then as they are now. It was difficult to learn how to power things with coal and oil. If wind and solar are so great, why did anyone bother?
You know why as well as I do. Wind is not cheap; dealing with its intermittency is costly, and if you’re paying for backup anyway the backup becomes cheaper to use 24/7. Further, if you need that backup at all you cannot fully decarbonize, let alone generate the energy surplus required to do remediation. Bret Kugelmass is right; we have NO other options that can do the job, and pretending “all of the above” is just dodging the issue.
They aren’t really hostile people.
If you listen to the complaints of the Australians who are the designated bad guys in the Cronulla riots (which I note that none of the mainstream sources do… though they uncritically quote someone named Jihad(!) Dib) you’ll find a litany of complains like M.E. “youths” harassing Australian women and families, leading to assault and battery upon two lifeguards who told them to lay off.
These are acts of viciously hostile people. Apparently “tolerance” only goes one way.
They just want a better life.
Let them make that better life where they come from. That’s the only way the whole world can get better. They can start by giving the “tolerance” they demand from others. If it doesn’t go both ways, it was always a lie.
All this right wing stuff will not help you sell your nuclear power ideas.
I’m not selling anything. I’m telling the truth and following where it goes, without fear or favor.
@708:
I no longer think we are going to fix the climate problem with usual mitigation strategies and lifestyle changes. The problem is just too big, too many things have to change, there are too many psychological, ideological, cost and political impediments to change at scale.
One thing we can do is adopt a global moratorium on manufacture and sales of coal-fired anything. That includes China.
We are probably going to end up resorting to some desperate geoengineering solution or sucking CO2 out of both the air with fans, because these are singular solutions.
Mining, crushing and spreading roughly 200 cubic kilometers of dunite in 100-micron granules, some on land but most of it in oceanic inter-tidal zones where the breakdown products are carried off and spread around by oceanic currents.
Yes, this is a huge job. But we have exactly 2 choices here:
1.) Fix things.
(a) Figure out what needs to be done, and the most efficient ways.
(b) Do it.
2.) Sit around and whine about it.
So far everyone, even Greta Thunberg, is firmly stuck on 2.).
Nuclear, e.g., does not meet the principle of zero waste, so it is not an option.
Your permaculture generates vast amounts of waste heat which is permanently lost to space. Therefore it is not an option either, QED.
See how reductio ad absurdum works now? When your “only option” fails in its own terms, you have lost the argument. Further, the world cannot support 7.7 billion on “permaculture”. You need calorie and protein crops, which fruits and greens do not and cannot provide. You say that a household can convert in 5 years, but you have not cited EVEN ONE EXAMPLE of this being accomplished.
Nuclear energy generates less waste heat per useful watt than your permaculture. Further, it is 100% sustainable up to at least 6x current human energy consumption (32,000 tons of new uranium flows into the world’s oceans every year). Waste is not an issue; on a scale of 1000 years, it decays to less activity than the source material. 1000 years is enough time to move to the next thing.
1. Immigration (to “the West”) will contribute to reducing global population growth. The immigrant’s offspring usually adapt to the local fertility rates within about two generations.
Only 4 problems with that:
1.) They make the receiving countries ever more crowded and alien to their own citizens. You know, the people who our goverments are allegedly SUPPOSED to represent?
2.) As Roy Beck has irrefutably demonstrated, we can’t relieve the rest of the world’s population pressures by taking them into first-world countries. As of 10 years ago, there were 5.6 billion people in the world living in countries with lower average income than Mexico. They have to fix things where they are.
3.) Immigrants are mostly used as captive voter plantations to dispossess natives.
4.) Allowing immigrants does NOTHING to stop the ones back home from making more.
What these overcrowded poor countries need isn’t an escape valve. It’s a one-decade moratorium on births followed by a couple generations of a one-child policy. If they need roads and schools and everything else, 10 years gives them time to build them… if they can actually do so.
the bonus effect is that the connection with the “old country” will influence relatives and friends who stay behind.
Those “connections” mostly drive more migration.
These people need to stay in their own countries and fix their own problems, including overpopulation.
So, the immigration program that tries to bring in people from “everywhere”, whose name I forget and is under attack now, does not require a moral argument to justify.
The Cult Of the Holy Other is just one of many which need to be proscribed.
There is a large subset (probably a large majority of all adult humans on earth, plus most teenagers and almost all smaller children) who think magically and cannot muster the required emotional and intellectual detachment to practice science, regardless of equipment.
Science is not about equipment. Science is about making testable predictions, performing reliable tests, and making certain that you haven’t either erred or fooled yourself. Science deals in disproof only. Further, all you can be certain about when you disprove a hypothesis is that the most parsimonious alternative which still fits the available data is less wrong than the hypothesis just disproven.
726: Yes, if possible, but I don’t know if it is possible within the bounds of feasibililty, and what people in a democratic society will accept. I would say reduce waste as much as possible that cannot serve another purpose, otherwise you risk being stuck with a pile of waste that gets bigger and bigger, and may have undesirable side effects, e.g. if it breaks down over time into toxic material.
I’m thinking that saturated brine is fatal to everything. Those natural marine brine rivers and lakes are how salty?
The desert pupfish, brine shrimp and a host of halophytes would beg to differ with you. Being able to endure saturated brine is how they keep competitors and parasites away. Works for them!
Extremophiles in general are protected from a great deal of competition and predation.
patrick027says
re 752 – Al Bundy – yeah, I realized there would be adverse impacts from too much of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity – mass dissolved per mass water (including dissolved component, if I’m not mistaken; thus no limit on solubility would allow salinity up to infinity) –
typical seawater 35 g/kg;
dead sea > 200 g/kg;
saturated brine ~ 260 g/kg ?(temp dependent – I assume pressure would have some effect too, but for Earthlike ocean depths…?) if I interpreted this information correctlyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine
So in the upper end of the range given for brine pools, 8*35 = 240+40 = 280; seems close to saturated to me.
I’ve read that they try to let the brine effluent mix with the ocean locally rather than having it flow like a brine river. But maybe that could still be done past the end of the tube I had proposed and still generate power. Although I realize natural mixing processes tend to be subdued at depth – except there are internal gravity waves and I think I’ve read that these break in some places…
I might to any other responses but I can’t see comments 736-750 for some reason.
patrick027says
“mass dissolved per mass water (including dissolved component, if I’m not mistaken; thus no limit on solubility would allow salinity up to infinity) –” WHOA, I was mixing up something. The limit would be 1. Pure salt would have a ‘salinity’ of 1 kg/kg.
patrick027says
I’ve wavered on nuclear power (and GMOs) over my life. I can’t be firmly against it if I want some future where human descendants are able to ride antimatter-powered spacecraft… etc. The Th-fuel cycle and reactor fuel in liquid state for easy processing sound good (I saw somewhere an idea of nuclear submarines powering the land via HVDC). But given how high-tech nuclear processes are, it’s perhaps a bit ironic if the best we can do is power an old-fashioned heat engine. What if the alpha and beta particles from waste were directed by magnetic fields to opposite ends of a load (different voltages for different particle energies with different trajectories), directly producing electric current (also, do the same for CSP-photoelectricity)… maybe the power density is too low, or any significant efficiency would require charge densities that could not be maintained?; just a thought. END BRAINSTORM
patrick027says
… of course, in order to be efficient, the alpha and beta particles would each have to be approaching charged electrodes repelling them so as to convert they’re kinetic energy to voltage*current.
nigeljsays
Killian @ 741 posts this “Re #725 Adam Lea said “Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different?”
I was quoted out of context, probably not intentionally but it doesn’t help. I said “Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different?”…Isn’t the issue more about the ‘impacts’ of the waste on the environment and whether they are positive, negative or neutral? Minimising waste and rendering waste neutral so it doesn’t harm the environment (and people) seems a more plausible principle. You can then have a set of quantitative rules, or goals to work towards. We could probably get reasonably close to zero waste.”
The point being the natural world creates waste, by any definition. And I acknowledged in another comment animal waste is absorbed by the environment, and you can use faeces as fertiliser like the Dutch do. The point is if we are trying to replicate natural processes, there is no case to aim for ‘zero’ waste, just to reduce waste and neutralise it (to put it simply).
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Kevin McKinney @749
Agreed completely. But read what I’ve been saying. It’s just this “zero waste” notion I have a problem with, by any ordinary definition of waste. I actually said @722 ” We could probably get reasonably close to zero waste.”
For example “zero waste” as listed in the simplicity principles prohibits nuclear waste, that prohibits nuclear power. Currently the only thing we can do with some of the spent nuclear fuels is bury it as waste, in sealed containers. There have to be other examples of things where recycling simply doesnt make sense, although like you I suspect not that many.
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Adam Lea @758
“I would say reduce waste as much as possible that cannot serve another purpose, otherwise you risk being stuck with a pile of waste that gets bigger and bigger, and may have undesirable side effects, e.g. if it breaks down over time into toxic material.”
Agreed, but everything we use comes out of the earth ultimately, so can go back into the earth, or sit on the earth as long as it isnt toxic (as you say) or a visual eye sore, like those piles of used tires.
The trouble is its uneconomic presently to reuse or recycle a lot of waste products for example like old tires. If society put a price on all waste, like a price on carbon it would force people to try to find a better use for things like old tires. I can think of a few uses, but its beside the point of this comment.
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Patrick says “I’ve wavered on nuclear power (and GMOs) over my life.”
Me too. We are cautious but open minded. Not a bad way to be.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @752
“Speaking of singing, those “single function” hand saws make grand musical instruments. ”
It’s not a great sound, its slighly nauseating. You do not see a lot of rock bands playing the saw (thank god) and it only works for large saws. Face it quite a few things only really have one function of any practical use. (And yes I’m attacking certain ideas partly because certain people attack ‘me’, and thats just how it is. The ideas still break.)
“AB: “were”?”
Oh you are wicked :
“AB: nothing like adding nuclear waste to that doomsday asteroid!”
Yes and on second thoughts if the space rocket exploded on take off it would be one hell of a problem.
“Ocean trenches are wonderful (storing nuclear waste). The only way back from them is through a volcano, and the dilution rate in that scenario is beyond comprehension. And as EP noted, the ocean itself is a fantastic diluter. ”
Yeah but a leak would be hard on marine life near the source of the leak. However I guess if its deep enough down it wouldn’t matter too much, and there’s not much life. Theres no perfectly ideal solution to the whole nuclear waste storage problem, and no reason that there would be, but thats not a sufficient reason to not use the resource, imo.
Agree about all the rest.
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Engineer-Poet @753
“What, exactly, was wrong with wind and solar? We used them first, and they were as “free” then as they are now. It was difficult to learn how to power things with coal and oil. If wind and solar are so great, why did anyone bother?”
I hear you, but I don’t think wind and solar are great “as such” way back then. Wind and solar were useful back in the distant past, but limited in their applications. Along came coal and oil that could generate power, and also supply heat and fuel for homes, industry, cars and ships so its not surprising they were developed in preference to solar and wind. Whats changed is the climate problem.
Solar technology back then didn’t have much in the way of supporting technical infrastructure to boost its development and it really needed that. Now we have the technology to make solar panels really sing.
“Wind is not cheap; dealing with its intermittency is costly”
Yeah which is why I dont think we should ignore nuclear power. I honestly think Zebra is on the right track to the extent have an energy market that treats nuclear power on a level playing field to renewables, as I’ve discussed. We do that where I live so Im a bit on his side on this one. It’s a bit hard to see local or state government suddenly pushing hard for nuclear power as the one great answer, but they could be persuaded to ensure it is treated fairly. Then things would build from there.
“They aren’t really hostile people……If you listen to the complaints of the Australians who are the designated bad guys in the Cronulla riots ”
Oh come on there are many immigrants, both legal and illegal and it tends to be a minority that are a problem. Official numbers show this and its true of moslem immigrants as well. However I’m an atheist, but even I think certain religions appeal more than others, and some are more primative than others. Read into that what you will. I’m not planning on living in the middle east, for sure.
“So far everyone, even Greta Thunberg, is firmly stuck on 2.).”
Yes an awful lot of people are sitting doing nothing or complaining. However Greta has pointed out a few home truths and that is “doing something”. It’s more than just whining, and it looks like she has made quite an effort to alter her lifestyle as much as possible.
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“Your (Killian) permaculture generates vast amounts of waste heat which is permanently lost to space. Therefore it is not an option either, QED.”
Yes but hes not thinking on that level, yet. See my comments on waste. Although some aspects of permaculture do make sense, in isolation. The trouble starts when it becomes very rigid in its rules and like a huge all encompassing belief system.
Killiansays
Re #754 Engineer-Poet said Nuclear, e.g., does not meet the principle of zero waste, so it is not an option.
Your permaculture generates vast amounts of waste heat which is permanently lost to space. Therefore it is not an option either, QED.
Now, we all knows *he* knows how childish that response is, yet **he typed it anyway.**
Nuclear energy generates less waste heat per useful watt than your permaculture.
1. You have no way to measure that. 2. You don’t know what permaculture is, thus, #1 is magnified. 3. “Zero waste” is not a “permaculture” term, and does not mean “no excess heat may be produced.”
Further, it is 100% sustainable up to at least 6x current human energy consumption
It is not sustainable in any way, shape, or form on the radiactive waste alone.
(32,000 tons of new uranium flows into the world’s oceans every year). Waste is not an issue; on a scale of 1000 years
This is just flat stupid. Uranium exists so it’s OK to pile up radiactive wastes?
1000 years is enough time to move to the next thing.
You have no way to support that statement. It’s magical thinking, so good job demonstrating what you said.
Further, the world cannot support 7.7 billion on “permaculture”.
Because you say so? Permaculture produces at least as much as conventional in good times, produces *more* during drought with none of the negatives and a multitude of positives.
And now, this is where this radiactive man really shows how little he knows:
You need calorie and protein crops, which fruits and greens do not and cannot provide.
WT actual F? Food production that mimics nature cannot grow proteins? Are you out of your damned mind? LOL!!! What kind of fool thinks applying permaculture
to food production only produces fruits and greens?!
I have wasted my time responding to a dullard who can’t even be bothered to know even the tiniest amount about a topic before running his rancid mouth.
You say that a household can convert in 5 years, but you have not cited EVEN ONE EXAMPLE of this being accomplished.
And when did I say I intended to? And, that was about simplicity, not permaculture. You can’t “permaculture” anything. Permaculture is a process, genius. And there are many, many people who have simplified their lives.
Beltain Cottage is an excellent example, and I have posted links here many times. Any food forest is a 5-year proposition. Etc. So, yeah, I have.
And you’re now officially less useful than anklebiter.
Killiansays
Re #752 Al Bundy said nigelj: One of the principles of “simplicity”is apparently “Every element has *at least* two functions.”
The idea is presumably to minimise use of scarce resources, but does it actually make much sense?
AB: O yes. And every undesirable side effect must be incorporated into a positive function, such as when a species turns a toxin into a resource or when that bit of unusable wasted volume becomes the key to solving something else, such as when a gap becomes a place to temporarily store secondary air.
If it does’t sing you ain’t finished yet. Speaking of singing, those “single function” hand saws make grand musical instruments.
Then they aren’t single function, are they.
However, I’m not disagreeing, just flavoring.
Yes, you did disagree by giving good examples of multiple functions. What anklebiter, and you, are bleetingly dumb about is what are the principles for? You already know they are drawn from Nature, yet **reject** them without even understanding how they are applied. You reject Nature’s way of designing…. just because? Idiotic. Myopic. Foolish beyond all possible belief.
It is the hubris of believing human’s do everything better that lead us here, and you two dolts are doubling down on that.
As you said, “Utopian philosophising
There is nothing utopian about the permaculture design process. It’s as pragmatic as it is possible to be. There is zero philosophy attached to the design process, yet you two twits sit here and natter like two dullards because doing so is easier than learning, and it blows your dresses up to convince yourselves your idiotic little games of “gotacha!” have “gotten”, which they haven’t, they’ve merely shown you have no understanding of regenerative design process.
How stupid do you have to be to play stupid, childish games on the internet when the entire planetary system is crashing? How utterly selfish and pyrrhic.
and very strict sets of principles
There’s nothing strict about them. They are First Principles. They are the foundation for good decisions and you can’t get a more stable starting point than First Principles by definition. (Yet you two set them aside without ever having understood them. Idiocy.) Whether one adheres to them or not is a choice, not a law one must obey. It’s a stupid thing to characterize them as strict in any way. They simply are. By denigrating them you are doing the same as saying an engineer should not follow the principles of engineering. You are advocating for structural failures of everything ever made by humans that required any degree of engineering. How stupid can you be?
I often refer to the permaculture process as ecological engineering because… it is. To wit:
“What are Engineering Principles?”
By engineering principles we mean the ideas, rules, or concepts that need to be kept in mind when solving an engineering problem. However, there is no one specific list of engineering principles that can be written down or posted up on the web. That is because the concepts used to solve a problem will often be different depending on the type of problem encountered.
The engineer must be aware of this and consider the most important features of a design before she begins. [But not you two dolts. No, we should eschew those pesky principles because we absurdly believe them to be “very strict.”] For example, one often-noted principle in engineering design is “keep it simple” or “KISS (keep it simple stupid)”. [Permaculture also uses this. It is phrased as “Least change for maximum effect.” But you two geniuses are right, let’s toss that out.]
Now, let’s see you two anklbiters dare tell us engineering principles are “very strict” and are “the enemy of the good.” LOL… Damned fools…
don’t do much for me.”
No, I’m sure nothing intelligent, logical, fundamental to the function of Nature would.
The perfect isn’t just the enemy of the good but also is limited to a myopic version of “perfect”.
And, yet, at no time in my well over ten years of posting here have I ever stated a single word that supports the idiocy of you two in claiming the application of permaculture design rejects all but the most perfect outcome. That is the opposite of “use what you’ve got”, “adapt in place”, “let solutions emerge, do not impose them.” Neither the principles nor the process call for perfection in any way, but they lead you in that direction. You’re not going to get a regenerative future without following them, even if you don’t understand that’s what you’ve done, so it is pointless to demonize them for the idiotic reason you don’t like me. (I truly wish a day would come where your survival depended on me supplying you food just so I can watch you starve yourselves rather than accept anything from me. LOL…. fools. ) They are not perfection, they are foundation.
Blithering idiots, the two of you.
nigelj: Christ I bet you were a difficult child.
AB: “were”?
I was, and remain, the one child who never gave my mother any trouble. However, fools and the unintelligent have always tended to hate me.
E-P 745: Diversity of values, languages and cultures is a gross liability, making it harder to do even simple things. When NASA put men on the moon, it was almost completely run by chain-smoking white men in shirts and ties with crew cuts, and so were all the contractors. It can’t do this today.
BPL: And why not? Because NASA hired too many black people! Thanks for that insightful analysis, E-P.
I’m guessing he didn’t want to see “Hidden Figures.”
E-P 755: Immigrants are mostly used as captive voter plantations to dispossess natives.
BPL: And the UN is sending black helicopters to take all the white Christian patriots to FEMA detention camps. Got any other batshit crazy conspiracy theories to share?
Al Bundysays
Patrick027: Could currents be used like flywheels?
AB: The percentage of total energy harvested of the total current energy is essentially zero, so no, putting some back wouldn’t do diddly except chop up more sea life for no benefit.
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EP: Only if it is ALPHA radiation.
AB: You have crowed about the safety of external radiation forever. Are you changing your mind and saying that non-alpha is the REAL problem? Seriously, dude. The problem IS alpha cuz if radiation doesn’t impact quickly and from a consistent location it gets diffuse. Kind of like the difference between somebody pushing you versus somebody shooting you. Same total force involved but one is relatively harmless (unless you fall) and the other can be fatal. Or do you disagree?
EP: Also, do not think I have not noticed your attempt to obfuscate and confuse by refusing to quote or even reference by comment number what you are referring to.
AB: Stick to your forte, kid. You suck at figuring out motivations. Sometimes I post from a phone and it is a pain to try to do what you demand (though I have recently figured out how to cut/paste on my phone). Seriously, you think I obfuscate??? You are either slamming so as to try to hurt by calling me the opposite of what I cherish of myself or you are a moron with regard to non-math stuff. And seriously, when somebody agrees with almost everything you are saying except “X” then to dis them for focusing on “X” is non-mathematically moronic. (And the math doesn’t compute either)
EP: If you are so injured by feelings of inadequacy… note that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. If anything I said has wounded you, you implicitly agree you deserve it.
AB: No, I am not injured by your feelings of inadequacy and no, they don’t transfer to me. I’ve never felt inadequate because of your words. And if your words injure anybody, then only an ass would say that the injured party always deserves it.
EP: 1.79% says we are in deep, deep trouble.
AB: Why? It could be that our system, which elevates lazy couch-sitting capitalists above everyone else combined, isn’t appropriate when the world is awash in excess capital (especially since capital has gone virtual). So yes, if you define “we” as “the rich” then “we” aren’t nearly as useful as “we” used to be and so “our” income might drop to more align with “our” non-productive rear ends. Is that “trouble”?
And please, do NOT replace “capitalist” with “entrepreneur”. Entrepreneurs are folks who WORK for a living. That some of them also invest capital (as opposed to loans) is irrelevant. The two actions, investing and working, are completely disjoint.
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Scott: And no, nothing you could coat on a windmill could possibly even come close to the massive sink caused by methanotrophs in grasslands. That sink is in fact the only biotic net sink on the planet…. and far larger than any meager coating you could put on a windmill blade.
AB: Welcome back! As you said, “gross” is irrelevant. Coatings on blades helps “net”. So though your comment sings with truth it doesn’t address the question.
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EP: or no-fault divorce that makes kids so miserable?
AB: Speak through your hat much? Little is worse for a child than living with parents who should have divorced. Stick to math, son. Your attempt to overlay math onto human interactions is soooo last century (which is why it almost always ends up with Naziesque conclusions) Palestinians are genetically “Jewish”. Palestinians score way low on IQ tests and Jews score way high. Explain.
Indeed, the skills are legit. And not to be underestimated. How many separate operations did the young woman undertake? And how long a time did each entail?
Whenever I’ve undertaken a some sort of “primitive” task, it’s invariably proven much tougher to do than any of us “moderns” would think. Not impossible, of course; but like anything that’s in the realm of technique as opposed to technology, you have to put in the time to build the skill. The essence of modern life has been ‘deskilling’ the population so that we are forced to buy prepackaged solutions to the problem of lacking skills.
Of course, other skills do develop: for instance, I can’t help but note that the video is beautifully shot and edited. Wonder what crew she needed? At minimum, a camera op and a gaffer for the mic.
And evidently the skills of digital marketing are not lacking, either, as the ‘content’ has made its way across the world to us, wherever each of ‘us’ happens to reside. I don’t think that delegitimizes the video at all. I’ve seen several similar ones by different people, showing the construction of wells, cisterns and other ‘simple’ tools of life. (All, I think, from Asian sources: there seems to be a whole genre of such–though I’d bet my bottom dollar (if I had one) on the existence of analogs from Europe and the Americas.)
I’m quite fascinated to see how such things used to be done. And I like to find corresponding opportunities in my life: eating the new shoots of the greenbriar, or making cordage out of bread wrappers, or fabricating parts out of the oak that grows on our property–and which are always shedding branches!–for example. But I think the lessons you can draw from such are much more diverse and ‘complicated’–sorry about that!–than one might think at first blush.
What if the alpha and beta particles from waste were directed by magnetic fields to opposite ends of a load (different voltages for different particle energies with different trajectories), directly producing electric current (also, do the same for CSP-photoelectricity)… maybe the power density is too low
1. They’re called betavoltaics or beta batteries. They’ve been known for a long time.
2. You have no way to control the direction of emission of the particles.
3. Bulk sources are “self-shielding”; only outward emissions from close to the surface can be relied upon to reach the anode.
4. Both power levels and efficiency are very low. There’s a reason that all substantial nuclear batteries use thermoelectric converters or other heat engines.
19th and early-20th century wind technology was not usually used to generate electricity, but for direct-driven mechanical power, and it was an end user technology. Modern wind power is an electricity generation technology, the vast majority of which is deployed at utility scale.
“Apples to oranges” doesn’t really cover that gap.
And similarly for solar: yes, thermal solar power has a long history. But the development of solid state PV is quite a different matter. It may be true that “Charles Fritts installed the world’s first rooftop photovoltaic solar array, using 1%-efficient selenium cells, on a New York City roof in 1884,” but that’s just an early experiment. Due to the lost cost and convenience of fossil fuels, “In 1974 it was estimated that only six private homes in all of North America were entirely heated or cooled by functional solar power systems.”
In fact, it wasn’t until the 90s that deployment of solar PV tech really started to take off. But take off it has, going from near zero use in 1992 to over 500 GW deployed in 2018–and note the semi-log scale of the graph:
What wind and solar both have in common today is their scalability and low cost relative to just about everything else. The lowest cost capacity being built today is wind, and solar PV is now firmly in the middle of the FF range, and still falling fast.
Intermittency? An issue, but not the issue E-P likes to imagine. For example:
In a year-end earnings call on Friday, Jim Robo predicted that new near-firm wind projects will have a levelised cost of energy (LCOE) of $20-30/MWh, with near-firm solar at $30-40/MWh within five years… “Near-firm” means that the renewables plants would be close to being able to provide power around the clock, much like a baseload coal-fired or gas-fired power plant.
Background:
“NextEra Energy, Inc. is a Fortune 200 energy company with about 45,900 megawatts of generating capacity, revenues of over $17 billion in 2017, and about 14,000 employees throughout the United States and Canada. It is the largest electric utility holding company by market capitalization.”
It happily operates both nuclear and renewable capacity. FWIW, its stock has been on a bit of a tear in the last couple of years:
I don’t mean to idolize Jim Robo for being a successful energy CEO, but the point is, Nextera is not short on either engineering talent or experience in supplying grid power in the real world.
[Racist xenophobic–and OT–BS noted. It renders the claim that “I’m telling the truth” damned ironic, but doesn’t deserve further response.]
Al Bundysays
EP: Yet they were largely abandoned. You know why as well as I do. Wind…
AB: …requires advanced materials and manufacturing capacities that have only recently become available.
EP: I’m not selling anything. I’m telling the truth and following where it goes, without fear or favor.
AB: Tamino’s “Proud to be Stupid” corps has analogs. To deliberately self-lobotomize one’s non-math brain could be an error.
EP: Mining, crushing and spreading roughly 200 cubic kilometers of dunite in 100-micron granules, some on land but most of it in oceanic inter-tidal zones
AB: I’ve solved this one, and without endangering inter-tidal ecosystems. Not sure when I’ll get enough leverage to productively share the solution. Of course, as Killian demands, the solution doesn’t just solve one problem. It way more than pays for itself.
EP: What these overcrowded poor countries need isn’t an escape valve.
AB: Hmm. White folks used the Americas as an escape valve and it worked out fairly well (except for the native non-White Americans). So why can’t non-White folks use the Americas as an escape valve? Perhaps it might work out just as well (except for the native White Americans). Oh, now I see…
EP: Science deals in disproof only.
AB: Naw. Science is about thinking of bicycles and various other whimsical stuff. Yep, there’s a lot of math that results, but if Einstein (or whoever) did’t take that virtual bicycle ride there wouldn’t have been much grunt work to do. Folks can debate whether vision or grunt work is more valuable.
I’ll start the debate: “We all cherish Einstein’s bicycle”.
EP’s link: However, similar to diesel engines, the direct injection of fuel in GDI engines creates fuel-rich pockets near the injection zone, and the combustion conditions in these pockets are conducive to formation of carbonaceous particulate matter (PM), especially black carbon (BC). Consequently, GDI engines emit larger amounts of BC compared to PFI engines, as has been confirmed by several laboratory studies.
AB: Yep, if you do it wrong then you’ll fail one way or the other. Current GDI engines spray into a cold-walled combustion chamber and give less than a single stroke to pressurized combustion. A proper GDI engine sprays into a hot-walled combustion chamber and gives about three strokes (out of four) to pressurized combustion.
EP: Extremophiles in general are protected from a great deal of competition and predation.
AB: Yep, I left extremophiles out. Considered various ways to caveat or handle but chose saving bandwidth since everyone knows they exist. The point is that the current ecosystem will suffer. Kind of like when people roll their eyes when denialists talk about how life will go on even if temperatures get too high for mammals.
Ray Ladburysays
EP, The laundry called. Your white robe with the pointy hood is ready.
Killiansays
Do not listen to children playing petty games on matters of import. Perfect? Rigid? Inflexible?
Those are words only fools who have never attempted to educate themselves would use to describe permaculture design.
A vendor interested in PG&E’s bid for microgrids flat-out admits that solar+storage is untenable for multi-day outages:
One of the vendors that’s interested in PG&E’s RFO [request for offers] is Enchanted Rock, a developer of natural gas-powered generators. The company has had numerous conversations with PG&E over the last many months, Chief Commercial Officer Allan Schurr told Utility Dive.
He said the requirements in the RFO — generation to serve multiple days of outages — are too cost prohibitive for solar and storage alone.
“I just think that the three, four, five-day requirement makes the solar and storage alternative for resiliency untenable. It’s by our calculation between 50 to 80 times more expensive to do it with solar plus storage,” he said.
I’d like to work with you. As Nigel noted, you do what I don’t and vice versa. Wanna participate in collectively ruling the world? (though that’s an obsolete phrase, “guiding” is more 21st century) Contact me at my introduction email: ManyAndVaried@hotmail.com
or not. Your decision may change the world. Fun, eh?
patrick027says
re “These people need to stay in their own countries and fix their own problems, including overpopulation.” – eminently practical to ask people to be responsible for themselves, but justice requires a measured approach.
First, we must treat people as individuals. E.g. I am not responsible for many of the problems in my country (U.S.) – I vote, and never for the GOP (*knowingly – in my first few times voting I encountered some non-partisan local races for which I was unprepared; I should have just left them blank but for some reason I gambled and voted anyway… I regret that.)
(GOP – “cruel to be kind”; liberals – “in the right measure” :) )
Second, in judging any moral agent’s choices, one must take into account what the situation was and what options were available (e.g. grabbing a stranger is good if you’re pulling them away from imminent harm – e.g. a speeding car; trying to perform a life-saving operation is not so good if you’re just pretending to be a doctor and don’t actually know what to do). I sometimes wonder of the ‘politics of personal responsibility’ is intended to ask people to take responsible not just for what they do but for what is done/happens to them (from pollutants to the economic, cultural, and geographical situation of their birth to DNA mutations to…) – this is not fair for individuals nor for countries.
patrick027says
…3rd, focusing just on justice for past – or even present- actions is not necessarily the most effective path towards a better future.
“So far everyone, even Greta Thunberg, is firmly stuck on 2.).” – I think that’s unfair. I know it’s tempting to find solace just by being angry (the dark side of the Force) at the GOP and that actually solving the problem requires more. But voting out climate-change deniers is certainly part of the solution. Political mobilization is important. It’s not as if Greta Thundberg is old enough (???) to be Emperor Supreme of the World – that job title doesn’t even exist (officially? :) ); and she certainly has taken actions regarding her own carbon footprint – PS options to reduce one’s carbon footprint should become easier when society as a whole adopts policies such as a climate-change (and ocean acidification) tax on pollutants – or the actions that produce them (production of fossil fuels, deforestation, (poorly-managed) cattle/dairy… landfill sewage rice-paddy etc. (CH4 doesn’t last so long in the atmosphere but it is an issue nonetheless) (of course people will still eat rice (gluten free – wheat isn’t always an option for everone), but there will be motivation to find cleaner methods/varieties/alternatives…) – another strike against an emphasis on personal responsility.
PS on the whole different values/dangers of immigration thing – note that the potential may actually exist for holy war amongst just the people born in the U.S. (as Putin wanted). Trump was born in the U.S. Also, Reagan founded MS-13; yes I’m being hyberbolic on that one, but not off-the-mark. Sorry that was a bit O/T.
In related news, IRENA reports 6 million EVs currently on the road globally, projecting 157 million in 2030. (Though it’s not clear what the policy assumptions underlying that call are, since the source is an infographic, although the second link below says it’s “Paris compliant.”)
re 773 – I appreciate your points; however I must point out that you can control the direction. emission in all directions from a location near a very strong magnetic field can result in a more narrow range of directions where the field is weak; i.e. picture ‘straight’ lines drawn on a conical surface (fitting magnetic field lines spreading out from a vertex (approximation to strong magnet). Of course you have to sacrifice concentration in area for concentration in direction, just like photons from the Sun – high flux/area, all directions at the Sun vs. lower irradiance, near unidirectional photons far away, entropy conserved, etc.
Solar technology back then didn’t have much in the way of supporting technical infrastructure to boost its development and it really needed that.
The solar technology of the day was as well-supported as the steam technology, because it WAS steam technology. Farrington Daniels lists a solar-steam engine in Paris in 1878 which ran a printing press. Later efforts include a 4.5 HP engine using a parabolic tracking collector in 1901 in Pasadena, solar water-pumping engines using flat-plate collectors near Philadelphia in 1907 and 1911, and a water-pumping engine using a parabolic cylinder collector in Cairo in 1913. (“Direct Use Of the Sun’s Energy”, 5th printing, pp. 9-10.)
All this stuff actually worked, but it wasn’t economic and was abandoned. Solar energy was just plain too diffuse even in the sunniest climates of the world. What’s changed? Nothing, except our willingness to subsidize and treat unequal things equally. That can’t continue, so it won’t; it’ll break down sooner or later, as it’s breaking down in Germany.
jgnfldsays
@781
Electric power for microgrids in limited areas during times of extreme forest fire danger–the actual subject of the article–has very little to do with regional and continental-scale grids supplying power to large areas.
Please explain how you stop the rain, wind, and sun across a significant portion of the continent for 3, 4, or 5 days. The physics of that would be interesting. The factor of 50x-80x needs more than a bit of context.
But I expect you knew all this as you seem to have expertise in the area. Or should, anyway.
Nuclear energy generates less waste heat per useful watt than your permaculture.
1. You have no way to measure that.
You mean you have no way to measure that. I am quite capable of comparing documented productivity figures for other crop systems, such as maize (~200 bushels/acre/year), converting to food calories and then to joules, and dividing that figure by the net annual sunlight falling on that acre (Iowa averages about 4.15 kWh/m²/day). YOU are not; you are innumerate.
Corn yields roughly 12.3 million calories/acre/year, about 14,300 kWh/ac/yr. 4.15 kWh/m²/day is 6.13 million kWh/ac/yr. That is 428.1 watts of wasted solar energy for every watt converted to food. Nuclear power plants are roughly 33% efficient, or 2 watts wasted per useful watt. Waste energy advantage: nuclear, by 200:1.
It is not sustainable in any way, shape, or form on the radiactive waste alone.
You’re crazy. Nuclear energy takes stuff that was radioactive when it was created and turns it into stuff with far less radiation-emitting potential than it had before. Further, nuclear power yields products OTHER than lead (which is the end of the decay chain for all isotopes of uranium and thorium and remains toxic forever). Nuclear power gets RID of net radioactivity and net toxics.
This is just flat stupid. Uranium exists so it’s OK to pile up radiactive wastes?
s/This is/You are/. Radioactive “wastes” (many of which are useful, for e.g. irradiating food to eliminate E. coli, salmonella and listeria) have the virtue of decaying away by themselves. They only “pile up” to some level proportional to their rate of production, and as soon as you STOP producing them they immediately go downward toward zero.
I have wasted my time responding to a dullard who can’t even be bothered to know even the tiniest amount about a topic before running his rancid mouth.
I am capable of looking up the productivity of e.g. black walnut trees, which are one of the very few “permaculture” protein sources which will grow in my climate zone. AAMOF, I have already done so. Do you seriously want me to do the same kind of analysis on walnuts that I just did on maize, to school your sorry butt?
Killiansays
Re #765 anklebiter yelped “Your (Killian) permaculture generates vast amounts of waste heat which is permanently lost to space. Therefore it is not an option either, QED.”
Yes
No. Based on excess heat, *virtually everything in the universe should be condemned as unsustainable.* It was a childish taunt. You can’t even “get” that. His example was absurd, which he acknowledged immediately after.
You truly are stupid.
but hes not thinking on that level, yet.
You’re an idiot. Permaculture *starts* with the gross energy flows: Sunlight, water, wind, earth. I incorporated thermodynamics into my belief systems long before I came across permaculture. The fact that energy only changes form, cannot be destroyed, is a huge point in not fearing death and coming to a fundamentally sound belief system wrt life and death.
I understood that over 40 years ago, child.
See my comments on waste.
Why? To better understand how goddamned stupid you are? How petty? How ignorant? Goddamned fool.
You are the living emodiment of, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt.”
Too late for you, though.
Killiansays
Re #772 Kevin McKinney said Killian, #751–
Indeed, the skills are legit. And not to be underestimated. How many separate operations did the young woman undertake? And how long a time did each entail?
I often marvel at how things ever came to be. We used to be freaking geniuses, so far as I can tell. The fact we beat the creative genius out of ourselves via education and aculturation is perhaps our greatest failure, preventing wiser choices.
Whenever I’ve undertaken a some sort of “primitive” task, it’s invariably proven much tougher to do than any of us “moderns” would think. Not impossible, of course; but like anything that’s in the realm of technique as opposed to technology, you have to put in the time to build the skill. The essence of modern life has been ‘deskilling’ the population so that we are forced to buy prepackaged solutions to the problem of lacking skills.
Precisely why reskilling is so integral to approaches to simplicity, peraculture, localization, etc., no? And getting back to experiential learning, including mentoring and apprenticing will play a huge role, necessarily.
Of course, other skills do develop: for instance, I can’t help but note that the video is beautifully shot and edited. Wonder what crew she needed? At minimum, a camera op and a gaffer for the mic.
And evidently the skills of digital marketing are not lacking, either, as the ‘content’ has made its way across the world to us, wherever each of ‘us’ happens to reside. I don’t think that delegitimizes the video at all. I’ve seen several similar ones by different people, showing the construction of wells, cisterns and other ‘simple’ tools of life. (All, I think, from Asian sources: there seems to be a whole genre of such–though I’d bet my bottom dollar (if I had one) on the existence of analogs from Europe and the Americas.)
I’m quite fascinated to see how such things used to be done. And I like to find corresponding opportunities in my life: eating the new shoots of the greenbriar, or making cordage out of bread wrappers, or fabricating parts out of the oak that grows on our property–and which are always shedding branches!–for example. But I think the lessons you can draw from such are much more diverse and ‘complicated’–sorry about that!–than one might think at first blush.
nigeljsays
Killian @766
“Nuclear energy generates less waste heat per useful watt than your permaculture.”
“1. You have no way to measure that. 2. You don’t know what permaculture is, thus, #1 is magnified. 3. “Zero waste” is not a “permaculture” term, and does not mean “no excess heat may be produced.”
Permaculture is probably being mistaken for regenerative agriculture or simplification. But it doesn’t matter in this context because these things all lead to the use of timber as the prime source of energy don’t they?
Nuclear power can create less wasted heat than burning timber in wood stoves. Basic engineering.
Zero waste is not a permaculture term, yet the so called”simplicity principles” talk about zero waste and the two things are supposed to be closely related, aren’t they? So if we are supposed to be doing both anyway, why bother even arguing about the distinction?
“Because you say so? Permaculture produces at least as much as conventional in good times, produces *more* during drought with none of the negatives and a multitude of positives.”
Citations please from published, peer reviewed science journals.
———————————-
Killian @767:
“Yes, you did disagree by giving good examples of multiple functions. What anklebiter, and you, are bleetingly dumb about is what are the principles for? You already know they are drawn from Nature, yet **reject** them without even understanding how they are applied. You reject Nature’s way of designing…. just because? Idiotic. Myopic. Foolish beyond all possible belief.”
One of the simplicity principles said “everything has at least two functions”. But many things in nature only have one function, eg human muscle cells, some cells in multi cellular organisms, various protein molecules etcetera. Some things have many functions like the human liver.
So I don’t think nature is an example of multi functionality. Its a mixture of multi functionality and specialisation. So ‘if’ we are learning from nature, or emulating nature, we should do the same surely? And we do that anyway.
And zero waste. The point is nature creates waste and it gets dumped. So if we are trying to emulate nature there is no precedent in nature that suggests we absolutely have to eliminate all waste or re-use it for something else. Nature is often efficient such that it creates minimal waste, so sure we could try to emulate that.
“It is the hubris of believing human’s do everything better that lead us here, and you two dolts are doubling down on that.”
Nope. I have never said or implied that humans do everything better than nature. We can obviously learn from nature. But nature is a wild harsh place. I’m not sure everything about nature is a good thing. You have to learn very carefully and very selectively.
“There is nothing utopian about the permaculture design process.'”
I never said permaculture design process is utopian philosophising. The ‘totality’ of Killians and similar peoples ideas look like utopian philosophising to me. They lay out an idealised sort of life and supporting structure. I think its a perfect example of utopianism. If we just talked about a permaculture process that would be a process that doesnt have a very definite end point, then that is not utopian. But the simple living people like Killian, not only him, talk about communities, their structures, specific morals and values, technologies etc and makes a clear distinction on what is desirable, and that looks utopian at times anyway.
I have had a look at permaculture. It looks like it has some value, up to a point. That’s the best I can say.
“and very strict sets of principles”
“There’s nothing strict about them.”
Zero waste: Cant get stricter or more rigid than that.
Adapt in place. Taken literally this suggests to me living permanently in one place. Very rigid. If it means something else please explain what it means.
There is no precedent in the natural world. Animals roam, migrate, escape dangers. Adapt in place where possible would be a more convincing principle.
Use what you have. Not sure how this is derived from nature. The natural world is quite opportunistic. Its a reasonable idea, but what if a miracle drug comes along? I assume the idea allows for exceptions like this? If so it needs guidelines, for the average person anyway.
Not ankle biting. Just expecting explanations, answers and coherence.
Solar energy was just plain too diffuse even in the sunniest climates of the world. What’s changed?
Answer: The entire conversion technology, including a materials science capable of economically manufacturing doped silicon and alternate PV substrates, supporting materials, and fabricating them all in huge volumes at low cost. The result has been a greater than 100x reduction in cost, coincident with a greater than 20x improvement in conversion efficiency. Ancillary improvements in things like tracking or mounting, not to mention related business developments having to do with financing, all of which have likewise made solar PV highly economical.
Yet E-P blithely answers “Nothing”–which, if truthful, tells you a lot about what he is prepared to consider–or rather, apparently, *not* consider.
Nemesissays
On The Seashore
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
– Rabindranath Tagore
nigeljsays
Killian @790,
“Based on excess heat, *virtually everything in the universe should be condemned as unsustainable.* It was a childish taunt. You can’t even “get” that. His example was absurd, which he acknowledged immediately after.”
No. I saw everything EP meant straight away. You have still missed the point of what EP was getting at about waste heat, which he has now explained in more detail, with the numbers. And you will still miss it, or argue with it.
AND nature creates waste products , so there is no precedent in nature to suggest we should have “zero waste”. That is just YOUR ASSERTION.
You have just looked at nature and noticed much of this waste is reabsorbed and the system is more or less in equilibrium over time. Christ I figured that out at frigging primary school. Like someone else mentioned (Patrik I think) we should emulate that, so waste is permitted at a level the environment can handle without gross destabilisation. That is a sensible principle based on nature. Not zero waste.
AND if you are using something other than the normal dictionary definition of waste, (it sure looks like it) you have to define it, every time you use the term.
“Permaculture *starts* with the gross energy flows: Sunlight, water, wind, earth. ”
Well hopefully it does, otherwise it lives in a non physics based universe. Sorry you don’t get points for doing the obvious.
“I incorporated thermodynamics into my belief systems long before I came across permaculture. The fact that energy only changes form, cannot be destroyed, is a huge point in not fearing death and coming to a fundamentally sound belief system wrt life and death.”
Whatever, I concluded much the same about death. However we are programmed to fear death. It would be insane to not have some fear of death because our actions would become totally reckless. I believe people that say they have no fear of death are just saying they have come to accept the inevitability of death.
“See my comments on waste.”
“Why? To better understand how goddamned stupid you are? How petty? How ignorant? Goddamned fool.”
You are only attacking me because you can’t refute what I’ve said. You crow but never show. You belittle people with personal abuse then cry tears when people criticise you or your comments. You are a child, emotionally anyway. Some of your ideas are almost adult.
nigeljsays
Engineer-Poet @787
“The solar technology of the day was as well-supported as the steam technology, because it WAS steam technology.”
Ok I thought you meant the very early solar panels for generating electricity. From the ever helpful Mr Google: ” 1954 Photovoltaic technology is born in the United States when Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson develop the silicon photovoltaic (PV) cell at Bell Labs—the first solar cell capable of converting enough of the sun’s energy into power to run everyday electrical equipment.”
Perhaps the first ever panel was earlier, but this appears to be the first seriously useful one.
I can only repeat the general electrical technology of the day was not as supportive compared to the amazing technologies we have now. As others have alluded to.
And we had coal that did the job rather well, and it probably didn’t look like solar panels would have a major advantage over coal. And the panels faced a hostile coal industry with a bit of a monopoly, so even if the panels were potentially better they faced an uphill battle. The idea withered on the vine except for specialist applications, until the climate problem emerged and made solar panels a lot more viable. Solar panels for electric power are good, provided thats seen in the context of the climate problem.
But hey, build nuclear if you want. I’m playing devils advocate a bit. Love a bit of an argument and a bit of history.
Nuclear is arguably better until the costs of storage drop. However if you look at all the forces that drive the economy, we will probably end up with both renewables and nuclear.
I notice that uranium has very few uses, so really just power generation, bombs, and depleted uranium for armour piercing shells etc. The world has more than enough bombs, so we may as well use the uranium to generate power. Silly to just waste it by leaving it in the ground.
AND nature creates waste products , so there is no precedent in nature to suggest we should have “zero waste”. That is just YOUR ASSERTION.
I think I’d disagree philosphically on that, if we posit that “nature” is in this context distinct from humanity. (A proposition I’d reject in the larger context.)
Here’s the logic: “waste” is defined with regard to particular needs, and therefore embodies a teleology. IOW, waste only exists with respect to some purpose.
But Nature, as far as I can tell (and that may not be very far!), has no truck with teleology. Natural things and processes just “are”. (Animals can pose a bit of an edge case here!)
Hence, no waste, by definition. “Waste” is a purely human phenomenon (or at least mostly a human phenomenon–it’s not too terrible an affront to the definition if we ignore, say, the bits of grass stem left over from chimpanzee anthill-probe-making).
A little more pragmatically, since everything in Nature is transformed over time in some way, if there is life almost anything will have a ‘use’ eventually.
patrick027says
I wanted to further explain this concept – emission of charged particles within a magnetic field:
Constant magnetic field (requires field lines be parallel) – particles of a particular charge, mass, and energy will follow helices amounting to geodesics on cylinders.
When the field lines diverge, such as from the pole of a magnet, particles follow geodesics on locally conical surfaces. Such paths are:
1. effectively repelled away from the narrow end of the cone, if the cone is long enough; particles are redirected away from the vertex of the cone; the fraction of particles able to get within some distance of the vertex decreases approaching the vertex; of course, realistically the surface of the magnet (or open end of the solenoid… etc.) would be in front of where the vertex would be, the magnetic field lines never truly meeting at a single point, but if the magnetic is small relative to the distance to the particle source, it may approximate a vertex.
2. moving away from the vertex, as the field lines spread away from each other, the helical paths ‘unwind’ – ie. the component of velocity parallel to the field lines becomes a greater portion of the total velocity. Thus:
Gradually (not suddenly) transitioning to parallel field lines, the particle paths become more nearly parallel. They could then: a). lose most of their kinetic energy to potential energy approaching a charged plate, if the field is such that the particles are not repelled sideways (maybe allow the magnetic field lines to converge a bit to compensate… I haven’t got it all worked out yet)… or b). lose energy by waving back and forth along a path, in reaction to deviations to the magnetic field associate with magnets attached to counterrotating rotors… etc. (?)
Of course, if the particles have a range of energies, then there must be some more inefficiency or multiple exit ramps… etc. Alpha and beta particles having different mass/charge ratios and/or different energies could be separated even if emitted from the same point due to the greater spreading out of one set of paths relative to another. Same for hot ions evaporating from a solar-heated molten salt, except the local thermodynamic equilibrium would result in a range of energies for each, but maybe with drastically different masses… eg. CsF, or better yet, Cs2O.
Might work best with multiple sources in an array of narrow magnetic bottles…
This might not be at all practical, but it is interesting, and relates to magnetospheric dynamics (also interesting is the effect of varying field strength across field lines, which causes an east-west current).
(requires a longer lifespan due to degradations, imperfections (dust, occasional snow that can’t be removed right away or before morning, birds and their droppings), and losses such as very large hail (they’re supposed to survive your typical hailstorms, right)/tornados/fires/lava flows…/crushed by earthquake-induced building collapses…etc.)
…that would sustain 50 TW capacity at equilibrium. Which would perhaps be ~ 10 TW average power, depending on locations (That one part of Bolivia https://globalsolaratlas.info/map could become part of ???(don’t want to spoil the local ecosystem) the next Saudi Arabia, shipping out solar-made fuels.)
I wonder about the possible need to overshoot equilibrium production rates to meet the temporal demands of climate-change mitigation. In the long run we may end up with a period surplus renewable energy. Well that could be used for something, of course – sequestration, recharging the Ogalla aquifer, a spurt of space missions, mining common rocks to produce Ca for C sequestration, feldspar and quartz for glass, Al and Fe, and take the rest and get P, Ti, … and then Cu, your rare-Earths, U, … ie. use the whole animal. Alternatively some solar jobs might suddenly disappear, but we could plan compensation for that.
Can’t be sure of the legitimacy, but the skills themselves are legit.
#Simplicity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR4DiU8wcVk
nigelj: One of the principles of “simplicity”is apparently “Every element has *at least* two functions.”
The idea is presumably to minimise use of scarce resources, but does it actually make much sense?
AB: O yes. And every undesirable side effect must be incorporated into a positive function, such as when a species turns a toxin into a resource or when that bit of unusable wasted volume becomes the key to solving something else, such as when a gap becomes a place to temporarily store secondary air.
If it does’t sing you ain’t finished yet. Speaking of singing, those “single function” hand saws make grand musical instruments. However, I’m not disagreeing, just flavoring. As you said, “Utopian philosophising and very strict sets of principles don’t do much for me.” The perfect isn’t just the enemy of the good but also is limited to a myopic version of “perfect”.
_____
nigelj: Christ I bet you were a difficult child.
AB: “were”?
________
nigelj: Maybe we could send it into space and dump it inside an asteroid,
AB: nothing like adding nuclear waste to that doomsday asteroid!
The sun is perfect except for the energy cost to get stuff there (and rockets spew quite spectacularly when they fail). Ocean trenches are wonderful. The only way back from them is through a volcano, and the dilution rate in that scenario is beyond comprehension. And as EP noted, the ocean itself is a fantastic diluter. It can’t handle the mercury emissions of coal plants but the non-useful and long-lived part of nuclear waste is orders of magnitude less bad both by quantity and longevity.
_____
patrick027,
I’m thinking that saturated brine is fatal to everything. Those natural marine brine rivers and lakes are how salty?
nigelj wrote @701:
Follow that thought just a little further.
What, exactly, was wrong with wind and solar? We used them first, and they were as “free” then as they are now. It was difficult to learn how to power things with coal and oil. If wind and solar are so great, why did anyone bother?
More to the point, are those problems any more tractable today than they were then? Danish windmills were so common you can find museums devoted to them in Iowa. Yet they were largely abandoned.
You know why as well as I do. Wind is not cheap; dealing with its intermittency is costly, and if you’re paying for backup anyway the backup becomes cheaper to use 24/7. Further, if you need that backup at all you cannot fully decarbonize, let alone generate the energy surplus required to do remediation. Bret Kugelmass is right; we have NO other options that can do the job, and pretending “all of the above” is just dodging the issue.
If you listen to the complaints of the Australians who are the designated bad guys in the Cronulla riots (which I note that none of the mainstream sources do… though they uncritically quote someone named Jihad(!) Dib) you’ll find a litany of complains like M.E. “youths” harassing Australian women and families, leading to assault and battery upon two lifeguards who told them to lay off.
These are acts of viciously hostile people. Apparently “tolerance” only goes one way.
Let them make that better life where they come from. That’s the only way the whole world can get better. They can start by giving the “tolerance” they demand from others. If it doesn’t go both ways, it was always a lie.
I’m not selling anything. I’m telling the truth and following where it goes, without fear or favor.
@708:
One thing we can do is adopt a global moratorium on manufacture and sales of coal-fired anything. That includes China.
Mining, crushing and spreading roughly 200 cubic kilometers of dunite in 100-micron granules, some on land but most of it in oceanic inter-tidal zones where the breakdown products are carried off and spread around by oceanic currents.
Yes, this is a huge job. But we have exactly 2 choices here:
1.) Fix things.
(a) Figure out what needs to be done, and the most efficient ways.
(b) Do it.
2.) Sit around and whine about it.
So far everyone, even Greta Thunberg, is firmly stuck on 2.).
Killian pedants like it’s going out of style @716:
Your permaculture generates vast amounts of waste heat which is permanently lost to space. Therefore it is not an option either, QED.
See how reductio ad absurdum works now? When your “only option” fails in its own terms, you have lost the argument. Further, the world cannot support 7.7 billion on “permaculture”. You need calorie and protein crops, which fruits and greens do not and cannot provide. You say that a household can convert in 5 years, but you have not cited EVEN ONE EXAMPLE of this being accomplished.
Nuclear energy generates less waste heat per useful watt than your permaculture. Further, it is 100% sustainable up to at least 6x current human energy consumption (32,000 tons of new uranium flows into the world’s oceans every year). Waste is not an issue; on a scale of 1000 years, it decays to less activity than the source material. 1000 years is enough time to move to the next thing.
And zebra demonstrates beyond all doubt AGAIN @717:
Only 4 problems with that:
1.) They make the receiving countries ever more crowded and alien to their own citizens. You know, the people who our goverments are allegedly SUPPOSED to represent?
2.) As Roy Beck has irrefutably demonstrated, we can’t relieve the rest of the world’s population pressures by taking them into first-world countries. As of 10 years ago, there were 5.6 billion people in the world living in countries with lower average income than Mexico. They have to fix things where they are.
3.) Immigrants are mostly used as captive voter plantations to dispossess natives.
4.) Allowing immigrants does NOTHING to stop the ones back home from making more.
What these overcrowded poor countries need isn’t an escape valve. It’s a one-decade moratorium on births followed by a couple generations of a one-child policy. If they need roads and schools and everything else, 10 years gives them time to build them… if they can actually do so.
Those “connections” mostly drive more migration.
These people need to stay in their own countries and fix their own problems, including overpopulation.
The Cult Of the Holy Other is just one of many which need to be proscribed.
patrick027 writes @735:
There is a large subset (probably a large majority of all adult humans on earth, plus most teenagers and almost all smaller children) who think magically and cannot muster the required emotional and intellectual detachment to practice science, regardless of equipment.
Science is not about equipment. Science is about making testable predictions, performing reliable tests, and making certain that you haven’t either erred or fooled yourself. Science deals in disproof only. Further, all you can be certain about when you disprove a hypothesis is that the most parsimonious alternative which still fits the available data is less wrong than the hypothesis just disproven.
Looks like the fine particulates from GDI engines without GPFs will cause a heating spike in and downwind of where they’re produced:
https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.9b04115
Hat tip https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/01/20200125-uga.html
726: Yes, if possible, but I don’t know if it is possible within the bounds of feasibililty, and what people in a democratic society will accept. I would say reduce waste as much as possible that cannot serve another purpose, otherwise you risk being stuck with a pile of waste that gets bigger and bigger, and may have undesirable side effects, e.g. if it breaks down over time into toxic material.
Al Bundy writes @752:
The desert pupfish, brine shrimp and a host of halophytes would beg to differ with you. Being able to endure saturated brine is how they keep competitors and parasites away. Works for them!
Extremophiles in general are protected from a great deal of competition and predation.
re 752 – Al Bundy – yeah, I realized there would be adverse impacts from too much of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_pool : “These pools are bodies of water that have a salinity three to eight times greater than the surrounding ocean.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity – mass dissolved per mass water (including dissolved component, if I’m not mistaken; thus no limit on solubility would allow salinity up to infinity) –
typical seawater 35 g/kg;
dead sea > 200 g/kg;
saturated brine ~ 260 g/kg ?(temp dependent – I assume pressure would have some effect too, but for Earthlike ocean depths…?) if I interpreted this information correctly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine
So in the upper end of the range given for brine pools, 8*35 = 240+40 = 280; seems close to saturated to me.
I’ve read that they try to let the brine effluent mix with the ocean locally rather than having it flow like a brine river. But maybe that could still be done past the end of the tube I had proposed and still generate power. Although I realize natural mixing processes tend to be subdued at depth – except there are internal gravity waves and I think I’ve read that these break in some places…
I might to any other responses but I can’t see comments 736-750 for some reason.
“mass dissolved per mass water (including dissolved component, if I’m not mistaken; thus no limit on solubility would allow salinity up to infinity) –” WHOA, I was mixing up something. The limit would be 1. Pure salt would have a ‘salinity’ of 1 kg/kg.
I’ve wavered on nuclear power (and GMOs) over my life. I can’t be firmly against it if I want some future where human descendants are able to ride antimatter-powered spacecraft… etc. The Th-fuel cycle and reactor fuel in liquid state for easy processing sound good (I saw somewhere an idea of nuclear submarines powering the land via HVDC). But given how high-tech nuclear processes are, it’s perhaps a bit ironic if the best we can do is power an old-fashioned heat engine. What if the alpha and beta particles from waste were directed by magnetic fields to opposite ends of a load (different voltages for different particle energies with different trajectories), directly producing electric current (also, do the same for CSP-photoelectricity)… maybe the power density is too low, or any significant efficiency would require charge densities that could not be maintained?; just a thought. END BRAINSTORM
… of course, in order to be efficient, the alpha and beta particles would each have to be approaching charged electrodes repelling them so as to convert they’re kinetic energy to voltage*current.
Killian @ 741 posts this “Re #725 Adam Lea said “Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different?”
I was quoted out of context, probably not intentionally but it doesn’t help. I said “Consider the natural world. Animals excrete waste, and create waste. Nobody bats an eyelid. So why do humans have to be different?”…Isn’t the issue more about the ‘impacts’ of the waste on the environment and whether they are positive, negative or neutral? Minimising waste and rendering waste neutral so it doesn’t harm the environment (and people) seems a more plausible principle. You can then have a set of quantitative rules, or goals to work towards. We could probably get reasonably close to zero waste.”
The point being the natural world creates waste, by any definition. And I acknowledged in another comment animal waste is absorbed by the environment, and you can use faeces as fertiliser like the Dutch do. The point is if we are trying to replicate natural processes, there is no case to aim for ‘zero’ waste, just to reduce waste and neutralise it (to put it simply).
———————————-
Kevin McKinney @749
Agreed completely. But read what I’ve been saying. It’s just this “zero waste” notion I have a problem with, by any ordinary definition of waste. I actually said @722 ” We could probably get reasonably close to zero waste.”
For example “zero waste” as listed in the simplicity principles prohibits nuclear waste, that prohibits nuclear power. Currently the only thing we can do with some of the spent nuclear fuels is bury it as waste, in sealed containers. There have to be other examples of things where recycling simply doesnt make sense, although like you I suspect not that many.
———————————
Adam Lea @758
“I would say reduce waste as much as possible that cannot serve another purpose, otherwise you risk being stuck with a pile of waste that gets bigger and bigger, and may have undesirable side effects, e.g. if it breaks down over time into toxic material.”
Agreed, but everything we use comes out of the earth ultimately, so can go back into the earth, or sit on the earth as long as it isnt toxic (as you say) or a visual eye sore, like those piles of used tires.
The trouble is its uneconomic presently to reuse or recycle a lot of waste products for example like old tires. If society put a price on all waste, like a price on carbon it would force people to try to find a better use for things like old tires. I can think of a few uses, but its beside the point of this comment.
——————
Patrick says “I’ve wavered on nuclear power (and GMOs) over my life.”
Me too. We are cautious but open minded. Not a bad way to be.
Al Bundy @752
“Speaking of singing, those “single function” hand saws make grand musical instruments. ”
It’s not a great sound, its slighly nauseating. You do not see a lot of rock bands playing the saw (thank god) and it only works for large saws. Face it quite a few things only really have one function of any practical use. (And yes I’m attacking certain ideas partly because certain people attack ‘me’, and thats just how it is. The ideas still break.)
“AB: “were”?”
Oh you are wicked :
“AB: nothing like adding nuclear waste to that doomsday asteroid!”
Yes and on second thoughts if the space rocket exploded on take off it would be one hell of a problem.
“Ocean trenches are wonderful (storing nuclear waste). The only way back from them is through a volcano, and the dilution rate in that scenario is beyond comprehension. And as EP noted, the ocean itself is a fantastic diluter. ”
Yeah but a leak would be hard on marine life near the source of the leak. However I guess if its deep enough down it wouldn’t matter too much, and there’s not much life. Theres no perfectly ideal solution to the whole nuclear waste storage problem, and no reason that there would be, but thats not a sufficient reason to not use the resource, imo.
Agree about all the rest.
—————————————
Engineer-Poet @753
“What, exactly, was wrong with wind and solar? We used them first, and they were as “free” then as they are now. It was difficult to learn how to power things with coal and oil. If wind and solar are so great, why did anyone bother?”
I hear you, but I don’t think wind and solar are great “as such” way back then. Wind and solar were useful back in the distant past, but limited in their applications. Along came coal and oil that could generate power, and also supply heat and fuel for homes, industry, cars and ships so its not surprising they were developed in preference to solar and wind. Whats changed is the climate problem.
Solar technology back then didn’t have much in the way of supporting technical infrastructure to boost its development and it really needed that. Now we have the technology to make solar panels really sing.
“Wind is not cheap; dealing with its intermittency is costly”
Yeah which is why I dont think we should ignore nuclear power. I honestly think Zebra is on the right track to the extent have an energy market that treats nuclear power on a level playing field to renewables, as I’ve discussed. We do that where I live so Im a bit on his side on this one. It’s a bit hard to see local or state government suddenly pushing hard for nuclear power as the one great answer, but they could be persuaded to ensure it is treated fairly. Then things would build from there.
“They aren’t really hostile people……If you listen to the complaints of the Australians who are the designated bad guys in the Cronulla riots ”
Oh come on there are many immigrants, both legal and illegal and it tends to be a minority that are a problem. Official numbers show this and its true of moslem immigrants as well. However I’m an atheist, but even I think certain religions appeal more than others, and some are more primative than others. Read into that what you will. I’m not planning on living in the middle east, for sure.
“So far everyone, even Greta Thunberg, is firmly stuck on 2.).”
Yes an awful lot of people are sitting doing nothing or complaining. However Greta has pointed out a few home truths and that is “doing something”. It’s more than just whining, and it looks like she has made quite an effort to alter her lifestyle as much as possible.
—————————————-
“Your (Killian) permaculture generates vast amounts of waste heat which is permanently lost to space. Therefore it is not an option either, QED.”
Yes but hes not thinking on that level, yet. See my comments on waste. Although some aspects of permaculture do make sense, in isolation. The trouble starts when it becomes very rigid in its rules and like a huge all encompassing belief system.
Re #754 Engineer-Poet said Nuclear, e.g., does not meet the principle of zero waste, so it is not an option.
Your permaculture generates vast amounts of waste heat which is permanently lost to space. Therefore it is not an option either, QED.
Now, we all knows *he* knows how childish that response is, yet **he typed it anyway.**
Nuclear energy generates less waste heat per useful watt than your permaculture.
1. You have no way to measure that. 2. You don’t know what permaculture is, thus, #1 is magnified. 3. “Zero waste” is not a “permaculture” term, and does not mean “no excess heat may be produced.”
Further, it is 100% sustainable up to at least 6x current human energy consumption
It is not sustainable in any way, shape, or form on the radiactive waste alone.
(32,000 tons of new uranium flows into the world’s oceans every year). Waste is not an issue; on a scale of 1000 years
This is just flat stupid. Uranium exists so it’s OK to pile up radiactive wastes?
1000 years is enough time to move to the next thing.
You have no way to support that statement. It’s magical thinking, so good job demonstrating what you said.
Further, the world cannot support 7.7 billion on “permaculture”.
Because you say so? Permaculture produces at least as much as conventional in good times, produces *more* during drought with none of the negatives and a multitude of positives.
And now, this is where this radiactive man really shows how little he knows:
You need calorie and protein crops, which fruits and greens do not and cannot provide.
WT actual F? Food production that mimics nature cannot grow proteins? Are you out of your damned mind? LOL!!! What kind of fool thinks applying permaculture
to food production only produces fruits and greens?!
I have wasted my time responding to a dullard who can’t even be bothered to know even the tiniest amount about a topic before running his rancid mouth.
You say that a household can convert in 5 years, but you have not cited EVEN ONE EXAMPLE of this being accomplished.
And when did I say I intended to? And, that was about simplicity, not permaculture. You can’t “permaculture” anything. Permaculture is a process, genius. And there are many, many people who have simplified their lives.
Beltain Cottage is an excellent example, and I have posted links here many times. Any food forest is a 5-year proposition. Etc. So, yeah, I have.
And you’re now officially less useful than anklebiter.
Re #752 Al Bundy said nigelj: One of the principles of “simplicity”is apparently “Every element has *at least* two functions.”
The idea is presumably to minimise use of scarce resources, but does it actually make much sense?
AB: O yes. And every undesirable side effect must be incorporated into a positive function, such as when a species turns a toxin into a resource or when that bit of unusable wasted volume becomes the key to solving something else, such as when a gap becomes a place to temporarily store secondary air.
If it does’t sing you ain’t finished yet. Speaking of singing, those “single function” hand saws make grand musical instruments.
Then they aren’t single function, are they.
However, I’m not disagreeing, just flavoring.
Yes, you did disagree by giving good examples of multiple functions. What anklebiter, and you, are bleetingly dumb about is what are the principles for? You already know they are drawn from Nature, yet **reject** them without even understanding how they are applied. You reject Nature’s way of designing…. just because? Idiotic. Myopic. Foolish beyond all possible belief.
It is the hubris of believing human’s do everything better that lead us here, and you two dolts are doubling down on that.
As you said, “Utopian philosophising
There is nothing utopian about the permaculture design process. It’s as pragmatic as it is possible to be. There is zero philosophy attached to the design process, yet you two twits sit here and natter like two dullards because doing so is easier than learning, and it blows your dresses up to convince yourselves your idiotic little games of “gotacha!” have “gotten”, which they haven’t, they’ve merely shown you have no understanding of regenerative design process.
How stupid do you have to be to play stupid, childish games on the internet when the entire planetary system is crashing? How utterly selfish and pyrrhic.
and very strict sets of principles
There’s nothing strict about them. They are First Principles. They are the foundation for good decisions and you can’t get a more stable starting point than First Principles by definition. (Yet you two set them aside without ever having understood them. Idiocy.) Whether one adheres to them or not is a choice, not a law one must obey. It’s a stupid thing to characterize them as strict in any way. They simply are. By denigrating them you are doing the same as saying an engineer should not follow the principles of engineering. You are advocating for structural failures of everything ever made by humans that required any degree of engineering. How stupid can you be?
I often refer to the permaculture process as ecological engineering because… it is. To wit:
https://www.engineergirl.org/2715/Engineering-Principles
Now, let’s see you two anklbiters dare tell us engineering principles are “very strict” and are “the enemy of the good.” LOL… Damned fools…
don’t do much for me.”
No, I’m sure nothing intelligent, logical, fundamental to the function of Nature would.
The perfect isn’t just the enemy of the good but also is limited to a myopic version of “perfect”.
And, yet, at no time in my well over ten years of posting here have I ever stated a single word that supports the idiocy of you two in claiming the application of permaculture design rejects all but the most perfect outcome. That is the opposite of “use what you’ve got”, “adapt in place”, “let solutions emerge, do not impose them.” Neither the principles nor the process call for perfection in any way, but they lead you in that direction. You’re not going to get a regenerative future without following them, even if you don’t understand that’s what you’ve done, so it is pointless to demonize them for the idiotic reason you don’t like me. (I truly wish a day would come where your survival depended on me supplying you food just so I can watch you starve yourselves rather than accept anything from me. LOL…. fools. ) They are not perfection, they are foundation.
Blithering idiots, the two of you.
nigelj: Christ I bet you were a difficult child.
AB: “were”?
I was, and remain, the one child who never gave my mother any trouble. However, fools and the unintelligent have always tended to hate me.
Anklebiters.
E-P 745: Diversity of values, languages and cultures is a gross liability, making it harder to do even simple things. When NASA put men on the moon, it was almost completely run by chain-smoking white men in shirts and ties with crew cuts, and so were all the contractors. It can’t do this today.
BPL: And why not? Because NASA hired too many black people! Thanks for that insightful analysis, E-P.
I’m guessing he didn’t want to see “Hidden Figures.”
E-P 746: 155 years is a LONG time.
BPL: Except that slavery was practiced under other names until about 1942. Something you’re obviously unaware of.
E-P 755: Immigrants are mostly used as captive voter plantations to dispossess natives.
BPL: And the UN is sending black helicopters to take all the white Christian patriots to FEMA detention camps. Got any other batshit crazy conspiracy theories to share?
Patrick027: Could currents be used like flywheels?
AB: The percentage of total energy harvested of the total current energy is essentially zero, so no, putting some back wouldn’t do diddly except chop up more sea life for no benefit.
_______
EP: Only if it is ALPHA radiation.
AB: You have crowed about the safety of external radiation forever. Are you changing your mind and saying that non-alpha is the REAL problem? Seriously, dude. The problem IS alpha cuz if radiation doesn’t impact quickly and from a consistent location it gets diffuse. Kind of like the difference between somebody pushing you versus somebody shooting you. Same total force involved but one is relatively harmless (unless you fall) and the other can be fatal. Or do you disagree?
EP: Also, do not think I have not noticed your attempt to obfuscate and confuse by refusing to quote or even reference by comment number what you are referring to.
AB: Stick to your forte, kid. You suck at figuring out motivations. Sometimes I post from a phone and it is a pain to try to do what you demand (though I have recently figured out how to cut/paste on my phone). Seriously, you think I obfuscate??? You are either slamming so as to try to hurt by calling me the opposite of what I cherish of myself or you are a moron with regard to non-math stuff. And seriously, when somebody agrees with almost everything you are saying except “X” then to dis them for focusing on “X” is non-mathematically moronic. (And the math doesn’t compute either)
EP: If you are so injured by feelings of inadequacy… note that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. If anything I said has wounded you, you implicitly agree you deserve it.
AB: No, I am not injured by your feelings of inadequacy and no, they don’t transfer to me. I’ve never felt inadequate because of your words. And if your words injure anybody, then only an ass would say that the injured party always deserves it.
EP: 1.79% says we are in deep, deep trouble.
AB: Why? It could be that our system, which elevates lazy couch-sitting capitalists above everyone else combined, isn’t appropriate when the world is awash in excess capital (especially since capital has gone virtual). So yes, if you define “we” as “the rich” then “we” aren’t nearly as useful as “we” used to be and so “our” income might drop to more align with “our” non-productive rear ends. Is that “trouble”?
And please, do NOT replace “capitalist” with “entrepreneur”. Entrepreneurs are folks who WORK for a living. That some of them also invest capital (as opposed to loans) is irrelevant. The two actions, investing and working, are completely disjoint.
_____
Scott: And no, nothing you could coat on a windmill could possibly even come close to the massive sink caused by methanotrophs in grasslands. That sink is in fact the only biotic net sink on the planet…. and far larger than any meager coating you could put on a windmill blade.
AB: Welcome back! As you said, “gross” is irrelevant. Coatings on blades helps “net”. So though your comment sings with truth it doesn’t address the question.
________
EP: or no-fault divorce that makes kids so miserable?
AB: Speak through your hat much? Little is worse for a child than living with parents who should have divorced. Stick to math, son. Your attempt to overlay math onto human interactions is soooo last century (which is why it almost always ends up with Naziesque conclusions) Palestinians are genetically “Jewish”. Palestinians score way low on IQ tests and Jews score way high. Explain.
Killian, #751–
Indeed, the skills are legit. And not to be underestimated. How many separate operations did the young woman undertake? And how long a time did each entail?
Whenever I’ve undertaken a some sort of “primitive” task, it’s invariably proven much tougher to do than any of us “moderns” would think. Not impossible, of course; but like anything that’s in the realm of technique as opposed to technology, you have to put in the time to build the skill. The essence of modern life has been ‘deskilling’ the population so that we are forced to buy prepackaged solutions to the problem of lacking skills.
Of course, other skills do develop: for instance, I can’t help but note that the video is beautifully shot and edited. Wonder what crew she needed? At minimum, a camera op and a gaffer for the mic.
And evidently the skills of digital marketing are not lacking, either, as the ‘content’ has made its way across the world to us, wherever each of ‘us’ happens to reside. I don’t think that delegitimizes the video at all. I’ve seen several similar ones by different people, showing the construction of wells, cisterns and other ‘simple’ tools of life. (All, I think, from Asian sources: there seems to be a whole genre of such–though I’d bet my bottom dollar (if I had one) on the existence of analogs from Europe and the Americas.)
I’m quite fascinated to see how such things used to be done. And I like to find corresponding opportunities in my life: eating the new shoots of the greenbriar, or making cordage out of bread wrappers, or fabricating parts out of the oak that grows on our property–and which are always shedding branches!–for example. But I think the lessons you can draw from such are much more diverse and ‘complicated’–sorry about that!–than one might think at first blush.
patrick027 writes @762:
1. They’re called betavoltaics or beta batteries. They’ve been known for a long time.
2. You have no way to control the direction of emission of the particles.
3. Bulk sources are “self-shielding”; only outward emissions from close to the surface can be relied upon to reach the anode.
4. Both power levels and efficiency are very low. There’s a reason that all substantial nuclear batteries use thermoelectric converters or other heat engines.
#753, EP–
What a specious argument!
19th and early-20th century wind technology was not usually used to generate electricity, but for direct-driven mechanical power, and it was an end user technology. Modern wind power is an electricity generation technology, the vast majority of which is deployed at utility scale.
“Apples to oranges” doesn’t really cover that gap.
And similarly for solar: yes, thermal solar power has a long history. But the development of solid state PV is quite a different matter. It may be true that “Charles Fritts installed the world’s first rooftop photovoltaic solar array, using 1%-efficient selenium cells, on a New York City roof in 1884,” but that’s just an early experiment. Due to the lost cost and convenience of fossil fuels, “In 1974 it was estimated that only six private homes in all of North America were entirely heated or cooled by functional solar power systems.”
In fact, it wasn’t until the 90s that deployment of solar PV tech really started to take off. But take off it has, going from near zero use in 1992 to over 500 GW deployed in 2018–and note the semi-log scale of the graph:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power#/media/File:PV_cume_semi_log_chart_2014_estimate.svg
What wind and solar both have in common today is their scalability and low cost relative to just about everything else. The lowest cost capacity being built today is wind, and solar PV is now firmly in the middle of the FF range, and still falling fast.
Intermittency? An issue, but not the issue E-P likes to imagine. For example:
https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/nextera-ceo-near-firm-renewables-cheaper-than-fossil-fuel-power-by-2025/2-1-745087
Background:
“NextEra Energy, Inc. is a Fortune 200 energy company with about 45,900 megawatts of generating capacity, revenues of over $17 billion in 2017, and about 14,000 employees throughout the United States and Canada. It is the largest electric utility holding company by market capitalization.”
It happily operates both nuclear and renewable capacity. FWIW, its stock has been on a bit of a tear in the last couple of years:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NEE
I don’t mean to idolize Jim Robo for being a successful energy CEO, but the point is, Nextera is not short on either engineering talent or experience in supplying grid power in the real world.
E-P, #753 & 5–
[Racist xenophobic–and OT–BS noted. It renders the claim that “I’m telling the truth” damned ironic, but doesn’t deserve further response.]
EP: Yet they were largely abandoned. You know why as well as I do. Wind…
AB: …requires advanced materials and manufacturing capacities that have only recently become available.
EP: I’m not selling anything. I’m telling the truth and following where it goes, without fear or favor.
AB: Tamino’s “Proud to be Stupid” corps has analogs. To deliberately self-lobotomize one’s non-math brain could be an error.
EP: Mining, crushing and spreading roughly 200 cubic kilometers of dunite in 100-micron granules, some on land but most of it in oceanic inter-tidal zones
AB: I’ve solved this one, and without endangering inter-tidal ecosystems. Not sure when I’ll get enough leverage to productively share the solution. Of course, as Killian demands, the solution doesn’t just solve one problem. It way more than pays for itself.
EP: What these overcrowded poor countries need isn’t an escape valve.
AB: Hmm. White folks used the Americas as an escape valve and it worked out fairly well (except for the native non-White Americans). So why can’t non-White folks use the Americas as an escape valve? Perhaps it might work out just as well (except for the native White Americans). Oh, now I see…
EP: Science deals in disproof only.
AB: Naw. Science is about thinking of bicycles and various other whimsical stuff. Yep, there’s a lot of math that results, but if Einstein (or whoever) did’t take that virtual bicycle ride there wouldn’t have been much grunt work to do. Folks can debate whether vision or grunt work is more valuable.
I’ll start the debate: “We all cherish Einstein’s bicycle”.
EP’s link: However, similar to diesel engines, the direct injection of fuel in GDI engines creates fuel-rich pockets near the injection zone, and the combustion conditions in these pockets are conducive to formation of carbonaceous particulate matter (PM), especially black carbon (BC). Consequently, GDI engines emit larger amounts of BC compared to PFI engines, as has been confirmed by several laboratory studies.
AB: Yep, if you do it wrong then you’ll fail one way or the other. Current GDI engines spray into a cold-walled combustion chamber and give less than a single stroke to pressurized combustion. A proper GDI engine sprays into a hot-walled combustion chamber and gives about three strokes (out of four) to pressurized combustion.
EP: Extremophiles in general are protected from a great deal of competition and predation.
AB: Yep, I left extremophiles out. Considered various ways to caveat or handle but chose saving bandwidth since everyone knows they exist. The point is that the current ecosystem will suffer. Kind of like when people roll their eyes when denialists talk about how life will go on even if temperatures get too high for mammals.
EP, The laundry called. Your white robe with the pointy hood is ready.
Do not listen to children playing petty games on matters of import. Perfect? Rigid? Inflexible?
Those are words only fools who have never attempted to educate themselves would use to describe permaculture design.
From one of the two originators:
http://api.ning.com/files/A10kEAxRRxpcKx*JJjBMtxe9Hp*jJZolw6T77*L-a7opKjyV*iW2qKsdPHgyPqEwa7z5HBXU1pQNenpZgwFqmWtdmkzqA2JE/DoWeNeedPrinciplesfromCollectedWritings7806.pdf
And everyone should study permaculture.
https://blog.feedspot.com/permaculture_blogs/
Scroll down to the frequency graph. “Permaculture” has had a rather rapid ascent.
https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/permaculture
A vendor interested in PG&E’s bid for microgrids flat-out admits that solar+storage is untenable for multi-day outages:
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pge-microgrid-public-safety-shutoffs-offers-distributed-energy-request-fossil-fuel-reliance/571017/
EP,
I’d like to work with you. As Nigel noted, you do what I don’t and vice versa. Wanna participate in collectively ruling the world? (though that’s an obsolete phrase, “guiding” is more 21st century) Contact me at my introduction email: ManyAndVaried@hotmail.com
or not. Your decision may change the world. Fun, eh?
re “These people need to stay in their own countries and fix their own problems, including overpopulation.” – eminently practical to ask people to be responsible for themselves, but justice requires a measured approach.
First, we must treat people as individuals. E.g. I am not responsible for many of the problems in my country (U.S.) – I vote, and never for the GOP (*knowingly – in my first few times voting I encountered some non-partisan local races for which I was unprepared; I should have just left them blank but for some reason I gambled and voted anyway… I regret that.)
(GOP – “cruel to be kind”; liberals – “in the right measure” :) )
Second, in judging any moral agent’s choices, one must take into account what the situation was and what options were available (e.g. grabbing a stranger is good if you’re pulling them away from imminent harm – e.g. a speeding car; trying to perform a life-saving operation is not so good if you’re just pretending to be a doctor and don’t actually know what to do). I sometimes wonder of the ‘politics of personal responsibility’ is intended to ask people to take responsible not just for what they do but for what is done/happens to them (from pollutants to the economic, cultural, and geographical situation of their birth to DNA mutations to…) – this is not fair for individuals nor for countries.
…3rd, focusing just on justice for past – or even present- actions is not necessarily the most effective path towards a better future.
“So far everyone, even Greta Thunberg, is firmly stuck on 2.).” – I think that’s unfair. I know it’s tempting to find solace just by being angry (the dark side of the Force) at the GOP and that actually solving the problem requires more. But voting out climate-change deniers is certainly part of the solution. Political mobilization is important. It’s not as if Greta Thundberg is old enough (???) to be Emperor Supreme of the World – that job title doesn’t even exist (officially? :) ); and she certainly has taken actions regarding her own carbon footprint – PS options to reduce one’s carbon footprint should become easier when society as a whole adopts policies such as a climate-change (and ocean acidification) tax on pollutants – or the actions that produce them (production of fossil fuels, deforestation, (poorly-managed) cattle/dairy… landfill sewage rice-paddy etc. (CH4 doesn’t last so long in the atmosphere but it is an issue nonetheless) (of course people will still eat rice (gluten free – wheat isn’t always an option for everone), but there will be motivation to find cleaner methods/varieties/alternatives…) – another strike against an emphasis on personal responsility.
PS on the whole different values/dangers of immigration thing – note that the potential may actually exist for holy war amongst just the people born in the U.S. (as Putin wanted). Trump was born in the U.S. Also, Reagan founded MS-13; yes I’m being hyberbolic on that one, but not off-the-mark. Sorry that was a bit O/T.
UK EV startup Arrival scores a big contract with UPS:
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/01/29/ups-orders-10000-electric-delivery-vans-from-arrival/
Though not as big as the recent deal between Amazon and Michigan-based startup, Rivian:
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2019/09/19/michigan-ev-startup-rivian-build-electric-vans-amazon/2373507001/
In related news, IRENA reports 6 million EVs currently on the road globally, projecting 157 million in 2030. (Though it’s not clear what the policy assumptions underlying that call are, since the source is an infographic, although the second link below says it’s “Paris compliant.”)
https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2020/Jan/IRENA_10_years_2020.pdf
Also:
https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/May/IRENA_Innovation_Outlook_EV_smart_charging_2019.pdf
re 773 – I appreciate your points; however I must point out that you can control the direction. emission in all directions from a location near a very strong magnetic field can result in a more narrow range of directions where the field is weak; i.e. picture ‘straight’ lines drawn on a conical surface (fitting magnetic field lines spreading out from a vertex (approximation to strong magnet). Of course you have to sacrifice concentration in area for concentration in direction, just like photons from the Sun – high flux/area, all directions at the Sun vs. lower irradiance, near unidirectional photons far away, entropy conserved, etc.
nigelj wrote @765:
The solar technology of the day was as well-supported as the steam technology, because it WAS steam technology. Farrington Daniels lists a solar-steam engine in Paris in 1878 which ran a printing press. Later efforts include a 4.5 HP engine using a parabolic tracking collector in 1901 in Pasadena, solar water-pumping engines using flat-plate collectors near Philadelphia in 1907 and 1911, and a water-pumping engine using a parabolic cylinder collector in Cairo in 1913. (“Direct Use Of the Sun’s Energy”, 5th printing, pp. 9-10.)
All this stuff actually worked, but it wasn’t economic and was abandoned. Solar energy was just plain too diffuse even in the sunniest climates of the world. What’s changed? Nothing, except our willingness to subsidize and treat unequal things equally. That can’t continue, so it won’t; it’ll break down sooner or later, as it’s breaking down in Germany.
@781
Electric power for microgrids in limited areas during times of extreme forest fire danger–the actual subject of the article–has very little to do with regional and continental-scale grids supplying power to large areas.
Please explain how you stop the rain, wind, and sun across a significant portion of the continent for 3, 4, or 5 days. The physics of that would be interesting. The factor of 50x-80x needs more than a bit of context.
But I expect you knew all this as you seem to have expertise in the area. Or should, anyway.
Killian bloviated @766:
You mean you have no way to measure that. I am quite capable of comparing documented productivity figures for other crop systems, such as maize (~200 bushels/acre/year), converting to food calories and then to joules, and dividing that figure by the net annual sunlight falling on that acre (Iowa averages about 4.15 kWh/m²/day). YOU are not; you are innumerate.
Corn yields roughly 12.3 million calories/acre/year, about 14,300 kWh/ac/yr. 4.15 kWh/m²/day is 6.13 million kWh/ac/yr. That is 428.1 watts of wasted solar energy for every watt converted to food. Nuclear power plants are roughly 33% efficient, or 2 watts wasted per useful watt. Waste energy advantage: nuclear, by 200:1.
You’re crazy. Nuclear energy takes stuff that was radioactive when it was created and turns it into stuff with far less radiation-emitting potential than it had before. Further, nuclear power yields products OTHER than lead (which is the end of the decay chain for all isotopes of uranium and thorium and remains toxic forever). Nuclear power gets RID of net radioactivity and net toxics.
s/This is/You are/. Radioactive “wastes” (many of which are useful, for e.g. irradiating food to eliminate E. coli, salmonella and listeria) have the virtue of decaying away by themselves. They only “pile up” to some level proportional to their rate of production, and as soon as you STOP producing them they immediately go downward toward zero.
I am capable of looking up the productivity of e.g. black walnut trees, which are one of the very few “permaculture” protein sources which will grow in my climate zone. AAMOF, I have already done so. Do you seriously want me to do the same kind of analysis on walnuts that I just did on maize, to school your sorry butt?
Re #765 anklebiter yelped “Your (Killian) permaculture generates vast amounts of waste heat which is permanently lost to space. Therefore it is not an option either, QED.”
Yes
No. Based on excess heat, *virtually everything in the universe should be condemned as unsustainable.* It was a childish taunt. You can’t even “get” that. His example was absurd, which he acknowledged immediately after.
You truly are stupid.
but hes not thinking on that level, yet.
You’re an idiot. Permaculture *starts* with the gross energy flows: Sunlight, water, wind, earth. I incorporated thermodynamics into my belief systems long before I came across permaculture. The fact that energy only changes form, cannot be destroyed, is a huge point in not fearing death and coming to a fundamentally sound belief system wrt life and death.
I understood that over 40 years ago, child.
See my comments on waste.
Why? To better understand how goddamned stupid you are? How petty? How ignorant? Goddamned fool.
You are the living emodiment of, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt.”
Too late for you, though.
Re #772 Kevin McKinney said Killian, #751–
Indeed, the skills are legit. And not to be underestimated. How many separate operations did the young woman undertake? And how long a time did each entail?
I often marvel at how things ever came to be. We used to be freaking geniuses, so far as I can tell. The fact we beat the creative genius out of ourselves via education and aculturation is perhaps our greatest failure, preventing wiser choices.
Whenever I’ve undertaken a some sort of “primitive” task, it’s invariably proven much tougher to do than any of us “moderns” would think. Not impossible, of course; but like anything that’s in the realm of technique as opposed to technology, you have to put in the time to build the skill. The essence of modern life has been ‘deskilling’ the population so that we are forced to buy prepackaged solutions to the problem of lacking skills.
Precisely why reskilling is so integral to approaches to simplicity, peraculture, localization, etc., no? And getting back to experiential learning, including mentoring and apprenticing will play a huge role, necessarily.
I like this take on learning (it will be misunderstood by the intentionally obtuse here, but I think you will “get” it): https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/play-makes-us-human-huntergatherers-playful-parenting/
Of course, other skills do develop: for instance, I can’t help but note that the video is beautifully shot and edited. Wonder what crew she needed? At minimum, a camera op and a gaffer for the mic.
And evidently the skills of digital marketing are not lacking, either, as the ‘content’ has made its way across the world to us, wherever each of ‘us’ happens to reside. I don’t think that delegitimizes the video at all. I’ve seen several similar ones by different people, showing the construction of wells, cisterns and other ‘simple’ tools of life. (All, I think, from Asian sources: there seems to be a whole genre of such–though I’d bet my bottom dollar (if I had one) on the existence of analogs from Europe and the Americas.)
I’m quite fascinated to see how such things used to be done. And I like to find corresponding opportunities in my life: eating the new shoots of the greenbriar, or making cordage out of bread wrappers, or fabricating parts out of the oak that grows on our property–and which are always shedding branches!–for example. But I think the lessons you can draw from such are much more diverse and ‘complicated’–sorry about that!–than one might think at first blush.
Killian @766
“Nuclear energy generates less waste heat per useful watt than your permaculture.”
“1. You have no way to measure that. 2. You don’t know what permaculture is, thus, #1 is magnified. 3. “Zero waste” is not a “permaculture” term, and does not mean “no excess heat may be produced.”
Permaculture is probably being mistaken for regenerative agriculture or simplification. But it doesn’t matter in this context because these things all lead to the use of timber as the prime source of energy don’t they?
Nuclear power can create less wasted heat than burning timber in wood stoves. Basic engineering.
Zero waste is not a permaculture term, yet the so called”simplicity principles” talk about zero waste and the two things are supposed to be closely related, aren’t they? So if we are supposed to be doing both anyway, why bother even arguing about the distinction?
“Because you say so? Permaculture produces at least as much as conventional in good times, produces *more* during drought with none of the negatives and a multitude of positives.”
Citations please from published, peer reviewed science journals.
———————————-
Killian @767:
“Yes, you did disagree by giving good examples of multiple functions. What anklebiter, and you, are bleetingly dumb about is what are the principles for? You already know they are drawn from Nature, yet **reject** them without even understanding how they are applied. You reject Nature’s way of designing…. just because? Idiotic. Myopic. Foolish beyond all possible belief.”
One of the simplicity principles said “everything has at least two functions”. But many things in nature only have one function, eg human muscle cells, some cells in multi cellular organisms, various protein molecules etcetera. Some things have many functions like the human liver.
So I don’t think nature is an example of multi functionality. Its a mixture of multi functionality and specialisation. So ‘if’ we are learning from nature, or emulating nature, we should do the same surely? And we do that anyway.
And zero waste. The point is nature creates waste and it gets dumped. So if we are trying to emulate nature there is no precedent in nature that suggests we absolutely have to eliminate all waste or re-use it for something else. Nature is often efficient such that it creates minimal waste, so sure we could try to emulate that.
“It is the hubris of believing human’s do everything better that lead us here, and you two dolts are doubling down on that.”
Nope. I have never said or implied that humans do everything better than nature. We can obviously learn from nature. But nature is a wild harsh place. I’m not sure everything about nature is a good thing. You have to learn very carefully and very selectively.
“There is nothing utopian about the permaculture design process.'”
I never said permaculture design process is utopian philosophising. The ‘totality’ of Killians and similar peoples ideas look like utopian philosophising to me. They lay out an idealised sort of life and supporting structure. I think its a perfect example of utopianism. If we just talked about a permaculture process that would be a process that doesnt have a very definite end point, then that is not utopian. But the simple living people like Killian, not only him, talk about communities, their structures, specific morals and values, technologies etc and makes a clear distinction on what is desirable, and that looks utopian at times anyway.
I have had a look at permaculture. It looks like it has some value, up to a point. That’s the best I can say.
“and very strict sets of principles”
“There’s nothing strict about them.”
Zero waste: Cant get stricter or more rigid than that.
Adapt in place. Taken literally this suggests to me living permanently in one place. Very rigid. If it means something else please explain what it means.
There is no precedent in the natural world. Animals roam, migrate, escape dangers. Adapt in place where possible would be a more convincing principle.
Use what you have. Not sure how this is derived from nature. The natural world is quite opportunistic. Its a reasonable idea, but what if a miracle drug comes along? I assume the idea allows for exceptions like this? If so it needs guidelines, for the average person anyway.
Not ankle biting. Just expecting explanations, answers and coherence.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/deep-decarbonization-a-realistic-way-forward-on-climate-change
Interesting: “Deep Decarbonization: A Realistic Way Forward on Climate Change”
#787–
E-P asks:
Answer: The entire conversion technology, including a materials science capable of economically manufacturing doped silicon and alternate PV substrates, supporting materials, and fabricating them all in huge volumes at low cost. The result has been a greater than 100x reduction in cost, coincident with a greater than 20x improvement in conversion efficiency. Ancillary improvements in things like tracking or mounting, not to mention related business developments having to do with financing, all of which have likewise made solar PV highly economical.
Yet E-P blithely answers “Nothing”–which, if truthful, tells you a lot about what he is prepared to consider–or rather, apparently, *not* consider.
On The Seashore
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
– Rabindranath Tagore
Killian @790,
“Based on excess heat, *virtually everything in the universe should be condemned as unsustainable.* It was a childish taunt. You can’t even “get” that. His example was absurd, which he acknowledged immediately after.”
No. I saw everything EP meant straight away. You have still missed the point of what EP was getting at about waste heat, which he has now explained in more detail, with the numbers. And you will still miss it, or argue with it.
AND nature creates waste products , so there is no precedent in nature to suggest we should have “zero waste”. That is just YOUR ASSERTION.
You have just looked at nature and noticed much of this waste is reabsorbed and the system is more or less in equilibrium over time. Christ I figured that out at frigging primary school. Like someone else mentioned (Patrik I think) we should emulate that, so waste is permitted at a level the environment can handle without gross destabilisation. That is a sensible principle based on nature. Not zero waste.
AND if you are using something other than the normal dictionary definition of waste, (it sure looks like it) you have to define it, every time you use the term.
“Permaculture *starts* with the gross energy flows: Sunlight, water, wind, earth. ”
Well hopefully it does, otherwise it lives in a non physics based universe. Sorry you don’t get points for doing the obvious.
“I incorporated thermodynamics into my belief systems long before I came across permaculture. The fact that energy only changes form, cannot be destroyed, is a huge point in not fearing death and coming to a fundamentally sound belief system wrt life and death.”
Whatever, I concluded much the same about death. However we are programmed to fear death. It would be insane to not have some fear of death because our actions would become totally reckless. I believe people that say they have no fear of death are just saying they have come to accept the inevitability of death.
“See my comments on waste.”
“Why? To better understand how goddamned stupid you are? How petty? How ignorant? Goddamned fool.”
You are only attacking me because you can’t refute what I’ve said. You crow but never show. You belittle people with personal abuse then cry tears when people criticise you or your comments. You are a child, emotionally anyway. Some of your ideas are almost adult.
Engineer-Poet @787
“The solar technology of the day was as well-supported as the steam technology, because it WAS steam technology.”
Ok I thought you meant the very early solar panels for generating electricity. From the ever helpful Mr Google: ” 1954 Photovoltaic technology is born in the United States when Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson develop the silicon photovoltaic (PV) cell at Bell Labs—the first solar cell capable of converting enough of the sun’s energy into power to run everyday electrical equipment.”
Perhaps the first ever panel was earlier, but this appears to be the first seriously useful one.
I can only repeat the general electrical technology of the day was not as supportive compared to the amazing technologies we have now. As others have alluded to.
And we had coal that did the job rather well, and it probably didn’t look like solar panels would have a major advantage over coal. And the panels faced a hostile coal industry with a bit of a monopoly, so even if the panels were potentially better they faced an uphill battle. The idea withered on the vine except for specialist applications, until the climate problem emerged and made solar panels a lot more viable. Solar panels for electric power are good, provided thats seen in the context of the climate problem.
But hey, build nuclear if you want. I’m playing devils advocate a bit. Love a bit of an argument and a bit of history.
Nuclear is arguably better until the costs of storage drop. However if you look at all the forces that drive the economy, we will probably end up with both renewables and nuclear.
I notice that uranium has very few uses, so really just power generation, bombs, and depleted uranium for armour piercing shells etc. The world has more than enough bombs, so we may as well use the uranium to generate power. Silly to just waste it by leaving it in the ground.
nigel, #796–
I think I’d disagree philosphically on that, if we posit that “nature” is in this context distinct from humanity. (A proposition I’d reject in the larger context.)
Here’s the logic: “waste” is defined with regard to particular needs, and therefore embodies a teleology. IOW, waste only exists with respect to some purpose.
But Nature, as far as I can tell (and that may not be very far!), has no truck with teleology. Natural things and processes just “are”. (Animals can pose a bit of an edge case here!)
Hence, no waste, by definition. “Waste” is a purely human phenomenon (or at least mostly a human phenomenon–it’s not too terrible an affront to the definition if we ignore, say, the bits of grass stem left over from chimpanzee anthill-probe-making).
A little more pragmatically, since everything in Nature is transformed over time in some way, if there is life almost anything will have a ‘use’ eventually.
I wanted to further explain this concept – emission of charged particles within a magnetic field:
Constant magnetic field (requires field lines be parallel) – particles of a particular charge, mass, and energy will follow helices amounting to geodesics on cylinders.
When the field lines diverge, such as from the pole of a magnet, particles follow geodesics on locally conical surfaces. Such paths are:
1. effectively repelled away from the narrow end of the cone, if the cone is long enough; particles are redirected away from the vertex of the cone; the fraction of particles able to get within some distance of the vertex decreases approaching the vertex; of course, realistically the surface of the magnet (or open end of the solenoid… etc.) would be in front of where the vertex would be, the magnetic field lines never truly meeting at a single point, but if the magnetic is small relative to the distance to the particle source, it may approximate a vertex.
2. moving away from the vertex, as the field lines spread away from each other, the helical paths ‘unwind’ – ie. the component of velocity parallel to the field lines becomes a greater portion of the total velocity. Thus:
Gradually (not suddenly) transitioning to parallel field lines, the particle paths become more nearly parallel. They could then: a). lose most of their kinetic energy to potential energy approaching a charged plate, if the field is such that the particles are not repelled sideways (maybe allow the magnetic field lines to converge a bit to compensate… I haven’t got it all worked out yet)… or b). lose energy by waving back and forth along a path, in reaction to deviations to the magnetic field associate with magnets attached to counterrotating rotors… etc. (?)
Of course, if the particles have a range of energies, then there must be some more inefficiency or multiple exit ramps… etc. Alpha and beta particles having different mass/charge ratios and/or different energies could be separated even if emitted from the same point due to the greater spreading out of one set of paths relative to another. Same for hot ions evaporating from a solar-heated molten salt, except the local thermodynamic equilibrium would result in a range of energies for each, but maybe with drastically different masses… eg. CsF, or better yet, Cs2O.
Might work best with multiple sources in an array of narrow magnetic bottles…
This might not be at all practical, but it is interesting, and relates to magnetospheric dynamics (also interesting is the effect of varying field strength across field lines, which causes an east-west current).
Meanwhile, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/PV_cume_semi_log_chart_2014_estimate.svg eyeballing it, looks like we could reach 10 TW installed solar PV capacity in not much more than a decade, with upwards of 1 TW/year installation rate. Supposing an effective 50-year lifespan at nameplate capacity …
(requires a longer lifespan due to degradations, imperfections (dust, occasional snow that can’t be removed right away or before morning, birds and their droppings), and losses such as very large hail (they’re supposed to survive your typical hailstorms, right)/tornados/fires/lava flows…/crushed by earthquake-induced building collapses…etc.)
…that would sustain 50 TW capacity at equilibrium. Which would perhaps be ~ 10 TW average power, depending on locations (That one part of Bolivia https://globalsolaratlas.info/map could become part of ???(don’t want to spoil the local ecosystem) the next Saudi Arabia, shipping out solar-made fuels.)
I wonder about the possible need to overshoot equilibrium production rates to meet the temporal demands of climate-change mitigation. In the long run we may end up with a period surplus renewable energy. Well that could be used for something, of course – sequestration, recharging the Ogalla aquifer, a spurt of space missions, mining common rocks to produce Ca for C sequestration, feldspar and quartz for glass, Al and Fe, and take the rest and get P, Ti, … and then Cu, your rare-Earths, U, … ie. use the whole animal. Alternatively some solar jobs might suddenly disappear, but we could plan compensation for that.