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You can also say that there weren't any problems from the TMI accident - unless you consider 40,000 curies of radioactive krypton released to the atmosphere minor. It certainly wasn't as bad as Chernobyl, but 40,000 curies is a lot.

That 40,000 Curies of Krypon-85 released into the atmosphere is _not_ a lot. Don't take my word for it, calculate the consequences and see for yourself.

The expected cancer rate from being exposed to 1pCi/cm3 air for a year results in 1 eventual death per 100,000 people, (ANL writeup: http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/krypton.pdf) as compared to 20,000 eventual cancer deaths in that population. That's a completely non-detectible increase.

And the only way that 40,000 Curies of Kr-85 you continue to harp on could even reach _that_ negligible dose would be for it to be confined to about a 5km-diameter area for a _year_, without any dispersal. I very much doubt that the weather in Pennsylvania would cooperate.

Seriously, you need to do some calculations before a number like "40,000 Curies" means anything.

No I'm not. I clearly stated the ENGINE's efficiency. I knew exactly what I was saying.

Then you were trying to distort the picture. You won't actually get those numbers driving a car in the real world, so mentioning them without pointing that out is going to mislead readers.

As for well-to-wheel efficiency, the GREET model shows no real difference between a hybrid gasoline-electric versus pure-electric car.

Um, what? And that's a lot more pessimstic than I've seen in some studies. Their most recent associated paper doesn't even cover li-ion batteries, which are far more efficient than PbA and NiMH -- yet li-ion are essentially the standard for new mass-produced EVs.

Furthermore, to top it all off, look at the direction things are trending. An increasing percentage of oil is being forced to come from syncrude. The future of oil isn't light, sweet saudi crude -- it's ultra-heavy crude, sour crude, bitumen, shale, coal liquefaction, etc. These are far dirtier and far more energy wasteful from well to pump. Electricity, on the other hand, is going in the opposite direction. Power plant efficiencies continue to rise, and the growing demand for cap and trade is eventually going to push coal (or at least non-"clean coal") out of the mix. Wind power prices and solar prices have plummetted in the past decade. Wind is now cost-competitive with coal in some areas, and solar should be there soon. CIGS/CIS solar could potentially become cheaper than coal even in Alaska. EGS is opening up a whole new front of baseload power. And on and on down the line.

In short, the trend is oil getting worse while electricity gets better.

No I'm not. I clearly stated the ENGINE's efficiency. I knew exactly what I was saying.

Then you were trying to distort the picture. You won't actually get those numbers driving a car in the real world, so mentioning them without pointing that out is going to mislead readers.

As for well-to-wheel efficiency, the GREET model shows no real difference between a hybrid gasoline-electric versus pure-electric car.

Um, what? And that's a lot more pessimstic than I've seen in some studies. Their most recent associated paper doesn't even cover li-ion batteries, which are far more efficient than PbA and NiMH -- yet li-ion are essentially the standard for new mass-produced EVs.

Furthermore, to top it all off, look at the direction things are trending. An increasing percentage of oil is being forced to come from syncrude. The future of oil isn't light, sweet saudi crude -- it's ultra-heavy crude, sour crude, bitumen, shale, coal liquefaction, etc. These are far dirtier and far more energy wasteful from well to pump. Electricity, on the other hand, is going in the opposite direction. Power plant efficiencies continue to rise, and the growing demand for cap and trade is eventually going to push coal (or at least non-"clean coal") out of the mix. Wind power prices and solar prices have plummetted in the past decade. Wind is now cost-competitive with coal in some areas, and solar should be there soon. CIGS/CIS solar could potentially become cheaper than coal even in Alaska. EGS is opening up a whole new front of baseload power. And on and on down the line.

In short, the trend is oil getting worse while electricity gets better.

Article gives the size of the glass, and some temps, so it may just be answerable. Googling for: how much energy does it take to manufacture glass, 5 hit (no direct link since its a f***in word doc)

The Recipe For 1 Ton Of Glass (Resources)
                      1300 Pounds Sand

                          400 Pound Soda Ash

                          400 Pounds Limestone

                          150 Pounds Feldspar

                  24000 Gallons Water

                      4400 KWH of Energy

So, 4400 KWH per ton.

How much do the panels weigh?

(.6 m) * (1.1 m) * (.5 cm) * (2 500 (kg / (m^3))) = 8.25 kilograms

(8.25 kilograms) * 4 400 (KWh / ton) = 144 Mj

Apart from making the glass, there is heating the glass, heating the cadmium sulfur and telluride, mining all those chemicals, etc.

Glass specific heat is .84 J/g K.

(.84 (J / g)) * 8.25 kg * 580 = 4 019 400 joules

So I've calculated 148Mj for the glass manufacture and heating.
Ignoring the cadmium, sulpher, telluride chemical mining, what do you get out of it?

(85 watts) * 25 years = 6.7 Ã-- 10^10 joules

How much coal is that? http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/eng99/eng99187.htm

6.7E10 joules) / (4.11E6 (joules / pound)) = 7 400 kg

Remember how I ignored the energy of mining those chemicals?
How does the energy compare for mining the GRAMS it would take to deposit a film of telluride compares to the energy for mining TONS of coal.

The answer to what you did ask, at least for the glass + heating, is pretty easy to answer:
(148E6 / 85) * s = 480 hours. Less than a month.

oil prices don't have a whole lot to do with the price of electricity.

They will if coal to gasoline ever takes hold. Every dollar that oil rises makes that more likely, and once there is a huge new demand for coal prices for electricity from coal powered plants will rise accordingly. Coal accounts for 49.7% of US electrical power. Coal and oil will also begin to effect each other if/when electric commuter cars become common. I admit that I only present ways in which oil prices might effect electricity prices, but I think they are both distinct possibilities in the near future. (kinda like every new solar break through we read about)

Any first level electronics book will do.

Let's see what the DOE ahs to say, shall we?
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy99x42.htm

IT also discusses current; which is what we are really talking about here.

Using the alternator is a bad idea.
An experiment that will show this:
collect an alternator to a hand crank and a variable load.
set the load to minimum, turn the crank, note how easy/hard it is.
start turning the load up, continuing to turn the crank. Note that it gets progressively harder to turn the crank at the same speed.
By sapping "wasted" power at idle you're making the engine work all that much harder to maintain RPMs. More work == more gas consumed.
Water has a substantially lower potential energy than 2xH2 and O2 separately.

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen06/gen06234.htm

This isn't anything new. Argonne National Laboratories did research much like this, to engage the "alternate body" clock. It involves feasting and fasting, with special attention to the day prior to travel crucial to it working:
Anti-Jet-Lag Diet

Actually, VIC and RAT are now part of AccessGrid, which is being actively developed and is cross-platform. The most recent stable release was on 21 Dec 2007.

you've probably seen it by now, but just in case you haven't: just about 40 attempts

The Mars Scorecard.

Mars currently leads, 20:19, though Earth is making a strong showing this decade.

Here is a great scorecard of all missions to mars showing which have succeeded, which have failed, and why: http://www.bio.aps.anl.gov/~dgore/fun/PSL/marsscorecard.html

In X-ray optics, we actually use bent crystals like silicon, germanium, diamond, graphite or multilayer to focus X-ray by diffraction for maybe 50 years. A short paper on the multilayer for X-ray optics I found at Argonne national lab is available at here (PDF).

http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso.torrent http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4153415/Ubuntu_8.04_Hardy_Heron_-_Desktop_i386.4153415.TPB.torrent http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso http://mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso http://mirrors.rit.edu/ubuntu-releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso http://ubuntu.media.mit.edu/ubuntu-releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso http://ubuntu.osuosl.org/releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso http://banner.uits.indiana.edu/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso ----- Features: http://techwatch.reviewk.com/2008/04/ubuntu-hardy-heron-8-04-2/

The server was overloaded; it's back up now, but in case it becomes unstable again... Cached lists of mirrors (for all versions):

        * http://www.ubuntu.com.nyud.net/getubuntu/downloadmirrors
        * http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubuntu.com%2Fgetubuntu%2Fdownloadmirrors

Torrent for 8.04 desktop version i386 ISO:

        * http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso.torrent
        * http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4153415/Ubuntu_8.04_Hardy_Heron_-_Desktop_i386.4153415.TPB.torrent
            (Piratebay mirror because official tracker is unstable)

Direct links to 8.04 desktop version i386 ISOs:

        * http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
        * http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
        * http://mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
        * http://mirrors.rit.edu/ubuntu-releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
        * http://ubuntu.media.mit.edu/ubuntu-releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
        * http://ubuntu.osuosl.org/releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
        * http://banner.uits.indiana.edu/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
        * http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso

The US total refining capacity was 17,443,492 barrels of oil/day, which yields on average, 340,148,094 gallons @19.5gallons gas/barrel of oil. The current consumption of gas in the US is 388.6 million gallons/day (as of 2006)

If those numbers are correct, we are at a 48,451,906 gallon/day shortfall of US domestic production capacity. Since no one wants a refinery in their backyard, there hasn't been a new one built since the 1970's (The last refinery built in the US was in Garyville, Louisiana, and it started up in 1976.)

So "we" as in the US, have a serious lack of refinery capacity.

Not exactly what you are looking for in a speed test, but there is some very interesting data in this test.

Argonne National Lab Web100 based Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT)
http://miranda.ctd.anl.gov:7123/

Well... I am one of DOE's "gatekeepers", so perhaps I can shed some light on the nature of the red tape. Actually, I am a proposal reviewer for the Advanced Photon Source and for the National Synchrotron Light Source, the x-ray facilities next door to two DOEs nanoscience facilities. So I help mind the gates for the x-ray facilities, not the nanoscience facilities, which are the topic of this article. But the process for access to the nanoscience facilities is very similar to our process.

First, we are not a secret cabal. The names of the proposal review panel members are listed on the web sites for the two x-ray facilities for which I do this work. (For the sake of transparency, I am Bruce Ravel on the Spectroscopy panel at the APS - http://www.aps.anl.gov/About/Committees/Proposal_Review_Panel/ - and the
X-Ray Spectroscopy: Chemical and Material Sciences panel at NSLS - http://www.nsls.bnl.gov/organization/committees/prp.htm.) Reviews are signed by the panel as a whole, not by individuals, but you know who we are.

Second, the procedure is not a mystery. There is a standardized form that the proposer must fill out. We review the contents of that form to assure that the experiment proposed is feaasible in the sense that it is well-conceived and appropriate to the instrment requested.

Third, the demand for these resources is high. At the APS, virtually every instrument receives more requests for time that there are days in the operating calendar. It is inevitable that some folks will come away disappointed. I cannot speak for all of my fello reviewers, but I write (what I hope are) useful comments in every review to help the proposer write a stringer, more competitive proposal the next time. One of the comment farther down is from someone who failed to get timefor an experiment at the APS. My advice to him or her is to contact the beamline scientist at the beamline and/or the user office and ask for advice about how to make your proposal sringer next time.

Fourth, although the process is challenging in the sense that not every proposal is going to result in access, the resources being offered are quite extraordinary. A researcher from academia or a national lab gets free access to the instrument with no obligation to cover the operating costs of the facility or of the special equipment available at the specific instrument. Companies get the same benefit for non-proprietary work. (Proprietary work involves cost-recovery, but many corporations choose to publish much of their work.) Except for the proprietary work, all users are expected to publish in peer-reviewed, widely available journals.

Fifth, everyone enters pretty equally. I get good proposals from institutions of all sizes and poor proposals from the same mix of institutions. One of colleagues and a very fine practioner of my specialty is faculty at Sarah Lawrence College -- certainly not a huge unversity -- and he has quite adequate access to DOEs facilities.

My comments are, of course, specifically relvant to the x-ray facilities. But similar models are used for the nanocenters.

So, yes... there is red tape, but there has to be. There is far more demand than supply. There are safety issues that range from the mundane to the severe. Adn there are obligations both for the facility and for the user to perform and report science of the highest quality.

I interact with users of the DOE facilities on a daily basis. I think the system is highly succesful (although not without warts and blemishes) and so do the vast majority of the people I see every day.

Although this is not a purely NASA project, NASA and every other spacecraft agency severely over-engineer their hardware. Most systems are at least redundant if not double redundant, and they incorporate numerous failsafes, fallbacks, and keep as many options open as possible at all times. If something breaks, unless you have the ability to work around it or fix it remotely, you're done. You can't just send a tech out to fix it.

The rovers on mars almost died when their flash memory filled up, because they did not intend to survive long enough to gather so much data, that the capacity of their flash was deemed more than enough. This alone is good evidence that they aren't really intending for things to run this long, just sometime they do a really good job AND get really lucky. Go read about the Expensive Hardware Lobbing to get an idea of just how easy it is to make a mistake, and how catastrophic such mistakes are. Even with how much care goes into these things, we still don't keep terribly good odds.

I don't know all the reasons the rovers are still running, but I've heard several. The crippling flash space problem was averted because of an automatic reboot, in addition to an automatic failsafe mode, the combination of which allowed them to get in and clear disk space. The rover with the dead wheel, they were able to disengage its motor so it didn't eat up power and drag on the ground (not turning) and that again isn't something you'd necessarily ever expect to need to do, but they added that ability anyway and it paid off. I'd bet there are at least a dozen other "plan ahead" safeties that have saved their bacon too.

From Mariner 2's entry on EHL: On September 8 17:50 UT the spacecraft suddenly lost its attitude control, which was restored by the gyroscopes 3 minutes later. The cause was unknown but may have been a collision with a small object. Then, on November 15, one solar panel failed. However, the probe got within 34,773 km of the planet on December 14 19:59:28.

The odds of it hitting something out in space has to be incredibly slim, but they installed gyroscopes anyway, and as a result were able to continue the mission. You can't really factor that in when trying to calculate the life expectancy of a project like this. All you can do is build it the absolutely best you can, and hope you don't get mugged by too many problems at the same time.

Although the ppl at NASA are certainly skilled, I don't think we can call any of them "experts" at this space exploration thing. They may be the best we've got, but lets face it, there's a lot we still don't know, and we're not able to build experience very quickly. We're total n00bs in space. I don't think we over-estimate anything, we just get lucky now and then. Building in failsafes and options gives us one or two more extra chances sometimes when something we do doesn't work, and that can turn a single 5 year mission into four or five learning experiences before it finally breaks beyond hope, rather than one.

When Mariner 3 failed to eject its heat shield, that one mistake totally screwed the entire mission after a very long wait. Instead of tinkering with various ways to fix the problem remotely with your available options, Game Over. Wait another 5 years and try again. Those are the painful lessons they try to avoid by what is sometimes perceived as over-engineering or under-estimating.

I hate to tell you this, but you're totally wrong. Space isn't cold. Temperature itself is derived from molecular vibrations and if you have no atoms, no temperature. Also, the lack of atoms completely removes conduction and convection. This is why a vacuum glass thermos works. Or, here is the answer from the U.S. Department of Energy ask a scientist.

To put some numbers on this, around 40,000 people die in car crashes per year. By their logic, around 13,333 people die from cell phone induced cancer per year. But oral cancer only kills around 8000 people per year. Clearly these figures have been pulled from someone's ass.

Regardless of your feelings on their inferiority, I still feel that they are better.

And that feeling is based on...? I just listed a bunch of stats, and your stats in favor of NiMH are...?

I didn't say anything about a conspiracy.

No, you just did a sort of "wink, wink" pointing out who owned Cobasys. If you don't think there's a conspiracy, then why mention that?

They're still cheaper, and nickel is less susceptible to a price spike than is lithium.

Not that the price of the battery is largely due to the lithium itself; it's mostly anode and cathode construction costs.

"Lithium metal is costly (about $50/lb), but the pure metallic form is not required for Li-ion cells. The actual lithium compound used to make cathode materials, lithium carbonate (Li2CO3), is considerably less expensive. The price history of lithium carbonate is shown in Figure 5.6. The average price reported for lithium carbonate in the United States at the end of 1999 was $4.47/kg ($2.03/lb). However, increased production in Chile and Argentina has led to a recent oversupply, and actual prices paid have been as much as 50% below the list, matching the price of only $0.90/lb from Chile and Argentina. A shutdown of the Argentine production due to process problems caused the price to rise again, but the price was still below list in early 2000 (Ober 2000). Recycled materials and sales from DOE stock put further downward pressure on prices. Large demand for batteries could eventually drive the price up. At the current list price, the lithium carbonate for the batteries in an EV like the Altra would cost about $100, and the material for an HEV battery would cost about $5"

So, to sum up, $10-15k worth of li-ion batteries contains about $100 worth of lithium ore (lithium carbonate). And you think the price of lithium is concerning why?

What is your repeated reference to "safe, long-life" lithium ion? Lithium polymer?

See, this is the problem with debating about something that you're not well versed in. There are over a dozen different li-ion chemistries with long lifespans and virtually no potential for offgassing, and this has been widely known and discussed in the EV community for years now. About the only chemistry that *isn't* is found in standard li-ion "laptop batteries" and li-poly (LiCoO2 cathode, graphite anode). You've got your phosphates, your titanates, your spinels, and all sorts of other chemistries, all of which are safe, long-life, and should be notably cheaper than LiCoO2/graphite when produced in similar volumes, and usually which can be charged very rapidly. A123 is currently the big name in the business, but there are dozens of other companies out there making them (especially with the phosphates).

I've looked at some recent studies by the US govt that show a net energy loss.

Studies conducted since the late 1970s have estimated the net energy value (NEV)
of corn ethanol. However, variations in data and assumptions used among the
studies have resulted in a wide range of estimates. This study identifies the factors
causing this wide variation and develops a more consistent estimate. We conclude
that the NEV of corn ethanol has been rising over time due to technological
advances in ethanol conversion and increased efficiency in farm production. We
show that corn ethanol is energy efficient as indicated by an energy output:input
ratio of 1.34. --July 2002

"Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment," according to the study by Cornell's David Pimentel and Berkeley's Tad Patzek.

And did you not back it up with any sort of link? If it was accurate, I could forgive the lack of citation, but for blatantly false information it's not tolerable.

Comparing Apples to Apples: Well-to-Wheel Analysis of Current ICE and Fuel Cell Vehicle Technologies
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/HV/300.pdf

Tesla Motors Well To Wheel Comparison
http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php

AskPablo: Well to Wheel Efficiency Tutorial
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-well-to-wheel-efficie-002461.php And let's be honest. Car and Driver? Not the most intelligently written rag out there.

Here's hoping that Spirit and Opportunity know how to duck and cover effectively...

In other cases, like the proof of the four color theorem, it seems like the source code is important to see, but not essential. Pseudocode should suffice. Providing pseudocode is akin to saying things like "Simplifying expression (1) yields..."; we don't have to provide EVERY step, but with pseudocode you have enough to determine whether the algorithm itself will work. Checking the source code beyond that is akin to checking someone's algebra.

Just because we don't know how the program arrived at the steps it did doesn't mean that we shouldn't use it; we can usually check the steps. After all, the human brain has been a closed-source proof machine for thousands of years, and no one has complained about that :) Just require pseudocode in computer aided proofs, and it should be sufficient.

The taxpayers will only hold still for a certain amount of screwing. We won't continue to fund every scheme somebody dreams up.

The fact that we've continued to fund Fusion research, now into it's - at least - 40th year with no payback in sight continues to amaze me. And it's only because the payback may be so great that we do so, decade in and decade out.

Some great things come out of academic research, but others are a huge money sink and have to be whacked. If it is so great, good chance somebody else will pick it up and carry on.

I figured out the cost for running distributed.net several years ago, and it was amazing. The difference between my computer sitting idle and my computer running the CPU at 100% is 60 watt-hours, or 1,440 extra watts per day. Scaling that number up to the amount of work I was able to perform in an hour, dividing out the amount of work that had to be done in order to crack one of the distributed.net challenge keys, turned into an ungodly amount of wasted power.

So how much has been donated to SETI@home? According to BOINC stats, 19,593,239,480 BOINC credits have been granted as of a few days ago. Since one credit represents the computations performed in 1/100th of a day on a reference machine, we can ballpark that 195,932,394 CPU days have been donated. As I said, my computer uses 1,440 watts per day under load, but let's assume it's only half as efficient as the average or reference machine; so that's about 720 watts per day. Times the credits, that's 141,071,323,680 watts (141 gigawatts.) According to the DoE, one pound of coal generates 926 watt-hours of electricity. So they've burned 152,344,842 pounds (76,000 tons) of coal, or 760 standard 100-ton cars -- that's almost seven 115-car trains of coal.

Put another way, that's 182,400 tons of CO2 that was pumped into the atmosphere on behalf of SETI. (Take that, Kyoto Protocol!) On the Chicago Climate Exchange, that'd cost you $364,000 in carbon credits. And that's just the BOINC figures, and not inclusive of the energy burned by SETI@home clients prior to the advent of BOINC.

Do you still wish to maintain that all the energy and waste and pollution is worth it, for a potential incidental invention? At least set your machine to folding@home, or the WCG, or some project that will produce results that might help the human race in tangible ways. You can still dream about E.T., just don't kill my planet looking for him.

But this of course requires oxygen to happen. Is there much oxygen available at 65,000 feet?

Question - Does air composition change with altitude in the Troposphere?

Is oxygen concentration different at an altitude of e.g. 10000m than at sea level?
-----------------
The composition of the atmosphere remain relatively constant up to the ozone layer at an altitude of around 60,000 feet (though that number does vary somewhat).

Ok let's throw out some odds... It's a three dimensional equation and we're on the losing end of every part of it. The universe is big and old, and we are young and small... There are 10^20 observed stars http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/astron/AST014.HTM The universe is 11 - 20 billion years old. We have been "intelligent" for 10000 years (generous, not sure we're intelligent yet ) on 1 planet around 1 star. 10^20 * 10^9 / 10^4 = 10^25 These are the odds of intelligent life being on this planet in this 10,000 year period. Divide by a million stars and you have 1 in 10^19 probability of there being intelligent life around any of these million stars. If there are a million civilizations in the universe, the odds of them being in those million stars at this time is still 1 in 10^13. The odds of us being the most intelligent are still 1 in 10^25. Ok, bunch of flaky math, but hey, the odds of *us discovering* alien civilizations is inversely proportional to the number of alien civilizations, and the more there are of them the more likely that they would *discover us*. The odds don't get better with more civilizations, they get worse.

there's always been change in climate and we have dealt with it, changes which have been far more then small.
it's just alarmist nonsense your pushing there.

You got your degree in climate science where? You've been studying this topic for how long?

I actually have friends doing research on the topic, both in the lab here in the US on the global climate model an in the field in the Antarctic. They are more alarmed about current trends than is filtering through to the media. The rate at which permafrost and glaciers have begun melting recently is sending shock waves through the scientific community. We are now only beginning to discover environmental feedback mechanisms that likely mean the scientists have UNDERESTIMATED the rate and impact of global warming, not overestimated it.

We used to talk about the climate problems our children and grandchildren will be dealing with. Guess what, the bill came early. Now YOU will likely be suffering the consequences. We are seeing the leading edge of it now with shifting weather patterns and encroachment of invasive species... just as the models predicted, only sooner. Because of climate deniers like you, it is probably now too late to stop it, but we still must do everything we can to slow the change and give our society and economy time to adapt.

Alarmist? Hardly. If anything the message from the scientist has been overly softened and toned down.

BTW, the friends I mentioned work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and on the global climate model at Argonne National Laboratories, in case anyone is curious.

If they can make this work I think it's great. The current U.S. consumption of oil is about 5.2 Million bb/d, and there is about 950 Million acres of farmland as of 2002. One barrel of crude equals about 42 gallons of gasoline according to this. So we can safely say that one acre is about a barrel of crude according TFA. I think that is very doable provided that it actually works. Much better solution than ethanol if you ask me, which has proven time and again that if we want to go with corn ethanol that there isn't enough farmland in the U.S. Now granted that 40kg is optimal so if we allow say 8 million acres for this I think we may even have a surplus of energy. That is the kind of idea I like to see.

The announcement last month that 46 million Nokia-branded lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries made by Matsushita Battery Industrial could potentially short circuit and overheat was just the latest in a spate of product advisories and recalls of the technology over the past two years.

But it's not as if Li-ion batteries are at the early point in their life cycle when you would expect these sorts of problems to crop up. Sony invented the technology back in 1990. So why is it failing now?

The theories behind the technology's recent spotty performance are complex and varied, which makes fixing the problem a perplexing engineering challenge.

A Constantly Evolving Technology

"You can't really say that for the first ten years the battery makers got it right and now they're screwing it up," says Jim Miller, Manager of Argonne National Lab's Electrochemical Technology Program. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, his group's research is directed at developing new materials for Li-ion batteries and addressing some of the major issues in scaling up the technology.

Miller points out that Li-ion battery technology is not just a single design or composition, but rather it's an entire family of chemistries that is constantly evolving. "When Sony invented it in 1990, it was lithium cobalt oxide. But cobalt is expensive and so engineers started replacing it with nickel, which costs less. And then as time went on engineers found that they could substitute cheaper nickel manganese alloys for the nickel."

Cost reduction isn't the only driving force behind the evolutionary march of Li-ion batteries. The desire to extend battery life, achieve higher energy densities and faster charging times, and improve reliability has led to a constant tinkering of the technology. Energy densities are double what they were five years ago, for example, and new surface coatings are being applied to make the batteries more stable and reduce their reactivity rates.

Ever-Increasing Demands, More Trade-offs

The trade-offs inherent in these often mutually exclusive goals make for a diabolical design challenge: You can make a Li-ion battery that has high performance, for example, but the trade-off is a shorter life. And as every design engineer knows, making the right trade-offs and getting everything right takes time, experience, and a bit of finesse.

"A problem doesn't necessarily pop up during the first generation of cells," says Miller. "Things may look fine in the lab and then when you go to production you find that the technology behaves in a slightly different way, which means things can and do go wrong."

Something certainly went wrong at Sony last year, resulting in the recall of millions of its Li-ion laptop batteries. As for what exactly led to the short-circuiting problem that posed a risk of fire and in one case caused a Dell notebook to burst into flames, Sony Spokesperson Rick Clancy says that there were different conclusions at different levels.

"When you produce lithium ion batteries, the objective is to either have zero metal contaminants or at least as few of them as possible and surround them by a protective shell or layer so that they cannot penetrate the separator," explains Clancy. The separator in a Li-ion battery keeps the anodes and cathodes from touching each other and causing a short circuit.

Clancy says that Sony engineers discovered that there was a greater frequency of these metal particles escaping from one part of the cell and entering the other part. They've addressed the issue at a product level by designing in a stronger lining, he notes.

But there were other

One of the goals of Bcfg2 (a configuration management system developed at Argonne National Laboratory) is to help provide this kind of information for both the admin and the manager. Its reports system gives a clear look at how well managed a machine is both now and in the past, making it simple to define how up-to-date machines are staying and show how they have changed over the last week/month/quarter/whatever. This is touched on in a couple of the publications that go along with it.

(Yes, I am indeed in cahoots with the project, but I'm only gushing about it here because I actually think it works quite well.)

One of the goals of Bcfg2 (a configuration management system developed at Argonne National Laboratory) is to help provide this kind of information for both the admin and the manager. Its reports system gives a clear look at how well managed a machine is both now and in the past, making it simple to define how up-to-date machines are staying and show how they have changed over the last week/month/quarter/whatever. This is touched on in a couple of the publications that go along with it.

(Yes, I am indeed in cahoots with the project, but I'm only gushing about it here because I actually think it works quite well.)

Here we go again. The vast conspiracy against solar and wind by those evil baddies. Please.

Why not solar? The Solar Constant, that's why. 1.367kW/m^2. Typical yield is closer to 1kW/m^2. Then some genius suggests that we cover an area roughly the size of Arizona with solar cells to generate all of the power. Riiiiiiiiight. "Just cover all of the roofs, and we'll be set!" Riiiiiiiiiight.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap970830.html

Those are the roofs. Added up, they might add up to Arizona. Not likely though. Now imagine that you wanted to cover up Arizona with big pieces of paper, the whole state. I want you to imagine the scale of a project like that with just paper. Now I want you to reflect on the difficulty inherent with replacing all of that paper with silicon semiconductors that currently require clean rooms for manufacture.

Nevermind that we can't get 50% cells to last more than a couple months let alone ten years, and that's the expensive, lab-grown variety. But people still hold out hope for "printable" solar panels that get 50% efficiency and last fifty years.

Stirling engines? Sure, cover Arizona with Stirling engines. That's feasible. Riiiiiiight.

And wind? Yeah, let's hear it for the 5 or 6MW wind generators! Well, until you see the stats on land area they use up. Feel free to look up pictures of how big 6MW wind generators actually are. However, most generators aren't anywhere near that big. In fact most wind farms (collections of generators) tend to add up to that 5 or 6MW range all together. There just isn't enough wind. You can't produce energy out of nothing. It has to come from something. If the wind isn't blowing hard enough, no amount of money and research is going to extract thousands of megawatts out of it.

What? Offshore wind generators? Uh hunh, no maintenance involved in keeping mechanical devices with large moving parts in working order in the middle of those salt water oceans. No sir! We could just turn them on and walk away. Let's not even think about those big power cables headed for shore. Nope, those aren't a target for mischief.

Kites? Sure, as long as we ignore the fact that no one has actually been successful at getting 100 kilowatts-hours out of that even for a single hour. I haven't yet heard of a meager first step yet let alone something approaching a working prototype.

Or traffic wind generators? That one takes the cake. If someone can't grasp why traffic wind generators are a moronic idea, that person can't handle the real world. Transferring energy from wind to turn generators will slow the air. If the air is slowed, it makes the cars work harder to maintain speed. If the cars are working harder, they burn more fuel. See where this is headed?

Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, the two nuclear plants in California, each have two working nuclear reactors on site. Each one produces more than 1,000MW. Hmmm... let's figure out how many 5MW wind generators it takes to add up to just one nuclear reactor. Be sure to keep that picture of the 5MW variety of wind generator around for reference.

Then there's the issue of how much wind you can get in most areas.
Added to the fact that nuclear reactors and coal plants don't depend on (in)consistent wind patterns, daylight hours, or weather conditions.

How much does wind blow? http://windeis.anl.gov/guide/maps/images/wherewind 800.gif

Be sure to focus on the amount of area that rates above "good." Notice how some states are COMPLETELY screwed with regard to wind power. What? Have some states sell their power to the other states, the completely energy dependent ones? Look up how well that worked when Enron, a Texas company, held sway over the energy supply of a different state, California. Now imagine that happening to a state with less clout than California.

Solar and wind are not going to save us. They are excel

Related links: * LDX@MIT
* Physics of magnetically confined fusion [pdf]
* The main principles of magnetic fusion
* Magnetic fusion experiments at LANL
* High density magnetic fusion
* Has a good bit on magnetic confinement
* Can a magnetic field be used to contain plasma?
* International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
* What's happening in fusion?
* Design of magnetic fields for fusion experiments [pdf]
* Wikipedia article on the topic
* Magnetized target fusion bibliography
* Plasma physics bibliography
* Databases for plasma physics

* Plasma physics laboratories
* List of plasma physicists
* Plasma on the internet

Space exploration is risky business, and there have been about as many successful missions to Mars as failures. An account of the fate of each mission to Mars is given in the hilarious Mars Scorecard. Fortunately, all of the missions in the new millenium have been pretty successful, and so we are very hopeful for Phoenix.

http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/zeptoos/

...and switching email clients is never as straightforward as one would like.

http://miranda.ctd.anl.gov:7123/ Can't stand seeing people using speedtest.net, MOD THIS UP!

The combination sounds new to me. Here are some ideas on the sea turbine bit: http://ocsenergy.anl.gov/guide/current/index.cfm.
--
Solar is the start: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

You can go north of the north pole, by entering the sphere. Standing on the north pole with a horizontal compass makes it spin, a vertical or dip compass would point straight down. Going in a straight line down into the earth would be moving north of the pole.

But now I'm just splitting hairs.

Which Fermi equation are you talking about, the post stamp equation?. Also planetary orbits with 1.3-day periods like the ones discovered are so close to the star surface it's not unlikely to see them transit.

Yes, that would be great.

I would hope that Ubuntu will be going DVD one of these days soon

Actually Mars and Venus don't have any major plate activity and haven't for Millions of years(see wikipedia). It's also why they have weak magnetic fields as the internal dynamo is what sustains a magnetic field. Internal dynamo drives plate tectonics which are sustained by the cooling action of surface and core exchanges.
Mars is dead geologically, meaning that it has no volcanic activity and we think that the core has (probably) hardened.
Incidentally, Venus is a much better candidate for colonization, but currently it's a little too hot due to the runaway greenhouse effect (it's surface is 450C). Probes sent there melt and get crushed do to surface pressure soon after they land. It's also a good example for those people who say there is no global warming. Look no further than our bastard twin planet.

Did you even read your source? YOUR source said that there were 88 less deaths per year in the entire US. That is 88 people out of 300,000,000. When someone says that you have a 1 in a million chance, they are talking about this. That 1 in a million is even including those who are severely ill with other things, the elderly, those with compromised immune systems, and whatnot. The reason there was a 92% drop in childhood deaths is because a child dying of chicken pox is so rare that 1 less death shows up as a huge percentage. Using percentages with such low numbers is the "desperate" argument. Here are some death numbers to ponder before claiming that the chicken pox vaccine is even worthy of notice:

Estimated deaths due to no chicken pox vaccine: 88
Deaths due to lightning strike: 82
Alzheimer's: 60,000
Assault: 17,500
Driving: 40,000
Flying: 200
High School Football: 30
Traveling to and from school: 800

The numbers of possible lives saved by this vaccine is so low as to be under the radar. You could get almost half as good results by just banning high school football. Heck, you could get just as good results by having 10% of the current school kids moving to home schooling. Using risk of death by chicken pox as an excuse for the vaccine is simply FUD, so that the parents who don't want to take a week off work can feel good about their decision. It is also entirely possible that the numbers of deaths due to chicken pox has actually been increased dramatically, but pushed off for 20 years. Ask your pediatrician. They will tell you that the vaccine might not last into adulthood, and we all know how much worse that will be.

So, if you are really interested in reducing the risk of death for your child, you would take your kid to a pox party, and start home schooling immediately. Heck, just not letting your kid play football is better protection than the chick pox vaccine.

Did you even read your source? YOUR source said that there were 88 less deaths per year in the entire US. That is 88 people out of 300,000,000. When someone says that you have a 1 in a million chance, they are talking about this. That 1 in a million is even including those who are severely ill with other things, the elderly, those with compromised immune systems, and whatnot. The reason there was a 92% drop in childhood deaths is because a child dying of chicken pox is so rare that 1 less death shows up as a huge percentage. Using percentages with such low numbers is the "desperate" argument. Here are some death numbers to ponder before claiming that the chicken pox vaccine is even worthy of notice:

Estimated deaths due to no chicken pox vaccine: 88
Deaths due to lightning strike: 82
Alzheimer's: 60,000
Assault: 17,500
Driving: 40,000
Flying: 200
High School Football: 30
Traveling to and from school: 800

The numbers of possible lives saved by this vaccine is so low as to be under the radar. You could get almost half as good results by just banning high school football. Heck, you could get just as good results by having 10% of the current school kids moving to home schooling. Using risk of death by chicken pox as an excuse for the vaccine is simply FUD, so that the parents who don't want to take a week off work can feel good about their decision. It is also entirely possible that the numbers of deaths due to chicken pox has actually been increased dramatically, but pushed off for 20 years. Ask your pediatrician. They will tell you that the vaccine might not last into adulthood, and we all know how much worse that will be.

So, if you are really interested in reducing the risk of death for your child, you would take your kid to a pox party, and start home schooling immediately. Heck, just not letting your kid play football is better protection than the chick pox vaccine.