I think you have a very good point but careful planning is hard. In a meeting I was at with Steny Hoyer's Distric Director http://events.stepitup2007.org/reports/472 the big news was the the task force in the house was feeling that meeting
it's July 4 deadline would be pretty hard.
On the other hand, shifting to renewable energy is probably cheaper than trying to sequester CO2 from fossil fuels so what this
buys us really is insurance against the chance that we've already passed a tipping point towards positive feedback or will do so
before we can bring emissions under control. This kind of technology might be able to keep up with natural sources of carbon
released owing to warming soon enough to stop that release and avoid a runaway.
Fusion reactors could produce some short lived waste, but they are not prone to melt down and so don't need the heavy containment that fission
reactors require in most countries. Table top fusion is also advancing so I'm not so sure things have to be big to be useful. For Tokomaks this
probably is a requirement but not neccessarily for other methods. -- Mr. Fusion on your roof: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
The Christian Science Monitor article link I submitted five days ago has more details on the actual device: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0419/p13s01-sten.htm l. It is 3 meters tall and captures about 18 kg of CO2 a year or about
4.5 kg of carbon. At this scale, it is probably not so good as a tree. These devices need to be much larger to compete
with plants on the rate of carbon capture per unit area. -- Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Lackner is addressing a problem of scale. If we had such a large demand for carbon as an industrial material that we were entering price competition
for use of carbon as a fuel, then your suggestion might work, but the scale of carbon use as fuel dwarves that of industrial use. And, it is not clear
that asphalt, plastic, wood and other large scale uses of carbon will not lead to oxidation anyway. Stripping oxygen from CO2 has to paid for in energy
which is why we get our carbon from easier sources and would continue to do so even with this technology. -- Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
I think the reason then that you have such animosity is that you are not persuaded that there is a crisis. When there is a crisis, control over people
is what happens. When there is a real war, there is a draft for example. Half measures don't ensure success. Perhaps you should consider if you opinion
concerning global warming has been influenced by people who actually control you http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html in a manner that is less honest than a plainly stated desire to require reductions in CO2 emissions. -- Go solar, your choice: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
It is important to remember that this is an added cost to the price of fuel. The cost, maybe $0.30/gal is not so large that it looks like a killer,
but you can't make money from this without making this connection. To go beyond just compensating for emissions and beginning to reduce atmospheric
CO2 concentrations requires further cash input. So, perhaps you require each pound of coal used to pay for 8 pounds of CO2 sequestered and that raises
electric rates by 4 cents per kWh. Pretty soon you put coal generation out of business since renewables will fill in.
We actually know what is a good CO2 concentration: the Holocene level. What we don't know is how far we can push up this level without entering
a positive feedback. The current concentration could already be at this level given the permafrost melting that may lead to quite a lot of CO2 release.
So, preindustrial CO2 concentrations are known to be safe and the conservative approach would be to control the concentration at that level. --
Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
The reason for this is that the concentation of CO2 on the atmosphere is pretty low so you'd need to cool a whole lot of air to get a little dry ice.
This is what you do when you want dry ice, if you want to use dry ice for sequestration, you might start with air that is already cold and use a natural
means to cool it further. The brightness temperature of the antarctic night sky is probably cold enough to do some of this using reflectors. But,
storing the dry ice may be a problem since eventually the sublimation rate is going to match the production rate even if it quite buried.
In discussing this some years ago, Lackner mentioned to me that others had been working on possibly stabilizing glacier based by injection cooling
that looks a little like this. So, there may be some aplication, but likely not sequestration. -- Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
What I've noticed is that math and sciences are a little bit immune to grade inflation. I think this is because the teachers know the
meaning of the ditribution function and set their exams to get an actual spread. So, only a few people should actually do very well
on an exam and most should end up missing a third or so of the questions. This means that grades can be meaningfully assigned from quantitative
information. Perhaps the problem is not that these subjects are too difficult but rather that assessments in other subjects have become
less meaningful. --
Solar power with no exam: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Same here. You might want to look at http://stepitup2007.org/ to see how our conception of stratigic interest might be changing in a way
that is more aligned with your way of thinking.
I have to agree that there is a fairness issue here. The Free Press article does convey strong opinions but they look like to source of much
of the reporting and they certainly credit epluribus correctly. This subject was flamebait no matter what but the subject of IT and voting is
a/. interest and needed to be covered. It would have been better to link the Free Press article. I waited to link in my comments because the
submitter should have gotten credit; it was at the very top of the firehose for over six hours. Political correctness should not trump decency
in attribution.
The green and libertarian parties requested and then paid for a recount in Ohio. There have been a couple of convictions so far stemming from this: http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/1 6536269.htm. Now, since the recount was done fraudulently, are not these parties owed a refund?
If the recount was fraudulent, what about the original vote? Why the attempted cover-up? This news http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/20 07/2553 gives greater weight to the idea the election was stolen. If the greens and libertarians don't get a refund, at least I hope they'll get a little credit if this turns out to be proven. To me, democrats have put up weak candidates in the last
two elections, Gore's Rose Garden speech basically shut out any competition after the impeachment but he wasn't ready to run. Kerry's reporting for duty
speech set the tone for his campaign and Bush Lite was a brand that was already taken. Still, it may be some comfort to know that America chose not to
elect Bush even with this poor alternative if, as now seems likely, the evidence comes out clearly that theft occured.
I'm back from coaching and the kid's rehearsal and the other story is persistent above all of the front page stories. As a green, I don't really
approve of the smarmy attitude towards the green party in the linked story and it was, after all, the greens and libertarians who requested and paid for
a recount in Ohio in 2004 that has since led to convictions in court. But I don't see why the link is not at least added as an update to the current story. --
Vote with your roof: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Yours is a refreshing view point. The way we say it is that the free flow of oil is in the nation's strategic interest. So, we spend a lot
on making sure that it flows freely.
Ultimately we need the price of oil to fall below the cost of extraction but this will only come about by reducing demand to well below supply.
Your method of taxing to reduce demand can be a part of this but I fear that doing this at the level that would cause productive wells to be shut down
would be impoverishing. I suspect that rationing is the only equitable form of self restraint that will get us that far along the road to where
we need to be.
Though there are some programs here to assist people with paying for home heating oil or gas if their income is low, most of our subsidies go to
suppliers and producers rather than to buyers. Not all of the subsidies are in the form of money. Sometimes is is in the form of protection from liability or extreamly low royalites for using public land. And, for oil there is a blood subsidy as well.
We seem to be willing to spend as long as people are willing to lend so yes, there will be a time when continuing to borrow will be too expensive
since people will no longer be willing to lend. I think we are begining to see some signs of this now as oil is starting to be traded in euros rather
than dollars. This is the reason I am wondering about when we might seek a fixed exchange rate.
President Eisenhower made just the point you do. From my experience, however, from the inside, people feel that they are doing a very good thing
protecting our country so that the coruption is easily overlooked. I don't know when spreading peace will become a priority again. There seems to
be a slight turn happening here: http://securityandclimate.cna.org/report/.
I think that you are correct that cooperation on a broader scale would be good. I mentioned the gas tax because much of or defense spending
supports "lower" oil prices. I've been wondering how soon we'll be asking for a fixed exchange rate with the euro in exchange for more controled
spending on our part.
I suspect your right that conductor geometery is pretty key. The cross-sectional area formula is a pretty gross approximation. Some HVDC underground
cable seems to look a little like co-ax, perhaps because capacitance with the ground is an issue. I do think that going to higher voltage is possible
with a (perhaps hollow) fatter conductor since the corona discharge is really about a gradient.
I think nuclear power is subsidized in Sweden and Sweden is relying on it to meet Kyoto. Though we're losing our touch I think, if you
want to send some of that gas tax to us to cover our defense spending, we might not act so stuck up this time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_response_to_H urricane_Katrina. Glad you were so quick to offer help back then.
Look at the TOP of the firehose: there is another story from the Free Press that is ranked above all the stories on the main page. This one
goes a lot further in its accusations.
Definitely not a jump start! That takes the highest current draw of all. These things are good if you leave a vehicle parked for
a long time. They keep the battery topped off.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose because inertial confinement is not useful for producing energy either (yet). Advances are needed in all fields of fusion research. This article http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/ 22/2115249 would anticipate a fairly small scale reactor for example.s -selling-solar.html
--
Really BIG fusion: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I think you have a very good point but careful planning is hard. In a meeting I was at with Steny Hoyer's Distric Director http://events.stepitup2007.org/reports/472 the big news was the the task force in the house was feeling that meeting it's July 4 deadline would be pretty hard.
s -selling-solar.html.
On the other hand, shifting to renewable energy is probably cheaper than trying to sequester CO2 from fossil fuels so what this buys us really is insurance against the chance that we've already passed a tipping point towards positive feedback or will do so before we can bring emissions under control. This kind of technology might be able to keep up with natural sources of carbon released owing to warming soon enough to stop that release and avoid a runaway.
We don't know if we are in that situation or not. Lackner's big thinking could be of huge importance.
--
Kick the carbon habit: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
That's a lot of reps with a lot of power. This is going to end up in missle defence for sure! I doubt funding is going to be an issue here.s -selling-solar.html
--
Mr. Fusion on your roof: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Fusion reactors could produce some short lived waste, but they are not prone to melt down and so don't need the heavy containment that fission reactors require in most countries. Table top fusion is also advancing so I'm not so sure things have to be big to be useful. For Tokomaks this probably is a requirement but not neccessarily for other methods.s -selling-solar.html
--
Mr. Fusion on your roof: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
And to think they said it would be forty years off twenty years ago!
The Christian Science Monitor article link I submitted five days ago has more details on the actual device: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0419/p13s01-sten.htm l. It is 3 meters tall and captures about 18 kg of CO2 a year or about
4.5 kg of carbon. At this scale, it is probably not so good as a tree. These devices need to be much larger to compete
with plants on the rate of carbon capture per unit area.s -selling-solar.html
--
Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Lackner is addressing a problem of scale. If we had such a large demand for carbon as an industrial material that we were entering price competition for use of carbon as a fuel, then your suggestion might work, but the scale of carbon use as fuel dwarves that of industrial use. And, it is not clear that asphalt, plastic, wood and other large scale uses of carbon will not lead to oxidation anyway. Stripping oxygen from CO2 has to paid for in energy which is why we get our carbon from easier sources and would continue to do so even with this technology.s -selling-solar.html
--
Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I think the reason then that you have such animosity is that you are not persuaded that there is a crisis. When there is a crisis, control over people is what happens. When there is a real war, there is a draft for example. Half measures don't ensure success. Perhaps you should consider if you opinion concerning global warming has been influenced by people who actually control you http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html in a manner that is less honest than a plainly stated desire to require reductions in CO2 emissions.s -selling-solar.html
--
Go solar, your choice: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
It is important to remember that this is an added cost to the price of fuel. The cost, maybe $0.30/gal is not so large that it looks like a killer, but you can't make money from this without making this connection. To go beyond just compensating for emissions and beginning to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations requires further cash input. So, perhaps you require each pound of coal used to pay for 8 pounds of CO2 sequestered and that raises electric rates by 4 cents per kWh. Pretty soon you put coal generation out of business since renewables will fill in.
s -selling-solar.html
I think that what we should call this is potentially commercially feasable and reserve viability for things that increase economic activity.
--
Solar power for what you pay for coal power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
We actually know what is a good CO2 concentration: the Holocene level. What we don't know is how far we can push up this level without entering a positive feedback. The current concentration could already be at this level given the permafrost melting that may lead to quite a lot of CO2 release. So, preindustrial CO2 concentrations are known to be safe and the conservative approach would be to control the concentration at that level.s -selling-solar.html
--
Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Lackner favors sequestration through mineralization, converting silicates to carbonates. This is exothermic and provides carbon storage time scales of 10^5 years. It closely mimics the geological carbon cycle which we are out pacing with our carbon extraction. I find his giude to CO2 sequestration http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/300/ 5626/1677 to be quite useful.s -selling-solar.html
--
Get off carbon http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The reason for this is that the concentation of CO2 on the atmosphere is pretty low so you'd need to cool a whole lot of air to get a little dry ice.
s -selling-solar.html
This is what you do when you want dry ice, if you want to use dry ice for sequestration, you might start with air that is already cold and use a natural means to cool it further. The brightness temperature of the antarctic night sky is probably cold enough to do some of this using reflectors. But, storing the dry ice may be a problem since eventually the sublimation rate is going to match the production rate even if it quite buried.
In discussing this some years ago, Lackner mentioned to me that others had been working on possibly stabilizing glacier based by injection cooling that looks a little like this. So, there may be some aplication, but likely not sequestration.
--
Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
This article points out that carbon can be sequestered in soil with the right mix of plants. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314 /5805/1598. Those plants can at the same
time be used to make fuel.s -selling-solar.html
--
Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
What I've noticed is that math and sciences are a little bit immune to grade inflation. I think this is because the teachers know the meaning of the ditribution function and set their exams to get an actual spread. So, only a few people should actually do very well on an exam and most should end up missing a third or so of the questions. This means that grades can be meaningfully assigned from quantitative information. Perhaps the problem is not that these subjects are too difficult but rather that assessments in other subjects have become less meaningful.s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar power with no exam: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Same here. You might want to look at http://stepitup2007.org/ to see how our conception of stratigic interest might be changing in a way that is more aligned with your way of thinking.
I have to agree that there is a fairness issue here. The Free Press article does convey strong opinions but they look like to source of much of the reporting and they certainly credit epluribus correctly. This subject was flamebait no matter what but the subject of IT and voting is a /. interest and needed to be covered. It would have been better to link the Free Press article. I waited to link in my comments because the
submitter should have gotten credit; it was at the very top of the firehose for over six hours. Political correctness should not trump decency
in attribution.
The green and libertarian parties requested and then paid for a recount in Ohio. There have been a couple of convictions so far stemming from this: http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/1 6536269.htm. Now, since the recount was done fraudulently, are not these parties owed a refund?
0 07/2553 gives greater weight to the idea the election was stolen. If the greens and libertarians don't get a refund, at least I hope they'll get a little credit if this turns out to be proven. To me, democrats have put up weak candidates in the last
two elections, Gore's Rose Garden speech basically shut out any competition after the impeachment but he wasn't ready to run. Kerry's reporting for duty
speech set the tone for his campaign and Bush Lite was a brand that was already taken. Still, it may be some comfort to know that America chose not to
elect Bush even with this poor alternative if, as now seems likely, the evidence comes out clearly that theft occured.
If the recount was fraudulent, what about the original vote? Why the attempted cover-up? This news http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2
I'm back from coaching and the kid's rehearsal and the other story is persistent above all of the front page stories. As a green, I don't really approve of the smarmy attitude towards the green party in the linked story and it was, after all, the greens and libertarians who requested and paid for a recount in Ohio in 2004 that has since led to convictions in court. But I don't see why the link is not at least added as an update to the current story.s -selling-solar.html
--
Vote with your roof: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Yours is a refreshing view point. The way we say it is that the free flow of oil is in the nation's strategic interest. So, we spend a lot on making sure that it flows freely.
Ultimately we need the price of oil to fall below the cost of extraction but this will only come about by reducing demand to well below supply. Your method of taxing to reduce demand can be a part of this but I fear that doing this at the level that would cause productive wells to be shut down would be impoverishing. I suspect that rationing is the only equitable form of self restraint that will get us that far along the road to where we need to be.
Though there are some programs here to assist people with paying for home heating oil or gas if their income is low, most of our subsidies go to suppliers and producers rather than to buyers. Not all of the subsidies are in the form of money. Sometimes is is in the form of protection from liability or extreamly low royalites for using public land. And, for oil there is a blood subsidy as well.
We seem to be willing to spend as long as people are willing to lend so yes, there will be a time when continuing to borrow will be too expensive since people will no longer be willing to lend. I think we are begining to see some signs of this now as oil is starting to be traded in euros rather than dollars. This is the reason I am wondering about when we might seek a fixed exchange rate.
President Eisenhower made just the point you do. From my experience, however, from the inside, people feel that they are doing a very good thing protecting our country so that the coruption is easily overlooked. I don't know when spreading peace will become a priority again. There seems to be a slight turn happening here: http://securityandclimate.cna.org/report/.
I think that you are correct that cooperation on a broader scale would be good. I mentioned the gas tax because much of or defense spending supports "lower" oil prices. I've been wondering how soon we'll be asking for a fixed exchange rate with the euro in exchange for more controled spending on our part.
I suspect your right that conductor geometery is pretty key. The cross-sectional area formula is a pretty gross approximation. Some HVDC underground cable seems to look a little like co-ax, perhaps because capacitance with the ground is an issue. I do think that going to higher voltage is possible with a (perhaps hollow) fatter conductor since the corona discharge is really about a gradient.
Get your state to pass this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apporti onment_Amendment.
I think nuclear power is subsidized in Sweden and Sweden is relying on it to meet Kyoto. Though we're losing our touch I think, if you want to send some of that gas tax to us to cover our defense spending, we might not act so stuck up this time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_response_to_H urricane_Katrina. Glad you were so quick to offer help back then.
Look at the TOP of the firehose: there is another story from the Free Press that is ranked above all the stories on the main page. This one goes a lot further in its accusations.
Definitely not a jump start! That takes the highest current draw of all. These things are good if you leave a vehicle parked for a long time. They keep the battery topped off.