It is an imperfect analogy but the order on maginitide estimate based on connections and firing rate seems plausible. The point
of these efforts is to simulate to better understand how the brain works. Your assertions may be strengthened by such efforts.
If I recall, the sense of smell work argued that compounds were recongnized via their resonances which does not seem all that
special. Neon emission is recognized by it's color. Perhaps I missed something deeper in that article. So far as I can tell though
theories about the need for quantum effects in the brain do go deeper asserting that quantum coherence is operational the way
it might be in a quantum computer. The reason for invoking this is the idea that the brain is too capable to be explained without
an extra boost. Seems to me that opposed to this would be the Wolfram idea that you might make an effective insect brain out of very
simple algorithms running on simple circuits. If one can explain those behaviors in a simpler way then maintaining quantum coherence
at a warm temperature would not be a required cedulity straining element of a theory of the mind. This is where simulation may be
quite helpful.
Perhaps, yes, I think if you look at this in terms of power rather than energy you'll see that a delay in degradation
is not important. It surely is in terms of chemical energy stored though photosynthesis and subsequently entered
into the geological cabon cycle but once you've biult you wind farm, you only get a one time advantage which becomes
frationally less and less important as you continue to operate. You've introduced a time delay which you want to
ratio to the amount of time it would ordinarily take the wind to blow itself out (which may be less than unity) but
once your period of operation exceeds the time delay, you're basically in steady state and there is no further
advantage. Once you stop operating, the advantage is lost.
It is worth thinking about how wind normally loses
energy. For the most part it runs into other systems and disipates that way, but with regard to the ground, it loses
energy by say bending the stem of a leave, which heats the stem. In a system without storage, the wind immediately
lights a lightbulb and that light immediately degrades to heat when it hits a wall, so if it might have taken a little
more time for the wind to blow through a tree and make heat that way, then you've actually produced heat sooner. That is
pretty normal for extracting useful work.
The article says that the chip will work at 300 teraflops. The human brain might be rated at 100,000 teraflops http://www.setiai.com/archives/000035.html so there is still quite a lot of speed to make up. However, it
seems to me that through state saving (paging) one could simulate the connections between many more that a million
neurons using this device. If you virtualize as a cube 3000 deep and track connections between these layers in software
then processing over the virtual layers can proceed sequentially. So, it seems as though it won't take all that much
more hardware development to get to simulations on the human scale owing to the higher frequency of individual operations.
-- Solar, a bright idea http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
The strongest argument though for wind (with regard to golbal warming) is that it displaces fossil fuel use and thus greenhouse gas
emissions. Your argument about direct energy input is a less important effect. Had it been important it would have been included in
Fig. 2 here http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf though the number is getting to be a little bit like the value for the change
in the solar irradiance so that at a finer level of detail you are correct that it probably should be included. If so, it is important to subtract the contribution of hydro, biofuels, tidal, solar and wind from the total energy use because, while your previous correspondent was correct that all of it degrades to heat anyway so that there is no real cooling from using these sources, what
you are getting at is that there is no additional heating.
I think it makes sense to bring in additional arguments in this debate but when they are physical arguments they need to be kept in
a physical perspective. There are philosophical arguments as well for renewable energy use that can be taken as independent of the
global warming problem though I'd guess that the warming has had something to do with their application. Have a look at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-is-real-e nergy.html to see how William McDonough's thinking might work into this.
Check and I think you'll find that you've made an error. The number I think you want to compare is the equivilent solar
forcing since 1750 (2.4 W/m^2) which as a fraction of solar input is about 0.7%, but that is 0.7% of 174 petawatts, so 1.2e15 watts,
not 8.4e13 watts. So, you see you can't beat the Sun. Something I try to tell everyone these days.
The Sun is responsible for the energy input, the atmosphere is responsible for keeping the surface of the planet warmer
than it would be without an atmosphere. You could use wind energy to convert electricity to light in the optical passband
and shine that out into space since it can escape the atmosphere, but the effect would be completely negligible. You other
correspondent is correct, just about all of the wind energy turns into heat, but that is basically the just tail end of the solar
heating. None of the nuclear, fossil or tidal power we use is of any importance to the heat input, but fossil energy is important in the way it changes the way light passes through the atmosphere at infrared wavelengths.
--
The Sun, ti's what's for energy http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Ozone depletion has not stopped but it is turning around
Since the adoption and strengthening of the Montreal Protocol has led to reductions in the emissions of CFCs, atmospheric concentrations of the most significant compounds have been declining. These substances are being gradually removed from the atmosphere. By 2015, the Antarctic ozone hole would have reduced by only 1 million km out of 25 (Newman et al., 2004); complete recovery of the Antarctic ozone layer will not occur until the year 2050 or later. Work has suggested that a detectable (and statistically significant) recovery will not occur until around 2024, with ozone levels recovering to 1980 levels by around 2068 (Newman et al., 2006).
Depending on your age, 1980 does not seem like forever. Warming has been going on for longer, but what is a big deal now is that
we're pretty sure that we are the reason for it http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/knowing-warmin g.html. With ozone it was much easier to tell. Now, the signs that warming is happening are all over the place as well.
The reason for wanting to look at sequestration is that we might be in very big trouble with only extreme measures left as options. Then again, we might not. Eliminating the use of fossil fuels may be an adequate response which would be a good idea for many other
reasons anyway. --
Get solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
I'm not sure I understand your objections to ocean sequestration. The sinking of bacterial is an input into the geological carbon cycle, which is long term. The bacteria respond to that availability of iron, so they are not sequestering carbon now. How could
that be reduced?
I don't really like the idea of doing anything more than eliminating the use of fossil fuels, but a case can be made that we should
look at the possibility of feedback as a result of what we have already done. The geological cycle is what we have tampered with
so returning carbon to the geological cycle is the fix we need if we are heading for, or in, a feedback involving large natural carbon
pools such as melting trundra or insect infestation of boreal forests owing to warming.
The situation could be very desperate and we are just not able to measure it yet.
These are desperate measures under discussion, but they only come up because of the huge impact we've already had. We need to be
much more deliberate about how we harmonize with the ecosystem. To get there, we may need to take some pretty drastic steps. We
should be taking the simple steps of reducing our impact now in hopes that the more complex and costly measures won't be needed.
You're right the economic considerations a very different for offgrid. I'm a little worried that our (future) offgrid
systems will spur development in areas where human impact could be damaging. Still, it must be lovely where you live.
Thanks for the point about rebates, I'll look into this.
That's exactly right which, I think, is why the prize conditions stipulate that the method be economically viable. This is why
I've settled on fish. We are already geared up to replace the protein in our diet with fuel in our tanks: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2007/Update63. htm at least for a season. So, a new source of protein looks like it
might meet favorable market conditions. The oceans are about tapped out for fish with fisheries collapsing all over http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Fish/Fish_d ata.htm#fig2 while aquaculture is polluting in many aspects. Why not
them make the best of it and move the aquiculture out to the desolate regions and call the pollution sequestration? With a
major increase in the fish supply, natural stocks can be allowed to recover. The surface area should be adequate given the
photosynthetic efficency of single celled organisms http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html, the remaining
worry being the mixing of CO2 into the water. However, to win you only need to run the thing for ten years, so disolved CO2
and a little mixing from weather ought ot provide an adequate resevoir for that timescale.
I think your comment about making things convenient is very important especially in getting renewable energy going on a big
scale. But, when it comes to food, the political consequences of making anything inconvenient can be severe, so working on
assuring an over-supply makes a lot of sense. If Brown is right in the first link here, people are going to be very upset.
My experience is that when things have been rechecked as often as the IPCC report, it takes a real breakthrough to shift
the field. When that happens, it is not so much that everybody was wrong as there is just a new way of seeing things. I personally
don't question the Newtonian results all that much except where the Einsteinian results differ from them. Sometimes I do,
but this hasn't led to a lot of progress so far.
I think you are taking the yahoo aspect of attacking science a little too seriously. Much of that is simply done in bad faith. There
may be some sincere motive somewhere down there, but the method of argument is so often based on rhetorical methods that are
intended to mislead that one just has to become dismissive.
One can hope that it will turn out that climate is not sensitive to GHGs alone and some new unconsidered aspect may come into play to
make this so, at least for a period, but that hope looks pretty thin as things stand.
The motivation for this kind of scheme is that we are already messing with the ecosystem in a big way. That said, the space
based things seem very expensive and looking at alternative desperate measures first, or more seriously makes sense. The first
thing we could do is stop messing with the ecosystem. It is already clear that this costs much less than continuing to do so.
But, what if that is not enough because we've gone too far already? Thinking about these kinds of options is important
just to show how truely desperate they are.
-- Solar:http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/sl ashdot-users-selling-solar.html
Here, I've asked for folks interested in competeing for the $25 million prize to get in touch http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221624&cid=179 62344. I'd be interested in structuring this
in a manner similar to open source development. The basic idea is to use ocean seeding to build
new fisheries, thus turning a profit and making the carbon sequestration economically viable.
Actually, this can also be reversed to spur action. May businesses say they don't mind regulation, they just want it to
be consistent and predicatable so that they may plan. There have been more and more businesses calling for national legislative
action on GHG emissions because ad hoc state-by-state efforts make for a complex market. You could call them lazy, but not
always opposed to change.
- Rethink solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
The energy distribution of cosmic radiation is pretty steep and its is the low energy end that is affected by the magenetic field
transported away from the Sun by the solar wind. So, in a way you can say that the Sun's wind affects the most abundant cosmic rays.
This is a plus for the theory. The history of of the cosmic ray flux can be reconstructed from ice core measurements of beryllium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_Activity_ Proxies.png suggesting that, for example, the Sun's magnetic cycle continues
even when sunspot activity is reduced. C14 can also be used albeit at a lower time resolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon-14_with_ activity_labels.png. Note that Years Before Present can be ambiguous.
The reason this theory can be excluded from the recently released
report on climate change is that the report looks at warming after 1750 where the solar activity has had lower variability, modulo the 22 year cycle (Be data). This means the variables (cosmic radiation and GHG concentration) are seperable in modern times (because
we've changed the CO2 concentration so much). The effect of the Sun is small compared to what we are doing ourselves in the current warming http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/executive-summ ary.html.
Now were getting back to the original thread, using refridgeration. The Baltimore-Washington installation wants to cool the gas to reduce pressure specs. Now here is a wild idea, suppose we use CO2 as the working fluid. I was thinking about this for carbon sequestration in the late eighties though I'd have taken advantage of the low brightness temperature of the sky over Antactica.
If you store CO2 as a cold solid, you could recover energy in two steps. 1) Use a sterling engine to transfer heat to the solid
then 2) Once the solid has sublimated use the pressure to drive a turbine. You would probably want to boost the turbine the
way you propose so there is a need to feed in both oxygen and fuel. Recapturing the CO2 would require a big volume I think,
but it would not have to be under pressure, in fact you would not want it under pressure at the turbine output. Perhaps a blader
would do. When the wind blows then the blader is deflated and the dry ice reformed. This keeps everything at low pressure
except the feed in to the turbine where the sterling engine acting as a heat pipe. I'm not so good as you are at making drawings,
but I see a big radiator for the warm side of the sterling engine extending into the turbine output, the dry ice fed to a chamber
at the cold end of the sterling engine. The chamber acts as a stop valve. Once sublimates, the CO2 runs in to the preheater along
with fuel-air mix as you've drawn. To return the CO2 to solid you refriderate it with wind power. You'll want to let off the
nitrogen that came in with the fuel air mix, water formed through condensation can be drained off for another use, and extra dry ice
can be shipped to wherever it might be useful.
There are a number of other phases for CO2 mixed with other things, here's a phase diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CO2HydrPhaseDia gram.jpg. I don't see anything that jumps out at me here though. The
main thing about the solid is low volume and low pressure for storage, though you still need a large volume to retain it
once it is sublimated. And, if you don't keep it, you waste a lot of energy cooling nitrogen, oxygen and argon.
The main article is talking about load shifting rather than energy storage through there is a delta T involved.
A number of industries can do this and do when they get discounts. But, at the point where the renewable
power sources on the grid can meet total demand at some instant in time, we are going to need a fairly robust
energy storage network or else we'll need to leave a portion of the energy unused. This would be a roadblock
to making renewables the dominant energy source to further displace polluting energy sources. The traditional
way of doing this, using biofuels as storage, could play a big role if we think of these as supplemental rather
than replacement sources of energy. I'm not sure I'm saying this clearly: Straight catchem as you can renewables can supply our total energy need while biofuels have an efficiency problem and can't, so it is better not to think of them as a replacement but rather as a useful kluge that can help around the edges. At http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html I sketch
out the relative efficiencies of various biofuels and PV solar power. --
You can get going with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
The deal is done, just not announced. While plants are operating at capacity sometimes, there is a constraint on the supply
of solar grade silicon. This makes solar unaffordable unless you a very commited to it. You didn't answer my question about
what your system cost, but I expect you'll see payback in about 18 years on a cash for cash basis. However, you'd have been
financially better off to invest that money at a higher rate of return. What happens when you produce at a large scale and
make your own supply of solar grade silicon is that the pay back time shortens considerably and solar becomes a good financial
investment. So, you are seeing a big deal with the usual timing issues related to PR.
You might want to look at the resale value of your system in the current market and see if you can gain an advantge by selling
it and getting one of ours. Most likely not since we're after profit and this would make the difference. We do have
5 year contracts and in five years we should have brought the cost of systems for sale down by a lot. So, you might gain
by selling now while the market is high, bide some time and buy in again when we've brought it down. Since you already have
solar, there is plenty of time to think about this. We do expect to have wait times though so you'd want to time such a
move with that in mind.
Making this profitable seems a little difficult at first blush, but the article mentions that fish were attracted in the second experiment. Since world fisheries are collapsing all over the place, one might consider this a form of aquaculture: build your
own fishery. Some of the big harvesting ships might carry iron out, fish, deliver and repeat. This could take pressure off the
natural ecosystem and give it a chance to recover. Owing to the Law of the Sea, it is very hard to come to fishing arrangements
that avoid over fishing. It needs to be done at the diplomatic level usually on a species by species basis and even then enforcement
is very difficult in international waters. This is sometimes called the tragedy of the commons. Perhaps a deal could be struck
to allow real enforcement on fishing of non-fertilized species in exchange for economic territories in the desolate low iron zones.
Since the prize is for reducing the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the scheme mentioned at the end of the article won't work
with regard to winning the prize. Any carbon credits earned would have to be retired wihout being traded.
With regard to measuring sequestration, one would want to subtract the carbon in the fish since in this case we'll breath it back
out to the atmosphere, but this should be only a small fraction of the carbon flux. If anyone wants to help with the numbers,
I'd be interested in forming a group to consider entering this for the prize. What do you think denis-The-menace?
--
Switch to solar http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
I'm glad you do. I expect to join you in September. How much did you spend on your system and how much does it produce?
As you can see in the parent, I'm proving quantitative information. You can back out the system cost from the lowest offered rate
though I give the cost per peak W elsewhere ($1.53, much less than you paid). If you think for just a little bit about this, the
system shakeout installs, where the monitoring/billing software can be tested in the field, are going to have to happen before
any money is collected. So, why do you jump to this conclusion? A 500 MW per year fabrication plant needs about 100,000 customers
per year. Does in not make sense to pre-sell the capacity so that it will be able produce at capacity? If not, then the systems will cost more. If you look at the parent,
the subject is the cost of solar power. It is now competative with fossil fuels. That is quite interesting. As you own expereince
must show, this is a change. It's news.
The prize conditions do mention that the carbon has to be kept out of the atmosphere for 1000 years, so if you make a useful
product, you've got to be sure that it is not useful in a way that it goes back into the atmopshere. Fuel is out, some plastics
which degrade are out too. For long term storage, mineralization looks good: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/300/ 5626/1677 though not terribly useful. Need to read whole article so this might send you to the library. It might be better to put the
carbon into soil as charcoal, using the only a portion of the potential combustion energy from biofuels. Engineer-Poet has been
working on this.
-- Don't burn coal http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Slashdot Mirror
It is an imperfect analogy but the order on maginitide estimate based on connections and firing rate seems plausible. The point of these efforts is to simulate to better understand how the brain works. Your assertions may be strengthened by such efforts.
If I recall, the sense of smell work argued that compounds were recongnized via their resonances which does not seem all that special. Neon emission is recognized by it's color. Perhaps I missed something deeper in that article. So far as I can tell though theories about the need for quantum effects in the brain do go deeper asserting that quantum coherence is operational the way it might be in a quantum computer. The reason for invoking this is the idea that the brain is too capable to be explained without an extra boost. Seems to me that opposed to this would be the Wolfram idea that you might make an effective insect brain out of very simple algorithms running on simple circuits. If one can explain those behaviors in a simpler way then maintaining quantum coherence at a warm temperature would not be a required cedulity straining element of a theory of the mind. This is where simulation may be quite helpful.
Perhaps, yes, I think if you look at this in terms of power rather than energy you'll see that a delay in degradation is not important. It surely is in terms of chemical energy stored though photosynthesis and subsequently entered into the geological cabon cycle but once you've biult you wind farm, you only get a one time advantage which becomes frationally less and less important as you continue to operate. You've introduced a time delay which you want to ratio to the amount of time it would ordinarily take the wind to blow itself out (which may be less than unity) but once your period of operation exceeds the time delay, you're basically in steady state and there is no further advantage. Once you stop operating, the advantage is lost.
It is worth thinking about how wind normally loses energy. For the most part it runs into other systems and disipates that way, but with regard to the ground, it loses energy by say bending the stem of a leave, which heats the stem. In a system without storage, the wind immediately lights a lightbulb and that light immediately degrades to heat when it hits a wall, so if it might have taken a little more time for the wind to blow through a tree and make heat that way, then you've actually produced heat sooner. That is pretty normal for extracting useful work.
The article says that the chip will work at 300 teraflops. The human brain might be rated at 100,000 teraflops http://www.setiai.com/archives/000035.html so there is still quite a lot of speed to make up. However, it seems to me that through state saving (paging) one could simulate the connections between many more that a million neurons using this device. If you virtualize as a cube 3000 deep and track connections between these layers in software then processing over the virtual layers can proceed sequentially. So, it seems as though it won't take all that much more hardware development to get to simulations on the human scale owing to the higher frequency of individual operations.s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar, a bright idea http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The strongest argument though for wind (with regard to golbal warming) is that it displaces fossil fuel use and thus greenhouse gas emissions. Your argument about direct energy input is a less important effect. Had it been important it would have been included in Fig. 2 here http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf though the number is getting to be a little bit like the value for the change in the solar irradiance so that at a finer level of detail you are correct that it probably should be included. If so, it is important to subtract the contribution of hydro, biofuels, tidal, solar and wind from the total energy use because, while your previous correspondent was correct that all of it degrades to heat anyway so that there is no real cooling from using these sources, what you are getting at is that there is no additional heating.
e nergy.html to see how William McDonough's thinking might work into this.
I think it makes sense to bring in additional arguments in this debate but when they are physical arguments they need to be kept in a physical perspective. There are philosophical arguments as well for renewable energy use that can be taken as independent of the global warming problem though I'd guess that the warming has had something to do with their application. Have a look at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-is-real-
Check and I think you'll find that you've made an error. The number I think you want to compare is the equivilent solar forcing since 1750 (2.4 W/m^2) which as a fraction of solar input is about 0.7%, but that is 0.7% of 174 petawatts, so 1.2e15 watts, not 8.4e13 watts. So, you see you can't beat the Sun. Something I try to tell everyone these days.
Actually the statement from that article is meaningless since 7 years is not an adequate span to see a trend, however 1999 had a lower temperature than 2006 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2006 /ann/glob_jan-dec-error-bar_pg.gif and the
slope is steeper that the 1970 to 2006 trend.s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The Sun is responsible for the energy input, the atmosphere is responsible for keeping the surface of the planet warmer than it would be without an atmosphere. You could use wind energy to convert electricity to light in the optical passband and shine that out into space since it can escape the atmosphere, but the effect would be completely negligible. You other correspondent is correct, just about all of the wind energy turns into heat, but that is basically the just tail end of the solar heating. None of the nuclear, fossil or tidal power we use is of any importance to the heat input, but fossil energy is important in the way it changes the way light passes through the atmosphere at infrared wavelengths.s -selling-solar.html
--
The Sun, ti's what's for energy http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Depending on your age, 1980 does not seem like forever. Warming has been going on for longer, but what is a big deal now is that we're pretty sure that we are the reason for it http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/knowing-warmi
The reason for wanting to look at sequestration is that we might be in very big trouble with only extreme measures left as options. Then again, we might not. Eliminating the use of fossil fuels may be an adequate response which would be a good idea for many other reasons anyway.
--
Get solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I'm not sure I understand your objections to ocean sequestration. The sinking of bacterial is an input into the geological carbon cycle, which is long term. The bacteria respond to that availability of iron, so they are not sequestering carbon now. How could that be reduced?
I don't really like the idea of doing anything more than eliminating the use of fossil fuels, but a case can be made that we should look at the possibility of feedback as a result of what we have already done. The geological cycle is what we have tampered with so returning carbon to the geological cycle is the fix we need if we are heading for, or in, a feedback involving large natural carbon pools such as melting trundra or insect infestation of boreal forests owing to warming.
The situation could be very desperate and we are just not able to measure it yet.
Hear! Hear!
These are desperate measures under discussion, but they only come up because of the huge impact we've already had. We need to be much more deliberate about how we harmonize with the ecosystem. To get there, we may need to take some pretty drastic steps. We should be taking the simple steps of reducing our impact now in hopes that the more complex and costly measures won't be needed.
You're right the economic considerations a very different for offgrid. I'm a little worried that our (future) offgrid systems will spur development in areas where human impact could be damaging. Still, it must be lovely where you live. Thanks for the point about rebates, I'll look into this.
That's exactly right which, I think, is why the prize conditions stipulate that the method be economically viable. This is why I've settled on fish. We are already geared up to replace the protein in our diet with fuel in our tanks: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2007/Update63. htm at least for a season. So, a new source of protein looks like it
might meet favorable market conditions. The oceans are about tapped out for fish with fisheries collapsing all over http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Fish/Fish_d ata.htm#fig2 while aquaculture is polluting in many aspects. Why not
them make the best of it and move the aquiculture out to the desolate regions and call the pollution sequestration? With a
major increase in the fish supply, natural stocks can be allowed to recover. The surface area should be adequate given the
photosynthetic efficency of single celled organisms http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html, the remaining
worry being the mixing of CO2 into the water. However, to win you only need to run the thing for ten years, so disolved CO2
and a little mixing from weather ought ot provide an adequate resevoir for that timescale.
I think your comment about making things convenient is very important especially in getting renewable energy going on a big scale. But, when it comes to food, the political consequences of making anything inconvenient can be severe, so working on assuring an over-supply makes a lot of sense. If Brown is right in the first link here, people are going to be very upset.
My experience is that when things have been rechecked as often as the IPCC report, it takes a real breakthrough to shift the field. When that happens, it is not so much that everybody was wrong as there is just a new way of seeing things. I personally don't question the Newtonian results all that much except where the Einsteinian results differ from them. Sometimes I do, but this hasn't led to a lot of progress so far.
I think you are taking the yahoo aspect of attacking science a little too seriously. Much of that is simply done in bad faith. There may be some sincere motive somewhere down there, but the method of argument is so often based on rhetorical methods that are intended to mislead that one just has to become dismissive.
One can hope that it will turn out that climate is not sensitive to GHGs alone and some new unconsidered aspect may come into play to make this so, at least for a period, but that hope looks pretty thin as things stand.
The motivation for this kind of scheme is that we are already messing with the ecosystem in a big way. That said, the space based things seem very expensive and looking at alternative desperate measures first, or more seriously makes sense. The first thing we could do is stop messing with the ecosystem. It is already clear that this costs much less than continuing to do so. But, what if that is not enough because we've gone too far already? Thinking about these kinds of options is important just to show how truely desperate they are.l ashdot-users-selling-solar.html
--
Solar:http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/s
Here, I've asked for folks interested in competeing for the $25 million prize to get in touch http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221624&cid=179 62344. I'd be interested in structuring this
in a manner similar to open source development. The basic idea is to use ocean seeding to build
new fisheries, thus turning a profit and making the carbon sequestration economically viable.
Actually, this can also be reversed to spur action. May businesses say they don't mind regulation, they just want it to be consistent and predicatable so that they may plan. There have been more and more businesses calling for national legislative action on GHG emissions because ad hoc state-by-state efforts make for a complex market. You could call them lazy, but not always opposed to change.s -selling-solar.html
-
Rethink solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The energy distribution of cosmic radiation is pretty steep and its is the low energy end that is affected by the magenetic field transported away from the Sun by the solar wind. So, in a way you can say that the Sun's wind affects the most abundant cosmic rays. This is a plus for the theory. The history of of the cosmic ray flux can be reconstructed from ice core measurements of beryllium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_Activity_ Proxies.png suggesting that, for example, the Sun's magnetic cycle continues
even when sunspot activity is reduced. C14 can also be used albeit at a lower time resolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon-14_with_ activity_labels.png. Note that Years Before Present can be ambiguous.
m ary.html.
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The reason this theory can be excluded from the recently released report on climate change is that the report looks at warming after 1750 where the solar activity has had lower variability, modulo the 22 year cycle (Be data). This means the variables (cosmic radiation and GHG concentration) are seperable in modern times (because we've changed the CO2 concentration so much). The effect of the Sun is small compared to what we are doing ourselves in the current warming http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/executive-sum
It seems to me that the link in the original article must be misrepresenting the recent IPCC climate report so while the experiment is certainly interesting, not much can be said regarding its impact on the conclusions drawn there http://www.ipcc.ch/.
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Get solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Now were getting back to the original thread, using refridgeration. The Baltimore-Washington installation wants to cool the gas to reduce pressure specs. Now here is a wild idea, suppose we use CO2 as the working fluid. I was thinking about this for carbon sequestration in the late eighties though I'd have taken advantage of the low brightness temperature of the sky over Antactica. If you store CO2 as a cold solid, you could recover energy in two steps. 1) Use a sterling engine to transfer heat to the solid then 2) Once the solid has sublimated use the pressure to drive a turbine. You would probably want to boost the turbine the way you propose so there is a need to feed in both oxygen and fuel. Recapturing the CO2 would require a big volume I think, but it would not have to be under pressure, in fact you would not want it under pressure at the turbine output. Perhaps a blader would do. When the wind blows then the blader is deflated and the dry ice reformed. This keeps everything at low pressure except the feed in to the turbine where the sterling engine acting as a heat pipe. I'm not so good as you are at making drawings, but I see a big radiator for the warm side of the sterling engine extending into the turbine output, the dry ice fed to a chamber at the cold end of the sterling engine. The chamber acts as a stop valve. Once sublimates, the CO2 runs in to the preheater along with fuel-air mix as you've drawn. To return the CO2 to solid you refriderate it with wind power. You'll want to let off the nitrogen that came in with the fuel air mix, water formed through condensation can be drained off for another use, and extra dry ice can be shipped to wherever it might be useful.
a gram.jpg. I don't see anything that jumps out at me here though. The
main thing about the solid is low volume and low pressure for storage, though you still need a large volume to retain it
once it is sublimated. And, if you don't keep it, you waste a lot of energy cooling nitrogen, oxygen and argon.
There are a number of other phases for CO2 mixed with other things, here's a phase diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CO2HydrPhaseDi
Looks good. I wonder how ofter the resevoirs are available, or if they can be easily escavated.
Thanks for these links. This is really helpful. I'm trying to collect ideas on enrgy storage at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewables -displace-nukes-first.html because this is crucial to
converting to renewables. There is a link to a promising flywheel technology there that should be helpful
for distibuted storage at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/saving-not-bor rowing.html.
s .html I sketch
out the relative efficiencies of various biofuels and PV solar power.s -selling-solar.html
The main article is talking about load shifting rather than energy storage through there is a delta T involved. A number of industries can do this and do when they get discounts. But, at the point where the renewable power sources on the grid can meet total demand at some instant in time, we are going to need a fairly robust energy storage network or else we'll need to leave a portion of the energy unused. This would be a roadblock to making renewables the dominant energy source to further displace polluting energy sources. The traditional way of doing this, using biofuels as storage, could play a big role if we think of these as supplemental rather than replacement sources of energy. I'm not sure I'm saying this clearly: Straight catchem as you can renewables can supply our total energy need while biofuels have an efficiency problem and can't, so it is better not to think of them as a replacement but rather as a useful kluge that can help around the edges. At http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesi
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You can get going with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The deal is done, just not announced. While plants are operating at capacity sometimes, there is a constraint on the supply of solar grade silicon. This makes solar unaffordable unless you a very commited to it. You didn't answer my question about what your system cost, but I expect you'll see payback in about 18 years on a cash for cash basis. However, you'd have been financially better off to invest that money at a higher rate of return. What happens when you produce at a large scale and make your own supply of solar grade silicon is that the pay back time shortens considerably and solar becomes a good financial investment. So, you are seeing a big deal with the usual timing issues related to PR.
You might want to look at the resale value of your system in the current market and see if you can gain an advantge by selling it and getting one of ours. Most likely not since we're after profit and this would make the difference. We do have 5 year contracts and in five years we should have brought the cost of systems for sale down by a lot. So, you might gain by selling now while the market is high, bide some time and buy in again when we've brought it down. Since you already have solar, there is plenty of time to think about this. We do expect to have wait times though so you'd want to time such a move with that in mind.
Making this profitable seems a little difficult at first blush, but the article mentions that fish were attracted in the second experiment. Since world fisheries are collapsing all over the place, one might consider this a form of aquaculture: build your own fishery. Some of the big harvesting ships might carry iron out, fish, deliver and repeat. This could take pressure off the natural ecosystem and give it a chance to recover. Owing to the Law of the Sea, it is very hard to come to fishing arrangements that avoid over fishing. It needs to be done at the diplomatic level usually on a species by species basis and even then enforcement is very difficult in international waters. This is sometimes called the tragedy of the commons. Perhaps a deal could be struck to allow real enforcement on fishing of non-fertilized species in exchange for economic territories in the desolate low iron zones.
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Since the prize is for reducing the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the scheme mentioned at the end of the article won't work with regard to winning the prize. Any carbon credits earned would have to be retired wihout being traded.
With regard to measuring sequestration, one would want to subtract the carbon in the fish since in this case we'll breath it back out to the atmosphere, but this should be only a small fraction of the carbon flux. If anyone wants to help with the numbers, I'd be interested in forming a group to consider entering this for the prize. What do you think denis-The-menace?
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Switch to solar http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I'm glad you do. I expect to join you in September. How much did you spend on your system and how much does it produce?
As you can see in the parent, I'm proving quantitative information. You can back out the system cost from the lowest offered rate though I give the cost per peak W elsewhere ($1.53, much less than you paid). If you think for just a little bit about this, the system shakeout installs, where the monitoring/billing software can be tested in the field, are going to have to happen before any money is collected. So, why do you jump to this conclusion? A 500 MW per year fabrication plant needs about 100,000 customers per year. Does in not make sense to pre-sell the capacity so that it will be able produce at capacity? If not, then the systems will cost more. If you look at the parent, the subject is the cost of solar power. It is now competative with fossil fuels. That is quite interesting. As you own expereince must show, this is a change. It's news.
You can get it now. Click any of the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html. Large
scale fabrication brings the cost down to $1.53 per peak W.
The prize conditions do mention that the carbon has to be kept out of the atmosphere for 1000 years, so if you make a useful product, you've got to be sure that it is not useful in a way that it goes back into the atmopshere. Fuel is out, some plastics which degrade are out too. For long term storage, mineralization looks good: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/300/ 5626/1677 though not terribly useful. Need to read whole article so this might send you to the library. It might be better to put the
carbon into soil as charcoal, using the only a portion of the potential combustion energy from biofuels. Engineer-Poet has been
working on this.
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Don't burn coal http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user