Well, we've ramped up quickly to save Europe before so I don't think that is the issue. And, if the initial indications of
a reduced salinity in the North Atlantic continue to build, it would make WWII kind of pointless not to make some kind of effort.
Our systems supply 100% of a home's power usage over a year. Granted, they still need the grid and other power sources, but those
power sources are used that much less. We can do this up to about 25% of the power consumed on the grid without needing to reengineer
the grid. So, it makes a lot of sense to start this way while at the same time planning for the reengineering that will be needed
down the road. To me, energy storage is the key issue because a roof can do 100% already. I'm definitely taking suggestions on this
at the Real Energy Blog: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/.
Still, things do look ominous with the more rapid than anticipate melting in Greenland. We may have crossed a threshold on the
circulation without having any sure way of knowing until the extreme effects are manifested. Still, does it not seem to you that
a reduced heat input in the North Atlantic might slow the melting and thus bounce us back after a short while?
Yes, Price-Anderson is the Act that makes commercial use of nuclear power possible. For Chornobyl the periodic control zone is
about 5000 sq mi (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0 7/Chornobyl_radiation_map.jpg) or 3.2 million acres. So,
the limit of $10 billion liability comes to about $3000 per acre, not even what unimproved land sells for. With a $250,000 house
per acre, we see the magnitude of the liability subsidy. You may feel that is fair, but I feel it is a market distortion. And, as
you say, nuclear power is not possible without it. Nuclear power has not demonstrated itself to be clean even disregarding the
waste problem as numerous accidents have shown.
Actually solar grade silicon often comes from semiconductor scrap. It does not have to be as pure. But, as a poor cousin of the
semiconductor industry, the supply of scrap is not in the control of the solar power industry. You're worries about high tempertures
for long periods are largely addressed by larger scale production which helps with heat management. Solar is now cost competitive: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Only under a model where Yucca Mountian happens, without that, the DOE waste fund is a complete sham. Freedom from liability is another huge subsidy for the nuclear industry as well. For fossil fuels, we may be hopeful that plants will aid us in sequestration, though
this still obviously takes a solar energy input. For nuclear waste, we're pretty much lacking a paddle in that proverbial creek.
---
Solar Energy: a market solution: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
No EXTRA heat generation, but my point is that none of our heat generation is of any importance. True, you can change the Earth's
albedo slightly by putting a solar panel on a white roof, but the change in albedo caused by the melting of the northern ice and
snow cover is hugely more important. This is the result of the increase in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The present
warming of the Earth is all about how we are changing the atmosphere and it's radiative transport, our very small contribution of
energy use compared to the dominant solar input has no desernable effect. Even urban heat islands, where our energy use is concentrated, are primarily a radiative effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island. --- Participate in real power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
I think you are confusing manufacturing cost with retail price. At current retail, set by the scarcity of solar grade silicon,
the payback time is about 12 years. But manufacturing cost is much lower than this. The energy
pay back time is less than 5 years, and, as you say, the input energy is typically renewable in any case. --- Solar: it's what cooks dinner: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Well, actually any heat we generate is miniscule compared to what comes in every day from the Sun, so your take on nuclear power
contributing to heating is not actually a big deal. But, you're right that the competition for resources involved with ethanol
could be a problem. Some think it is a near term problem just because of governement incentives: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2007/Update63. htm.
No, I was saying that raising the stakes increases both risks and rewards, Bruno is sort of a limiting case on the risk side. I also
think the grapes are sourer on all sides of the fence, just as base motivations are present everywhere as you point out. But, for the level of creativity that might go beyond anything that a prize could adequately recognize, highly refined motivations probably have a
role to play of necessity. I like prizes. I just think that they can limit total potential creativity and thus be counter productive
if the goal is advancing science. If, in the Baconian view, it does not matter who does the work, then getting more groups on the
problem may make up for the limiting tendency, but if, say, getting a Nobel makes people do less future work, and their potential
contributions are unique, then it could end up being a loss. But Bacon might be right. ---- Burma Shave: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
I think some professional societies have been a little too enthusastic when it comes to promoting the prospects for employment in
their fields. Your analysis should be included in profesional society literuature. My advisor, in astronomy, had one Ph.D. student partly
because he saw the same math as you. But, your mention of math reminds be of another internal drive which is approching the sublime.
In this case, any prize that turns up becomes irrelevant. We've seen a recent case of a major prize being declined: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/2 2/1751225 for proving the Poincare conjecture. It is also worth remembering that
making the stakes high can cut another way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno. ---
Solar + geothermal heat + a plug in hybrid = no personal fossil fuel consumption. Get started at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
I agree that human nature contains an urge to compete, but I'd add cooperate, contemplate, inquire and many other drives.
For myself, I like the horse race aspect of those prize competitions. And, I think that competition can bring out more in people
than they thought they could do, as well. I just don't think it always can bring out everything they can do. That is the limiting
aspect: the goal, however lofty, is still a cutoff of achievement.
---
This tag is not about solar power.
Soory, I hadn't thought you would intentionally bais the direction of the bicycle's fall. Let me be clear then, you wish to equate
weather and climate instabilities as being of the same nature but different time scales. In weather one can make fairly accurate
short term predictions based on physical models. Similarly in climate one can do the same, only the short term for climate is
much longer than for weather. The insistance on the Sun being the only important thing is incorrect and can not lead to
a useful understanding of climate. The temperature variations you give are very small and much smaller than the difference
in temperature of the surface of the Earth with or without an atmosphere. The composition of the atmosphere is of key importance.
The Earth's tilt wiht respect to its orbit is 23 degrees so a seasonal change ot 46 degrees does not seem like an "itsy bit" unless
you are somehow confused and are taking a changed distance to the Sun as being what is important. It is actually the length of the
day and dilution of the sunlight owing to the tilt angle that is important. Since the prospects for a hotter Sun, on the timescale that
you concede is OK for making climate predictions, are vanishingly small, your insistance that this is the most important thing to consider seems stubborn at best.
Regarding FUD, as you can see at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html the intent to deceive is present in the ExxonMobil campaign. This has no part in science, where uncertanties are quantified, doubt is used to
perfect experiment and curiosity rather than fear is the motive.
-----
Glad you have solar. Try net metering.
Well, your bycycle example it a good one. The FUD that is being spread about warming often says "we can't predict the weather five
days out, how can there be any certainty about 30 years out." It is difficult to predict if your bicycle will fall to the left or to the right, but, as you say, knowing that it will fall is pretty easy. The weather prediction problem is like the left-right question,
climate prediction is like the will it fall question.
On the other hand, the factors that go into climate are many. Insisting that it is the Sun alone is incorrect. If you liked Silent Spring, you'll probably enjoy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisyworld where feedback is simply introduced. "Daisyworld arguably demonstrates that biologically mediated homeostasis does not require a teleological explanation." So, no magic either....
------
Already have solar? Make it easy for your friends: http://www.powur.com/mdsolar
Tha't the one. In my opinion, butterflies probably have little to do with tornado weather, but I'm
happy to concede that which path they take may have depended on when a butterfly took flight.
My favorite butterfly effect predates this idea: Chuang Tzu had a beautiful dream that he was a butterfly. From that day he
was never certain that he was a philosopher dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a philosopher.
----
Flutter by here to get solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Volcanos cause short term cooling until the ash falls out. Many volcanos erupting together cause longer term warming
owing to the higher CO2 concentration.
You seem to want the climate to be entirely free from constraints of cause and effect, it can go wherever it wants for
no reason at all. This is, I think, what you mean by instability. Climate feedbacks do occur but this is not the same thing
as the butterfly effect which makes weather difficult to predict. Climate follows forcing and both the short term aerosols
that you cite and the long term GHG balance have definite effects on climate.
----
Because this false equating of weather behavior and climate behavior has been a major part of a well funded attempt to decieve the
public http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html you may want to closely scutinize what
has influenced your opinion here.
It really isn't clear from the article how they define the boundry. It seems like a geologically disturbed region
and somehow they put the boundry well above the glass. Yet tsunamis were supposed to have passed there so why not
just rapidly cover it we easily eroded disturbed sediment? If the boundry is defined by irridum, and they are drilling
in the bottom of a former river, again, sedimentation from irridum enriched erosion might expalain their measurement.
There is quite a lot of evidence that in less disturbed regions the irridum layer marks the dissaperance of megafauna
so why is the survival of microorganisms a tracer of these? The KT boundry does not mark the end of flora, insects or
microrganisms, just the big stuff.
I think you are most likely correct on the 'a lot' part, I'd even say 'the vast majority' for the simple reason that entry into science is accompanied by many hoops to jump through. Because this is part of the training, the habit of seeking recognition becomes pretty ingrained. And, it is pretty hard to be self-taught these days. It also seems to me that schools that have sought to counter this
bias in the past have been cowed by the insistence that the transcripts they issue be comparable with those of grade based institutions.
I seem to remember that Reed felt that its graduates weren't getting jobs dispite its extreme academic rigor. ----
Solar out of the box: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Slashdot Mirror
Well, we've ramped up quickly to save Europe before so I don't think that is the issue. And, if the initial indications of a reduced salinity in the North Atlantic continue to build, it would make WWII kind of pointless not to make some kind of effort. Our systems supply 100% of a home's power usage over a year. Granted, they still need the grid and other power sources, but those power sources are used that much less. We can do this up to about 25% of the power consumed on the grid without needing to reengineer the grid. So, it makes a lot of sense to start this way while at the same time planning for the reengineering that will be needed down the road. To me, energy storage is the key issue because a roof can do 100% already. I'm definitely taking suggestions on this at the Real Energy Blog: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/.
Still, things do look ominous with the more rapid than anticipate melting in Greenland. We may have crossed a threshold on the circulation without having any sure way of knowing until the extreme effects are manifested. Still, does it not seem to you that a reduced heat input in the North Atlantic might slow the melting and thus bounce us back after a short while?
Yes, Price-Anderson is the Act that makes commercial use of nuclear power possible. For Chornobyl the periodic control zone is about 5000 sq mi (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0 7/Chornobyl_radiation_map.jpg) or 3.2 million acres. So,
the limit of $10 billion liability comes to about $3000 per acre, not even what unimproved land sells for. With a $250,000 house
per acre, we see the magnitude of the liability subsidy. You may feel that is fair, but I feel it is a market distortion. And, as
you say, nuclear power is not possible without it. Nuclear power has not demonstrated itself to be clean even disregarding the
waste problem as numerous accidents have shown.
s -selling-solar.html
What to do with the nuclear waste fund? Until we know that, we'd do best to stop making more waste.
----
Have a strange love for nukes? That's OK. You can still save money using solar. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Actually, we can do it in much less time than that. Solar competes directly with coal. Look at this offer: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html.
Actually solar grade silicon often comes from semiconductor scrap. It does not have to be as pure. But, as a poor cousin of the semiconductor industry, the supply of scrap is not in the control of the solar power industry. You're worries about high tempertures for long periods are largely addressed by larger scale production which helps with heat management. Solar is now cost competitive: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Only under a model where Yucca Mountian happens, without that, the DOE waste fund is a complete sham. Freedom from liability is another huge subsidy for the nuclear industry as well. For fossil fuels, we may be hopeful that plants will aid us in sequestration, though this still obviously takes a solar energy input. For nuclear waste, we're pretty much lacking a paddle in that proverbial creek.s -selling-solar.html
---
Solar Energy: a market solution: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
That was http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/ 27/2054231 but the CNET article is gone now. The company site is
http://www.greenfuelonline.com/. I miss the chart in the article showing the relative photosynthetic efficency of different
crops. Algae can out on top, but still nowhere close to solar panels, so...s -selling-solar.html
---
Sprout silicon leaves for no more than you're paying now: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The tides slow the Moon but this pushes the Moon further out from the Earth rather than closer.
No EXTRA heat generation, but my point is that none of our heat generation is of any importance. True, you can change the Earth's albedo slightly by putting a solar panel on a white roof, but the change in albedo caused by the melting of the northern ice and snow cover is hugely more important. This is the result of the increase in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The present warming of the Earth is all about how we are changing the atmosphere and it's radiative transport, our very small contribution of energy use compared to the dominant solar input has no desernable effect. Even urban heat islands, where our energy use is concentrated, are primarily a radiative effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island.s -selling-solar.html
---
Participate in real power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Hum, you've forgotten the incredible subsidy nuclear power gets: It's been promised not to have to deal with the waste. That promise is not at all realistic since Yucca Mountian can't go forward. So, we're in a postion where we'll have to pay back all the energy we've ever gotten from nuclear power and then some. How much more expensive can you get? See: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/saving-not-bor rowing.html s -selling-solar.html
---
Get Real Energy: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I think you are confusing manufacturing cost with retail price. At current retail, set by the scarcity of solar grade silicon, the payback time is about 12 years. But manufacturing cost is much lower than this. The energy pay back time is less than 5 years, and, as you say, the input energy is typically renewable in any case.s -selling-solar.html
---
Solar: it's what cooks dinner: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
There is a perfectly good fusion reactor already and we orbit it. Tap in at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html. No need for fission at all.
Well, actually any heat we generate is miniscule compared to what comes in every day from the Sun, so your take on nuclear power contributing to heating is not actually a big deal. But, you're right that the competition for resources involved with ethanol could be a problem. Some think it is a near term problem just because of governement incentives: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2007/Update63. htm.
s -selling-solar.html
If Brown is correct, then buying flour now would be a good hedge.
----
Solar doesn't increase grain futures. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Some recent work suggests that this might not be the case http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314 /5805/1598.
s -selling-solar.html
---
Beat the rush into renewables: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
This is a really nice piece of work. A couple of technologies that were missed are marketing mechanisms related to solar http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/solar-power-am way-way.html
and fly wheels http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/saving-not-bor rowing.html, described on the Real Energy blog.
Slashdot didn't place, on the other hand, slashdot links to tech writing rather than reporting on technology itself, most of the time.s -selling-solar.html
----
Got solar? http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
No, I was saying that raising the stakes increases both risks and rewards, Bruno is sort of a limiting case on the risk side. I also think the grapes are sourer on all sides of the fence, just as base motivations are present everywhere as you point out. But, for the level of creativity that might go beyond anything that a prize could adequately recognize, highly refined motivations probably have a role to play of necessity. I like prizes. I just think that they can limit total potential creativity and thus be counter productive if the goal is advancing science. If, in the Baconian view, it does not matter who does the work, then getting more groups on the problem may make up for the limiting tendency, but if, say, getting a Nobel makes people do less future work, and their potential contributions are unique, then it could end up being a loss. But Bacon might be right.s -selling-solar.html
----
Burma Shave: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I think some professional societies have been a little too enthusastic when it comes to promoting the prospects for employment in their fields. Your analysis should be included in profesional society literuature. My advisor, in astronomy, had one Ph.D. student partly because he saw the same math as you. But, your mention of math reminds be of another internal drive which is approching the sublime. In this case, any prize that turns up becomes irrelevant. We've seen a recent case of a major prize being declined: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/2 2/1751225 for proving the Poincare conjecture. It is also worth remembering that
making the stakes high can cut another way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno. s -selling-solar.html
---
Solar + geothermal heat + a plug in hybrid = no personal fossil fuel consumption. Get started at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I agree that human nature contains an urge to compete, but I'd add cooperate, contemplate, inquire and many other drives.
For myself, I like the horse race aspect of those prize competitions. And, I think that competition can bring out more in people than they thought they could do, as well. I just don't think it always can bring out everything they can do. That is the limiting aspect: the goal, however lofty, is still a cutoff of achievement.
---
This tag is not about solar power.
Soory, I hadn't thought you would intentionally bais the direction of the bicycle's fall. Let me be clear then, you wish to equate weather and climate instabilities as being of the same nature but different time scales. In weather one can make fairly accurate short term predictions based on physical models. Similarly in climate one can do the same, only the short term for climate is much longer than for weather. The insistance on the Sun being the only important thing is incorrect and can not lead to a useful understanding of climate. The temperature variations you give are very small and much smaller than the difference in temperature of the surface of the Earth with or without an atmosphere. The composition of the atmosphere is of key importance. The Earth's tilt wiht respect to its orbit is 23 degrees so a seasonal change ot 46 degrees does not seem like an "itsy bit" unless you are somehow confused and are taking a changed distance to the Sun as being what is important. It is actually the length of the day and dilution of the sunlight owing to the tilt angle that is important. Since the prospects for a hotter Sun, on the timescale that you concede is OK for making climate predictions, are vanishingly small, your insistance that this is the most important thing to consider seems stubborn at best.c ould-be-paid-for-by.html the intent to deceive is present in the ExxonMobil campaign. This has no part in science, where uncertanties are quantified, doubt is used to
perfect experiment and curiosity rather than fear is the motive.
Regarding FUD, as you can see at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-
-----
Glad you have solar. Try net metering.
Well, your bycycle example it a good one. The FUD that is being spread about warming often says "we can't predict the weather five days out, how can there be any certainty about 30 years out." It is difficult to predict if your bicycle will fall to the left or to the right, but, as you say, knowing that it will fall is pretty easy. The weather prediction problem is like the left-right question, climate prediction is like the will it fall question.
On the other hand, the factors that go into climate are many. Insisting that it is the Sun alone is incorrect. If you liked Silent Spring, you'll probably enjoy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisyworld where feedback is simply introduced. "Daisyworld arguably demonstrates that biologically mediated homeostasis does not require a teleological explanation." So, no magic either....
------
Already have solar? Make it easy for your friends: http://www.powur.com/mdsolar
Tha't the one. In my opinion, butterflies probably have little to do with tornado weather, but I'm happy to concede that which path they take may have depended on when a butterfly took flight.
s -selling-solar.html
My favorite butterfly effect predates this idea: Chuang Tzu had a beautiful dream that he was a butterfly. From that day he was never certain that he was a philosopher dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a philosopher.
----
Flutter by here to get solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Volcanos cause short term cooling until the ash falls out. Many volcanos erupting together cause longer term warming owing to the higher CO2 concentration.
c ould-be-paid-for-by.html you may want to closely scutinize what
has influenced your opinion here.
s -selling-solar.html
You seem to want the climate to be entirely free from constraints of cause and effect, it can go wherever it wants for no reason at all. This is, I think, what you mean by instability. Climate feedbacks do occur but this is not the same thing as the butterfly effect which makes weather difficult to predict. Climate follows forcing and both the short term aerosols that you cite and the long term GHG balance have definite effects on climate.
----
Because this false equating of weather behavior and climate behavior has been a major part of a well funded attempt to decieve the public http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-
Skeptical about global warming? Who cares, you can still save money by switching to solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
It really isn't clear from the article how they define the boundry. It seems like a geologically disturbed region and somehow they put the boundry well above the glass. Yet tsunamis were supposed to have passed there so why not just rapidly cover it we easily eroded disturbed sediment? If the boundry is defined by irridum, and they are drilling in the bottom of a former river, again, sedimentation from irridum enriched erosion might expalain their measurement.
s -selling-solar.html
There is quite a lot of evidence that in less disturbed regions the irridum layer marks the dissaperance of megafauna so why is the survival of microorganisms a tracer of these? The KT boundry does not mark the end of flora, insects or microrganisms, just the big stuff.
More detail would be a big help here.
------
Halt global warming. Switch to solar power with ease: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I think you are most likely correct on the 'a lot' part, I'd even say 'the vast majority' for the simple reason that entry into science is accompanied by many hoops to jump through. Because this is part of the training, the habit of seeking recognition becomes pretty ingrained. And, it is pretty hard to be self-taught these days. It also seems to me that schools that have sought to counter this bias in the past have been cowed by the insistence that the transcripts they issue be comparable with those of grade based institutions. I seem to remember that Reed felt that its graduates weren't getting jobs dispite its extreme academic rigor.s -selling-solar.html
----
Solar out of the box: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
My grandparents gave me a half roll of these which I still have somewhere. I've found maybe three in change in my life.s -selling-solar.html
----
Moderate inflation with a 25 year fixed rate solar rental contract: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user