There is nothing quite as wonderful as money. There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash. Some people say it's folly, But I'd rather have the lolly. With money you can make a splash.
The technical term for this is EROEI (Energy returned on energy invested)
Yes.
Every energy source has this.
Of course. That is innate. Even in just lying in the sun. Fossil Oil simply has the advantage of being a "found" concentrate. The disadvantage of being "irreplacable" (within a timespan relevant to the human lifetime) initial capital.
Converting oil into solar panels is thus a sensible thing to do -
Of course. Often times the optimum solution. You won't find many cruising sailboats these days without a solar panel somewhere about. Some also drag generators.
. ..certainly better than burning, which is what you seem to be advocating?
Hardly. In fact I haven't advocated anything at all. What I am doing is noting that the burning is part of the process of converting oil into solar panels.
Clearly once bootstrapped any net positive EROEI can be self-powering, as long as the energy is in a suitable form.
Clearly. But net yields go down. Scarcity goes up. Crop fuels and photovoltaic power are also proportional to acerage and weather, something oil isn't. So you'll need backup at full capacity for those times when the crops fail or the sun goes down. Less oil also means you need more acerage for the same return in crops. Have you tried self sufficient farming? Certainly it's a good way to leverage oil, but leverage and replacment are two different things.
The reason people don't solar panels everywhere is simply because they are too expensive.
Of course. And they will remain so. In fact, as oil becomes more expensive they will become more expensive in real dollars, as a proportion of what you have available to spend. Dearer. Because we will be using energy obtained at a higher EROIE to make them; and thus increasing their own EROIE as well. It's a feedback system, although damped.
. ..from a purely energy physics point of view there is nothing wrong with the current production.
Of course not. Just add oil. Easy. In the abscence of oil, just add. ..something else, from . ..somewhere.
Again, not advocating, just noting.
If I were to advocate anything it would be contraception. Scarcity is relative to the population. Fewer people, more "stuff" per capita. Not too little oil. Too many damned rats in the cage. "Spaceship Earth" and all that.
Yes, Vyatta talks a good game, but 24/7 worldwide support isn't something you build with a few million bucks in VC funding.
JAWMMBOS (Just Another We Make Money By Offering Support) OSS company. Nothing revolutionary to see here. Move along.
Does it have a possible niche? Yeah, sure. Might even add something of value to the code pool. We'll see.
But that doesn't mean that "enterprise" will buy in, which is all this story is about. Putting a corporate face on OSS software to try to make enterprise comfortable buying in to it. It's not a tech story, which is kinda what I was hoping for when I clicked on it.
There is one factor that isn't addressed directly, only indirectly in terms of cost; and that's the incredible amount of energy required to make semiconductors (and you have to include the energy costs of creating the facilities in that) and that energy does not come from the solar cells the fab puts out. The whole affair would grind to a halt if you tried that, like a "free energy" machine unplugged from the wall. At which time the cost per any "excess" units would be phenomenal.
The whole thing runs on . ..oil. No oil. No solar cells. Ironic, innit?
And as the cost of oil goes up, the cost of manufaturing solar cells goes up. The break even point is an ever moving target proportional to the cost of what we're trying to replace with something cheaper, and/or compelled to consume its own output in a vain attempt to keep going.
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.
This is the Renewable Dilemma, that it takes energy to make usable energy and without a source external to the system it feeds on itself. It isn't about cost, it's about energy. To follow the money you need to follow the energy, because over the short run the money can be used to disguise what's really going on(investment, tax incentives, etc) at the energy level, but when the energy runs down, so does the money; and costs skyrocket.
So you grow biofuels to replace oil, which means you have to use your biofuels to grow your crops and refine them into fuel. How much fuel is actually left over when you've finished this and - at that point how much is the "excess" going to cost per gallon to the consumer - assuming there is any?
That is your true cost of renewables as an oil "replacement." What you have to pay when the oil is gone and no longer driving the process. Using solar cells to make solar cells.
You won't like it.
But are you starting to get it? Solar cells are expensive because it takes energy to make them.
I didn't know that Boyer actually made it to the Tour!
Oh, shit yeah. Rode it five times. Finished 12th in '83, the year before LeMond's first. I'll tell ya, there was some hootin' and hollerin' around my local bike shop over that one. Unlike other Americans who "visited" Europe to ride Jack completely acculturated himself as a Frenchman; and into the French amatuer system, in '73, That made all the difference.
. ..Jeannie Longo's unbelievable string of victories.
Ahhh, Jeannie's sumpin' else; and a geek! Mathematics and computer science at Grenoble. A shame she was born into a family that supported her fully, but a nation that didn't. She was one of the first to cross the pond in the other direction to find competition. I guess I'll never fully understand the French. Rene Arnoux once complained that he was a bigger hero in France when he was coming second in an Italain car than when he was winning in a French one. Elan! The valiant loss. I'm a huge fan of the man (or woman, Seana Hogan another God, another geek. MA in Mathematics) who "puts in the effort" myself, but one can overdue that if one isn't careful.
The purpose of a license plate number is to tie "you" to the car. It's the "face" you wear when you drive and public information. In a way technology is simply catching up to the technology.
Doesn't mean that any of us have to like it, but that's the way it is. Sitting in your car isn't the same as sitting in your home.
Ah, yes, George and his famous grimace. "Smile" is far too polite a word for it.
But Jackie Simes III was the one who really kicked it off in the late 60s. He was the one we all looked to as the first to give it a go in the post WWII era, but a track rider. Track was still huge in Europe, but nearly unheard of here though, so he never got any headlines. Silver medal in the worlds kilo in '68. Gave up the idea of a European career to try to restart pro racing in the US. He did it, but it took 20 years or so. Dave Chauner was the first American to actually win a Eurpean race, even though it was only amatuer and only in England it was a huge event for American cycling. John Allis brought the first American team overseas. Selected for the Olympic team 4 times (declined the fourth), but never turned pro. Then there was Jack Boyer, the model for Breaking Away, although Jack went "all French" instead of "all Italian." Expatriated to France, went pro in '77 and rode The Tour in '81. Mike Neel turned pro in Italy the same year Jack went pro in France.
The lead up to, and the '76 Olympic games themselves, is what really kicked started American pro cycling, more than any one rider. It showed our amatuers that they really could compete and gave them impetus to go to Europe.
But, to be honest though, it was the American amatuer women who led the way in international success, although mostly on track. Sheila Young, Sue Novara, Connie Carpenter, Miji Reoch. When the men were despairing of ever being comptetive the "girls" were kicking ass and showing us it could be done. In Europe women's cycling was culturally a kind of "Powder Puff" affair, but our women took it very seriously and showed results. I think a lot of American guys, perhaps even George, secretly held one of the women as his role model for success.
I'm a pure roadie, but to me Sue and Shiela were Gods.
. ..whoever can get completely bootstrapped off of oil first . ..
Piece of cake. I could do that tomorrow. At least so long as other people stay out of my way. Those other people can be a bitch though.
. ..viable replacements
Ahhhhhhh, well, see, there is what I am arguing. I can do it tomorrow by forgoing energy use. I believe that the cultural concept of "viable" includes "abudant." That you won't have to give up your car, your AC, your bananas flown in from Argentina, or simply your trips to the mall. I posit that is not possible on solar energy without first forgoing at least half of the world's population.
. ..going to make the most money.
Making it and keeping it are two different issues. Nevermind what it might be worth as a trade item. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
1. Alternative energy is the new 90's tech boom, and fortunes will be made and lost.
There ya go, we have a point of agreement, but I do not see that the fortunes have overmuch to do with the viablility of the technologies. That's purely market bullshit, in its own little insular world, at least until the bubble bursts. People who make the "right" investment in the wrong thing, but get out of it at the right time, may well do better in monetary terms than someone who got into the right thing at the wrong time. I'm talking strictly about technologies, not investment opportunities.
2. NO one tech can do it . ..
Nor should one. Putting all of our eggs in one barrel is what got us here in the first place.
. ..but many can.
This is where we may disagree, if by "can" you mean "can" maintain our "way of life." Our way of life is not sustainable by any combination of solar radiative technologies anywhere near within our grasp.
If by "can" you mean that we "can" build a new "way of life," well sure. Piece of cake, except for those other people. They might well make things very messy for the rest of us for awhile.
As you (or someone) said, hydrogen is just a transport.
I've been flogging that horse on Slashdot for years. Elsewhere for decades. For all I know I might have been the one that Smartinized(tm) some of the people flogging it under this particular article, but I did not participate.
You also need wind, solar, maybe biodiesel, all that other good stuff.
All solar energy. There's a bit to be had from geothermal and even the gravity of the moon, but those are likely to be of only local import for a long time.
And as much oil as you can buy, borrow, or steal to get it off the ground.
But buy, borrow, or steal it wisely. Wisdom is rarely easy. Cultures never adopt wisdom until it's that or death. Sometimes they opt for death. That often takes a lot of wise individuals with them. Life ain't fair.
We, as a society, are addicted to cheap energy, so if it is possible for us to have cheap energy without oil, we will . ..
Yeah, if only I can get just a bit more smack, really cheap, I'll be alright.
I know of one way, and only one way, at least for a time:
Nukes. And I'm not inclined to be pro-nuke until we're talking clean fussion.
. ..we won't have oil for much longer.
A point of agreement. At least not cheap, abundant oil, for the current world population.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not . ..
I am.
. ..you can still buy appliances with a cooling cycle based on this system.
Sure. There are still lots of places on earth, and even in America, where such a refrigerator is your only practical choice if you want something "conventional."
Apropos to the article the heat source I was talking about using to cool things that drew said criticism was. ..the Sun. It may not seem intuitive that placing something in the Sun can cool it, but if instead of thinking of it as "heating" that something you think of it as adding energy to the system it may become more obvious that such might be possible; if you have a sink available to absorb the heat, say, the air.
In this case by the sacrifice of a heated fluid when it changes to vapor, expands and carries its heat away into the air, which means you have to manually add more fluid. It's not "set and forget." Anyone from a native desert culture that has progressed to pottery making (I learned it from the Zapotecs) should be able to show you the system working; and show you that it works faster with direct exposure to the Sun, but to try a simple version simply wrap a damp towel around a water bottle.
And please note that while a portion of the towel (and the water saturating it) is being heated by the Sun the water bottle (and hence its contents) is entirely in the shade.
Early refrigeration used heat sources such as kerosene to expand the working fluid. ..
Don't be silly. I've been told right here on Slashdot that you can't make things cold by applying heat to the system. Anyone can see that doesn't make a lick of sense.
warmer regions (traditional buildings build with clay and wind-traps and smaller windows to the sunny side)
I've never lived so comfortably as when I lived in a traditional adobe house in a high desert region . ..at about 17 degrees north latitude. Simply lovely. Cool in the day when it was hot. Warm at night when it was cold. No heating, no airconditioning, but nearly always perfect for comfort.
Adobe, but built in a modern fashion, at sea level against the rainforest, not so nice at all; and the scorpions liked to hide in the tile roof during the day, and then drop down on you when when it got cold at night.
Location, location, location. Plus a bit of native engineering.
I'm a counter culturist who has been dealing with alternative energies since I was a physics student during the oil embargo of the 70s. I'm also a small scale farmer and the child of someone who grew up on a farm. I not only know stone age technologies as well, I practice them and enjoy it. If the weather is halfway decent when I start out I could wander into the woods naked and walk out again a couple years later, fat, happy and wearing a suit of woven cloth. Maybe carrying a fiddle. Certainly a flute and a banjo.
I know the tech. I know the land. I don't think you fully appreciate how much everything in our culture is tied to oil, even the so called "alternatives." Your food is grown with oil. Your clothes are made with oil, perhaps even from oil. Your home, your heat, your cool, your transport (even if you only bicycle, or even only walk), the roads themselves, the Internet, your solar cells, your pocket knife, your toys . ..all represent oil.
My fiddle, all handmade (except the steel strings) of natural materials almost entirely as they were made in the days of Amati . ..oil. The case I keep it in is almost 100% oil. Even the zipper.
It all runs on oil.
There may come a day when the "greens" are crawling on the their knees to Washington/Brussels begging for nuclear power to make their solar cells with, because when oil becomes scarce, everything becomes scarce.
Except the Sun.
I can live on the Sun. I don't think that's what most people have in mind when they think of "alternatives" though. I think what they envisage is corn and sugar or some such keeping things going pretty much as they are now; and even supplying our increasing demands.
Ain't gonna happen without oil to drive it, because oil represents thousands of years of concentrated solar energy at your fingertips to use up in a matter of seconds, no matter the local weather or the climate.
Concentrated . ..reliable. ..energy.
Unlike solar energy in the form of crops. Nevermind crops without the benefit of . ..oil, which provides labor, nutrition, pest control, water, heat when it's needed and the very tools with which to till the soil. Perhaps even some portion of the soil itself. Our entire agriculture is oil based. Growing more crops to produce biofuels means . ..using more oil.
Go get yerself an acre and work it for awhile, on solar energy alone. No oil, no oil based products, nothing made by burning oil. Nothing hauled in by the power of oil. I guarundamtee you'll larn yourself sumpin', even though to do it you'll still . ..be using oil (unless you walk nekkid maybe, it is impossible to avoid oil in our culture without going stone cold stone age).
I lost all of my crops to flood this year. Not even a blade of grass left alive. Nothing to be done about it. If it weren't for oil I'd be wandering off into the woods right now out of necessity instead of for fun. So would a lot of other people, which would make things kinda tight in the woods. As far as I'm concerned our problem isn't a shortage of oil, but an excess of people. I suppose the oil wars will help take care of that.
Anyhoo, now go back to your plot, but allow yourself some investment in oil upfront. Biiiiig difference. Now you've got improved soil, reliable water under pressure, steel, plastic, power tools.
But here's the kicker. That's a capital investment. A one shot deal. One season to play with oil, then it's gone again. Simulating going from here to there. When a part wears out, or the fuel is gone, you're going to have to come up with it, or its energy equivilent, from your land and the Sun.
See how long it takes to "wind down," and at what level of technology it winds down to, without oil to grease the wheels.
That's why I wrote my own timing software and made my own transponders/interface. But don't tell them that, they've got patents and shit. Nevermind that the prior art goes back to the 1920s and you can find everything you need to know in Mimms' books from Radio Shack.
Doing it the easy way limits you to 8 cars per heat (using the internal counting circuit of your computer's cpu), but not many clubs race more than that anyway.
While the Tour de France was certainly his focus he wasn't anywhere near the "Tour Specialist" that LeMond was, who was criticised for even spending most of his training time alone in Calfornia and only showing up in Europe for the Tour season.
Lance trained with the team in Europe. He won the Tour de Luxumbourg, the Tour de Suisse, the Dauphine Libere as well as riding in, and winning stages in, a number of other events.
He was hardly a one trick pony.
No, he didn't ride all the one day classics, like Eddy, but then Eddy had to just to make living. They didn't pay squat in those days.
Do you know anyone who has never had a medical condition treated with drugs?
Have you ever seen anyone undergoing chemotherapy? It isn't exactly performance enhancing. Neither is arthritis so bad you're going to need a new joint, no matter what sort of drugs they give you.
Slashdot Mirror
Only the atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt is helping them "fight" terror. . .
FFC.
KFG
Die dulci freure.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some fiddling to go do by the fire. I think "The Rights of Man."
KFG
There is nothing quite as wonderful as money.
There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash.
Some people say it's folly,
But I'd rather have the lolly.
With money you can make a splash.
- Eric Idle
KFG
And I'd be so pissed if the battery died halfway through the game.
Yeah, my first thought on seeing the story:
"Dice game that needs batteries. Lovely."
KFG
Damned dyslexia.
KFG
The technical term for this is EROEI (Energy returned on energy invested)
.certainly better than burning, which is what you seem to be advocating?
.from a purely energy physics point of view there is nothing wrong with the current production.
.something else, from . . .somewhere.
Yes.
Every energy source has this.
Of course. That is innate. Even in just lying in the sun. Fossil Oil simply has the advantage of being a "found" concentrate. The disadvantage of being "irreplacable" (within a timespan relevant to the human lifetime) initial capital.
Converting oil into solar panels is thus a sensible thing to do -
Of course. Often times the optimum solution. You won't find many cruising sailboats these days without a solar panel somewhere about. Some also drag generators.
. .
Hardly. In fact I haven't advocated anything at all. What I am doing is noting that the burning is part of the process of converting oil into solar panels.
Clearly once bootstrapped any net positive EROEI can be self-powering, as long as the energy is in a suitable form.
Clearly. But net yields go down. Scarcity goes up. Crop fuels and photovoltaic power are also proportional to acerage and weather, something oil isn't. So you'll need backup at full capacity for those times when the crops fail or the sun goes down. Less oil also means you need more acerage for the same return in crops. Have you tried self sufficient farming? Certainly it's a good way to leverage oil, but leverage and replacment are two different things.
The reason people don't solar panels everywhere is simply because they are too expensive.
Of course. And they will remain so. In fact, as oil becomes more expensive they will become more expensive in real dollars, as a proportion of what you have available to spend. Dearer. Because we will be using energy obtained at a higher EROIE to make them; and thus increasing their own EROIE as well. It's a feedback system, although damped.
. .
Of course not. Just add oil. Easy. In the abscence of oil, just add. .
Again, not advocating, just noting.
If I were to advocate anything it would be contraception. Scarcity is relative to the population. Fewer people, more "stuff" per capita. Not too little oil. Too many damned rats in the cage. "Spaceship Earth" and all that.
KFG
One I clicked on the story about an Open Source router I was kinda hoping to see . . .a router.
KFG
Yes, Vyatta talks a good game, but 24/7 worldwide support isn't something you build with a few million bucks in VC funding.
JAWMMBOS (Just Another We Make Money By Offering Support) OSS company. Nothing revolutionary to see here. Move along.
Does it have a possible niche? Yeah, sure. Might even add something of value to the code pool. We'll see.
But that doesn't mean that "enterprise" will buy in, which is all this story is about. Putting a corporate face on OSS software to try to make enterprise comfortable buying in to it. It's not a tech story, which is kinda what I was hoping for when I clicked on it.
KFG
What makes them expensive to make?
e nts/clean.php3
. html -- Scroll down to the bottom of the page for cost issues.
.oil. No oil. No solar cells. Ironic, innit?
Well hey, you try turning sand into a semiconductor and not spend a lot of money in the process.
http://www.facsnet.org/tools/sci_tech/tech/fundam
http://www.eere.energy.gov/RE/solar_photovoltaics
There is one factor that isn't addressed directly, only indirectly in terms of cost; and that's the incredible amount of energy required to make semiconductors (and you have to include the energy costs of creating the facilities in that) and that energy does not come from the solar cells the fab puts out. The whole affair would grind to a halt if you tried that, like a "free energy" machine unplugged from the wall. At which time the cost per any "excess" units would be phenomenal.
The whole thing runs on . .
And as the cost of oil goes up, the cost of manufaturing solar cells goes up. The break even point is an ever moving target proportional to the cost of what we're trying to replace with something cheaper, and/or compelled to consume its own output in a vain attempt to keep going.
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.
This is the Renewable Dilemma, that it takes energy to make usable energy and without a source external to the system it feeds on itself. It isn't about cost, it's about energy. To follow the money you need to follow the energy, because over the short run the money can be used to disguise what's really going on(investment, tax incentives, etc) at the energy level, but when the energy runs down, so does the money; and costs skyrocket.
So you grow biofuels to replace oil, which means you have to use your biofuels to grow your crops and refine them into fuel. How much fuel is actually left over when you've finished this and - at that point how much is the "excess" going to cost per gallon to the consumer - assuming there is any?
That is your true cost of renewables as an oil "replacement." What you have to pay when the oil is gone and no longer driving the process. Using solar cells to make solar cells.
You won't like it.
But are you starting to get it? Solar cells are expensive because it takes energy to make them.
KFG
I didn't know that Boyer actually made it to the Tour!
.Jeannie Longo's unbelievable string of victories.
Oh, shit yeah. Rode it five times. Finished 12th in '83, the year before LeMond's first. I'll tell ya, there was some hootin' and hollerin' around my local bike shop over that one. Unlike other Americans who "visited" Europe to ride Jack completely acculturated himself as a Frenchman; and into the French amatuer system, in '73, That made all the difference.
. .
Ahhh, Jeannie's sumpin' else; and a geek! Mathematics and computer science at Grenoble. A shame she was born into a family that supported her fully, but a nation that didn't. She was one of the first to cross the pond in the other direction to find competition. I guess I'll never fully understand the French. Rene Arnoux once complained that he was a bigger hero in France when he was coming second in an Italain car than when he was winning in a French one. Elan! The valiant loss. I'm a huge fan of the man (or woman, Seana Hogan another God, another geek. MA in Mathematics) who "puts in the effort" myself, but one can overdue that if one isn't careful.
KFG
The purpose of a license plate number is to tie "you" to the car. It's the "face" you wear when you drive and public information. In a way technology is simply catching up to the technology.
Doesn't mean that any of us have to like it, but that's the way it is. Sitting in your car isn't the same as sitting in your home.
KFG
You might want to check out a book called "Sailing the Farm," about container gardening in the limited space of a small boat.
KFG
Ah, yes, George and his famous grimace. "Smile" is far too polite a word for it.
But Jackie Simes III was the one who really kicked it off in the late 60s. He was the one we all looked to as the first to give it a go in the post WWII era, but a track rider. Track was still huge in Europe, but nearly unheard of here though, so he never got any headlines. Silver medal in the worlds kilo in '68. Gave up the idea of a European career to try to restart pro racing in the US. He did it, but it took 20 years or so. Dave Chauner was the first American to actually win a Eurpean race, even though it was only amatuer and only in England it was a huge event for American cycling. John Allis brought the first American team overseas. Selected for the Olympic team 4 times (declined the fourth), but never turned pro. Then there was Jack Boyer, the model for Breaking Away, although Jack went "all French" instead of "all Italian." Expatriated to France, went pro in '77 and rode The Tour in '81. Mike Neel turned pro in Italy the same year Jack went pro in France.
The lead up to, and the '76 Olympic games themselves, is what really kicked started American pro cycling, more than any one rider. It showed our amatuers that they really could compete and gave them impetus to go to Europe.
But, to be honest though, it was the American amatuer women who led the way in international success, although mostly on track. Sheila Young, Sue Novara, Connie Carpenter, Miji Reoch. When the men were despairing of ever being comptetive the "girls" were kicking ass and showing us it could be done. In Europe women's cycling was culturally a kind of "Powder Puff" affair, but our women took it very seriously and showed results. I think a lot of American guys, perhaps even George, secretly held one of the women as his role model for success.
I'm a pure roadie, but to me Sue and Shiela were Gods.
KFG
. . .whoever can get completely bootstrapped off of oil first . . .
.viable replacements
.going to make the most money.
.
.but many can.
.
.we won't have oil for much longer.
Piece of cake. I could do that tomorrow. At least so long as other people stay out of my way. Those other people can be a bitch though.
. .
Ahhhhhhh, well, see, there is what I am arguing. I can do it tomorrow by forgoing energy use. I believe that the cultural concept of "viable" includes "abudant." That you won't have to give up your car, your AC, your bananas flown in from Argentina, or simply your trips to the mall. I posit that is not possible on solar energy without first forgoing at least half of the world's population.
. .
Making it and keeping it are two different issues. Nevermind what it might be worth as a trade item. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
1. Alternative energy is the new 90's tech boom, and fortunes will be made and lost.
There ya go, we have a point of agreement, but I do not see that the fortunes have overmuch to do with the viablility of the technologies. That's purely market bullshit, in its own little insular world, at least until the bubble bursts. People who make the "right" investment in the wrong thing, but get out of it at the right time, may well do better in monetary terms than someone who got into the right thing at the wrong time. I'm talking strictly about technologies, not investment opportunities.
2. NO one tech can do it . .
Nor should one. Putting all of our eggs in one barrel is what got us here in the first place.
. .
This is where we may disagree, if by "can" you mean "can" maintain our "way of life." Our way of life is not sustainable by any combination of solar radiative technologies anywhere near within our grasp.
If by "can" you mean that we "can" build a new "way of life," well sure. Piece of cake, except for those other people. They might well make things very messy for the rest of us for awhile.
As you (or someone) said, hydrogen is just a transport.
I've been flogging that horse on Slashdot for years. Elsewhere for decades. For all I know I might have been the one that Smartinized(tm) some of the people flogging it under this particular article, but I did not participate.
You also need wind, solar, maybe biodiesel, all that other good stuff.
All solar energy. There's a bit to be had from geothermal and even the gravity of the moon, but those are likely to be of only local import for a long time.
And as much oil as you can buy, borrow, or steal to get it off the ground.
But buy, borrow, or steal it wisely. Wisdom is rarely easy. Cultures never adopt wisdom until it's that or death. Sometimes they opt for death. That often takes a lot of wise individuals with them. Life ain't fair.
We, as a society, are addicted to cheap energy, so if it is possible for us to have cheap energy without oil, we will . .
Yeah, if only I can get just a bit more smack, really cheap, I'll be alright.
I know of one way, and only one way, at least for a time:
Nukes. And I'm not inclined to be pro-nuke until we're talking clean fussion.
. .
A point of agreement. At least not cheap, abundant oil, for the current world population.
KFG
Maybe it is scratchy . . .
.or confining . . .
.too hot
.or not warm enough
Until recently they were made of wool.
. .
Well, d'oh! It's a cycling jersey. Get with the program.
. .
Add water.
. .
Add a piece of newspaper.
What if it sucks enough
to make you think you'll lose the next stage because of it?
Quit. None of the other riders will complain if you do this.
KFG
It may not seem intuitive that placing something in the Sun can cool it . . .
I'm having a little trouble with this concept myself.
KFG
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not . . .
.you can still buy appliances with a cooling cycle based on this system.
.the Sun. It may not seem intuitive that placing something in the Sun can cool it, but if instead of thinking of it as "heating" that something you think of it as adding energy to the system it may become more obvious that such might be possible; if you have a sink available to absorb the heat, say, the air.
I am.
. .
Sure. There are still lots of places on earth, and even in America, where such a refrigerator is your only practical choice if you want something "conventional."
Apropos to the article the heat source I was talking about using to cool things that drew said criticism was. .
In this case by the sacrifice of a heated fluid when it changes to vapor, expands and carries its heat away into the air, which means you have to manually add more fluid. It's not "set and forget." Anyone from a native desert culture that has progressed to pottery making (I learned it from the Zapotecs) should be able to show you the system working; and show you that it works faster with direct exposure to the Sun, but to try a simple version simply wrap a damp towel around a water bottle.
And please note that while a portion of the towel (and the water saturating it) is being heated by the Sun the water bottle (and hence its contents) is entirely in the shade.
KFG
Early refrigeration used heat sources such as kerosene to expand the working fluid. . .
Don't be silly. I've been told right here on Slashdot that you can't make things cold by applying heat to the system. Anyone can see that doesn't make a lick of sense.
KFG
warmer regions (traditional buildings build with clay and wind-traps and smaller windows to the sunny side)
.at about 17 degrees north latitude. Simply lovely. Cool in the day when it was hot. Warm at night when it was cold. No heating, no airconditioning, but nearly always perfect for comfort.
I've never lived so comfortably as when I lived in a traditional adobe house in a high desert region . .
Adobe, but built in a modern fashion, at sea level against the rainforest, not so nice at all; and the scorpions liked to hide in the tile roof during the day, and then drop down on you when when it got cold at night.
Location, location, location. Plus a bit of native engineering.
KFG
you will increase the economies of scale in solar cell manufacture and drive costs down overall.
.plain . . .expensive to make. Innately.
"Economies of Scale" is not a magic wand you can wave to simply reduce cost to some level you would prefer.
We already make photovoltaics at or near the limits of economies of scale. They are just . .
If you're losing money per unit you can't "make it up on volume" either.
KFG
The energy comes from the sun.
.all represent oil.
.oil. The case I keep it in is almost 100% oil. Even the zipper.
.reliable. . .energy.
.oil, which provides labor, nutrition, pest control, water, heat when it's needed and the very tools with which to till the soil. Perhaps even some portion of the soil itself. Our entire agriculture is oil based. Growing more crops to produce biofuels means . . .using more oil.
.be using oil (unless you walk nekkid maybe, it is impossible to avoid oil in our culture without going stone cold stone age).
Exactly.
You're an idjit.
I'm a counter culturist who has been dealing with alternative energies since I was a physics student during the oil embargo of the 70s. I'm also a small scale farmer and the child of someone who grew up on a farm. I not only know stone age technologies as well, I practice them and enjoy it. If the weather is halfway decent when I start out I could wander into the woods naked and walk out again a couple years later, fat, happy and wearing a suit of woven cloth. Maybe carrying a fiddle. Certainly a flute and a banjo.
I know the tech. I know the land. I don't think you fully appreciate how much everything in our culture is tied to oil, even the so called "alternatives." Your food is grown with oil. Your clothes are made with oil, perhaps even from oil. Your home, your heat, your cool, your transport (even if you only bicycle, or even only walk), the roads themselves, the Internet, your solar cells, your pocket knife, your toys . .
My fiddle, all handmade (except the steel strings) of natural materials almost entirely as they were made in the days of Amati . .
It all runs on oil.
There may come a day when the "greens" are crawling on the their knees to Washington/Brussels begging for nuclear power to make their solar cells with, because when oil becomes scarce, everything becomes scarce.
Except the Sun.
I can live on the Sun. I don't think that's what most people have in mind when they think of "alternatives" though. I think what they envisage is corn and sugar or some such keeping things going pretty much as they are now; and even supplying our increasing demands.
Ain't gonna happen without oil to drive it, because oil represents thousands of years of concentrated solar energy at your fingertips to use up in a matter of seconds, no matter the local weather or the climate.
Concentrated . .
Unlike solar energy in the form of crops. Nevermind crops without the benefit of . .
Go get yerself an acre and work it for awhile, on solar energy alone. No oil, no oil based products, nothing made by burning oil. Nothing hauled in by the power of oil. I guarundamtee you'll larn yourself sumpin', even though to do it you'll still . .
I lost all of my crops to flood this year. Not even a blade of grass left alive. Nothing to be done about it. If it weren't for oil I'd be wandering off into the woods right now out of necessity instead of for fun. So would a lot of other people, which would make things kinda tight in the woods. As far as I'm concerned our problem isn't a shortage of oil, but an excess of people. I suppose the oil wars will help take care of that.
Anyhoo, now go back to your plot, but allow yourself some investment in oil upfront. Biiiiig difference. Now you've got improved soil, reliable water under pressure, steel, plastic, power tools.
But here's the kicker. That's a capital investment. A one shot deal. One season to play with oil, then it's gone again. Simulating going from here to there. When a part wears out, or the fuel is gone, you're going to have to come up with it, or its energy equivilent, from your land and the Sun.
See how long it takes to "wind down," and at what level of technology it winds down to, without oil to grease the wheels.
Well, there's always nukes I guess.
KFG
That's why I wrote my own timing software and made my own transponders/interface. But don't tell them that, they've got patents and shit. Nevermind that the prior art goes back to the 1920s and you can find everything you need to know in Mimms' books from Radio Shack.
Doing it the easy way limits you to 8 cars per heat (using the internal counting circuit of your computer's cpu), but not many clubs race more than that anyway.
KFG
While the Tour de France was certainly his focus he wasn't anywhere near the "Tour Specialist" that LeMond was, who was criticised for even spending most of his training time alone in Calfornia and only showing up in Europe for the Tour season.
Lance trained with the team in Europe. He won the Tour de Luxumbourg, the Tour de Suisse, the Dauphine Libere as well as riding in, and winning stages in, a number of other events.
He was hardly a one trick pony.
No, he didn't ride all the one day classics, like Eddy, but then Eddy had to just to make living. They didn't pay squat in those days.
KFG
forbidden substances... Greg LeMond
Perhaps all the riders will be lining up for lead injections into the gut now.
Or maybe not.
KFG
Do you know anyone who has never had a medical condition treated with drugs?
Have you ever seen anyone undergoing chemotherapy? It isn't exactly performance enhancing. Neither is arthritis so bad you're going to need a new joint, no matter what sort of drugs they give you.
KFG