I think energy gained would come at the cost of increased work done by the cars.
Try the same idea, only backwards, and you may be onto something. That is, each car has a magnet on it, and something buried under the freeway generates a magnetic field that pulls the cars along. Since the ICE is about the least efficient method of generating energy, offloading some of the work to other forms of power generation could only help.
But such a prognosis neglects the empirical evidence for expecting continued declines in PV prices. For example, average selling prices of PV modules have decreased from $55/Wp (in 2001 dollars) in 1976 to approximately $3.50/Wp in 2001 (Harmon, 2000; Maycock, 2002). For our analysis, we set the breakeven price of PV modules at $1.50/Wp, which is within the range reported in the research literature on PV market penetration (e.g., Payne et al., 2001). PV modules can be expected to reach a real price of $1.50/Wp by 2012, based on price trends to date.
Note: Wp stands for "peak watt," the nominal unit of solar panel absorption (which translates to different amounts of power generated, depending on location and weather).
The point is, between 1976 and 2001, the price of a given amount of solar capacity has undergone four halvings. Furthermore, it's supposed to more-than-halve again between 2001 and 2012. That's huge, steady progress, but given a half-life of six years, it's not surprising that it seems imperceptible to an eager shopper.
I'm in the market for a new laptop (the old one is on its last legs), and I'm a big Ubuntu fan. This could be a big deal for me, if they actually start shipping within the next month or so. Otherwise, it'll be a self-install as usual.
The downside: if my votes for operating systems are anything like my votes for political candidates, Ubuntu will be dead within the year. Seriously, if I vote for it, it's pretty much guaranteed to fail.
Suddenly I have this idea that you could overlay cold-weather panels with the sort of defrosting elements you see in car windshields. A sheet of plastic with a heating element wound through it shouldn't add exorbitantly to the cost, but it might be enough that panels destined for Vegas wouldn't have them.
Maintenance of a PV array isn't zero, but it's very low.
Cost of land is extremely low for many areas (read: Nevada). For other areas, arrays can be installed on top of existing infrastructure (big box stores or warehouses) or in ways that don't greatly interfere with existing uses (grazing land). The square mileage taken up by an array doesn't seem like a critical factor.
Even when it's raining, PV arrays generate significant amounts of power (I'm not sure exactly how much, and it varies from technology to technology, but it's nothing to sniff at). You're right about requiring separate infrastructure, but the question is "how much"? It will be less if you've got a good mix of solar, wind, and geothermal. It will be less if you've got an intelligent grid with attached appliances that know when to use a lot, when to conserve, and when to give back. It will be less if you've got storage available (the arrays on electric cars, for example). Finally, it will be less if we've taken aggressive conservation measures.
In short, I'm not convinced that we're going to require more nuclear power than we're already generating.
>> Solar, once it is cheaply manufactured, involves placing the panels.
> That's a big if. We can't count on everything ramping up like computer chips.
It's working well thus far. From 1976 to 2001, the cost of shipping a given unit of solar capacity (read: PVs) has fallen by a factor of 16 (four halvings) [src], and thus far it's been following an exponential trend.
> Heck, look at how far we've come with cars. A model T got around the same gas milage as most of today's cars. Sure, today's cars are more efficient, but they're also heavier. It was a generational improvement rather than a exponential improvement.
Lots of people these days expect everything to follow an exponential curve. Battery size, energy efficiency, material strength, lots of things. Lots of them don't, but we've been raised to believe in the march of progress. So you're right to be skeptical.
Nevertheless, in the case of PV panels, it really does appear to be following an exponential trend, just as related silicon technologies have been.
1) People who have 20 year old PV installations don't report that they need replacement. Instead, they seem to be chugging along at about 80% of their original efficiency. Where are you getting your numbers? Also, it should be possible to design the panels in such a way that they can be easily pulled apart and refurbished or recycled.
2) A solar plant set up in Canada will invariably be less productive per acre than a solar plant set up in the American southwest. Taking the figures of productivity per land area from this story is bound to mislead.
3) I'm not clear why you're bring up grid capacity. Just because we could theoretically supply all our energy needs with 10% of the energy that falls on a 40,000 square mile area doesn't mean that all the PVs need to be centrally located.
4) The cost of solar panels has been on a solid decline over the last quarter century (from $55/peak watt in 1976 to $3.50/peak watt in 2001 (adjusted dollars)) [source]. That's about four halvings of cost in 25 years. If we can keep this up, in twelve years, it should be down to about $0.43/peak watt. There is room for increased cost savings that simply don't exist in more traditional technologies like coal and nuclear. In short, solar is getting ready to kick ass and take names.
I think transmission lossage only amounts to about 6% of generated power. It's not really worth accounting for when you're doing back-of-the-envelope calculations, and is probably less than the economies of scale that would come from a more centralized facility.
On the other hand, if you could basically ignore the cost of renting the land, that might help drive down costs.
Now, is the 4-8 billion dollars just the build cost? How much does it cost to operate a plant that size, year in year out, for decades on end, plus deal with the wastes?
With solar, once you've hooked the panels up, it's very low maintenance from there on. Plus, al-Qaeda isn't going to be breaking into your solar plant looking for material for dirty bombs.
There is also the matter of conservation. You say that you spend a billion dollars on nuclear power, and you can get a gigawatt of production from that. On the other hand, if you take that billion dollars and buy 250M CFL bulbs (rough guess: they'll be on 10% of the time on average, so effectively 25M bulbs), and each one is using 45 fewer watts than the incandescent it replaces, you've eliminated the need for 1.125GW of capacity for several years. That's just one of many potential conservation measures that could be taken with the same sort of money.
Finally, the risk of a dangerous accident goes from "It's not worth worrying about. We're a corporation, so why would we lie to you?" to safe-in-fact. Does it not worry you that, despite the highly touted safety features of new plant designs, absolutely nobody in the private sector is willing to ensure a nuclear reactor? Government insurance guarantees and liability waivers amount to a huge subsidy of nuclear power.
Dude, most of these initial studies try to get all their participants from one gender or the other. I think the primary reason is to limit the variability of the sample somewhat.
There are plenty of possible reasons that do not involve power-hungry womyn trying to institute an oppressive matriarchy, overthrow your biblical values, turn your daughters into lesbians, and eventually shoot males for sport.
Intriguing conspiracy theory, but I think it suffers from the geekocentric fallacy. The primary purpose of the OLPC is to use computers to educate children, not to teach them computer literacy.
I'm not sure if the sign is "hate speech" or not. It feels like it to me, in that it seems to be saying that the bulk of the Islamic world wants to destroy us, and that those feelings are inseparable from the religion of Islam itself. But it's not easy to gauge author's intent on a slogan that short.
Socialism isn't Communism, and I think some amount of socialism is not only compatible with individual freedom, but necessary to it.
The ITAVTRAC philosophy (as interpreted by tribal African cultures) isn't the same thing as the collectivist ideals of the American left wing. The former is enforced primarily by one-to-one social relationships, the latter requires elaborate, bureaucratic (in the neutral sense of the word) large-scale political institutions. We lefties invoke the ITAVTRAC mantra to evoke what the two philosophies have in common: the idea that a society needs to take some responsibility for the success of the individuals who compose it.
Nah, it's not that. We just recognize that it's very difficult for a person to be a valuable, productive member of society while simultaneously feeling that society doesn't give a flying fuck about them. PC speech simply means, when you're speaking, try to be mindful of the feelings of the people you're speaking about.
At least, that's my opinion on the matter. Don't bother hunting down long lists of "political correctness gone amok". I already know that it's taken too far by certain people at certain times in certain places. But rather than incoherently ranting about the brainwashed, monolithic left wing, why not give some actual examples of obviously true ideas that "the left" brands as hate speech because it has no answer for them?
I suspect the list will tell us a lot more about you than it will about "the left" or about political discourse in this country.
2) Do you comprehend the difference between a single individual identifying something as "hate speech" and taking steps to remove or destroy it, and society as a whole trying to do the same thing? While the consequences of an entire society choosing wrongly are more dramatic, it's unlikely that society would settle on the same heuristic as your sign-ripper. Of course, that depends on the answer to question #1.
I'm personally ambivalent about the whole discussion. Government power can be dangerous, and especially when it comes to power over how the political discourse is conducted. But I also believe that much of what gets labeled "hate speech" goes beyond merely reprehensible, to actually undermining the foundations of a tolerant, pluralistic democracy.
Example: If I say, "I'll shoot any queers what show up to tomorrow's city council meeting," that's probably already illegal in the U.S., since it constitutes a direct threat of violence. But if I mention my concealed carry permit, mention my intention to show up at the city council meeting, and go on a long diatribe about how the homosexual agenda is destroying everything good and decent in the world, and should be stopped by any means necessary... Well, no direct threat has been made, but homosexuals would get the message that it might be dangerous to show up to that meeting. It doesn't matter whether or not you think someone who skips the meeting is in need of a spine; democratic participation shouldn't be the privilege of the bravest among us.
As someone who has been on both sides of a lot of different issues in his life, I know how dangerously warped your worldview can get when you're getting all your information from a single viewpoint. The ubiquity of hate sites guarantees that some highly frustrated members of our society are going to get the misimpression that the most blatant forms of racism, sexism, religious intolerance, and homophobia are reasonable, normal, and sanctioned by a large fraction of society. Such people go on to do things that make it harder for the targets of their rage to participate in democracy, which is a bad thing. Nobody should have to make a brave stand against bigotry in order to tell politicians how they feel about the proposed changes to the municipal water fee schedule.
Is a ban on hate speech a good idea? Probably not. It will have all sorts of unforseen consequences. I'm sympathetic to the people who say such a ban will merely drive the poison underground, where it can fester. But it's also important to remember that society does control many harmful speech acts (libel, for example). This is wise, because some speech acts are far more valuable than others. Given a choice between a ban on "hate speech" and a ban on government-critical speech, I'd gladly go for the former, because I believe the benefits of the latter are obvious, whereas the people who defend the right to speak hate can only really say, "Yeah, but as nasty as it is, banning it would be worse."
They're probably right. But it's not an obviously settled issue for me.
In order for that to work, you have to assume that you can get more CO2 from the atmosphere with a given unit of energy than gets emitted when you generate the energy to run the extractor. That's pretty unlikely. But even if you could get the extractor to extract efficiently enough that there was some energy left over, it cuts a huge hole in our energy reserves.
If the extractor can absorb two tons of coal emissions for every ton of coal you burn to power it (which is pretty unlikely, given that coal burning is only 30-40% energy efficient) then a "600 year supply" suddenly becomes a 300 year supply. If you move closer to the break even point (say, having to burn nine tons of coal to remove the emissions from ten tons of coal) then suddenly for every ten tons of coal, nine were burned just to fire the CO2 extractors, and we only have 60 years worth of coal.
Most likely, though, is the possibility that a coal-fired extractor array is a net CO2 producer, in which case burning CO2 just produces energy debt that will need to be repaid after the coal runs out.
In short, I really doubt this technology will make our remaining coal reserves into a viable energy source.
2) Using nuclear energy, extract the resulting CO2 from the atmosphere.
3) Using more nuclear energy, synthesize oil out of it.
3) Burn that oil like mad.
The problem is, steps 2 and 3 are incredibly inefficient, which means we'd probably be using five times more nuclear energy than if we simply powered all our activities with nuclear power in the first place.
Without knowing precisely how much energy it takes to sequester a given amount of CO2 in this fashion, you can't really run the numbers. But it's safe to say that, if you hooked a square mile grid of these extractors up to a coal-fired plant, you'd be raising atmospheric CO2 levels dramatically. Lesson: It's far, far better to not burn the coal in the first place. Derived lesson: If we're going to build new nuclear plants, it's more effective to replace current energy usage, rather than cleaning up after previous energy usage.
To put it another way: Assume that every joule of energy produced by burning fossil fuels commits us to using ten joules of energy to undo those CO2 emissions in the future. Is there any point at all in running these machines before we've completely eliminated fossil fuels from our energy system? It doesn't seem like it.
Slashdot Mirror
I fully disagree. Anything that helps us expand our sphere of empathy helps. Working on one will likely have a positive effect on the other.
I firmly believe that all future debates should be held in front of a very large green screen.
Our democracy deserves nothing less.
I think energy gained would come at the cost of increased work done by the cars.
Try the same idea, only backwards, and you may be onto something. That is, each car has a magnet on it, and something buried under the freeway generates a magnetic field that pulls the cars along. Since the ICE is about the least efficient method of generating energy, offloading some of the work to other forms of power generation could only help.
From some random policy paper:Note: Wp stands for "peak watt," the nominal unit of solar panel absorption (which translates to different amounts of power generated, depending on location and weather).
The point is, between 1976 and 2001, the price of a given amount of solar capacity has undergone four halvings. Furthermore, it's supposed to more-than-halve again between 2001 and 2012. That's huge, steady progress, but given a half-life of six years, it's not surprising that it seems imperceptible to an eager shopper.
I'm in the market for a new laptop (the old one is on its last legs), and I'm a big Ubuntu fan. This could be a big deal for me, if they actually start shipping within the next month or so. Otherwise, it'll be a self-install as usual.
The downside: if my votes for operating systems are anything like my votes for political candidates, Ubuntu will be dead within the year. Seriously, if I vote for it, it's pretty much guaranteed to fail.
Would you really have to melt all the snow? Once the bottom layer melts, the rest should just slide off.
Suddenly I have this idea that you could overlay cold-weather panels with the sort of defrosting elements you see in car windshields. A sheet of plastic with a heating element wound through it shouldn't add exorbitantly to the cost, but it might be enough that panels destined for Vegas wouldn't have them.
Maintenance of a PV array isn't zero, but it's very low.
Cost of land is extremely low for many areas (read: Nevada). For other areas, arrays can be installed on top of existing infrastructure (big box stores or warehouses) or in ways that don't greatly interfere with existing uses (grazing land). The square mileage taken up by an array doesn't seem like a critical factor.
Even when it's raining, PV arrays generate significant amounts of power (I'm not sure exactly how much, and it varies from technology to technology, but it's nothing to sniff at). You're right about requiring separate infrastructure, but the question is "how much"? It will be less if you've got a good mix of solar, wind, and geothermal. It will be less if you've got an intelligent grid with attached appliances that know when to use a lot, when to conserve, and when to give back. It will be less if you've got storage available (the arrays on electric cars, for example). Finally, it will be less if we've taken aggressive conservation measures.
In short, I'm not convinced that we're going to require more nuclear power than we're already generating.
Sorry. Try this link instead. Especially check out pages 4 and 5.
>> Solar, once it is cheaply manufactured, involves placing the panels.
> That's a big if. We can't count on everything ramping up like computer chips.
It's working well thus far. From 1976 to 2001, the cost of shipping a given unit of solar capacity (read: PVs) has fallen by a factor of 16 (four halvings) [src], and thus far it's been following an exponential trend.
> Heck, look at how far we've come with cars. A model T got around the same gas milage as most of today's cars. Sure, today's cars are more efficient, but they're also heavier. It was a generational improvement rather than a exponential improvement.
Lots of people these days expect everything to follow an exponential curve. Battery size, energy efficiency, material strength, lots of things. Lots of them don't, but we've been raised to believe in the march of progress. So you're right to be skeptical.
Nevertheless, in the case of PV panels, it really does appear to be following an exponential trend, just as related silicon technologies have been.
1) People who have 20 year old PV installations don't report that they need replacement. Instead, they seem to be chugging along at about 80% of their original efficiency. Where are you getting your numbers? Also, it should be possible to design the panels in such a way that they can be easily pulled apart and refurbished or recycled.
2) A solar plant set up in Canada will invariably be less productive per acre than a solar plant set up in the American southwest. Taking the figures of productivity per land area from this story is bound to mislead.
3) I'm not clear why you're bring up grid capacity. Just because we could theoretically supply all our energy needs with 10% of the energy that falls on a 40,000 square mile area doesn't mean that all the PVs need to be centrally located.
4) The cost of solar panels has been on a solid decline over the last quarter century (from $55/peak watt in 1976 to $3.50/peak watt in 2001 (adjusted dollars)) [source]. That's about four halvings of cost in 25 years. If we can keep this up, in twelve years, it should be down to about $0.43/peak watt. There is room for increased cost savings that simply don't exist in more traditional technologies like coal and nuclear. In short, solar is getting ready to kick ass and take names.
Great idea! A nuclear power plant with wheels!
Nobody will try and steal that.
I think transmission lossage only amounts to about 6% of generated power. It's not really worth accounting for when you're doing back-of-the-envelope calculations, and is probably less than the economies of scale that would come from a more centralized facility.
On the other hand, if you could basically ignore the cost of renting the land, that might help drive down costs.
Now, is the 4-8 billion dollars just the build cost? How much does it cost to operate a plant that size, year in year out, for decades on end, plus deal with the wastes?
With solar, once you've hooked the panels up, it's very low maintenance from there on. Plus, al-Qaeda isn't going to be breaking into your solar plant looking for material for dirty bombs.
There is also the matter of conservation. You say that you spend a billion dollars on nuclear power, and you can get a gigawatt of production from that. On the other hand, if you take that billion dollars and buy 250M CFL bulbs (rough guess: they'll be on 10% of the time on average, so effectively 25M bulbs), and each one is using 45 fewer watts than the incandescent it replaces, you've eliminated the need for 1.125GW of capacity for several years. That's just one of many potential conservation measures that could be taken with the same sort of money.
Finally, the risk of a dangerous accident goes from "It's not worth worrying about. We're a corporation, so why would we lie to you?" to safe-in-fact. Does it not worry you that, despite the highly touted safety features of new plant designs, absolutely nobody in the private sector is willing to ensure a nuclear reactor? Government insurance guarantees and liability waivers amount to a huge subsidy of nuclear power.
Dude, most of these initial studies try to get all their participants from one gender or the other. I think the primary reason is to limit the variability of the sample somewhat.
There are plenty of possible reasons that do not involve power-hungry womyn trying to institute an oppressive matriarchy, overthrow your biblical values, turn your daughters into lesbians, and eventually shoot males for sport.
Intriguing conspiracy theory, but I think it suffers from the geekocentric fallacy. The primary purpose of the OLPC is to use computers to educate children, not to teach them computer literacy.
I'm not sure if the sign is "hate speech" or not. It feels like it to me, in that it seems to be saying that the bulk of the Islamic world wants to destroy us, and that those feelings are inseparable from the religion of Islam itself. But it's not easy to gauge author's intent on a slogan that short.
Socialism isn't Communism, and I think some amount of socialism is not only compatible with individual freedom, but necessary to it.
The ITAVTRAC philosophy (as interpreted by tribal African cultures) isn't the same thing as the collectivist ideals of the American left wing. The former is enforced primarily by one-to-one social relationships, the latter requires elaborate, bureaucratic (in the neutral sense of the word) large-scale political institutions. We lefties invoke the ITAVTRAC mantra to evoke what the two philosophies have in common: the idea that a society needs to take some responsibility for the success of the individuals who compose it.
Nah, it's not that. We just recognize that it's very difficult for a person to be a valuable, productive member of society while simultaneously feeling that society doesn't give a flying fuck about them. PC speech simply means, when you're speaking, try to be mindful of the feelings of the people you're speaking about.
At least, that's my opinion on the matter. Don't bother hunting down long lists of "political correctness gone amok". I already know that it's taken too far by certain people at certain times in certain places. But rather than incoherently ranting about the brainwashed, monolithic left wing, why not give some actual examples of obviously true ideas that "the left" brands as hate speech because it has no answer for them?
I suspect the list will tell us a lot more about you than it will about "the left" or about political discourse in this country.
1) What did the "pro troops" sign actually say?
2) Do you comprehend the difference between a single individual identifying something as "hate speech" and taking steps to remove or destroy it, and society as a whole trying to do the same thing? While the consequences of an entire society choosing wrongly are more dramatic, it's unlikely that society would settle on the same heuristic as your sign-ripper. Of course, that depends on the answer to question #1.
I'm personally ambivalent about the whole discussion. Government power can be dangerous, and especially when it comes to power over how the political discourse is conducted. But I also believe that much of what gets labeled "hate speech" goes beyond merely reprehensible, to actually undermining the foundations of a tolerant, pluralistic democracy.
Example: If I say, "I'll shoot any queers what show up to tomorrow's city council meeting," that's probably already illegal in the U.S., since it constitutes a direct threat of violence. But if I mention my concealed carry permit, mention my intention to show up at the city council meeting, and go on a long diatribe about how the homosexual agenda is destroying everything good and decent in the world, and should be stopped by any means necessary... Well, no direct threat has been made, but homosexuals would get the message that it might be dangerous to show up to that meeting. It doesn't matter whether or not you think someone who skips the meeting is in need of a spine; democratic participation shouldn't be the privilege of the bravest among us.
As someone who has been on both sides of a lot of different issues in his life, I know how dangerously warped your worldview can get when you're getting all your information from a single viewpoint. The ubiquity of hate sites guarantees that some highly frustrated members of our society are going to get the misimpression that the most blatant forms of racism, sexism, religious intolerance, and homophobia are reasonable, normal, and sanctioned by a large fraction of society. Such people go on to do things that make it harder for the targets of their rage to participate in democracy, which is a bad thing. Nobody should have to make a brave stand against bigotry in order to tell politicians how they feel about the proposed changes to the municipal water fee schedule.
Is a ban on hate speech a good idea? Probably not. It will have all sorts of unforseen consequences. I'm sympathetic to the people who say such a ban will merely drive the poison underground, where it can fester. But it's also important to remember that society does control many harmful speech acts (libel, for example). This is wise, because some speech acts are far more valuable than others. Given a choice between a ban on "hate speech" and a ban on government-critical speech, I'd gladly go for the former, because I believe the benefits of the latter are obvious, whereas the people who defend the right to speak hate can only really say, "Yeah, but as nasty as it is, banning it would be worse."
They're probably right. But it's not an obviously settled issue for me.
/me directs everyone on Slashdot towards their local thermodynamics class.
In order for that to work, you have to assume that you can get more CO2 from the atmosphere with a given unit of energy than gets emitted when you generate the energy to run the extractor. That's pretty unlikely. But even if you could get the extractor to extract efficiently enough that there was some energy left over, it cuts a huge hole in our energy reserves.
If the extractor can absorb two tons of coal emissions for every ton of coal you burn to power it (which is pretty unlikely, given that coal burning is only 30-40% energy efficient) then a "600 year supply" suddenly becomes a 300 year supply. If you move closer to the break even point (say, having to burn nine tons of coal to remove the emissions from ten tons of coal) then suddenly for every ten tons of coal, nine were burned just to fire the CO2 extractors, and we only have 60 years worth of coal.
Most likely, though, is the possibility that a coal-fired extractor array is a net CO2 producer, in which case burning CO2 just produces energy debt that will need to be repaid after the coal runs out.
In short, I really doubt this technology will make our remaining coal reserves into a viable energy source.
No biggie.
CO2 is at about 380PPM right now. O2 is at about 21000PPM. We'd have to burn quite a lot more coal than we have to make a noticeable difference.
So, what you're proposing is:
1) Burn oil like mad.
2) Using nuclear energy, extract the resulting CO2 from the atmosphere.
3) Using more nuclear energy, synthesize oil out of it.
3) Burn that oil like mad.
The problem is, steps 2 and 3 are incredibly inefficient, which means we'd probably be using five times more nuclear energy than if we simply powered all our activities with nuclear power in the first place.
Without knowing precisely how much energy it takes to sequester a given amount of CO2 in this fashion, you can't really run the numbers. But it's safe to say that, if you hooked a square mile grid of these extractors up to a coal-fired plant, you'd be raising atmospheric CO2 levels dramatically. Lesson: It's far, far better to not burn the coal in the first place. Derived lesson: If we're going to build new nuclear plants, it's more effective to replace current energy usage, rather than cleaning up after previous energy usage.
To put it another way: Assume that every joule of energy produced by burning fossil fuels commits us to using ten joules of energy to undo those CO2 emissions in the future. Is there any point at all in running these machines before we've completely eliminated fossil fuels from our energy system? It doesn't seem like it.
I had carpal tunnel surgery last week. Hands still bandaged, typing with two-fingered hunt and peck.
This idea is doubleplus ungood.