Not just is there no-one on the speaker list with an environmentalist bent
It's an economic issue. How expensive is energy going to be. And the peak oil people aren't saying oil is going to run out, it simply gets more and more expensive to extract as the conventional supplies go into decline.
It doesn't matter what anyone reports anyway, that's just market manipulation from one side or the other. What matters is the actual amount pumped. If it declines or remains static then prices are going up.
People start looking for alternatives sharpish. Business as usual is a much better proposition for the oil suppliers. If that happens to fuck over the customers as the price soars 5-10 years down the line, that's just tough for them.
You would undo or override all those countless valid and important reasons in your quest for perfect efficiency? You're like some statist tree hugging socialist freak who took one technology elective in college and now thinks he knows enough to use the frightful and destructive power of the government, overruling countless other rationale he dismisses as 'greedy' or 'selfish' without the slightest evaluation of them.
Lol. In fact I'm a liberal, in the true sense of the word rather than the American one (you'll probably have to look up liberalism to understand). The thing you have to recognise is that the economic conditions have already shaped the size, location and configuration of the power stations as well as everything else in the economy. Conditions which were created largely by government, prompted largely by lobby groups. Changing those conditions is the most effective way to change the configuration of the economy. People would be free to be as selfish and greedy as they like under the changed underlying conditions, they could do what they wanted to to the size, location, type, of their power stations, they could do what they liked to their supply chain. In fact, I'm counting on it.
You propose spending countless dollars of other peoples money in order to sooth your conscience. How noble of you.
What else do you think government's are for? Spending other people's money is what governments do. Ask any farmer.
Which do you think is cheaper to install and maintain?
Well it's not just down to installation and maintenance is it. It's down to the cost of the energy as well. The total cost of the system, and that depends on how the economy works. If it's economic to run out pipes and pumps, guess what, that's what'll happen.
And do you think the government can limitlessly tax its way into building the thermal efficiency you hold so very, very dear?
It isn't limitless, it's simply moving taxation from taxing human being's work to taxing machine's work. It would be done in a tax neutral manner, every dollar of taxation raised on the power generators would be reduced in income and other taxes. And yes, the overall efficiency of the power generation sector would increase substantially to the maximum possible.
Batteries still only return a tenth of the energy put into charging them,
Sorry, this is rubbish. Batteries are generally highly efficient. The efficiency of the system is determined by the charger which can be anything from crap (30%) to excellent (90%).
The discharge temperature of our steam turbines is around 100 deg F (into a vaccuum), and the water we use to cool that final stage is put back in the ocean at around 80 deg F.
Um, yes... You know the whole idea is to replace the condenser with a heat distribution network... So instead of condensing the exhausted steam with seawater and thereby wasting the heat, you heat up a hot water distribution network and sell the heat. You lose a little efficiency from the steam turbine and gain a huge efficiency boost overall in harnessing the "waste" heat.
It's highly ironic that power stations produce more energy as heat than they do as electricity. No, it's not ironic, it's just the limitations of the physics involved. Basic thermodynamics.
No, it is ironic, and since you missed the point, the irony is the use the electricity is put to, the largest single use of electricity is either to create low grade heat or to create cold (move low grade heat).
Taxation doesn't change the thermodynamics involved with the low discharge temperatures, heat losses from even insulated piping to move it around, energy costs of the pumps to move said heat, and the population densities involved.
It doesn't change the thermodynamics. It does change the type and location of the power generation. It's an economic tool which would substantially increase the overall efficiency of the power generators by making the inefficient ones uneconomic.
As to heat losses. You're deliberately throwing the product away at the moment... anything is an improvement. And since you disbelieve, Denmark has a truly huge district heating network (http://www.dbdh.dk/) and Finland also has a well developed district heating sector (e.g. http://www.helsinginenergia.fi/en/). The reason Denmark and Finland have well developed district heating sectors is that they are energy poor, they have no great stocks of oil, coal, gas which makes energy expensive and therefore district heating becomes economically viable.
Religion is simply a form of mental illness. People who are religious have almost certainly had the illness passed on to them by their parents who were probably similarly infected. Rather than despise and revile them, you should feel sorry for them and do what you can to help them see how they've been deceived and how silly and bizarre their beliefs really are. Rather than force them into hiding, talk to them and explain the reality of the world. Be an evangelical atheist, or agnostic if you prefer.
Books like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins can help, it condenses all of the religious insanity into one book.
As a static device anyway, unless it's supported by humans. I'd put money on it that a cheap laser pointer will dazzle the optics. Then you have sheets of cardboard or plywood to hide your shape etc etc etc Never mind stuff like rocket propelled grenades and other simple but effective military goodies.
Lets see some real tests. Fit it with a paintball gun and see how it fairs against some good old human ignorance. I'll bet on the squaddies. Anyone want to suggest odds?
Everyone here's talking about the space elevator as if the big problem is going to be technological, sure it is just now, but there's another fundamental problem with space elevators, the economics simply don't make sense. They would need a huge launch rate to cover the capital costs, interest etc, but they have a 24,000 mile journey to launch.
Now, blasting objects into space with a laser sounds like a great idea, all the energy stays on the ground, very high launch rate possible...
Yeah, I know, Finland lacks it's own energy resources, meaning it has to buy most of it in making it expensive so they're making good use of more efficient technologies than countries with abundant energy sources. I think they're a good example of how things will develop as we get over the oil peak.
Sure, some of it is exhausted, but as much of it is captured as possible. Some loss is unavoidable without superconductors
Actually the problem is the Carnot efficiency of the turbines, they're limited to about 40% efficient, the rest of the energy is exhausted as waste heat. District heating takes this waste heat, sells it to customers and increases the overall efficiency of the system to close to around 85%.
Even if we could distribute energy as heat, it would still probably be safer to stick with electricty. It's a lot easier to insulate electric current than heat.
It's alread been done for decades, particularly in countries where energy is already expensive. The first district heating systems appeared in the 19th century. It isn't a new, experimental or unproven technology.
I don't believe that's correct. Power plants can achieve 40% because they vent heat to the environment. If that heat instead goes into industrial processes, then there will be a reduction of the initial 40% efficiency. Overall efficiency will be better, but heat is generally a lower value product than electricity because it is even more difficult to transport and store.
Instead of venting, it can be distributed through a heat distribution network. District heating is an old technology, insulated pipes can transport the heat for miles. It's been working on the continent in various places for decades, in fact the first district heating systems were created in the 19th century.
You're correct that the closer you are to the consumer the better, but then you were venting the "waste" heat to the environment anyway. Nuclear facilities in particular are likely to be difficult to use in this way.
Or his children for that matter. That's the thing about money, people assume it doesn't conform to the laws of supply and demand. It does, however. Once you have a certain amount, adding more is irrelevant.
For these guys, it isn't about the money any more, it's about the social status, a competition to beat the other guy and be number one. The act of giving 10 billion and 90% of your wealth is essentially the same as giving 1 billion and half your wealth.
That none of our power stations (including nuclear, fission and fusion) are going to get much above 40% efficient until we stop treating waste heat as waste. Overall efficiency can be doubled to the 80%-90% region by selling the heat for industrial processes, domestic water, space heating and to power chillers which can distribute cold water in hot regions.
Most of our electricity is used to create or move heat from one place to another. It's highly ironic that power stations produce more energy as heat than they do as electricity. With District Heating and District Cooling it's possible to distribute heat and cold such that the requirement for space heating and air conditioning is massively reduced.
This isn't going to happen any time soon, economically it simply isn't worth while, it's much cheaper to dig up coal or pipe oil or gas. That could change with the flick of a pen though. At the moment every working individual pays 30%-40% of their income as taxation, get rid of it and add the equivalent level of taxation to fuel sources, in particular the non green methods of generation. The utilities will then squeeze every Watt out of the fuel, and customers will make sure they don't waste any energy either. As a side effect, people will become much cheaper to employ.
Most current coal plants are frankly dreadful in terms of efficiency and emissions. It's entirely possible to double their efficiency and reduce emissions by a similar margin. The costs of implementing such a system are another matter.
Too much corruption, too little infrastructure, too little education.
I'll happily buy stuff from them though. Maybe once the agricultural subsidies in the EU and US have been dumped that will be worthwhile. Till then they're pretty much fucked.
It's largely an economic consequence of cheap energy and expensive labour. It's much cheaper to have machines make a new thing on a production line than it is to have humans recycle or refurbish something old.
Of course, humans are particularly expensive because the government levies a 30-40% tax on their use.
A real customer is someone who buys your product. Your best customers are the ones who buy the most of your product at the highest price. It's a business problem and given Sony's profit problems they should almost certainly have been auctioning PS3s in lots of 10 on eBay.
What happened before or after the video clip we can see IS IRRELEVENT.
Don't be ridiculous. If you've been fighting someone to restrain them, then that person is a violent attacker. If that violent attacker then makes a grab for your thigh, groin or possibly even may be able to reach your gun then any force required to subdue that individual further is completely justified.
If however they were submissive, lay down and put their hands over their head in order to be cuffed the force might be considered excessive.
Of course the context matters.
As far as I'm concerned from the context I've seen, the violence from the police officer is completely justified, pure self defence and should I ever be in a jury room watching an identical video, completely legal.
Your position that you can take this 10 seconds of video out of context and say this is illegal is utterly ridiculous.
The video has clearly been edited to include only the police violence, it isn't credible that the cameraman/neighbour only managed to record just those seconds perfectly, so until the rest of the video appears, this is propaganda.
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vs gold anyway. Which kind of suggests the supply of US dollars has massively increased.
I think donkey piss sold as beer may violate the trade descriptions act... Oh Wait... How did Budweiser get away with it?
It's an economic issue. How expensive is energy going to be. And the peak oil people aren't saying oil is going to run out, it simply gets more and more expensive to extract as the conventional supplies go into decline.
It doesn't matter what anyone reports anyway, that's just market manipulation from one side or the other. What matters is the actual amount pumped. If it declines or remains static then prices are going up.
People start looking for alternatives sharpish. Business as usual is a much better proposition for the oil suppliers. If that happens to fuck over the customers as the price soars 5-10 years down the line, that's just tough for them.
Lol. In fact I'm a liberal, in the true sense of the word rather than the American one (you'll probably have to look up liberalism to understand). The thing you have to recognise is that the economic conditions have already shaped the size, location and configuration of the power stations as well as everything else in the economy. Conditions which were created largely by government, prompted largely by lobby groups. Changing those conditions is the most effective way to change the configuration of the economy. People would be free to be as selfish and greedy as they like under the changed underlying conditions, they could do what they wanted to to the size, location, type, of their power stations, they could do what they liked to their supply chain. In fact, I'm counting on it.
What else do you think government's are for? Spending other people's money is what governments do. Ask any farmer.
Well it's not just down to installation and maintenance is it. It's down to the cost of the energy as well. The total cost of the system, and that depends on how the economy works. If it's economic to run out pipes and pumps, guess what, that's what'll happen.
It isn't limitless, it's simply moving taxation from taxing human being's work to taxing machine's work. It would be done in a tax neutral manner, every dollar of taxation raised on the power generators would be reduced in income and other taxes. And yes, the overall efficiency of the power generation sector would increase substantially to the maximum possible.
Sorry, this is rubbish. Batteries are generally highly efficient. The efficiency of the system is determined by the charger which can be anything from crap (30%) to excellent (90%).
Um, yes... You know the whole idea is to replace the condenser with a heat distribution network... So instead of condensing the exhausted steam with seawater and thereby wasting the heat, you heat up a hot water distribution network and sell the heat. You lose a little efficiency from the steam turbine and gain a huge efficiency boost overall in harnessing the "waste" heat.
No, it is ironic, and since you missed the point, the irony is the use the electricity is put to, the largest single use of electricity is either to create low grade heat or to create cold (move low grade heat).
It doesn't change the thermodynamics. It does change the type and location of the power generation. It's an economic tool which would substantially increase the overall efficiency of the power generators by making the inefficient ones uneconomic.
As to heat losses. You're deliberately throwing the product away at the moment... anything is an improvement. And since you disbelieve, Denmark has a truly huge district heating network (http://www.dbdh.dk/) and Finland also has a well developed district heating sector (e.g. http://www.helsinginenergia.fi/en/). The reason Denmark and Finland have well developed district heating sectors is that they are energy poor, they have no great stocks of oil, coal, gas which makes energy expensive and therefore district heating becomes economically viable.
It's freshly printed money, they don't have to raise any taxes to pay for it all...
of a virtual world where you can't go on the rampage and kill everything?
Religion is simply a form of mental illness. People who are religious have almost certainly had the illness passed on to them by their parents who were probably similarly infected. Rather than despise and revile them, you should feel sorry for them and do what you can to help them see how they've been deceived and how silly and bizarre their beliefs really are. Rather than force them into hiding, talk to them and explain the reality of the world. Be an evangelical atheist, or agnostic if you prefer.
Books like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins can help, it condenses all of the religious insanity into one book.
I can get 100 L of acetone and peroxide for far less. It's easier to make some TATP high explosives and just blow the people up.
As a static device anyway, unless it's supported by humans. I'd put money on it that a cheap laser pointer will dazzle the optics. Then you have sheets of cardboard or plywood to hide your shape etc etc etc Never mind stuff like rocket propelled grenades and other simple but effective military goodies.
Lets see some real tests. Fit it with a paintball gun and see how it fairs against some good old human ignorance. I'll bet on the squaddies. Anyone want to suggest odds?
Everyone here's talking about the space elevator as if the big problem is going to be technological, sure it is just now, but there's another fundamental problem with space elevators, the economics simply don't make sense. They would need a huge launch rate to cover the capital costs, interest etc, but they have a 24,000 mile journey to launch.
Now, blasting objects into space with a laser sounds like a great idea, all the energy stays on the ground, very high launch rate possible...
Yeah, I know, Finland lacks it's own energy resources, meaning it has to buy most of it in making it expensive so they're making good use of more efficient technologies than countries with abundant energy sources. I think they're a good example of how things will develop as we get over the oil peak.
Actually the problem is the Carnot efficiency of the turbines, they're limited to about 40% efficient, the rest of the energy is exhausted as waste heat. District heating takes this waste heat, sells it to customers and increases the overall efficiency of the system to close to around 85%.
It's alread been done for decades, particularly in countries where energy is already expensive. The first district heating systems appeared in the 19th century. It isn't a new, experimental or unproven technology.
e.g.
http://www.dbdh.dk/dkmap/development.html
Instead of venting, it can be distributed through a heat distribution network. District heating is an old technology, insulated pipes can transport the heat for miles. It's been working on the continent in various places for decades, in fact the first district heating systems were created in the 19th century.
e.g.
http://www.helsinginenergia.fi/en/heat/heating.ht
You're correct that the closer you are to the consumer the better, but then you were venting the "waste" heat to the environment anyway. Nuclear facilities in particular are likely to be difficult to use in this way.
Or his children for that matter. That's the thing about money, people assume it doesn't conform to the laws of supply and demand. It does, however. Once you have a certain amount, adding more is irrelevant.
For these guys, it isn't about the money any more, it's about the social status, a competition to beat the other guy and be number one. The act of giving 10 billion and 90% of your wealth is essentially the same as giving 1 billion and half your wealth.
That none of our power stations (including nuclear, fission and fusion) are going to get much above 40% efficient until we stop treating waste heat as waste. Overall efficiency can be doubled to the 80%-90% region by selling the heat for industrial processes, domestic water, space heating and to power chillers which can distribute cold water in hot regions.
Most of our electricity is used to create or move heat from one place to another. It's highly ironic that power stations produce more energy as heat than they do as electricity. With District Heating and District Cooling it's possible to distribute heat and cold such that the requirement for space heating and air conditioning is massively reduced.
This isn't going to happen any time soon, economically it simply isn't worth while, it's much cheaper to dig up coal or pipe oil or gas. That could change with the flick of a pen though. At the moment every working individual pays 30%-40% of their income as taxation, get rid of it and add the equivalent level of taxation to fuel sources, in particular the non green methods of generation. The utilities will then squeeze every Watt out of the fuel, and customers will make sure they don't waste any energy either. As a side effect, people will become much cheaper to employ.
Most current coal plants are frankly dreadful in terms of efficiency and emissions. It's entirely possible to double their efficiency and reduce emissions by a similar margin. The costs of implementing such a system are another matter.
Too much corruption, too little infrastructure, too little education.
I'll happily buy stuff from them though. Maybe once the agricultural subsidies in the EU and US have been dumped that will be worthwhile. Till then they're pretty much fucked.
With a mailto URL and deal with the resulting spam at the mail level, the cost of doing so is less than the cost of alienating potential customers.
However, on a personal site, images.
It's largely an economic consequence of cheap energy and expensive labour. It's much cheaper to have machines make a new thing on a production line than it is to have humans recycle or refurbish something old.
Of course, humans are particularly expensive because the government levies a 30-40% tax on their use.
A real customer is someone who buys your product. Your best customers are the ones who buy the most of your product at the highest price. It's a business problem and given Sony's profit problems they should almost certainly have been auctioning PS3s in lots of 10 on eBay.
It makes the world a better place to live.
Don't be ridiculous. If you've been fighting someone to restrain them, then that person is a violent attacker. If that violent attacker then makes a grab for your thigh, groin or possibly even may be able to reach your gun then any force required to subdue that individual further is completely justified.
If however they were submissive, lay down and put their hands over their head in order to be cuffed the force might be considered excessive.
Of course the context matters.
As far as I'm concerned from the context I've seen, the violence from the police officer is completely justified, pure self defence and should I ever be in a jury room watching an identical video, completely legal.
Your position that you can take this 10 seconds of video out of context and say this is illegal is utterly ridiculous.
The video has clearly been edited to include only the police violence, it isn't credible that the cameraman/neighbour only managed to record just those seconds perfectly, so until the rest of the video appears, this is propaganda.