The USA uses about 20,000,000 BOPD. Canada and the USA use over 22 million BOPD. This is a drop in the bucket.
If they scaled this up by a factor of 1000 (a $14 BILLION plant) then this would still be small potatoes compared to what we need. Even the Alberta tar sands expansions which will take us to about 3.3 million BOPD with investments in the 10's of billions and maybe 100's of billions by 2015 are small potatoes compared to what we need.
Yes - every bit helps but...
Lets look at the 4 top oil fields:
Ghawar (Saudit Arabia) 5 million BOPD Likely near decline Canaterall (Mexico) 2.2 million BOPD In decline, 14% per year Bergan (Kuwait) 1.6 million BOPD In decline, rate unknown DaQing (China) 1 million BOPD In decline, 7% per year
These 4 feilds produce about 10 million BOPD, or about 12.5% of the world's 82 million BOPD production.
A decline rate of 10% in these 4 feilds translates to a loss of over 1 million BOPD. If we multiply that biodiesel plant by 1000 we still do not make up for the lost production of the top 4 oil fields.
The North sea went into decline in 1999 at a rate of about 14%. The UK became an oil importer this year.
Indonesia became an oil importer this year.
Australia use to be supplied by Indoneasia and since Indonesia can no longer supply Oz, Oz also has lined up at the Straits of Hormuz, hat in hand, asking for middle east oil.
This plant is just a drop in the bucket! If we build a plant like this every day for the next 10 years it won't be enough. That is how big the world oil peak problem is. We do not have a workable energy policy in place.
Has anyone even heard any of the damn pollies even dicusssing it seriously?
The most believable estimate I have is that world oil production will peak in 2007 and this is an optimistic estimate taking into consideration every oil production project on the planet.
For the past 10 years, Yarro has been building and developing technology companies such as Altiris Inc. and SCO Group Inc.
Perhaps that explains it. Is this a ploy for SCO to deflect attention away from their lawsuit with IBM?
Does his team include Darrel?
Hahah - what a joke - and of course some dick head reporter picks this up as feasible. I wonder what PR firm is behind this? Would this have something to do with SCO?
I didn't follow the link. I mearly commented that laws against hemp were motivated by greed and punishment minded people out looking for trouble. The greed came from Synthetic fibers and the punishment from the bible thumpers.
In the end a lot of innocent people have been hurt.
From a medical standpoint I happen to know for a fact that it is very useful.
There are other illegal substances that have proven medical benefits as well - such as psylicybin treating hearing loss. The reports are not detailed enough for me to identify what types of hearing loss - I suspect it is treatment of Tinitus. Amounts are well below halucinegenic levels.
There is a whole area of medical benefits from mushrooms that people do not know about. Shitake has strong anti-cancer benefits and Oyster has anti-cloresteral.
Hemp has been shown to have a HUGE number of substances which are pharmacologically active. Some are very useful for treating Glaucoma. Others are powerful anti-nausia drugs.
-------------
However this is not recognised in the overzealous madness of the DEA.
Ah yes. These are nice tape drives. I'm in the market for one!
If anyone has a 3590 kicking around please send me an email with details. I like the 256 track units. They are fast and realiable.
As for $50K per tape - that is cheap.
In the 128 track models the Fujitsu drives were more relaible than the IBM drives.
BTW - if anyone needs some 10 tape autoloaders for the Fujitsu's I have several available plus main boards in both differential and single ended SCSI as well as some model H.
Tape RULES!!!
I'll never trust my precious data to a drive and media system as cheap as a DVD or CD. We are still reading tapes recorded in the 60's and 70's. I doubt a DVD or a CD will even last 10 years even if you have a special environment to keep it in. At least Magneto optical has an expected life span of 50 years.
In all likelihood a hard disk drive has a longer life than CD's and DVD's.
Its NMR. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Some people figured "nuclear" is a bad word so they are trying to rename it. This is discrimination for no good reasons at all.
Texas oil and Nylon would not have been worth nearly as much if Hemp were a commecial crop. Hense we know why it is illegal. Many of the farmers who had their crops burned by the cops were immagrants who had difficulty speaking English. Who here can imagine what it would be like to have the cops break in and burn what you were planning on making your pants out of next year?
The English Empire sailed on Hemp. There was no other fibre that could stand the salt spray. I can still remember when I was a boy looking at a hemp rope an wondering what it was. Then they were replaced by sisle which is a totally inferior product.
Our governments have been doing a lot of lying to us over the years.
I recall watching on CNN one very distraugh woman who lost 7 of her 9 children in the Tsunami last year. While I feel sorry for her I do wonder what other planets she was planning on populating.
This will sound heartless but nevertheless it is true. The starvation in the 3rd world is due to a reproduction rate that is out of control. We see this in the middle east as well.
One of the reasons Saddam was able to run kids through the mine feilds in the Iran Iraq war is because he had a lot of kids available. Just check the CIA factbook and look at the population demographics. It is scary!
Can you post some links and technical information? I would really like to learn more!
I would like to see some engineering designs and performance measurements and I would like to try building some of the things you have worked on.
Excellent post - unfortunately the story is fraught with errors. Perhaps this the the new slashdot strategy - post absolutely innane "stories" in hope that we readers do all the corrections.
What is unethical is to NOT pursue stem cell research.
I have a friend in his early 40's who is now a parpalegic because of a skiing accident. To leave him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life because some people want to argue hypotheticals about the sanctity of life of a germ cell which we all know has no future because it was never destined to be fertilized has got to be one of the most callous deflections of intelligence that I have ever come across. This is especially so when we consider that if the germ cell in question were accidently fertilized than it would be the subject of a quick abortion!
It is not those who wish to pursue stem cell research who are being unethical - it is those who oppose the research!
Of course I suppose this same negative attitude has been prevalent in the past. Would the ludites qualify? How is this different?
One thing that has always amased me is the anti-technology people. They come in many guises. The thing is that mankind has had an ever increasing level of technological sophistication ever since we left the stone ages.
To suggest for instance that in the 1800 - the population was quite unsophisticated from a technological standpoint is a total falicy. Much of our modren world was well understood back then and indeed the Special theory of relativity was published in 1905.
Even the 30's appear primative to many people - yet it was during the 30's that the neutron was discovered and nuclear fission. Are these achievements of an ignorant population? Absolutley not! People at the turn of the last century were very technologically competant. Their science was very well developed.
Given this perspective it has always amased me that those who yearn for the good old days and a simpler life typically just want to turn the clock back about one (1) generation. It isn't that they are against technology. They just associate the technology of their grandparents with some romantic notion that the past was somehow better than what the future will be.
The truth is that past was a lot harder life to live than the present and in all likelihood the future will be considerably better yet. This is in spite of the uncertainties our fear mongers like to spew in the name of whatever cause or whatever worry happens to be the fashion of the day.
Where would you be without the uni option?
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
·
· Score: 1
Where would you be if you were denied the option to study at the university level?
It sounds as if you were given the best. You are one of the lucky ones.
It is very common for little girls to be precocious at an early age in the area of language. It is very common for little boys to be retarded. This is one of the reasons that all the way through the elementary grades - where language arts are enphasized - little girls typically out perform little boys.
The scales swing the other way after puberty. Pubecient girls language skills are still typically ahead of pubecient boys. However the mathematical and logical skills of the male of the species start to shine.
So while your little girl may have tested over 180 when 4 and is undoubtably a smart little girl, do not be surprised if when she gets to gr 9 she will be pretty close to and a little above average.
Most likely she will end up being somewhere in the neighbourhood of where her grandmothers and mother is. If your wife has an IQ over 180 then odds are your daughter will fall between 100 and 180. It is only rarely do the genetic factors combine to yeild a child with an IQ significantly greated than his parents and ancestors.
You have no clue whatsoever my friend. For someone who lacks the "brains" so to speak it is about the same as being blind. So your comment is akin to a blind person suggesting that people who can see are really just as blind as everyone else however they have an obsession. How cute.
If I were to ask you for instance to write a world class poem then given you have ordinary talents in this esoteric undertaking, you could sit at your desk for the next millenium and never be one of the monkeys lucky enough to strike shakespear's keys in the right order.
My tale is sad as well. I was one of the top winners of the Canadian Math Olympiad when I was in high school. But my high school was much worse than most. It was in an intellectual backwater and since the principal was accredited he could set his own grade 11-12 finals. This allowed him to water down the phys and chem and he didn't finish even the gr 11 curiculum by the end of gr 12 in either subject. Since the ciriculum already started out watered down you can well imagine what it was like.
For me, being in that school felt like being in prison. I thought of dropping out many times. Marks above 98 in math, chem, phys, trig didn't trigger a response in any of the teachers. I was never challenged ever. There wasn't even a decent reference book in the school library.
If I had been challenged I would have wrapped up high school maths and sciences by the middle of Gr 10. I would have completed my undergraduate math, phys and chem by the end of gr 12.
Instead, when I got to uni I had no idea how to study because I never had been challenged in my life. So I started out by skipping classes thinking this would be little different than high school. Well - I did get my degree but it took almost 2 years to start to undo the damage that school pupetrated on me.
I missed my calling - a career in theoretical physics/engineering. Instead I wandered into IT and my career has been fine. But I feel there is a hole in my life and in this hole is the career and the feild I love the most.
I was really screwed over by a badly broken system. That principal should have been fired for non-performace. Where we to look at this legally he is guilty of fraud. When you falsify final test results to cover up that you never taught the subjects in the first place - then this is fraud. Instead he draws a nice pension.
I would email you but I don't have your email. You do have mine.
Please see if you can pull the utility records for the place. Even if you did not in the past pay them - you do own the house now and I would think this would give you the right to know what the heating bills were like.
You have several problems to deal with.
1) I suspect that the heating costs are going to set you back over $4,000 this year. Thus you really have little choice in the matter. This may be why the former owners sold the place to you.
2) The USA is going into a severe energy crisis. You have not seen ANYTHING yet. There are posts in the tread to the effect that we can just transition to LNG imports and drill more gas wells. Bullshyte. People who say this are just dreaming. It would be nice but the truth is we have to deal with reality or reality will deal with us.
North American Natural Gas peaked in 2001. If this were not true then the North American Fertilizer business would not be currently mostly shut down and the president of Dow Chemicals would not be warning of plastics shortages. These are real issues. They are happening. If you heat with natural gas then you will probably be ok for the next couple years. Natural Gas in storage looks ok for this year but it will be tight come spring (again) and next year about the same. Over a period of time it will only get worse and your heating bills will keep going up.
3) Your house probably has a number of high maintenance features. What kind of exterior? Do you need to paint it for instance?
4) Your house should probably have its wiring upgraded and new cabling for TV, internet. You might want to look into fiber optics as well. If you are working from the outside you can fit all of this in. From the inside you can do it as well but you will need to figure out how to do this in a peice meal fashion if you wish to remain living in the place.
Look for a complete solution. When the walls are apart is when to do all this stuff. Wiring is cheap. So is cabling. Insulation is cheap. Labour is not but hopfully you and your wife can do most of the work. Tearing walls apart sounds a lot more scary than it is. I tore my house apart for instance. Jaws drop when you take a tile knife and cut a 20 foot long by 1 foot wide hole in the living room.
-----------
When I stated 15,000 I was thinking of a contractor price (finished). If I were to set up a business to do this then that would be my target because it can be paid for in fuel savings alone and I've talked to banks about organising this and they are keen.
On a do it yourself basis - budget under 10,000. Stucco is more expensive than other solutions. You can even leave Tyvac on the exterior for a while.
For vinyl, you'll have to price it out but that siding is not all that dear. There are ways to get this done.
Also - see if there are any incentives in your area. I suspect there may be.
Good luck. Send me an email to my regular addy and let me know how you are making out.
THere are windows that will give you R17. I expect we'll see some comming from Japan shortly that will do even better. These are new developments and they are barely commercial at this time.
An active sutter system will actually solve the problem as well. There is no reason for your windows to be leaking energy in the middle of the winter in the middle of the night when you should be in bed sleeping.
Again - we have simple ideas and apparently no products to choose from.
I think you'll have to make your own. One way to do this might be to get a nice fabric and cover styrofoam panels. Then you might need to build an electric motor powered system to move the shutters.
I see no reason that requires you to work on the inside. If the house can use a residing then tear off the old siding and take the walls apart. Scab on a stud extension to bring the walls to 1 foot thick and re-insulate, re-sheath, re-side with a maintanance free exterior such as stucco.
It will set you back about 6,000-10,000 for a good stucco job and soffits, etc. Windows will still have to be reset. I would think this approach might be done for say about 15K ++.
You may run into zoning problems. However I think these issues can be dealt with.
The thing is by the time you do all the engineering required you may as well put an ad in the papers and do it professionally. I think there is a fortune to me made!
THere are a few ways to go. Blown in bat is one of the best. The thing is that in order to get to where you need to be you really need to get R50 in those walls.
What you illustrate is the typical stupidiy of builders back in the 40s and they are not much better now. They often will try to get away with what they can get away with.
But back to the problem at hand. If you are going to refinish a room I'd suggest knock down the plaster on the outside walls and scab on extentions to the studs to bring the walls to a foot thick. Then fill with R50 fibergalls and drywall it. When you paint it will be invisible however you will have ceiling details to deal with as well as door jambs and windows. One of the best window solutions I've see is this. Desing for a wall thickness which will accomodate a mirror tile and a nice floor tile. Use floor tiles on the sill area and mirror tiles on the sides. This will leave a window that does not look as if it is in a tunnel. Next you gain a nice window sill for plants.
You'll want a thickness of about 1 foot for the tiles. This will give you R50 or so.
Now - if you wish to be even more cleaver then you need to realise that those old houses were designed to exclude any energy from the outside and you are expected to replace it - hense why the furnace is running all the time... and costing you a great deal of money!!!
Passive solar is where you need to go. There is a huge amount of work done but what we really need might not quite yet exist.
What you have to realise is that the local HVAC people probably don't really know all that much. I am constantly amased at how little contractors typically know.
Track down the DOE sponsored "Solar Decathalon". There is a lot of work being done in the uni's at this time and I think were I in your situation that I would contact the architectural school and see if I could find some of the brains behind the demonstration houses. You might find that if you make a small investment to support their next sustainable housing competition that you gain access to some really serious information and ideas as well as to some needy students in search of consulting work.
If you can't find it email me and I'll see what I can dig up for you.
BTW - the 1-2" contractor specials that the siding folks like to talk the pubic into are not going to cut it. If you do it properly you'll be able to eliminate the furnace forever. Hiring good consulting is a really good way to start. This is a complex feild.
I think I read somewhere that 60% of homes are heated by methane (CH4) (Natural Gas). Last I checked today the price of Nat Gas is $11.41 and I expect this is at the Henry Hub and the units are MM-btu's (ie 1 million btu). The conversion factor between MM-btu and GJ is 1.054615. For some reason the "units" program shows this conversion factor as 1.0550559. This is close enough for the girls I go with.
Since there are 3600 seconds in an hour an energy consumption of 1 kWh is equivalent to an energy consumption of 3600 kilojoules. Eg - for the units impaired we do this:
kWh => k(W)(h) => k(j/s)(h) => k(j/s)(3600s) => k(j)(3600)(s/s) => 3600 kj = 3.6*10^6j = 3.6e6j (the later being scientific notation)
We know the price of NatGas is 11.41 for 1 MM-btu (10^6 btu = 1e6 btu)
multiply by 1.054615 and we get about $12 bux = 1Gj = 10^9j = 1e9j
This is a wholesale price for natgas. Wholesale prices for electricty are about 5 cents per kWh. Delivered prices are about 2x in both cases as well. Check your energy bills.
What this shows is that at present prices, the cost of energy from a source such as delivered natural gas is about the same as the cost of energy from electricty. When you consider that electricty can be used to drive a heat pump (whole house negative fridge) at an overall thermal effciency of upwards of 300% if earth or lake coupled then it is actually cheaper and more energy efficient to heat our homes with electricty rather than natural gas. Ditto with oil.
Now a standard incandecent heater (light bulb) is upwards of 90% efficient. IE - when you run your incandecent heater you leak about 10% or so of the energy in the visible spectrum while the vast majority of the energy is retained as usable heat. Much of the visible light falls on walls and floors and furniture and people and pets and most of this energy is also salvaged eventually as heat. Only that small portion which leaks out of windows is actually lost.
Hense we can say that the heating effciency of an incandecent lightbulb is pretty close overall to 100% so it really is pretty close to being on par with natural gas and other energy sources such as oil.
What this means is that the energy loss from appliances offsets the energy consumption from the furnace and the prices are so close it is more or less a wash. If we check the futures prices on Natural Gas come March we may find the old 100 watt light bulbs are cheaper.
-------------
What these calculations demonstrate is that in the winter heating season the only path to energy conservation is through attention to the building envelope. Energy efficient appliances accomplish next to nothing (in colloqial French Canadian this is loosely translated to SFA).
However in the cooling season in summer the story is a lot different. These applicances during summer add to the cooling load of the building and this load is very considerable. Still in summer if we pay attention again to the building envelope then we can eliminate a huge percentage of the energy that must be pushed out of the building against the thermal gradient by the HVAC system. Note that in this case the Delta-T for an air coupled system might be sitting at say 40F while the Delta-T for an earth or water coupled system might only be 10F.
So energy efficient appliances and lighting starts to make a great deal of sense once we get the building envelope insulation up where it should be which in Northern States and Canada is probably north of R50 in the walls and R70 in the ceilings. Then we can use the electricty saved to run a small earth or water coupled HVAC/Heat pump system and in so doing more or less eliminate the dependancy on Natural Gas and heating oil.
However with the typical homes we live in - especially in the winter time - its a wash. Pay for your energy as electricity or pay for it as Nat Gas.
The data on this is that the USA eastern states have experiance a huge increase in preciptation as measured by the frequency of rainfall in the ranges 0-1/2, 1/2-1, 1-1 1/2, etc up to 4 inches.
I found a website on that about 4 years ago and I forget it now. It looked very credible.
I would want to look at details. There are huge expanses of the planet that are very dry. To integrate this is a very very good idea.
Water vapour above about 15,000 feet is practially non-existant. I'm not sure of the boundry and of course this is a continous function.
If your prof said this then he was thinking of some specific areas. I would expect that is subtropical to tropical SE asia that H2O absorption is 100% effective. THere is probably a surplus.
This will explain why global warming will affect higher latitudes. IE - near the equator we already have all the solar energy captured. The leaks are at high latitude. If you boost H2O in high latitudes then they will become sub tropical and this just pushes the climate zones towards the poles.
If your comment is correct then there may not be much warming near the equator.
You should contrast these ideas to the permian warming. That knocked out about 90% of species. It was a single warm blip that lifted the average global temperature to about 27 degrees warmer than now.
Your basic idea is correct. If you look at the atmosphere on Venus then you will get an idea of the weight of the atmosphere if a significant portion of the oceans were evaporated.
BTW - the atmosphere during the Cretaceous was considerably more dense than it is today. Oxygen levels were also considerably higher. Maybe this is why the Dinosaurs could fly.
Nothing about science will make sense unless you can do your numbers.
What is not in the models is a fundamental change in H2O from _other_ than a feedback mechanizm.
What you posted is correct. However it is incomplete.
It would be good for the discussion if you posted the actual H2O specific concentrations verses temperature curves. You use the term specific. In the wikipedia it is called absolute.
Clearly you know a lot!
Now consider the geological processes. The Rocky Mountains for instance started to be build in the early cretaceous or late jurassic. That is say 200-150 million years ago. But most of the construction took place since the end of the cretaceous. Ditto with the Himalayans
When you push a lot of land to high elevation then that land loses its H2O blankee.
Then erosion etches out the mountains and the valleys regain their blankee.
Tie this in to massive irrigation projects worldwide that force entire rivers into the atmosphere through evapo-transpiration. Arid areas now become more humid. Cold desert nights become warmer.
Then we have massive and continous emission of H2O via smoke stacks. Since liquid fuel is about 2:1 H:C (part of the parfin series - C(n)H(2n+2)) we get molecual of H2O for each molecual of CO2.
It is true the H2O is short lived and the CO2 is not.
However the H2O is being continously replentished.
I do not think the amount of H2O from fuel is significant. From irrigation it might be. As an excersize the CIA fact book has acerage under irrigation.
This can be determined another way. If the satalite data is good enough we can tell from the wave lengths reflected into space what the impact of the irrigation is. We can also tell what the elevation impact is. From this we can look at the geology and the paleoclimate record.
I think the answers are written in the rocks. This would IMHO provide some material for a number of PHd thesis.
If you check my posts you will see that I have been saying this for years.
Most of this is probably due to a lot of land at high elevation. This causes a cooling because water vapour falls out at high elevation and cannot trap the incomming solar radiation. Furthermore we get a high reflection off the snow and ice as well.
In all likelihood the cooling from the Miocene was caused by mountain building with the himalyan plateau being the latest addition. The Rockys and Andies, Pyrannies, Alps and 2 Hellenic ranges appeared before the Himalain plateau was pushed up. In North America we have the Colorado Plateau.
As part of this cooling Antarctica froze over and that locked the planet into the current snowball earth. Prior to this freeze over Antactrica was cold - but still had significant amounts of water vapour which trapped solar energy falling during the Antarctic summers. After the freeze over, Antarctica became the dryest continent on the planet - with a huge increase in the loss of solar energy falling on Antarctica. So this is a powerful positive feedback mechanizm that locked us into the current snowball earth phase.
Since then a lot of erosion has taken place which my have moved us past the equilibrium point. Still - the ice on antarctica and the glaciers at high elevation have kept us locked into the snowball earth phase.
I suspect that irrigation is causing a warming. It makes a great deal of sense. But offsetting this is the distruction of the rain forests.
CO2 is negligable. During the ordovician levels of CO2 were 13x to 19x higher than now and the earth cooled.
Some have pointed out correctly that the sun was not as strong back then. While that is true - there was a fair amount of mountain building during the ordovician (taconic orogany) and this may have been what tipped the planet from the hot house into the snowball phase. The sun was also weaker when the planet came out of the snowball phase a few million years later.
For over 80% of the last 540 million years the earth has been about 22 degrees warmer on average than now. So it makes sense that the earth will warm up - we just do not know when.
Another thing is that we have had about 22 ice cycles in the last 2+ million years and typically with a frequency of about every 100,000 years or so. 5 million years ago there were trees north of the Arctic circle in Canada. This is probably true of Russia as well.
Since we have had a number of ice cycles (the last was at peak about 50,000 years ago) it would make sense that we will have another. If so then we may be within a few 1000 years of another ice age developing.
It really will depend on where the equilibrium points are and I don't think anyone has any real idea.
One thing that is really instructive is to look at a globe of the earth that has actual mountains on it. There is one at the Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta. When you look at this globe and see just how thin the atmosphere really is - 2/3 of it lies below 30,000 feet for instance (Mount Everest) - it becomes very clear that a lot of solar incident energy is simply reflected off into space.
Get rid of the mountains and you gain a very effective H2O blanket.
In the tropics at sea level and 35C the absolute H2O vapour in the atmosphere is over 8% (80,000 ppm). This is in contrast to CO2 levels of 365 PPM.
H2O is a stronger absorber than CO2 by far - in all wavelengths.
So I frankly do not think CO2 is even a factor to be honest. The models used by the IPCC do not take into consideration that water vapour levels may be changing. When your most significant variable is not handled properly then your model isn't very believable.
From a paleoclimate standpoint - CO2 can change climate. It did several times in the Precambrian. The thing is that in order to do this the CO2 levels had to climb to many 1000 PPM. This occurred back then because so much of the earth froze over that even the oceans may have frozen r
Slashdot Mirror
9,200,000/42/365 = 600 BOPD.
The USA uses about 20,000,000 BOPD. Canada and the USA use over 22 million BOPD. This is a drop in the bucket.
If they scaled this up by a factor of 1000 (a $14 BILLION plant) then this would still be small potatoes compared to what we need. Even the Alberta tar sands expansions which will take us to about 3.3 million BOPD with investments in the 10's of billions and maybe 100's of billions by 2015 are small potatoes compared to what we need.
Yes - every bit helps but...
Lets look at the 4 top oil fields:
Ghawar (Saudit Arabia) 5 million BOPD Likely near decline
Canaterall (Mexico) 2.2 million BOPD In decline, 14% per year
Bergan (Kuwait) 1.6 million BOPD In decline, rate unknown
DaQing (China) 1 million BOPD In decline, 7% per year
These 4 feilds produce about 10 million BOPD, or about 12.5% of the world's 82 million BOPD production.
A decline rate of 10% in these 4 feilds translates to a loss of over 1 million BOPD. If we multiply that biodiesel plant by 1000 we still do not make up for the lost production of the top 4 oil fields.
The North sea went into decline in 1999 at a rate of about 14%. The UK became an oil importer this year.
Indonesia became an oil importer this year.
Australia use to be supplied by Indoneasia and since Indonesia can no longer supply Oz, Oz also has lined up at the Straits of Hormuz, hat in hand, asking for middle east oil.
This plant is just a drop in the bucket! If we build a plant like this every day for the next 10 years it won't be enough. That is how big the world oil peak problem is. We do not have a workable energy policy in place.
Has anyone even heard any of the damn pollies even dicusssing it seriously?
The most believable estimate I have is that world oil production will peak in 2007 and this is an optimistic estimate taking into consideration every oil production project on the planet.
From the artical:
For the past 10 years, Yarro has been building and developing technology companies such as Altiris Inc. and SCO Group Inc.
Perhaps that explains it. Is this a ploy for SCO to deflect attention away from their lawsuit with IBM?
Does his team include Darrel?
Hahah - what a joke - and of course some dick head reporter picks this up as feasible. I wonder what PR firm is behind this? Would this have something to do with SCO?
I didn't follow the link. I mearly commented that laws against hemp were motivated by greed and punishment minded people out looking for trouble. The greed came from Synthetic fibers and the punishment from the bible thumpers.
In the end a lot of innocent people have been hurt.
From a medical standpoint I happen to know for a fact that it is very useful.
There are other illegal substances that have proven medical benefits as well - such as psylicybin treating hearing loss. The reports are not detailed enough for me to identify what types of hearing loss - I suspect it is treatment of Tinitus. Amounts are well below halucinegenic levels.
There is a whole area of medical benefits from mushrooms that people do not know about. Shitake has strong anti-cancer benefits and Oyster has anti-cloresteral.
Hemp has been shown to have a HUGE number of substances which are pharmacologically active. Some are very useful for treating Glaucoma. Others are powerful anti-nausia drugs.
-------------
However this is not recognised in the overzealous madness of the DEA.
Well - the USA gov and the DEA seem to be well funded. Then we get the pollies in Canada going along.
You do realise of course that the USA prison system has been a rather nice growth industry for quite a while.
Ah yes. These are nice tape drives. I'm in the market for one!
If anyone has a 3590 kicking around please send me an email with details. I like the 256 track units. They are fast and realiable.
As for $50K per tape - that is cheap.
In the 128 track models the Fujitsu drives were more relaible than the IBM drives.
BTW - if anyone needs some 10 tape autoloaders for the Fujitsu's I have several available plus main boards in both differential and single ended SCSI as well as some model H.
Tape RULES!!!
I'll never trust my precious data to a drive and media system as cheap as a DVD or CD. We are still reading tapes recorded in the 60's and 70's. I doubt a DVD or a CD will even last 10 years even if you have a special environment to keep it in. At least Magneto optical has an expected life span of 50 years.
In all likelihood a hard disk drive has a longer life than CD's and DVD's.
Its NMR. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Some people figured "nuclear" is a bad word so they are trying to rename it. This is discrimination for no good reasons at all.
Texas oil and Nylon would not have been worth nearly as much if Hemp were a commecial crop. Hense we know why it is illegal. Many of the farmers who had their crops burned by the cops were immagrants who had difficulty speaking English. Who here can imagine what it would be like to have the cops break in and burn what you were planning on making your pants out of next year?
The English Empire sailed on Hemp. There was no other fibre that could stand the salt spray. I can still remember when I was a boy looking at a hemp rope an wondering what it was. Then they were replaced by sisle which is a totally inferior product.
Our governments have been doing a lot of lying to us over the years.
I recall watching on CNN one very distraugh woman who lost 7 of her 9 children in the Tsunami last year. While I feel sorry for her I do wonder what other planets she was planning on populating.
This will sound heartless but nevertheless it is true. The starvation in the 3rd world is due to a reproduction rate that is out of control. We see this in the middle east as well.
One of the reasons Saddam was able to run kids through the mine feilds in the Iran Iraq war is because he had a lot of kids available. Just check the CIA factbook and look at the population demographics. It is scary!
Sweden may be cool but I can assure you their women arn't!
Can you post some links and technical information? I would really like to learn more!
I would like to see some engineering designs and performance measurements and I would like to try building some of the things you have worked on.
Excellent post - unfortunately the story is fraught with errors. Perhaps this the the new slashdot strategy - post absolutely innane "stories" in hope that we readers do all the corrections.
What is unethical is to NOT pursue stem cell research.
I have a friend in his early 40's who is now a parpalegic because of a skiing accident. To leave him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life because some people want to argue hypotheticals about the sanctity of life of a germ cell which we all know has no future because it was never destined to be fertilized has got to be one of the most callous deflections of intelligence that I have ever come across. This is especially so when we consider that if the germ cell in question were accidently fertilized than it would be the subject of a quick abortion!
It is not those who wish to pursue stem cell research who are being unethical - it is those who oppose the research!
Of course I suppose this same negative attitude has been prevalent in the past. Would the ludites qualify? How is this different?
One thing that has always amased me is the anti-technology people. They come in many guises. The thing is that mankind has had an ever increasing level of technological sophistication ever since we left the stone ages.
To suggest for instance that in the 1800 - the population was quite unsophisticated from a technological standpoint is a total falicy. Much of our modren world was well understood back then and indeed the Special theory of relativity was published in 1905.
Even the 30's appear primative to many people - yet it was during the 30's that the neutron was discovered and nuclear fission. Are these achievements of an ignorant population? Absolutley not! People at the turn of the last century were very technologically competant. Their science was very well developed.
Given this perspective it has always amased me that those who yearn for the good old days and a simpler life typically just want to turn the clock back about one (1) generation. It isn't that they are against technology. They just associate the technology of their grandparents with some romantic notion that the past was somehow better than what the future will be.
The truth is that past was a lot harder life to live than the present and in all likelihood the future will be considerably better yet. This is in spite of the uncertainties our fear mongers like to spew in the name of whatever cause or whatever worry happens to be the fashion of the day.
Where would you be if you were denied the option to study at the university level?
It sounds as if you were given the best. You are one of the lucky ones.
It is very common for little girls to be precocious at an early age in the area of language. It is very common for little boys to be retarded. This is one of the reasons that all the way through the elementary grades - where language arts are enphasized - little girls typically out perform little boys.
The scales swing the other way after puberty. Pubecient girls language skills are still typically ahead of pubecient boys. However the mathematical and logical skills of the male of the species start to shine.
So while your little girl may have tested over 180 when 4 and is undoubtably a smart little girl, do not be surprised if when she gets to gr 9 she will be pretty close to and a little above average.
Most likely she will end up being somewhere in the neighbourhood of where her grandmothers and mother is. If your wife has an IQ over 180 then odds are your daughter will fall between 100 and 180. It is only rarely do the genetic factors combine to yeild a child with an IQ significantly greated than his parents and ancestors.
You have no clue whatsoever my friend. For someone who lacks the "brains" so to speak it is about the same as being blind. So your comment is akin to a blind person suggesting that people who can see are really just as blind as everyone else however they have an obsession. How cute.
If I were to ask you for instance to write a world class poem then given you have ordinary talents in this esoteric undertaking, you could sit at your desk for the next millenium and never be one of the monkeys lucky enough to strike shakespear's keys in the right order.
My tale is sad as well. I was one of the top winners of the Canadian Math Olympiad when I was in high school. But my high school was much worse than most. It was in an intellectual backwater and since the principal was accredited he could set his own grade 11-12 finals. This allowed him to water down the phys and chem and he didn't finish even the gr 11 curiculum by the end of gr 12 in either subject. Since the ciriculum already started out watered down you can well imagine what it was like.
For me, being in that school felt like being in prison. I thought of dropping out many times. Marks above 98 in math, chem, phys, trig didn't trigger a response in any of the teachers. I was never challenged ever. There wasn't even a decent reference book in the school library.
If I had been challenged I would have wrapped up high school maths and sciences by the middle of Gr 10. I would have completed my undergraduate math, phys and chem by the end of gr 12.
Instead, when I got to uni I had no idea how to study because I never had been challenged in my life. So I started out by skipping classes thinking this would be little different than high school. Well - I did get my degree but it took almost 2 years to start to undo the damage that school pupetrated on me.
I missed my calling - a career in theoretical physics/engineering. Instead I wandered into IT and my career has been fine. But I feel there is a hole in my life and in this hole is the career and the feild I love the most.
I was really screwed over by a badly broken system. That principal should have been fired for non-performace. Where we to look at this legally he is guilty of fraud. When you falsify final test results to cover up that you never taught the subjects in the first place - then this is fraud. Instead he draws a nice pension.
I would email you but I don't have your email. You do have mine.
Please see if you can pull the utility records for the place. Even if you did not in the past pay them - you do own the house now and I would think this would give you the right to know what the heating bills were like.
You have several problems to deal with.
1) I suspect that the heating costs are going to set you back over $4,000 this year. Thus you really have little choice in the matter. This may be why the former owners sold the place to you.
2) The USA is going into a severe energy crisis. You have not seen ANYTHING yet. There are posts in the tread to the effect that we can just transition to LNG imports and drill more gas wells. Bullshyte. People who say this are just dreaming. It would be nice but the truth is we have to deal with reality or reality will deal with us.
North American Natural Gas peaked in 2001. If this were not true then the North American Fertilizer business would not be currently mostly shut down and the president of Dow Chemicals would not be warning of plastics shortages. These are real issues. They are happening. If you heat with natural gas then you will probably be ok for the next couple years. Natural Gas in storage looks ok for this year but it will be tight come spring (again) and next year about the same. Over a period of time it will only get worse and your heating bills will keep going up.
3) Your house probably has a number of high maintenance features. What kind of exterior? Do you need to paint it for instance?
4) Your house should probably have its wiring upgraded and new cabling for TV, internet. You might want to look into fiber optics as well. If you are working from the outside you can fit all of this in. From the inside you can do it as well but you will need to figure out how to do this in a peice meal fashion if you wish to remain living in the place.
Look for a complete solution. When the walls are apart is when to do all this stuff. Wiring is cheap. So is cabling. Insulation is cheap. Labour is not but hopfully you and your wife can do most of the work. Tearing walls apart sounds a lot more scary than it is. I tore my house apart for instance. Jaws drop when you take a tile knife and cut a 20 foot long by 1 foot wide hole in the living room.
-----------
When I stated 15,000 I was thinking of a contractor price (finished). If I were to set up a business to do this then that would be my target because it can be paid for in fuel savings alone and I've talked to banks about organising this and they are keen.
On a do it yourself basis - budget under 10,000. Stucco is more expensive than other solutions. You can even leave Tyvac on the exterior for a while.
For vinyl, you'll have to price it out but that siding is not all that dear. There are ways to get this done.
Also - see if there are any incentives in your area. I suspect there may be.
Good luck. Send me an email to my regular addy and let me know how you are making out.
THere are windows that will give you R17. I expect we'll see some comming from Japan shortly that will do even better. These are new developments and they are barely commercial at this time.
An active sutter system will actually solve the problem as well. There is no reason for your windows to be leaking energy in the middle of the winter in the middle of the night when you should be in bed sleeping.
Again - we have simple ideas and apparently no products to choose from.
I think you'll have to make your own. One way to do this might be to get a nice fabric and cover styrofoam panels. Then you might need to build an electric motor powered system to move the shutters.
Life is so much fun at the bleeding edge.
Further to my last coment.
I see no reason that requires you to work on the inside. If the house can use a residing then tear off the old siding and take the walls apart. Scab on a stud extension to bring the walls to 1 foot thick and re-insulate, re-sheath, re-side with a maintanance free exterior such as stucco.
It will set you back about 6,000-10,000 for a good stucco job and soffits, etc. Windows will still have to be reset. I would think this approach might be done for say about 15K ++.
You may run into zoning problems. However I think these issues can be dealt with.
The thing is by the time you do all the engineering required you may as well put an ad in the papers and do it professionally. I think there is a fortune to me made!
You have a real opportunity on your hands.
THere are a few ways to go. Blown in bat is one of the best. The thing is that in order to get to where you need to be you really need to get R50 in those walls.
What you illustrate is the typical stupidiy of builders back in the 40s and they are not much better now. They often will try to get away with what they can get away with.
But back to the problem at hand. If you are going to refinish a room I'd suggest knock down the plaster on the outside walls and scab on extentions to the studs to bring the walls to a foot thick. Then fill with R50 fibergalls and drywall it. When you paint it will be invisible however you will have ceiling details to deal with as well as door jambs and windows. One of the best window solutions I've see is this. Desing for a wall thickness which will accomodate a mirror tile and a nice floor tile. Use floor tiles on the sill area and mirror tiles on the sides. This will leave a window that does not look as if it is in a tunnel. Next you gain a nice window sill for plants.
You'll want a thickness of about 1 foot for the tiles. This will give you R50 or so.
Now - if you wish to be even more cleaver then you need to realise that those old houses were designed to exclude any energy from the outside and you are expected to replace it - hense why the furnace is running all the time... and costing you a great deal of money!!!
Passive solar is where you need to go. There is a huge amount of work done but what we really need might not quite yet exist.
What you have to realise is that the local HVAC people probably don't really know all that much. I am constantly amased at how little contractors typically know.
Track down the DOE sponsored "Solar Decathalon". There is a lot of work being done in the uni's at this time and I think were I in your situation that I would contact the architectural school and see if I could find some of the brains behind the demonstration houses. You might find that if you make a small investment to support their next sustainable housing competition that you gain access to some really serious information and ideas as well as to some needy students in search of consulting work.
If you can't find it email me and I'll see what I can dig up for you.
BTW - the 1-2" contractor specials that the siding folks like to talk the pubic into are not going to cut it. If you do it properly you'll be able to eliminate the furnace forever. Hiring good consulting is a really good way to start. This is a complex feild.
I think I read somewhere that 60% of homes are heated by methane (CH4) (Natural Gas). Last I checked today the price of Nat Gas is $11.41 and I expect this is at the Henry Hub and the units are MM-btu's (ie 1 million btu). The conversion factor between MM-btu and GJ is 1.054615. For some reason the "units" program shows this conversion factor as 1.0550559. This is close enough for the girls I go with.
Since there are 3600 seconds in an hour an energy consumption of 1 kWh is equivalent to an energy consumption of 3600 kilojoules. Eg - for the units impaired we do this:
kWh => k(W)(h) => k(j/s)(h) => k(j/s)(3600s) => k(j)(3600)(s/s) => 3600 kj = 3.6*10^6j = 3.6e6j (the later being scientific notation)
We know the price of NatGas is 11.41 for 1 MM-btu (10^6 btu = 1e6 btu)
multiply by 1.054615 and we get about $12 bux = 1Gj = 10^9j = 1e9j
divide by 1000 to get: $0.012 = 10^6j = 1e6j
but: kWh = 3.6e6j = 3.6(1e6j) = 3.6 * 0.012 = 4.3 cents.
This is a wholesale price for natgas. Wholesale prices for electricty are about 5 cents per kWh. Delivered prices are about 2x in both cases as well. Check your energy bills.
What this shows is that at present prices, the cost of energy from a source such as delivered natural gas is about the same as the cost of energy from electricty. When you consider that electricty can be used to drive a heat pump (whole house negative fridge) at an overall thermal effciency of upwards of 300% if earth or lake coupled then it is actually cheaper and more energy efficient to heat our homes with electricty rather than natural gas. Ditto with oil.
Now a standard incandecent heater (light bulb) is upwards of 90% efficient. IE - when you run your incandecent heater you leak about 10% or so of the energy in the visible spectrum while the vast majority of the energy is retained as usable heat. Much of the visible light falls on walls and floors and furniture and people and pets and most of this energy is also salvaged eventually as heat. Only that small portion which leaks out of windows is actually lost.
Hense we can say that the heating effciency of an incandecent lightbulb is pretty close overall to 100% so it really is pretty close to being on par with natural gas and other energy sources such as oil.
What this means is that the energy loss from appliances offsets the energy consumption from the furnace and the prices are so close it is more or less a wash. If we check the futures prices on Natural Gas come March we may find the old 100 watt light bulbs are cheaper.
-------------
What these calculations demonstrate is that in the winter heating season the only path to energy conservation is through attention to the building envelope. Energy efficient appliances accomplish next to nothing (in colloqial French Canadian this is loosely translated to SFA).
However in the cooling season in summer the story is a lot different. These applicances during summer add to the cooling load of the building and this load is very considerable. Still in summer if we pay attention again to the building envelope then we can eliminate a huge percentage of the energy that must be pushed out of the building against the thermal gradient by the HVAC system. Note that in this case the Delta-T for an air coupled system might be sitting at say 40F while the Delta-T for an earth or water coupled system might only be 10F.
So energy efficient appliances and lighting starts to make a great deal of sense once we get the building envelope insulation up where it should be which in Northern States and Canada is probably north of R50 in the walls and R70 in the ceilings. Then we can use the electricty saved to run a small earth or water coupled HVAC/Heat pump system and in so doing more or less eliminate the dependancy on Natural Gas and heating oil.
However with the typical homes we live in - especially in the winter time - its a wash. Pay for your energy as electricity or pay for it as Nat Gas.
yes - correct.
The data on this is that the USA eastern states have experiance a huge increase in preciptation as measured by the frequency of rainfall in the ranges 0-1/2, 1/2-1, 1-1 1/2, etc up to 4 inches.
I found a website on that about 4 years ago and I forget it now. It looked very credible.
See if you can find it ok?
I would want to look at details. There are huge expanses of the planet that are very dry. To integrate this is a very very good idea.
Water vapour above about 15,000 feet is practially non-existant. I'm not sure of the boundry and of course this is a continous function.
If your prof said this then he was thinking of some specific areas. I would expect that is subtropical to tropical SE asia that H2O absorption is 100% effective. THere is probably a surplus.
This will explain why global warming will affect higher latitudes. IE - near the equator we already have all the solar energy captured. The leaks are at high latitude. If you boost H2O in high latitudes then they will become sub tropical and this just pushes the climate zones towards the poles.
If your comment is correct then there may not be much warming near the equator.
You should contrast these ideas to the permian warming. That knocked out about 90% of species. It was a single warm blip that lifted the average global temperature to about 27 degrees warmer than now.
Check www.scotese.com
Please do some numbers.
Your basic idea is correct. If you look at the atmosphere on Venus then you will get an idea of the weight of the atmosphere if a significant portion of the oceans were evaporated.
BTW - the atmosphere during the Cretaceous was considerably more dense than it is today. Oxygen levels were also considerably higher. Maybe this is why the Dinosaurs could fly.
Nothing about science will make sense unless you can do your numbers.
What is not in the models is a fundamental change in H2O from _other_ than a feedback mechanizm.
What you posted is correct. However it is incomplete.
It would be good for the discussion if you posted the actual H2O specific concentrations verses temperature curves. You use the term specific. In the wikipedia it is called absolute.
Clearly you know a lot!
Now consider the geological processes. The Rocky Mountains for instance started to be build in the early cretaceous or late jurassic. That is say 200-150 million years ago. But most of the construction took place since the end of the cretaceous. Ditto with the Himalayans
When you push a lot of land to high elevation then that land loses its H2O blankee.
Then erosion etches out the mountains and the valleys regain their blankee.
Tie this in to massive irrigation projects worldwide that force entire rivers into the atmosphere through evapo-transpiration. Arid areas now become more humid. Cold desert nights become warmer.
Then we have massive and continous emission of H2O via smoke stacks. Since liquid fuel is about 2:1 H:C (part of the parfin series - C(n)H(2n+2)) we get molecual of H2O for each molecual of CO2.
It is true the H2O is short lived and the CO2 is not.
However the H2O is being continously replentished.
I do not think the amount of H2O from fuel is significant. From irrigation it might be. As an excersize the CIA fact book has acerage under irrigation.
This can be determined another way. If the satalite data is good enough we can tell from the wave lengths reflected into space what the impact of the irrigation is. We can also tell what the elevation impact is. From this we can look at the geology and the paleoclimate record.
I think the answers are written in the rocks. This would IMHO provide some material for a number of PHd thesis.
If you check my posts you will see that I have been saying this for years.
Most of this is probably due to a lot of land at high elevation. This causes a cooling because water vapour falls out at high elevation and cannot trap the incomming solar radiation. Furthermore we get a high reflection off the snow and ice as well.
In all likelihood the cooling from the Miocene was caused by mountain building with the himalyan plateau being the latest addition. The Rockys and Andies, Pyrannies, Alps and 2 Hellenic ranges appeared before the Himalain plateau was pushed up. In North America we have the Colorado Plateau.
As part of this cooling Antarctica froze over and that locked the planet into the current snowball earth. Prior to this freeze over Antactrica was cold - but still had significant amounts of water vapour which trapped solar energy falling during the Antarctic summers. After the freeze over, Antarctica became the dryest continent on the planet - with a huge increase in the loss of solar energy falling on Antarctica. So this is a powerful positive feedback mechanizm that locked us into the current snowball earth phase.
Since then a lot of erosion has taken place which my have moved us past the equilibrium point. Still - the ice on antarctica and the glaciers at high elevation have kept us locked into the snowball earth phase.
I suspect that irrigation is causing a warming. It makes a great deal of sense. But offsetting this is the distruction of the rain forests.
CO2 is negligable. During the ordovician levels of CO2 were 13x to 19x higher than now and the earth cooled.
Some have pointed out correctly that the sun was not as strong back then. While that is true - there was a fair amount of mountain building during the ordovician (taconic orogany) and this may have been what tipped the planet from the hot house into the snowball phase. The sun was also weaker when the planet came out of the snowball phase a few million years later.
For over 80% of the last 540 million years the earth has been about 22 degrees warmer on average than now. So it makes sense that the earth will warm up - we just do not know when.
Another thing is that we have had about 22 ice cycles in the last 2+ million years and typically with a frequency of about every 100,000 years or so. 5 million years ago there were trees north of the Arctic circle in Canada. This is probably true of Russia as well.
Since we have had a number of ice cycles (the last was at peak about 50,000 years ago) it would make sense that we will have another. If so then we may be within a few 1000 years of another ice age developing.
It really will depend on where the equilibrium points are and I don't think anyone has any real idea.
One thing that is really instructive is to look at a globe of the earth that has actual mountains on it. There is one at the Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta. When you look at this globe and see just how thin the atmosphere really is - 2/3 of it lies below 30,000 feet for instance (Mount Everest) - it becomes very clear that a lot of solar incident energy is simply reflected off into space.
Get rid of the mountains and you gain a very effective H2O blanket.
In the tropics at sea level and 35C the absolute H2O vapour in the atmosphere is over 8% (80,000 ppm). This is in contrast to CO2 levels of 365 PPM.
H2O is a stronger absorber than CO2 by far - in all wavelengths.
So I frankly do not think CO2 is even a factor to be honest. The models used by the IPCC do not take into consideration that water vapour levels may be changing. When your most significant variable is not handled properly then your model isn't very believable.
From a paleoclimate standpoint - CO2 can change climate. It did several times in the Precambrian. The thing is that in order to do this the CO2 levels had to climb to many 1000 PPM. This occurred back then because so much of the earth froze over that even the oceans may have frozen r