The "real" issue is where the Kinetic Energy comes from. Space Ship 1 proves that a small relatively inexpensive craft can attain the elevation needed to reach space. What Space ship 1 did not have is enough energy to reach orbital speeds. The additional energy is over 30 times more than required to reach the elevation.
Now a space elevator has the exact same problem. Somehow this energy has to be fed into the system.
Now - suppose we launch into space a tether and rotate this teather in the opposite direction to orbit so that the relative velocity of the tether when it picks up a spaceship is low. This tether will need to impart kinetic energy to the craft and perhaps this can be done through some sort of electrical propulsion system. If so, then free sunlight from space can be collected to provide the electricty.
So just maybe there are hybred systems that will work.
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One way a tether system could be used is to use a baloon to raise the ship to a high elevation and then drop a tether down. Of course baloons can be attached to the space elevator cable itself... but why bother? You can simply lift the elevator car.
Now - this is real science fiction. Suppose in orbit we build a monorail that encricles the entire earth... a ring at the equator if you will.
On this monorail you run a train in the opposite driection from the orbital direction and then drop the cable down to the car being lifted up by the baloon. Clearly you have the option of matching velocities. So the car gets transfered to the cable and the baloon gets deflated as the cable takes over the lift. In order to counter balence the weight of the train, the monorail track has counterwieghts and enough strength to actually carry the train and the elevator car.
Then as the car is lifted by the cable the velocity of the train on the monorail is increased to match orbital speeds.
I think all can see the problems with this system. The train must travel at a speed of about 25,000 miles per hour in order to match the speed of the elevator car and even in space it might be difficult to build a train that can handle this velocity difference relative to its track.
However - perhaps using maglev this can be done. If so the kinetic energy of the train can be transfered to the monorail and once the elevator car has been picked up the kinetic energy of the monorail can be recovered to accelerate the elevator car and the train. Essentually the train just brakes and we would need a big capacitor that we can feed the energy into.
Aside from the idea that the monorail is over 26,000 miles long, maybe the physics will work.
Also, with a properly designed rail gun we might be able to launch the building materials into space so there might be some way to build the monorail without expensive rocket systems.
Science fiction? of course this is. IMHO so is a space elevator.
While this is certainly a step forward, it is a very long way away from LEO. SS-1 reached only about mach 3 which is perhaps 1/8th the velocity needed for orbit.
The reporter on CNN, being the uninformed dummy that the media normally hires, commented they would need 8x more energy to reach LEO. NO. E=mv^2/2 and thus they would need at least 32 times more energy and next they would need to carry all this extra energy and when you get it all scaled up properly you have a system like the space shuttle.
Still, 90% of the mass of the shuttle is elegible for elimination if oxygen from the atmosphere can be subsituted. We need hyper speed engines for this - which are being worked on.
A more dense energy source would do the job as well. Candidates in this area include nuclear which perhaps might include Hf isomers. But at this point this is just speculation. A nuclear engine will work however and there have been prototypes built.
Finally, if we could figure out a way to beam in the energy then we wouldn't need to carry it with us. The atmosphere probably precludes beaming it up from the surface of the planet. However, today's test clearly shows that obtaining elevation is not really that big a problem... it is solvable - so perhaps the energy can be beamed from space.
One way this _might_ be done (speculation) is to place a number of satelites in orbit that capture solar energy and then radiate it to a ship. With enough satelites a more or less continous energy feed could be accomplished. Thus as long as _some_ positive differential over the drag of the rarified atmosphere can be obtained, then it should be possible to obtain orbit.
However, I don't think radient energy capture systems are anywhere near robust enough to even be considered. It takes quite a bit of solar panel to power a coffee pot, much less a rocket ship.
Well - I think there should be kudos and pats on the back and I say good going.
However I do note that 2.8 million divided by 40 works out to about $70,000 per computer so these are slightly less expensive than the toilet seats we hear about.
The service area is the issue of course. Sparsely populated areas are expensive to service.
The last info I read on this was about a year ago adn I think it was from Oak Ridge National Labs.
Yes, the algea can produce the oil and yes, this is a very good idea. The problem was infections. They so far have been unable to keep a healthy population growing.
I think these problems can be solved. But we better do it pretty dman soon becuase if we have passed peak world oil production, then we can expect decline rates of about 5% per year and I'll leave it to the reader to do the math.
Your two discoveries are quite notworthy and should be compared to the total world production/consumption which in in the vicinity of 75 million barrels per day.
You are correct for instance that Europe production almost doubled from 3.5 to 6 million barrels per day. And you are correct with the fact that most of this came from the North Sea. With the North sea now declining at a rate approaching 15% per year Europe will be back to its 1982 production within 7 years. This is unless they find another feild the size of the North Sea.
I read your comment with much interest. Can you post something on the chemistry involved.
As I see it, the octane series which basically governs gasoline for the most part has an H to C ratio of about 2:1. The chemical formula is CnH(2n+2) where for octane n=8.
Coal has a ratio of about 0.6 so we have C0.6H and bitmen is closer to 1:1.
This means that for each atom of C tossed into the upgraders we need to add in the vicinity of one atom of H.
A good friend of mine happens to be working on the desing of the largest Hydrogen plant in the world at the moment, so if there is something in the Texaco Gasifier that we should tell him... well - here is our chance!
If we add steam (H2O) to a hot Carbon, hydrogen fire we get out H, CO and CO2 and you may wish to point out that from an energy standpoint the reactions are reasonably efficient.
However, lets look at this from a slightly different standpoint. Suppose we do not want to mine the Carbon feedstocks just to turn around and burn a major percentage of them in the Texaco Gasifier. Suppose instead we want to conserve each and every Carbon atom that goes into the process so that the end products of the gasifier are H2 and CH4 and other "tane's". We can do the chemistry but we end up with a big energy deficit.
This is why we need the CANDU reactors.
It is terribly wasteful to mine bitumin for a CHEMICAL/ENERGY feedstock and then having extracted it with some of the largest minning equipment in the world, turn around and literally burn off 1/2 the Carbon and release it as CO2 because we have an energy constraint...
The tar sands will go 2x as far if we use them as a chemical feedstock and obtain the energy from other sources. In the process CO2 emmissions are greatly reduced.
This being said, the CH4 is also being burned as a source of energy.
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One might like to look at this in the light of hte Turner Valley field. It was being developed in the 1920's and produced through WWII. During this period they flared the gas cap. It was so bright you could drive at night with your lights off.
93% of the oil was left in the feild.
I have not done these calculations with Syncrude, but it would be worthwhile to calculate a ration that shows the amount of carbon in verses carbon out as end product and do a similar calculation for hydrogen in verses hydrogen out.
If this is done I think people will see that Syncrude is running perhaps between 25% and 33%.
If we take the lower number, it means that for each atom of carbon that ends up in a barrel of fuel at the pumps, 3x that amount was released into the atmosphere as CO2. The underlying reason for this is because Syncrude needs an alternate source of energy. With an alternate source of energy it can act as a chemical plant.
If you look at the Vostock ice data carefully you may note that the CO2 lags the temperature increase by about 1000 years.
I suspect the reason for this is CO2 solubility in water decreases with temperature. Anyone familiar with a beer on a hot day will note this.
The pressure in a chamgpagne bottle, just for example, with about 5 volumes of CO2 dissolved varies from under 10 PSI at 32F to over 60 PSI at room temperatures. So clearly as those cold oceans warmed, the CO2 is expelled.
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About 5 million years ago there were trees north of the Arctic Circle as is evidenced by wood fragments and sometimes logs found buried in the Kimberlites.
If you look at the history of the earth since the end of the Cabrian you find only 4 cold periods - and we are in one now... for the rest of the time, about 90% in fact, the earth was about 20 degrees warmer on average - which means the poles were much warmer because the tropics don't change all that much.
The cooling which started at the end of the Cretaceous is sort of correlated with the loss of the shallow tropical ocean which covered most of central North America. The percentage of the planet covered with open water is probably the driving factor here and the earth does run on two modes: snowball earth and tropical earth..
The tip over into tropical probably comes when there is eanough open water to overcome the cooling of the snowball phase and when this occurs the ice mealts rather quickly and the planet warms up.
The tip into snowball probably comes when there is enough loos of open water so that extensive ice caps start to form and eventually the point is reached when the earth cools into the alternate phase.
Mankind can influence this with irrigation and constantly releasing water vapour through fuel consumption. The CIA fact book contains data on irrigated acerage.
The thing to note is that water vapour runs at 2-4% or about 100 times more than the 0.0365% CO2.
The uncertainty in the change of the water vapour is greated than the total amount of CO2. Thus while CO2 will contribute, it is unlikely that it makes much difference.
In the end, if global warming is real, then mankind will influence it and water vapour with provide the mechanism. (IMHO)
You can find it on the BP website and specifically look here: BP reports
While there is a LOT of energy falling on planet earth and alternate energy forms can yeild a significant source, it is unlikly that these sources combined with reduced wastage can make the kind of difference we need.
The BP reports show 2002 oil ouput in ALL middle eastern countries has been in decline since 2000 and that Norway and North Sea have been in a rather serious decline since 1999.
The 2004 report showing 2003 production is expected shortly. What I hope this report shows is an increase in production in certain countries like Saudi Arabia. I suspect it will not show this. This will put us more than 3 years past the peak.
If within the next couple years we do not see an increase in world oil ouput then I supect we can conclude that looking through the rear veiw mirror we have seen the Peak of World Oil Production. THere is a lot of information to be found at the Hubbert Peak Website
If one assumes a 5% reduction per year and this might be generous, then consider how much the world consumption is cut back within say 10 years or 20...
I am sure slashdotters can do this math and can add the number of years to their age. The bottom line is they may be growing old in world without oil.
However you slice it, do not expect Alberta to be able to pick up much slack with Tar Sands, even though we have about 1.8 trillion barrels in resources. The trouble is our tar sands reserves are only about 300 billion barrels and our TOTAL natural gas supplies (which are needed to supply hydrogen so the bitumin can be chemically lightened) are not even sufficient for 10% and North America is already in a Natural Gas crisis.
WE NEED nuclear plants (CANDU, not enriched, because CANDU burns natural uranium unlike the stoopid USA enriched reactors which I think were designed that way to justify enrichment facilities so bombs could be made)
Not only this, we needed to start building them 10 years ago. We are going to have some major power problems over the next few years.
I did not know that solid wood, clay brick and stone are good insulators.
I have no idea why my house has fiberglass in it with all these great "natural" materials available.
Great!! and we can just ripem outta the pavement
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If they start to pick up licence plate numebrs then some enterprizing individual will simply mount a blade on the underside of his truck and rip them out of the pavement.
Sometimes those involved with enforcement go a little to far in their search for more ways to pick the pockets of those they purport to serve. We generally know their objective is to serve themselves... serve themselves our money right?
2 billion years ago is smack dab in the middle of the preCambrian and there was no marine life that we know of then. There certainly were no land species. Early life in the oceans showed up in the Cambrian which is about 570 million years ago.
A UK billion is a million million not a 1000 million as is used in North America. So by their own numbers they are out by a factor of not 8 but 8000 on their time scales.
Stories that are this factually wrong should not be welcome in/.
Actually your power saw example is a rather good one. New industrial saws are able to sense when the operator inserts his finger under the blade - and stop! So the saw quite literally does adust its parameters.
I also have a windows computer. It is behind an OpenBSD firewall. My son was unsuccessful with his windows 2000 system and after the 7th reload he has abandoned it. I gave him his own zone... the OpenBSD firewall blocks him and his computers from anything in my zone.
I have Never had a virus or worm affect me. I could not take the chance in fact. This is why my emails and web browsing and most of my development work are in Linux machines.
I do recieve many viruses. Mutt is not vulnerable. I do not use vulnerable email systems.
If any of the trojans you speak of actually contained a payload, you would not have the opportunity to run your anti-virus software. A payload can erase your hard drive, erase or reprogram the bios so your machine will not even boot... it can reprogram the bios to set parameters that will fry the hardware... it could change the CRTC register timings to fry your monitor - or even smoke it!
There are many really nasty things that a payload can do. You are just lucky...
But - the future is a very long time and I do execpt that if you continue to practice unsafe cybering that one day you will learn that you should have taken precautions.
With this purported arrest there are a few questions that enter my mind.
(1) Do they have the right guy? I doubt it!
(2) What of a payload. Perhaps next time there will be a real payload. IMHO dumping a worm onto the net is about the same as a prank. I somehow doubt the "authorties" will see the humour. In which case perhaps the next worm will contain a payload worthy of the punishment that this young man will suffer.
This could be the beginning of a serious escalation.
What people need to realise is that with a billion plus people on the net, if there is a vulnerability then it will be found. It does not matter who does it - because SOMEONE will. Punshing the pranster is not a deterant. Fixing the broken software is the only solution and fat cat Mr. Moneybags Bill Gates should be able to accomplish the later... either that or withdraw the clearly faulty software from the market.
If we chose to attack and punish the pransters then it is we who escalate this and I would expect the reaction will be in the form of an escalation of the damages.
The issue with the 1/2 life is that it is inversely proportional to the danger. Of course this is modified by what nuclear trash is ejected when a nucleus splits. This part should be obvious to all.
A second point is that the dangers of low level radiation are drastically overstated. While there is disagreement on the casualties, the fact there is a rift in the attributed numbers is very clear. The UN reports fewer than 50 people died and a few 1000 (horrible of course - I feel so sad for these people) with thyroid cancer. These numbers are in stark contrast to the 300,000+ that some people cite.
We can learn from the accident, learn a great deal and perhaps from this will come an understanding that nuclear energy has been bad mouthed for decades and has been the target of a rather large disinformation campaign.
It is my suspicion that the disinformation campaign was fueled by large Texan oil interests who collectively realised that in a nuclear economy - their oil would not be worth much... and hense their power base would erode.
So they bought themselves a few years of prosperity at the expense of mankind in general, because now this wonderful chemical feedstock has been burned about a fast as possible. From an economic point of view, oil resources are not valuable and the value can only be achieved by burning them up ass fast as freking possible and converting them into money. Right?
I personally think the disaster is a tragedy. I really feel for these people, they have suffered a great deal. Yet, we now see the beginning of a rebirth.
Perhaps what we should be looking to do is have all nuclear nations fund actinide transmutations technology based in Chornobyl. This is the perfect place to build these facilities and conduct this research. The area is alreay poisoned and public opion says it will be uninhabitalable for 1000+ years.
The Nuclear physists and engineers may choose to differ, and they should have the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are so to speak. The area is beautiful. Actinide transmutation technology can reclaim it.
Rather than be negative about this, lets be positive. Lets build the biggest bloody actinide transmutations lab, then facility in the world and end our nuclear waste problems in the process.
Stockpiling is just bullshyte. Burning the garbage gets rid of it and no-one can build a weapon out of nuclear isotopes after they have been burnt up. Its the perfect solution and the Ukrane can export the surplus power to Europe. Right?
Vaccume distilation is quite energy efficient. This is why water distillers use this system.
As for the aziotrop - there is no good reason to distill past this point. However there will be engineering changes required in the motors to use a fuel which is 95% ethanol and 5% water.
David Pimental suggested that ethanol production from crops is a net energy loss. This is patently absurd. However - it is possible that the way things were actually done back then - given the massive subsidies - did result in an energy loss.
It is very clear that a great deal of energy can be harvested from crops and using the celulose in the straw is an excellent way to go.
Now - here is the problem with this idea. We will not get enough energy from bio-sources to supply what we need. In fact - we cannot get enough from even the vast Alberta tar Sands to supply what we need.
The total Canadian natural gas resource - if allocated to the tar sands upgrading - can only enrigh about 10% of the 300 billion barrels estimated to be recoverable - and this does not represent much of the 1.8 trillion barrels present.
Not only this - but your corn will have spread its pollen around the world and infected every feild of corn on the planet - feilds where the farmers were trying to grow NON GM MODDIFIED corn.
You can sue them too.
And they will lose just as Percy Schmeiser lost when Monsanto's GM modified rape contaminated his feilds.
You still have not caught the errors of your thinking. The lifetime of the molecule is not important. The fact is that new molecules are constantly being introduced. This is like the humidifier in your house and it is perfectly clear that your argument (and the IPCC's as well) that since the lifetime of the molecule in the atmosphere is short, it can be ignored is totally falicious!
The humidifier in your house clearly works! This is inspite of the fact you have to contantly refill it.
We are constantly irrigating vast stretches of land that would otherwise be arid. This causes more energy to be retained in the atmosphere.
You are 100% correct that the hydrogen gas released into the atmosphere will contribute to global warming. The people who have tried to belittle your comment are just totally uninformed or unable to understand the process or both.
The issues with hydrogen is at what altitude it will recombine. Notwithstanding this, water vapour is a far more powerful absorber than CO2 at all wavelengths and it is about 100 times more abundant.
CO2 levels currently are about 365ppm or 0.0365% while water vapour typically is 2-4%. However some areas are quite arid and may have water vapour levels at 0%.
Irrigation is playing a much bigger role than escaping hydrogen - however hydrogen technology is not widely deployed. If every house in the world were built along these lines - perhaps escaping hydrogen would be a significant factor. It certainly deserves some study.
Now the issue with irrigation is that before the dam was put in - the water flowed in a narrow band confined by two river banks and the only evaporation that took place was from its surface. After irrigation, all the water that previously flowed to the sea was now forced generally into the atmosphere through evaporation of land that otherwise would be arid, or secondly through transpiration from the crops that are irrigated.
If you look at the flow of the rivers around the world that has been diverted you will find this is quite a lot of water.
People use the argument that water is short lived in the atmosphere. While this is true, it is also irrelevant. Humidity in my house is also short lived but this does not change the fact that my humidifier works quite effectively because I can refill it. Similarly, if we look at the irrigation projects - it is clear that the global humidifier created by the crops is also being constantly refilled.
The next area where water vapour is significalty changed in the atmosphere is from the combustion of fossil fuels. Most liquid fuels come from the oxtane series and have a chemical formula of CnH(2n+2). Here we can clearly see we get 2x as much water vapour as CO2 on a molecular basis. With coals we are actually putting in more CO2 than Water vapour - but most of our fuels are not coals.
Natural Gas is CH4 so we put in 4x as much water vapour from Natural Gas.
Again, the issue is not how long lived the water vapour is, the issue is that we are constantly adding it. Thus all the activities we humans do actually pushes water vapour into the atmosphere on a more or less steady basis. Even breathing does this!
Some studies have suggested that each human in North America adds 64KG CO2 per day. If this is true, then each human add more than 2x this in the form of water vapour forced into the atmosphere.
Since water vapour is a strong absorber in all wavelengths one would expect the lower atmosphere to warm slightly and the upper atmosphere to cool. There is data to support this.
If you check the IPCC report in chapter 7 you will find that they simply decided to ignore the role of water vapour in their models. Given that the concentration of water vapour is at least 2 orders of magnitude more significant than CO2, this IMHO is a silly thing to do. You simply cannot ignore the most significant variable and expect your model to be meaningful.
So perhaps we do have some climate change taking place. The jury is still out on this matter mind you. I kinda think our climate is warming - but how much is an open question.
Over the last 570 million years, for over 90% of this time the planet was about 20 degrees warmer than now. So the dinosaurs really did live in a hot steamy jungle. In fact, even 5 million years ago there were trees north of the artic circle which is clear because we sometimes find wood in the kimberlites in some of Canada's wanna be diamond mines.
This wood has been dated at about 5 million years and it is still wood. So 5 million years ago it was quite a bit warmer than it is now.
ipcc report and water vapour in the atmosphere
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I think it will be many years before anything worthwhile comes from the IPCC and their models. I you check out chapter 7 you will find they advise why they have not included water vapour in the atmosphere in their modeles.
The issue is that water vapour is by FAR the most important greenhouse gas. CO2 is about 365 ppm these days - or 0.0356% while water vapour is in the range of 2-4% and this makes water vapour 100 TIMES more important.
Next, we need to consider irrigation. The CIA factbook does have land under irrigation on a country by country basis. It is clear these irrigation projects collectively are very significant and they have the effect of turning vast areas of arid land into moist land. All that water ends up transpired or evaporated into the atmosphere.
If we consider fossil fuels we find another large source of water vapour.
If we add it all together, which the IPCC has not done, what we find is that there has been a change in the amount of water vaopur released into the atmosphere from mankind's activites and then we must note that the UNCERTANTY in the measuremens of the water vapour are much greater than the total amount of trace gases.
Water vapour is 2 orders of magnitude more significant in concentration and it is a stronger absorber of Ultraviolet light in ALL wavelengths.
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That being said, our climatologist look at an extremely short time frame. The earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years. By 570 million years ago, it had warmed and then it stayed warm for close to 90% of the time since then. There really only were 4 cold snaps and we have been in one for the last two million years. And during this last 2 million years it appears we have enjoyed about 20 ice ages, the last of which ended only 18,000 years ago.
To contrast the duration of time, suppose we were to stack up the volumes of the encyclopeadia Brittanica. If we count the number of pages we might find the thickness of each page would correspond to say about 100,000 years of the earths history.
This means that our climate modelers basically collect there data from usually less than 1/1000th of the thickness of the last page and meanwhile they ignore everything else.
IMHO this does not bode very well for their ability to make valid predictions.
You are very naive my dear friend. If you have a valid patent anyone who wants to use it is going to walk all over your intellectual property rights. You DO NOT HAVE THE RESOURCES to defend them and you will lose them as a result.
On the other hand you also do not have the resources to fight against absolutley insane and invalid patents which form much of the portfolio of [typically large USA based] companies who have been amassing HUGE numbers of patents. These companies have been cross licensing so that they run no risk of infighting, yet they create their own select group that excludes everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
The "real" issue is where the Kinetic Energy comes from. Space Ship 1 proves that a small relatively inexpensive craft can attain the elevation needed to reach space. What Space ship 1 did not have is enough energy to reach orbital speeds. The additional energy is over 30 times more than required to reach the elevation.
Now a space elevator has the exact same problem. Somehow this energy has to be fed into the system.
Now - suppose we launch into space a tether and rotate this teather in the opposite direction to orbit so that the relative velocity of the tether when it picks up a spaceship is low. This tether will need to impart kinetic energy to the craft and perhaps this can be done through some sort of electrical propulsion system. If so, then free sunlight from space can be collected to provide the electricty.
So just maybe there are hybred systems that will work.
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One way a tether system could be used is to use a baloon to raise the ship to a high elevation and then drop a tether down. Of course baloons can be attached to the space elevator cable itself... but why bother? You can simply lift the elevator car.
Now - this is real science fiction. Suppose in orbit we build a monorail that encricles the entire earth... a ring at the equator if you will.
On this monorail you run a train in the opposite driection from the orbital direction and then drop the cable down to the car being lifted up by the baloon. Clearly you have the option of matching velocities. So the car gets transfered to the cable and the baloon gets deflated as the cable takes over the lift. In order to counter balence the weight of the train, the monorail track has counterwieghts and enough strength to actually carry the train and the elevator car.
Then as the car is lifted by the cable the velocity of the train on the monorail is increased to match orbital speeds.
I think all can see the problems with this system. The train must travel at a speed of about 25,000 miles per hour in order to match the speed of the elevator car and even in space it might be difficult to build a train that can handle this velocity difference relative to its track.
However - perhaps using maglev this can be done. If so the kinetic energy of the train can be transfered to the monorail and once the elevator car has been picked up the kinetic energy of the monorail can be recovered to accelerate the elevator car and the train. Essentually the train just brakes and we would need a big capacitor that we can feed the energy into.
Aside from the idea that the monorail is over 26,000 miles long, maybe the physics will work.
Also, with a properly designed rail gun we might be able to launch the building materials into space so there might be some way to build the monorail without expensive rocket systems.
Science fiction? of course this is. IMHO so is a space elevator.
While this is certainly a step forward, it is a very long way away from LEO. SS-1 reached only about mach 3 which is perhaps 1/8th the velocity needed for orbit.
The reporter on CNN, being the uninformed dummy that the media normally hires, commented they would need 8x more energy to reach LEO. NO. E=mv^2/2 and thus they would need at least 32 times more energy and next they would need to carry all this extra energy and when you get it all scaled up properly you have a system like the space shuttle.
Still, 90% of the mass of the shuttle is elegible for elimination if oxygen from the atmosphere can be subsituted. We need hyper speed engines for this - which are being worked on.
A more dense energy source would do the job as well. Candidates in this area include nuclear which perhaps might include Hf isomers. But at this point this is just speculation. A nuclear engine will work however and there have been prototypes built.
Finally, if we could figure out a way to beam in the energy then we wouldn't need to carry it with us. The atmosphere probably precludes beaming it up from the surface of the planet. However, today's test clearly shows that obtaining elevation is not really that big a problem... it is solvable - so perhaps the energy can be beamed from space.
One way this _might_ be done (speculation) is to place a number of satelites in orbit that capture solar energy and then radiate it to a ship. With enough satelites a more or less continous energy feed could be accomplished. Thus as long as _some_ positive differential over the drag of the rarified atmosphere can be obtained, then it should be possible to obtain orbit.
However, I don't think radient energy capture systems are anywhere near robust enough to even be considered. It takes quite a bit of solar panel to power a coffee pot, much less a rocket ship.
Well - I think there should be kudos and pats on the back and I say good going.
However I do note that 2.8 million divided by 40 works out to about $70,000 per computer so these are slightly less expensive than the toilet seats we hear about.
The service area is the issue of course. Sparsely populated areas are expensive to service.
Still - good going and I hope it works out!
The last info I read on this was about a year ago adn I think it was from Oak Ridge National Labs.
Yes, the algea can produce the oil and yes, this is a very good idea. The problem was infections. They so far have been unable to keep a healthy population growing.
I think these problems can be solved. But we better do it pretty dman soon becuase if we have passed peak world oil production, then we can expect decline rates of about 5% per year and I'll leave it to the reader to do the math.
Your two discoveries are quite notworthy and should be compared to the total world production/consumption which in in the vicinity of 75 million barrels per day.
You are correct for instance that Europe production almost doubled from 3.5 to 6 million barrels per day. And you are correct with the fact that most of this came from the North Sea. With the North sea now declining at a rate approaching 15% per year Europe will be back to its 1982 production within 7 years. This is unless they find another feild the size of the North Sea.
Do you have some prospects?
I read your comment with much interest. Can you post something on the chemistry involved.
As I see it, the octane series which basically governs gasoline for the most part has an H to C ratio of about 2:1. The chemical formula is CnH(2n+2) where for octane n=8.
Coal has a ratio of about 0.6 so we have C0.6H and bitmen is closer to 1:1.
This means that for each atom of C tossed into the upgraders we need to add in the vicinity of one atom of H.
A good friend of mine happens to be working on the desing of the largest Hydrogen plant in the world at the moment, so if there is something in the Texaco Gasifier that we should tell him... well - here is our chance!
If we add steam (H2O) to a hot Carbon, hydrogen fire we get out H, CO and CO2 and you may wish to point out that from an energy standpoint the reactions are reasonably efficient.
However, lets look at this from a slightly different standpoint. Suppose we do not want to mine the Carbon feedstocks just to turn around and burn a major percentage of them in the Texaco Gasifier. Suppose instead we want to conserve each and every Carbon atom that goes into the process so that the end products of the gasifier are H2 and CH4 and other "tane's". We can do the chemistry but we end up with a big energy deficit.
This is why we need the CANDU reactors.
It is terribly wasteful to mine bitumin for a CHEMICAL/ENERGY feedstock and then having extracted it with some of the largest minning equipment in the world, turn around and literally burn off 1/2 the Carbon and release it as CO2 because we have an energy constraint...
The tar sands will go 2x as far if we use them as a chemical feedstock and obtain the energy from other sources. In the process CO2 emmissions are greatly reduced.
This being said, the CH4 is also being burned as a source of energy.
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One might like to look at this in the light of hte Turner Valley field. It was being developed in the 1920's and produced through WWII. During this period they flared the gas cap. It was so bright you could drive at night with your lights off.
93% of the oil was left in the feild.
I have not done these calculations with Syncrude, but it would be worthwhile to calculate a ration that shows the amount of carbon in verses carbon out as end product and do a similar calculation for hydrogen in verses hydrogen out.
If this is done I think people will see that Syncrude is running perhaps between 25% and 33%.
If we take the lower number, it means that for each atom of carbon that ends up in a barrel of fuel at the pumps, 3x that amount was released into the atmosphere as CO2. The underlying reason for this is because Syncrude needs an alternate source of energy. With an alternate source of energy it can act as a chemical plant.
If you look at the Vostock ice data carefully you may note that the CO2 lags the temperature increase by about 1000 years.
I suspect the reason for this is CO2 solubility in water decreases with temperature. Anyone familiar with a beer on a hot day will note this.
The pressure in a chamgpagne bottle, just for example, with about 5 volumes of CO2 dissolved varies from under 10 PSI at 32F to over 60 PSI at room temperatures. So clearly as those cold oceans warmed, the CO2 is expelled.
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About 5 million years ago there were trees north of the Arctic Circle as is evidenced by wood fragments and sometimes logs found buried in the Kimberlites.
If you look at the history of the earth since the end of the Cabrian you find only 4 cold periods - and we are in one now... for the rest of the time, about 90% in fact, the earth was about 20 degrees warmer on average - which means the poles were much warmer because the tropics don't change all that much.
The cooling which started at the end of the Cretaceous is sort of correlated with the loss of the shallow tropical ocean which covered most of central North America. The percentage of the planet covered with open water is probably the driving factor here and the earth does run on two modes: snowball earth and tropical earth..
The tip over into tropical probably comes when there is eanough open water to overcome the cooling of the snowball phase and when this occurs the ice mealts rather quickly and the planet warms up.
The tip into snowball probably comes when there is enough loos of open water so that extensive ice caps start to form and eventually the point is reached when the earth cools into the alternate phase.
Mankind can influence this with irrigation and constantly releasing water vapour through fuel consumption. The CIA fact book contains data on irrigated acerage.
The thing to note is that water vapour runs at 2-4% or about 100 times more than the 0.0365% CO2.
The uncertainty in the change of the water vapour is greated than the total amount of CO2. Thus while CO2 will contribute, it is unlikely that it makes much difference.
In the end, if global warming is real, then mankind will influence it and water vapour with provide the mechanism. (IMHO)
You can find it on the BP website and specifically look here: BP reports
While there is a LOT of energy falling on planet earth and alternate energy forms can yeild a significant source, it is unlikly that these sources combined with reduced wastage can make the kind of difference we need.
The BP reports show 2002 oil ouput in ALL middle eastern countries has been in decline since 2000 and that Norway and North Sea have been in a rather serious decline since 1999.
The 2004 report showing 2003 production is expected shortly. What I hope this report shows is an increase in production in certain countries like Saudi Arabia. I suspect it will not show this. This will put us more than 3 years past the peak.
If within the next couple years we do not see an increase in world oil ouput then I supect we can conclude that looking through the rear veiw mirror we have seen the Peak of World Oil Production. THere is a lot of information to be found at the Hubbert Peak Website
If one assumes a 5% reduction per year and this might be generous, then consider how much the world consumption is cut back within say 10 years or 20...
I am sure slashdotters can do this math and can add the number of years to their age. The bottom line is they may be growing old in world without oil.
However you slice it, do not expect Alberta to be able to pick up much slack with Tar Sands, even though we have about 1.8 trillion barrels in resources. The trouble is our tar sands reserves are only about 300 billion barrels and our TOTAL natural gas supplies (which are needed to supply hydrogen so the bitumin can be chemically lightened) are not even sufficient for 10% and North America is already in a Natural Gas crisis.
WE NEED nuclear plants (CANDU, not enriched, because CANDU burns natural uranium unlike the stoopid USA enriched reactors which I think were designed that way to justify enrichment facilities so bombs could be made)
Not only this, we needed to start building them 10 years ago. We are going to have some major power problems over the next few years.
I did not know that solid wood, clay brick and stone are good insulators.
I have no idea why my house has fiberglass in it with all these great "natural" materials available.
If they start to pick up licence plate numebrs then some enterprizing individual will simply mount a blade on the underside of his truck and rip them out of the pavement.
Sometimes those involved with enforcement go a little to far in their search for more ways to pick the pockets of those they purport to serve. We generally know their objective is to serve themselves... serve themselves our money right?
2 billion years ago is smack dab in the middle of the preCambrian and there was no marine life that we know of then. There certainly were no land species. Early life in the oceans showed up in the Cambrian which is about 570 million years ago.
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A UK billion is a million million not a 1000 million as is used in North America. So by their own numbers they are out by a factor of not 8 but 8000 on their time scales.
Stories that are this factually wrong should not be welcome in
Actually your power saw example is a rather good one. New industrial saws are able to sense when the operator inserts his finger under the blade - and stop! So the saw quite literally does adust its parameters.
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I also have a windows computer. It is behind an OpenBSD firewall. My son was unsuccessful with his windows 2000 system and after the 7th reload he has abandoned it. I gave him his own zone... the OpenBSD firewall blocks him and his computers from anything in my zone.
I have Never had a virus or worm affect me. I could not take the chance in fact. This is why my emails and web browsing and most of my development work are in Linux machines.
I do recieve many viruses. Mutt is not vulnerable. I do not use vulnerable email systems
If any of the trojans you speak of actually contained a payload, you would not have the opportunity to run your anti-virus software. A payload can erase your hard drive, erase or reprogram the bios so your machine will not even boot... it can reprogram the bios to set parameters that will fry the hardware... it could change the CRTC register timings to fry your monitor - or even smoke it!
There are many really nasty things that a payload can do. You are just lucky...
But - the future is a very long time and I do execpt that if you continue to practice unsafe cybering that one day you will learn that you should have taken precautions.
With this purported arrest there are a few questions that enter my mind.
(1) Do they have the right guy? I doubt it!
(2) What of a payload. Perhaps next time there will be a real payload. IMHO dumping a worm onto the net is about the same as a prank. I somehow doubt the "authorties" will see the humour. In which case perhaps the next worm will contain a payload worthy of the punishment that this young man will suffer.
This could be the beginning of a serious escalation.
What people need to realise is that with a billion plus people on the net, if there is a vulnerability then it will be found. It does not matter who does it - because SOMEONE will. Punshing the pranster is not a deterant. Fixing the broken software is the only solution and fat cat Mr. Moneybags Bill Gates should be able to accomplish the later... either that or withdraw the clearly faulty software from the market.
If we chose to attack and punish the pransters then it is we who escalate this and I would expect the reaction will be in the form of an escalation of the damages.
ya - you can't do arithmetic! Idjot. This is BASIC right?
Well - there are good comments also.
The issue with the 1/2 life is that it is inversely proportional to the danger. Of course this is modified by what nuclear trash is ejected when a nucleus splits. This part should be obvious to all.
A second point is that the dangers of low level radiation are drastically overstated. While there is disagreement on the casualties, the fact there is a rift in the attributed numbers is very clear. The UN reports fewer than 50 people died and a few 1000 (horrible of course - I feel so sad for these people) with thyroid cancer. These numbers are in stark contrast to the 300,000+ that some people cite.
We can learn from the accident, learn a great deal and perhaps from this will come an understanding that nuclear energy has been bad mouthed for decades and has been the target of a rather large disinformation campaign.
It is my suspicion that the disinformation campaign was fueled by large Texan oil interests who collectively realised that in a nuclear economy - their oil would not be worth much... and hense their power base would erode.
So they bought themselves a few years of prosperity at the expense of mankind in general, because now this wonderful chemical feedstock has been burned about a fast as possible. From an economic point of view, oil resources are not valuable and the value can only be achieved by burning them up ass fast as freking possible and converting them into money. Right?
I personally think the disaster is a tragedy. I really feel for these people, they have suffered a great deal. Yet, we now see the beginning of a rebirth.
Perhaps what we should be looking to do is have all nuclear nations fund actinide transmutations technology based in Chornobyl. This is the perfect place to build these facilities and conduct this research. The area is alreay poisoned and public opion says it will be uninhabitalable for 1000+ years.
The Nuclear physists and engineers may choose to differ, and they should have the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are so to speak. The area is beautiful. Actinide transmutation technology can reclaim it.
Rather than be negative about this, lets be positive. Lets build the biggest bloody actinide transmutations lab, then facility in the world and end our nuclear waste problems in the process.
Stockpiling is just bullshyte. Burning the garbage gets rid of it and no-one can build a weapon out of nuclear isotopes after they have been burnt up. Its the perfect solution and the Ukrane can export the surplus power to Europe. Right?
Vaccume distilation is quite energy efficient. This is why water distillers use this system.
As for the aziotrop - there is no good reason to distill past this point. However there will be engineering changes required in the motors to use a fuel which is 95% ethanol and 5% water.
David Pimental suggested that ethanol production from crops is a net energy loss. This is patently absurd. However - it is possible that the way things were actually done back then - given the massive subsidies - did result in an energy loss.
It is very clear that a great deal of energy can be harvested from crops and using the celulose in the straw is an excellent way to go.
Now - here is the problem with this idea. We will not get enough energy from bio-sources to supply what we need. In fact - we cannot get enough from even the vast Alberta tar Sands to supply what we need.
The total Canadian natural gas resource - if allocated to the tar sands upgrading - can only enrigh about 10% of the 300 billion barrels estimated to be recoverable - and this does not represent much of the 1.8 trillion barrels present.
Ditto with the oil shales in the USA.
Well - you probably do have the right to sue.
Not only this - but your corn will have spread its pollen around the world and infected every feild of corn on the planet - feilds where the farmers were trying to grow NON GM MODDIFIED corn.
You can sue them too.
And they will lose just as Percy Schmeiser lost when Monsanto's GM modified rape contaminated his feilds.
You can read all about it here: Monsanto vs Schmeiser
You have made a very good point here.
You still have not caught the errors of your thinking. The lifetime of the molecule is not important. The fact is that new molecules are constantly being introduced. This is like the humidifier in your house and it is perfectly clear that your argument (and the IPCC's as well) that since the lifetime of the molecule in the atmosphere is short, it can be ignored is totally falicious!
The humidifier in your house clearly works! This is inspite of the fact you have to contantly refill it.
We are constantly irrigating vast stretches of land that would otherwise be arid. This causes more energy to be retained in the atmosphere.
You are 100% correct that the hydrogen gas released into the atmosphere will contribute to global warming. The people who have tried to belittle your comment are just totally uninformed or unable to understand the process or both.
The issues with hydrogen is at what altitude it will recombine. Notwithstanding this, water vapour is a far more powerful absorber than CO2 at all wavelengths and it is about 100 times more abundant.
CO2 levels currently are about 365ppm or 0.0365% while water vapour typically is 2-4%. However some areas are quite arid and may have water vapour levels at 0%.
Irrigation is playing a much bigger role than escaping hydrogen - however hydrogen technology is not widely deployed. If every house in the world were built along these lines - perhaps escaping hydrogen would be a significant factor. It certainly deserves some study.
Now the issue with irrigation is that before the dam was put in - the water flowed in a narrow band confined by two river banks and the only evaporation that took place was from its surface. After irrigation, all the water that previously flowed to the sea was now forced generally into the atmosphere through evaporation of land that otherwise would be arid, or secondly through transpiration from the crops that are irrigated.
If you look at the flow of the rivers around the world that has been diverted you will find this is quite a lot of water.
People use the argument that water is short lived in the atmosphere. While this is true, it is also irrelevant. Humidity in my house is also short lived but this does not change the fact that my humidifier works quite effectively because I can refill it. Similarly, if we look at the irrigation projects - it is clear that the global humidifier created by the crops is also being constantly refilled.
The next area where water vapour is significalty changed in the atmosphere is from the combustion of fossil fuels. Most liquid fuels come from the oxtane series and have a chemical formula of CnH(2n+2). Here we can clearly see we get 2x as much water vapour as CO2 on a molecular basis. With coals we are actually putting in more CO2 than Water vapour - but most of our fuels are not coals.
Natural Gas is CH4 so we put in 4x as much water vapour from Natural Gas.
Again, the issue is not how long lived the water vapour is, the issue is that we are constantly adding it. Thus all the activities we humans do actually pushes water vapour into the atmosphere on a more or less steady basis. Even breathing does this!
Some studies have suggested that each human in North America adds 64KG CO2 per day. If this is true, then each human add more than 2x this in the form of water vapour forced into the atmosphere.
Since water vapour is a strong absorber in all wavelengths one would expect the lower atmosphere to warm slightly and the upper atmosphere to cool. There is data to support this.
If you check the IPCC report in chapter 7 you will find that they simply decided to ignore the role of water vapour in their models. Given that the concentration of water vapour is at least 2 orders of magnitude more significant than CO2, this IMHO is a silly thing to do. You simply cannot ignore the most significant variable and expect your model to be meaningful.
So perhaps we do have some climate change taking place. The jury is still out on this matter mind you. I kinda think our climate is warming - but how much is an open question.
Over the last 570 million years, for over 90% of this time the planet was about 20 degrees warmer than now. So the dinosaurs really did live in a hot steamy jungle. In fact, even 5 million years ago there were trees north of the artic circle which is clear because we sometimes find wood in the kimberlites in some of Canada's wanna be diamond mines.
This wood has been dated at about 5 million years and it is still wood. So 5 million years ago it was quite a bit warmer than it is now.
I think it will be many years before anything worthwhile comes from the IPCC and their models. I you check out chapter 7 you will find they advise why they have not included water vapour in the atmosphere in their modeles.
The issue is that water vapour is by FAR the most important greenhouse gas. CO2 is about 365 ppm these days - or 0.0356% while water vapour is in the range of 2-4% and this makes water vapour 100 TIMES more important.
Next, we need to consider irrigation. The CIA factbook does have land under irrigation on a country by country basis. It is clear these irrigation projects collectively are very significant and they have the effect of turning vast areas of arid land into moist land. All that water ends up transpired or evaporated into the atmosphere.
If we consider fossil fuels we find another large source of water vapour.
If we add it all together, which the IPCC has not done, what we find is that there has been a change in the amount of water vaopur released into the atmosphere from mankind's activites and then we must note that the UNCERTANTY in the measuremens of the water vapour are much greater than the total amount of trace gases.
Water vapour is 2 orders of magnitude more significant in concentration and it is a stronger absorber of Ultraviolet light in ALL wavelengths.
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That being said, our climatologist look at an extremely short time frame. The earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years. By 570 million years ago, it had warmed and then it stayed warm for close to 90% of the time since then. There really only were 4 cold snaps and we have been in one for the last two million years. And during this last 2 million years it appears we have enjoyed about 20 ice ages, the last of which ended only 18,000 years ago.
To contrast the duration of time, suppose we were to stack up the volumes of the encyclopeadia Brittanica. If we count the number of pages we might find the thickness of each page would correspond to say about 100,000 years of the earths history.
This means that our climate modelers basically collect there data from usually less than 1/1000th of the thickness of the last page and meanwhile they ignore everything else.
IMHO this does not bode very well for their ability to make valid predictions.
My - what a small drop. It just goes to show that many investors are what?
thankyou!
Yeh. Totally obvious.
You are very naive my dear friend. If you have a valid patent anyone who wants to use it is going to walk all over your intellectual property rights. You DO NOT HAVE THE RESOURCES to defend them and you will lose them as a result.
On the other hand you also do not have the resources to fight against absolutley insane and invalid patents which form much of the portfolio of [typically large USA based] companies who have been amassing HUGE numbers of patents. These companies have been cross licensing so that they run no risk of infighting, yet they create their own select group that excludes everyone else.