What has a female dominant society got to do with Marxist viewpoint? That being said, the Naxi in China were a matriarchal society.
Anyhow, I got some Marxism in first year, mainly because it was part of the curriculum. Presumably, if others had the same experience, the Marxist boogeyman wouldn't be around today.
I don't think that there should be any long term correlation between humans and climate because the bulk of growth has happened in the last 50 years.
As for core data, it is not the actual temperatures but the variance of temperatures that is of concern. If I remember the seminar correctly, a comparison was made between temperature deviations back in the 90s and in a period where the temperature was 2C warmer. Standard deviation was much higher during the warm period, indicating more severe weather changes.
If more relevant data exists now, then colour me stupid. But for the moment, I am assuming that less carbon means less weather fluctuation. If I am wrong, all it means is that my bank account is smaller.
Way back in the last millenium, I attended a seminar put on by Dr. Weaver. At that time, he was an untenured professor doing climatology. Dot Com was about to explode and oil was less than $15/barrel. Nobody except a few grad students like myself knew or cared about his research.
He reported on ice core drilling in Greenland and mentioned that periods where the average temperature was higher coincided with a higher standard deviation in temperature. In other words, when the average temperature is warmer, the variability of the weather increases. Coupled with climate theory that predicts increasing temperature with increasing CO2 concentration, you get a pretty reasonable argument that the weather is going to get bad in the future.
At that time, he was part of a research institute and what he had to say was just part of his research. He was doing his job and didn't have any incentives from any lobby groups outside academia because at that time, there weren't any. There were no Wall Street backroom boys slipping him dollars, nor was any greenwash organization encouraging him.
I have a hard time believing he falsified data given the circumstances and time. If you are still skeptical, I encourage you to try reading some of the papers he put out or contact him or the climatology center to get a look at the data.
You keep saying you've got something for me. something you call seaweed, but confess. You've been eatin' what you shouldn't have been a eatin' and now your guts is digestin' all your best.
Your guts are made for seaweed, and that's just what they'll do one of these days my guts will digest seaweed like you
Wind does compete against itself. The way that it works is that utilities offer long term contracts to buy power from wind or other renewables. This is typically a competitive bid process where the best price wins.
You have an interesting argument about nuclear. Some would argue that nuclear has been good for the environment around Chernobyl because it has driven away people. Animals are flourishing in the area, despite higher mutation and death rates. This leads to an odd scenario where it would be in an environmentalist's best interest to encourage construction of nuclear reactors with no safety standards.
So, when corporation X starts poisoning your river for its smelter, and you can't actually stop buying their product because you haven't actually ever bought their product, how will this help you to get them to stop poisoning your river?
Corporations wield power because of the wealth they accumulate from selling product. It is pretty idealistic to believe that a consumer boycott of a raw material by that corporation can force them to make changes.
Of course, if corporations actually followed the rules like everyone else, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Have you ever made one of these? You pull in all the favors you can. $300 in Uruguay will go a lot further than in the USA. Borrow equipment, get talent to work for free in exchange for film credit, get your friends and family to work as extras, use idle editing suites... you get the idea.
If you add up all the effort, the total cost would be way more than $300. The point is that it cost him $300 to put it together. It speaks volumes about his ability to get good results at low cost. That is pretty impressive.
What you are missing is that not wearing a helmet does not increase the risk to yourself or others on the road. A motorcyclist who opts not to wear a helmet only damages himself. Someone who opts to text may damage themselves and others. The insurance company sees increased costs because they must now cover off everyone against accidental texting damages. The only party that has a chance of benefiting is the texter. "I won't be at the mall because I just got into an accident." Myself, I'm not seeing this as being a good tradeoff.
There's no single energy resource that is going to meet the needs of the power grid. Coal and nuclear are too slow to follow load, wind and solar are intermittent, hydro, geothermal and biomass are limited locationally. Natural gas is subject to price volatility.
The grid's energy requirements are too big and complicated to be handled by any one source of energy. Using baseload resources to provide the bulk of the energy with intermittent resources to provide cheaper or more timely energy with hydro and natural gas to fill in the gaps is what it is necessary now.
Maybe we're talking about different things. I would not be able to implement OpenOffice in our environment because of the fear of application (and consequently file) incompabilities. We had an issue with a pdf rendering on a Mac that threw off the page numbering of a legal document. There's no way I'd be able to get off MS after that one.
Without a buy-in from the top, I've got to be able to defend every one of those glitches if I go with OpenOffice. That is not worth my time.
As mentioned earlier, adoption away from MS Office requires a directive from upper management. If you don't have that support, you'll be replaced when a file or application incompatibility delays a project enough to miss a deadline. If you want OpenOffice to be used, you'll need to join the upper management ranks so you can call the shots. It won't happen on its own.
I think that file compatibility is the issue. I am the de-facto IT guy for an office of a dozen people. Because our CEO and administrator are err....not so tech savvy, I need to have reliable software that is compatible with what every other office is using. The amount of time spent fussing on file incompabilities and quirks is not worth the money saved from going with Open Office.
This is a bit like speaking English. English is a pretty horrible language to be conducting business in because it is full of exceptions, vagueness and ambiguity. However, much of the world speaks it so it has become the de-facto business language. It's not the best language to use but because it is so widespread, it is the easiest language to use.
OpenOffice might gain more users over time but it will be a slow process. If its going to go anywhere, it needs to start with techies becoming management and driving its use. Sorry to be the one to tell you that.
I'll assume you meant plants and not pants. That being said, nuclear plants can follow load but not quickly enough. There is too much thermal mass for a nuclear facility to capture the minute to minute fluctuations in power supply.
You are right about why they operate the way they do. Capital intensive generation like nuclear, coal and to a lesser extent, geothermal and biomass is best run at a relatively even output. Other sources like wind and solar are used to fill up the difference between the daily peak and trough. Hydro and natural gas also serve the same function but can be used to fill in the minute to minute fluctuations in load.
No single source of energy will be able to meet the electrical needs of the future. Economics and legislation will be the factors that determine what that mix is. How that will pan out is anyone's guess.
HVDC lines are cheaper to build than HVAC lines. They only need two lines for conductors and use smaller right of ways. The problem with using HVDC is that it is very expensive to interconnect. HVDC works best when you have a single source of generation nearby. The interconnection costs make it not feasible for the majority of renewable energy projects.
Conservation works very well but is limited in scope. When electric cars become more mainstream, their energy use will swamp any conservation efforts. At some point, it is necessary to build new generation. Whether it is renewable, nuclear or fossil fuel depends on the economics and regulations. No single type of energy will meet our future energy needs. It will take a combination of resources to have a reliable, low cost electrical system.
That's the whole point of going to renewables. Using a barrel of oil for lubrication and making components is far better than burning it to get from A to B.
It's true that playing video games is not the same as getting a degree in astrophysics. However, I think that getting people to believe that they have the talent to do something and failing is ultimately better than having them believe they can't do anything.
As for getting along with others, being intelligent is not a prerequisite for being a jerk. Bragging about how smart you are, regardless of whether you are or are not, will not help you win friends and influence people.
Has it occurred to you that he already knows he is smarter than everyone else and understands that saying so is not likely to win him any friends? He made a politically correct statement and will do well by it. There's a lot of smart people on Slashdot but some are not smart enough to get that you have to get along with others if you want a life. Telling people how much smarter you are than them is a good way to ensure you spend Friday night in the basement playing video games.
When was the last time you saw a car filled with five people, not including teenagers coming home from a party? People drive because it is the form of transportation that provides the most freedom vs time and cost. Pack five people in a car and you've lost your freedom and your time saving. Five in a car is carpooling and that has never caught on because it removes all the advantages of having a car.
Remove the busses and everyone who can't afford to drive will either walk or bike or carpool. This doesn't do much to get rid of single occupant vehicles. They are just too good to pass up for most people.
Can you guarantee that the area you have to spread your generators over to ensure a steady, certain minimum generating capacity (or the base load for the system) is within acceptable transmission loss levels?
You cant, and thats the problem with generation systems where you don't control the minute to minute generating capacity yourself. Wind and solar also cannot handle the increase in peak production required during certain events.
Nor can you do it with coal or nuclear. Both types of generation are must run and cannot follow the load fluctuations. During non-peak hours, must-run facilities will sometimes pay to deliver energy because it is more cost effective than shutting down the facility short term.
Windmills are easy to shut down. While I agree that distributed wind is not likely to be an effective substitute for base load, building surplus capacity will allow for load following much better than trying to do it solely with coal and/or nuclear.
Which brings me to my point. I'm tired of people arguing about whether nuclear is better than wind or whatever. The energy system is like the ecosystem in that it is better when there are different types of generation. Each type of generation has a place. An effective electricity grid operates with base load generation to cover the minimum load requirements. Cheap intermittent generation like wind are used to fill above baseload requirements, while more expensive dispatchable generation like hydro or natural gas turbines are used to fill in the gaps. The amount of each depends on what the load curve is and the availability of transmission.
My understanding is that the yield from algae is very high but the processing required to get it into something burnable is where most of the cost is. This is pretty typical for biofuels.
We all accept a level of risk in our lives. However, if there is a licence and training for higher risk activities like using a cell phone simultaneously, why stop there? Why not create a licence class for drunk drivers as well? If the studies are correct that risk from driving and cell phone talking is similar to drinking and driving, then we should allow that under a licencing scheme.
It's a novel idea but unlikely to be workable as the people who benefit (driver talkers) are not the ones who bear the costs (accident victims). Given the data that is coming out scientifically and anecdotally, I think it would be extremely difficult to find an insurer willing to cover someone specifically licenced to drink and drive and expect the same for a talk and drive licence.
It's clear you dropped out before you had to take the logic course. What you wrote says that it only takes drive to succeed, not intelligence and drive. Nitpicking aside, I agree with you. Execution is the key.
You're mostly right. DC works better than AC but not in all cases. It is appropriate for long distance lines for the reasons that you mentioned and also because you need one less physical line when you build it.
Unfortunately, it is very expensive to build the substations for a DC line. To use the highway analogy, there are no on or off ramps.
This makes DC appropriate to span great distances where there is little or no load to service in between points. It is inappropriate for short distances where there are many places that need power or can generate power.
Both nuclear and coal are becoming extremely difficult to site. In fact, any power plant will take at least three years to permit and construct. Removing environmental regulations will likely result in a situation like China's, where pollution is becoming a very serious issue.
Due to increases in costs for labour and materials all types of generation are becoming more expensive. Renewables have the advantage of free or low cost fuels. This makes them more attractive in the present environment. However, they are much more constrained by transmission than coal or nuclear.
Unfortunately, there has not been any real upgrades on the transmission system for twenty years. Permitting and constructing a transmission line can take a decade if it happens to go through a sensitive area. This is the more serious issue as only PV can be used in a distributed system. That is unlikely to happen (due to cost) anywhere except the SW USA.
If you've got a fast way of constructing a power line, your fortune is made. Otherwise, I think we will be seeing more and more rolling blackouts.
That's not true. Nuclear, coal, biomass and geothermal are considered base load generation. This means they are always on. This is due to the must run quality of the technology. They are basically steam engines and do not shut down or start up quickly. Hydro and natural gas are considered dispatchable because the power can be ramped up and turned off quickly. Solar, run of river hydro and wind are considered intermittent resources. These resources generate when available.
Power markets are complex and highly volatile due to the high cost of entry into them and the difficulty in moving power from region to region. Baseload generation is not suitable for covering peak load because they need to be on all the time. You cannot start up a coal plant and operate during the six hours of peak load and expect to stay in business.
When the grid requires more generation, dispatchable resources are usually called upon if nothing else can be found. Prices are much better during peak load. It makes more sense to use the water in a dam to generate during this time than at 3 in the morning when the power prices are much, much lower.
Peak load is most likely to be powered by natural gas, not coal. This is about a 50% improvement in CO2 emissions.
If you are talking about new generation to handle annual increases to demand, you are more correct. Most new base load generation has come from coal in the last 20 years. However, due to the new found greenness of the population, it is becoming extremely difficult to site and build coal plants. We are in for some interesting times.
Slashdot Mirror
What has a female dominant society got to do with Marxist viewpoint? That being said, the Naxi in China were a matriarchal society.
Anyhow, I got some Marxism in first year, mainly because it was part of the curriculum. Presumably, if others had the same experience, the Marxist boogeyman wouldn't be around today.
I don't think that there should be any long term correlation between humans and climate because the bulk of growth has happened in the last 50 years.
As for core data, it is not the actual temperatures but the variance of temperatures that is of concern. If I remember the seminar correctly, a comparison was made between temperature deviations back in the 90s and in a period where the temperature was 2C warmer. Standard deviation was much higher during the warm period, indicating more severe weather changes.
If more relevant data exists now, then colour me stupid. But for the moment, I am assuming that less carbon means less weather fluctuation. If I am wrong, all it means is that my bank account is smaller.
Way back in the last millenium, I attended a seminar put on by Dr. Weaver. At that time, he was an untenured professor doing climatology. Dot Com was about to explode and oil was less than $15/barrel. Nobody except a few grad students like myself knew or cared about his research.
He reported on ice core drilling in Greenland and mentioned that periods where the average temperature was higher coincided with a higher standard deviation in temperature. In other words, when the average temperature is warmer, the variability of the weather increases. Coupled with climate theory that predicts increasing temperature with increasing CO2 concentration, you get a pretty reasonable argument that the weather is going to get bad in the future.
At that time, he was part of a research institute and what he had to say was just part of his research. He was doing his job and didn't have any incentives from any lobby groups outside academia because at that time, there weren't any. There were no Wall Street backroom boys slipping him dollars, nor was any greenwash organization encouraging him.
I have a hard time believing he falsified data given the circumstances and time. If you are still skeptical, I encourage you to try reading some of the papers he put out or contact him or the climatology center to get a look at the data.
You keep saying you've got something for me.
something you call seaweed, but confess.
You've been eatin' what you shouldn't have been a eatin'
and now your guts is digestin' all your best.
Your guts are made for seaweed, and that's just what they'll do
one of these days my guts will digest seaweed like you
With sincere apologies to Nancy Sinatra
Wind does compete against itself. The way that it works is that utilities offer long term contracts to buy power from wind or other renewables. This is typically a competitive bid process where the best price wins.
You have an interesting argument about nuclear. Some would argue that nuclear has been good for the environment around Chernobyl because it has driven away people. Animals are flourishing in the area, despite higher mutation and death rates. This leads to an odd scenario where it would be in an environmentalist's best interest to encourage construction of nuclear reactors with no safety standards.
So, when corporation X starts poisoning your river for its smelter, and you can't actually stop buying their product because you haven't actually ever bought their product, how will this help you to get them to stop poisoning your river?
Corporations wield power because of the wealth they accumulate from selling product. It is pretty idealistic to believe that a consumer boycott of a raw material by that corporation can force them to make changes.
Of course, if corporations actually followed the rules like everyone else, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Have you ever made one of these? You pull in all the favors you can. $300 in Uruguay will go a lot further than in the USA. Borrow equipment, get talent to work for free in exchange for film credit, get your friends and family to work as extras, use idle editing suites... you get the idea.
If you add up all the effort, the total cost would be way more than $300. The point is that it cost him $300 to put it together. It speaks volumes about his ability to get good results at low cost. That is pretty impressive.
What you are missing is that not wearing a helmet does not increase the risk to yourself or others on the road. A motorcyclist who opts not to wear a helmet only damages himself. Someone who opts to text may damage themselves and others. The insurance company sees increased costs because they must now cover off everyone against accidental texting damages. The only party that has a chance of benefiting is the texter. "I won't be at the mall because I just got into an accident." Myself, I'm not seeing this as being a good tradeoff.
There's no single energy resource that is going to meet the needs of the power grid. Coal and nuclear are too slow to follow load, wind and solar are intermittent, hydro, geothermal and biomass are limited locationally. Natural gas is subject to price volatility.
The grid's energy requirements are too big and complicated to be handled by any one source of energy. Using baseload resources to provide the bulk of the energy with intermittent resources to provide cheaper or more timely energy with hydro and natural gas to fill in the gaps is what it is necessary now.
Maybe we're talking about different things. I would not be able to implement OpenOffice in our environment because of the fear of application (and consequently file) incompabilities. We had an issue with a pdf rendering on a Mac that threw off the page numbering of a legal document. There's no way I'd be able to get off MS after that one.
Without a buy-in from the top, I've got to be able to defend every one of those glitches if I go with OpenOffice. That is not worth my time.
As mentioned earlier, adoption away from MS Office requires a directive from upper management. If you don't have that support, you'll be replaced when a file or application incompatibility delays a project enough to miss a deadline. If you want OpenOffice to be used, you'll need to join the upper management ranks so you can call the shots. It won't happen on its own.
I think that file compatibility is the issue. I am the de-facto IT guy for an office of a dozen people. Because our CEO and administrator are err....not so tech savvy, I need to have reliable software that is compatible with what every other office is using. The amount of time spent fussing on file incompabilities and quirks is not worth the money saved from going with Open Office.
This is a bit like speaking English. English is a pretty horrible language to be conducting business in because it is full of exceptions, vagueness and ambiguity. However, much of the world speaks it so it has become the de-facto business language. It's not the best language to use but because it is so widespread, it is the easiest language to use.
OpenOffice might gain more users over time but it will be a slow process. If its going to go anywhere, it needs to start with techies becoming management and driving its use. Sorry to be the one to tell you that.
I'll assume you meant plants and not pants. That being said, nuclear plants can follow load but not quickly enough. There is too much thermal mass for a nuclear facility to capture the minute to minute fluctuations in power supply.
You are right about why they operate the way they do. Capital intensive generation like nuclear, coal and to a lesser extent, geothermal and biomass is best run at a relatively even output. Other sources like wind and solar are used to fill up the difference between the daily peak and trough. Hydro and natural gas also serve the same function but can be used to fill in the minute to minute fluctuations in load.
No single source of energy will be able to meet the electrical needs of the future. Economics and legislation will be the factors that determine what that mix is. How that will pan out is anyone's guess.
HVDC lines are cheaper to build than HVAC lines. They only need two lines for conductors and use smaller right of ways. The problem with using HVDC is that it is very expensive to interconnect. HVDC works best when you have a single source of generation nearby. The interconnection costs make it not feasible for the majority of renewable energy projects.
Conservation works very well but is limited in scope. When electric cars become more mainstream, their energy use will swamp any conservation efforts. At some point, it is necessary to build new generation. Whether it is renewable, nuclear or fossil fuel depends on the economics and regulations. No single type of energy will meet our future energy needs. It will take a combination of resources to have a reliable, low cost electrical system.
That's the whole point of going to renewables. Using a barrel of oil for lubrication and making components is far better than burning it to get from A to B.
I'm assuming you are joking. If you're not, the end result of your statement is a society like Communist China. Be careful what you wish for.
It's true that playing video games is not the same as getting a degree in astrophysics. However, I think that getting people to believe that they have the talent to do something and failing is ultimately better than having them believe they can't do anything.
As for getting along with others, being intelligent is not a prerequisite for being a jerk. Bragging about how smart you are, regardless of whether you are or are not, will not help you win friends and influence people.
Has it occurred to you that he already knows he is smarter than everyone else and understands that saying so is not likely to win him any friends? He made a politically correct statement and will do well by it. There's a lot of smart people on Slashdot but some are not smart enough to get that you have to get along with others if you want a life. Telling people how much smarter you are than them is a good way to ensure you spend Friday night in the basement playing video games.
When was the last time you saw a car filled with five people, not including teenagers coming home from a party? People drive because it is the form of transportation that provides the most freedom vs time and cost. Pack five people in a car and you've lost your freedom and your time saving. Five in a car is carpooling and that has never caught on because it removes all the advantages of having a car.
Remove the busses and everyone who can't afford to drive will either walk or bike or carpool. This doesn't do much to get rid of single occupant vehicles. They are just too good to pass up for most people.
Can you guarantee that the area you have to spread your generators over to ensure a steady, certain minimum generating capacity (or the base load for the system) is within acceptable transmission loss levels?
You cant, and thats the problem with generation systems where you don't control the minute to minute generating capacity yourself. Wind and solar also cannot handle the increase in peak production required during certain events.
Nor can you do it with coal or nuclear. Both types of generation are must run and cannot follow the load fluctuations. During non-peak hours, must-run facilities will sometimes pay to deliver energy because it is more cost effective than shutting down the facility short term.
Windmills are easy to shut down. While I agree that distributed wind is not likely to be an effective substitute for base load, building surplus capacity will allow for load following much better than trying to do it solely with coal and/or nuclear.
Which brings me to my point. I'm tired of people arguing about whether nuclear is better than wind or whatever. The energy system is like the ecosystem in that it is better when there are different types of generation. Each type of generation has a place. An effective electricity grid operates with base load generation to cover the minimum load requirements. Cheap intermittent generation like wind are used to fill above baseload requirements, while more expensive dispatchable generation like hydro or natural gas turbines are used to fill in the gaps. The amount of each depends on what the load curve is and the availability of transmission.
My understanding is that the yield from algae is very high but the processing required to get it into something burnable is where most of the cost is. This is pretty typical for biofuels.
We all accept a level of risk in our lives. However, if there is a licence and training for higher risk activities like using a cell phone simultaneously, why stop there? Why not create a licence class for drunk drivers as well? If the studies are correct that risk from driving and cell phone talking is similar to drinking and driving, then we should allow that under a licencing scheme.
It's a novel idea but unlikely to be workable as the people who benefit (driver talkers) are not the ones who bear the costs (accident victims). Given the data that is coming out scientifically and anecdotally, I think it would be extremely difficult to find an insurer willing to cover someone specifically licenced to drink and drive and expect the same for a talk and drive licence.
It's clear you dropped out before you had to take the logic course. What you wrote says that it only takes drive to succeed, not intelligence and drive. Nitpicking aside, I agree with you. Execution is the key.
You're mostly right. DC works better than AC but not in all cases. It is appropriate for long distance lines for the reasons that you mentioned and also because you need one less physical line when you build it.
Unfortunately, it is very expensive to build the substations for a DC line. To use the highway analogy, there are no on or off ramps.
This makes DC appropriate to span great distances where there is little or no load to service in between points. It is inappropriate for short distances where there are many places that need power or can generate power.
Both nuclear and coal are becoming extremely difficult to site. In fact, any power plant will take at least three years to permit and construct. Removing environmental regulations will likely result in a situation like China's, where pollution is becoming a very serious issue.
Due to increases in costs for labour and materials all types of generation are becoming more expensive. Renewables have the advantage of free or low cost fuels. This makes them more attractive in the present environment. However, they are much more constrained by transmission than coal or nuclear.
Unfortunately, there has not been any real upgrades on the transmission system for twenty years. Permitting and constructing a transmission line can take a decade if it happens to go through a sensitive area. This is the more serious issue as only PV can be used in a distributed system. That is unlikely to happen (due to cost) anywhere except the SW USA.
If you've got a fast way of constructing a power line, your fortune is made. Otherwise, I think we will be seeing more and more rolling blackouts.
That's not true. Nuclear, coal, biomass and geothermal are considered base load generation. This means they are always on. This is due to the must run quality of the technology. They are basically steam engines and do not shut down or start up quickly. Hydro and natural gas are considered dispatchable because the power can be ramped up and turned off quickly. Solar, run of river hydro and wind are considered intermittent resources. These resources generate when available.
Power markets are complex and highly volatile due to the high cost of entry into them and the difficulty in moving power from region to region. Baseload generation is not suitable for covering peak load because they need to be on all the time. You cannot start up a coal plant and operate during the six hours of peak load and expect to stay in business.
When the grid requires more generation, dispatchable resources are usually called upon if nothing else can be found. Prices are much better during peak load. It makes more sense to use the water in a dam to generate during this time than at 3 in the morning when the power prices are much, much lower.
Peak load is most likely to be powered by natural gas, not coal. This is about a 50% improvement in CO2 emissions.
If you are talking about new generation to handle annual increases to demand, you are more correct. Most new base load generation has come from coal in the last 20 years. However, due to the new found greenness of the population, it is becoming extremely difficult to site and build coal plants. We are in for some interesting times.