There is a big problem with going with a highly insulated home: moisture.
No. In fact, moisture is a big problem in poorly insulated homes, since you get a large temperature difference between the walls and the air, leading to condensation and mold.
Homes tend to be wet places, and without good airflow, moisture builds up in inconvenient places and mold can become a big problem.
And here's the point: Leaky windows, doors and walls don't mean "good" airflow. They mean uncontrolled, constant airflow that leads to cold spots inside (see above - condensation and mold) and constant loss of heat.
"Good" airflow is caused by a dedicated ventilation system, or by following some dead-simple rules on ventilating the place (open all windows for three to five minutes, two to four times a day. This will cause pretty much all of the air to be exchanged, with minimum loss of heat, since most heat is not stored in the air, but in the walls/furniture/other solid stuff inside the house. Outside the heating season, you can also leave the windows tipped open).
Of course, if you build a highly insulated home, you need to get the place dried out before you move in. Usually this is accomplished by running the heating full blast and ventilating the place regularly.
but ended up with moisture problems in the far bedrooms.
That's probably because they didn't properly ventilate the place, or because the walls had thermal bridges.
That is true, of course, but I've seen an A/C unit in Indianapolis.
Indiana has the same "high humiditiy, high temperature, doesn't cool off significantly at night" problem that you can find in States farther south, just for a shorter time each year (mid June - mid September). The humidity is a real problem, too. I had no problems with the "record summer" here in Germany a few years ago (highs of well above 90F, no rain, for several weeks), mainly because it cools down nicely at night and because it's either hot, or humid, but not both at the same time. 90-something percent humidity and an average temperature of 85F-90F in Indiana made even me appreciate AC, though I mostly used it to dehumidify the apartment and keep the temperature a handful of degrees below the outside temperature, not to turn my place into a deep freezer.
Yah you open the windows only when it's cool outside (like a cool night), then you close them during the day when it's really hot and hope not too much heat leaks in.
Ah, then you haven't found this out the hard way, have you? There are lots of places in the US where it's hot, humid, and _doesn't_ cool off significantly at night. I found that out the hard way, during my time as a foreign student at a US college. And of course we didn't have AC. Good thing I have more problems with cold than with heat.
When I spent time in Germany, I noticed that their homes really are quite similar to ours.
What, are you serious? In Germany, "trying to go with your head through the wall" means trying to do something impossible, by force, and probably breaking your head, without making a dent in the wall. In the US, you're probably going to end up with a hole in the wall.
Also, the outside insulation layer on recently-built or renovated German homes is thicker than the whole wall of common US homes. And then there's stuff like coated double- or triple-pane windows, window blinds on the outside (do you realize how much you can save on air conditioning if you keep the mid-day sun from heating up the inside of the house in the first place?), etc, etc.
There's a reason why building a house in the US are so inexpensive.
Sounds reasonable -- but can't the same argument be made for the amount of CO2 added by the next coal fired power plant compared to the total CO2 in the atmosphere?
No, the argument can't be made for CO2, for several reasons. One of them being the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere being much longer than that of heat. Another being that one needs to take the total CO2 input to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels into account, not just "the next coal-fired power plant" (200 GW in orbital solar power would be huge already, and still only be about one millionth of the total solar power input to Earth). Yet another one being that Earth temperature only rises with fourth root of energy input.
Earth receives some 174*10^15 Watts in solar irradiation. Unless the additional input is a significant fraction of that (200 MW aren't. Heck, even 200 GW wouldn't be), it's not going to make a significant contribution to global warming.
I'm only doing it if the claim made is truly far-fetched and I couldn't find any good evidence myself. Presented with such, I'll accept the claim, otherwise I'll consider it void.
Order a special meal. (ie vegetarian / kosher / halala etc) I not only get served first, but the meal comes to me warm and full of flav... um,... comes to me warm!:-)
The food is better this way, but it doesn't make up for the special attention you receive after landing.
You _might_ get away with ordering a kids meal. Those are usually pretty good, too.
Those kinds of channels can be up to 100 meters long -- direct them at thunderclouds and they could first trigger lightning to spark and then act as a convenient but short-lived lightning rod to guide it safely to the ground, according to some researchers
Direct them at people, and you can hit them with a laser _and_ send a couple of thousand volts through the resulting ionized air at almost the same time. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
No its not - for a deposit of $100, general banks can lend out 8-10X what they have in reserve.
Citation needed.
If you deposit $100 - they have $100 in reserve and can lend out $800-$1000.
No. If someone deposits $100 and the bank lends out $100 or more, it doesn't have a fractional reserve, it has no (zero/zip/nada) reserve. If the bank lends out more than $100, it'll be in debt, too.
Citibank could lend out $4700 (47X )for every $you deposit.
Citation needed.
What the parent poster was saying, is how people generally believe the banking system works. It used to, until fractional reserve banking came into play.
Lending more than the bank has in deposits is not fractional reserve banking. It's zero (or even negative) reserve banking, if anything.
Haha. Did you know that UC Berkeley police have a bomb squad? It's kind of sad that a campus police force needs a bomb squad...
Any college or university that offers chemistry (and anything related) as a major _needs_ a bomb squad. Even if it's just to dispose of "experiments" gone awry.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Most solar radiation gets blocked by the ionosphere and magnetosphere, and the atmosphere which absorbs several frequencies and re-emits others less useful to our photovoltaic cells. Most frequencies of microwave radiation doesn't pass through easily with those giant magnetic shields in the way, else the atmosphere would ionize and blow off (see Mars).
Microwave radiation isn't energetic enough to ionize anything. It's the solar wind and the more energetic parts of solar radiation that blow Mars' atmosphere away, and of course Mars' lack of mass (Venus is holding on to its atmosphere just fine, despite receiving much, much more solar irradiation).
Mind you, these satellites operate at over 1 million percent efficiency: you put 0 power in after construction and launch (they self-power), and they collect and transfer more than 0 power, for a gain ratio of 1/0 units power output.
Of course, this completely ignores the upfront cost of sending a truckload of stuff into space, and the impossibility of fixing anything or replenishing any consumables.
You are aware that there are different frequencies of microwaves yes? Some that do agitate water (and heat it up) and others that don't.
Water is pretty much a broad-band absorber of electromagnetic radiation of infrared wavelengths and above, which includes radio waves. Especially in the radio wavelengths, it does not have any particular absorption maxima. So you won't find _any_ kind of micro- or radio wave wavelength that water is particularly transparent to.
That's why I specified that the *receiver* have a very limited field of vision. If the satellite rotates enough to be off target, it can no longer see the laser. Thus no latency issues.
Oh... right. My bad. That should work as intended.
The planet is basically a closed system, it has come into balance with the available energy it collects from its surface area.
That's basically an oxymoron.
Introducing more energy from an orbiting source will have a significant effect.
Only if the orbiting energy source inputs a significant fraction of the energy collected by Earths area. 0.2 km^2 does not qualify here, it's insignificant compared to the 125*10^6 km^2 cross-section of Earth.
We *can* create systems that are bug immune. Note that I didn't say "bug free" - take three different architectures, and have three different teams write the code for them. Connect them in a "majority rules" redundant configuration. The odds of two of them experiencing bugs at the same time (or of having a hardware failure) producing the same result at the same time is pretty, well, astronomical...
What about the chance of the firmware in one of the sensors (that all three systems unfortunately rely on) experiencing a bug? If the sensor says the plane has touched down while it's still 400 feet up in the air, then all three control systems will unanimously think that it's a good idea to shut the engines down now...
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No. In fact, moisture is a big problem in poorly insulated homes, since you get a large temperature difference between the walls and the air, leading to condensation and mold.
Homes tend to be wet places, and without good airflow, moisture builds up in inconvenient places and mold can become a big problem.
And here's the point: Leaky windows, doors and walls don't mean "good" airflow. They mean uncontrolled, constant airflow that leads to cold spots inside (see above - condensation and mold) and constant loss of heat.
"Good" airflow is caused by a dedicated ventilation system, or by following some dead-simple rules on ventilating the place (open all windows for three to five minutes, two to four times a day. This will cause pretty much all of the air to be exchanged, with minimum loss of heat, since most heat is not stored in the air, but in the walls/furniture/other solid stuff inside the house. Outside the heating season, you can also leave the windows tipped open).
Of course, if you build a highly insulated home, you need to get the place dried out before you move in. Usually this is accomplished by running the heating full blast and ventilating the place regularly.
but ended up with moisture problems in the far bedrooms.
That's probably because they didn't properly ventilate the place, or because the walls had thermal bridges.
Indiana has the same "high humiditiy, high temperature, doesn't cool off significantly at night" problem that you can find in States farther south, just for a shorter time each year (mid June - mid September). The humidity is a real problem, too. I had no problems with the "record summer" here in Germany a few years ago (highs of well above 90F, no rain, for several weeks), mainly because it cools down nicely at night and because it's either hot, or humid, but not both at the same time. 90-something percent humidity and an average temperature of 85F-90F in Indiana made even me appreciate AC, though I mostly used it to dehumidify the apartment and keep the temperature a handful of degrees below the outside temperature, not to turn my place into a deep freezer.
Ah, then you haven't found this out the hard way, have you? There are lots of places in the US where it's hot, humid, and _doesn't_ cool off significantly at night. I found that out the hard way, during my time as a foreign student at a US college. And of course we didn't have AC. Good thing I have more problems with cold than with heat.
Geographic size has very little do with it.
Americans have some of the longest work commutes in the world.
Because they _chose_ to live spread out all over the place. It's cause by human behavior, not by the physical size of the country.
Of course we're going to consume more fuel.
Only because you chose to live this way.
The emergency services in DFW must be sick and tired of having to go to people's houses simply to open their windows for them.
Opening the windows to cool down a house that's 95 F inside is very much counterproductive if it's warmer than 95 F outside.
When I spent time in Germany, I noticed that their homes really are quite similar to ours.
What, are you serious? In Germany, "trying to go with your head through the wall" means trying to do something impossible, by force, and probably breaking your head, without making a dent in the wall. In the US, you're probably going to end up with a hole in the wall.
Also, the outside insulation layer on recently-built or renovated German homes is thicker than the whole wall of common US homes. And then there's stuff like coated double- or triple-pane windows, window blinds on the outside (do you realize how much you can save on air conditioning if you keep the mid-day sun from heating up the inside of the house in the first place?), etc, etc.
There's a reason why building a house in the US are so inexpensive.
Self-replicating space probes with slightly messed-up behavior priorities, anyone?
In some class during my first year at the university, the professor used to cut through metal with a cigar (that had been dipped in liquid oxygen).
Way cooler, since it also involved cryogenic liquids.
No, the argument can't be made for CO2, for several reasons. One of them being the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere being much longer than that of heat. Another being that one needs to take the total CO2 input to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels into account, not just "the next coal-fired power plant" (200 GW in orbital solar power would be huge already, and still only be about one millionth of the total solar power input to Earth). Yet another one being that Earth temperature only rises with fourth root of energy input.
Earth receives some 174*10^15 Watts in solar irradiation. Unless the additional input is a significant fraction of that (200 MW aren't. Heck, even 200 GW wouldn't be), it's not going to make a significant contribution to global warming.
Huh? As long as saving and investing isn't outlawed, there's always a chance at having a decent retirement.
Why?
I'm only doing it if the claim made is truly far-fetched and I couldn't find any good evidence myself. Presented with such, I'll accept the claim, otherwise I'll consider it void.
The food is better this way, but it doesn't make up for the special attention you receive after landing.
You _might_ get away with ordering a kids meal. Those are usually pretty good, too.
Those kinds of channels can be up to 100 meters long -- direct them at thunderclouds and they could first trigger lightning to spark and then act as a convenient but short-lived lightning rod to guide it safely to the ground, according to some researchers Direct them at people, and you can hit them with a laser _and_ send a couple of thousand volts through the resulting ionized air at almost the same time. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
No its not - for a deposit of $100, general banks can lend out 8-10X what they have in reserve.
Citation needed.
If you deposit $100 - they have $100 in reserve and can lend out $800-$1000.
No. If someone deposits $100 and the bank lends out $100 or more, it doesn't have a fractional reserve, it has no (zero/zip/nada) reserve. If the bank lends out more than $100, it'll be in debt, too.
Citibank could lend out $4700 (47X )for every $you deposit.
Citation needed.
What the parent poster was saying, is how people generally believe the banking system works. It used to, until fractional reserve banking came into play.
Lending more than the bank has in deposits is not fractional reserve banking. It's zero (or even negative) reserve banking, if anything.
Any college or university that offers chemistry (and anything related) as a major _needs_ a bomb squad. Even if it's just to dispose of "experiments" gone awry.
Microwave radiation isn't energetic enough to ionize anything. It's the solar wind and the more energetic parts of solar radiation that blow Mars' atmosphere away, and of course Mars' lack of mass (Venus is holding on to its atmosphere just fine, despite receiving much, much more solar irradiation).
Mind you, these satellites operate at over 1 million percent efficiency: you put 0 power in after construction and launch (they self-power), and they collect and transfer more than 0 power, for a gain ratio of 1/0 units power output.
Of course, this completely ignores the upfront cost of sending a truckload of stuff into space, and the impossibility of fixing anything or replenishing any consumables.
Water is pretty much a broad-band absorber of electromagnetic radiation of infrared wavelengths and above, which includes radio waves. Especially in the radio wavelengths, it does not have any particular absorption maxima. So you won't find _any_ kind of micro- or radio wave wavelength that water is particularly transparent to.
http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jones/es151/gallery/images/absorp_water.html
0.2 km^2 is 200,000 m^2, not 200 m^2. It's 20% of a square kilometer, e.g. a rectangle of 200mx1000m or roughly a square of 450mx450m.
See where the problems might arise?
why not beam across the country?
More atmosphere to go through, Earths curvature requiring impossibly high transmission towers, etc.
How about I convince you they're planning to deliver only 2MW, not 200MW.
TFA said that they have a deal to deliver 200 MW by 2016. If they're only producing 2 MW by then, they're in trouble.
There's a lot of pie in the sky?
Oh ... right. My bad. That should work as intended.
That's basically an oxymoron.
Introducing more energy from an orbiting source will have a significant effect.
Only if the orbiting energy source inputs a significant fraction of the energy collected by Earths area. 0.2 km^2 does not qualify here, it's insignificant compared to the 125*10^6 km^2 cross-section of Earth.
We *can* create systems that are bug immune. Note that I didn't say "bug free" - take three different architectures, and have three different teams write the code for them. Connect them in a "majority rules" redundant configuration. The odds of two of them experiencing bugs at the same time (or of having a hardware failure) producing the same result at the same time is pretty, well, astronomical... What about the chance of the firmware in one of the sensors (that all three systems unfortunately rely on) experiencing a bug? If the sensor says the plane has touched down while it's still 400 feet up in the air, then all three control systems will unanimously think that it's a good idea to shut the engines down now ...