[Geof]

When I said GW is not a problem, I mean it is not a problem; as opposed to not happening at all.

Anyway, as usual you wrote a good summary.

I am not too sure it is not a problem natural or not; whatever the cause if sea levels come up a meter I am going to have a very damp basement. :drowning: Or at least my grandchildren are . Or great grand children could be more likely.

[xyzdonna]

Hi all,
I caught Dr. Reid A. Bryson on TV this morning, interresting quy, some call him the father of climatology.
Quoting:
http://www.wecnmagazine.com/2007issues/may/may07.html#1
Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.
“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.
“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

That's what he says and he's a sharp ol bird, who knows. Me I'm scared. I don't know the science but something is happening.
Donna

[Mariss Freimanis]

Uh huh.. "I'm scared", "something is happening", "I don't know science". Back to that again. Here I thought we were making some real progress.:-)

How does "human activity could alter climate" square with "not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”? His conclusion are contradictory.

By the way, how did things check out with your certified genius?

Mariss

[Geof]

....How does "human activity could alter climate" square with "not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”? His conclusion are contradictory....

Contradictory over a forty year time span. So, in my view not really contradictory, you have to take each statement independently and review it in the light of what was known at the time and also the person's state of knowledge development.

[xyzdonna]

Uh huh.. "I'm scared", "something is happening", "I don't know science". Back to that again. Here I thought we were making some real progress.:-)

How does "human activity could alter climate" square with "not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”? His conclusion are contradictory.

By the way, how did things check out with your certified genius?

Mariss

By the way, how did things check out with your certified genius?

Hi Mariss,
Suffice it to say he was not pleased. Before I can post what he said I'll have to doctor it up somewhat. Delete a few expletives and what not.
Donna

[Geof]

By the way, how did things check out with your certified genius?

Hi Mariss,
Suffice it to say he was not pleased. Before I can post what he said I'll have to doctor it up somewhat. Delete a few expletives and what not.
Donna

Ah go on, just put in a few asterixes and put it up verbatim; you harm your credibility sucggesting you will delete 'what not'. And it is fun reading the opinions of 'certified genii'; almost as much fun as listening to 'intellectuals'.

[Mariss Freimanis]

Geof,

So, It take it to mean his more recent conclusion is the operative one, i.e. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

OK, there you have it; human activity is not the cause of Global Warming.:-)

Mariss

[xyzdonna]

Ah go on, just put in a few asterixes and put it up verbatim; you harm your credibility sucggesting you will delete 'what not'. And it is fun reading the opinions of 'certified genii'; almost as much fun as listening to 'intellectuals'.

I should mention that John is somewhat right wing, he raises hell with me for being a liberal. BTW I did look up the definition of a Quad, it's 10^15 BTU.
TVA stands for Tennessee Valley Authority, they supply the electricity around here.
But OK, you asked for it, here is Johns reply:

Quoting from John:
Right, wrong, who knows? Anyone who'd throw around any unit of measure with an
exponent that large hasn't a clue. Is it 10^23 or ^22 or ^24? Would he know the
difference? I wouldn't. Heck, Avagadro's number, the number of atoms or molecules
in a mole of a substance is 6.022*10^23. Do I have any concept of how many that is?
Hell no.

FYI, the unit of national energy consumption normally used in actual real studies is
the "quad". I believe that stands for quadrillion BTU but don't hold me to it. In
any event, it results in nice small numbers that one can get his mind around.

People who engage in these sorts of arguments are what I call "bookshelf warriors".
They don't have any actual experience or training to draw on so instead they reach
for their bookshelves (or the internet equivalent) and sling "facts" and figures that
they haven't a clue as to the veracity. When I see someone doing that, this image
always jumps to mind:

http://jabusites.1hwy.com/images/naked_fat_man.jpg

This guy is correct about solar being a dead end but for mostly all the wrong
reasons. Rather than quoting big impressive numbers of dubious origin, I ask you to
consider this smaller and more mundane example. Look around the net until you find a
photo of a house that has converted to solar power. Not one of those eco-nuts who
shivers in the dark and reads by LED flashlight, but a conventional house like you
and I would live in, complete with AC and appliances, that gets its power from solar
panels instead of TVA.

Look at the size of them ****ers! Sheets of silicon everywhere. And look at the
price. I used to subscribe to "HomePower" Magazine before they went over the
eco-loonie edge. In one of the last issues I got was an article on the conversion of
a small office to solar. The cost was over $40,000. Damn!

The automatic response of the loonies is "subsidies will make them affordable".
"Subsidy" means having the government take money from you and me at the point of a
gun and giving it to someone else who didn't earn it. Just remember that "subsidy"
is another word for "government sanctioned theft". Don't think that will work.

That's one issue but it's a relatively minor one in terms of energy supply. In
common with the other sources of energy that rely on ephermal natural actions (wind,
waves, etc), the sun has a nasty way of going away, sometimes very rapidly and for
long periods.

Consider Chattanooga. If my fuzzy memory is working, Chattanooga requires about 600
megawatts, averaged over a year. Let's suppose half the load were transferred to
solar. Ignore the capital cost and the ugly factor for a moment. Now suppose one of
those afternoon thunderstorms blows up that we're all so familiar with. When the sun
goes behind the clouds, that 300 megawatts of solar generation instantly goes away.

Folks don't like their lights to go off so good ole TVA has to be able to fill in.
That means that they have to have rotating reserves lying in wait, ready to pick up
the load literally at a moment's notice. It should be evident that the solar
generation saved little. TVA had to have the reserves in place, fired up and ready
to go. The reserves would likely be gas turbines, the most expensive large
generation there is to operate. The cheap generation, nukes and coal, can't respond
fast enough.

Or consider our lovely winter weather when we're socked in with clouds for weeks at a
time. Solar isn't working there either. TVA again has to fill the gap. They won't
run the expensive peaking generation for that long a duration. That requires base
load generation. The base load generators have to be there. That is, they have to
have been built and paid for. Now comes sunny weather again and the solar cells perk
back to life. All this expensive base load generation is now sitting idle. All that
capital is tied up in non-revenue producing hardware. That isn't the way to run a
utility. That also isn't the way to generate cheap electricity.

The bleary-eyed radicals love to shout at us utility types that we're
knuckle-dragging troglodytes for opposing such "enlightened" concepts as "alternative
energy". Quite the contrary. We simply believe that it is quite important that when
you flip a light switch that the light actually come on. Every time. We can't
afford to "make statements" and other balderdash when simple math shows that such
actions would de-stabilize the grid. Believe it or not, us utility types really do
know more about generating reliable and cheap electricity than those granola-munching
green weenies. If some folks want their lights to go off every night then they're
free to move to South America or Africa.

Another consideration is that these green weenies have no concept of scale or
magnitude. After all, a megawatt isn't much different than kilowatt, right? Just
different letters involved.

Let's consider two familiar local structures, Sequoyah nuclear plant and the
Chickamauga dam. They're about the same physical size so they have to generate about
the same amount of power, right? Wrong. Sequoyah generates almost 15 times as much
electricity.

Chickamauga generates 160 megawatts of power - when there is enough water to run all
the turbines.

http://www.tva.com/sites/chickamauga.htm

Sequoyah currently generates 22,000 megawatts. That's at the present. TVA is in the
process of uprating the Sequoyah generators. That should be good for another 200-300
megawatts. The Nuclear Steam Supply System was designed with uprating in mind, once
the design was proven entirely safe and reliable.

Heck, the standby-diesel generators at Sequoyah make almost as much power as
Chickamauga. Sequoyah needs around 100 megawatts just to start up! A joke at TVA
used to be that we really ought to just run a cable over to Dupont from Chickamauga,
since Dupont consumes essentially all that Chickamauga makes.

Let's consider another aspect of the green loony agenda - electric cars. I happen to
know a thing or three about EVs since I own several. Let's run some numbers and see
what the effect would be on the electrical grid of any significant BEV (battery EV)
market penetration.

A mid-sized BEV now achieves around 400 watt-hours per mile. Let's say one drives 25
miles round trip to work. I think that the government says that's a national
average. That would be 400*25 = 10,000 watt-hours or 10kWh. Given a 5 day work
week, that's 5*4*10 = 200kWh a month.

TVA says that the average residential electric bill is now around $60 (from fuzzy
memory, in case some bookshelf warrior finds other numbers. In any event, that's a
good enough number). At 8 cents/kWh, that's 750kWh a month. Let's suppose now that
we get a BEV and add that 200kWh to the monthly consumption. The average residential
demand has now risen 750/200+750 = 21%.

Let's put that in perspective for the grid. Back in the good old days before
eco-nazis and overbearing government regulation, when the utilities could run their
operations according to best practices, the practice was to keep about 10% of the
demand available in ready reserves and 1-3% in rotating reserves. "Ready reserves"
are generators that are ready to run, are not running but can be started with a few
hours' notice. A coal plant in hot standby, for example. "Rotating reserves" are
generators capable of rapid load acceptance that are fired off but are carrying
little load.

Rotating reserves pick up the load every night when everyone comes home from work,
turns the TV on and starts cooking supper. Ready reserves handle seasonal load
variations and deficits left when plants go down for maintenance.

A 21% increase in the grid's load would completely swamp all reserves, ready or
rotating. No utility could supply that increase in load without a massive power
plant building campaign. The problem is, the same eco-loons who advocate massive
forced conversion to EV transportation are the ones who erect pickets and file
lawsuits at the mere mention of building new power plants.

Let's suppose that somehow the utility could build the new plants. The distribution
grid could not handle the load. Again, because of obstructions from the greenies, it
has become almost impossible to build major new transmission lines. Utilities have
been having to make do for decades. The major make-do is overloading existing lines.
An overloaded line that got hot enough to sag into trees is what caused that big
northeastern blackout of a few years ago. Other techniques involve stacking new
conductors on top of old on existing towers. Few towers can handle the extra load
without major upgrades.

These are, of course, all political problems. The solution is to do as the French
did. The French government long ago declared that the energy supply was a national
security matter and so they did what was necessary, often behind military-like
secrecy and without allowing any interference from the public. That's why France's
energy situation is the best in the world, with almost all their power coming from
nuclear. The same thing needs to happen here.

John

On Tue, 4 Dec 2007 21:22:24 -0500, <[email protected]> wrote:

>Thanks for that John I posted that to the list. Now maybe you can help me
>out with what Mariss is saying. He's saying solar energy won't solve our
>energy problems. I quote:
>
>I guess I didn't get my point across; solar energy is feeble and all
>"alternate energy" is solar.
>
>Sun energy falling on the US in 1 year: 1 X 10^23 Joules.
>Total US energy consumption in 1 year: 1 X 10^20 Joules.
>US land area: 1 X 10^7 Km^2.
>
>If you could convert 100% solar to fuel, then an absolute minimum of 0.1% of
>the US must be covered with solar collector area (solar cells, farmland or
>algae swamps). That is 10,000 square kilometers or 3,900 square miles. That
>is more than Delaware and Rhode Island put together.
>
>But wait, it gets far worse. Algae Oil yields 2.4 X 10^13 Joules per square
>kilometer per year so 4.2 million square kilometers would be needed to meet
>US energy needs. That is 1.6 million square miles or 42% of the entire US
>land area covered by a slime swamp! An absolutely Jurassic vision.
>
>Mariss

>Does this sound correct to you?

[Geof]

...OK, there you have it; human activity is not the cause of Global Warming.:-)

Mariss

Which thread has the thing from the Hudson Institute quoting 500 scientists who believe that is the case?

[Geof]

I should mention that John is somewhat right wing, he raises hell with me for being a liberal. BTW I did look up the definition of a Quad, it's 10^15 BTU.
TVA stands for Tennessee Valley Authority, they supply the electricity around here.
But OK, you asked for it, here is Johns reply: .....

Donna, Donna, Donna, do you read what you post???

First let me mention that I do, and did many decades ago, know what TVA stands for.

I will cease being slightly disparaging and referring to your friend as a certified genius.

John's reply parallels almost exactly what Mariss and I have been saying. Different words, slightly more colorful phrasing, possibly a bit more arrogant but the deviation in overall sentiment is negligible.

Or perhaps I am not reading it correctly? We will have to wait on Mariss' comments.

[miljnor]

Seams like a blatant flip flop to me as well!

[jhowelb]

Geof ,
He may not be a certified genius, but certainly makes sense to me. Especially in referance to "Green Weenies" (SNARF....!!!) and his assessment of certain "bookshelf" types!

Now I know that man kind never made progress till one generation could pass knowledge to all subsequent generations in the form of the written word. It is when that is the sole source of edification that one gets into the "loony valley" with no practical sense at all.

Walla, Algore, et al!

[xyzdonna]

Donna, Donna, Donna, do you read what you post???


John's reply parallels almost exactly what Mariss and I have been saying. Different words, slightly more colorful phrasing, possibly a bit more arrogant but the deviation in overall sentiment is negligible.

Or perhaps I am not reading it correctly? We will have to wait on Mariss' comments.

Hi Geof,
I didn't say he was going to agree with me. On the contrary. He's slightly right of right wing. Interesting guy though. Fun to talk to and very opinionated. Arrogant? Yup, that's John, and he doesn't suffer fools gladly. He's put me in my place a few times.
Donna

[Rekd]

Quoting from John:
...
Look at the size of them ****ers! Sheets of silicon everywhere. And look at the price. I used to subscribe to "HomePower" Magazine before they went over the eco-loonie edge. In one of the last issues I got was an article on the conversion of a small office to solar.
...

See attachment for the panels on my house.

There are 24 24x48 inch panels. My meter spins backwards during the day, even on cloudy days. It runs the house when the power goes out, and if I wanted to get a bank of batteries and go off the grid, I probably could without adding more panels. They came with the house when I bought it over 2 years ago, so I didn't really notice the cost.

I have to completely disagree (from personal experience) that solar is a dead end, especially considering that they're getting more and more effecient and cost effective.

[Geof]

...Arrogant? Yup, that's John, and he doesn't suffer fools gladly. He's put me in my place a few times.
Donna

But who are the fools he is not suffering? He agrees with us, that is Mariss and me.

I will say though that he is making the same error you are making and that is not listening tol, or reading all the words and fully understanding the meaning intended to be conveyed. His response suggests he has interpreted what you said (or wrote) as being pro-solar, pro-alternate energy and anti-nuclear and in response has dumped on it and said tactless things about the person you were ascribing it to. It appears to me that he jumped to the conclusion you were asking for an opinion on something proposed by a liberal greenie, and gave a knee-jerk response with the emphasis on jerk.

[Geof]

Seams like a blatant flip flop to me as well!

No, not really, it is obvious that John is of pretty much the same view as us. He has just jumped to a wrong conclusion that we differ with him.

[Mariss Freimanis]

xyzdonna,

Aw geez,...that kinda hurts.:-) As a certified non-genius EE, I use "big numbers" in my daily work so I have a passing familiarity with them. At one end a femto-amp is 1 X 10^-15 Amps, and at the other end 100 giga-ohms is 1X 10^14 Ohms. These are numbers whose scale I grasp and use. The dynamic range of my EE world is about 1 : 1 X 10^30. Caution; I have a scientific calculator and I know how to use it.:-)

I don't know about being a "bookshelf warrior" but I do know how to get information. Yes, I used the internet to get the total mean annual US insolation at the surface as 250 Watts / m^2. Looked up several sources for that number even. I also used the internet to get the US land area as being approximately 1 X 10^7 Km^2. I figured one source would do.

I like to use Joules as a unit of energy. Even real live Scientists use Joules for that purpose. BTU (British Thermal Unit) is not an SI unit so I don't bother with it. Instead I use my calculator and "roll my own" data. Let's do math!

1 Watt-second is a Joule. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour, 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year, so:

250W * 3600 sec * 24 Hr * 365 days = 7.9 X 10^9 Joules / square meter / year.

A square Km is 1,000 * 1,000 m^2 or 1 X 10^6 square meters. The US land area is 1 X 10^7 Km^2 so the US is 1 X 10^6 * 1 X 10^7 or 1 X 10^13 square meters. OK, we're nearly there.

7.9 X 10^9 Joules * 1 X 10^13 square meters = 7.9 X 10^22 Joules for the mean annual US insolation. I took the liberty of rounding it off to 1 X 10^23 Joules.

There, that wasn't so bad, was it? You can actually calculate your own data using just a few constants (250W, 10-million square Km). I did the rest of the calculations in a similar fashion to arrive at the numbers that formed my conclusions.

Mariss

P.S. I like your friend's no B***S*** attitude. My kind of person.

[xyzdonna]

But who are the fools he is not suffering? He agrees with us, that is Mariss and me.

I will say though that he is making the same error you are making and that is not listening tol, or reading all the words and fully understanding the meaning intended to be conveyed. His response suggests he has interpreted what you said (or wrote) as being pro-solar, pro-alternate energy and anti-nuclear and in response has dumped on it and said tactless things about the person you were ascribing it to. It appears to me that he jumped to the conclusion you were asking for an opinion on something proposed by a liberal greenie, and gave a knee-jerk response with the emphasis on jerk.

Yup, by fool he didn't suffer gladly I meant myself. He agrees with you and Mariss. I think he just didn't like all the exponents Mariss was bandying about. He knows I'm pro-solar/alternate energy and I think what he was saying is it wasn't practical. It would screw up the electrical grid. You'd still have to have just as much generating capacity available for when the sun went away and everybody went back to the grid. For what it's worth, I'm not anti neuclear. It is my fervent hope that we could develop alternative liquid fuels for automobiles. Algea into biodiesel. Mariss doesn't think this is possible. I just don't know.
John is an interesting character, when he worked for TVA they sent him to engineering school and paid him to go. Not many companies will do that. He's supposed to come down for a visit in a few weeks and of course I'll ply more interesting tidbits out of him. We have some good conversations. He had a laboratory in his house when he lived in Cleveland, TN. I used to love to go in there and see all the neat stuff he was working on. He was into neon at the time and he was pumping glass tubes with all sorts of esoteric gases. I'll bet no one here has heard of uranium glass. It's radioactive glass that was made in the early 1900's. He had some pumped with argon and mercury vapor. It gave off the strangest most ethereal yellow glow I've ever seen.
xyzdonna

[Geof]

... I'll bet no one here has heard of uranium glass. It's radioactive glass that was made in the early 1900's. He had some pumped with argon and mercury vapor. It gave off the strangest most ethereal yellow glow I've ever seen.
xyzdonna

There you go again assuming your audience is uninformed. Uranium gas made even early than the 1900's in Bohemia now part of the Czeck Republic. Been there actually, twice, my spouse imports antiques including uranium glass antiques from there on a small scale. Actually I should be precise; she got some items that were claimed to be uranium glass but we suspect she was diddled because they do not fluoresce correctly under UV.

And regarding large exponents does he really know what Avogadro's number is? I used to keep things like that in my head; it is more or less expected of you when you are a graduate student in chemistry. I have to admit I had to check the exact number; memory fails a bit after thirty years.

And with a friend like John why are you still clinging to the forlorn hope that solar or wind or algae or anything else can substitute for fossil fuels?

You should ask John about his opinion on the chances of building enough Nuke Plants to substitute for 50% of the world's current energy consumption of fossil fuels by 2050. Or is he one of these physicists like Freeman Dyson who figures on genetically modifying humans to live directly from sunlight or colonize the planets or some other kokamaimee idea.

[xyzdonna]

There you go again assuming your audience is uninformed. Uranium gas made even early than the 1900's in Bohemia now part of the Czeck Republic. Been there actually, twice, my spouse imports antiques including uranium glass antiques from there on a small scale. Actually I should be precise; she got some items that were claimed to be uranium glass but we suspect she was diddled because they do not fluoresce correctly under UV.

And regarding large exponents does he really know what Avogadro's number is? I used to keep things like that in my head; it is more or less expected of you when you are a graduate student in chemistry. I have to admit I had to check the exact number; memory fails a bit after thirty years.

And with a friend like John why are you still clinging to the forlorn hope that solar or wind or algae or anything else can substitute for fossil fuels?

You should ask John about his opinion on the chances of building enough Nuke Plants to substitute for 50% of the world's current energy consumption of fossil fuels by 2050. Or is he one of these physicists like Freeman Dyson who figures on genetically modifying humans to live directly from sunlight or colonize the planets or some other kokamaimee idea.

Hi Geof,

Geof said: There you go again assuming your audience is uninformed. Uranium gas made even early than the 1900's in Bohemia now part of the Czeck Republic. Been there actually, twice, my spouse imports antiques including uranium glass antiques from there on a small scale.

WOW, I didn't know that! Made before 1900 eh, amazing. Now you know, I love talking with people who know more than I do. I learn so much. All my friends know more than me. I like to be the dumbest person in my group. I learn and people cut me some slack. I don't have a big ego to maintain.
xyzdonna