Arrogance and Scientific Rules of Thumb
Posted by Gail the Actuary on July 5, 2010 - 10:16am
This is a guest post by Cheryl Rofer. Cheryl worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 37 years on topics including the nuclear fuel cycle, fossil fuels, lasers, technologies for destruction of hazardous wastes and decommissioning of nuclear weapons, and management of environmental cleanups. Cheryl has been a visitor to The OIl Drum for a long time, but has only recently registered. Her blog is Phronesisaical.
I often get irritated when I read poorly informed discussions of scientific and engineering issues. Why? I think it’s the arrogance. That arrogance comes in several forms:
Hey, you science guys! You’ve got something wrong!
I’ve figured out a solution for a problem that other people seem to find difficult.
No, I didn’t have to check what’s been done before.
And there are more.
These assertions are indicators that the person behind them doesn’t know what s/he is talking about.
That’s one of my rules of thumb. Scientists have a lot of rules of thumb, which sometimes makes them seem arrogant.
“I’ve found a way to run your car on water instead of gasoline.”
“Bosh.”
One of my favorite sources of rules of thumb is thermodynamics. It doesn’t tell you how to do things, or how fast you can do them, but it tells you whether something, like running your car on water, is impossible.
Most people know that there are three laws of thermodynamics: energy can neither be created nor destroyed; you can’t break even except at absolute zero, but you can’t reach absolute zero. Adding some chemical specifics gives very useful rules of thumb. Engineers have other rules of thumb, from thermodynamics and practical experience.
I’ll give a few examples of those rules. They become so engrained if you do science or engineering for a while that you don’t think of them--they become a sort of common sense, different from everyday common sense. So when someone says something that contravenes them, a scientist is likely to reply sharply that that’s wrong.
Rule #1 (no significance to the numbers): If it’s an obvious idea, chances are that someone’s thought of it before, and there’s a good reason why it won’t work. This is not a reason to give up, but rather a guide to checking the idea out.
This rule doesn’t flow directly from thermodynamics. It’s more in the realm of how science works. One of the most basic things that a scientist learns is that his/her own mind is the first place that mistakes will be made. It’s too easy to bend facts in your mind toward what you want, to determine a conclusion and then figure out how it has to be done. So when a scientist has a great idea, the first reaction is to ask whether it fits with the rules of thumb and whether it’s been done before. If it goes against any of these, a scientist’s reaction is, “What did I get wrong?” not “That’s the way it ought to be.”
I had a boss once – a physicist in a project that was mostly chemistry – who believed that creativity depended on not knowing too much about a subject. This is a view taken by many physicists and too many of those proffering solutions to the Deepwater Horizon blowout. My boss would come around with a great idea; we would tell him what was wrong with it; and then he’d let it go. It wasted time, which is why I prefer some base of subject knowledge as a takeoff point for creativity, but he put the process of science into play and lived by it: peer review. There are a lot of ways to check out a new idea: ask other people; repeat the experiment; check the literature. You can’t get creative if you stick with a loser idea. The important thing is to give it up once someone shows you it’s foolish.
BP’s blowout at Deepwater Horizon is particularly difficult to comprehend because of its scale. Most of us are not accustomed to thinking of the pressures under a mile of water, nor gases flashing out of the liquid as the petroleum bursts from the pipe, the enormous pressure behind it, the five-story blowout preventer. The construction of the well is not easily visualized, particularly if you’ve never learned how a well is constructed, now with an unknown degree of damage. I’ve dealt with drillers, had the business of mud described to me, and I can’t describe it now in any detail myself.
So extrapolations from experience in watering the garden are unlikely to provide solutions. Heck, if you think that the well can just be buried, plant a hose in the ground shooting full force upward and try to cover it with dirt. Nor are computer games or action movies a good guide to what can be done.
Rule #2: Input for a product should be water and air; other things cost more. KISS: Keep it simple, stupid. Also: Occam’s razor. Basically, the simplest explanations and the cheapest inputs, are usually best.
These are three statements of a similar principle. I learned the first from a chemical engineer. The others are more general. They are nice tests of an idea: how cheap and easy is it? How could it be cheaper and easier? This can lead to cutting corners, but it doesn’t have to.
Those rules are directly applicable to the solutions being offered for the BP blowout, but there are other rules that have more general application.
Rule #3: Carbon dioxide and water are products, not reactants. The system hydrocarbon plus oxygen has more energy (enthalpy) in it than water plus carbon dioxide. This is mostly a consequence of thermodynamics’ First Law. If you get energy out of a system, as in an automobile engine, you can’t get much more energy out of the products. So all the schemes to run your car on water are bosh. No, you can’t use a catalyst to turn it around; catalysts only speed up reactions that are allowed thermodynamically. You have to add energy to do anything chemically with carbon dioxide and water.
Rule #4: Stuff mixes. I’ve recently been engaged in a discussion with a person who has convinced himself that the science on the CFC ban was wrong. His reasoning is that you can pour out gaseous CFCs in a stream because they are heavier than air; therefore they must fall out of the atmosphere and never reach the ozone layer. The Second Law says that things tend toward maximum disorder, which means they mix. Once mixed, stuff doesn’t unmix. Have you ever seen the sugar jump out of a cup of tea and form one of those nice little cubes? Gases mix even more easily.
Rule #5: Everything takes more energy than you think. I’ve seen, far too many times, the lament that our current electrical generating plants “waste” one-third of the energy in their fuels. Welcome to the Carnot cycle! It’s one of the first things thermodynamics students calculate, a sequence of energy generation and use. And the result that those students get, largely a consequence of the Second Law, is that about a third of the input energy goes to entropy, not usable. There are other cycles and other ways to use energy that are more efficient, but if you’ve got a Carnot cycle, the most common cycle for power plants, you’re stuck with that one-third entropy. The Second Law says that there’s always going to be some left-over, not-usable energy, and that there will be even more when you try to reverse a process, like turning carbon dioxide into something else.
There are more. Maybe the ongoing nature of the BP blowout, leading to repeated rebuffs of all those suggestions that aren’t likely to work, will teach some of the public that such rules of thumb exist and are useful.
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Not bad. I'm familiar with the technology, but I refrain from making comments or suggestions because I don't have enough specific information about the well's conditions. Unfortunately they are gathering data they won't publish. I have thought about potential alternatives, one of which I shared with the response team (they didn't answer). This alternative is fairly radical, but it can work - I think - and it's not a permanent solution.
I do find the proposals to use nukes or dump a bunch of rocks on the well to be pretty interesting. They do show the general public doesn't understand the challenges. I also suspect the BP plan to drill and complete the well was missing a great deal of risk awareness. They got hit by an extreme event which I bet they'll find wasn't so extreme. It's like their Texas City explosion, when one looks at it, there were some very simple and basic common sense rules they ignored.
I suspect BP suffers from a corporate cultural "disease" they'll need to cure to survive, and this won't be possible if they keep their current management structure. Evidently they put too much emphasis on the commercial side, and neglect basic engineering. They can dance around this issue, but that's the key, not enough engineers in charge making sure nobody gets up in the morning and kills a bunch of people that day. Evidently the answer is to get rid of Hayward, and re-structure so that when engineers want to make sure things will be done right, the decision on whether to do it or not doesn't land on either an engineer who has been perverted or raised to think like an accountant, or on a non-engineer who doesn't really get it anyway.
All huge organizations have many 'cultures', so I'm not so sure that I'd be inclined to link BP's Upstream (Macondo) culture with their Downstream (Texas City) cultures. In fact, Texas City was an Amoco refinery, with a culture of its' own.
As for Hayward, anyone who knows the man knows that safety has always been a primary foci. As head of E&P, he instituted many policies and structures to improve safety. And he spent considerable time in field operations reinforcing those policies. Strangely, I don't see anyone demanding the resignation of our Presidents or Generals for sending 'boys' into combat without proper equipment. I guess that would be unpatriotic, whereas witch hunts are not.
What Cheryl says about the 'arrogance' of people goes doubly for the media. There's a huge difference between 'hearsay' and 'investigative' reporting. To date, the major news media reports very little exculpatory evidence on the Macondo spill, even though it abounds in smaller local and professional journals. And 'corrections' to misguided stories seems anathema to them.
To his credit, former President Bill Clinton said last week at a Fortune Magazine conference, "I'm glad that the government has 'finally' accepted the assistance of foreign governments" who have considerably better response policies and capabilities for such disasters.
Every corner that could be cut by BP on their Gulf blowout well# was cut, safety be dammed.##
Apparently Hayward's purported (mythical ?) "safety consciousness" had not reached Houston, despite his years in charge of E & P and then BP overall.
BP is a self admitted corporate felon three times over and should have gotten more than a misdemeanor in Alaska (per investigator that was pulled off early by orders from the top of US Gov't).
Not much respect for BP apologia, this post is designed to offset such efforts.
Alan
# I object to any description (Macondo) that does not include "BP" in the name. Such efforts serve to disconnect the felon from it's crime.
## Another example is BP wanted to drill ONLY ONE RELIEF WELL ! When the case is strong for 3 or 4 such relief wells. And BP did not bring enough oil processing equipment top-side soon enough, with many 100,000s of barrels more oil spilled due to their cost & corner cutting. Nor enough skimmers.
With all due respect much of what is say has no basis in fact. Hope you are as loose with your own many as you think others want to be.Go back to talking about all the oil heading to the loop current.
Maybe there are loose "facts", but Alan's statements are simple, proven, and qualitative. If you want quantitative, that info is out there too. The 15kbpd Enterprise capacity was advertised from day one. The flaring capacity and expected take from the second drill-ship was stated too. The sum, about 28Kbpd, was at the lower limit of the estimated leak rate. Only BP was in a position to provide a better estimate, but they chose not to, and yet chose to plan logistics on the faulty estimates.
Any application of the precautionary principle by anyone other that lawyers at BP would have had excess capacity in place in 30 days -- if you say "money is no object" and mean it, all sorts of things can happen. Now we're well over 2x that, and in hurricane season, and those logistics are only now being applied, too little, too late.
BP's record before the spill was atrocious. And it is a 'record', in court and gov't files. Their response since has been no better. I was one who initially cut them some slack as they worked the initial response, but they have fallen short. Not so much from an engr perspective, but from a logistics perspective. Every appearance is that lawyers are calling the shots in the hopes of plausibly denying a few billion in liability at some point in the future.
I'm not understanding what point(s) you were trying to make.
"Apparently Hayward's purported (mythical ?) "safety consciousness" had not reached Houston, despite his years in charge of E & P and then BP overall."
Unfortunately, I know way too much about how this plays out in practice. The CEO makes many impassioned speeches about safety coming first. Many internal documents and all-hands emails back this up.
But, when bonus and promotion time come, the goodies go to the people who met or exceeded budget, as measured by various KPIs. (Key Performance Indicators.)
There are two ways to exceed budget reliably after you have fixed the obvious problems. In other words, after three or four years, when it gets hard to meet the budget goals, you stretch to get the next round of goodies. The plumpest targets are safety and quality. Walmart went after quality in a big way, but this isn't alway possible. The customers are either paying attention and have a choice, or you have no control anyway (as in BP's case with crude oil.)
So leaves us at cutting safety. Now 90% of the time you can cut corners and get away with it. And since you have redundant layers, even if one corner cutting does get you, another layer will keep it from getting out of control. If you cut enough corners and something goes wrong, then you are screwed, but the odds of that are very low. So the promotion-hungry manager will take the risk, hoping with some justification that things will go right long enough so he can make the jump the C-level where the big-bucks are, and let some other poor sap deal with the possible wreckage in the future.
This is exactly why I am increasingly reluctant to fly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possessive_adjective#Possessive_adjectives_...
Possessive adjectives in English should not be conflated with the non-possessive equivalent adjective and an apostrophe followed by the letter "s". This type of conflation results in frequent errors in English usage including "it's", "your's", "her's", "our's", "their's", and "who's". The only two of these forms having any type of valid usage in English are the contraction of the pronoun and verb "it is" or "who is" to "it's" or "who's", and these are the forms most commonly used in error where the possessive adjective "its" or "whose" should be used. For example, "Whose box is it?" is correct usage while "Who's box is it?" is incorrect usage.
Thank you Alan,
I agree with every point made.
Mr Obvious BP Spokesperson.
Would you kindly explain the massive lack of transparency and broad based 'cloaking' of information to the general public. Please tell us why every corner turned is a roadblock to information.
Why does BP refuse to participate in uncontrolled press inquiries?
Why all the undeniable lies?
Why the security goons all over the coastline threatening public citizens with arrest if they wander into suspect areas?
If Mr Hayward is such a good guy, why all the BS?
"All huge organizations have many 'cultures', so I'm not so sure that I'd be inclined to link BP's Upstream (Macondo) culture with their Downstream (Texas City) cultures. In fact, Texas City was an Amoco refinery, with a culture of its' own."
Are you stating that upstream and downstream operate as separate entities?
If the stated Tony Hayward policy on safety was what it was purported to be then over a period of seven years one would think there would have been changes in the Texas City culture. After the explosion BP was again fined for non compliance. Excuse me, but where I come from **culture** can be fired. Fifteen people killed in the Texas City explosion and eleven killed on the DWH. How many deaths does it take to connect the upstream and downstream culture?
In regard to arrogance you reference the media then close with a credit to WJC. You then twist your version of his comment (not a quote) to reflect foreign govvernments having considerably better response policies and capabilities than the US. I'm only guessing you excluded BP from the list of foreign governments you might choose to name.
In regard to safety did anyone notice the position of attachment for the safety harness lanyard. This is an example of complacency that causes accidents. In this case they are pretending to be safe.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6687/667003
As for Hayward, anyone who knows the man knows that safety has always been a primary foci.
Huh. So on what basis do you make this claim?
My guess is the kind of people who have big ocean racing boats/have that kinda money don't hang out on TOD.
As head of E&P, he instituted many policies and structures to improve safety.
Perhaps the lawsuits will show that is the case with BP.
What Cheryl says about the 'arrogance' of people goes doubly for the media.
Ohhh, you have an arrogance meter? Without a meter - how do you measure this?
They can dance around this issue, but that's the key, not enough engineers in charge making sure nobody gets up in the morning and kills a bunch of people that day.
I believe NASA delivered that lesson in spades with the Challenger shuttle loss. The only defense I can give to their management was that none of the engineers walked out.
There aren't too many jobs available working on spaceships and virtually all of them are publicly funded and involve working with a small number of govt contractors.
The engineers obviously went along in order to get along if the deficiencies and accidents were really the result of poor engineering practices.
Actually everybody should realize that space travel is a very dangerous undertaking.
The astronauts are after all highly intelligent and well trained scientists/engineers/military officers, etc, and should know well enough what the risks are.
I think that PhilB was deferring to the organizational culture at NASA, more than the objective hazard of space travel.
There were organizational, economic and other pressures on the engineers at NASA, and its subcontractors (Morton Thiokol and others) that set up what Diane Vaughn, the person who researched the Challenger accident (and wrote a pretty darned good book on it "Launch Decision"), called "the normalization of deviance". That is, in a complex system with a lot of inputs and crtical decisions on sometimes imperfect conditions and data, that the set point for when something is observed as outside of the expected, tends to shift over time due to a number of pressures, making what would have been considered an abnormal finding ordinarily, interpreted as acceptable. It happens in many organizations all the time, but is particularly important in an organization that deals with lives or huge economic or other consequences.
The situation in this accident is not exactly the same as that with the Challenger accident, certainly, but the organizational set up, etc provides some comparisons that are useful to consider.
Re. last para: That's why we need Feynman back to do the enquiry!
“Scientists say they have developed a car that can run on water. The only catch is, the water has to come from the Gulf of Mexico.” -Jay Leno
For those who still want to build new motorways I wrote this (Australian context):
19/6/2010
Primary Energy Dilemma for cars
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=1631
.
Thank you for putting a name on the sickness in my stomach that I develop when discussing energy concepts with people (even very smart people) who do not understand thermodynamics. Unfortunately, my "it's obvious" face doesn't get me invited to many dinner parties. Great to have you here.
Bristlecone,
Discussing energy with someone who has not had physics, geology, and chemistry in college is akin to trying to discuss evolution with someone whose last exposure to science was a D in high-school biology.
BTW, it is frustrating to discuss economic issues with those who have never had a class in economics. Almost every day on TOD I see the terms "supply" and "demand" misused and fuzzed up by those ignorant of economics.
Economists have said a lot of dumb things, but noneconomists have spouted more nonsense by far. Economics is not a discipline one can pick up by osmosis any more than petroleum geology is.
Good point. Imagine what a course in Thermoeconomics could do for the world!
Thermodynamics should be taught after algebra, in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth years of high school; the knowledge could be embedded in compulsory science classes.
Unfortunately, with a few heartening exceptions, high-school science classes are a bad joke.
Even more importantly personal health care should be embedded into high school ten fold from what it is now.
Real grasp of classical thermogoddamnics takes calculus, and the average American HS graduate can barely handle algebra (forget trig).
That said, it would be a huge improvement if we had some serious GATE schools which taught all that stuff on the math/science side. It would be great to have kids ready for BSc degrees with at most 2 more years of coursework, both for the time and money saved.
The single biggest problem we have with education, well, after stupid-assed funding and and the even worse social milieu in which it exists, is that we cram everyone into the same exact educational track. One of the reasons Europeans are better-educated than Americans at the secondary level is the two-track system with practical skills on one track and college-bound on the other.
Fix that, it gets a lot cheaper to provide the advanced maths to that much smaller group.
Etc.
Cheers
This is politically impossible, because the voc-ed track will have the "wrong" complexion and the system will be ruled illegal due to "disparate impact".
...and the even worse social milieu in which it exists...
The average American HS graduate does not become President of the United States (POTUS) or an energy czar appointed by POTUS. So lack of skills in them there hard hard maths by Joe Five'n'a Half Pack is irrelevant.
Rules of Thumb for Scientists and Engineers was never in the lesson plan.
It is typically worse than this. Politicians only need to know how to count. How to count votes. Be it at the polling booth, or more importantly, when dealing with voting by fellow politicians. Keeping track of the numbers is the most important thing any politican does. All else is subserviant. This is an important lesson to learn about how politics is played. Politicans can't be bought with any currency other than votes. Not that that stops people from trying.
That's an interesting position to take as someone from the UK university system, where the first degree is focussed onto one subject in contrast to the US system. I think it's perfectly possible to pick up outline knowledge of a subject by some general reading. The important thing is to keep in mind the depth of your knowledge, and take onboard the distinctions you hadn't appreciated that the expert points out. The one thing that is perhaps essential is some exposure to some form of actual experimental work, so that one has a proper appreciation of (1) even simple theories have more complications to understand when you try and validate/engineer based upon them and (2) no matter how elegant and logical your theory is, if the observations you get out don't support it then the current incarnation of the theory is wrong.
I can see how discussing economics might be frustrating, but it's equally frustrating from the other side where one has carefully avoided using the words like "supply", "demand" and "inflation" and talked about different things, only to have someone try and correct you as to how you got the "terms you didn't actually use" wrong. There's a similar problem with "Moore's Law", where specifically stating you're talking about the "Generalised Moore's Law" doesn't save you from "correction" about what Moore's Law actually talks about. There's issues on both sides of the expert divide.
Don't you think that sometimes on this site, that the "experts" in whatever, find it easier to discuss the meta about what is being said (you used the wrong term, you emphasized the wrong thing, you don't know about x and y), because what they really want to do is tell you to "shut up"...
While many (probably most) of the really cool and patient experts that comment here are open to the content of what many non experts are trying to say, there is a small cadre of "elitists" who just want their old club members to be the only ones who count and the only ones having any opinion that they do not or have not supported.
Just sayin.
What is your example? How serious should people consider the sinking battleship? Some ideas come with a great deal of disrespect for the people who are working on the problem. I have to admit I worked on a solution that ended up taking to long to generate and at the time was to risky. Chu, solved that with the gamma ray inspection of the bop.
thinking for myself i can get rid of the most crazy ideas in a minute, thinking for myself, a little harder, i do know some physiks and chemestry i can get rid of almost all ideas that wont work in a day or two. problem is if i cant get rid of it i need someone better qualified to get rid of it in a sentence ore two.
theres just a lot of people around who dont know how deficient they are in hard facts.
and who want answers imediatly without thinking for themselfs.
and in the internet the bullshit is represented 100x to realworld
believe is good for church it wont work in engeniering.
goto look up the spelling of engeniering.
Economist to bloggers: Shut up, fools
Economics is Hard. Don’t Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise by Kartik Athreya, Research Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, June 17, 1010.
There may be a subliminal, perhaps unintentional, message here, although on the surface the economist displays some arrogance towards others outside the Fed.
No doubt the Fed sees its itself as the know it all in the economic world, so it really doesn't need the opinion of bloggers to reach its conclusions about the economy. But in the area of economics, many ordinary persons not specifically trained in economics, seem to have taken over the debate on the web as to the state of the economy and where it is going.
A misunderstanding of where the economy is now and where it is going can lead to incorrect decision making, and quite likely, an economy below its potential.
So the message to bloggers to get a better understanding of the subject before diving in is not necessarily a bad one, especially since complexity and dynamic systems are involved here. But the approach was a little over the top, and may have ironically encouraged even more misinformed speculation about the nature of the economy by making it appear that the Fed exists in an ivory tower disconnected from the real economy.
After all the Fed has done such a wonderful job in the economic paradise we have now and for the next decade ha! FED=Fools, Egos and Deluded. Like the weatherperson who doesn't look out the window before reading the report. The FED only had to roll down their limo windows to see what was happening ha!
What you say is true, except for the minor detail that the neoclassical understanding of the Fed doesn't even know what a dynamic system is. All their models have the assumption of operating near equilibrium with perturbations, as opposed to a disequilibrium model. Steve Keen has a dynamic system model and when he gives talks he jokes that he is showing the differential equations in a slide just to scare the economists in the room. That isn't far from the truth.
The fact of the matter is that a lot of economic "understanding" is just based on curve fitting and most policies are positive feedback loops (or turning up the gain factor) instead of stabilizing ones. Even though few bloggers put it in those terms and many of them make incorrect statements, they are intuitively far closer to the truth than the Fed.
I don't disagree, the Fed doesn't have all the answers, and a few bloggers probably do have the correct answers. The Fed doesn't appear to want to hear alternative ecomomic opinions that don't follow its models.
But my own observation is that the most of blogger opinions during times of more unusual dynamic changes will come up short, and possibly lead to political pressure that will negatively affect the economy.
The assumption is that all bloggers are gradeschool know nothings on the part of the FED and that is not true. I don't think we can get a real world figure of how many are skilled in X disciplines, But I would wager that their are a few bloggers that have degrees in the field of economics. So making a blanket statement is more of an attack against people you feel are watering down your authority of being a member of the FED in the first place. As if anyone that is not on a board of a FED branch is a worthless peon, no matter what degree they might have.
I only talk about things that I know about, and then I use a lot of IMHO, IMO, opinions may vary but my 3 cents worth is, etc to weight what I might say. I usually don't get into the Econ 101 discussions because I am not versed in the subject.
If you talk about architecture and landscaping, and mapping the world, and plants and land uses, then I will pipe up because of my experience, training and general ego on the subjects.
So carry on and ignore the kid running around with the balloons and fire brands.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world, hugs to all.
Grrrr ....
Kartik Athreya took the pie and threw it into his own face which is a real neat trick.
- Here is a Fed (and an Athreya) who could not see the greatest real estate bubble in US history forming ... and acted as if it didn't matter, anyway ... after the fact. Good Grief!
- Maybe Athreay perceived the oncoming bubble and crash! Maybe I am being unfair: Athreya certainly kept quiet about it while bloggers such as Dean Baker, Nouriel Roubini and Peter Schiff raised the alarms.
- Here is a Fed that has rewarded its friends in finance (AIG, American Express, GE, GM, J. P. Morgan- Chase, Goldman- Sachs, Bank of America, and hundreds of large and small banks) while screwing everyone in America who a) is prudent, b) saves money, c) is current on their mortgage or who owns their house outright, d) invests in money markets, e) invests in the (Fed- manipulated) stock markets, f) uses a credit card and otherwise depends on a relatively honest and well- functioning finance system.
- Here is a Fed that has failed to regulate the banks since Greenspan became chairman, who has supported every loosening of finance regulation, which has defended indefensible super- low interest rates when the inevitable and obvious outcome was massive asset price bubbles, which has turned a blind eye - and still turns - to unbalanced derivative strategies involving interest rate and cash flow swaps between banks which has succeded in enmeshing the hapless taxpayers into every sort of finance gamble at multi- hundred TRILLION dollar levels!
- Here is a Fed that has the taxpayers on the hook for a cool trillion in USA currency; money, cash, 'toilet paper' ... that is backed ... courtesy of the dumbass Athreya's Fed ... by a trillion in worthless mortgage loans.
- This is a Fed that refuces to tell anyone who actually received this money and where it is now! Barbuda and Antigua? Jersey Islands? Singapore? Curacao?
- Here is a Fed that has stood by while the USA has fallen into hock to the Chinese, the Japanese and the Germans, mostly in return for cheap, worthless junk or automobiles. We Americans are stuck with the automobiles that are sucking our oil resources dry by the day which has the effect of making our business activities less valuable while it makes money more valuable at the same time. Yet ... we don't have any of this money, our own money ... it's overseas in the hands of our 'friends' ... who sell us more oil, more automobiles and more worthless junk!
- Here is a Fed that could not see the Great Unwinding when it was staring the country - and the Fed - in the face.
- Here is a Fed 'employee' that generalizes about bloggers forgetting that many notable (PhD) economists write blogs such as Paul Krugman, Willem Buiter, Simon Johnson, John Hussman, James Hamilton, Mark Thoma, Nouriel Roubini, Dean Baker, Steve Keen, Michael Hudson, Andy Xie, Victor Shih ... and the list goes on and on. This is added to non- economist bloggers who have a lot more on the ball than does anyone at the Fed save for the 'Evil Genius' Bernanke himself: Ambrose Evans- Pritchard, Matt Taibbi, Susan Webber, Nicole Hoff (Stoneleigh), Randy Steve Waldman, Charles Hugh Smith, Nathan Lewis, Felix Salmon, David Goldman, John- Michael Greer.
The novelist Kunstler has a better grip on reality than does anyone at the Fed which does not know the difference between inflation and deflation.
Athreya's best move would have been to have kept his mouth shut.
Right here, right now, the entire Anglo- American 'Western' economic system is falling like a house of cards. The culprits are the business establishment, Western governments (and developing countries' imitators) along with the central banks including the Fed. NONE have acknowledged any energy constraint relevant to TODAY'S ongoing crisis. Because of this 'oversight' the establishment is completely helpless to effect anything, to support any sorts of positive outcomes.
Where is the credibility?
+10
Note: Kartik Athreya said economics was hard>, not that it had any bearing whatsoever on reality...
In a similar vein, my ex wife, an astrologer, claims that astrology is hard. And she has the software and complex mathematical calculations which produce these beautifully complex colored charts to prove it... It's still mostly useless when it comes to charting a path into the future!
why does everyone want to convince me of astrologie
Hauke, in case we are having a bit of a language barrier,*I DO NOT BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY!*,
nor would I ever try to convince someone of it. When I want to predict the future my preferred method of choice is carefully analysing
goateconomist's entrails.I was just trying make the point that just because something is supposedly hard or complex and uses math doesn't automatically means it has practical value in the real world. To be clear I'm also not disparaging those economists who are reality based and understand that the economy is a subset of the physical world and take that knowledge into account.
A bit like the difference in practical applications of string theory and cosmology...captured by these two XKCD comics.
The economy is most definitely not a subset of the physical world.
For example, a single large New York bank has settled over $2 trillion in payments in a single day. The average daily global payment volume is probably in the $5 to $10 trillion range these days.
Compare $1250 to $2500 trillion with the global GDP, which is only about $50 trillion / year. Even allowing for a lengthy supply chain prior to final demand, one can see that trade in financial assets is a lot greater than trade in goods and services. And trade in goods is smaller than trade in services.
So the non-physical world dominates economics.
Okee dough keey! If you say so.
Though you are kinda makin my point for me there, aren't cha, bubba!
*SIGH*!!
She probably did splitsville with you because of the "astronomical" amounts of money she was "projecting" into her private bank account with aid of her infallible stars and other assorted orbs
Who needs science when you've got Gemini rising up your Taurus?
Are you psychic? ;^)
That's awfully close to what actually happened... one day I happened to look at the books of our jointly owned, but run by her, business.
Everybody knows that Astrology is just Taurus dumpings.
/sarcasm
Of course astrology is essentially and totally worthless,WHEN you judge it on it's actual merits.
Of course there are no meaningful correlations between the apparent or actual movements of the stars and planets and day to day affairs, personal or kingdom sized.
But this does not mean astrologers can't generate some results from time to time-most of us have heard of the phenomenon known as a self fulling prophecy;if you believe in astrology,, and listen to your astrologer,you may actually get the promised results-call it a placebo effect.If I am actually dumb enough to believe that today is an excellent day for (example) meeting a new lover, I will try harder today to meet a new lover, raising the odds of success.
Another aspect of the astrology game is that any plan or system of thought is apt to work better than no plan at all simply because it leads to thinking rather than simply reacting or remaining passive.
An astrologer who develops a relationship with a sucker-er, customer, I meant to say,gets to know the person very well , and can steer that persons decisions in the same way a priest or preacher or spouse can steer the thinking of someone under thier influence.
It is possible that the astrologer can give good advice, not based on the stars obviuosly, but on her own perception of the interests of her client.
I maintain that it is self evident that even though the astrologer may be intellectually challenged, she is still smarter than her client-who is obviously either ignorant enough or dumb enough to pay her for advice.;)
If for instance I were an astrologer, and collecting a few bucks every week or two from some dingaling,I would interpret his stars in such a way as to advise him to hold onto whatever job he might have , or to keep looking, the stars are in his favor, if he is out of work.
This would be good advice for both of us, in effect.;)
There seems to be some misunderstanding of what I've and the writer said. The article does not complain about those with an advanced education coming to some conclusion about the economic state. Neither do I.
I am though complaining about persons coming to some conclusions without giving much deep thought as to anything beyond what they currently see happening, and those perceptions may not be correct. By shear numbers, those persons may dominate the political debate about where economy is going, and misdirect it.
Granted it may already be misdirected by the Fed and the Government, and its quite possible that an alternative direction may be helpful. However I would never state that just doing the opposite of what the Fed is doing is correct, just by virtue of their past mistakes and/or somewhat narrow minded model of the economy.
There is a lot of discussion above about the FED and economics. I would just like to post here the EXACT method economists use to PREDICT everything! This is top secret, someone will probably delete shortly after I post, so be sure and bookmark as soon as you can!
Here is a reply from one who has little practical experience in the field of economics. From where I stand, the politicians, the economists, and Wall St. all blew it big time. Yet none of the major players has lost his/her job, retirement, home. In fact, they are all sitting pretty well where they were when the sh*t hit the fan. Yet their failed policies have deprived many out of their jobs, retirement, and homes. Can you name me any other field where such a thing would happen?
Now, can we get back to a discussion about the science behind drilling for oil a mile beneath the surface, and what caused the failures we now all have to live with?
Question: is there a rule in science that discusses how many comments it takes before the discussion is pulled so far away from the original statements?
Well said, I have discussions with people from economic depts. that still say employment is a trailing indicator to the level of 100% certainty. I ask what is your number one indicator of economic health without fail the stock market ha! That might have been true thirty years ago however I doubt high freq. trading that has little to do with general forward growth was taught in the class room ? Really unemployment has little to do with leading indicators ha!I ask them if they have ever heard of a negative feedback loop as with any amp. and the clueless look comes over.
As you can tell economics is my hobby and I have no claim to any real understanding. I read Keens latest talk and loved it, at some point old theory will be driven from the classroom just as with the standard model.
I can't believe how economists twist data so readily. The meme is that employment is a trailing indicator but if you look at the data it is a co-incident (+/- 2months) until the 91 recession! This makes sense when you think about the transition from a production oriented business cycle to a debt based consumer oriented business cycle, yet debt dynamics is precisely why viewing this as the same as all post WWII recessions but larger is so very wrong.
I'm not sure that the old theory will be driven from the classroom though, as many of these dynamics have been well described for centuries. At the end of the day the more people can project a sense of controllability the more power they will be given. Fighting hard for negative feedback and humility will never be popular.
Your comment makes perfect sense to me now about employment being a negative feedback loop. Thanks!
Restarting employment in a service economy may be much harder than restarting a manufacturing economy.
If employment in nail salons and tanning salons is down, what government policy can be used to stimulate demand for their services?
If employment in nail salons and tanning salons is down, what government policy can be used
Add a tax on tanning!
Economics, IMHO, is not a science, since it has absolutely no predictive value. Economist can tell you with great precision why something happened, but can't tell you anything about what is gonna happen.
How many economists got rich applying their science? None that I know of. I can think of a few who got people broke.
For example, remember the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management? If not, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management - it was run by a couple of Nobel Prize Laureates who thought they knew how to make a buck using trading strategies such as fixed income arbitrage, statistical arbitrage, and pairs trading, combined with high leverage. It failed spectacularly in the late 1990s, and almost took down our economic system with it.
On the other hand, there are numerous chemists, physists, and biologists who have got feeeelthy steeeeenking rich.
JK Galbraith said something to the effect of "Economic forecasting was developed in order to make astrology look respectable."
Actually, it was Ezra Solomon.
In an attempt to stay informed, I came to TOD right after the BP gusher started. I've been lurking but just had to comment on this thread.
I majored in journalism, with a minor in economics, and then spent several years covering energy and environmental issues for a leading trade newsletter in Washington, D.C. (that's why I'm a fan of TOD). Before that, I was in Army intelligence.
But that was then, and this is now. In my new incarnation, I'm an astrologer. I've often joked about putting economists up against financial astrologers. I've also quipped that astrology would get more respect if we could just incorporate calculus into our forecasting. What we need is a precision variable such as the "util."
For my part, I'm collecting empirical data to determine whether there is any correlation between planetary cycles and events on earth. We're currently in the middle of an alignment that has not occurred in human history (it will peak the first week in August, then dissipate and return next year). The last time we had anything approaching this configuration was in 1989. Events that year included the fall of the Berlin Wall, the protests in Tiananmen Square, Hurricane Hugo, the Loma Prieta earthquake, a geomagnetic storm that knocked out Hydro-Québec ... and, of course, the Exxon Valdez spill.
Remember, you heard it on TOD first.
"If you're so clever,why aren't you rich?" from South Africa.
Keynes.
I vaguely recall he was a very successful money manager, i.e., both he and his clients got richer.
Let's see what Wikipedia has to say ...
(How fire can be domesticated)
I'm probably showing the hubris of those from other fields that was being complained about, but I think it would be a great advance over the current situation if "economic understanding" was actually based on curve fitting, since if you try and fit curves you get some measure of fit that you should look at and decide if your model is simply inappropriate. The "issue", to my mind, with a lot of economics is that it's based upon postulating sets of "conditions/mechanisms" which result in the system global behaviour and then the economics community attempting to argue "by logic" and very limited thought experiment whether they're "true" or not, rather than by seeing if they do actually reproduce the global behaviour. The most interesting thing about Steve Keen's stuff isn't specifically about dynamical systems per se, but that he's numerically modelling the range of behaviours within the range of a specified model, so that if the behaviour of those outputs don't look anything like what occurs you can say "OK, that model is clearly inappropriate here". To that extent, I don't think the bloggers who postulate "what's obviously going on" and "which proposals are clearly idiotic/having-a-hidden-real-goal" (often with much greater vociferousness than professionals) rather than actually investigating are any better than professional economists.
(Economics is clearly much more difficult field to do real-world experiments in than my own field of computer analysis, which is difficult enough. But it does seem to be a discipline that, until recently, had decided on the "tools" to be used in the pre-computer and pre-data-mining age and was going to stick with them even as their relative limits became apparent.)
I don't fully understand your comment. A lot of the (macro) economic Laws do have acceptable fits in the limited context from which they were developed. The assumption exercises you talk about sound to me more like micro, and it's a long running joke that macro and micro never agree with each other or even understand the other's worldview.
In this post, keep in mind the distinction between whether something is right/wrong and whether the evidence is sufficient to conclude something is right/wrong. I'm not talking about the originator of a concept being "inspired" by looking at some numbers, but the process by which other economists decide if the concept is "right". I'm also thinking about "does the best fitting show the model is right", not "assuming this model, what are the parameters".
Unfortunately I don't have access to academic journals at the moment, and by definition the arxiv quant-ph is populated by people who model stuff quantativiely, so this evidence is rather weak. But consider the wikipedia list of economics laws:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Economics_laws
is clearly incomplete, but take
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economics_topics
and remove those elements which are entirely definitional/theorems (but not those that posit this choice is that they are appropriate to the real-world) or entirely subjective, it's very rare to find any that discuss a comment and then actually reference any extensive data evaluation. I was thinking of things like the Edgeworth's limit theorem, Balassa–Samuelson effect, Differentiated Bertrand competition, Efficient-market hypothesis, Excess burden of taxation, Fisher separation theorem, Friedman rule, Harris–Todaro model, Laffer curve, Modigliani–Miller theorem, Phillips curve. (I've stopped at mid-P to actually post this comment.) Many of these concepts may actually be "applicable", but unless the economics textbooks and journals I can't get at are full of attempts to prove/disprove them by rigorous curve fitting rather than "logical argument+thought experiment (possibly referencing some picked out real world numbers)" I'm still of the opinion that things would be better than they are now if economics involved more curve fitting than "logical debate".
I agree with Embryonic. Econophysicists are mad about curve fitting, especially in trying to uncover some of the underlying power-laws. My recent favorite example is the studies of labor productivity that are coming out of Japan. These scientists are looking at millions of data points and trying to make sense of the behaviors.
http://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/summary/10010002.html
The PDF is in english and it is just brilliant stuff to contemplate, IMO.
added:
Here is my take
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/04/extracting-learning-curve-in-la...
All explainable as a stochastic learning curve with constrained limits.
Economics shares the problem with oil depletion analysis of not having a "controlled experiment" to test any hypothesis on. The most interesting aspect of the Shock Doctrine was the idea that Milton Friedman and his gang were planning on using Argentina and Chile to do "clean room" experiments to check Uncle Milt's theories. It made sense in a diabolical sort of way but also is perhaps another conspiracy theory.
As to oil depletion and AGW we are in the middle of our own controlled experiment.
Define the information necessary for a controlled experiment. My last hypothesis used 9,000 US oilfields. Are you suggesting this is not sufficient information to test my hypothesis against?
True, but I was referring to projecting the actual effects of the decline, much like Milton Friedman wanted to test the effects of completely unbridled free-market capitalism.
Now that we have RGR2 on the board, I will test my variation of Rule #1.
Please RGR2, please describe in some detail your hypothesis concerning 9,000 US oilfields.
The main part of that hypothesis was presented nearly 2 years ago. In the appropriate place, and after peer review of course.
Well that's partial vindication of my variation Rule #1
Obviously the real reason that you won't say anything is that it will give away your real identity.
Since physics did so great with their curve-fitting and quantifying, economics wanted to just as cool. The problem is that you more or less need to be able to predict the future in all of it's aspects in order to predict the economic development. It doesn't get more true just because you have numbers on it if these numbers are taken out out of thin air. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has chapter called "How to be wrong with infinite precision" or something like that.
http://www.platformonomics.com/2007/05/book-review-the-black-swan/
While we are on the subject of assumptions, Istappar, I would like to take the opportunity to comment on Mr. Taleb's black swan theory. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, since I haven't been able to summon the courage to read his book, but basing your entire premise on the idea that "s**t happens", and "Who coulda' knowed" is hardly the basis for a predictive theory. That's why chaos theory never went much of anywhere. This is the kind of simplistic garbage that gets lauded by the MBAs, since that is the depth of their conceptual framework.
From the review, perhaps I would enjoy the chapter in the book on Microsoft, however. Windows could be an analogy for the development of complexity. Keep adding and adding and adding to a structure that had faults in the beginning, and soon you have an upside-down pyramid with the inability to add more complexity, ready to topple. Bill Gates finally came to that conclusion, realized that he had backed himself into a corner, and stepped down as CEO to go off and do good works. We have backed ourselves as a civilization into a similar corner, except we have no resources left with which to develop a second career.
And while I'm on a rant,
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/feds-drinking-a-up-to-coffee-cup-of-cr...
And check out the compilation of Florida journal articles of the media battling over the health of tourists. Scroll down through the list.
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/
Complex delusions. Anyone for a cup of crude? Elvis has left the building.
/rant
Now that you bring Taleb up, did you notice how boastful and arrogant Taleb's writing style sounds? His Black Swan is partly an autobiography about his intelligence.
Its an effective approach because it sells books and keeps him in demand as a consultant.
It also helps that he's got Wall St pegged and has Mandelbrot as his mentor.
It seems implausible that the economic system is linear, stable, and controllable by manipulating one or two variables (short term interest rates, quantity of money). This is especially true with a global economy consisting of a coupled systems involving multiple governments, a global financial system, and a global business system.
Much of traditional economic theory treated government taxation, regulation and transfer payments as incremental and exogenous to the economic system. Keynesians, for example, hypothesize that government can play a regulatory role, rather than being a closely coupled subsystem of the whole.
The rise of a financial system separate from the business real economy, which now exists largely in the form of a global multi-player, on-line video game with a lot of herd behavior and low-delay time constants, is also not well modeled by traditional economists.
His attitude is not uncommon among specialist researchers in those disciplines with which I've come in contact.
Many researchers, for example, are unconcerned or even resistant to the notion that their results should have practical and economic value to the organization funding their work, or even to society at large. They are only interested in whether the results are publishable, will enhance their stature as principal investigators, and have the potential to win them accolades from their professional organizations.
This is evident in the benefits section of the average funding proposal. Those I've seen typically ranged from flimsy to duplicitous. Of course, this is exacerbated by the highly competitive funding process which doles out small sums to individual principal investigators.
Direct rebuttal:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100006729/ti...
Previous critique:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-cl...
Cheers
As a follow up to the limitations enumerated in the Scientific American article, note that economists barely treated economic development as a function of technological change at all. Output was a function of capital and labor -- technology did not matter or was treated as a slowly changing exogenous input leading to a general expansion with time. David Warsh's Knowledge and the Wealth Of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery describes how economists have treated technological change and intellectural property through history, leading up to Paul Romer's work in the late '80s and '90s.
From the bloggers to Kartik Athreya: You're a fool.
For one, as a blogger, and a very rank amateur economist with no formal education in that field, other than life, I'd like to point out that economists tend to focus on small parts of a very large and very complex system, and from those, extrapolate what their foregone conclusions tell them. In other words, they spend endless amounts of time seeking the proof they want for the ideas they have. As I've pointed out many times to many forums, "economics" is a game of guessing what the sum total of millions of different economic decisions will cumulatively achieve. Figuring out the effect of policies isn't that hard, since many of us can relate to making economic decisions in the light of tax and other policies.
But, there are times when, like the fable of the Emperor's clothes, there's a point where things have become so far progressed down one track that the answer really is simple. As a blogger, I don't even pretend to have any idea of what the future will be. Predicting future trends is beyond me. However, it doesn't take rocket science, nor "economics" to understand the effects of massive debt and continued deficit spending upon the future. These things are so simplistic that pretending otherwise is, well, sheer folly.
That Krugman's completely lost in the fog, for instance, is an observation that takes little expertise or education. Some things really ARE that simple. That Congress and the Obama administration are so much worse than say, completely incompetent, also takes little expertise or education. It's just that simple.
But this is not to say that all things economic ARE simple, that there is no point to education and expertise and accumulated wisdom and tools would be to say that you can walk on water, sans inflatable shoes, freezing temperatures, or a hidden support. We all know better. Every time I read one these things, where the 'experts' are complaining generically about the musings of the "non-experts", I begin to imagine the machinations of a tribal shaman, one who is losing his influence and prestige, because his limited ability to affect the future or even fortell it, is dawning upon more and more of the tribal members. Failure begets mistrust, mistrust begets closer examination, and closer examination tends to reveal more failures. Shouting about the lack of validity of the critic isn't going to be compelling, until such time as what you say proves you to be the authority you claim.
There is much integrity and intelligence in our society, as there is in any society, but it no longer exists among those occupying the positions of imperial power in NYC and D.C.
That's why it feels like our country is going down the tubes. I mean...there is not a single large policy area - not energy, not economic policy, not immigration, not health care reform, not financial reform, certainly not warfare - which is being done even remotely competently.
The only solution is breakup of the Union. A large country of 300 million people run by a small group of arrogant idiots cannot survive.
Well, there is certainly plenty of corruption in the top echelons of those cities. But the corruption at the heart of the capitalist enterprise seeps throughout the entire system. Certainly many in the real estate business were deeply involved in all sorts of scams. There is plenty of corruption among the political and business circles of most other cities and states. Even the priesthood appears to have turned into a well organized child abuse system.
Where does one turn to in this moral swamp for moral authority or even authenticity?
I think we need to be suspicious of most, especially those claiming to be least corrupt and most trustworthy. A while back, the most trusted profession turned out to be trash collector. I'm not sure whether even they are held in such high esteem anymore.
From the second article Merrill pointed to: "Economist to bloggers: Shut up, fools", by Andrew Leonard
Bingo!
Economics, the neoclassical variety actually isn't that hard. What is hard, for economists to grasp, is that economics has to be embedded in physics, chemistry, biology, and ecology at a bare minimum. Then I suppose you can say it is hard. Until economics is understood as a subset of this larger embedding no one can make reasonable guesses let alone predictions about what is going to happen in the future.
Being one of those fool bloggers who regularly writes about biophysical economics I invite Mr. Athreya to critique my current posting (up later this afternoon) at Question Everything (especially neoclassical economics!)
George
George, I think you air-balled on your URL
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/
Thanks WHT. I tried to go back and edit and couldn't for some reason. Thanks for helping me out. Blog is now posted for those interested.
George
you can't edit once someone responds - nature of TOD.
I have the dubious distinction of having degrees in both science and economics.
When I arrived in my first economics class I nearly died laughing when I saw that economists' idea of being mathematically rigorous was log-linear functions.
Then, as I progressed, I was increasingly disturbed what awful models you can construct when you assume that "all agents are rational" (like, erm, the "efficient markets hypothesis" in finance). Mostly not checked vs reality or only very selectively. At least in physics, you are taught first "planetary orbits are circular", then later - when you know better - you go back and see how bad/good of an approximation that was to reality.
Reality check in economics is what has been lacking IMHO, but I hold out some hope for behavioural (behavioral for the Americans) economics.
Meanwhile, always good to take everything with a huge quantity of salt and ask questions - in best TOD spirit.
P.S. FWIW I'd recommend http://www.withouthotair.com/ to anyone looking for basic facts on energy etc. Very UK focused, though.
It's good to nurture both the rational and irrational parts of the brain, respectively.
Hence the user name..
What is ironic is the St. Louis Fed via its FRED web- based interactive database sharing and ... social networking ... is one of the most useful economic resources on the Internet. Presumably this is used by despised economic bloggers:
https://thefrednetwork.com/account/
It's easy to start an account and there are a lot of resources including the St. Louis Fed statistical databases:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/
All those pretty blue and white charts that are found all over the media are generated by the research arm of the St Louis Fed. (How much is accurate? You can also look up Census Bureau and BEA databases online, just as you can look up EIA msterial to cross check or look @ John William's Shadow Government Statistics. John removes a lot of the 'fudge' from government stats.)
Please read Athreya's entire article. It is basically whining.
I heard an economist say on Australian Broadcasting Corporation Breakfast that the downturn in America needed stimulus, and that it was all about "confidence" and "optimism".
Today I shall be confident,stimulated and optimistic as my patriotic duty.
Nothing about fundamentals such as this so called "peak oil".
Hey, but what do I know?
I'm just a dumb blogger.
Thank you Cheryl, now if people will only read and understand what you posted ha! I work in a sister lab of yours and early on I was shocked at the lack of understanding of basic laws of physics (sinking battleship). I would love to hear more on this from you, e-mail?
landrew - I've been writing more about communicating scientific ideas back at Phronesisaical (here and here), having been inspired (if that's the word) by Chris Mooney's latest outpourings, and I have two more posts in mind, but not everything I think manages to make it into pixels!
It's not just people learning more science, although that would certainly help. We scientists have to get better at communicating. I'm trying to sort some of that out in those posts.
Cheryl, I agree wholeheartedly with your statement "We scientists have to get better at communicating." I speak about this all the time when we talk about how to fund an experiment even at the level of what should be said at the DOE review level. Sadly some take the point of view it's to complicated for general public to understand therefore they should just give us the funds ha!
I think you have a wonderful topic for a book in the same vein a friend wrote in Uncommon Sense (great book btw).
Thanks, Cheryl!
Since the gist of the topic seems to be how much folks don't know, I think it would be useful to do a post in the future on the realities of the nuclear fuel issue and modern reactor options. Fuel availabilities and waste disposal/conversions/reprocessing/storage has been a bone of contention here. Many posters see the value of nuclear power in a fossil fuel constrained future, and consider nuclear to be (more) clean, scalable and sustainable than other options. My main issue is that we haven't dealt with the disposal issue effectively yet and I consider this prerequisite to further construction and development. Some clarity on the subject would be welcome.
Thanks again!
I'd like to second Ghung's motion.
Cheryl would be able to speak to this with more knowledge than I but, my two cents, I wish storage of waste was the limit to nuclear power options! The real limit is 10 years of available fuel ( my understanding). We have already consumed the Russian warhead supplies and now we search for larger deposits of ore. The clue just as with Peak Oil, when you have to mine more rock (ore or oil sands) dig or drill deeper and deeper it is your best clue that your resource is in decline! People yell gas is 3.00$ a gallon and I say what do you expect your mining your freaking oil! When ore production runs from 5% to 2% to .5% to .2% per ton of rock you know it's just a matter of time before energy return on investment is negative. Same is true for most alternatives on a large scale, the great ethanol failure using 1.25 gallons of ethanol corn equivalent to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. Again if any few Senators had read Cheryl's post here they could have saved billions in failed corn to ethanol failures. Nothing beats that BTU per barrel of crude ha! That is why large scale change to alternatives is a joke and people need to prepare for individual conversion (four homes or less) to generate the power they nee to live in the 50's/60's power consumption level. We want to think there is a miracle of science just around the corner as even members of my own family think. Fusion would be the miracle we need and it's just that a miracle for now. Didn't we just kill funding for fusion research ha! Thorium may be one of our only hopes to buy time on Peak Oil. Sorry about ramble, it's just a sore point when people think all is being taken care of by CHANGE we can believe in (yes I am disappointed in BO's war funding over energy).
This why I feel we need more clarity on the nuclear subject. Are we at peak uranium? What is the viability of LTRs and "Gen4" reactors. What is the state of the technology now and what is pure speculation/wishful thinking. Costs? What is actually involved with using the millions of tons of waste we now have (from uranium mine tailings to high level waste and weapons grade stuff) into a viable energy source? What will future generations be left with?
"....people need to prepare for individual conversion (four homes or less) to generate the power they need to live in the 50's/60's power consumption level."
I've made it clear that this is the approach I'm advocating and living, and that it should have been a national priority for decades. Many others have disagreed and have made some good points to support their arguments. My hope is that Cheryl (considering her background), and others can help us arrive at some answers on the nuclear options.
We'd have a lot more clarity over the issue if it wasn't for deliberately misleading pieces like those authored by one Michael Dittmar. As for Landrew's questions, we've got at least 70 years of uranium for LWRs at reasonable prices, and we have heaps of thorium we can use to substitute for uranium (it worked wonderfully in the Shippingport reactor as it bred more fuel in its final run than it consumed, and company Lightbridge is working to bring thorium fuel to market).
As for Gen IV technologies, our pols and other competing interests have to keep shutting them down to avoid inconvenient things like a crash in uranium and coal futures. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors eliminate most of the problems of LWRs, like the safety issues of large vessels of very hot water under high pressure, but the LWR-steeped AEC head (ex-Navy) killed it in 1969. Our "shortage" of uranium is due entirely to our use of thermal-spectrum reactors, which breed elements like americium and curium which absorb neutrons but don't fission easily and thus put a limit on fuel recycling. They are also rather nasty waste isotopes. Fast-spectrum reactors have neutrons at high enough energies that they do fission this stuff, so it doesn't build up. They can also generate enough free neutrons to breed as much U-238 into fissionables as they burn.
That last is important, because it means that about 95% of our spent nuclear fuel (well over 50,000 tons now) becomes fuel again. If it takes 0.8 tons of uranium to make a gigawatt-year of power, 50,000 tons of uranium is over 60,000 GW-years of electricity. That's about 133 years of US electric consumption (not the nuclear part, ALL of it).
So no, we don't have to run out unless our pols demand we do.
He did win one of his bets with Brian Wang, and lose the other.
Wang is of course too kind in calling doomers' predictions of uranium supply crunches real soon now "pessimistic". Obviously for them such predictions are optimism.
(How fire can be domesticated)
I ran into this article about three years ago after discussing peak oil and solutions with another geologist who was with the Navy. http://www.nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf Converting nuclear waste into fuel might hold a few answers.
Spent fuel from LWR's is simply too valuable to "dispose of". China's sending the un-reprocessed spent fuel from LWR's into CANDU6 HWR's. Major milestone demonstrates CANDU’s fuel cycle flexibility - Beijing, 2010 March 23
Course Im sure the religious anti's will probably already have dreamed up some reason why this is a bad idea also.....
Don't you think most of the U.S. aversion to HWR or breeder reactors (plutonium feed-stock) stems from crazy thoughts that we can keep all other countries from nuclear power gen.? To me I can not see this weird phobia about nuclear power. Do we really believe counties will sit in the dark rather than build one of the few remaining resource power supplies left available to them?
As I say here all the time the last 10% is worth far more than the previous 90%! We are fortunate that oil exporters have no vision. If they had any vision at all about crude production declines they would ship nothing but value added oil (gasoline,diesel,etc.). In the very near term we will wake to find K.S.A.,Iran and Russia stating if you want oil you really need to build your factories in our country! This really is the only logical outcome and surprises me that they haven't said it all reeady or have they? K.S.A. we see the need to stop further production development for the sake of our children's future needs. Yes, he did just say that!
The real problem with CANDU is that the on-line refuelling allows uranium fuel elements to be put in the reactor just briefly, then taken out again. This breeds Pu-239 without generating troublesome levels of Pu-238 and Pu-240... in other words, terrible proliferation risk.
Untrustworthy nations should not have CANDU or other HWRs. PWRs are fairly safe (they need extensive outages to exchange fuel) and denatured molten-salt reactors may be just about terrorist-proof. Look up Dr. LeBlanc's YouTube presentation on LFTR (I'd give you a URL but YouTube just crashed Firefox on me).
If I were Nation X, I wanted a bomb, and the previous regime left me some operating nukes, I would hang some uranium from an access port inside the reactor.
Periodically, my nukes would "have to" scram (which they do anyway), and I would have a "patriotic volunteer" pull up the old U and put down new U. Then chemically separate out the Pu.
Gathering up spent depleted uranium munitions, or natural mined uranium, could give me my raw material.
Slow, but it would work. Perhaps Th would work better (I would have to check).
Alan
There's a lot to be said about nuclear power. I occasionally post on that subject. I don't post a lot on it because what I would like to say requires quite a bit of research and calculations, and I just haven't had the time or inclination to do that sort of thing. And when I have done the research, the numbers I'm looking for seem to be really, really hard to find.
"And when I have done the research, the numbers I'm looking for seem to be really, really hard to find."
Does any one find this disturbing?
This has been my experience as well. Lots of smoke, mirrors, and claims surround the issue especially by those with an agenda. I searched NRC and energy sites regarding waste, mainly how much of what type and couldn't come up with solid numbers. And the "where" and "what's next" questions reveal even more vague answers. It can be frustrating to discuss a technology going forward without good data. Perhaps some of those who are advocates for new generation nuclear power can enlighten us.
Like deep water drilling for oil, I suppose that the population is expected to simply trust the industry to do the right thing and go about their business; "Nothing to worry about here folks. Please move along". This seems to be their "rule of thumb".
With your resume, Cheryl, I was hoping to mine your sources for some data to be digested on TOD, though I understand that you may be limited as to what you can reveal on the little ol' Oil Drum ;-)
Enquiring minds need to know.
If we told you, we'd have to kill you.
Well, you could do what I did, which is to pick up a recently-used textbook on nuclear engineering and read it thoroughly. Easily available on Amazon.com if not your local university bookstore. I thought you non-engineering types were all about being proud of your reading, research and comprehension skills?
key question is uranium and plutomiom plasma density in a magnetic field.
sorry simplified
Perhaps you should first learn to distinguish fission technology from fusion technology? AFAIK plasmas are commonly formed of hydrogen nuclei in a fusion reactor in order to create helium nuclei and heat, but have no applicability to fission tech. which is concerned with maintaining specific quantities of radioactivly decaying nuclei, commonly uranium and plutonium in ceramic fuel rods, within a specific physical relationship to each other and a set of moderators, neutron absorbers and shields in order to generate heat.
I agree with Ghung. There is a tendency among some scientists and even among some engineers to take certain numbers at face value, without regard to real-world logistics and contingencies (never mind politics, NIMYism, etc.)
For example, it is popular to quote the theoretical amount of energy available in a few grams of uranium as evidence that we don't really have an energy problem. Likewise the amount of solar flux hitting the earth every day, and so on.
I would someday like to engage in a discussion of nuclear power, with knowledgeable people without having the kind of polarization that inevitably seems to happen on this and other blogs. The only person on TOD who makes sense to me in regards to nuclear power is AlanFromBigEasy. The real nuke proponents seem inevitably to exhibit the kind of arrogance that this main post is partly about, while too many nuke 'antis' are doing little more than chanting the same old slogans. Maybe at some point a sensible discussion about this will happen but I am beginning to lose hope on it.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It is tempting, and perhaps even necessary, to consider science as a primary player in the transition away from fossil fuels. However, a simple fact for ANY new power technology is that the key issues are logistics, not science or even engineering. One MUST consider scaling of production, resources, technologists, installers, maintenance, financing, transportation, transmission, permitting, zoning, and a host of other considerations as part of any transition. For many sources, new rules (and requisite bureaucracies) will need to be built from scratch as any ramp-up moves along.
And behind every logistics problem there are politicians, and behind them public sentiment. Everything has to align before significant progress can be made. And that is why we are doomed to do too little, too late, as problems must become inescapably dire before we shift policies and actions significantly. The best we can do is to act at the individual level, as only by voting with our personal resources can we make a direct and immediate impact.
Hmmm.... I don't recall ANY of the issues you raise having been significant in structuring the US economy to produce incredible numbers of tanks, ships and planes in the 1940's. If people all about you were dropping dead due to a lack of energy and your child was likely next, (a scenario commonly posited here) would "politics" or etc. any of the other "issues that engineers forget" stop you from building a new nuclear reactor? And fuel availability is not a serious issue IF religionists would give engineers the opportunity to demonstrate solutions. Its a transition technology, until solar PV comes of age technically, but a critical one IMHO.
No NIMBYism then.
There's a lot to be said about nuclear power.
Really?
I'd say the 'saying' is useless. What is useful is showing what WAS said and what has been DONE and compare the 2.
Too cheap to meter 'sayings' VS cost overruns doing.
The Anderson regulation "need till fission power can show how safe it is" VS Congressional statements from fission power industry asking Congress to extend the coverage of Anderson.
Saying that fission plants are complying with safety laws VS fines for safety violations and sleeping guards on YouTube.
And when I have done the research, the numbers I'm looking for seem to be really, really hard to find.
Well that is better than the statements I spanked another user where he claimed 'X in Y' and I showed how often X in Y happened - and how his safety claims were made up bullshit.
Perhaps the number you are looking for are hard to find because they don't exist. Your position may be undefendable - I've made a few claims here and can't find other sources to back 'em up/can't find the source I remember. What you did for 37 years may have been "a lie".
I have one more rule of thumb. A version of the 80:20 rule, or whatever the ratio is.
If I see something written down I don't understand , like a scientific article in a general publication, or an economics piece, I apply the 80:20 rule. There is a 20% chance that the author of the piece is very intelligent but not very good at writing for the general public, and an 80% chance that the article genuinely makes no sense.
Sometimes I think it is more of a 95:5 rule.
0% = The chance that RalphW doesn't get it.
80:20 rule, or whatever the ratio is.
That is the commonly cited ratio.
Sturgeon's Law is more pessimistic.
Rule #5 - The view of wasting 1/3 of the energy used in producing electricity is one I would agree with. If we are locked into the thinking of centralized power as the only way then me might accept the view that this is as good as it gets. To me "wasted" energy in the form of low grade( low temp) heat is a waste.
I would like to see CHP as a better way of looking at the issue and our collective future. The idea that low grade heat is useless only applies to electrical generation plants. It does not apply to homes, schools, business, or greenhouses. Losing 1/3 to generate electricity and then convert the 2/3 back to low grade heat inside electrically heated homes is wasteful no?
I can see where small scale coal/electric generation would be impractical but a lot of new electrical generation is nat. gas/electric. Using the existing nat. gas infrastructure and small CHP units might be overall less wasteful. 33% is a huge percentage for any industry anywhere.
Understood is energy use habits would likely have to change, but that is a given imo.
Comments?
Rule n+1. The devil is in the details. Or, second order effects can often dominate.
Cogeneration is a great idea, spoken by someone who lives in a cold climate. :-) Where I live peak electrical energy demands are at the height of summer. A very large fraction of the world needs aircon all year. Then you need to look to Mr Carnot and see why electrical generation systems like big. They can drag a few highly valuable extra percentage points of efficiency out of generation with big cooling towers and huge turbines. Local co-generation plants won't approach that efficiency. So the gap closes a bit. However a big loser is still line losses. That can be partially addressed with higher voltage distributors, but there is a heck of a lot of energy lost in the copper.
OTOH, for pure thermodynamic efficiency nothing touches a big diesel. But per unit energy the cost of coal is vastly lower than oil. An optimal local cogeneration system would have diesel engines running the generators with waste heat piped to the local community. The efficiency and carbon footprint is unbeatable for conventional power. It is just that you shackle yourself to oil to do so. And someone ends up living next the power plant.
Personally I see the biggest win in domestic power use as being in improved building design, especially in insulation.
Hopefully further advances in ceramics can make economical the "coal-water slurry" fueled diesel engine, as Cummins was developing in Alaska. That would sure make a lot more sense than a lot of gas-fired peaker turbines as now.
efficiency in a a abstract society :
we never use fossile fueles.
we never build big damms.
we never do anything which would change the biosphere.
we use energy available without disruppting the biosphere tio develop science and technology.
when we notice that we use too much energy, energy that changes even local reality, we go into space where we can use all the energy aboundend from the sun without changing energy levels on earth, to produce industrial economics.
effiecency means : we dont degrade allready existing systems to maximise output of new systems.
we think that complex ecological systems are beautifull and that their worth is unlimited therefore destruction of a system is not an option.
economics means maximum deversity
i could go on
Cogeneration is a great idea, spoken by someone who lives in a cold climate.
And yet, the cost is 5-20X the 90+% eff pulse units.....if you can buy 'em.
(based on me looking at Stirling Cycle engines and the $30,000 -> $10,000 -> projected $5000 whispergen product)
several manufacturers are now offering models in the U.S.
Ok...I'm game. Who?
Links. Show the links to 'em.
Personally I see the biggest win in domestic power use as being in improved building design, especially in insulation.
Passivehaus claims a 10% cost increase and 'drastic' savings. In some use cases - no heating plant is "needed" - one case in Minnesota the building never went below 45 degrees.
http://www.freewatt.com/
Well, it is not one that I would agree with at all. I have done a lot of reading on the subject and actually worked at a gas/oil hydro plant for two years. I was not an engineer there, I worked with their computers, but all the engineers told me that about 2/3 of all the energy was wasted. The wasted energy was mostly in the condenser. The water exiting the condenser was very warm and a lot of water passed through the condenser. The input to the condenser was so strong that large fish would get stuck on the grating and could not get off. Of course some heat just went up the stack. And there was a lot of heat heat that just radiated off the outside of the boiler walls.
Fossil fuel power station
Now that I can agree with.
I googled it and checked many articles. They all tend to agree.
Power Plant Efficiency Hasn’t Improved Since 1957
Ron P.
You can do worse than 66% efficiency if you're using a Carnot cycle, but you can't do better.
Of course Cheryl. But some folks seem to be getting the idea that the average power plant wasted only 1/3 of its fossil fuel energy input. That would be a very wrong idea. The average waste is 2/3 for coal, oil or gas hydro plants and 50 percent for gas combined cycle.
Great article, thanks.
Ron P.
Denmark has a 45% efficient coal fired plant. China is building one 44% efficient coal fired plant per month.
GE's H frame combined cycle natural gas plant has a "nameplate" efficiency of 60%.
CHP plants can get to 89% efficient with fossil fuels and large hydro is typically over 90% efficient.
Best Hopes for Efficiency,
Alan
I would have no idea how one would measure the efficiency of a hydroelectric dam. You are using falling water to turn a turbine. I guess you are saying you are capturing 90% of the energy of the falling water. Okay, sounds reasonable but we are not burning fossil fuel here.
I guess the efficiency of a CHP plant would depend on just how much of the waste heat you can capture for other purposes. I would guess that the efficiency would vary greatly from winter to summer. Just how much of the waste heat, used for space heating in the winter, can be converted to other uses in the summer?
Ron P.
In many cases, idle the plant (usually not the most efficient producer of just electricity despite transforming and transmission savings) and use it for emergency reserve during the summer. A bit of solar hot water could supply that demand.
At the University of Texas at Austin combined cycle, co-generation plant (among others) they use absorption chilling powered by the waste heat.
CHP could, and should, be used more widely, but the economic details vary significantly from site to site.
Typical (AFAIK) to match the CHP generation to the required heat load. Basically one's neighborhood boiler first produces electricity as a very and immediately useful by-product. If electrical generation is inefficient, then more heat is created. In an emergency, Denmark has a large number of small generators scattered all over the nation.
In Denmark, they use larger, and more efficient co-generation plants that produced 42.7% of all electricity in 2006. The waste heat from these is sent to district heating plants as needed, or wasted, if they needed to operate to generate electricity.
http://www.climate.org/publications/Climate%20Alerts/Winter2009/EU.html
Some of these are garbage powered steam plants and others are NG powered combined cycle units.
The Danish Avedøre 2 plant built in 2002 remains the most efficient power plant today with 95% efficiency. It uses natural gas and biogas for its electricity and heat production
Best Hopes for Efficiency,
Alan
CHP 90% efficiency. Used in Japan and Europe. Now available in the US.
Small, and less likely to be a terrorist target. No large cataclysmic failure(three mile island).
We should be looking at the subsidies given "Big Power" at 33-66% inefficiencies and compare. Opps I assume some intelligence in DC.
http://www.toolbase.org/Technology-Inventory/Electrical-Electronics/comb...
Something i've found from a lot of study of the topic is that things are always a lot more complex that you assume. The above two posts are so over-simplified as to be deliberately misleading.
How so ?
Alan
As in your response to Ron, "In many cases, idle the plant".
!
I doubt there's many power distibutors who could handle that "efficiency", economically speaking.
The rules of efficiency are fairly simple:
1) start with water, at rest, in a reservoir.
2) water flows into a pipe, down a slope to a lower elevation at a fixed rate.
3) water passes through a turbine in which water pressure imparts force to
turn turbine blades and hence kinetic energy to the electric generator
4) water exits the turbine at the same fixed flow rate.
The kinetic energy of flow at the exit is 'waste'.
The kinetic energy of turning the generator shaft is 'good'.
The efficiency is
Eff. = (good)/(good+waste).
Problem with your argument, "we are not burning fossil fuel here" with respect to hydro. The damn was not built in a vacuum of zero oil. Just as with any power generation, if it takes more fuel than the lifetime design to build verse output you don't build it. Just as in the funny You-tube videos showing you can make your own hydrogen generator ha! Sure, 10 cents of electricity to produce 1 cent of btu hydrogen power ha!Nothing beats CRUDE! Really, nothing beats good old high btu output CRUDE! That is why we will drill baby drill to the end of the earth (we are almost there now) for every barrel that takes less than one barrel to extract! Yes, there will be a time when it takes more than one barrel to extract a barrel of crude, happens already with some wells closing for lack of return on investment dollar. You can still see small wells in Southern IL. pumping 1/2 barrels a day when the price of crude is more than the cost to pay for pick up ha!
I think I am not arguing. Just responding to an issue about how one calculates the efficiency of hydroelectric power generation. This is how I have seen it done. I had hoped to have people realize that it is totally different conceptually form Second Law Thermodynamics efficiency.
Personally, I find efficiency calculations and comparisons intellectually suspect. I could make an efficiency calculation that 'proved' that fiat money is more efficient than gold, based on the wasted energy in carting the heavy gold around. Are you impressed? I hope not.
Some hydroelectric plants were built with oil, but the primary use was as lubricants and lighting.
I suspect that many hydroelectric power plants will have EROEI of 1,000 to 1.
Alan
That should be an easy one. Mass of water times the change in the gravitational energy of it is the potential. Some is loss to frictional forces, rotating machinery, turbulent flow of water through pipes, etc. Then there are electrical loses in the generator, etc. So ninetypercent is believable.
Now with CHP, there is efficiency, fraction of BTUs which end up as either mechanical(electrical) energy, plus usable heat. But, if you think in terms of entergy, the low grade heat has relatively low value per BTU, so a CHP plant which produces more electricity, and less heat might win out even if its classic efficiency is less.
Check out Freewatt.com (formerly Climate Energy LLC). They make a cogenerating home furnace based on a Honda generator.
Alan, the US electric generation fleet has a wide range of efficiencies. I did an analysis of coal and gas fired plants for a graduate environmental management program I completed recently. I used the reported data from the various plants in the US. In 2007 the most efficient coal fired plant had a 43% efficiency. The least efficient plant was 21%. The mean efficiency of coal fired plants in my sample was 32% and the 75th percentile was just under 35%.
We have quite a lot of efficiency gains to make before we get close to theoretical limits. And we can reduce our fossil fuel use and pollution as well.
PLEASE contact me ! I could use the results to bolster a recent case that I made (to the UN's Green Economy Report) and I am going to make (to the Sierra Club).
Alan_Drake at Juno dott conn
I've taught college level thermodynamics. So I really don't think I misunderstand the theory. In my opinion, the major problem is the use of the word 'waste'. The process of turning the shaft of the electrical generator cannot happen without a flow of thermal energy into the system at a high temperature and a flow of thermal energy out of the system at a low temperature. Calling that low temperature heat flow 'waste' misses the whole point of how the system works, and using that word in that context is a serious surrender to the forces of stupidity. The heat flows happen when the system is working. Assigning a judgmental word merely obfuscates a simple fact.
Cheryl:
About the guy who thinks that the CFCs would settle out of the atmosphere. I think your idea that things that have been mixed don't spontaneously separate is a weak argument. Separation of molecules having differing molecular weights by means of acceleration is a known technology e.g. centrifuge separation of U235. What makes the idea unworkable for atmospheric CFCs is the Sun and the rotation of the Earth keep the atmosphere fairly well stirred. Ask him to think of a can of paint on a shelf in a paint shop, and a can of paint in a shaker machine in a paint shop. Ask him, would he expect the paint in the shaker to separate merely because he has good observational evidence that paint separated in a can on the shelf? Ask him to imagine what situation for the Earth would be correctly analogous to the can on the shelf. My thinking is that such an Earth would not be one on which we could survive, much less check his theoretical prediction against reality.
geek7 - It happens that that guy also used centrifuge separation of U-235 as an example to bolster his contention that CFCs were never going to make it to the stratosphere.
It takes energy to spin those centrifuges to do that separation! Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the enormous amount of energy in the uranium nucleus.
You are missing my point. Your general principle that things stay mixed always and everywhere is not valid. There are ways to unmix things using acceleration. You need to address the issue about why unmix through acceleration doesn't apply to the situation where he wishes to apply it. (For instance it applies to paint in a can on the shelf.)
Saying that it takes energy to spin the centrifuges is beside the point. The supposed principle is not in fact universally true. And this fact should be addressed. He is wrong, but your argument is unconvincing.
Your statement about centrifuge separation energy consumption is also unconvincing. Energy is used to maintain very steady environmental conditions, not to spin the rotors. The rate of energy consumption depends on the skill and sophistication of the centrifuge implementation, not on the rate at which U235 is separated from U238. I would say that the acceleration of gravity causes a movement towards an equilibrium separation of CFCs, but forced mixing in the atmosphere totally overwhelms that tendency.
My main point is that one wrong idea is not successfully countered with vigorous assertion of an erroneous principle.
geek7 - A rule of thumb is not a "general principle." Let's ask Wikipedia:
So "stuff mixes" is one statement of one aspect of the Second Law. I never said that stuff stays mixed always and everywhere. There are many ways to unmix things. Any elementary chemical engineering text gives you many of them. They all require energy input: fractional distillation, transport through a membrane, centrifugation. That's a consequence of the Second Law: mixing gives off energy (think of the the heat given off when concentrated acid is mixed with water), and separation requires energy. Boiled down (sorry!) to a rule of thumb: stuff mixes.
Please tell us what spins the rotors, if not energy.
I disagree with Wikipedia. For me, a rule of thumb is an informally stated general principle. It is used in argument as if it were strictly accurate, but it is not.
A rotor is a repository of stored kinetic energy. In most of this discussion we have been using 'energy' to mean power, which is the time rate of flow of energy.
My initial post was a comment on how one might better address the CFC guy who was not impressed with argument from rule of thumb. I had been trying to suggest that he might have been impressed with a more carefully stated argument from scientific principle. But, in truth, he might not have been.
We seem to have reached a point where further progress in understanding is unlikely. Let's stop.
We are indeed talking about different things. I have been using "energy" in the thermodynamic sense.
There are a number of definitions of "rotor." Since you mentioned centrifuges, I thought that their rotors were what you were talking about. Here's a picture to help.
And, when I wrote the post, I intended "rule of thumb" in the sense that Wikipedia gives.
I agree that there's not much point to continuing this discussion.
FWIW, I've come across this question regarding atmospheric CO2.
One of the best responses I've ever seen had to do with diffusion and scale height, and those terms were enough to let me find it. Enjoy.
I incorporated the slow diffusivity of CO2 here:
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/04/fat-tail-in-co2-persistence.html
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-shock-model-analysis-relate...
A rotor is a repository of stored kinetic energy.
"A rotor" can be used to describe something "at rest"
http://www.oddparts.com/acsi/defines/rotor.htm
A rotor is the interior part of a motor.
(yea yea the next parts "It is the rotating section. This is in contrast to the stator, which is the external section which is stationary." - yet the stator is on the Earth and it moves thru space - thus it rotates also)
The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the enormous amount of energy in the uranium nucleus.
Or perhaps the 'value' of having fission/fusion based WMD's?
Hey! Would you folks please recognize that NO real world heat engine actually uses the Carnot cycle.
It's too feeble in the sense that it requires a lot of working fluid for a little work, not to mention an infinitely long time to do that work, that is, no power.
The Carnot cycle is reversible, which Carnot the person used in his beautifully simple, elegant argument that if any other cycle were MORE efficient than it was, then we could combine the reversed Carnot cycle with the more efficient one to violate the second law, which is taken as a given to be not possible.
Anybody's thermo book has this neat little proof.
There are plenty of other theoretical cycles that are reversible, and plenty of them that are not. Real heat engines use cycles that are not, but get rather close, close enough to be useful.
Example. The Stirling cycle, an approximation of which I use for my little machines, is theoretically reversible and hence has exactly the Carnot efficiency. In practice, we can, with a lot of effort, get about 60% of that.
A useful statement re all this is " No thermal machine can ever get higher efficiency than the carnot efficiency, which is simply the highest temperature minus the lowest temperature in the cycle divided by the highest temperature. And real thermal machines get a lot less.
"Well, it is not one that I would agree with at all. I have done a lot of reading on the subject and actually worked at a gas/oil hydro plant for two years. I was not an engineer there, I worked with their computers, but all the engineers told me that about 2/3 of all the energy was wasted."
Sorry, I wasn't clear. That 1/3 is "waste"(as in wasted) is what I agree with. 2/3 "wasted" is even worse.
I live in a cold area ;-), and operate a nursery. Plants love low grade heat. 68 deg. F soil temp will do wonders. That you can waste 1/3 or 2/3 of (imho) useful heat is what we need to address.
CHP makes too much sense to my situation. I shall see if it is practical....
D
Ontario has been trying to get greenhouse operators to exploit the "waste" heat from power generation for years. No takers, seems not commercially viable (so far). I've also calculated the cost / gain issues for designing a nuclear plant specifically so the condenser heat would directly heat a large greenhouse on an upward slope above the condensers, with natural convection and fans to assist airflow. The value of the output crops is so small relative to that of the energy generation that it makes no difference at all to the economics of the plant. Add in the added capital costs of the installation, the risks of crop loss due to heating shutdown or a tear in the covering, and the fact that every "environmentalist" would be hammering your products in the media as "irradiated and dangerous", and it simply makes no sense.
"The value of the output crops is so small relative to that of the energy generation that it makes no difference at all to the economics of the plant. Add in the added capital costs of the installation, the risks of crop loss due to heating shutdown or a tear in the covering,..."
Low value and a possible tear in the poly. Stuff we deal with every year. If this was not economically profitable then explain the growth in the nursery industry over the last 20 years.
If you are figuring in backup systems for electricity and gas with a nuclear shut down maintenance situation then I think we are not on the same page, and that would not be practical or economic. Remove the nuclear reactor and you get a workable situation currently used in most commercial operations.
The nursery industry has functioned while using nat gas and propane to heat water for beds and air heat for greenhouses, while buying nat gas fired turbine generated electricity to run pumps, boilers, etc.
I think CHP is a natural fit for the industry. I also think it would work for commercial and residential as well.
I'm not figuring PO or P nat gas just the merits of CHP vrs 33-66% losses of heat with "Big Power".
I'm quite sure there is a lot to loose financially in some industries if subsidies were equal and CHP were to become more common. I can see that being a hindrance as those with the most to loose try to maintain the status quo ignoring what might be best long term.
Even removing the nuclear and replacing it with coal-fired, there's still the problem of intermitent heat availability. One of the biggest advantages of coal-fired generation over nuclear, from the owner's POV, is that the coal generating station output can be ramped up and down quite rapidly according to grid demand. Such power excursions, plus an imposed absolute requirement for heat availability on any day when freezing might occur, are not likely to be welcome additions to the operating plans of generating stations considering the marginal financial benefit. It would complicate operations scheduling and planning considerably. I'm not condoning, simply explaining. Personally I think it should make a lot of sense especially in northern climates, as opposed to trucking market garden produce hundreds of miles. An added difficulty is the fact that no current generating stations were planned with the added space and equipment (alternative condenser systems, higher back-pressures on the turbines, etc.) from the outset, making the addition more costly.
Thank you for this most excellent post.
Well said, Madam!
I will quibble just a bit and gently point out that you have made a minor mistake when you say that most people know something about the laws of thermodynamics.
Most people,the vast majority of people, including many very well educated people, know nothing at all about thermodynamics.There are probably as many who believe in "something for nothing" as there are who believe in "no free lunch".
I am incidentally professionally qualified, as a former educator, to make this statement.
This is not even really an error at all within the context of your intended audience here at TOD and the conversational tone of your post;most of this audience does indeed seem to know some basic science.
You may have heard the one about the professor from some small liberal arts college in Vermont wondering how Mc Goverm lost the presidential election because after all "everybody I know voted for him". ;)
Mac,
You make a very good point about the ones who truly know the breadth and depth of the ignorance of the average American being post-secondary educators. With 31 years of experience teaching both recent high-school graduates and older nontraditional students at a community college, I can say with no fear of successful contradiction that I have plumbed the depth of the ignorance of average Americans and found no bottom at 5,000 fathoms.
With nearly ten years experience as a student in several graduate majors I also found a shocking ignorance of facts outside a particular discipline. For example, sociologists have no idea of what psychologists were talking about, and vice versa. Few economists have much knowledge outside economics, though one of my econ profs (MacFadden) had a Ph.D. in physics before he switched to economics.
MBA students often had little knowledge outside of their discipline, though the Ph.D. students in business administration often read outside their discipline. Engineers tend to know a great deal about engineering--and also know basic physics, math, and some chemistry, but their knowledge of current events was not generally impressive.
The students who seemed to have the most general knowledge (except for math) were the English and Comparative Literature majors; often these people read widely.
Isn't there a business-administration school of thought that prides itself on not feeling a need to know much about substantive subject matter, on the grounds that you crack the whip in pretty much the same manner irrespective of the mundane details of the business? (After all, you hire technicians, who come and go unnoticed, to see to the details, no?)
That's the GE / Walsh concept of management, eg. a manager can manage anything, no subject knowledge required. By firing the 10% of sales staff who are selling the least each year, you are doing them a favour by getting them on into a career where they can succeed.
To me this seems to be the root cause of many major mistakes in business today. The idea that someone trained to manage a Burger King (or any fast food franchise) has the same skills needed to run a deep water rig or run GM just seems silly to me. Managers used to come up through the ranks and had a pretty good idea about what they were managing. Now all you need is a piece of paper to work on the Space shuttle or work for Sears. Management is management. That idea seems to be invalidated now but it will probably still be used for the next 60 years. The idea that managers might have to go back to school and learn something about what they are managing or spend some time "on the line" will not go over well.
Unfortunately, it has been my experience that their breadth in knowledge does not correlate to good analytical decision making. They tend to make errors in decision making by relying upon the anecdote or belief in precedent. And rely upon the emotional side of the brain rather than the analytical side. The entire TOD site is tribute to a populace that does not understand numbers and how to interpret them.
I have 225 hours of low B level college credits. No degree, I studied anything I was interested it. Anthropology, to Zoology, and all points in between. But that was ages ago, What I know I can pile in a thimble and have room for a cow and two pigs to fit in after it.
So I am totally clueless, This must be Wednesday and In august, right?
I try to make the complex world easy for the people I talk with, some of them have smarts that aren't from any book, while others seem to have no common sense about things and need to have someone hold their hands when dealing with the rest of the world. I'd say it takes all kinds to make the world go round, but that is not true, The gravity well around the Sun does a lot of the work for that.
Tips his beer to you all and says, have at the problems of the world, I have to go rake some leaves before someone's landowner's Manager lady blows her stack and forces her opinion's about neatness on someone who has already paid a month's rent, and whose trashy leaf pile has been there in place for 3 years, why complain now?
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world, even if I have to fight the land owners off with wet noodles.
Hugs to the smart people on TOD.( all 73,000 of you, lol)
Actually attributed to Pauline Kael, New York theater critic: "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them." However, the pithier popular version persists since it fits a strong strain found in Vermont, the Upper West Side, Berkeley, a wide range of college humanities departments, and elsewhere.
At least we can credit Kael herself with being enough in touch with reality to know that she was not really in touch with reality. That's a whole lot more than can be said for the general run of starry-eyed Utopians and would-be social engineers...
One also hears frequently, "they'll think of something", even when the something would have to be quite fantastic.
Yes like business and economics experts who think that by lowering taxes and "unleasing the power of the free market" energy, raw materials and universal wealth will appear out of nowhere.
+10
Good Morning Compadres,
Every profession gets this treatment. When I worked as a pilot frequent customers would say, "I could do your job, I've been riding on these machines for twenty years". I would say, "I'm sure you could, it's just hard to get the job". Doctors are second guessed all the time, teachers are denigrated because....well, everyone has been to school so they must know everything about it. Science, hey, we watch the Nature of Things and Daily Planet. Bill Nye did this on TV.
If you were to tell someone "the brightest minds are working on fixing this spill", doubt would still prevail. That someone still has their 'special opinion'. I am in mind of the new stoplights on a major road in a nearby town. "Those stupid traffic idiots, they just messed it up".
Just a thought, but from day one kids are told and ingrained with....we are all equal, no one fails (elementary), you are special, you have rights.
Of course we all know that we are not equal, rights are a gift and require responsibilities (also sorely lacking), many fail in this world (and there is nothing wrong with trying your best and failing).
Shooting an approach into a shitty little glassy water lake and not feeling the touchdown or running out of room gave me the inner smile knowing that one job was done as done as good as possible. What are the expressions about "suffering fools" or my personal favourite, "empty carts make the most noise".
Laymen pretending they know about science is simple ignorance and bad manners. I am afraid it is very common. My wife is a long time teacher and she often remarks on the decline in basic abilities, manners, the increase of family dysfunction, and the slide to an impossible job. Perhaps it is an indication of rot.
I teach high school shop and anyone can do my job so what do I know? (Maybe I'll just invent that car that runs on water).
all the best.......Paul
Wow - a pilot that can do more than one water landing! It's nice to see there is more than one of us.
Bryan, flying a Goose on the BC coast.
You almost need to do two---
You need to scatter the moose and bears, especially in those river landings with a bend.
Must work for the Smiths in Hardy.
Of course, every so often they do mess it up. For decades, where I live, we've continually heard stridently moralizing complaints about "speeding" at 35mph on a one-way minor arterial where the posted limit is 25. No prize for guessing the speed the traffic lights are synchronized for.
Naturally, the real problem is that politics enters the picture. People claim to want the traffic to creep along, in order that it should be "safe" to dump their kids outside without proper supervision when they find it convenient to do so. But yet neither do they want gridlock since that would often prevent them from getting those same kids to their endless 24/7/365 soccer games on time.
Oh, and as we all know, it's much the same with climate change. The real issue for the most part is less about science than about tradeoffs. But in a social climate that prizes shrill moralizing above all else, where unattainable Utopia is the only outcome that may permissibly be discussed in polite company, it's impossible to discuss tradeoffs rationally or even civilly - whether the tradeoffs involve fuel consumption, traffic speed, or anything else. Too bad for the scientists and engineers upon whom the public frustration with failing to attain Utopia is projected...
"unattainable Utopia"
I really and truly have no glimmering idea what you are talking about. Can you specify who exactly is insisting on Utopia?
As yesterday I was poking at a rotten tree, and thinking about the chances of it falling in the next section of time, your point of thinking it might be ROT is likely spot on.
We have a rotten to the core system, we see it when we try to explain the simple things to people who grew up in the last 20 years, and have never seen an LP record and can't fathom life without a game system or cellphone or something techy pocket junk. I get a little fuzzy around the edges when I see kids, younger than 7 talking on cell phones, while mommy or daddy talk on theirs, while they are walking through a store, or down a country lane. Being in a restroom and having someone answer their cell phone and start talking. Where has the world gone too?
The house phone rang about an hour ago, my Ex-wife(#3) said, don't you ever answer your cellphone? I said, yeah, when I need too. She's never had much use for a land line house phone. I always think of the power outage we had the other night At least our landline worked.
Like that tree yesterday, my advice to the owners was to cut it down before it fell down and costs were higher. How do we trim the rot out of our system? Or do we cut it out and patch the trunk with a brickwork to support the tree for a few more years?
No easy answers.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world, hopefully with less rotten cores around.
Hugs from Arkansas.
Charles, I think it's more senesence than rot. An aging complex organism just starts accumulating too much waste and over time organs and circulation begins to harden and become sclerotic. All functions become less efficient and effective as the organism ages and entropy can't be overcome. Similarly, elderly cultures reach a point where more and more energy is needed to maintain function, and the culture suffers a meta-version of memory loss and dementia, along with clogged pipes and weak infrastructure.
Doctors are second guessed all the time,
And why not?
teachers are denigrated
And many times they are wrong. The longer the time they have been seperated from actual doing (vs the change in the field they teach) - why should they be held out as "correct"?
I teach high school shop
And thus one of the examples of 'unchanging' I was thinking of.
Other than old-growth/faster growth due to breed-global warming - how much change has happened in hand-powered woodworking?
Hear, hear..
And it is precisely why I mostly keep my mouth shut here on TOD: My science degree is far too many years back now, I have worked in other areas since, but at least I know when and what I don't know.
Good post.
Irra - I agree. I always try to follow Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry philosophy: A man has got to know his limitations. Unfortunately I don’t always succeed.
WRT the public’s understanding: back in the late 70’s when there was much talk about building the Strategic Petroleum Reserve a rather well educated fellow commented that he could see a big problem developing: if we did bury 100’s of millions of barrels of oil underground eventually they would rust and the oil would leak out.
So who was at fault? He for not understanding we were using bbls as a volume and not an actually container. Or us for not making it clear we weren’t.
Great article. One of the gifts of learning is at some point you realise how little you do know. It's humbling but liberating and inspirting all at the same time. Like Irrational I like to think I know when to speak up or when to shut up. Regular reading of this site pretty quickly reveals whose comments are worth reading and whose are not.
That has been my observation also- well stated.
The more I know, it becomes apparent how little I know.
One of my college friends summarized it thusly: "Total ignorance is a convenient lower bound."
-- Mark Twain
If, the more you know, the more you know you don't know, wouldn't Total Ignorance be the upper bound, not the lower? I hope someday to learn so much about so many things that I know that I know absolutely nothing at all. Sometimes I feel real close.
More seriously, I like the reference to ethics and manners. We've all heard people say about immigrants, "if they're going to live here, they should learn the language." Some of us would agree, some not--my point is that the sentiment behind that common statement is relevant here. We're all immigrants to the 21st century, and I would argue that we all have an ethical responsibility, to the extent we're able, to learn the language--and the language includes science, economics, current events, and much more. Obviously we can't all be experts, but most of us can learn enough to appreciate that there's a lot more to know. And arrogance is rude, always, whether it comes from expertise or from ignorance.
I think the upper bound is more like "total awareness of ignorance."
The lack of appreciation of the significance of our ignorance is one of the central problems of our time.
The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. -- Ralph W. Sockman
Knowledge is a fire, the more you stoke it the greater the darkness it reveals.
found on the interweb
lukitas
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell
Bayesian reasoning can often be interpreted as trying to quantify one's ignorance or uncertainty about the way something behaves. In other words, probabilities can act as measures of belief.
That is why lots of statisticians can make huge amounts of progress in understanding fields that they know absolutely nothing about. The Bayesian statisticians know how to express this understanding well either in terms of belief or empirical data.
The Principle of Maximum Entropy works by setting the lower bounds on what you know, for example knowing the average value of something. Applying this correctly allows you to fill in the rest.
This is probably not what you intended to convey, but it fits in with the ideas that someone who doesn't know anything about a particular field can add value with their expertise.
As a good recent example of this, take the case of Nate Silver who essentially went from working on baseball states for Bill James, to being one of the best political science numbers guys out there. Heck, he didn't have to know much about anything in politics, but he understood how statistics works and took it from there.
I like the old saying "Anyone who thinks they understand thermodynamics doesn't really understand thermodynamics".
There is some truth to that in that only by learning statistical mechanics as the underpinning to thermodynamics does it start making sense in terms of state spaces and ensemble behavior, and you can understand how entropy is derived. Until that point all you have is formulas to memorize.
And the important point is that the deeper understanding gives you insight into how it might apply elsewhere and in other disciplines. If you recall, Len, the entire wind energy analysis that I did on your Ontario data is based on entropy principles derived by statistical mechanics ;)
I can match that one, actually. On the way home from work, some years ago, the two men in the neighboring seats on the train were talking about the gas storage field a few miles away as if the gas were stored in underground tanks. (I had a hard time not laughing, because I know more about it than they do, and I don't know much about it; all I have to know about it (so far) is where it is, not the details of the field.)
Thanks for this post because it describes the typical struggles that anyone goes through trying to add anything of value to the scientific discussion.
Rule #1 can be inverted into saying "If your idea is so great, why hasn't anyone else ever thought of it before?". Perhaps someone has thought of it, but if no one is aware of its existence then that amounts to the same thing. In particular, I think in terms of all the science of oil discovery/reserves/depletion that might exist buried in corporate vaults. So to all the geologists and petroleum engineers who scoff at ideas that are placed on TOD and elsewhere, but then claim to not be able to post anything as a rebuttal due to its proprietary nature, I say put up or shut up.
Rule #2 is great and I refer to it as the parsimony rule. Whenever something fits in parsimoniously with the rest of the data that is a sign that you are heading in the right direction. If as you proceed and the degree of agreement maintains its level, then it becomes less and less likely that the agreement is purely coincidental. However, you should never stop this verification process because any disagreement could negate your entire conceptual framework. That essentially sets apart science from other endeavors, as you never really have an exit criteria. As an example, for the dispersion analysis that I have been working on the last few years, I have tried to see how parsimoniously the ideas have fit into a whole slew of scientific disciplines. I pulled everything together in a post that I wrote a few weeks ago: http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/06/mentaculus.html. I do this out in the open so if someone wants to take a shot and say that "someone has done it all before" (see Rule #1), feel free.
Rule #3: This relates to global warming and why CO2 has such a long residence time in the atmosphere. Take a look at all the AGW skeptics and note what they think the residence time is (a few years) and then look at the reality (perhaps 100 years or more). This is really just another way of saying that CO2 is almost inert for all practical purposes and why it is such a misunderstood GHG.
Rule #4: This is the entire rationale for my framework for dispersion analysis. Many scientists have applied the "stuff mixes" ideas to many other scientific disciplines (Shannon's information theory for example). The idea of the Principle of Maximum Entropy largely comes out of this general notion, which states that the amount of disorder in any system will tend to maximize the entropy subject to the available constraints. All this can be described in probabilistic terms, which is why that Jaynes who popularized the Maximum Entropy idea calls probability theory "The Logic of Science". See the link to my work in Rule #2.
Rule #5 has an important corollary in that stuff doesn't spontaneously organize without lots of energy as input, i.e. stuff doesn't spontaneously "unmix". This has huge implications for the oil that has already leaked out and is starting to disperse everywhere. You have convection, dispersion, and diffusion operating. And the dispersion is of two types: chemical (see Rule #2) and spatial (see Rule #4). It is awfully hard to put that genie back into the bottle.
The only thing I disagree with what Cheryl said is that people from outside the specific disciplines can't add any value. Many of the great scientific minds did their work in their early 20's where by definition they had no accumulated knowledge in the specific field they were investigating. Or they came up with the ideas as students. My point is that the ideas usually come about through the learning process. I say this because I usually am all over the map as I do this as a hobby, and no one is telling me which domains of science and math to stick to. The only problem with this is that most people are only comfortable within their own scientific discipline. And that's why many of the KISS ideas fall through the cracks. Or why no one will want to wade through what I am working on. No discipline "owns" the oil depletion problem yet it spans so many areas, that it will take a multi-disciplinary approach to solve.
And if I sound arrogant in any way, tough noogies.
Web - I didn't intend to sound like people from outside the specific disciplines can't add any value. Looking at a problem with new eyes can be very helpful indeed. But I've seen (or been subjected to) far too many people who were much too optimistic about what they could contribute.
Look at the ideas for dealing with the BP blowout from people outside the oil industry. IIRC, I've seen a few encouraged here at TOD, but most are just hopeless, largely because the originators are ignorant of some of these rules of thumb.
I'm very much a believer in a multidisciplinary approach, but I'm also a believer in having respect for one's limits. That doesn't mean to shut up, but to be open to criticism and willing to jettison something that, for example, goes against the Second Law.
I think it is pretty easy to figure out whether someone has some serious ideas on these public forums, so it essentially boils down to the old signal/noise ratio rule. It just takes too long to wade through everything to find the occasional gems of insight.
The signal/noise ratio in academic journals is on a completely different level. Wading through all that information is even harder because everyone shows intelligence and seriousness about their work, so it is not as easy to dismiss any one particular article or idea. You have to get good at speed-reading these articles otherwise you can't keep up.
I am not sure I read the retraction in your criticism? Clearly Cheryl was not implying only thought from within any field is legit.
OK I will retract it. I just don't think there is any way to control the flow of information in these kinds of forums.
Thats why I love you man! In a brotherly way of course ha! Energy in all forms is so much fun! Just when I think I know something I don't ha!
Yes, once upon a time the local university used to have an open physics colloquium; I don't know if they still do. I think it was seen as the least worst way to assuage idiot legislators who might otherwise have imposed something considerably more time-wasting in the interest of what would be called in current PC-speak "fair consideration" of "diverse ideas". It also provided entertainment to new graduate students during the interval before it became tiresome.
One fairly persistent character had his own version of pseudo Maxwell equations, and there was much forgettable else. As far as I know, none were ever persuaded to modify their thoughts in even the smallest way...
This is nothing really new. The American Physical Society annual meetings routinely accepted all sorts of abstracts from quack scientists, and they would publish them in the proceedings! The rationale was that the scientists payed their APS dues and thus had the right to send their abstracts in.
As students we had a fun time finding these abstract in the proceedings. Many times they featured sideways writing so they could fill their results in the abstract box.
I guess my point is that physics people have always been open to new ideas, but the buck stops at peer review.
Webb,
There is a whole section of literature devoted to alternative physics at the University of Michigan physics library.
And I do appreciate your admission that scientist do occupy the same ladder with the same rungs as the rest of the world. It is a given that the majority are located somewhere above the masses on the ladder, but many are not.
Good discussion.
Reminds me of the most chilling words ever spoken to me. A physics professor 40 years ago. "Not the old crystal model of the nucleus again!". Ouch. Crushed. I still don't understand why a theory of close packing of spheres with strict adherence to just 2 rules doesn't explain chemistry entirely. 1) the periodic table provided the number of available protons and neutrons for each addition 2) logical close packing of spheres with logical maximizing of distance between positive charged protons.
Its wierd how well the chemical characteristics of the periodic table fall out of such a simple set of rules. eg. the development of the 2-6-6- etc. "orbitals" are clearly apparent if you glue red and white marbles together following those 2 rules.
It may not be "accurate", but it sure would have helped me in highschool chemistry, even if given simply as a handy visualization. Looks "to me" like it should also "explain" radioactivity, abundance of isotopes, etc.
On Rule no. 1
Even if your idea is great, it probably has been thought up by someone before, but it wasn't a great idea at the time and place that it was thought up, or it simply met too much cultural inertia to take hold.
There is a quite a lot of evidence that many scientific discoveries become simply a matter of time once the overall level of scientific knowledge in (academic) society reaches a level that makes the discovery possible. Think Darwin/Russell. What is much rarer are those greats who can produce inspirational advances almost from first principals. Einstein comes to mind.
All too often history reveals that some scientific breakthrough was made decades or even centuries earlier, by someone you never heard of, because they were not taken seriously, or failed to publish their work widely enough. Often science has to wait to build up enough conflicting experimental data to require some researcher to recognise the work of a previously ignored scientist which exactly resolves the conflicts.
Plate tectonics comes to mind.
Who's Russell? Bertrand Russell? Or perhaps you meant Alfred Russel Wallace.
Ron P.
When I was working at Los Alamos, I had a very clever mechanical engineer on my team that used to work for a geothermal project. In her former job, she was presented with a problem - the electronic circuits associated with the instruments in these hot wells they were drilling were getting too hot. She came up with an elegant design for a refrigerator that could work in a small space and at high temperatures, used NO electricity and had NO MOVING PARTS. She applied for a patent, and was disappointed to learn that it had already been invented and patented by none other than Albert Einstein.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator
There might still be a use for absorption refrigeration. More thermo at:
Adam Grosser and his sustainable fridge
Rule #6 - Don't let anecdotal information discourage your efforts.
Several years ago I had a run-in with the Cold-Fusion quack Martin Fleischman who proclaimed that my results were old news and already demonstrated back in 1928. I can't remember if this was another Einstein thing or not. This was during a presentation so I was taken aback slightly. Afterward I rationalized that the guy just enjoyed picking on a poor grad student. Several years later I ROTFL when I found out that the same Martin Fleischmann was involved in the biggest scientific scam of the last century -- room temperature fusion.
BTW, Interesting if you can find someone who has done the analysis that I linked to.
He and Ponds gave a lecture at our lab days after the article came out and it was clear their trigger was flawed not knowing if they were looking at internal or external events ha! The auditorium was packed more so then when they brought us in to talk about furloughs ha!
Furloughs? As in leave of absence? or as in prison terms?
I have tried to find "solutions" (really mitigations) within the experience of the past, and preferably with mature technology.
Walking to get one's bread and beer is a mature technology, although not as well understand by American Suburbanites as one might hope.
I do not discount using a Segway instead of shoe leather (at a certain age I may well need that crutch) and try to imagine what changes may be required (parking, ramps on sidewalks). Less mature technology, but quite real.
Likewise bicycles and rail. There are advantages is turning towards well understood and mature technologies instead of the newest technology du jour. With new technologies you may miss something (do Segways need recharging stations away from home ?) but mature technologies already have these questions answered (Urban Rail needs bathroom facilitates for staff and operators and for patrons in specific cases, it is best if the power supply has redundant grid access).
I used probabilistic analysis with uncertain data to conclude that 4, and not 2, relief wells should be underway today. The cost ($100 million each) vs. the low probability of reducing the marginal harm lead me to conclude that two was not enough.
Likewise, given the uncertainty of the flow rate and the multiple uncertainties of capture possibilities, I called for more oil processing capacity topside at the BP Spill months ago. A precaution that would have saved 100,000s of barrels from spilling into the Gulf.
Unfortunately, understanding probabilistic analysis with uncertain data is a poorly understood and implemented tool.
Best Hopes for Better Analysis,
Alan
Probability analysis is the only means to reason in an uncertain world.
I will back you up on the relief well analysis.
First the fine analysis by JoulesBurn:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6573
And then one I did to support JB:
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/06/reliability-of-relief-wells.html
From the size of the underlying reservoir perhaps they should have gone with a parallel effort in the first place? It is a rogue flow now but if they wanted to maximize their oil throughput (i.e. more profits) then they would have drilled parallel wells. As Berman has shown and you can pick this up from the MMS site, no GOM wells have really had more than 50,000 barrels per day throughput. This would have killed two birds with one stone: potentially more profit and better fault tolerance.
shouldnt they have started production wells parallel to relief wells in case stopping doesent work ? if the propability of a relief well working is 60% and if they want to produce anyway drilling another 4 production wells would
a. allow production emidiatly ( bad policy exept if u use the revenues to pay for damage)
b. in case of relief well failure allow to reduce the preasure imidiatly.
sorry for my bad spelling.
Re: parallel relief / production wells. Although there were 30,000 SUCCESSFUL wells drilled before this mega-disaster, EVERY one of them had the probability of a disaster in the making (well, not every one, but most of them). Even the 2 relief wells being drilled right now could have a "kick" hitting the same formation (but not at all the same "spot"). Therefore, increasing the number of relief wells increases the odds that something will go wrong, ESPECIALLY at Macando, where we know the formation is iffy. The only difference with these relief wells of course is that there are no less than a dozen people looking over the mud loggers' shoulders, and assuming it was a lack of vigilance concerning mud returns that caused this disaster that would be the better thing. On the other hand, what if it were something else, as yet undetermined? Too many wells going into the same danger zone just increase the odds of another blowout. I think they knew your stats, but erred on the side of caution.
To put it in other terms, say that after the Columbia disaster, NASA mandated that TWO shuttles go up every time, so the one could rescue the other. Would that have made sense?
That was the main point, whether or not someone had done the analysis.
I have a few problems with this post.
First of all it does a poor job of discriminating between "science" and "engineering." In my experience differentiating between the two is crucial as the former is merely descriptive while the latter is implementational. Solutions derived from good science can be bad engineering and vice versa due to the nature of operational criteria/costs/complexity/whatnot and unfortunately there is often little overlap between the disciplines. A lot of engineering when it comes to my field is a good 30 years behind the scientific understanding, with no end in sight due to corporate dynamics.
My other point is that I strongly agree with Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the sociology of scientific/engineering endeavors about how the fields are by nature structurally conservative and operate primarily to defend the current paradigm. Sometimes ignorance is bliss because it frees your mind from the constraint of the dominant mentality; the key is to have critical ignorance. WebHubbleTelescope is absolutely correct that in many cases advances are made by people too young to have bought into the system but old enough to understand the implications of basic mechanics and be critical of their own ideas.
As we become more and more expert oriented we are focusing on more specific details within any particular discipline, but there is very little synthesis between fields as Don Sailorman noticed. Paradigms that have been proven to be useful in one context may be revolutionary in another one and someone that understands that can contribute a lot to a field despite not being an "expert" going in (as long as they work with the current experts to synthesize the details into the new paradigm).
This is especially true when it comes to systems oriented approaches. Many fields are dominated by experts that were schooled before systems theory was widely understood and thus still have a largely stochastic/reductionist viewpoint even if it's inappropriate for their problem. In particular economics and finance is almost entirely built on this incorrect assumption and most risk models are painfully incorrect at the times they are needed most.
Mikkel - I make no claims to being an engineer, but I've worked at the interface of science and engineering my entire career. So I don't make hard and fast distinctions. I've always found it amusing that many scientists tend to think I'm an engineer, but the engineers always know I'm not!
So I don't discriminate between the two. I think they're both at their best when they work together.
As to the rest of your comments, see my response to WebHubbleTelescope above.
We need more scientists that can pass for engineers but I am surprised you don't see a large distinction. Perhaps you were lucky enough to work in a place where the science was highly relevant to engineering and vice versa. I spend most of my time arguing with engineers that they can create better designs if only they listen to academia and arguing with academic scientists to step back from arguing about minutiae for a while in order to try to get their ideas out into the real world.
... and sometimes the engineers should listen to the consumers in order not design gadgets that require x hours of reading manuals before you are able to use..
sorry, off topic, but couldn't resist ;-)
Actually good engineers are good scientists and for them there is no differentiation.
When you say "stochastic/reductionist" do you actually believe that a deterministic viewpoint is better suited to doing systems analysis and in particular risk analysis?
The whole chaos versus disorder controversy boils down to whether you believe more in determinism mixed with complexity (chaos), or stochastic processes of entropy (disorder). I am more a fan of the latter, because you can actually try to reason about disorder, but any complex deterministic system with an infinite number of initial conditions is largely intractable.
You probably start to buy into the whole emergent behaviour question too. At its base we do have statistical mechanics, but that actually works. You don't need a very complex system at all to get essentially chaotic behaviour. Indeed more complexity can often damp things down. But you only need one pole to become unstuck.
In some ways this strikes to a problem that many non-scientists have with science as well. They don't get it when a scientist steadfastly refuses to provide an answer. The idea that a scientist will place a limit to their knowledge is often as confronting as the scientist dismissing idiotic ideas. Perhaps one of the hardest lessons is that there are often simply no answers. Sometimes we can even prove it. But modern life seems to teach people that that have an inate right to an answer.
You bet that statistical mechanics works. Not many people understand that digital electronics is the probabilistic flow of electrons and holes, that when driven by the laws of large numbers, results in computations that are 100% accurate, give or take failure modes (which are usually also stochastcally described).
So the conundrum is that you can only convince people by demonstrating an ensemble effect, but then you use these same principles to predict some other important ensemble effect, like oil depletion, AGW, etc they run away screaming.
Yet when we talk about a specific situation like Deep Horizon, everyone has ideas as to what caused it. I know better than to predict that with any certainty at all because it is way too specific.
Most of the time even highly complex systems operate in their linear region on most practical timescales. During those times statistical reasoning is fine and gets you much more reasonability. However when the system moves through a bifurcation point and positive feedback loops dominate then those types of models fall apart and the comfort they gave proves detrimental. The majority of the time you can guess when this is occurring by looking at changes in variance.
The answer is tricky I think because it changes based on intent and scale (both in time and system size). For instance we know that individual neurons operate very deterministically and I have sat through many hour long talks about how various neurons act in the most excruciating mathematical detail. However once you have a connected network of any reasonable size then modelling all the individual neurons proves nearly computationally impossible and doesn't give you much better result than a stochastic process approximation. Yet some pathologies are much better recognized when using tools that look for determinism. You can predict when a seizure is about to occur because EEGs will show very high order chaos, and they have made implants that will give a little shock to the system to break up the pattern and thus avert the seizure. We are finding it is impossible to generalize: the olfactory bulb operates as a stochastic process with a very simple and elegant mechanism that creates synchroncity between neurons that aren't directly connected -- so it is deterministic behavior without a deterministic mechanism. By contrast, the breathing control system is mechanistically very deteriminstic but behaviorally it is not; except in some instances, which could prove to be a marker of disease and perhaps even a treatment eventually.
The other thing to remember that took me a while but I finally saw the wisdom is that you don't have to think of complex deterministic systems in terms of individual trajectories but the entire attractor. As one paper showed, "weather" operates on such high levels of chaos that it largely is a stochastic process. The conditions and parameters are so numerous that we'll never be able to have that good of skill in predicting what will happen next week because we won't be able to tell what trajectory we're on. However "climate" is the collection of all trajectories and on long timescales is much more predictable. Thus characterizing the general feedback loops and looking for bifurcation points in the attractor as a whole makes sense.
When it comes to risk analysis, it is my opinion that the false sense of security given by stochastic modelling leads people to engineer systems that have highly correlated components when they are pushed to the limit, and the same sense of security leads people to ultimately push systems past that limit in order to try to extract more out of it. In many instances, the very characterization of the risk leads to decisions that ultimately increases risk beyond the analysis assumptions. This leads to a "pinging" effect where the system components become more and more correlated and the positive feedback loops cause extreme volatility. In fact you can make a lot of money by analyzing when financial asset classes that should be uncorrelated become correlated and then bet on an increase in volatility.
When it comes to systems that we can engineer I much prefer Donella Meadow's Twelve Leverage Points approach where you create systems that conform to general principles and then not try to affect the individual trajectories too much. For other types of systems I think the best policy is to stay very very far away from boundary parameters even at increased cost: even if you gain more in total from dealing with tail events, you won't on a risk adjusted basis. Plus it will avoid catastrophe.
I think I understand everything you are saying, so thanks.
One of my huge findings is the fact that the famed Logistic function that everyone uses to model the behavior of some resource can actually be derived in stochastic terms. Most people are so used to seeing the Logistic derivation in terms of deterministic differential equations (via the Verhulst equation) that they think that this is the way that nature operates. They then take one step away from this and notice all these other non-linear equations that lead to chaotic regimes, and voila, everyone believes that chaos rules everything.
I don't really buy the Systems Dynamics approach by Meadows and Forrester et al for just that reason, they assume too much determinism in their model. Determinism will never give you fat-tails, or add any level of uncertainty, other than stating some level of chaos may prevail.
So the duality with the Logistic is whether you believe that an attractor governs the lifecycle (chaos) or whether entropy and a dispersion into state space better describes the behavior (disorder). To my mind, the disorder argument is much more KISS, see Cheryl's Rule #2.
As someone that tells the determinists that they are wrong and in the next breath says the same to the stochasticists, I think your lack of buying into systems dynamics is based on looking at things too purely. Another example from neuronal systems: if you put a bunch of completely deterministic neurons together and start the system then it will oscillate but having an external input will often make it blow up. If you use a totally stochastic model then the external input has to be gigantic in order to force the system.
If you use a deterministic system with a baseline of stochastic behavior then you can modulate sensitivity to external inputs by modulating the amount of random activity. In fact we have strong empirical evidence that if you drive parts of the neurological system too strongly that you can basically destroy the deterministic component and it becomes much less robust to subtle input.
Remember that chaotic attractors themselves are very sensitive to their parameters: in most parameter sets they are merely nonlinear periodic or limit cycles. In my opinion there are many instances where systems theory best describes behavior, but stochastic inputs can (and will) change operational parameters in ways that affect the core "being" of the attractor. As I mentioned you also have vice versa, where stochastic systems can have a fat tail event and then no longer be stochastic.
As such I am a fatalist that believes in predeteriminism...that can change at any moment due to outside events. Look at Malthus.
I would never apply this to neurological systems because those have clear feedback loops. So I have no issue with relaxing the stochastic elements there. As I said elsewhere in this thread, semiconductor transport is all stochastic statistical mechanics, but the engineering application of this is purely deterministic.
Here is an example, I don't think there is a clear feedback loop on oil discovery. We will continue to explore for oil using accelerated search strategies until we find no more. The element of a feedback constraint essentially does not apply. So in the end the overall profile is simply a mix of randomly accelerating prospecting through history, which can lead to the Logistic -- http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4171. This is not a chaotic trajectory, but you might call it a stochastic arc which incorporates all the fat-tail events that you will ever see
Sounds good to me. In keeping with the spirit of your own "put up or shut up" rule stated above can you re-state their world model?
It would be most interesting to see your version of the Forrester (world2) or Meadows (world3) model in which you project the behavior of world population, pollution, resources, food, and industrial output out to the year 2100.
Cheers,
Jerry
The context was if there was a proprietary nature to the results. I have seen several times on TOD where someone from the oil industry stated they knew something but couldn't explain it in detail because of corporate IP concerns. Perhaps my anger at that is a knee-jerk reaction but you can see how people can get frustrated.
In any case, I wouldn't pretend to estimate population deterministically, because first you have to predict oil depletion stochastically. So I have a stochastic model of oil depletion, and I don't know how to take that to the next level. Therefore I disagree with the way that they did their own model because I wouldn't do it the way they did it. What's wrong with that argument?
Nothing wrong at all, far from it. It's just that we have seen several times on TOD where you have stated that your model is better than theirs, but you have yet to show something even remotely resembling a world model. Never mind an effort as comprehensive and informative (and as effectively communicated) as theirs.
Perhaps we should amend your rule to state "everyone else put up or shut up, except me"...?
Cheers,
Jerry
Actually good to bring this issue up in terms of Cheryl's Rule #2 of KISS.
"World3 Population"
What's wrong with this picture?
I trust (hope) you are referring to artificial neurons, e.g. the McCulloch-Pitts (and derivatives therefrom) type. This statement is definitely invalid if you are referring to living neurons which operate quite stochasitally and achieve precision (if that is even the right concept) from central tendencies of large assemblages. This is true at the membrane level as well as the whole cell level.
My Adaptrode learning algorithm and artificial neural network was described in its purely deterministic version in these papers. But it worked best when we introduced model noise (generally Gaussian) in our robotics work.
http://faculty.washington.edu/gmobus/AdaptiveAgents/publications.html
Something akin to what you seem to be describing can be seen in the pink noise pattern generated by central pattern generator circuits of such artificial cells.
http://faculty.washington.edu/gmobus/ForagingSearch/Foraging.html
George
It depends, although my wording was sloppy. Yeah I was referring to neuron models, but most of the people I know that do single cell work (which admittedly is only a handful) claim there is mechanistic determinism and "blame" the stochasticity on osmotic dynamics that they conjecture is unimportant in networks because those have a stronger drive. By "very deterministically" I should have been more specific in saying that it was in relationship to an external input into the system giving predictive behavior, in this instance an action potential with a relatively tight firing time.
There are similar theories about recruitment: neurons may fire randomly based on osmotic concentrations but only a few neurons firing coherently can recruit orders of magnitudes more through driving the potential. Is that similar to your algorithm?
I'm looking at your webpage and see you did some work in thermal solar control systems. I am trying to design a thermal solar product for home/residential use and am at the point of modelling the system and coming up with various control possibilities. Do you mind talking about your experience if I email you?
Not at all. gmobus ATT u DOTT washington DOTT edu is best place to get me.
George
This is precisely the kind of collaboration the Oil Drum needs to drum up revenue. Entrepreneurs looking for investment opportunities could contribute to the Oil Drum to encourage this kind of idea generation and for access to it. And then, ideas generated here that go on to succeed could kick back the seed money for more ideas to be generated in a collaborative way. This, I believe would be one way to save the future.
For me it is, can I really believe in the data I am looking at first order. Needed results as opposed to blind data collection is the failure of most analysis.
Great post, Cheryl. CP Snow said, you cannot win, you cannot break even, and you cannot get out of the game. Add to that, #4, You can't play for long unless you steal your opponent's game pieces.
The maximum power principle can be stated: During self organization, system designs develop and prevail that maximize power intake, energy transformation, and those uses that reinforce production and efficiency.--Odum 1995
And #5 You shorten the cumulative length of the game the more you steal.
Fifth principle of energetics The energy quality factor increases hierarchically. From studies of ecological food chains, Odum proposed that energy transformations form a hierarchical series measured by Transformity increase (Odum 2000, p. 246). Flows of energy develop hierarchical webs in which inflowing energies interact and are transformed by work processes into energy forms of higher quality that feedback amplifier actions, helping to maximise the power of the system. — Odum 1994, p. 251)
And #6 The object of the game is to make it last as long as possible.
Sixth principle of energetics Material cycles have hierarchical patterns measured by the emergy/mass ratio that determines its zone and pulse frequency in the energy hierarchy.--Odum 2000, p. 246
http://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/OneSentenceChallenge
And when you apply these laws, the outcomes result in either exponential growth from storages (infinite-appearing supply) vs. logistic growth from flows. Exponential doubling times equals 70/rate of growth. All systems pulse, and the pulsing is adaptive and maximizes power.
And Mikkel, to add to your thoughts, there be lumpers and splitters in this world. Reductionist thought and generalist thought.
"Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing." (Einstein? Lorenz?)
I love that bit about the philosophers vs. scientists, I hadn't heard it before.
Re: Odum and stock vs. flow.
It is my belief that power maximizing strategies will naturally form around stocks, which allows for exponential growth and dominance until the stock is depleted to the point that it cannot support continued growth and collapse. I am very interested in the concept of failure as a result of dominance. By contrast flow based systems can sustain themselves nearly indefinitely (at a cost of possibly being more vulnerable to external factors) but have low evolution and are at risk of being crowded out by a power maximizer.
I have read some interesting anthropological articles suggesting that egalitarian societies operate on a flow based system and hierarchical ones on a stock system. The egalitarian societies can exist free from many problems of complexity but are eventually destroyed by the hierarchical competitors; until the hierarchical complexity becomes larger than the energy supporting it and they collapse into egalitarian seeking societies.
Interesting observation, and one that I keep in the back of my mind when I hear talk of "downscaling" industrial societies. Probably not going to happen voluntarily, and either way would only result in a comparative disadvantage to neighbors with no such compunction.
Odum would point out that in addition to transformity there is also the matter of scale. Systems with longer pulses over time and with greater territory of influence will send high quality "feedback" to systems lower on the energy hierarchy. Odum speculated that this has the effect of increasing eMergy for the system as a whole.
For example, in an area that has been disturbed by man or nature a succession of weedy growth will colonize the area, exploiting stocks of available nutrients. Eventually the fast, weedy growth will be replaced by slower growing, more specialized species and the regime will change from one of fast exploitation to slow conservation of resources.
Stocks of nutrients which are now mostly bound up in physical plant will be replaced by available flows and recycling of nutrients such as that seen in old-growth forests.
One source of change in such a system is for a pulse of high transformity energy from a larger system, such as a tsunami or volcano, which serves to release the stocks of nutrients and restart a new cycle of growth.
This is in contrast to a system that continues to grow on accumulated stocks well beyond the ability of available flows to sustain it, which will most likely result in a collapse to a lower level of complexity until such time as stocks can re-accumulate.
Cheers,
Jerry
Jarrod Diamonds revelations on flow of ideas, wealth and sustainable society are interesting. One sentence from his last book, when arriving at shore in New Guinea the laborer asked him why do you have all the cargo and I have none. I found that more interesting then the rest of the book.
Great post, Cheryl. CP Snow said, you cannot win, you cannot break even, and you cannot get out of the game. Add to that, #4, You can't play for long unless you steal your opponent's game pieces.....
I don't need to win, I can play to lose( see going nil in the game of spades), I don't need to break even, I am playing to lose. I don't need out of the game I am having fun losing. And I don't need to steal the pieces, they will feel sorry for my losing and give them to me.
Simple.
I play Pool and card games, and I have a habit of telling some players that I play to lose. It is for the reaction I get, I will learn about their morals, rather fast I might add.
It seems so abnormal I have had people on this forum tell me I was insane and lying to boot.
But If I do not play to win, I play to have fun and help others win, What does that make me? In this day and Age, would a normal person call me sick in the head and shake their head and walk away?
For that matter what do you think?
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world.
hugs.
I think you do have an important point, mikkel. The issue is when people step out of their areas of expertise, or fail to understand larger points.
For example, the Mississippi river is controlled by a very complex series of levees and dams. This is a great engineering solution, but the unanticipated side effect is that Louisiana is losing marshland at a ferocious rate. The engineers were concerned about water flooding from the Mississippi river, but due to their lack of knowledge of marsh formation and land formation in the lower reaches of the Mississippi, they created a situation where the threat is water from the Gulf of Mexico flooding parts of Louisiana.
Of course, until very recently engineers were not expected to know or care about environmental issues. Now that's flipped and environmental engineering is a major field.
On the flip side, I wouldn't ask a biologist about engines.
There are areas where science and engineering meet, but it is very important to understand that there are differences and that every person has limits to their expertise and outside of those limits they aren't going to be very useful.
Gail,
This is a request for information that is not related to this article.
As you well know Israel has declared a major natural gas find off shore called Tamar1. The Lebanese maintain that the fields extends into Lebanese territorial waters. If that is the case is there a mechanism on who gets what or is it first come first serve? Given the level of tension between the two countries this is not a purely academic question.
gk -- Couldn’t find anything on specific treaties covering your question. In general there are two approaches. In Right of Capture each party drills and produces as they wish on their side of the boundary. This is the law in Texas as well as the boundary between the US and Mexico in the GOM. The other approach is an arbitrated pooling of the production which each party getting a prorated share of the production. This is the law in Louisiana.
THANKS FOR YOUR HELP.
Most "bright new ideas" have already been thought of, won't work, and will go nowhere.
However, all "bright new ideas" that will go somewhere haven't already been thought of, or haven't been explored thoroughly enough.
The U.S. patent office has been busy for a long time.
Rule #6: Big numbers are hard for everyone to grasp, so at least back-of-the-envelope scale calculations are a necessity.
Rule #7: Large complex systems with feedback loops of varying lengths often react in unforeseen fashion when you tinker with them. Coupled with Murphy's law, you get the corollary that everything of interest is part of just such a large complex system.
I asked a group of public policy students to estimate how many wind turbines it would take to replace the current fleet of coal-burning power plants (rule #6), and it was an eye opener for them, because it led to a lot of interesting questions (rule #7). Where would you put that many? How do those locations compare to where you need the electricity? How much additional infrastructure will you have to build to connect those power sources and sinks? What's the trade-off between putting turbines closer to the sinks, where the wind resource is not so good, versus building the interconnects? Given current trends in regulatory matters, can you design a wholesale electricity market that allows for efficient dispatch of as much of the wind power as possible? If that market structure tromps all over policy areas traditionally handled by state PUCs, can you garner sufficient political capital to implement it?
I use AIGs (the unit of money required to bail out one insurance company) when costing projects.
I would use the number of WTs per year, replaced on a 25 years rotation, as a ratio of the number of cars we build every year. We do not have to build them all in one or two years.
Can we build one wind turbine for every X thousand cars we build every year is a realistic way of framing the issue. Or even more realistic, what is required to replace half of our current coal fired generation, and what is required to conserve away the demand for the other half of coal fired generation (leaving nuke, hydro, natural gas).
Your framing of the issue appears to be misleading.
As for transmission, Texas is building $4.9 billion of new transmission to accept 18+ GW of new wind generation. They have plans for more transmission to accept more wind.
Alan
As a final position, absolutely. As a starting point for students who have not thought about it at all, no. Because once it becomes apparent that the "solution" many people propose -- quick conversion to wind power -- is unreasonable for scale reasons, they start to think about alternatives like serious conservation programs, longer schedules, etc.
Texas is almost in a class by itself, in terms of (a) being its own reliability area and (b) having good local wind resources. There are questions as to whether its wind resources are geographically diverse enough to provide a large reliable source of power. OTOH, moving enough wind power around to provide a reliable replacement for coal in Florida/Georgia/Alabama is a quite different problem. Whether you build HVDC direct from North Dakota to Florida, or build more conventional interconnects that ultimately allow an equivalent flow into the SE states, it's a whole lot bigger problem than Texas faces.
Legislators typically don't have engineers or other technology people on staff. And people with backgrounds in technology are very rare in public policy programs. For many of those students, and with no disrespect, the answer to the question of where electricity comes from is "wall outlets." How to get more of them thinking about thermodynamic limits and scale problems and all of the rest of the things important to making good energy policy is a challenge.
It only takes about 60 GW of wind to replace the end-use energy from offshore oil. Ergo, that's about 30% of what we'd need right there.
"stuff mixes" except when it doesn't : Life would be much simpler in the GOM if oil was mixing with water. Where is the Second Principle when we need it ?! The Second Principle is simple, but identifying the relevant (and necessarily approximate) phase space to apply it is much more complicated.
Regarding Rod's controversy, his homework is far from being sufficient to be taken at full value IMO ("extraordinary findings require extraordinary proofs"), but still reached a higher level than a "stuff mixes" sleight of hand.
As for Rule #5, if you know a way to run a real life power plant on a Carnot Cycle (" the most common cycle for power plants"), the world is interested. Last time I checked, Rankine and Brayton were much more common, even if less efficient.
The oil in the GOM is mixing with the water, aided by the dispersants. It's true that not all of it dissolves.
Cogen economics and distributed generation is something I can intelligently comment on (project engineer for an IPP). The problem with distributed generation has to do with economies of scale for the equipment, the cost disadvantage of fuel distribution, and reliability of the machinery ie you still need the grid to make your equipment reliable. Nat Gas is the cheapest fuel, but large power plants have a $1-$2 or more cost advantage for not having to be delivered in the middle of a city by a local gas distribution company. The microturbines available that can make power and hot water are about double or more the unit ($/kW) installed cost of modern gas fired combined cycle power plants. The companies that make microturbines sell alot of them for remote locations however,but apparently alot of hospitals are looking into them (hospitals need alot of hot water?). Coal distribution is not practical for distributed generation, not to mention the emissions. Oil is way more expensive $/MMBtu than gas as well. One thing people need to keep in mind is that Btus in liquid fuel typically cost alot more than Btu's in gas or solid form. Btu's in liquid form are more valueable as transportation fuels than for burning in a boiler or turbine to make electricty.
As the article states, if somehting sounds obvious, there typically are reasons whey its not being done - usually cost. In this case, the reason is distributed cogen is more expensive than what we have due to economies of scale, not to mention more reliable. Those of us in the power industry would love to find an economically valuable use for the low grade heat coming off the steam turbine condensor - maybe growing algae for alternative biofuels, but no-one has come up with anything. In addition, most places that can use large scale cogeneration (refineries, chemical plants, etc)have them.
Just to set the record straight as well: Steam (rankine Cycle) plants typically convert 30%-40% of the fuel heat input to electricity - but coal is cheap enough to keep existing coal plants running (but they are too expensive to build new ones when gas is at $5, not to mention CO2 regulatory uncertainty), gas turbine combined cycle power plants convert about 50% of the heat in the gas to electricity. Gas turbine cogen plants typically convert 30% into electricity and 40%-45% into steam that is economically valuable to someone. Transmission and distribution losses from large power plants to residential users is in the 4%-6% range.
What you say is true, however something that I cannot intelligently comment on (for now, because I haven't started the work yet) comes down to grid dynamics. I am working with a systems control expert that has contracted with various utilities to analyze the dynamics and he believes that they waste a ton of energy and construction of power plants by not using distributed generation to "fill in" weak parts in the system to act as load balancers. I cannot comment much more for right now because he hasn't gone into specifics other than to say that a distributed generation idea I am working on would be great for that purpose; however based on my own rough calculations I do think that smart distributed generation could give 3x-5x its cost back in terms of overall grid savings.
Love the idea, however, I do have to ask what grid ha! We keep talking about creating grid upgrades and to date I see zero. People still can not come home and turn on their air without brown-outs! Now compound that with plug in your auto chargers ha! I still say we have failed at any hope to rescue our old systems of comfort. We do need to think at the most local of power generation. I laugh when people talk of wind power and fail to see a 20 yr. pay back with a system design of 20 yr. life time ha! When Siemens was to build a very large solar array in AZ. the project failed for the need of 90% of the local water supply for cooling ha! We are so far from understanding how little time we have left to solve these simple but very complex problems. Simple in that even if we do nothing the problem solves itself with the starvation of 3 billion or so people and the return of early twentieth century living standards. How do we get there with 8% per yr./yr. production declines in every single oil exporting country? Without cheap energy you can not feed 7 billion people. I was visiting my father in the middle of Midwest corn fields. I thought why are some plants a third the size of most of the field? Ah, cheap fertilizer! The plants are less than a third as tall (knee high by the fourth of July). Today the corn is 6'-7' by the 4th! the signs of our failure to understand Peak Oil surround us and we ignore them.
I am greatly enthused by your opinion. I look forward to the day that Gates, Dell and Einstein and Jesus follow your rules. Perhaps they will them make something of themselves and not be such a drain on society.
I look forward to the day that Gates, Dell and Einstein and Jesus follow your rules.
Considering 1 of 'em is dead "following" a path is gonna be hard.
A terrible post praising of arrogance, inside-the-box, conventional KISS groupthinkery--one of the absolute worst posts in a long time.
These 'rules' are dangerous blinders for small minds.
Wrong.
Even wrong ideas help more than the repetition of engineering dogma.
bright side of wrong
Actually it's 2/3 waste because of temperature limits on metals but of course batteries and fuel cells don't obey Carnots cycle for reversible heat engines.
As far as 'expert' thinking on Macondo for example goes,
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/24/faq.top.kill.bp/index.html
“I’ve found a way to run your car on water instead of gasoline. Bosh”
Yes, but there is a kernal of truth which is easily missed.
You CAN run a car on a combination of gasoline and hydrogen gas with a ~25% improvement in mpg.
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/the-hydrogen-boosted-gasoline...
A really awful article, IMO.
But by your own definition, Cheryl has written a great post because it is so wrong?
Simply because it got us thinking on how best to weed through reams of information or misinformation.
Don't be too jealous, WHT.
It's not as bad as your stuff.
When you turn water into hydrogen using electricity you get two products. Why don't engines use hydrogen AND pure oxygen? Would that not increase the efficiency?
Check out the Space Shuttle Main Engines. Pure Hydrogen and pure Oxygen are quite a ferocious mix not to mention their explosive potential.
NAOM
I know, so why do we throw away the oxygen? Is the oxygen in the atmosphere enough to insure complete combustion? Edit
As an aside to my post, where does most commercially available hydrogen come from? Methane, and what is left over? CO2. So that is good for the environment?
Ah, part of the sinking battleship crowd? Or are you from the giant screw idea or the giant mile long Tyvek tube crowd? I think Cheryl is just saying why not do even the smallest amount of reading and research before you submit your idea for critique? Yes, you can run your car on hydrogen if you like, at a cost that makes you look silly, seeing Denmark gave up on their public bus experiment. You can also build a nuclear car, is it a great idea I don't think so.
The mile long Tyvek tube idea, I asked have you ever placed Tyvek in oil? I have, optical grease used to wrap counters turns it into a greasy mess that would fall to the bottom not to mention ocean currents. Or the mile long giant 36 inch 1/2 steel pipe straw. I guess they didn't realize the 6 7/8 straw was a challenge to float. Or that great idea of turning the well into a production well ha! Love that one, my comment REALLY? REALLY ha! Oh, the liquid nitrogen freeze ha!Just put a heavy weight on it like a lead fishing sinker or pour fast setting porch post cement on it, yes really that was a big idea that hundreds thought was viable. My comment, then when the GOM was filled you could put a little flag on top ha! Then the big valve idea, my comment that is what they are doing with the top hat. Surprising that so few bothered to understand the pressure inside the reservoir or the pressure of a mile of ocean. Many of the ideas were great ideas like drilling a relief well ha! Or building a cap to funnel the oil to the surface, my comment, you mean like the one they have in place now? The ideas where so funny I started and still am writing a book of American Silly BP GOM Spill Fixes with the sinking battleship on the cover. Shocking people hadn't thought of how long it takes to weld a section of pipe or even the weight of pipe or the seabed structure. All of these facts are there for the reading.Really they are. I don't think Cheryl meant any disrespect for well thought out ideas that didn't include aliens, anti-gravity or my fav term noni-physics. Everything these people did was very logical except for maybe not drilling four relief wells ( I agree with Alan Big Easy).Re-read Cheryl's post with an open mind and I think you will see her thoughts really do speak to a larger problem of logical thinking and communication. I would have to say Cheryl's post maybe one of the most interesting written on BP Spill in GOM.
Landrew:
You should really do some reading before spouting off. Try searching the library at the MMS and the various patent offices of the major world powers. There are thousands upon thousands of pages that you need to read. Several of the items you mention have been investigated for years, are patented and have been reviewed and found to be feasible. I will leave it up to you to determine what is considered worthy of more research and those ideas that are not viable as it relates to your personal opinion. But at this point you have no credibility as far as I am concerned.
I will advise that current, salinity, anchors, tubing, separation, disposal, and most things you can only guess about have already been investigated and are part of the designs that are tenable.
I don't know if you can hear the laughing, but your post is a joke.
I like your idea of doing nothing, you are qualified for that.
The book is more than a little satiric.
Although I wished he had included my plan to drop gold "darts" down the well.
Darts would have a hexagonal cross section (8 mm across flats) and 16 mm long (not including conical tip) and would have an indent in the top for the cone of a dart above them to settle into. 24 K Au
Such darts should sink down the well against the current of oil and "self pack" horizontally and vertically for many meters (BP pays to drop a *LOT* of them down the choke and kill pipes). The pure gold "darts" should be malleable enough to squeeze fit against the walls of the well bore.
Best Hopes,
Alan
I like your idea best, landrew.
We'll kill Macondo with sarcasm.
That always works.
And you should really start at the bottom.
Because you're already there, right?
It's also worth mentioning that those who accuse scientists of "scientific arrogance" are attracted to all-out conspiracy theory: "Oil companies have had secret cheap energy sources for decades," and "Climate scientists are the vanguard of global socialism."
Fortunately, the conspiracy theories of the climate "skeptics" are being disconfirmed with gratifying frequency nowadays:
Dutch review backs UN climate panel report
Penn State completely exonerates climate scientist Michael Mann on bogus Climategate accusations
Of course, in Conspiracy Theory 101 we learn that any investigation that disconfirms the conspiracy is itself part of the conspiracy:
Morano and Lindzen: Mann exoneration a ‘whitewash’
He he, thanks Barrett, I am going to have to remember that one.
Ron P.
That statement could be proven false occasionally if there WAS a real conspiracy. But real conspiracies are not impossible. What is society, after all?
Wow. Thanks to Gail for her trolling efforts. Gail has indeed landed a big fish in Cheryl. Sadly these incisive comments attempting to explain complex interactions(eg contemporary neoclassical economic theory) utilizing flawed mathematical algorithms or back of envelope calculations from a scientifically illiterate population led by incompetent leaders working within a dysfunctional political system will be followed by a tiny audience such as we TOD ers. It may be a lot of sound and fury but it will in the end signify...NOTHING.
Something that has been the hardest to learn in life is how to balance the cultivation of intelligence to understand the sorts of things that the people here are talking about with the acceptance of the wisdom in your conclusion.
+10
Sometimes, for an educated and relatively well-read layman, simply 'doing the math' clears up a lot of issues. I suspect a lot of people have been through this little energy storage thought experiment: looking at an old-fashioned weight-driven clock, one might get the bright idea of using the same principle for larger scale energy storage for, say, household use. Getting out my conversion chart, I quickly discover that storing 600KWH per month for my household use would take on the order of raising 1 Billion pounds 1 foot off the ground (or any combination of mass/height that is equivalent).
Oh well, it did seem like a bright idea.
PS. This is roughly the same as pumped hydro storage, which is possible when large quantities of water are available near a height difference for storage.
I literally did this calculation a couple weeks ago when trying to evaluate nonchemical means of energy storage. My conclusion was the same as yours: pumped hydro is the only practical solution. Unfortunately I was thinking in terms of distributed generation/storage, and pumped hydro is only economical on a utility level scale. I do think it'd be interesting to make a model with distributed generation to run the pumps with grid connectivity to the hydroplant.
Pumped storage, in practice, is useful for daily and even weekly variations (save French nuke power from weekend for weekdays), but begins to wane for month to month variations (French holiday month of August) and is not useful for seasonal variations.
OTOH, some storage hydro can bridge that large a time gap.
Or the French strategy of just turning off the least efficient nukes in Spring & Fall. Ontario used to do this as well.
Alan
True, but so much power is wasted when not smoothing out daily/weekly fluctuation. Once you combine that with relying on renewables where and when it makes sense, we could cut 50% of our utility production. It is not an "answer" but it will buy us a lot of time.
But *ONLY* 50%, or even 90+% renewable generation in the grid, makes renewables "false firemen". A waste of trillions !
See article here on TOD a week ago.
Alan
"Waste" compared to what? If the alternative is to spend it to greatly restructure society for all time then I agree, but it is a fool's errand to believe that we can ever educate society and have them change sans major crisis. Heck, the first stage of crisis is system reaffirming! The economic crisis should really be a wake up call to energy activists about what can be realistically expected.
The false fire brigade is not a good analogy because the house keeps burning at the same rate regardless: a better analogy would be a brigade that has access to some water but not enough to put out the fire. By slowing down the burn it will allow those that see the problems to increasingly organize and become self reliant, while increasing the chance that maybe there will be a miracle breakthrough.
You may not have noticed the sarcanol on my breath as I typed that.
I vehemently opposed the concept that unless renewables can do 100% of the job 100% of the time, they were useless and a waste of money.
Lets build to 96% renewable & nuclear grid and work on developing throttle-able geothermal generation (or some other renewable gap filler).
Best Hopes for the Good vs. the Perfect,
Alan
Haha no I didn't, because every argument I've ever heard deals in absolutes. A lot of times it does feel like sarcasm is dead because it's nearly impossible to pick up these days...I mean that "fake fire brigade" post was totally serious.
Alan,
I'm sure you have heard the Russian saying"Better is the enemy of good enough".
Don't store the energy in a weight, try a flywheel, then it becomes possible.
1) Good enough is usually not as good as most engineers believe is necessary.
2) A one-off, throw-away effort will often become the unfortunate basis for multiple generations of development.
3) Well-structured, carefully-planned, re-usable technology will generally be used only in the initial dev'p project, if it makes it to market at all.
Nuclear fusion the 'Holy Grail' of green energy?
This is why I'm a doomer. Every time CNN or other so-called news stations run this type of idiocy, we come one step closer to teaching the general public that it is just a matter of time before an "easy" solution is found. A complacent public will be our downfall. Worse, this type of information becomes part of the individual's belief system and arrogance prevents them from accepting facts that will destroy that belief.
Cheryl, often when people bring up "running engines on water", they are ignorant in a different way than you think. Water CAN be used to improve efficiency and performance in internal combustion engines, through water injection. I would be willing to bet that most of the claims of "running engines on water" rise out of claims about water injection. Water injection isn't much used now, due to other improvements in performance and efficiency.
In the peak oil scenario, a similar problem is people talking about Canada and Venezuela having massive oil reserves that will save us all, or the US being the "Saudi Arabia of coal". Well, it's true that Canada and Venezuela have huge reserves in oil sands/bitumen, but that's not the same as conventional oil requires more energy to make usable. The US has lots of coal, yes, but has already worked through its anthracite reserves and is left with much harder to reach coal. Less energy makes it harder to exploit these reserves.
Scientists tend to come off as arrogant only if they can't explain themselves well, or if they are faced with equally arrogant people who believe in things that are obviously untrue (creationism, young earth, etc). But it's important to distinguish between people who are ignorant of or misunderstand salient facts and people who are willfully ignoring reality. One group can be educated easily, the other group is much harder to deal with. Mistaking one for the other often brings out the worst in scientists and engineers.
Yes, it's true that water injection can improve combustion, and it's also true that it's a small effect.
But I think that a lot of those schemes are simply scams. They used to advertise in the back of pulp magazines. (Are there still pulp magazines? I'm spending much too much time on the Internet!) I even had a telephone call from a graduate-school colleague asking me if one of them made sense! They actually claim that you don't need gasoline.
I haven't seem as much of them lately; maybe I'm just hanging out in the wrong parts of the Internet. Or maybe people are getting smarter.
But, it is an illustration that using thermodynamics as a filter is not 100% reliable (if you don't look a little further). I suspect most of these "run your car on water", are either the water injection for minor efficiency improvement, or some sort of cold fusion scam. In most cases they are out and out scams. In others a not very scientifically savy "inventor" really believes he has stumbled onto something wonderful. The result may be the same as a scam, but the intent differs. I wonder how many Ponzi-schemes, were originally bright but flawed investment ideas whose perpetrators gradually descended a slippery slope as the hoped for results failed to materialize.
Cheryl. I had spent five years at LASL/LANL. For a guy with an all-but-docorate I shuddr to think what would have happened to my career, had I not got that break.
But, again, if we go back to "run you car on water", I think some interesting psychology is going on. So many people have vague memories of a junior high science teacher trying to impress them with the power of fusion by stating something like "if we could fuse the Hydrogen in water into Helium, you could run your car on a thimbleful of water for your entire lifetime". The average Joe remembers, "water would be a great fuel if...", and has enough techno-optimism to think someone will solve the problem during their lifetime. So, some of them when they are solicitated, will have these memes click and go for it.
"Yes, it's true that water injection can improve combustion, and it's also true that it's a small effect."
The small effect is huge when water is injected into a J-57 on take-off. If you are a passenger you realize just how huge it is if no demineralized water is available, cargo is heavy and the runway is three thousand feet short due to construction. If water improves combustion then it would save fuel, create more horsepower, thrust etc. I'm dating myself but looking back at the improvements since shows the obvious lack of efficiency but it worked as intended and it's still used today. Approx. 600 gallons of water for two minute injection on takeoff. I seem to remember the additional thrust was 800-900#. The efficiency is evident when you do the math for a 8-10 hour flight. How much additional energy is used just to move the water. Hmmmm, I think I just proved your point.
I have seen the contraptions applied to autos and the claims of fuel savings. I remember thumbing through the J.C. Whitney catalog dreaming of purchasing the add-on to my VW micro bus. If you added all the purported fuel savings of the different gadgets I'm guessing at some point a person would have to stop to drain fuel from the overflowing tank.
Thanks CR, We all can't be as gifted in tact and diplomacy as Rockman and the other pros here. From a lay persons point of view I do try.
That's one of the more interesting posts I've seen.
Six hundred gallons over 2 minutes is 5 gallons a second, roughly 19,000 grams per second. At the standard heat of evaporation of 540 cal/gm, evaporating this water takes ~10 million calories per second or about 43 megawatts.
That's a LOT of cooling power. What's it going to do to your J-57? It will reduce the temperature and the back work starting a few stages into the compressor (reducing the shaft load), it will allow more fuel to be burned before reaching the turbine-inlet temperature (TiT) limit, and there will be more mass going out the exhaust nozzle. Less compressor back-work means more of the energy of expansion can go to the exhaust stream, so it can move faster. There you get more thrust.
Adding water to a spark-ignited engine will also cool the charge and combustion, more so than EGR. It will increase the usable amount of spark advance or charge leanness before knock appears (but it will not increase the limit for lean misfire). Both of those can increase efficiency, a bit. But you can't run an engine on water.
Cheryl,
Thanks for the intersting post. I remember teaching some thermo to students. When we discussed the Carnot Efficiency of (TH-TC)/TH I had a wise guy (and problem child) in class who insisted we could just build a car engine with a 100000 K TH and get high efficiency.
I then gave the class the Universal Survival Theorem to always remember:
HA/H>1
which of course means that the number of horses asses in the world is always greater than the number of horses.
Did convince one student that the Schwinn cycle yielded a higher efficiency than the Carnot but that I could not remember the formula.
One of the biggest problems related to energy consumption is that many forms of energy are mispriced. For example, the USA needs to spend several hundred billion dollars in defense spending in the middle east to keep the price of oil relatively low.
In the case of biofuels, I have read some absurd attempts to include everything, including the kitchen sink, into what the total 'cost' of production actually is. They usually leave out the cost to replace the topsoil, which is 'time' as in 1000 years to create an inch of topsoil (in some areas).
When something is mispriced, this skews consumption patterns.
I'm somewhat surprised there hasn't been a big breakthrough in solar energy. Again, it is probably just a matter of alloting sufficient resources.
Solar is on a strong volume-ramp, and also on a falling price curve.
Indeed, the first claims of grid-parity are being trotted out right now, tho there are many 'grid parity' thresholds ;)
Volumes are healthy :
[" iSuppli predicts solar installations will rise to 13.6 gigawatts (GW) in 2010, up 92.9 percent from 7 GW in 2009."]
There are recent reports of a 66% Solar Cell efficiency using quantum dots, but I think that's still a 'virtual number' - ie nothing actually working, just some computer models, and materials on an idea that's been about for ~1 decade.
If they do nail such an efficiency jump, it should ripple-out to other cells - and accelerate even more, as well as open more size-limited markets.
eg Cars, and houses are good examples of finite-area usage, where higher efficiency can make a BIG difference.
Cheryl,
As long as we are unable to explain gravity, time and their relation with energy, there must be hope. And why does life itself then create structures that seem to be searching and self-building their way to survive and improve?
For all the rest, i agree.
How could one survive the invention of home-made nuclear fusion? How many enemies does such a person have? And what if it is so easy and cheap that all hands, also the wrong-ones have endless energy resources at once?
So, even if brilliant scientist find a way out, probably the population of our world is not yet ready for it. After 70 years, we still fear the misuse of inventions from Von Braun and Oppenheimer.
But, obviously more modest TH would allow pretty startling efficiencies. I suspect most fuel-air mixtures, especially if confined under high pressure could generate high enough TH that the efficiency could theoretically be very high (say 90%). It is only when we must use real materials to build our engines that things get ugly.
There seems to be a law in there. Substitute "batteries" or "transmission lines" or almost anything else and it still holds up...
Before 2005, environmentalists forced lawmakers towards minimum NOx. Since PeakOil and Global Warming, we need minimum CO2 and so maximum efficiency. The technical means to comply to both demands are just the opposite: high engine temperatures for better efficiency, but lower temperatures(or no spare oxygen) for less NOx. There is, or better there was a lot that people can/could do by themselves with EGR-deletion and HHO to improve efficiency, but with the modern electronics in cars, it has become very difficult.
While water is not a fuel it can and has been used as an energy carrier in the past.
#1) 100 years ago there were many steam cars on the road. Instead of a conventional boiler heat up a tank of water with an electric heating coil to several hundred degrees. Make sure you are close to an hydro electric plant to maximize the amount of water used in the energy chain. As pressure is released it will flash into steam which then powers the car.
#2) Charge the batteries of an electric car near an hydroelectric dam. The closer you are to the dam the higher the percentage of the electricity will come from the kinetic energy of water passing through the turbine.
#3) Put a large tank of water on top of you vehicle and release it through an hydraulic motor. You won't go very fast or far but you could possibly refill the tank at any hydrant.
#4) Take a large high pressure tank with a hole on one end. Lower it into deep water with the hole on the bottom. The high water pressure down deep will compress the air in the tank to very high pressure. Close a valve on the hole and bring the tank back to your car. Release the water through an hydraulic motor.
More silly ideas will be appreciated.
That is how we, Europeans, believe US-cars were working. They just use gasoline instead of water, but the principles remain the same.
Almost sensible: Add a large water tank to an existing hybrid vehicle. When ever you climb a hill fill up the water tank. You then can charge your battery driving downhill. Release the water when you enter the valley. Essentially you are using the hybrid car like a hydroelectric plant generator.
Also, there was a wind turbine powered car race a couple of years back. The rules were to drive directly into the wind. IIRC the winner went something like 60% as fast as the headwind!
Reprinted from freeenergyblog. Names have been removed to protect the stupid
The technology to run cars on plain old water has been known since the late 40's, when government scientists, doing the bidding of their Trilateral and Bilderburger masters, reverse engineered it from downed alien spaceships that run on zero point energy. Since then it has been supressed as part of the global conspiracy of the reptilian race to enslave the population. These are the same folks who spray us with barium chemtrails to dumb us down. Duh. Wake up people. Free energy is your birthwrite. Thousands of people including top NASA scientists have endorsed our do it yourself water engine. Just $99 for easy to read plans. Also a killer MLM money making opportunity that pays seven levels deep.
Comments follow in which misspelled invectives are hurled back and forth.
Pump baby, pump.
EDIT: Added the blockquote.
Man, I remember those things from when I was a kid! They really went too.
I think it is important to remember that the bulk of the posters to this site do not represent the general level of knowledge or interest in knowledge of the general public, at least in the US, but probably world wide.
I am reminded whenever i see some of the general knowledge polls conducted today. 74% of those under 25, asked who we (US) got our independence from did not know. 1000 samples. More than 50% of US high school juniors could not find the US on a world map. Reminds me when the 1970 polls indicated that 40% of the US population did not believe we landed on the moon.
Ever wonder why the concept of peak oil is such a hard sell?
The world is flat and the center of the universe.
lets talk about it somewhere else cause its relative .
ok i mean i can prove the world is flat and in the center of the universe
Your post was ironic. Perhaps instead of castigating the laity for angry responses to a disaster they don't understand--but with costs that are all too apparent--you should turn your complaints to the hubris of the technocratic elite that has created the mess in the first place. I, for one, am quite willing to say "hey, you science guys! You've got something wrong!" From top to bottom, you've got something wrong. Something deeply, fundamentally wrong. Starting with this well, you got something wrong: that you could drill in deep water--despite all of the difficulties enumerated here--as long as you got enough money and enough folks with the proper academic bona fides. Never mind the challenges: we can do the impossible--as long as there's enough profit to be had.
But it goes much deeper than that. We need this oil, to be sure. We need to drill as if our very lives are at stake--because they are. We're trapped into the consumption (and, indeed, over-consumption) of a finite resource because of a planning--driven by greed--that was so convinced of its omnipotence that it failed to see that it was just the stupid expenditure of ancient stores of energy that it had nothing to do with creating.
And that's the biggest ignorance; the biggest mistake: that the power of science was sufficient to generate endless energy and endless progress. That technology, by the hand of man, could break down the walls of Eden or steal fire from the gods. That human beings and societies could be carefully managed and controlled. That we could permeate our entire form of life with machines and yet retain a relationship of power over them, using them as means to our ends. That the earth could be made to pliantly yield itself as material for design and be made ready at hand, for any and all human desires, in the form of expendable energy.
Who are the arrogant ones here?
According to the author's bio, she worked for umpteen years at Los Alamos, which was at the forefront of research into nuclear weapons and the site of the creation of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. If that didn't perturb her in the slightest, I fear that a single post on the internet will hardly suffice to provoke any kind of self-reflection.
What does her working at Los Alamos the last 35 year have to do with the building of the first bomb? Los Alamos does a lot of great basic research on a lot of areas--defense being just one, and whether or not she worked there her point was regarding understanding, lack of understanding of, scientific principles.
You know I do just hate that damn Edison and even Tesla. Much prefer the oil lamp. What is worse are those guys who invented vaccines. Much preferred the days of my youth worrying that I would end up in an iron lung.
Yep, perhaps information generation and transmission has exceeded most humans ability to filter it and perhaps humans have not advanced in their ability to work together to solve problems as compared to their ability to develop technology or to create problems.
Thanks though for reminding me that progress has ended and that the end is near. Guess I won't worry any more about my retirement account.
the biggest problem is predicting the results of new technologies.
ecpescially in the long run.
the vaccines helped to destroy one major harm.
antibiotica resulted in imune bacteria.
and the future is not certaine.
we know that invntions can be helpfull in the short term and harmfull in the long run.
therfore how do we know what a new invention or idea will do ?
we don´t.
You are no fool.
Welcome, philosopher Fool. Ironies abound at the end of empire. Technology as the Fifth Horseman, spurring us into the overshoot?
I once knew a psychologist at the lab who was a sweet old lady......but when it came to perturbations, she was ditzy and clueless. Perfect fit for the "job".
I believe that current generating plants waste almost 2/3 of the energy in the fuel (natural gas for example). Most of this loss is heat rejected when the spent steam, exhausted by the last low pressure turbine stage, is condensed back into water. Given a need for space heat and hot water one could get nearly 100% efficiency from an internal combustion engine burning natural gas inside your house. The exhaust could be used to heat hot water and, given that one burner on a gas stove is about 10,000 BTU per hour, an engine consuming natural gas at that rate could exhaust into the living space - with perhaps a small catalytic converter to remove CO. All other losses, from cylinder fins, lubricating oil, and generator copper and iron - all contribute to space heat instead of being dumped as warm water into a river somewhere. Your 10,000 BTU per hour would generate 1000 watts of electricity with much lower losses than the current central station method. It is not high tech or expensive either - a 2.5 HP engine from Harbor Freight is $89.
I am impressed and educated by your post. However, educating the masses is near impossible when most people do not believe much of what they see, hear or read anymore. Welcome to a world without real journalism. I would happily translate the science in another section, but it would require expert answers to my questions.
Uneducated assertions and uneducated questions aimed at increasing understanding are not the same thing. Here is an uneducated question based on your stated three laws of thermodynamics."Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; you can’t break even except at absolute zero, but you can’t reach absolute zero."
As we expend energy (drill baby, drill, refining, transport, filling up,) to produce usable energy, (fuel for cars and our present economy,) are we not creating and destroying energy? (From a practical, not a scientific standpoint, of course.) And as we suck the energy from the system, what's sitting on the other end of the see-saw? Is there a practical and scientific price for us to pay over there? (besides whatever global warming results from the use of every drop of oil that remains) How cheap and easy will that be? What would close to zero look like? (from both a practical and a scientific standpoint)
Re: "Occam’s razor" (Link does not respond for me) "Basically, the simplest explanations and the cheapest inputs, are usually best.
How cheap and easy is it? How could it be cheaper and easier? This can lead to cutting corners, but it doesn’t have to."
Did BP cut corners to reduce cost? How cheap and easy is the oil spill going to be? Perhaps it would have been cheapest and easiest to make the fine for getting oil in the water exponentially higher than the fine for getting water in the oil. Can we solve problems before we create them to make them cheaper and easier?
Re; Individual disciplines and peer review: I agree that people feel most comfortable in their learned discipline. That's how their neurons have been wired. This medium then, comes just in time to hook the disciplines together for a better understanding of them all.
Re: Economics and engineering. Could the law of thermodynamics also apply to money? And could we use it to craft a new economy?
Bearing in mind we need water and food to survive. The cheapest and easiest way to preserve them?
Re: Missing Ideas
Even Einstein's ideas were overlooked.
From Psoter JamesRWhite:
"When I was working at Los Alamos, I had a very clever mechanical engineer on my team that used to work for a geothermal project. In her former job, she was presented with a problem - the electronic circuits associated with the instruments in these hot wells they were drilling were getting too hot. She came up with an elegant design for a refrigerator that could work in a small space and at high temperatures, used NO electricity and had NO MOVING PARTS. She applied for a patent, and was disappointed to learn that it had already been invented and patented by none other than Albert Einstein."
fritzie-borgwardt -
It's not possible to shift from the scientific meaning of "energy," which is what I was using, to the practical meaning and still have that statement of the Second Law mean anything. So the answer to your first question, in the scientific sense, is "no." Coal and petroleum contain energy stored by living things and concentrated by nature, that concentration process taking up energy as well. Uranium contains energy stored by stars in the formation of elements. So the processes you list that expend energy are worthwhile because they make that stored energy available. But no new energy is created.
As we use up resources, fewer and fewer resources remain. That's the theme of this website. Others have written quite a bit about about the potential practical and scientific price.
I'm not claiming that everything is going to be cheap and easy, just that cheap and easy is better than expensive and complicated, all other things being equal. You've hit on something that I felt was a weakness of this precept as I stated it. I think I've seen someone here, perhaps Rockman, state it as "Cheap, fast, and good. You get two of the three." That's got a somewhat more cynical slant to it, the kind of thing one says when one's boss is pressuring too much in the wrong direction. There have been times when I've said it. But, if you're looking for solutions, easy and cheap isn't a bad first guide. I think you're aiming at something like that here:
When I began doing project management, that was my assumption in handling the budget, or at least that money must be conserved, so that different methods of accounting must add up to the same numbers. I wound up keeping three sets of books for different purposes. The numbers never came out the same, but everyone seemed more or less happy with the results. Given the argument upthread, I think I'll just leave economics alone for now.
Finally, yes, good ideas can be overlooked, or rejected for all the wrong reasons. But that should be the conclusion that one comes to after considering the other rules of thumb, including some listed by commenters, like "The devil is in the details," not the first.
Thank you. I did not find that noisy at all.
What's the take here on hydrogen as fuel?
Hydrogen ?
Plentiful, but Low energy density, in MJ/liter.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_density.svg
and hydrogen is really only a battery, not a fuel.
That said, there are moves to improve the battery angle, on many fronts.
This one was interesting, and seems close to 'commercial critical mass'
- uses magnesium hydride
["McPhy Energy, French company specializing in solid state hydrogen storage technology, announced it has raised 13.7 million euros ($16.9 million) in a second round of financing"]
Often it looks like this:
H-O-H
or like this
-CH2-
but sometimes like this:
I checked out your Hindenburg Link and noted this paragraph:
"At the time, authorities blamed the disaster on a discharge of atmospheric energy near a leaking hydrogen valve. But others speculated that it was the result of anti-Nazi sabotage. Whatever the cause, the use of flammable Hydrogen has long taken the blame for the disaster, which effectively ended commercial travel by zeppelin."
You would have to tell me more about what the chemical symbols foretell. And would this hydrogen be stored in the same way that hydrogen would be stored in automobiles, for example?
F-B:
H-O-H is sometimes referred to as "dihydride oxygen".
Some people have the audacity to wrongly refer to it as H2O or water.
The -CH2- symbolism refers to a core part of "OIL".
Crude oil is composed of a mixture of long and shorter chained hydrocarbons of the form:
CH3-CH2--CH2--CH2--CH2--CH2-...-CH2-CH3
There are of course more complex organic chemistry compounds included in crude oil (i.e. benzene rings), but the -CH2- basic chain moiety is often present.
GTA generating more noise than signal as usual.
It would be nice if site operators followed their own rules.
I thought it was a high quality post and Gail made a good choice in selecting Cheryl.
And, as energy is not infinite, at least here on Earth from what I think I understood Cheryl to say, (correct me if wrong) we all could use a lesson in using only what God gave us. I.e. per "Devil is in the Details," build more energy-efficient housing ASAP. Hay bales come to mind.
"It would be nice if site operators followed their own rules."
So do your own site, set your own rules, and make sure they're followed.
Hint: It can get pretty lonely and dull out there. Sometimes the "noise" is where the action is :->
Once a fact becomes a certainty it becomes a dogma. Dogmas are not falsifiable so they are not in the set of scientific ideas.
Every boy and girl should have a go at a perpetual motion machine.
Here is my best effort.
Quantum fluctuations create virtual particles. Matter and anti-matter. If we separate them at birth we could recombine them at leisure releasing their pent up energy.(How sexy is that!)
I am betting that it won't work, but I am soo old and conservative.
The breakthroughs come from the lunatic fringe. That is why loonies are precious should be protected.
Cheryl,
The reason your entire post fails is that there are conflicting ideas and theories that are supported by different scientist from different branches of science. An expert can be found to support almost any cause and almost any idea. We must remember that it was scientific thought that brought us polywater, and every conflicting theory of the origin of the universe and every outdated scientific theory. Every scientist and every engineer believes their view of the "laws of physics" is correct. To my knowledge, no person, including you, or anyone else knows it all. And it is a fact that the laws of physics work together, in opposition to one another, and in an exclusive frame of reference depending on the intent of the investigation. Maybe we could spend a little time on Bell's theorem, the uncertainty principle and quantum physics. You must admit that what is law to Newton may not be law to Heisenberg. So is there room in your mind for differing opinion, or are you pretty much set in the theory that you are always right?
I don't see how you got all that out of this post.
But Bell's Theorem and the uncertainty principle both constitute theories within quantum physics, so the way you group these together is a bit odd.
I don't think they work in opposition to each other. They work in concert to one another.
You might have a different view of science, but I am more aligned with Cheryl.
just a nitpick; Bell's inequality stands separately from quantum theories and doesn't depend on them.
I think you know what I mean.
Emission sends electromagnetic waves from an emitter, gravity et al, alters its path and wavelength (not speed).
They work in opposition to one another.
No claim that I know it all, manofmetal!
It was scientific thought that brought us polywater, and scientific thought that debunked it. Scientists get things wrong, but the value of science is that it provides ways to check up on things.
It's not a matter of every scientist and engineer having a different idea of the laws of physics. Those laws are agreed to by those who call themselves scientists and engineers. Do they test them from time to time? Absolutely! We've got to check even on what seems the most certain.
Newton's laws aren't controverted by Heisenberg - you're just looking at different scales. The quantum physical effects that you would like to use to undermine classical physics operate at such small scales that they're not important when you're pumping mud. There has been altogether too much mystification around them, in the service of convincing people that anything they want to believe will be true if they believe hard enough.
Cheryl,
I already know you don't know it all Cheryl and that is why I believe you need to be humble and not arrogant. I see you as being just as arrogant as the people you complain of. It is so ugly to be arrogant. I am certain that when one warthog looks at another it sees nothing but beauty. And one arrogant person looking at another sees beauty. But if you are not a warthog or an arrogant person, there is no beauty.
Why lose so much beauty on a wasted act that only impresses other arrogant people? You can accomplish everything you want without being arrogant.
Until we know the origin of the laws of physics, we learn to do math or change the number line so that we have no singularities, infinities, or other breakdowns, until we know where all this universe came from and understand what is outside the universe and inside the earth, perhaps we should be open minded. Many of the theories of physics, discoveries of nature and mathematics were accidental. Maybe one of these people that are being made fun of will stumble upon something when mixing component "a" with element "b" that is unimaginable. Will many fail, yes, but many scientist have failed even using the known laws (id. Cold Fusion) of physics. Others were successful without solid plans that what they were doing would have such a massive impact (Madam Curie). So lighten up. Your definitely a genius. Act like a person that understands other people that are not of genius level have a great chance to stumble upon what you work so hard to discover. It is a mathematical certainty that an accidental discovery by an uneducated person of average intelligence will be made this year. Embrace it.
Our perceptions are both
limited by the senses were were given ...and boundlessly increased by them.
That's a tad "ad femina" for my tastes. If you think Cheryl stated something in error, correct it. And when and if "one of these people that are being made fun of will stumble upon something when mixing component 'a' with element 'b' that is unimaginable." it will be someone following the rules Cheryl suports who will recognize it, support it, and verify it to the investors who will make it available to the general population.
lengould:
I have not disagreed with the intent of enlightening everyone that the laws of science are supreme. And I believe that is Cheryl's intent.
My only disagreement is with her methods that drive people away from science and invention. What she and others do not only harms themselves, it harms others. When people are stifled in their attempts to find answers to scientific problems, then they are likely to come up with harmful ideas and waste time.
I grant you that it is the problem of a person proposing a theory to get the science right and not her problem.
And she is not obligated to enter into discussion. But if she is going to waste time insulting a person, then she could use the same time to simply state that their idea violates the second law of thermodynamics. Cute insults get a person nowhere with most people. And in fact they damage the image of scientists.
I don't have time to re-read Cheryls topic in it's entirety but I think you are beating the nail on the head MoM.
"Many of the theories of physics, discoveries of nature and mathematics were accidental."
Were they really or were they a result or byproduct in the initial reasearch?
As a layperson in the petrochemical industry or correctly stated outside the petrochemical industry I become irritated or arrogant at some of the comments presented here. Some of the Pros here may feel the same toward my comments. In short I will toss my example into the ring in Cheryls defense.
I'm sitting behind my desk and being asked to sign a disclaimer regarding something that I'm not sure of the nature or intent of the person who's asked me to sign. I usually ask for a snippet as to the subject matter. The response has been on most occasions perpetual motion. The frequency for a couple of years was such that I had a started thinking my magnetic personality might be a player in this and started thinking how I might apply....and I digress.
PS.I tend to get irritated at the thirty minutes late for class responses where the tardy student asks to be brought to present in the discussion only to state they disagree.
I'm not sure exactly what this post is complaining about. Ignorant people making ignorant comments? Well, that's a fact of life. People commenting outside their area of expertise and making themselves look like idiots? Who hasn't done that? Is it something else - What am I missing? If it's any or all of the above, then I have to ask, "so what?"
I'm annoyed as anyone at stupid ideas which get floated all the time and not just about science and engineering - it happens constantly in my field of expertise - but I don't think it's fair or even accurate to suggest that these (usually) well-meaning but ignorant comments are rooted in arrogance. Sure you'll find that here and there but you shouldn't mistake passion and frustration for arrogance.
And hell, I have three young kids who constantly offer me free advice about stuff they don't know the first thing about (that's in between all the questions which are often challenging to answer). Usually I explain to them why such-and-such won't work, but every now and again their wild idea has some merit, or is something I hadn't considered. Point being, it's usually worth the effort to sift through the haystack to find the rare golden needle.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, Have you read about encyclopedic synthesis? I think Asimov first put the idea out there. A little knowledge in all fields can lead to great things. Look at the Chicxulub crater idea for a reference. It came from a beer drinking episode between two people from two different disciplines, paleontology and petrochemical geology. It has since been disproved as the cause of dinosaur extinction, but it still was a good idea and is still accepted by many people.
It has since been disproved as the cause of dinosaur extinction
Well that's news I hadn't heard. Link?
Sorry, I thought that this was common knowledge, careful study of the K-T boundary shows that many species lived beyond the impact event.
http://www.livingcosmos.com/k-t.htm
I did not read this article, but it probably backs up my statement (it was the first one I found to link).
Point 14 is the one I am most familiar with.
Popular science is always about ten years behind the current theories.
You're joking, right?
No. I'm not . if you have current info that disproves my post (and I linked a less the concrete source) Please post your sources.
Pretty much any other source. Wiki is far better, e.g.
What was that, some quasi-religious, non-peer-reviewed... mess?
Cheers
A story on the using water to fuel a car. When I was sixteen years old about fifty years ago, a old man would come into the gas station I worked at part time on Saturday, and pull up to the water hose instead of the gas pump. Then he would get out this huge white pill and put it down the filler tube. After that He would go into the office and talk to My boss for about fifteen minutes. Then He would come out get in His car and drive away. The car ran and sounded normal except for some white smoke from the tailpipe.
The next time this happened I slid under his car after He went in to talk to My boss. I saw nothing changed or out of the ordinary. So when He came out I asked Him about it. He explained that he had found a process to turn water into fuel. I said God, "You should be the richest man on earth". He said I don't want to die. Then he went on to say that they, and He pointed to the gas pumps would have me killed in an instant, if I ever tried to market it. He quickly got in His car and drove away.
I believed then, and still do that old man was smart, because big oil wouldn't stop and even think about getting rid of anyone who jepordized their having the world at their mercy.
Who was "He" and "Him"?
Jesus H. Christ?
I was also wondering that, as well as who "My boss" was. Maybe the three of them represent the holy trinity? But clearly this mystery man with the huge white pill was not Christ (a dirty hippie who liked to share), because even after he decided not to market his magic pill out of fear of death, he decided not to give the knowledge to other people either.
I guess if You had invented that pill You would have ran right out and told the world, and they would have belived You and we all would be running our cars on water.
The oil Companies would have said what a wonderful guy that Bench is, and thank heaven He invented that so we don't have to look for that dirty old oil we make our livings off of.
The auto makers would just love scrapping all those cars they made for gasoline and diesel, or paying to convert all of them.
People would be carrying You through the streets, and naming babies after You. Scrooge McDuck would have nothing over on You, and Your money bin You could use bull dozers to push Your money around.
Or maybe You'd be pushing up daisies in some unknown field, or wearing cement overshoes, or wearing a cement topcoat under a sports arena.
You are laboring under the idea that the mysterious old man with the magic white pill had only two options, keep it to himself or shout it from the rooftops. Assuming he was actually powering his car with water and this story is actually more than a fantasy or product of a prank played on a gullible 16 year-old, he could have taught his family, close friends, neighbors (or even you) how to do it, or left anonymous instructions by random gas pumps so the "technology" could spread on its own, without putting himself in danger. But in your world if he can't get full credit and a pile of money for his magic, he decides to keep it all to himself. Like I said, he's no Jesus.
In any case, I have to go. I have an appointment with Occam. Oh, and the mystery of the capitalized personal pronouns remains. Thanks for the chuckle, barnybilt.
I'm wondering if he meant the oil executives, or if he thought that the gas pumps themselves would have him killed.
I think the screenplay needs some work.
Sniper: Die, you random son of a bitch.
[shoots at Navin but hits a display of oil cans]
Navin R. Johnson: He hates these cans!
He meant the oil executives' mercenaries. You know, right?
Barney, there is only so much energy that you can get easily from certain chemicals. Water and what would equal the energy in gasoline? The energy in gasoline is close to that in dynamite. Even alcohol is only 2/3rd as potent as gasoline.Did his "magic pill" yield helium 3 out of water? And he built a car to run on that rare element?
I was there with you that day.
It was Nov. 5, 1985 actually.
It wasn't water. It was beer from an old beer can.
The crazy old man with the white hair said said we should forget about it because such knowledge can disrupt the space time continuum and we might then all die. Don't you remember?
I can't believe you finally did it and said something. We had promised that old man we never would.
OMG! My fingers are fade , faaaaddddiiinnggg ....
Gasoline has about 5+ times the energy content of C4 (or any other high explosive). Just remember that when driving past that tanker truck.
R2O
H2O is hydrogen 2 oxygen one. Hydrogen has as much power as gasoline, and oxygen supports combustion, so separate them and You have the two main components of combustion, add spark and you have what internal combustion engines run on.
Who is to separate them? (The two lill' H's from the one big O)
You and what army of yours and what energy of theirs?
There are some things that all the King's horses and all the King's men simply cannot do, like defying the laws of thermodynamics.
A youtube video showed a man from the Phillipines who had spent his life working on producing a car to run on water. When he went to the Phillipine government they told him his idea would "upset current relationships".
Actually, cars running on water is probably a bigger "taboo" for oil engineers and executives than even abiotic oil.
Did he look like this?
http://waterpoweredcar.com/herman.html
The obvious answer is that the source of energy was in the pill. Or that it was a ruse.
aside:
My grandfather was an inventor of engines. He frequently told people that his engines used water in conjunction with fuel to operate at increased fuel economy. He was referring to the breakdown of the water in the cylinder and the cleansing effect it had in assisting the removal of carbon from the engine. And the amount of water was small compared to the real fuel. So if you overheard something and did not investigate, then perhaps that old man was my grandpa. He was known to put detergent pills in the fuel tank for experimental purposes.
"Rule #3... You have to add energy to do anything chemically with carbon dioxide and water."
Is being smothered to death and/or drowning chemical?
Carbon dioxide is a product of combustion as not of water or air. H2O water is Hydrogen 2 Oxygen 1. Hydrogen is as powerful as gasoline, and Oxygen is needed and supports combustion, ao add spark and You have what internal combustion engines run on, and they make carbon dioxide out the exhaust.
In therory water should be able to make the perfect fuel, because it has Hydrogen to burn and Oxygen to make it burn.
So the people who dismiss this need to do a little research.
I guess you can't work for LANL unless you "know" cars can't run on water.
Do the research!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVhXrvCCILw
ps...make fun of it all you want. Ridicule is a pretty common tactic to discourage ideas that would perturb the "status quo". The combustion engine is a hundred plus year old technology that has barely advanced at all relative to other technologies. The reason is self evident.
pss...If it wasn't for Bill Ford, American car makers would not be breaking any new ground. the Ford Fusion hybrid and other Ford hybrids are a step in the right direction.
This is a notion that comes up from time to time, and can be used as a neat example of technological maturity.
My favorite example is the airplane. December the 17 1903 was the first flight of the Wright Flyer. Februrary 8th 1969 the first flight of a Boeing 747. 66 years. Now, here we are, 41 years further in the future, and the 747 has been around for 2/3rds the entire interval it took to design the first one from the Wright flyer. Boeing still make them. Sure, it isn't exactly the same plane. It is a bit more efficient, uses composites in some parts, and is a bit bigger. But put a 747-100 next to a 747-800 and then put the two next to the Wright flyer and tell me about technological progress.
Dec 20 1957 was the first flight of the 707 (they were shooting for Dec 17) 55 years from the Flyer. December 15 2009 and the 787 took flight. (I don't know why they didn't wait two days, maybe they were splitting the difference.) So, now 52 years later. Put the 707 and the Dreamliner next to one another and also a Wright flyer. Almost the same time period seperates the Flyer from the 707 as seperates the 707 from the Dreamliner.
We do have a few technologies that are not yet mature. The usual one quoted is semiconductor technology. Which says little more than that we haven't yet worked out how to get to the physical limits of the processes. But the vast majority of things we have in life are actually pretty slow changing. We just see the glitz that is based upon cheap electronics. If you look around your house and life, and identify those parts that are not based upon electronic technology it gets slow pretty quickly. A substantial part of our western improvement in standard of life is based on cheap overseas labour.
Oh, and the infernal combustion engine? In the last 50 years car engines have roughly doubled in fuel efficiency. In about the time the 747 has added about 25% efficiency gains, the car has added 100%. Sadly cars have also roughly doubled in mass, pretty much negating any gains. There is a deeper lesson here.
And I'm here to say the reason the combustion engine has not advanced has as much (if not more) to do with politics and economics as with engineering and science.
Curiously there are many who would say it is almost the exact opposite. Engine efficiencies are perhaps one of the better examples of how government lawmaking has driven a technology. If you were a car maker (especially in the US) the glory days were the 50's and 60's where cars were appalling technologically. Huge gas guzzling heaps of junk. Primitive engines of large capacity, poor power, dreadful economy, and worse pollution. The 70's saw the first wave of anti-pollution laws come into play. The car manufactures really hated it. But when faced with reduction in markets, they produced cars to meet the laws. And to some extent, much of the world benefited as the technology moved out. California and parts of Europe (notably the Germans) really pushed this.
Part of the reason governments do this is that it costs them nothing to do so. It is easy vote winning stuff, allows them to appease the green lobby (again note the political influence in Germany especially) and generally look good. From the standpoint of a government the additional price added to a car isn't their problem. The citizens bear this cost - and since they voted for it in the first place, they can hardly grumble.
We are now at the point where a modern smallish car (say a Volkswagen Golf) can achieve 5 litres/100 km. This needs an extremely advanced engine. If you look at the thermodynamic efficiency of these engines they are quite something. Indeed there is some disquiet that hybrid cars may turn out to be something of a technological glitch. Certainly the much higher price and energy input required to make them is not to be discounted.
The other area where lawmaking has driven car technology is safety. The ever increasing safety requirements in cars has led to astounding design and testing advances. I used to work in high performance computing. One of the key drivers for purchase of supercomputers was the need to perform ever more accurate and detailed modelling of car crash dynamics, to design for the ever more stringent crash safety laws.
The funny thing is that along here the car companies realised that despite their initial opposition to all these government mandated changes, they actually benefited. One - cars became more expensive at the same time that consumer expectations for what they got in a car was rising. So they sold just as many, but more expensive, cars. Two - The ever increasing stringency created a rolling obsoleteness of cars. So consumers were primed to keep buying. Indeed it has reached the point where in many western countries first owners keep their cars for even shorter periods and buy ever more expensive cars.
The pity is that this is a bit of a one off success. There are far more places where governments are eoither powerless, or would find it actually cost them something to do something worthwhile. Like almost everything in politics getting something done is about convincing everyone involved that there is something in it for them.
Jet transport is an interesting example of technology that reaches maturity and then persists.
By the introduction of the 747, the various fuselage, wing, tail, and engine mounting configurations for large jet aircraft had been pretty thoroughly explored by previous transport and bomber designs. Today, most jet transports are variations of either the 1954 Boeing 707 or the 1955 Sud Aviation Caravelle.
The supersonic transport flew briefly as the Concorde and TU-144. It is an interesting example of a technology that was killed because of:
Jet fuel really never got cheap enough to make the airlines confident in the economics of the SST, even if the objections of the environmentalists could have been overcome. Even the militaries, who are less restricted by environmental or energy price considerations, did not deploy supersonic bombers to any great extent. The Convair B-58 of 1956 was the fastest large US operational bomber.
Speaking of Arrogance and Realism,
Our New York Times expert on Realism has this to say:
---------------------
Left click on the image to link to the NYT editorial
"BP’s blowout at Deepwater Horizon is particularly difficult to comprehend because of its scale. Most of us are not accustomed to thinking of the pressures under a mile of water, nor gases flashing out of the liquid as the petroleum bursts from the pipe, the enormous pressure behind it, the five-story blowout preventer. The construction of the well is not easily visualized, particularly if you’ve never learned how a well is constructed, now with an unknown degree of damage."
The above excerpt says it all. the media,Gvmt. Officials, regulatory agencies, and the general public have no concept of the enormity/complexity of the effort and resulting problems. If the media could lay out all that went right, the size and scope of each element used in finding/digging/extraction oil MAYBE the noise from the uninformed would be more reasonable. Haywood was simply protecting BP's legal liability in those hearings in DC.
A horrible end to an honest endeavor no doubt, but when you understand the complexity you then understand the risks.
I read this yesterday morning and found it irritating, as I have a lot of recent posts on BP's blown well. As it happens I had a lot of outdoor physical work to do in the 100 degree heat on my day off, which provided some time to think about why.
On one hand it is annoying when people with no scientific knowledge jump in with what should be obviously flawed ideas. It's partly a reminder of the poor quality of our educational system, as well as other failings of the society we've built. And the ever present snake oil salesmen are as despicable as they always are.
However, there is a certain strained quality of self gratifying, let's all laugh at the cretins running through here - and it feels like people laughing just a bit too loud and trying just a bit too hard to cover their fear.
There are certainly a lot of people here who are much smarter and much more learned than me. I'm just a BSEE doing grunt work designing circuits and products. It's a vocation that pays the bills for a little bit longer perhaps, but I'm not sure I could solve a differential equation anymore if my life depended on it, and I do not know systems theory or game theory or half of the other terminology used. But I do know that every scientist and engineer is a human, with all of the weaknesses and blindness that implies. As important as scientific method is, it doesn't trump those human failings.
The masses of poorly educated people sense that something is wrong, even if they lack the tools to understand what it is. And they are not wrong about that. Despite the chortling assurances from their leaders and their learned scientists, and the force of all the marketing and propaganda, they can see that their world is failing around them. And they are beginning to doubt that your knowledge will be enough to fix it. And you know what? It won't. So laugh at their ignorance if you will, but they know that their priests can no longer delver the goods, cannot bring the rains and the bountiful harvests.
It was the surplus energy from fossil fuels that allowed us to have a society with so many who do not directly participate in the production of food. The world that is coming will have a lot fewer places at the table, and a much smaller percentage of scientists, engineers, economists, etc. The Gods of science and technology are failing, as they stood on a tower built of fossil fuels.
We get one little post recommending insightful ways to think about things and I am curious why it has generated such hostility.
Frankly I think we can use more of these kinds of posts. You may not have belief in the dogs of SciTech but as long as we have that choice, I will go along for the ride.
WHT - it is not hostility on my part, rather irritation and sadness at what I think lies behind it. Few who are educated in such things need the reminders, and few who are not will benefit from them. So who are the reminders really for - or are they intended to show who is in the group and who is excluded?
Webb,
There is no doubt that there are people that have fantasies about what is physically possible and what is not physically possibly. There will always be those people and they are a blessing to the world, as are you. These people are interesting in their approach to making cars that "run on water" when in fact they run on water that is parsed into its basic components with the input of more energy than it takes to propel the auto in the first place. But these people gain by learning their pseudoscience and practicing their art. Largely they are learning science through the back door method of trial and error.
I have read some of your back door learned papers and your back door theory and most of it is good. You have a way with words that makes what you say palatable, even more than that, it is genius level.
You are much like those who you seem to despise. You jump into things that you are not trained to understand, yet you understand. You make statements that are on the edge of what may or may not be acceptable physically, mathematically and statistically, yet they sound reasonable to people at my level of understanding. But I have noticed that sometimes people find obvious error in what you say. (For example me right now)
I guess the point of all this is that You and Cheryl are capable of seeing the flaws of others, and yet unable to see your own flaws. And in the world that is much more dangerous that not understanding physics and mathematics.
After all when a genius is wrong and is not capable of understanding why, what can a person do? A casual observer can see the arrogance of geniuses seeing the flaws of others without seeing their own flaws. Just as those uneducated in physics and math will continue to make their errors. You,Cheryl and others here will continue to make yours. Arrogance is unsightly. You can acheive your goals without it.
I'd like to thank people for their kind words and good discussion.
I see that the run-your-car-on-water advocates have emerged. I would ask them how this works, chemically and thermodynamically.
What bothers me about this kind of stuff, and the more bone-headed "solutions" to the BP Blowout, is that it wastes time. I don't mind explaining to people who have honest questions or suggest a solution and are willing to listen to responses backed up by scientific reasoning, but I do have a problem with those who aggressively insist that there is a perpetual motion machine out there, and they know what it is. Even if they can't explain it.
There have been a couple of nice debunkings above - peer review lives at TOD! Thanks for those.
As I've said in those other posts at Phronesisaical, scientists believe that there are some truths about the world that we can discover using the methods that science has developed. Those truths may not be ultimate wisdom, but they work, and that's been enough to build ourselves some very good things. Boiling seas, giant methane bubbles, cars that run on water: show us the science.
Nevermind.
3 distinct parts , some not very close to the subject.
1. if someone has 30 years of expierience after an accademic study and i dont,
i expect him to know more then me.
2. a poem
if i were to think and care about evereyone else and earth
but not of me
and everyone would think and care about me and earth
but not of them
7 billion would think and care about me
and 7 billion and one would care about earth
i´d be rich and earth would live
if id just think and care about me
and everyone else would just think and care about themselfs
thered be just one to care about me
no one cares about earth
i´d be poor and earth would die
3. i belive ( my personal view of reality) that the laws ot thermodynamics are a special case in a more universal law.
the laws of thermodynamics applie too allmost, maybe everything happening on this planet (earth) but i do not belive that energy can´t be created. i m not so sure about the part it can´t be destroyed once created. that might be true.
in engeneering you can simply suppose the thermodynamic laws are true. until someone produces a machine working otherwise. i m working on one. Haven´t found the error in my thinking yet, after 8 years of thinking about this machine i got to build something to test the idea. Normaly i find an error in a perpetum mobile idea by thinking about it in 2 minutes to 1 year. more then one minute cause i got to do the reverse test.
my argument : if energy can´t be created why is there any ?
P.S. Jesus was a Communist
P.P.S havent read it all just the beginning, its a more interresting post then the gulf oil one, because were just waiting there for something to happen.
Which is a remarkably deep question. In many ways it is not far removed from (if not identical to) the fundamental question of philosophy. "Why is there anything?"
There is a critical point in here. What most people think of when they think of energy is only part of what a physicist defines as energy. Energy can exist in a great many forms, and there are some astonishing implications that come from this. Transformation from one form to another never loses us any, although if you have energy in one form, and wish to transfer it to another form, there will usually be some leakage as some energy is lost to some third form.
An absolutely fundamental part of physics are the conservation laws. Conservation of energy is only one of these. Momentum is another, then charge, and finally into a whole wrealm of metrics that control the physics of quantum theory. These laws have worked astoundingly well. Indeed those parts of engineering that are based upon them find them perfectly correct to the limits of measureability. Something that, if you were a betting man, would give you pause before assering their falsehood.
And you are right. They are actually the special case of the conservation laws above. Statistical mechanics allows us to derive the laws of thermodynamics from the conservation laws. However you will note that conservation of energy is still a fundamental law.
But, the intial question. Why is there any energy at all? We have no clue(*). The same reason probably as why there is time, why there is space, and why there is anything at all.
(*) Really, we don't. There is no shortage of popular physics books talking in breathless terms about parallel universes, multi-dimensional or not, M-theory, colliding universes, and random bubbles of universes. Which is all fun, but none of it is science. From a fundamental point of view there are also a lot of physicists who feel that we will never know, mostly because it is intrinsically unknowable.
you didnt answer to my believe that energy can be created.
allthought that might be an engine more massive then our sun it might be possible now.
(1) Firstly, much of the "energy" we (humanity) use here on Earth is "created".
Scientists believe that fusion reactions occur inside the Sun whereby hydrogen atoms remaining from the Big Bang fuse together under enormous pressures so at to "create" helium atoms AND energy.
There is a second kind of energy due to radioactive decay of atoms. In that case, energy is again being created as overly-"heavy" atoms (i.e. Uranium) shed some of their mass fat when transitioning to more stable isotopes or to other atoms.
(2) Secondly, the energy that we humans use and think of as "useful" energy is part of a giant flow. Think of the Earth as a small pebble in a giant flowing river where the waters spring forth from the Sun. All of that energy flow eventually is swept out towards the downstream vastness of space beyond our solar system.
When some of that energy gets temporarily "trapped" here on Earth (say due to photosynthesis) we humans take advantage of that dammed up energy by poking a hole in the dam and diverting some of the ultimate flow towards our own purposes. However, all the energy always flows into the atmosphere and then out into the emptiness of outer space.
The fact that we cannot totally block the undammed energy is why no engine can have 100% efficiency. Part of the energy (QH-QL)/QL = (TH-TL)/TL must always be flowing wastefully to outer space (in the downstream direction of the giant, sun-sourced river).
everythin you mention is a transformation of one type of energy to another or simply downgrade energy as in the laws of thermodynamics called entropie
fusion of hydrogen to helium doesnt create energy, it liberates the energy of depending on the hydrogene isotope one to two neutrons. and some mater gets turned into free energy but tall the energy was there before it just goes to a lower level of entropie
argh fusion reactions dont creat energy they just transform one energy state to another.
hello i mean real creation of energy, not transmutation.
i dont mean e = mc²
i mean e from nohing
i dont mean transforming and loosing to entropie
i mean creation in the sense of the big bang.
Sorry, what transpired prior to the BB (if there was even "time" in that realm) is beyond my event horizon.
yeah far beyond mine too, thats why i keep asking i want to get closer
I may have looked something like this:
A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009
He explains a bit of what is happening in that animation above. Great lecture BTW...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
Hah! It was a mate of mine that created that animation. It is interesting how it turns up now. Back when it was created it tore up a top-500 supercomputer for quite some time to build the data set. He spent ages working on the rendering afterwards.
Wow, you know Frank Wilczek?
I won't pretend to understand the math and the physics behind that animation. I just wanted to present it as an example of the predictive value of evidence based science, as compared to say, BS voodoo economics.
To paraphrase Laurence Krauss, if you have "Nothing", quantum fluctuations could have given rise to the universe... unfortunately it seems that it also created economists >;^)
Then again it also gave rise to lawyers, at least one of whom,Edwin Hubble, ended up becoming an astronomer,
No, Frank stole the animation too. (It was a source of considerable pride to the author that Frank did I might add.) I'm not that well connected.
Still, pretty cool stuff all in all. OT, but I just came across this in the last half hour, amazing place these "Intertubes"... You can play it as the sound track to the animation!
http://soundcloud.com/arthur-taylor/the-resonance-of-quantum-foam
Absolutely wonderful. Told me that gravity is negative energy. (negative energy is at work in the gulf pressing the oil out.) And that there is more dark energy and empty space in the universe than there is of anything else. All the galaxies in the universe represent just 1% of what's out there? Now, if we could just harness the stuff ....
Second Law of Thermodynamics
"You can’t break even except at absolute zero."
My question to Cheryl:
"As we expend energy (drill baby, drill, refining, transport, filling up,) to produce usable energy, (fuel for cars and our present economy,) are we not creating and destroying energy? (From a practical, not a scientific standpoint, of course.) And as we suck the energy from the system, what's sitting on the other end of the see-saw? Is there a practical and scientific price for us to pay over there? (besides whatever global warming results from the use of every drop of oil that remains) How cheap and easy will that be? What would close to zero look like? (from both a practical and a scientific standpoint)"
Cheryl's Response to my question:
"It's not possible to shift from the scientific meaning of "energy," which is what I was using, to the practical meaning and still have that statement of the Second Law mean anything. So the answer to your first question, in the scientific sense, is "no."
Does anyone think the price of our practical energy use IS possible to calculate or determine in the practical sense using the laws of thermodynamics?
A related question: Is it possible that approaching absolute zero looks like one group reaping the benefits and another group paying the price?
the foundaments ,the basic truth on witch all science rests are the laws of thermodynamics.
if they are gone you can throw physics in the trash bin.
if energy could appear unpredictable anywhere whats the constant ?
hell explaining how gravity works faster then light needed some serious bending of space time.
physics is the science of predicting the future.
these laws are supposed to make us cappable of describing future events.
because if nature fallows these laws we can say beforehand whats going to happen in the future.
i like entropie, im playing poker this moment
A minor complaint about this one -- a carnot cycle is not the cycle used in a power plant, it is the most efficient possible heat engine cycle. Actual power plants try to achieve the efficiency of a carnot cycle, but if they are extracting energy from heat they can't beat it.
I believe you know this, but the way this is phrased suggests that we use the carnot cycle in power plants as opposed to, for instance, the rankine cycle. Yes, there are non-heat engine routes for extracting energy such as with fuel cells, but these are not heat engines.
So, I would suggest replacing "carnot cycle" with "heat engine" in order to make this part not make people like myself with extensive experience with thermodynamics do a double-take.
Thanks for this, neltnerb. I've learned something in this thread: that most power plants today don't use the Carnot cycle. Your suggestion goes to the heart of the problem that others have had with my explanation of this rule. But the rule still stands, since it depends on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, not the Carnot cycle.
Edit: Peer review in action!
sorry for my un engeneering unscientific artist point of view
u need a hot place and a colder one
u get work from the diffrence in temperature
you enhance entropie
i just realized , people want an answer to their questions imediatly, like right now.
they don´t seem to realize that some answers take like 50 years.
or 2000 years. or that someone asked a question 3000 years ago that still isnt answered
actualy i got some questions, i expect i ´ll never get an answer.
not in eternity
i m one of the people who still try to find an answer to the question asked 3000 years ago
what is a circle ?
in which framework?
Don't know, but...
It is the set of points a distance R from the center point, where R is the radius of the circle.
All you had to do is take junior-high geometry.
Would that be true if the points were plotted on a non-planar (i.e. wrinkled) surface?
And how do you measure "distance" on such a surface?
That is why I asked our wise guy friend to name his framework first.
He was setting up a trap for the unwary (and possibly overly arrogant).
Yes. That's the definition of "circle"; it's normative, not descriptive.
That depends. How is distance defined in that geometry? (See "taxicab geometry" for a particularly non-Euclidean example.)
OK smart one, one of the most yellowed and dogeared books in my personal library is The Geometry of Thinking, Synergetics, by Buckminster Fuller. FYI, I use spherical trigonometry to optimise strut lengths in tensegrity structures, and that's just a recreational pastime of mine. /sarcasm
The "Dunno" was also sarcastic, in case you missed it...
One of my favorite sources of rules of thumb is thermodynamics
I like that. I ask that question wrt "hydrinos" and never get an answer.
So all the schemes to run your car on water are bosh.
Now here's another case of the use of the word "all".
Internal Combustion Engines gain the force VS the piston due to gas expansion. Liquid water expands into a gas when you add heat. Thus, for a certain amount of liquid water injected into the combustion chamber you should see less hydrocarbon usage for the same output from the engine.
Thus "all" is "bosh". In almost all statements of a case something will not be included in your case.
(this has been discussed on TOD before. Based on those conversations some WWII airplanes had water injection, fog conditions improve mileage, and I just saw the 1970's improve your gas mileage book so I could re-read that to cite the page that mentions water injection)
Have you ever seen the sugar jump out of a cup of tea and form one of those nice little cubes?
yea, ususally on TV during a 'turn back time' events. And TV wouldn't lie, cuz I saw it.
Rule #5: Everything takes more energy than you think. I’ve seen, far too many times, the lament that our current electrical generating plants “waste” one-third of the energy in their fuels. Welcome to the Carnot cycle!
You might wanna add a #6 and a #7.
Someone's waste is anothers feedstock. Thus the 'lets burn everything/lets make carbon to make zinc-carbon batteries' kinda people don't see the bananna peel or pile of small sticks in the woods as part of a cycle of taking sub-soil material in the topsoil area. Bacteria/Fungi need to eat :-)
For every action there are reactions. You may not know what that reaction will be - those are unintended consequences.
Bosh.
I am reminded of a saying attributed to a nameless physicist, "if a scientist cannot explain what [s]he is doing to a child, it means [s]he does not understand it [her]self."
This is not meant as a jab at the author, but rather to reinforce the idea that it is imperative for scientists to translate their work into language that anyone can understand. After all, we all live in the physical world; why should those who study its laws closely not be able to explain them clearly to others who also inhabit the world? Science and engineering are far from alone among the academic disciplines in their obsession with novel and arcane concepts, when what has real value (for any given field) are the applications and benefits for society more broadly. I imagine that the problem arises from a failure to contemplate such questions, sidestepped as irrelevant to the day-to-day research problems. So while I agree with the author that there is a great deal of arrogance in presuming to bypass the laws of physics, there is also tremendous arrogance on the part of scientists and engineers themselves who assume that nobody without a formal training could possibly grasp the mechanics of energy, for instance. In fact, it is in no way required to spend X number of hours in a lecture hall for the "common folk" to come to such an understanding; what is required is a willingness to dig deeper, to delve into texts that might seem arcane at first, and even to accept that there are certain concepts that will be difficult if not impossible to fully grasp. But the contribution of the non-specialist should not be reduced to zero.
It is just as incumbent on those who desire to be communicators to learn energy as it is on engineers to learn how to communicate. Same goes for policymakers.
On another note:
The fact that a Los Alamos nuclear scientist and engineer with 37 years of experience can run the numbers on nuclear power and still be unsure if those numbers crunch, or even if the data exist, should give the nuclear optimists here pause. I agree with the poster above who said the entire enterprise reeks of 'everything is fine, trust us.' Which, I think, illustrates both sides of the coin: it's not OK for pundits who don't 'get it' at all to simply throw their views around all willy-nilly, of course, but on the other hand, to paraphrase Clemenceau: energy is simply too important a matter to be left to the engineers. A failure to account for the ecological, demographic, political-economic, cultural sides of the energy discussion (and the outsourcing of science to specialists alone) are what got us into our current predicament, so while the engineers certainly get some of the first and choicest seats at the table, let us just say they are not the only seats.
I do all I can to translate the typical academic research paper, such as you would find on Google Scholar, to some math that actually uses concrete numbers. That I consider a huge improvement. Unfortunately, when you have to reduce it anymore than that, it tends to lose all meaning and significance. If somebody does accomplish this, it usually amounts to transforming it into an analogy or allegory, which often makes people feel good but doesn't really explain anything. Popular science writing is replete with explanations that look reasonable but ultimately lead to no deeper understanding.
The first hack you will get 20% of people to understand (me, perhaps): academic -> technical level
The second hack you will get another 20% to understand (popular science writer): technical level -> college layman
The third hack will result in no one understanding anything (newspaper): college layman -> man off the street
WastedEnergy - Yes, it's a two-way street. I'm trying to make my own contribution, and the feedback here is helpful.
I've said very little here about nuclear energy because 1) it's OT; 2) it would take much more than this box allows to say what I might. But let me correct a couple of impressions (aided and abetted by my silence on the subject) that have developed in the comments.
It's not a matter of running the numbers and being unsure that the numbers crunch; it's a matter of not being able to find what I want easily on the Web. What I would particularly like to look at is lifetime costs and energy balances for various energy technologies. Various people have claimed to do such things, but all of them have interests in particular outcomes, so I distrust all the calculations. Further, people use different bases for what they might call lifetime costs and therefore their numbers are not comparable.
Doing all that would be very time-consuming, and I'm not sure I have that kind of time to spare. But from time to time, I do a bit of searching or talk to people who are supposed to know these things. For one part of my career, I was in a group that did such things, and the conclusion that many of us are reaching is that lifetime costs and energy balances are not being done in a careful way. Every lead I've been given that claims to be what I'm looking for has come up severely wanting when I've looked at it.
On nuclear in particular, there are a lot of claims flying around that don't seem to have much backing them up. I know, proprietary data and all that. There are so many of them - fourth generation, thorium, blah blah blah - that I can't look at them all in detail. I have been following the Hyperion reactor; start out with one fuel design, then switch to a totally new fuel that hasn't been used commercially before. Good luck with that.
One of the things that makes me wary about nuclear is that the people I see selling it share the overoptimism of "too cheap to meter" and seem as impervious to some of the safety concerns as anyone before Three Mile Island. They don't seem to have learned anything.
So those are some of my concerns, quickly summarized. If the editors here want, maybe it would be good for me to spend some more time on one or more of those issues.
I think, Cheryl you have hit on what it is I am wanting to find out. I am not sure if I understand you right, but I think you are asking the price of energy (of various types) and what is the cost of paying that price? I often think I expend more energy living in our current society, putting my stuff away, re-learning software every time it's self-obsolescence switch flips, throwing out things that break or trying to fix them, etc., etc.,) than I would growing food and building a house of hay. In fact there's not enough time left in my life to deal adequately with all my stuff.
If we lived simple craftsman's lives like they do at the Renaissance Fair, (with a few vaccines and train transport of goods, of course) would there not be enough jobs for all of us? Living locally and thinking globally? I am not trying to be political here.
I am afraid this balloon keeps growing, padded by greed ... a closed system bursting from its enclosure. And i Fear that all the energy we use to produce work will result in us having to re-pay what we've used by doing an equal amount of work. Thermodynamics may not predict this, but some scientific formula should be able to do so.
Is there energy that replaces itself in a closed system? (practically speaking, of course.)
fritzie - Yes, we seem to be thinking the same way about the price of energy. You're adding in even more than what I'm looking for, but introducing more complexity into one's life than what you want is a price too.
I think there's no way to go back to what we may think is a simpler life. I just got in my car and went to the supermarket and got a week's worth of food and other necessities in about an hour. If I had to grow my own, trade with others, and make some of that stuff, it would take a lot more time. We're, to some degree, substituting petroleum for time, because a lot of what went into my saving time was transporting goods and petroleum-based fertilizer for the apricots and figs I bought.
No, there's no energy that replaces itself. That's the result of the Second Law. You've always got to add extra energy to replace the energy you've used.
What about small villages with stores one could walk to? Stones instead of asphalt beneath our feet? As if the age of the automobile is the big bang, and now it must contract?
There may be an obvious answer to this, but if you must add energy to replace the energy you've used, where will that energy come from to replace the energy you used to travel to the store?
Just watched Krausse link listed above on U-Tube. Wonderful stuff. 2/3 of what's around us is "dark energy." How could we get at that?
And I think I heard him say that gravity is anti-energy? Well, then perhaps the gravity on that relatively flat oil deposit in the GOM, (from all the oceans of the Earth and the attending pressure of the rock,) may be the payback on the other side of the equation?
I like thinking, but I fear if I had learned the science from the bottom up, I would be unable to think as creatively as I can.
I am not a scientist, but based on testing, probably should have been. Went with the sexy TV news career instead, (when it made more of a difference,) but it never fulfilled me, and collegues did not get me at all. Now I want to learn as much as I can to help in other ways before I die. Thanks for being a part of my inquiry-based learning process.
We may be truly insignificant per Krausse, but I'm going to try to be less so if I can. I have energy that I do not know yet how to expend.
(worked on tech video with MIT scientists in the past)
It's kind of how I see it. I think of it as Hobbits with technology.
Cheers
I am reminded of a saying attributed to a nameless physicist, "if a scientist cannot explain what [s]he is doing to a child, it means [s]he does not understand it [her]self." This is not meant as a jab at the author, but rather to reinforce the idea that it is imperative for scientists to translate their work into language that anyone can understand
You bet, Wasted. The best lectures that I have ever received or given have been at the dinner table or sitting with students in a socratic conversation, when give and take are happening on both sides, and heart is infused into the equation. That allows Snow's third culture, which binds people together as whole instead of tearing them apart into ever tinier technological pieces. My best lectures with highly complex (or any) content is when i put down the outline and speak from the heart. Speaking without notes prevents me from drilling down into details too quickly; if I can't cite line and verse from memory, I stay at the larger scale and speak from a system perspective first, before illustrating with more detailed examples or analogies. And if I can't do that, then, no, I don't really know the content, and I need to go back and dig some more. Cheryl's OP was from the heart, so it captured souls. Some of the comments are bathed in technospeak, moats guarded and dressed for battle with Powerpoints if possible. I guess that would be my rule of thumb for educators. Anyone read Parker Palmer? Link below on the idea of the 3rd culture, but the author of the article misses all kinds of boats when he proclaims the technologists the new intellectuals.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
On nuclear, landrew had a pretty good post somewhere upthread? about the future availability of uranium. Mother Nature sorts the energy options out, and there may be a reason why we have not built a nuclear power plant in this country in over 20 years. The Emergy yield ratio of US nuclear power is 4.6. That compares favorably with rainforests in Brazil at 3.6, but not so well as NZ Hydro at 10, or tidal electric in France at 15. And since we didn't build more plants then, we're hardly going to build them now, when we're more crowded, with less net energy available as a basis. And I can only imagine that those touting nuclear on threads here this month have not only blinded themselves in one eye to these critical issues regarding resources and net energy, but have also poked out their other eye, studiously looking away from the Chernobyl-like occurrence in the Gulf of Mexico.
A failure to account for the ecological, demographic, political-economic, cultural sides of the energy discussion (and the outsourcing of science to specialists alone) are what got us into our current predicament, so while the engineers certainly get some of the first and choicest seats at the table, let us just say they are not the only seats
More truth. Back to poor, hapless Bill Gates again, I guess he's an easy target. Is there any place where development of complexity combined with growth in this FF age that has not eventually resulted in overshoot, with overly complex, dysfunctional structures or organizations that outrun their resources? Computers, health care, the military, cities, cars, federal bureaucracy, Congressional politics, I see it everywhere I look, with organizations at the brink of standstill, ready to topple. As I filled in the bubble for Obama, I found myself wondering, does he really think he can turn this ship around, or is he just an ambitious, clueless pawn, unable to view the whole past his silo of politics? Because either way, he had to have failed to "account for the ecological, demographic, political-economic, cultural sides of the energy discussion." Which means that his/their thinking will not fix our problems.
/rhetorical
/politics
My own position is that the USA should
- Heavily subsidize building 5 to 8 new Gen III nukes by 2021. This will restart supply lines and help recreate an experienced core of people to build them. Preferably two different designs (AP-1000, EPR, Toshiba, etc).
And by 2027 or so, another ten or twelve. Perhaps one would be a prototype Gen IV in Idaho.
At that point, the USA will have the option to go on a nuke building boom (or not).
- Heavily promote conservation and energy efficiency
- Have a Rush to Wind, with associated transmission (especially HV DC) and pumped storage building booms. Also Geothermal (but try for variable output Geothermal).
- Grow solar until price points drop and the a Rush to the Sun as well. Solar hot water heating now.
I see new nukes as being a delayed, second/clean-up stage, filling the gaps left by wind and solar.
Best Hopes,
Alan
My own position is that the USA should- Heavily subsidize building 5 to 8 new Gen III nukes by 2021. This will restart supply lines and help recreate an experienced core of people to build them. Preferably two different designs (AP-1000, EPR, Toshiba, etc). And by 2027 or so, another ten or twelve. Perhaps one would be a prototype Gen IV in Idaho. At that point, the USA will have the option to go on a nuke building boom (or not).
Alan, you've backslid. I'm pulling out that question again--the one you and all of the other technocratic optimists refuse to answer. Just how many Gulf of Mexicos is it going to take for us to realize that we cannot continue to add to our civilization without killing it off even quicker?
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6641#comment-663135
I went looking for real news over on the open thread. It appears as though there's an infestation problem.
I'm comment number 400 for the thread--do I win a a prize or something?
http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/media/documents/articles/rsa_lecture...
Time. As in running out of.
Cheers
We all give to much credit to Engineers and Scientists as the preveyors of all our technology advances.
Most of the things we marvel over weren't invented by these type people, but only refined and redesigned.
If it wasn't for the garage inventors Henry Ford, The Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, and a thousand others, we would be back in the 1800dreds.
Not to say that many of these people have not done great things, or don't contribute to our technology, but they also hold back advances by swaring things can't be done. Their book learning teaches them rules that can't be overcome, and therefore limits their imaginations.
For an example, Take UFO's and Aliens. These people will tell You that they can't travel through space, fly at the speeds they do, can't overcome our gravity, fly in and out of water, hover. make turns without banking, and reverse without stopping first. All of these things someone, and many someones have witnessed them doing. Are the aliens stupid and don't know they can't do these things, or are our learned people to big for their britches in proclaiming these things can't be done.
A second example, Is there is a huge bunch of Scientists listening for radio siganls from outer space. Assuming that aliens will have to use some form of radio or signal they can hear. Yet UFO's have been visiting the Earth for along time, and have made no audible signals, with our best radars and radio listening devises that we ever heard.
A third example, Is all of these people, and none have been able to plug a hole in the Gulf of Mexico spewing Oil and Gas. Our Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr. Chu has had to leave this to BP's engineers, because Gamma rays wouldn't work.
Scientists gave us the atom bomb, but can't figure out what to do with radio active waste.
Almost all of our power sources, still use steam including nuclear. Our cars tools and toys use the internal combution engine, and yes even jet engines use fan inducted internal combustion to make jet engines work.
We haven't came up with much new in a hundred years or longer, only refined the old techniques.
Even our dreams of solar and wind power are just refinements on past tech.
We rave over computers and phones for what they can do today, but with out electricity none of them could be made, and replacement batteries the power for them wouldn't be there.
We still generate most of our electricity by spinning magnets in our generators to excite the electrons to move. Where are the scientists that can figure out how to excite the electrons with heat, nuclear reaction, or some chemical reaction. Crystals have been toyed with to use to generate electricity by using them to vibrate, but no one is doing much in that field.
We have bunches of scientists world wide, and engineers in every field imaginable, and atom smashers they got, but no new energy sources or power production techniques.
All the smart people we have in the world, and they haven't solved hardly any of the worlds problems.
We can kill each other in fantasic ways, communicate in fantasic ways, use carbon based fuels like their going out of style, and make money and goods to sell in grand style, and ship things all around the world.
Yet were still dependant on the same things our grandfathers and those before them invented, and we just made better use of.
Where is the world of tomorrow, and all the things that will be able to sustain us in the future?
Another grad of a fine department of psychoceramics!
The US Patent Office is having a bit of hard time keeping up with the "not much new" in the last few years.
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Left click (one click) on image for more info. See also this.
And with so many investors looking for places to invest ....