Eaarth

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Thu Nov 18, 2010 9:45 pm

The safety video? On batteries?

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Re: Eaarth

Post by dhanson865 » Fri Nov 19, 2010 6:31 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:The safety video? On batteries?
From page 132
Are lithium-ion batteries safe in an accident?
Some lithium-ion batteries are unsafe when short-circuited or overheated,
but the battery industry is now producing safer batteries such as
lithium phosphate. There’s a fun safety video at http://www.valence.com.
I did some google searches and poked around their site and didn't find the video he was talking about.

I think this is it on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brcSLnAT1nU

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Re: Eaarth

Post by dhanson865 » Fri Nov 19, 2010 7:07 am

Oh and fwiw that book (Sustainable Energy — without the hot air) was way more awesome than Eaarth.

The part that surprised me most was how foreign heat pumps are to people in the UK. It also seems from his descriptions that central heat and air as I know it isn't common in households over there (No ductwork).

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Re: Eaarth

Post by andymcca » Fri Nov 19, 2010 9:17 am

I just read this whole thread for the first time, and man are there some angry people out there :D

As a fun note (and perhaps this is common knowledge but I thought it up a couple of years ago and thought it was neat):
Did you ever wonder where the energy from tidal power would come from? It is actually from the difference in period between the rotation of the earth and the revolution of the moon about the earth! (With a tad of solar period in there, too)
Tidal is not renewable, and not infinite! We would actually slow the planet's rotation until it was in sync with the lunar period! Of course, this would probably take a while :D

By my pen & paper math, if we assume a linear doubling of usage every 40 years, based on a glance at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_ener ... onsumption, we could power the world for 25 million years with tidal energy. I favor 28 hour days, which would take 3.75 milion years!

Edit: Let me know if you think I've underestimated the gravitational effects on the moon of limiting tides.
MikeC wrote:So SPCR has ~50% of visitors coming from countries where English is not the official language.
~75% if you count the USA! :D

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Nov 19, 2010 1:09 pm


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Re: Eaarth

Post by dhanson865 » Fri Nov 19, 2010 7:47 pm

andymcca wrote:As a fun note (and perhaps this is common knowledge but I thought it up a couple of years ago and thought it was neat):
Did you ever wonder where the energy from tidal power would come from? It is actually from the difference in period between the rotation of the earth and the revolution of the moon about the earth! (With a tad of solar period in there, too)
Tidal is not renewable, and not infinite! We would actually slow the planet's rotation until it was in sync with the lunar period! Of course, this would probably take a while :D

By my pen & paper math, if we assume a linear doubling of usage every 40 years, based on a glance at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_ener ... onsumption, we could power the world for 25 million years with tidal energy. I favor 28 hour days, which would take 3.75 milion years!

Edit: Let me know if you think I've underestimated the gravitational effects on the moon of limiting tides.
well here is what the book has to say about tidal power (starts at http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/with ... e_81.shtml)
page 87 wrote:Mythconceptions
Tidal power, while clean and green, should not be called renew-able. Extracting power from the tides slows down the earth’s rotation. We definitely can’t use tidal power long-term.

False. The natural tides already slow down the earth’s rotation. The natural rotational energy loss is roughly 3 TW (Shepherd, 2003). Thanks to natural tidal friction, each century, the day gets longer by 2.3 milliseconds. Many tidal energy extraction systems are just extracting energy that would have been lost anyway in friction. But even if we doubled the power extracted from the earth–moon system, tidal energy would still last more than a billion years.

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Nov 19, 2010 7:58 pm

Tidal energy comes from the moon orbiting the Eaarth, and if tides slow the Eaarth's rotation, then extracting some tidal power should slow the it less?

I don't think we need to worry about billions of years into the future...

Tidal energy is about the only energy that doesn't come from the Sun originally -- well, maybe nuclear power, too? Oil, coal and natural gas are billion year old sunshine. We need to use the current sunshine, instead.

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Re: Eaarth

Post by cordis » Fri Nov 19, 2010 8:33 pm

Well, I guess it depends, the presence of the moon can be attributed to the gravity well created by the sun, so you could say it's originally from the sun. On the other hand, the matter in the moon (and the uranium driving nuclear reactors) coalesced out of the original nebula that created the sun, so in that way it isn't directly from the sun.

And in terms of the renewability of tidal, the energy loss is also causing the moon to spiral away from the Earth. As it sprials away, the tidal forces will lessen, so there's that to look forward to as well. ;)

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Re: Eaarth

Post by andymcca » Mon Nov 22, 2010 8:43 am

cordis wrote:And in terms of the renewability of tidal, the energy loss is also causing the moon to spiral away from the Earth.
I'm not sure I understand this unless there is some gravitational effect I've not considered? What force (or lessening thereof) is acting on the moon's orbit?
dhanson865 wrote:
page 87 wrote:tidal energy would still last more than a billion years.
I stand by my pen & paper figure of ~25M years :D
That is based on current energy usage (474 PJ annually) (rather than natural tidal friction) and a linear rate of growth 474PJ/year/40years, though, so I'm not saying the book is wrong. Just that we use much more than 3TW already.
I did calculate moment of inertia in terms of a uniform sphere. Is the core actually much more dense? That would reduce the energy available even more.

Edit: I can't wait till peta bytes are common. Many jelly jokes to follow.

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Re: Eaarth

Post by Ralf Hutter » Tue Nov 23, 2010 7:27 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:
I don't think we need to worry about billions of years into the future...
:roll:

Typical short-sighted American. Please think about the children of future generations!

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Re: Eaarth

Post by cordis » Tue Nov 23, 2010 12:18 pm

Well, to quote wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon, down in the tidal effects section):
Gravitational coupling between the Moon and the bulge nearest the Moon acts as a torque on the Earth's rotation, draining angular momentum and rotational kinetic energy from the Earth's spin. In turn, angular momentum is added to the Moon's orbit, accelerating it, which lifts the Moon into a higher orbit with a longer period. As a result, the distance between the Earth and Moon is increasing, and the Earth's spin slowing down. Measurements from lunar ranging experiments with laser reflectors left during the Apollo missions have found that the Moon's distance to the Earth increases by 38 mm per year (though this is only 0.10 ppb/year of the radius of the Moon's orbit). Atomic clocks also show that the Earth's day lengthens by about 15 microseconds every year, slowly increasing the rate at which UTC is adjusted by leap seconds. This tidal drag will continue until the spin of the Earth has slowed to match the orbital period of the Moon; however, long before this could happen, the Sun will have become a red giant, engulfing the Earth.
So sure, we'll keep seeing tides until the sun boils the oceans away, but their energy should steadily decrease over time.

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Re: Eaarth

Post by andymcca » Wed Nov 24, 2010 6:27 am

cordis wrote:Well, to quote wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon, down in the tidal effects section):
Gravitational coupling between the Moon and the bulge nearest the Moon acts as a torque on the Earth's rotation, draining angular momentum and rotational kinetic energy from the Earth's spin. In turn, angular momentum is added to the Moon's orbit, accelerating it, which lifts the Moon into a higher orbit with a longer period. As a result, the distance between the Earth and Moon is increasing, and the Earth's spin slowing down.
Seems to me that tidal energy harvesting would not effect bulging much, and would lag tidal peaks behind the moon. If anything it seems like it would lessen the rate of the moon's orbit expanding.
Thoughts?
Let me know if I'm beating a dead animal. I'm just curious!

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Wed Nov 24, 2010 1:20 pm

Andy,

I think you are technically correct (in my limited understanding?), but we would have to have a hell of a lot of tidal systems before we had any affect at all. For all intents and purposes, the effect is completely negligible! If we gathered a quarter of all the tidal energy (which would be an absolutely stupendously huge effort) it would probably change nothing for billions of years. And it would be a LOT of electrical power.

Here's another gravitational issue to chew on:

The reason our Eaarth is sort of pear shaped (it has a slightly larger higher sea level south of the equator -- look it up!) is because of all the ice that is piled up on Antarctica. And the ice on Antarctica is melting due to the warming and Global Climate Change -- so if and when a large portion of it melts and raises the ocean level, a hundred years or so later than that -- the Eaarth will be closer to round than it is now!

And, the sea level rise due to the Antarctic ice melting will have a greater rise in the northern hemisphere...

How's them apples?

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Re: Eaarth

Post by Fayd » Sun Nov 28, 2010 9:00 am

cordis wrote:Well, I guess it depends, the presence of the moon can be attributed to the gravity well created by the sun, so you could say it's originally from the sun. On the other hand, the matter in the moon (and the uranium driving nuclear reactors) coalesced out of the original nebula that created the sun, so in that way it isn't directly from the sun.
well, they're from A sun.

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Mon Nov 29, 2010 4:44 pm

Acidification of the oceans due to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqCvcX7 ... r_embedded

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Wed Dec 01, 2010 8:02 am

Rising oceans, acidifying oceans -- hmmm...

http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/12/climate-seas

3 feet sea level rise is minimum in the next 100 years (or sooner) and it probably will be 5 feet, or more.

Norfolk, VA is already seeing lots of damage. Miami is particularly vulnerable.

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please watch this

Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Dec 03, 2010 12:21 pm


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Re: Eaarth

Post by dhanson865 » Thu Dec 09, 2010 10:50 am

here is another place I didn't know about: Hawaii

“Hawaii generates the vast majority of its electric power from burning imported fossil fuels”


http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/info/energy/ is the official site to learn more.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/state/state_ener ... cfm?sid=HI might be a good read also
“Petroleum-fired power plants supply more than three-fourths of Hawaii’s electricity generation”

From another site I get this quote though I’m not sure what year it is from it appears to be at least 5 years in the past. “In contrast to the rest of the nation, Hawaii use petroleum to produce 84.7 percent of its electricity. Biomass from sugar plantations and municipal solid waste was used to generate 8.2 percent of the states’ electrical power. the remaining 7.1 percent came from coal, hydroelectricity, wind and geothermal.”

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Dec 10, 2010 5:35 am

Yeah, geothermal would seem to be the obvious biggie for Hawaii! That and wave power. ;-)

Solar too, would be great for daytime use -- think A/C. And more methane from sewage and farm waste (both plant and animal).

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Re: Eaarth

Post by dhanson865 » Fri Dec 10, 2010 7:53 am

I think these quotes from posters on another site sum it up nicely (note the thread was about the Nissan Leaf being used in Hawaii) I took the liberty of not quoting portions that were redundant or petty and I have no idea if these quotes are in thread or time order (mostly mixed them up some).
windswords wrote:I say do Nukes and wind/solar/geothermal. The more the merrier. Of course some would object to wind turbines if it blocked their view of the ocean/scenery and some would object to geothermal (don’t want an ugly powerplant right next to Mauna Kea), and of course some would balk at paying for expensive solar cells and the expensive land to put them on… Well, on second thought, lets just put a nuke plant up.
James2 wrote:Only one island, the Big Island, has active volcanoes. The Big Island is also, um, big enough to provide plenty of range anxiety. As Bertel says, yeah, you don’t want to be on the road to Hana (on the island of Maui) in a Leaf, either. Maui is also big enough that you wouldn’t want to be in an electric car.

The Leaf/Volt/plug-in Prius might work fine in Honolulu, but our electrical infrastructure is, in a word, lousy. Small incidents are enough to blackout the entire island. In 2006 an earthquake on the Big Island knocked out power on Oahu, 200-odd miles away.

We have the perfect site for a nuclear power plant, the deserted island of Kahoolawe, but the native Hawaiians would put up an epic fight. Our politicians might be dumb, but not that dumb.
jmo wrote: Only one island, the Big Island, has active volcanoes

You don’t need active volcanoes for geothermal.
LALoser wrote:My commute from Ala Moana to Waikiki is 1.8 miles. It takes 5 minutes at 5:30 AM and 20 to 25 minutes going home at about 3 PM. Most come into downtown Hono from 6 to 8 miles out. Some mornings it takes 45 minutes to travel that far, but at least 35% of the time it can take up to 2 hours if it is raining or an accident.

A bike seems like a good idea,but it rains a lot here, standing water and dodgy drivers, it’s good that speed limits are low. In my job I have to run out for meetings at many military bases. If timed wrong it can take hours. The traffic here is not the scale of LA, but the travel rate has to be lower. The average MPH on the cars computer is 15…..
imag wrote:Until I can refuel it in 15 minutes, no electric vehicle will meet my 3-car family’s needs

The 15-minute charge interval is an excellent vehicle selection criteria if you need to drive over 100 miles a day in that vehicle. If you don’t, EVs actually save you time because you never need to go to the gas station. An 8-hour charge interval isn’t the end of the world when the gas station is in your garage, in other words.
shaker wrote:Hawaii, being geologically unstable, isn’t prime real estate for nuclear power plants.
I honestly don't know how much of an issue earthquakes and possible volcanic eruptions play into the safety equation of a nuclear plant.

Multiple posts mentioned the tourist factor (can't block the scenery with powerplants, windmills, solar panels), can't do tidal power in locations where surfers play as that is where a chunk of the tourist money comes from.

I suppose you could camouflage your geothermal plants? Put the Solar panels on roofs of existing buildings (avoid putting them on ground based arrays, avoid building new structures that mar the scenery). I could see off shore wind farms being doable but you'd have to be careful about placement (again the view, surfers, shipping, and such).

I'd have to assume any issues mentioned here probably hold true for most tropical islands from the Caribbean to the Pacific that can outlast a several meter sea level rise. With Geothermal being the least widely applicable solution.

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Re: Eaarth

Post by dhanson865 » Fri Dec 10, 2010 11:22 am

Image

from http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7215

canada didn't make the report but it is assumed they would be down below the US in the cheap seats.

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Dec 10, 2010 12:34 pm

Nuclear is not carbon free; despite what advocates say. The uranium needs to be mined, and transported and enriched. Building a nuclear plant requires an extraordinary amount of concrete, which itself requires a LOT of fuel for heating it during processing, so there is lots of carbon used for this step. Long term storage for the nuclear waste requires a lot of energy; not the least of which is to keep it out of the hands of those who would use it to cause damage. Also, it cannot enter the water table, and remains incredibly poisonous and highly radioactive for many, many thousands of years...

Lastly, the entire plant itself must be decommissioned -- i.e. taken apart piece by piece at the end of its useful life; which is about 50 years. So, this requires yet more energy that probably adds to the carbon footprint of nuclear. Overall, I have heard that the complete cycle of nuclear produces about 75% as much carbon as just burning fossil fuels -- and this is a lot more than zero.

Have you seen the wave power generations systems? Some are arrays of about 60 buoys that generate power with magnets as they bob in the waves. Each array produces about 10MW of power. these are starting to be used in Hawaii, already:

http://gas2.org/2010/09/29/wave-generat ... irst-time/

The other type are long sections of steel tubes; like five parts of a caterpillar, and as the hinges between the sections flex, this pumps hydraulic pumps, and the pressure builds up in accumulators, and then it spins generators. Each of these 5-sectioned units produces 0.75MW.

http://www.pelamiswave.com/

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Re: Eaarth

Post by Fayd » Fri Dec 10, 2010 12:40 pm

dhanson865 wrote:Image

from http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7215

canada didn't make the report but it is assumed they would be down below the US in the cheap seats.

here in so-cal, we pay significantly more than average for US :(

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Re: Eaarth

Post by cordis » Fri Dec 10, 2010 2:35 pm

Yeah, I'm not really sure why Hawaii hasn't gone crazy with renewables, I suspect it's probably grid issues more than anything else. Geothermal is pretty much a no-brainer there, wind is also a good option, but you do get into the issues where the best locations aren't always near population centers, so then your grid comes into play. With the islands spread out the way they are, you'd ideally want some shared grid between all of them, which would probably wind up being high voltage DC lines sunk into the water between the islands. That can be done, it's been done in the northeast a couple places, but it's still new and expensive technology, and the distances are pretty far, especially to wire up all the islands. But since most of the power they get is fossil fuels shipped in, they're paying enough now that renewables should be better from a price perspective. It may be a catch 22 type of thing, with the grid guys waiting for renewables to show up before they invest, and the renewable guys waiting for the grid to be built. Hope they can get it figured out sometime.

Nuclear wouldn't be a bad option either, one of the big carbon penalties you get in Hawaii is that fuel has to be shipped from refineries on the mainland, so that's a constant transport carbon output stream. A nuclear plant gets refueled on average once every two years or so, so the transport penalties would be much less. I doubt earthquakes would be a big issue, the plants in California have been strengthened to handle them, the same sort of work could be done there. You do have the same types of grid issues, though, a large 1000 MW plant could power more than one island, and possibly the whole chain, so you'd want to make sure that the grid can handle it. If earthquakes and volcanoes are an issue, you'd want the plant to be out away from people anyway, ideally on the easternmost island, and that's where most of the people aren't, so the grid work would be pretty essential then. But it's probably essential for any path away from fossil fuels for Hawaii.

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Re: Eaarth

Post by dhanson865 » Fri Dec 10, 2010 4:04 pm

How Solid Is Concrete's Carbon Footprint?
ScienceDaily (May 24, 2009) — Many scientists currently think at least 5 percent of humanity's carbon footprint comes from the concrete industry, both from energy use and the carbon dioxide (CO2) byproduct from the production of cement, one of concrete's principal components.

Yet several studies have shown that small quantities of CO2 later reabsorb into concrete, even decades after it is emplaced, when elements of the material combine with CO2 to form calcite.

A study appearing in the June 2009 Journal of Environmental Engineering suggests that the re-absorption may extend to products beyond calcite, increasing the total CO2 removed from the atmosphere and lowering concrete's overall carbon footprint.
and as Cordis said Hawaii imports ALL of its fossil fuels meaning huge transportation costs both in dollars and in carbon output.

Besides concrete is way more durable than asphalt, wood, and other construction materials so on the Reduce, Re-use, Recycle front it reduces the use of new materials later and that's before we ever even talk about it's re-use/recycle potential.

Then we have this article

March 31, 2009, 12:00 pm
Reducing Concrete’s Carbon Footprint
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
In my Science Times article today on concrete, I write about efforts to reduce the material’s carbon footprint in two ways — by replacing some of the cement in a concrete mix with industrial wastes like coal ash or blast-furnace slag, which have little or no carbon cost, and by developing new cements and other concrete ingredients that can permanently sequester carbon dioxide.

But there are other ways in which some companies in the concrete industry are trying to make their products more environmentally responsible. Recycled concrete is being used as a replacement for crushed stone in some concrete applications. A Montana company is experimenting with using mine tailings — which blot the Western landscape, creating runoff problems and other environmental woes — in their recipe for precast concrete blocks.

Other companies are adding different materials to the concrete mix, everything from carbon fiber to plastic foams. That reduces the amount of concrete in a given volume, reducing the carbon cost.
And as to Nuclear powers radioactivity and waste issues I still believe newer reactor designs can minimize those issues and even the average old nuclear reactor is better than the worst coal fired plant. Coal Ash Slurry is easily worse for the environment than nuclear waste (once you total up the output of all Coal Plants vs all Nuclear plants worldwide).
"In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J.P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.

As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.
The study referenced is 1978 in vintage and does not include the radioactive constituents of all coals including anthracite. The co-generation process (fluidized bed technology)in Pa burns coal waste (Culm) with low grade limestone and dolomite. The coal waste is primarily carbonaceous shale which has a much higher radioactive content than pure coal and would produce a fly ash with a much higher concentration of radioactive constituents.
no, considering how bad the current forms of fossil fuel power generation are I'm not worried about the downsides of Nuclear Power. I'm not saying it is idiot proof or safe beyond reproach. I'm just saying it's safer than burning every ounce of coal on the planet.

I expect US electricity to continue to rise in price and approach the cost of electricity in France (I'm sure their costs will rise as everyone's does so we may not reach parity).

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Dec 10, 2010 7:54 pm

I don't think there is any danger of a lot of coal getting transported to Hawaii. Wave, wind, solar, geothermal, and biogas from plant and animal waste (people, too) -- all are extremely low carbon and renewable. Once they are build, there is virtually zero fuel needed.

The perimeter of the big island is about 255 miles, so if you own a Tesla, you are probably fine. Longer range EV's will be here soon enough. The recent trip of 375 miles in an Audi A2 at 55mph at night with the heat on -- on one charge; was done in Germany using DBM Energy "Hummingbird" batteries.

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Re: Eaarth

Post by dhanson865 » Tue Dec 14, 2010 1:08 pm

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYS ... r_embedded

a quick interesting watch.

If you want to see an older longer discussion (including some carbon emissions data) by the same guy there is

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_r ... verty.html


and if you want to you can play with the app and data yourself at http://www.gapminder.org/

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Re: Eaarth

Post by dhanson865 » Thu Dec 16, 2010 3:07 pm

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-0 ... -cash.html

"the Chinese are ready to spend $511 billion to build up to 245 reactors."

and a quote from another thread were I saw this URL
the price of coal has increased substantially over the past 2-3 years to the point where now Nuclear Power is unequivocally the cheapest form of electricity production on the East Coast of China. The Chinese have responded and now propose 245 reactors by 2030 (from 11 in 2009)

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Re: Eaarth

Post by NeilBlanchard » Wed Dec 22, 2010 4:50 am

6 months worth of rain in California in less than a week.

2" / hour rains in California, causing landslides,
Landslides are likely because of huge wild fires,
Huge wild fires are common because of droughts,
Droughts are happening because the snow pack is shrinking,
Snow packs are shrinking because of lots of heat: both in the summer AND because it is warm enough to rain in the winter *instead* of snowing...

Hmmm...

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Re: Eaarth

Post by Fayd » Thu Dec 23, 2010 1:54 am

dhanson865 wrote: I suppose you could camouflage your geothermal plants? Put the Solar panels on roofs of existing buildings (avoid putting them on ground based arrays, avoid building new structures that mar the scenery). I could see off shore wind farms being doable but you'd have to be careful about placement (again the view, surfers, shipping, and such).
all around hawaii the seabed very quickly drops to 3 miles deep. that's not something you can do offshore wind-power in.

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