The safety video? On batteries?

From page 132


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

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).

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

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

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.

~75% if you count the USA!

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)

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.

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.

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?


I stand by my pen & paper figure of ~25M years
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.

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

Well, to quote wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon, down in the tidal effects section):



So sure, we'll keep seeing tides until the sun boils the oceans away, but their energy should steadily decrease over time.

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!

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?

well, they're from A sun.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqCvcX7buo&feature=player_embedded

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.

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.”

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).

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).













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.

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.

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-generated-electricity-powers-u-s-grid-for-the-first-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/

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

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.

How Solid Is Concrete's 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



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).





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).

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.

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/

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

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...

all around hawaii the seabed very quickly drops to 3 miles deep. that's not something you can do offshore wind-power in.