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filkertomReally cool green science, actually. First, some wizards at M.I.T. have figured out a way, using existing tech and infrastructure, to generate electricity using natural gas with pretty much no CO2 emission.
Second, Boeing-Spectralab has broken the 40% barrier in solar-cell efficiency.
Oh, and, Virgin Atlantic's SpaceShipTwo is just about ready for commercial space flight.
Any new green tech we should know about? Or else, cool science photos or videos? Link 'em up.
ETA: SpaceShipTwo, and adding a < sub > tag.
Second, Boeing-Spectralab has broken the 40% barrier in solar-cell efficiency.
Oh, and, Virgin Atlantic's SpaceShipTwo is just about ready for commercial space flight.
Any new green tech we should know about? Or else, cool science photos or videos? Link 'em up.
ETA: SpaceShipTwo, and adding a < sub > tag.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 01:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 02:10 pm (UTC)I love the whole world
And all its sights and sounds
Boom Dee Ahh Dah
Boom Dee Ahh Dah
Boom Dee Ahh Dah
Boom Dee Ahh Dah
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 09:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 10:19 pm (UTC)http://www.bautforum.com/astronomy/8190-seeing-stars-space.html
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 02:36 pm (UTC)/textbook editor
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 02:57 pm (UTC)Oh, the opposite of [sub] is [sup], which lets you turn an "O" into a degree sign.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 03:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 07:07 pm (UTC):-)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-08 12:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 02:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 03:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 04:05 pm (UTC)Assume for a moment you have an ideal home where there is no cloudcover at all year round. Sunlight reaching the earth is peak 1KW. With the converter pointed square at the sun, you have 400W. Then you have losses of the wiring and invertors, typically about 75% efficient, giving you 300W per square meter useful power.
Ah, but that's only when you can get full sunlight in. With a rotating assembly, you only have 6 hours before shadows from the other assemblies around it block the light. With the shading figured in, you have 1/3 of a day of peak power overall. So even with these modules in a desert clime, you have about 133W throughout the day useful energy. Note that most homes with average cloudcover only get 1/3 of this. Oh, and a generic microwave consumes 1000W all by itself.
A good additional source, and I can see myself buying a bunch to power a secondary airconditioner in my own home to lower my powerbills.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 06:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 07:10 pm (UTC)Alternative power folks and folks living in RVs loved them. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 05:29 pm (UTC)Uh, yeah. Unfortunately, this is science-by-press-release. It's really nothing new.
Solid oxide fuel cells are an existing technology. They are very cool, because they let you generate electricity on-site from fuels like natural gas, and because of their proximity to the load, you can capture the waste heat too, for a total fuel use efficiency of 80-90% (compared to ~30% for a conventional powerplant). But they are not widely adopted because... they're expensive... surprise.
Marrying SOX fuelcells with carbon capture and sequestration makes sense, because the waste stream from the fuel cell is much more pure than what you get from combustion, so it's easier to deal with. But CCS is not the magic bullet people hope for. Once you've captured the carbon dioxide, where do you put it? You have to put it somewhere that you know it will stay put for THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Otherwise, it's a pointless exercise. There are lots of ideas in this department, but no real solutions. And, worse, no way to run meaningful experiments of the most important factor, which is the duration of the sequestration.
Another way to look at CSS: to sequester 1 gigaton of CO2 (one "climate wedge", of which we need 7-15 depending on who you ask) will require capturing, liquifying and burying about 30 MILLION BARRELS PER DAY of CO2. That's approximately half of the world's consumption of oil.
Think about that: For CCS to make a major contribution to the climate problem, we will have to build a worldwide infrastructure approximately equivalent to the system of tanks, pipes, and plants that currently supply our oil. That's ALOT of infrastructure. And it has to be maintained continuously, adding cost (and energy use) to the equation.
CCS is an idea that makes people comfortable continuing to live their destructive lifestyles. It is a technological red herring, which will never solve our problems but will give people an excuse to delay confronting them. Not a win.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 08:11 pm (UTC)Hitching your wagon to a falling star? Perhaps not the best use of your time.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-08 12:31 am (UTC)The overarching problem with all of these solutions is that no biological source provides energy in anything like the density that we are used to from fossil fuels. That's just the way it goes. We got a huge, one-time endowment. We've squandered most of it, and we're going to have to figure out how to keep going on much less energy dense sources. Which means we're going to have to be much more careful about how we use energy, in the future.
In that respect, all of modern industrial civilization is a falling star. More specifically, a technological civilization in which standard of living is proportional to energy use, is a falling star.
We (in the West, particularly) are kind of like a trust fund kid who parties his way into early middle age, and then wakes up one day to realize that their account is down to relatively few zeroes, and they're going to have to start working for their living. It sucks, and I understand why some people will move heaven and earth to deny it. But of course, reality doesn't give a shit.
homo sapiens technicus must change, or die.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 09:36 pm (UTC)I also wanted to mention, since no one here has, that there's a considerable angry scandal brewing in the Physics community over the emails hacked by the Russians from the CRU (the chief UK climate institute) and distributed over the net.
I took it upon myself to *read* every one of the 150 megabytes (ten years worth) of emails over the last couple weeks and I have one word for them--DAMNING.
If someone at a decent university, let alone a first-class institution like Fermilab had "fiddled with data with ends in mind", they would be fired on the spot. I'd say we're looking at a failure in ethics at the least and a criminal conspiracy at the most. It is possible that much of the antropogenic global warming models are on very shaky ground.
Worst part is (and the most horrific of all) the researchers there DESTROYED the raw data (that they used to make their models) sometime during the mid-80s, so there is no way for anyone to re-analyze the questionable data and check their hypotheses. A reasonable reaction would be to toss all of that institute's work.
The kicker is that that institute has been the basic research that many of the others across the world have used as a starting point for their work. It's the equivalent (within the astrophysics community, for example) of some scientists on the Hubble team doctoring photos to seemingly prove that the universe is contracting and then conspiring to keep dissenting views from the respectable journals.
It's just that bad.
TC
Great article on the programs involved in making the models published in PJM and written by Charlie Martin, a good friend of mine:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-computer-codes-are-the-real-story/
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 09:38 pm (UTC)TC
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 10:17 pm (UTC)The CRU data relates to global temperature records; global temperature is certainly one of the important elements in climate change, and is key to understanding the dynamics (since the system is driven by a heat balance problem, in the end). But it's far from the only piece of evidence that supports the notion that climate change is happening.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 10:49 pm (UTC)The trick is to assume it is, you see. Most of the "debate" about this is based primarily on picking one thing, rejecting it (with or without reason), and generalizing that to the rest of the field; it's identical to the anti-evolution arguments for the most part.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 11:14 pm (UTC)I am an engineer, not a climate scientist. So I have only a passing familiarity with the science of climate change. But I have more than a passing familiarity with the practice of science as an institution: I studied at Caltech, an institution which mostly graduates future academicians and researchers, and most of my friends are scientists of one stripe or another. And I gotta say, based on my experience, the idea that all (or even most) of such a large body of research is based on the work of a single group, as the previous poster claims, stretches credulity. The statements in the linked article are much more plausible given the way that the scientific academy as a whole tends to work.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 11:32 pm (UTC)I have absolutely 100% confidence that climate change is happening. The Sun is a G2 star and we know that they have a tendency to get brighter with time. It is also likely that we are still in the recovery period from the last Ice Age.
The problem that I have is with the hypothesis that there is a significant contribution to the warming of the Earth from human beings--in particular, greenhouse gases. We have had million-year plus periods with an order of magnitude higher CO2 levels with no disasterous warming trends. Hell, the post-Permian strike period had a small Ice Age going on at the same time.
Just thirty-five years ago, climate scientists pointed to evidence that we were entering a period of global cooling. That's been discarded in the intervening time.
My skepticism has its roots in Chaos Theory. That branch of mathematical study was born in computer simulations of weather and climate during the early 1960s when very small differences in initial conditions of models resulted in large divergences in results--the so-called "Butterfly Effect."
Chaos and Non-linear dynamics exist in any and all systems where there is dynamic flow of fluids, whether they be atmospheric gases or liquids in oceans. (Non-linear equations are those that cannot be solved by simple differential equation "tricks.") There were two basic principles discovered in regard to weather systems on Earth.
1) The longer the future period modelled, the more expensive it is to create any meaningful predictions.
2) Within the boundary conditions of the model, past measurements of variables can have little predictive capability (barring Strange Attractors.) This is the very definition of non-linear dynamics.
Putting that aside, though... (and this is not the first time that I've disagreed with an editorial in Nature, believe me)
Even if every piece of data that the guys at the CRU presented us with was absolutely true, they have committed a crime against science in that they communicated a willingness to repress dissenting evidence and models in peer-reviewed journals including "changing the definition of peer-review" in order to accomplish that.
What's the problem with that?
When science fails, it fails spectacularly. I can point to the Steady-State Theory of Universal Evolution, Phlogiston, and the Luminiferous Ether as theories that had an almost universal acceptance among scientists. The trouble with such a universal acceptance is that science is powered by dissent and disagreement.
You create a hypothesis and test it to effin' death. You do not try and gather evidence to support it--you try your damndest to poke every hole possible in the theory. As soon as you get one piece of consistently reproducible contrary evidence, it's back to the drawing board. What the CRU was doing, by their actions, was making the assumption that their theory is so correct and important that any contrary evidence needed to be supressed.
This is not science, at least not the kind that I grew up with.
TC
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 11:47 pm (UTC)(It's also worth noting that any one of the climate change denial organization out there has committed far more egregious abuses of the truth before breakfast, than these guys did in the totality of their career. The denialists brazenly make shit up all the time, with basically no consequences. Yeah, they're scientists, and should be held to a higher standard. On the other hand, let's say you're a scientist, and you believe based on your own work that AGW is real. You're facing a river of denial that is rooted in greed and fear of change. For how long do you maintain a position of moral purity that ensures that, whether you are right or wrong, you will lose the public debate (and if you are right, and lose, so does everyone else)?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 11:54 pm (UTC)If they do anything less, they let down those rational individuals who stake their lives and plan their futures with a firm belief in the ultimate triumph of reason.
The end never justifies the means--acting upon such a belief summons the Four Horsemen.
From personal experience, when I was asked to take actions that were contrary to my personal morality and belief in the proper methods of instruction in a university classroom, I did not compromise. I retired.
I would expect no less from anyone else.
TC
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-08 12:41 am (UTC)But your analogy breaks down. I did not ask what you would do if you were asked to compromise your principles by a third party. I asked what you would do if you were convinced -- based on your own work -- that the problem was both real and immediate, but you also knew that you could never prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt in a timeframe that would make a difference. That's a different question.
It's not moral purity vs. externally imposed compromise. It's your role as a scientist vs. your role as a human being, a citizen, a parent (if you are one) and a member of an endangered civilization.
Consider also the converse question: do you believe, as Edward Teller did, that the scientist does not bear moral responsibility -- must specifically disclaim that responsibility -- for the uses to which their work is put? I call it Werner von Braun syndrome...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-08 04:37 am (UTC)In any case, any answer that I would give to that question would be irrelevant in the context of this discussion. The CRU researchers were not in possession of civilization/species-ending data and they are within the group that constitutes the majority opinion on the subject, not in a group with no chance of convincing others. Despite this, they still conspired to supress data and opinions that could have been used to refine their theories.
This to me is not the behavior of a scientist, but that of a religious fanatic.
Penultimately, I have to say that the Nature comments are disingenuous. Saying that the CRU is not responsible for the present theory of AGW is like saying that CERN is not responsible for the Standard Model of Particle Physics. It's technically true, but is an attempt to gloss over their importance in the way that the science has been framed over the last two decades.
In reply to your last question--I take moral responsibility for all of my actions, whether they be related to my work in science or to the day-to-day life of my family. The willingness to take that responsibility is what distinguishes us from brutes.
Tom Trumpinski
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 07:42 pm (UTC)Corrected for geek-squee! ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 07:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-07 09:46 pm (UTC)"People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want," the researchers write. "The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."
http://www.sciencecodex.com/study_believers_inferences_about_gods_beliefs_are_uniquely_egocentric
Tom, you have to read it
Date: 2009-12-08 12:13 am (UTC)The Natural Gas system still produces CO2, it's just that they say that they will sequester it. Considering that sequestering CO2 is expensive, I have my doubts that they will do it.
What this is, is an attempt to keep the fuel companies from going bankrupt. If we went 100% wind turbine, Exxon, Shell, et al would die. They don't want to die, so they try to keep coming up with reasons to use fossil fuels.
And this is a problem, as ANY use of Fossil Fuels causes emissions. TANSTAFL.
But Wind Turbines, once built, are emission free.
Re: Tom, you have to read it
Date: 2009-12-08 12:15 am (UTC)Oh, and we keep hearing that Fuel Cells are clean. They aren't. I've talked to the Fuel Cell manufacturers, and there are emissions. Nasty emissions. They tell you that CO2 and H2O are the only emissions, but what they don't tell you is that the H2O is poisonous.
Nasty.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-08 11:59 am (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/user/GREENPOWERSCIENCE
He and his wife do experiments and videos about solar power, stirling engines, and re-purposing old stuff. Not very scientific but they still do some pretty cool things using just the sun and fresnel lenses among other things.