Ways to solve global warming
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, June 16, 2024 03:19
VIEWED: 6297
PAGE 10 of 13
Quote:Well, I guess... once you put that that way....
People like me and Wulf don't just pop out the way we are, it's one of the reasons I am ever so more merciful to him despite his struggles with his own prejudices
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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I'm still in love with vertical wind turbines.
That one with the solar panels built in is just pure fuckin WIN any way you slice it.
I wonder if they've tripped to the concept of using a submarine drive shaft clutch in reverse to obtain maximum energy per spin in variable wind conditions ?
EDIT: Wowza, while digging for an explaination of how that clutch works, I tripped over THIS!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine
Apparently the Swedish use em to power a couple subs, it seems.
I'd say this idea has way, way more future potential, especially with alternative fuel systems, than our typical otto engines - which have pretty much reached the peak of development, while the Stirling is still quite primitive in most designs.
EDIT2: Here ya go
http://www.fleetsubmarine.com/propulsion.html
Although, the concept of the batteries producing hydrogen gas when charged - it seems a total shame to waste it by venting, doesn't it ?
Hell, power the galley with it or something.
-F
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The amount of clean-up that would take... I can't even fathom.
Any of these look familiar?
http://cfpub.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/srchrslt.cfm?start=1&CFID=2135
269&CFTOKEN=58245261&jsessionid=2e30573cbb2d159ce6996e58452761660415TR4a302e3020302830
I notice that shipyard is one, but they're calling it final, that must mean they decided to not take any further action. Is it clean?
Someone should discover that company you mentioned, if they haven't.
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I agree with Auraptor that the “problem” of global warming is a lot of assumptions based more on politics then science.
But I’m also not a big fan of fossil fuels. Yes, it true that they are cheap, which makes them attractive, but they probably won’t be forever. And there are other problems with them as well. Combustion engines are smelly and loud and produce noxious fumes. I’m not a fan. But few alternatives really provide the power and reliability needed to run society.
Solar and wind energy are nice, but the problem with them is that they are not reliable.
Electricity, as a general rule, must be used or lost. There’s no way to store it for use later. Batteries are good for small amounts of electricity, but they don’t scale up very well. Large batteries quickly become unwieldy and dangerous and never achieve the level of storage needed. Only recently has battery technology made the electric car even feasible, and then only when combined with a gasoline engine. But purely electric cars are the toys of fanatics – they will never see popular use until the technology improves dramatically.
One good thing is that MIT has made some breakthroughs on battery technology that might make solar and wind power feasible. Recently I heard of a so-called “mega-battery,” which makes it possible to store energy from solar panels and could usher in a day when cities are lit by the sun, even at night. Still these batteries would require 10-20 acres of real-estate to provide the electricity needs of a city like New York.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I'm still in love with vertical wind turbines. Damn, they're just sexy! .
Yeah, I'm fond of vertical things as well.
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Quote:
The amount of clean-up that would take... I can't even fathom.
Honestly Byte, even if you managed it, even if you bulldozed all the buildings, tore everything down to dirt, plowed it under good and abandoned it for a hundred years...
It would STILL be an evil place - it just reeks of it, like the horror and desperation soaked into the ground right along with all the other pollutants, it's really hard to describe without getting all metaphysical about it, but it's undeniably there - I've taken a few disbelievers up there for a short drive in the daytime when visiting family in the state, and even on a bright sunny day with no visible activity, the place STILL scared the living daylights out of em.
Only place I've seen even *close* to that effect was in fiction, The Shoikan Grove gaurding the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas, in the dragonlance works.
Quote:
Any of these look familiar?
You bet, add about a dozen more which have been deleted, and about ten that no one "officially" knows about which are still in use.
Quote:
I notice that shipyard is one, but they're calling it final, that must mean they decided to not take any further action. Is it clean?
Hell no, but the only folks gonna suffer are poor, have no political power, and no one gives a damn about em, so why waste resources on something that isn't even going to net you good PR, much less more funding ?
Quote:
Someone should discover that company you mentioned, if they haven't.
Oh believe me, everybody knows - nobody CARES.
Which is really, when it comes right down to it, what the source of the problem really is.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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"Solar and wind energy are nice, but the problem with them is that they are not reliable."
Do you think hydropower is unreliable ?
That's the thing with hydropower --- it has to be where the resource is. You wouldn't want hydropower in Kansas. And, just as you wouldn't want hydropower in Kansas, you wouldn't want solar power on coastal Oregon, or wind power in Florida. But put each of these in the right place and they are more than simply viable, they are abundant.
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Silence is consent.
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I`m not sure what would be unreliable about hydropower. It runs or can run constantly. It produces a steady, usually unbroken, stream of electricity. Solar and wind power do not. They are intermittent, whether they are in Kansas or the coast.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:As river origin points lose snow & ice, hydropower may fluctuate some, I conjure.
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I`m not sure what would be unreliable about hydropower.
The laughing Chrisisall
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BTW_ Electricity generated by boilers and turbine is not more reliable. Just look at the outages California had several summers ago when power plants were taken offline during peak season. Or just google major+ power+failures
Quote:From a security/ reliability standpoint, its better to have distributed power generation. Those huge boilers and turbines are centralized and tend to require long transmission lines which are subject to heat failure (a common cause of widespread blackouts), fire, earthquakes, ice storms, hurricanes and acts of sabotage or manipulation (by Enron, for example), and solar storms
Major power outage hits New York, other large cities
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Bloomberg says power failure will be fixed in due time and there is no evidence of terrorism in relation to the blackout
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Power began to flicker on late Thursday evening, hours after a major power outage struck simultaneously across dozens of cities in the eastern United States and Canada.
www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1206.
What I envisin is a mixed power structure: In sunny areas, each home having solar roofs. In windy areas, distributed turbine farms, or several turbines on top of each skyscraper. In areas of huge tidal flux, tidal turbine. All of them feeding into the grid. (The technology is possible- it's done here in So Cal with solar power. The most demanding issue is "syncing up" with line frequency and phase.) The sub-grids themselves need to be better "firewalled" from each other than they are now too because taking one major transmission line off the grid dumps the load onto other transmission lines and can cause a series of failures if those lines are stressed.
Now, if you want REAL energy security, you'd have to make each customer able to go off-the-grid altogether. THAT'S more expensive, as each customer would need a big battery for storage.
But overall, if you distribute power production you stress long transmission lines less, and if you re-configure the grid to be able to better isolate portion from each other you have the best chance at energy reliability.
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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
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