| Author | Message | ||
     Aesquire |
https://babylonbee.com/news/dangerous-levels-of-me thane-released-as-republicans-rush-to-buy-goya-bea ns | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/07/apo calypse-never.php [Shellenberger] chronicles environmental progress around the world and crisply debunks myth after gloomy myth. No, we are not in the midst of the “sixth mass extinction,” because only 0.001% of the planet’s species go extinct annually. No, whales were not saved by Greenpeace but rather by the capitalist entrepreneurs who discovered cheaper substitutes for whale oil (first petroleum, then vegetable oils) that decimated the whaling industry long before activists got involved. No, plastics don’t linger for thousands of years in the ocean; they’re broken down by sunlight and other forces. No, climate change has not caused an increase in the frequency or intensity of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes. In 2002, Mr. Shellenberger proposed the New Apollo Project, a precursor to the Green New Deal. Many of its ideas for promoting renewable energy were adopted by the Obama administration and received more than $150 billion in federal funds, but Mr. Shellenberger was disillusioned with the results. A disproportionate share of the money, as he documents, went to companies that enriched donors to the Obama campaign but failed to yield practical technologies. For over 6 years, the best investment on Wall Street was to bribe Obama. The easiest money was pretending to save the world. No need to actually solve a problem or build any products, since that takes effort and capital. Much better to promise to rewrite the laws of nature in a pleasing way, like 100% efficient solar power with no cost. And with hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds and no costs to YOU, a great way to take a bonus from a grateful company. That You never intended to honor your promises didn't matter. You parrot the right magic spell, ( "solar energy will replace fossil fuels" & " Our new battery technology will enable electric air lines" ) give a half million dollars to the Party, and you're golden. Also... The comment on plastic is true, It's also true there's a gazillion tons floating in the oceans. Just like corona... Virus or beer, a small amount isn't necessarily dangerous, too much can overwhelm the system. With plastics dumped in the ocean and horrible diseases, the vast majority comes from Communist China, and African countries that went Communist after losing colonial status after WW2. Feel free to blame European Imperialism for everything, if you like. Marx was born there, after all. | ||
| Hootowl |
Tesla update. I have owned the car for just about a year now, and I am still very much pleased with it. I recently drove it from Houston to Seattle, Spokane, Idaho Falls, and back to Houston. I say I drove it, but, in reality, it drove itself, and I supervised. The car will not stay in autopilot unless it detects some amount of steering input from from the driver. Take your hands off the wheel, or fail to provide any input (not enough to take control, but enough to let it know you're there) and it warns you, then eventually shuts off and barks at you to take control. As this defeats the purpose of a self-driving car, I projected my Katra into one of my old diving ankle weights. It fit around the right side steering wheel spoke perfectly, and applied just enough turning force to make the car believe I was holding the wheel. It has a Netflix client, so I can only assume it watches old start trek movies in the garage at night, and was aware of the ability to transfer consciousness into others, and, apparently, inanimate diving weights, for it didn't balk the entire trip. The car has, realistically, a 300 mile range, unless you want to do 80, in which case it is a bit less. Add the AC, and goes down a bit more. The AC uses about 4 miles of range per hour of operation, so I lose 12 miles of range in a three hour drive, which is just about when I need to stop to charge. For the most part, the chargers are spaced within 150 miles of each other, with the exception of a remote part of Texas/New Mexico/Colorado, which I only was able to reach by not exceeding 70 MPH. The car tells you the maximum speed you can travel and still make it to the next charger. To be fair, the nav system didn't want me to go that way, but I wanted to drive through Colorado and Wyoming, Wyoming being my father's birthplace, and lovely country, so I overrode it, and plugged in the charging destination of my own choosing. I accepted having to drive at a more efficient speed to get there. I should also point out that there is a 4000 foot increase in elevation involved. Harder to go uphill, but, being electric, there was no change in performance with the change in altitude. I traveled from charger to charger, taking a nice little break for food, bathrooms, and sometimes a nap while the car was eating. The typical charge time was 20 minutes, depending on how far away the next charger was, and how far I had driven on the last charge. Some were 45 minutes. The first 50% happens very quickly (a V3 charger puts over 1000 miles of range on the battery in an hour) as 10%-50% is the sweet spot for charging. The last 5% takes just as long as the first 50%. However, I never charged to 100% unless I was sitting in a restaurant anyway. The idea is to charge just enough to get to the next charger (plus a 10% buffer). Battery state, and expected state of charge upon reaching your destination are all displayed in the nav system, so it's pretty easy to know how much to charge, even if the car didn't do it for you automatically. It's a very easy and intuitive interface. It also supports voice commands. When I left, I said "take me to Seattle" and it calculated the route, including charge stops, and told me when I would be at each charger, for how long, and what time I would reach Seattle. Pretty neat. I say this in all seriousness: Unless there was construction that required traversing the median into oncoming lanes of traffic, I didn't touch the steering wheel from the time I entered the freeway until after the car had automatically taken the exit to the next charger. It automatically slowed for traffic ahead, it automatically changed lanes to pass slower vehicles, it automatically set my cruise speed to the lower speed limits when the highway went through small towns (had to manually set it higher after passing through), and it automatically exited the freeway, navigated the interchange, and merged onto a new freeway when freeway changes were required to stay on route. It took me about six hours to get comfortable with the car making these decisions for me. By the end of the first 12 hours, I no longer wondered whether I would have to take over during a tight corner, or whether it was aware of other vehicles when it made lane changes. Rather than driving for 30 hours (Houston to Seattle) with my hands glued to the wheel, shoulders aching, and eyes twitching from constant scanning, I was able to take a more supervisory role. I could look around and enjoy the trip, while still being very much aware of what was going on around me. In some ways, I was more aware of my surroundings. On long stretches of highway with no cars in front or behind for a half a mile, it was nice to be able to grab a water out of the cooler, or mess with the stereo, without accidentally veering off the road. I'm sold on self driving. It's not level 5 yet, nor even 4, but it's getting there. Cars don't drink and drive, mess with their phones, put on makeup, rummage around in their purses, bend down to pick up that thing they dropped, or reach into the back seat to slap their kids, and they have a 360 degree view of their surroundings, in radar, sonar, and visible/infrared. I would feel many times safer riding next to a Tesla on autopilot than I would riding next to a human driver. Yes, there are crashes. Some spectacular. But you are three times less likely to be in an accident on autopilot than not. One of the videos out there on Youtube shows a Tesla crashing into an overturned truck on a freeway. It's not noted in the video, but you can see the car braking very hard for a second, then accelerating. I believe the acceleration was due to driver input, and that the car was attempting to stop. $0.02. I have video of the car negotiating fairly sharp corners in a mountain pass at night at freeway speed. If anyone is interested, I will post it on youtube and link to it here. | ||
| Aesquire |
Groovy! There's a tv show on Amazon, Upload, about, um, cyber afterlife. Spoiler!!! protagonist is killed in self driving car accident. Everyone he tells that to says, "that hardly ever happens". If you watch it, you figure it out. Spoiler over. Took My Mom's Prius Prime in for one year service. Still has full tank, never added gas. Dad wins! ( his goal completed ) The self driving is limited to active cruise and lane warning, & only on cruise control. The HUD then displays GPS informed speed !limit signs. I haven't had it in the freeway yet, but other than really firm seats and little wiggle room, it's a nice riding car. Mom apparently found a new display mode, since instead of the old Prius power flow graphic, it showed acceleration curve graphics that are quite useful. I studied hypermiling before it was a buzzword. Did lots of mileage testing on my dodge maxi van. Air dams, spoilers, speeds, acceleration. And engine mods. Best aero mod was to remove the truck mirrors and install small, cone shaped ones off a 240z. I got better with full under pan but it was a pain for maintenance. Best acceleration was brisk, but not tire burning, up to cruise speed to get to top gear asap. Lockup torque converter. Peak mileage speed was 45-48. Or, with Edelbrock RV intake, ported carb, headers, & 2.71 rear gears, about 50. Ymmv.  I got it up to 25 mpg. Over 70% better than stock. (1977 360 v-8 ) Basically half the hypermiling mythology is false. And half is annoying. And a third is outright dangerous. There's a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram. Feel free to disbelieve. But I had my speedometer calibrated, and got an "A" on the paper I wrote for an engineering class. Engine mods were good for about 5 mpg. | ||
| Chauly |
Patrick, I did all of that in a wind tunnel at Clarkson on a model of a Dodge MaxiVan. I got a 50% reduction in drag and an "A" on the project. The mirrors were a big deal, as was the belly pan. but when I rounded the nose with clay, it really dropped... I think all of the weight of the clay would be a handling problem.  | ||
| Aesquire |
Rounding the nose was beyond the aftermarket parts available, and I hadn't learned fiberglass construction yet. I know A lot more about drag now. Carbon fiber and resin infusion would make the weight gain tiny. You'd still have the extra length parking problem, but I usually parked in 2 spots with a maxivan anyway, so... Today I'd look hard at cooling drag. That was half the real world issues with a belly pan. Good design on under engine removable panels for maintenance, and heat exhaust ducting for the radiator would make a big difference. The Rutan Catbird record setting airplane, used an updraft cooling system that dumped the hot air in front of the windshield. Automatic defog but an oil leak would wreck your vision. That wasn't a deliberate design decision, it was because they got a deal on a fairly rare used engine that used updraft cooling. ( most aircraft use downdraft, the difference is mostly the baffles ) The Rutan crew was infamous for doing it quick, light, Cheap and without frills. The nose gear on the Catbird was used from a different plane, and wouldn't self center reliably before retracting. Instead of an automatic mechanism to center the wheel to fit through the door, they just cut a hole in the floor and put in a stick for the pilot to turn the gear. That wouldn't be accepted in any commercial built plane, but a one off record breaking plane? Tell the test pilot to suck it up and adapt. The Catbird hung from the ceiling of the hanger in Mojave for years, until it was given to one of the engineers to resurrect. Originally a 5 seat plane ( The CAFE competition rules made that a good design choice ) for the 2014 record flight they pulled all but one seat and built custom fuel tanks to replace them. Then put the seats back for recreational flying. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_ Catbird | ||
| Hootowl |
Tesla is attempting to get mirrors replaced by cameras to reduce drag. It’s a hard sell. The folks in charge are set in their ways. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/07/che cking-in-with-the-latest-climate-change-estimates. php | ||
| Aesquire |
And in the potential mass disaster dept. https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/07/29/china-lo cals-scramble-high-ground-three-gorges-dam-faces-m ounting-pressure/ | ||
| Ducbsa |
https://the-pipeline.org/about-those-green-energy- unicorns/ | ||
| Hootowl |
Regarding Cobalt. https://oilprice-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/oilpri ce.com/Energy/Energy-General/Teslas-Ambitious-Plan -To-Ditch-Cobalt.amp.html This is good news. Lots of people bash electric cars; I used to. Until you’ve driven one, keep an open mind. | ||
| Ratbuell |
I don't think there's anything wrong with "electric cars" per se (other than range anxiety, and loooong "refuel" times compared to 3min at a fuel pump). The problem I have with them is the holier-than-thou attitude from the owners because they're "saving the planet" by not burning fossil fuel. Well...maybe not IN THE CAR...but where do you think that electricity comes from? Somebody, somewhere, is burning something to make that electricity. Or, burned something, or mined something, or manufactured something that will make the power from either solar, or wind, or...whatever. The END USER is consuming less...but upstream? There's a LOT more consumption involved, and a LOT more garbage/refuse in the end. | ||
| Aesquire |
So, renewable energy takes digging 10 times the utterly irreplaceable minerals than coal? Ten times the environmental impact? Carbon & hydrogen & oxygen, the elements biological processes change to useful products we can burn, ( coal, oil, natural gas - slow ...methane, alcohol, hydrogen - fast ) are abundant and recycle back into forms biological processes can change to sustain life, flowers, food, trees, babies, kittens. Carbon, for all the hysteria, is the basis for half the chemistry taught in college. Literally divided into Organic ( carbon ) and everything else. That we need to transition from old, slow, stored energy, ( fossil fuels ) to new, fast, man made energy, ( methane, booze ) is obvious. And ultimately forbidden by the Climate Cult wing of the Communist Party. That would mean wealth and independence, blasphemy. "Renewable" aka gathering diffuse power from wind, water pulled by gravity, and the faint rays of the Sun, requires massive infrastructure, millions of acres of land, expensive capital investment. And for generators, wind/wave/tide/dams, you need Rare Earth elements that cannot be easily extracted and altered to fit our needs by biology. In fact, it's almost all incredibly poisonous to life. And every atom is strictly limited in quantity and made millions of years ago in the heart of dying stars. Nothing short of a nuclear reactor or relativistic particle beam can make one microgram. ( oh, and enough energy to shatter matter itself ) I suspect the ten times the hole dug is a little misleading. The impact of strip mining for coal can be enormous, albeit you can leave parkland behind paid for by a minor reduction in profits, forced by enlightened environmental regulations. Which are active in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and practically unknown in Marxist dictatorships, which are the biggest environmental criminals in history. ( as well as the worst murderers ) Today, the sick, dying, and graves of the people poisoned by the mining & processing of the heavy metals needed for "Renewable" energy, are far away, and hidden by the rich Party Leaders that profit from exploiting the expendable peasants. So your Woke neighbor probably has no idea how many died in agony so he could pretend he's virtuous. | ||
| Hootowl |
“ and loooong "refuel" times compared to 3min at a fuel pump” It is a paradigm shift in how we think about refueling a vehicle. Do you know how long I’ve waited at a charger? With the exception of road trips, when I’m welcoming that 20 minute break every three hours, exactly zero minutes. Not three, zero. There is no need to stop for fuel. You just drive home and plug in. While you’re sleeping, your car is charging. I leave for work every morning with a full* tank of fuel. There’s no more hitting the gas station on the way home; home is the gas station. “The END USER is consuming less...but upstream? There's a LOT more consumption involved” I disagree. The cost of energy necessarily includes all mining/extracting, processing, transportation, and delivery costs, and electric cars are cheaper per mile to operate than a liquid fueled vehicle. On a cost per mile basis, my 500 horsepower car gets the equivalent of 60 mpg. I’m not referring to the MPGe rating, just dollars per mile. Can you point me at a commonly available 500 hp gasoline vehicle that gets 60 mpg? There are distinct advantages with electric cars. Don’t get so spun up about the green bs being thrown around that you reject the good things that have been developed. *Completely charging a lithium ion battery reduces its life. In a cell phone expected to be obsolete in two years, this is not an issue. In a car expected to last 20, it is. Tesla recommends a daily charge level of 80% for their older battery chemistry, and 90% for their newer stuff. Occasionally charging to 100 is okay, but for everyday use, it’s best not to. And that’s fine for me, as I don’t need to drive 310 miles per day. Even on the drive from Houston to Seattle I only charged to 100 twice, and one of those was because I was in a restaurant anyway. On long trips you charge just enough to get to the next charger, so that the battery is always in its peak charging zone. The last 10% takes as long as the first 50%. The navigation system takes this into account when planning charge stops in order to minimize wait times. | ||
| Hootowl |
“ And every atom is strictly limited in quantity and made millions of years ago in the heart of dying stars.” I’ve heard a theory that all the deuterium in the universe was created in the first 20 minutes after the big bang. After that, the universe had cooled too much to create it. Even in the unimaginable heat of a star, it’s too cold to make heavy hydrogen out of hydrogen and there aren’t enough free neutrons anyway. All the fusion of hydrogen to helium is actually heavy hydrogen to helium, because helium has two neutrons, and hydrogen has none. Essentially, stars still have plenty of hydrogen when they die, but not enough heavy hydrogen to sustain fusion. Interesting. | ||
| Aesquire |
We can create deuterium in our reactors, plus tritium, ( used for glowing dots in gun sights and emergency signs ) Which has a short life as it decays... Which is where the photons come from. It's hard to find a source of power that doesn't need either vast amounts of land, to capture solar power ( wind is indirect solar, oil is old organic solar ) or consumption of stellar fossil fuels. Even in science fiction, smart authors acknowledge the physics of energy. In the Schlock Mercenary series, power plants very efficiently "burn" Helium 3, a renewable/fossil fuel constantly created by solar emissions, & mined from Gas Giants...think Bespin. ( current Helium 3 mining proposals include strip mining the top few centimetres of lunar soil to extract the good stuff ) But in that Fiction, while mining, transporting, and refueling are big business, the real choke point is the reactors are made from Platinum group metals which are slowly consumed. Thus even incredibly clean and powerful energy is ultimately limited by resources. Which makes this hilarious 20 year series more scientifically accurate than Star Trek or Star Wars by light years. | ||
| Hootowl |
I said it was a theory, I didn’t say I bought it. I’m too ignorant to be able to make that determination. The photons don’t come from the radioactive decay of tritium. When tritium decays, it spits out a neutron. Similarly, you don’t stuff neutrons into your gun sights when you blast them with photons from your bedside lamp as you recharge them. You’re thinking of radioluminescence. When used with phosphorescence, the electrons emitted kick out a photon.  | ||
| Hootowl |
Yeah, it’s wikipedia, but it’s not political, so the odds that it’s not complete bullshit go up a bit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium | ||
| Court |
I'm tainted . . . being in the business. I should probably bite my tongue on this one. But . . my sincere thank you to those of you who have steadfastly demanded wind and solar energy. | ||
| Aesquire |
Yes, it's the phosphors that emit photons, powered by Beta particles from Tritium decay. Not Neutrons, the steel in a gunsight isn't made radioactive by Tritium. Radium paint, though... (banned for decades ) | ||
| Ratbuell |
Court is actually helping make the point - all the "green improvements" are requiring HUGE investments in infrastructure, materials, labor, and (eventually) equipment rotation and disposal. Where does all the copper come from, to create these turbine generator coils? And to connect all of them to existing grids, from remote locations? Ditto the solar panels and their connection matrix, as well as the materials that go into making the panels in the first place? Sure, it's creating jobs and adding to our infrastructure. But, what's the true ROI here? What are we - a PLANET - getting out of the deal here? What's the long-term projection? Or, is this just pissing up a rope in the name of virtue signaling? I'm not talking about what Court and other linemen do. I'm talking about what the Karens and all the IT geeks with their "green" cars and solar panels and wind farms are saying about changing the planet with "free electricity"...versus the actual investment in infrastructure, materials, mining, disposal, and hazmat chemicals. Not to mention, the environmental impact of both these active operations (the energy used to mine and manufacture and install); the environmental impact of taking even MORE raw materials out of the earth; and the environmental impact of disposing of all those non-biodegradable products and chemicals when the equipment gets retired and rotated out. (Message edited by ratbuell on August 04, 2020) | ||
| Court |
Certainly interesting times Fun pic from yesterday. This is Mark . . not me.  (Message edited by Court on August 04, 2020) | ||
| Hootowl |
Single engine, off center. | ||
| Hootowl |
That’s a full flow engine. If you don’t understand how huge that is, and what it means for efficiency, watch this. | ||
| Blake |
A full flow burn from bean burrito with jalapeño catalyst is something to behold. | ||
| Hootowl |
How do you maintain aperture and nozzle control? | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/why -green-energy-is-impossible.php Biased, and somewhat full of it, but mostly correct. I'm all for electric cars. Ignoring the metals in the batteries & motors, they probably pollute less than a gasoline car of the same performance, if you figure that they are coal powered. Big power plants are fairly efficient. And our taxes subsidize them. So it makes sense the consumer can save compared to a supercharged Mustang, on fuel. But it's inevitable that if we replace, say, half, the gas cars with electric, we need more power plants, wires, transformers, etc. There's more than meets the eye. | ||
| Hootowl |
That’s not necessarily the case. Power demands during the day and night are drastically different. Charging happens at night. Plants can simply run harder at night than they currently do, which would actually increase efficiency. There may not be a need to build more plants. | ||
| Aesquire |
Sorry, but if you replace the cars then the energy to move them has to come from somewhere. It might be coal, natural gas and nuclear instead of diesel, gasoline & diesel ( corn alcohol, tractors, eh? ) but within a few percent, that power demand isn't that different. Less gas, more coal. And off peak power is in demand for making Aluminum ( very heavy electric demand ) and increasingly filling in for solar. Plus heat pumps in winter & remote thermostats. So the slack just isn't there. For you & Mom, sure. For a hundred million? But it's not bad to build new more efficient power plants. The downside is that natural gas for home heating will go up in price as more is burned for steam instead of coal. And the physics of economy of scale ( big plants should be more efficient users of fuel than a million V-6s ) are in competition with the losses from conversion from one form to another. Fossil/nuclear ( we can skip any steps before we dig It up ) to steam to spinning to electrons to chemical to electrons to spinning. ( is there a shorter path? Fuel cells. ) | ||
| Aesquire |
I'm considering adding Power to my mountain bike. Gasoline, the cheap Chinese 2 strokes, plus the extra hardware to make the kits not destroy wheels fast, are 1/4 the cost of electric. Noisy, vibrating, smoking, a cop magnet, and disposable. About $250 vs $1000. For the engine/motor & battery kit alone, no bicycle. ) Cheap Chinese 4 strokes narrow the price gap, & still need extra hardware. ( mostly a better clamping system to attach the rear sprocket ) And, of course, the batteries are the biggest cost on electric bicycles. All I have to do is wait until I'm too old to throw my leg over and the batteries will be cheaper.. but I won't care. The big advantage of electric is low noise, which both makes the neighbors less annoyed and lets me take bike paths out in the country that don't allow motorcycles etc. hopefully without getting caught. ( if that's a problem with electric, as the signs usually say "no motor vehicle" ) Also despite a buddy's enthusiasm for the smoky beasts, I already own a great motorcycle for the road, and don't need another gas powered bike for the highway, especially of the "vibrating noisy self destructing" type. So... An electric vehicle might be in my future too. |
