| Friday,
August 31, 2007 Wind
Power
Background - I'm a 45 year old Chemical engineer who
grew up in west texas where there is plenty of wind, lots of sun, and not
much else.
Solar and Wind are great ways to charge a bank of
batteries. For small locations that are very far from the grid it's an
amazing solution. Big stuff needs base load power plants and nukes make the
most sense for the long term.
As the cost of grid power goes up it makes more sense
to start using solar and wind for my low load needs at home, but my
homeowners association doesn't allow big windmills - for obvious reasons.
I'm waiting for a good inventor to provide me with a
small rooftop mounted wind mill. It needs to look like the normal
"whirlybird" attic wind turbine vent fans so as not to disturb the
neighbors.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=
http://www.edmonds.com.au/images/superwhirly.jpg&imgrefurl=
http://www.edmonds.com.au/html/products/
superwhirly_turbine_ventilator_300mm.htm&h
=182&w=250&sz=11&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=mUX5-R5bQ0U8oM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=111&prev=/images%3
Fq%3Dattic%2Bfan%2Bwhirly%2Bbird%26gbv%3
D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den
If you attach the whirlybird to a small generator and
then to a batter bank you can run a set of lights without using grid power.
I can install 10 of these on my house without bothering the neighbors.
Most of my neighbors are already using solar power to
run their accent lights along their sidewalk and in the garden. Several are
also using solar power to run pumps in the swimming pool and landscape
waterfalls. Here in hurricane country the solar accent lights serve double
duty as emergency lights if we must go without power for a week or two.
Several technologies are converging to make this a
reality in the next few years.
1. Efficient lighting (LED and compact fluorescent)
2. Better batteries
3. low cost PLC controllers to manage the current load
and keep the batteries topped off properly.
4. As the cost of grid power continues to go up the
ROI for these units will improve.
5. Portable electronics all run on DC power which is
great for batteries. TV, Laptop, etc.
6. Baby boomers (who have all the money) buy boats,
RV's, lake houses, beach houses, and mountain cabins - all areas that tend
to need "off grid" power. Increased demand yields lower cost components and
innovative ideas.
Maybe we'll be able to "reap the wind" in my
generation.
Jim Coffey
My neighbor Ed Begley Jr has one of those
rooftop mills. It's certainly not an eyesore.
http://www.pe.com/reports/2007/futurepower/stories
/PE_News_Local_D_begley24.1993f31.html
http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/ed.htm
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/begley_vs_nye.php
========
Francis Hamit on
Richard Jewell
A few words about Richard Jewell
Dear Jerry:
A few words about Richard Jewell and the Olympic Park
Bombing. At the time I was a Contributing Editor for Security Technology and
Design magazine and wrote a monthly column called "Security Counterpoint".
Watching Jewell on television while he was being harassed and looking at the
coverage on the Internet, where everyone was simply quoting each other and
very little new information was offered, I quickly concluded that he had
been wronged and unjustly accused. I wrote a column to this effect, but my
Editor, who lived in Atlanta and had ties to local law enforcement, was
convinced that he was indeed the guy responsible. We argued about this for
several months and the column only ran after the U.S. Attorney there cleared
him.
The Jewell case is now taught as a horrible example of
what getting facts wrong can do to innocent lives. Here there were no real
facts, just assumptions. The source of Jewell's problems with the FBI
allegedly were the fault of Ray Cleere, the President of Piedmont College.
Jewell had been a cop there. (Yes, he was a cop. POST Trained and Certified
by the State of Georgia, who graduated in the top 25% of his class. Cleere
who came to Piedmont after Jewell was hired there, was unclear on the
concept of what he was dealing with with the officers on the campus force.
Being cops and not so called "security guards" and sworn to uphold the law,
they did not have the luxury of looking the other way when students there
drank underage and/or drove while doing so. Cleere was the former
Commissioner of Higher Education in Mississippi and left there under a cloud
to take the job as President of Piedmont, which is a small college for those
of Christian values. Preacher's kids. Cleere didn't want the little darlings
arrested. Jewell, as he always did, did his job and was fired for it.
When Jewell got media attention for his heroism at the
Olympic Park, Cleere allegedly took it upon himself to call the FBI and
described Jewell's employment and character in most unflattering terms.
This, it seems, was where the cop wantabee rap against Jewell came from. But
Jewell was a cop and took the Olympic Park job as something in between
police jobs. It was never a career move and lots of cops also work security
between jobs or as a second job. What possessed Cleere to do this other than
simple jealousy and meanness, has never been clear. I have been told that
Piedmont, or rather its insurance company settled with Jewell for four
million dollars, the limit under their policy. To my surprise the last time
I checked, Cleere was still its President. There was a photo online of him
and Jane Fonda, accepting some kind of award during her brief romance with
that brand of Christianity.
So, anyway, this is where Jewell's troubles started. I
discovered this trying to do a follow-up column but my Editor deemed it old
news by that point. Talking to one of Piedmont's other cops I got the
impression that Jewell was simply doing what the rest of them should have
been doing and would have been doing had Cleere not fired Jewell for doing
it. Jobs are not easy to come by there I gather.
But the real shame was the way that the media piled
on. Jewell was more than a little Christian himself and he felt the
accusations against him keenly. I read today that he never expressed any
bitterness nor talked about the matter, but it undoubtedly helped shorten
his life. There was one big name newsman who said "What if he didn't do it?"
when Tom Brokaw was accusing him openly of just that on national television.
Bob Costas, whose beat is sports.
I never did meet Richard Jewell. I would have liked
to. I spent over 20 years at "Day Jobs" in the Security Industry and they
have few cultural heroes. It seems that when one does do the right thing, as
Jewell did and as Frank Wills did at Watergate, the long knives come out.
That's a pity. Jewell deserved better at our hands.
May he be long remembered for the great soul he was.
Sincerely,
Francis Hamit
Thanks.
Mr. Cleere is not dead, so I suppose I
cannot add him to my book.
========
Subject: Global warming. No
Consensus.
Jerry,
The paper is due to be formlly published in the
journal Energy and Environment. The science blog DailyTech
<http://www.dailytech.com/Survey%2BLess%2BThan
%2BHalf%2Bof%2Ball%2BPublished%2BScientists%
2BEndorse%2BGlobal%2BWarming%2BTheory/
article8641..htm> has obtained a pre-publication copy which
states:
Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%)
gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit"
endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure
rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus
outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either
accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."
Ho hum,
John Edwards
========
Water pours on your star system
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6968724.stm
<snip>
A torrent of water-ice cascading down on an
embryonic star system may shed light on how a key ingredient for life
makes its way into planets.
</snip>
Gods, what I wouldn't give to live billions of years
and spend part of that just watching star systems form.
Braxton
Indeed.
========
No more ice age?
Jerry: The claim is that an ice age will be delayed up
to 1/2 million years because of carbon dioxide already in the system.
<http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/index.php?full=1>
Dr
Tyrrell’s team used a mathematical model to study what would happen to
marine chemistry in a world with ever-increasing supplies of the
greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. The world’s oceans absorb CO2 from the
atmosphere but in doing so they are becoming more acidic. This in turn
is dissolving the calcium carbonate in the shells produced by
surface-dwelling marine organisms, adding even more carbon to the
oceans. The outcome is elevated carbon dioxide for far longer than
previously assumed. The plausibility of the phenomenon is supported by
theoretical analysis.
and bio-piracy? When science is outlawed, only
criminals will have science? Brazil is apparently awash in anti-scientific
paranoia.
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/29/healthscience/snbiopiracy.php>
It takes a village to raze a mad scientist's
laboratory.
Chris
==
Giant spider web
Jerry: Do you suppose that things like this:
<http://citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=200770830007>
are consequences of climatic change? If so, I could do
without it.
"Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all
its students."-- Hector Berlioz
Chris
Given that West Nile is spreading in LA,
maybe we could import the spiders...
========
Handling waste with plasma gasification
Convert anything (except nuclear waste) to glass, gas
and electricity....
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/
873aae7bf86c0110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
About two thirds of the power is siphoned off to run
the converter; the rest can be used on-site for heating or electricity, or
sold back to the utility grid.
Sounds intriguing. I'd like a way to generate
electricity while simultaneously not filling landfills.
Regards,
John Harlow
=========
Cory Doctorow, Scribd, SFWA, and
DMCA
Read your comments regarding Mr. Doctorow's comments
re. the mass DMCA takedown at Scribd. I have to respectfully disagree with
your stance on the matter, and I hope you'll soften that stance somewhat on
further consideration.
The problem with the action, in my view, is NOT that
the SFWA used the DMCA to get Scribd to remove material that infringed an
author's copyright. In my view, it is an author's right to choose to do
whatsoever he or she will with his or her own product... and any author who
sees their content being distributed illegally has a right to act to take it
down. Unlike some, I see no moral obligation for an author (or any artist)
to provide work for free, though I will say that I choose to do so (I
publish a comic on the web).
The problem in my eyes, is that there was content that
was taken down via a DMCA declaration that the SFWA was in no position
whatsoever to demand be taken down -- Mr. Doctorow himself has mentioned
that he has published a book under an open license, free for any to
distribute, that was taken down as a part of this action. In other words,
there is at least one instance where a copyright holder found his material
removed at the request of the SFWA, where they had no right or authority to
remove it.
Now I believe from a legal standpoint the SFWA is ok
-- I think the DMCA treats the first takedown request as a "no fault"
situation for everyone involved (note that I'm not a lawyer and I can't
vouch for whether this interpretation is true). And Mr. Doctorow should be
able to contact Scribd and have his content restored (and if the SFWA should
attempt to have it taken down again, they would be liable for that action in
court). Be that as it may, I don't see anything laudible about the SFWA
"righting some wrongs" at the expense of someone else's rights on *their*
properties. I can understand why an author would want to keep pirated works
off of a site, but I can't understand or endorse same author taking measures
that affect the decisions other authors have made "just to be safe."
In situations like these precision is needed instead
of carpet bombing. When the decision is made that collateral damage is OK
then ultimately you weaken your own position where your rights on your work
is concerned, because you are taking legal action that affects someone
else's property against their will -- surely that can't be a good precedent
to take?
I am a musician, a cartoonist (albeit a bad one) and a
would-be author -- I don't endorse piracy. But I do support an artist's
right to choose how his or her work is distributed and licensed, whatever
that may be. And from that perspective it seems to me that the SFWA grossly
overstepped itself in this situation.
Respectfully, Christopher B. Wright (wrightc@ubersoft.net)
The site in question uses other people's
works to draw a crowd and thus fulfill their business model. I first learned
of them when I found that just about everything I have ever written, alone
or with others, was posted in full text. MOTE IN GOD'S EYE. HIGHER EDUCATION
(which is STILL there). Many other works by me, Niven, Sheffield, Heinlein,
and others.
Their response was a demand that I prove
ownership of everything they had stolen; they insolently set up a set of
hurdles for authors to get their works removed from this den of thieves.
SFWA acted on behalf of a number of actual
writers. It was impossible to list each of the thousands of stolen items, so
Dr. Burt used a computer generated list. That list may well have included
some items to which the thieves had some rights of publication.
They could have ignored those, of course,
and knew they could do so. But somehow we are supposed to have great
sympathy for these people and for the authors who want their works displayed
there because SFWA included some few dozen items legitimately posted on
their site among the thousands of stolen items they posted.
If they can draw a crowd with the stuff
they legitimately post, then let them do so; but their business model
clearly intends something a bit different.
They know full well that SFWA can't and
won't do anything about the stuff they post with permission of the authors
or copyright holders; and yet all the focus is on these few legitimate items
among the thousands of stolen goods they displayed for download. (And
download you could; I got copies of some of my works from their site. They
certainly had no permission from me.)
Why these pirates deserve sympathy and a
writers association that tries to defend the rights of writers deserves
obloquy in not clear to me. You say you endorse a writer's right to choose.
Since that place still hasn't cleared all the pirated works, and is
certainly under no obligation to remove items they have permission for
including yours, I do not understand your point.
If you want to post your works with them,
send them permissions. If they have the permissions they know they don't
have any obligation to remove those. So please tell me, precisely, how an
over inclusive demand to remove a few legitimately displayed works is
morally evil, while putting up thousands of works without a scintilla of
permission, and making it very difficult to request their withdrawal, is
laudable?
========
Seitz on CO2 and Food
Dear Jerry
In the discussion of ethanol fuel and higher food
prices , you ask"
"Has anyone done a CO2 budget on burning food? Fewer
steers, perhaps, and corn eats CO2, but then gets burned again... I don't
know the efficiencies. There was a time when I'd do the math, but I am sure
there are many of you who can do it. "
The counterintuitive answer has emerged from concern
about the ostensibly high energy and CO2 cost of shipping food halfway
around the world. Sometimes this can actually save a lot of CO2 emission, as
when grass fed Kiwi lamb and Argentine beef displace corn fed feedlot
products in the UK . In the winter, when normally grass fed dairy herds must
be fed indoors in both new and Ol England, drinking milk becomes Hreenhouse
intensive, because the methane coming out of the cows roughly doubles their
radiative forcing impact.
I have taken the liberty of pursuing this one step
further , and the analysis has taken a decidedly Hogarthian turn:
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/08/wheres-ye-beefe.html
-- Russell Seitz
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