@ my wits’ end

Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes

From the BBC:

“A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show.

The controlled fusion of atoms – creating conditions like those in our Sun – has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source.

However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the “plasma” they create could interrupt the fusion.

An article in Science showed the plasma is far less of a problem than expected.

The report is based on the first experiments from the National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US that used all 192 of its laser beams.

Along the way, the experiments smashed the record for the highest energy from a laser – by a factor of 20….”

Read the full article here

Some hopeful news for a change:

Levitating magnet may yield new approach to clean energy.

There’s a difference between scepticism and denial. One is healthy, the other is often one-eyed, fanatical, or both. There are a number of things I don’t understand about the climate change denial industry:

Why do denialists have to be so obnoxious? They invariably use the same sarcastic, sneering tone that Richard Dawkins uses when reviling creationists in his best-selling books. Although I agree with Dawkins’ views on evolution, I suspect that his methods only serve to entrench the beliefs of those whom he belittles—he ends up preaching to the converted. The same argument applies with the denial industry. If they have faith in their beliefs, why not state their truth calmly and lucidly and let the facts sway the skeptical?

Ian Wishhart’s recent book Air Con is a case in point. Sneering is the most apt adjective for the tone of the whole book. I read the book in the hope of finding some insight into the denialist case. I was disappointed. After the first 3 or 4 chapters I’d had it with the half-truths, the interminable ramblings and the lies of omission; I gave up on it.

Where’s the problem?

As a denialist, is it not possible to accept that, even if you’re right, the actions promoted by anthropogenic climate change supporters would be good for the planet no matter what the global temperature graph looks like 20, 50 or 100 years on? Why not just get over it?

• What’s wrong with replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources?
• What’s wrong with denying the oil producers the wherewithal to continue to fund extremist Islam, anti-Western jihadist, and fanatical terrorist groups?
• What’s wrong with reducing atmospheric pollution?
• What’s to like about the coal industry?
• What’s wrong with creating new hi-tech technologies, new green industries, and new clean jobs?
• Who doesn’t want much more energy efficient cars which transfer the reduced amount of pollution they do generate from exhaust pipes to power plants far from choked city streets?

Most of all, how can you be so certain? Scratch the most prominent denialists and you’ll find that they’re doing very nicely out of it – like Bjørn Lomborg (a political scientist) with his money-making books and lecture circuit, or they’re like David Evans (a mathematician) who pads his résumé, or they’re working for big oil, or they’re just plain out-there, like the physicist at Auckland University who seemed to claim that the sun must be driving the change because it’s very big!

I’m not a climate scientist, I’m a retired engineer. My income has depended upon my success in monitoring processes in thermodynamic systems and I can spot a trend as well as anybody.

When the denial industry tell me that the planet’s been cooling since 1998 I know that they’re either mistaken, can’t read a graph, ignorant, or lying. One El Niño induced anomalous year notwithstanding. That tired argument is particularly mystifying when one considers that the last decade is the warmest on record even though we’ve been in a low period of solar forcing for the latter part of it.

When they tell me that Arctic ice cover is increasing while they confuse extent with volume my eyes glaze over.

When the realities of Milankovitch Cycles are ignored and they equate cooling of Pluto with Earth’s climate I smell a very dead and decomposing rat.

For me there’s no choice

Most of all I ask the denialists, “What if you’re wrong?” What will you tell your grand-children? If you’re right, it won’t matter too much, we’ll have made some overdue changes to the way things are done and my grandchildren will benefit.

If you’re wrong, and you succeed in sowing enough doubt, you could doom millions, maybe billions, to a far more apocalyptic outcome than would otherwise be the case.

Time to Act

Nothing really new here, but it puts the scenario for the next century or two in perspective. If you care about our children you should pay attention to this week’s editorial in Nature Journal.

Read it here.

These folk aren’t looney-left green extremists. They’re science folk firmly grounded in reality.

Even a complete halt to carbon pollution would not bring the world’s temperatures down substantially for several centuries.

Leaving your car in the garage won’t make a detectable difference. Keeping informed, spreading the message and making sure the politicians are paying attention will.

The most sensible thing we could do right now is to put a variable tax on oil and coal to create a price floor of at least US$100 per barrel equivalent —  irrespective of OPEC’s prices . This would create a more level playing field and allow the developers of alternative energy sources and technology sufficient certainty to keep them in the business. This needs the leadership of the U.S.A.

It must be done.

As a bonus it would help to stop the developed world transferring vast quantities of their wealth to oil-financed terrorists.

Some connected items caught my eye.

First, Jeanette Fitzsimons got riled up on FrogBlog about the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). It’s no surprise that she’s not happy that the ETS is likely to be put on hold.

I like Jeanette. She’s one Green MP who isn’t a totally head in the sand Watermelon. The Green Party may be in trouble when she’s gone. Nevertheless, she’s bound by dogma in her views on the ETS.

Days prior to Jeanette’s post, Lord Stern spelled out the bad news on global warming.

“Much of Southern Europe would look like the Sahara,”

“Do the politicians understand just how difficult it could be? Just how devastating four, five, six degrees centigrade could be. I think not yet.”

“Many of the major rivers of the world, serving billions of people would dry up in the dry seasons or re-route.

“What would be the implication? Hundreds of millions of people would have to move, probably billions. What would be the implication of that? Extended conflict, social disruption, war essentially, over much of the world for many decades.” Continue reading ‘Climate reality and Green dreams’ »

Habitat loss, pollution, desertification, over-population

It’s not just about climate change…

Jonathan Schell is an insightful writer and scholar. A man of many accomplishments. With spare elegance he has encapsulated my generation’s legacy to our children’s children in this quote:

“Taken in its entirety, the increase in mankind’s strength has brought about a decisive, many-sided shift in the balance of strength between man and the earth.”

“Nature, once a harsh and feared master, now lies in subjection and needs protection against man’s powers.”

“Yet because man, no matter what intellectual and technical heights he may scale, remains embedded in nature, the balance has shifted against him too, and the threat that he poses to the Earth is a threat to him as well.”

Jonathan Schell

Believe it. Those cupfuls of oil add up.

Whether you’re a climate change evangelist or a climate change skeptic, you can’t escape the fact that we’re fouling our grandchildren’s nest and squandering their heritage.

Whether or not you believe that our output of greenhouse gasses is contributing to climate change, it’s undeniable that the measures which need to be addressed in order to limit pollution and to husband non-renewable energy sources are the same measures as those which the proponents of anthropogenic climate change promote.

One world, one people, one chance

If nothing else disturbs you, contemplate the source of funding for Al Qaeda, Hamas, Abu Nidal, Islamic Jihad and dozens of other groups. Every time we buy petrol or diesel we’re contributing to their cause. Those groups obtain most of their funding from oil money: mainly, but not exclusively, from Iran and America’s bosom buddies in Saudi Arabia.

We’re funding an openly declared war upon ourselves.

A quote from the Middle East Forum 5 years ago:

The Saudi government has admitted to spending more than $87 billion over the last decade in an effort to spread Wahhabism. This money has been spent on the creation of Mosques, schools, and other institutions that have constituted the breeding grounds for the foot soldiers of the global Islamic terrorist movement. Political considerations, and oil, have prevented Washington from holding the Saudis accountable for their role in promoting terrorism.

A briefing by Rachel Ehrenfeld
September 19, 2003

I suspect that the soon-to-be-resumed rising cost of oil will eventually be seen to have been a very good thing in every conceivable way.

We only get one bite of the cherry.

Don’t get your hopes up

Unless you’re an American or you’ve been hiding under a very big rock you won’t have missed the unseemly glee with which various cricketing nations have greeted the demise of Australia’s perennial world champions at the hands of South Africa. The Proteas have beaten the Aussies for their first time ever in a test series in Australia. If they win the final test they’ll knock the Aussies off the world #1 pedestal where they’ve been since the old king died.

All this on top of the stunned Australian nation watching the victorious Kiwis thump the Kangaroos in the Rugby League World Cup final.

It’s enough to make a dinkum Aussie swear off Fosters and take up chamomile tea. If you’re not an Aussie, enjoy the feeling while you can. The sporting world is littered with the festering corpses of sports folk who underestimated the Australian will to win.

The legendary Australian Book of Etiquette may be somewhat short but so too is the list of Aussie chokers. I predict with some confidence that their run of defeats won’t last long.

Just like oil at $40 a barrel

When oil was pushing $150 a barrel a few months ago I recall reading that the pundits’ predictions for the medium term ranged from $80 to $200 a barrel. Nobody predicted that the economic downturn would lead to it going below $50.

Not even your trusted blogger. I got it right about the economic meltdown, I even expected Helen Clarke’s relinqushment of the NZ Labour leadership. I did not expect to see oil south of $80 again.

Interesting to speculate upon why OPEC have allowed it to happen.

• A big chunk of the peak was a result of speculation. That bubble has well and truly burst. Some investing biters have been bitten. Historically speaking, $40 a barrel is still not cheap, nevertheless if I had a million or two to spare I’d be partial to oil futures about now.
• We can safely assume that OPEC don’t want to send the planetary economy into even more of a tailspin right now, so they’d be wise to keep their powder dry until the battle lines are clearer.
• It’s also a fair bet that they don’t want to push oil prices up to the point that the USA, the European Union and Japan start getting serious about alternative energy. The Persian Gulf is hardly a hotbed of conservationism – they desperately need us to keep on burning that black stuff.
• Nevertheless, the oil czars are not in the charity business. Don’t be surprised if those outlet valves are eased closed a smidgeon in the very near future.

I’m rather partial to prediction myself, so let’s look at some facts

• Two billion people in China and India are still on a growth curve, albeit having slowed a little. Their oil consumption will probably increase steadily. Another couple of billion people in the emerging world are also aiming at living the high life. The pressure on the price of oil will increase.
• Although oil pumping capacity exceeds demand right now, that happy situation for consumers will last months rather than years.
• The OPEC folk really do want your dollars. How else would we in the West continue to fund Al Qaeda, Hamas, fundamentalist Islam and all the other hate groups whom we pay to hasten our downfall?
• Russia has climbed out of an economic mire on the back of high oil prices. They’ll be partial to staying out.
• The Gulf states are heavily committed to some big spending to keep the peasants from revolting. Some are even running out of oil — are they happy right now?
• Struggling Nigeria, Indonesia and Venezuela are hardly likely to be impressed with the status quo.

Just like the Aussie battlers, they’ll be back.

I’m punting for a stable oil price of at least US$100 a barrel within two years. Possibly within one year. If we had any common sense we’d be putting a tariff on it to bring it up there right now. Fat chance.

More about that soon.

Hmmm… anyone detect a bit of a trend here?

My country, New Zealand, has had a head-in-the-sand attitude toward nuclear power since a stoush with Ronald Reagan and George Schultz in the 1980s over nuclear armed and powered ships. For some, it’s because they can’t separate nuclear fission power from the nuclear weapons issue. Others are Luddites. For most, reason is hindered by lack of knowledge.

There’s much wringing of hands by the environmentalists about this but not much in the way of sensible answers or positive action. Before you jump down my throat, I’m an environmentalist too. I sympathise with the Greens but until they separate their environmental message from their socialist political bias I won’t join them.

Here are some facts:

We talk a lot but we don’t show any sign of being capable of keeping our per-capita energy consumption at current levels. Our population is continuing to grow – ergo, we need to produce more energy.

How do we do that?

• We have a lot of spare hydro capacity in our rivers, but most environmentalists won’t have a bar of more dams.
• We have good wind resources. Lobbyists like Anton Oliver don’t want windmills in their backyard. And there’s the problem of cost and continuity of supply.
• Geothermal is limited. The sources are not infinitely renewable as the folk of Rotorua who rely on steam bores and hot pools have found to their cost.
• We have huge amounts of coal. Can’t use that – environmental vandalism. We just export it to China and they burn it instead.
• Wave and tidal power are available in abundance but are too costly with current (pun intended) technology.
• We don’t have much oil. We may eventually access it from the Great South Basin, but that’s 20 years off and it will still be subject to market pricing. If you don’t understand market pricing, consider what’s happened to the price of snapper and crayfish since we started exporting it to Japan.

Oil

Without oil and imported gas we would be in bit trouble. Not just for transport fuel, but for supplying the national grid.

In 2005 people were predicting that crude oil would be US$50 a barrel in 2007. Well, last I checked it was US$70. It’s going to keep on rising.

And rising.

Many energy experts believe that we’ve already reached the point where supply can’t keep up with demand.

Click on this chart for more information

So, unless there is an early and unexpected scientific and/or technological breakthrough, you’re all going to have to make enormous changes in your lifestyle if you wish to strike nuclear power production off the options list.

In a coming post I’ll look at just what’s wrong with nuclear power and how the dangers stack up against those posed to us by oil.

Image via Wikipedia

Kiwi readers may have taken advantage of recent offers from electricity retailers to purchase 5 compact fluorescent Ecobulbs for $10.

The lamps are excellent. Many manufacturers of compact fluoros exaggerate their effectiveness. There’s no doubt that they put out far more light than their incandescent ancestors for a given wattage, but many don’t match the standard claim of 100W equivalent for a 20W fluoro.

Not so the product from the manufacturer Energy Mad (click here to visit their website: Energy Mad) who supplied the discounted lamps and who clocked up a well deserved 2746 per cent revenue growth last year.

Their lamps are very bright compared to other brands I’ve used.

Complaints about the light quality

A lot of revisionist folk hate fluoros because they say the light is too harsh. It’s not so if you buy the correct lamps.

Remember when you’re buying fluoros that there are two types of light output: daylight and warm. The daylight lamp is just that – daylight. Use it for mood lighting and it ain’t gonna work. for that you need the warm fluoro.

Longevity

I bought one of the original compact fluoros in Fiji 20 years ago. It was a 20W glass encased monster and it cost $30. The good news is that it’s still going.