octave
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Posts posted by octave
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People throughout history have sacrificed their most valuable things to the gods, hoping for redemption, or rain, or warmer weather. They sacrificed animals, children, jewellery. In the Bronze Age they broke valuable objects and threw them into swamps. Incas threw gold into deep wells. We are no different. A mass hysteria has gripped the otherwise intelligent world, making them wish to sacrifice the basis of our well-being to appease the gods. Shut down the mines, turn off the power stations. The gods will reward us by stopping the cycles of climate change that have continued since the world began.
To link this to religion is drawing I long and desperate bow.
They are few people that want to shut down mines or immediately close down power stations. PM do you think that is what I want? Do you think that I am some religious zealot who wants to bring down the economy?
The cement industry is responsible for I believe 5% of CO2 emissions. I don't want stop humanity using cement or concrete I just want smart innovative people and companies to come up with new and better ways. Here are some smart people innovating cement that both uses less energy to produce and it actually sequesters CO2.
Who are the religious zealots funding this BP. PM you are going to have to accept that your position is a minority position. It must be difficult when you can't reference scientific organisations but must rely on the odd contrarian.
Mining will always be important in our society. Even renewable tech needs the minerals that the mining industry supply. Mining will not go away but what we mine will change as we progress.
A mass hysteria has gripped the otherwise intelligent world, making them wish to sacrifice the basis of our well-being to appease the gods.It would be interesting to make a list of these otherwise intelligent individuals or perhaps it would be quicker to compile a list of those who do not accept to some degree the scientific evidence.
If you genuinely believe that the likes of Bill Gates amongst many others are unintelligent and hysterical I suspect perhaps you need a more convincing argument.
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I am required to have a WWC as a music teacher. I am not especially bothered by it, being self employed it is just another business expense. My check lasts for 5 years and the last renewal was I think $80 which is $16 per year (think it is about $93 per 5 years now) I can understand why a volunteer would be upset by this and in my opinion it should be free. When I worked in Canberra about 10 years ago they did not have or requirement for any kind of specific check however I got myself a Federal police record check which I did not need but hey it was good in a business sense.
I guess the question is who should pay.
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I like the solar car race but I wish there was a category for more normal cars, by which I mean 2 seats and in principle able to be registered.
I would also have an electric car race with solar recharge and more than one battery pack allowed, as an associated event .
https://www.hyundai.news/eu/brand/hyundai-launches-first-car-with-solar-roof-charging-system/
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This whole Israel Folau thing started because he published excerpts from the bible.
There are some people who think that was wrong as it made everybody out to be a sinner. So Israel was brought to heel and lost his well paying job.
Now he has continued in the same vein and we hear people saying he shouldn't be allowed to say such things.
What I wonder is how he can be causing any damage, what harm is he doing? He has just demonstrated the old saying is correct.
It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and dispel all doubt.
Free speech means he can say it, it also means we can criticize it.
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Re. the whole god smiting because of same sex marriage thing. If I were to seriously consider that proposition my first step would probably be to produce a map of countries where SSM was allowed and then overlay a map of natural disasters. If I did notice a correlation then I would probably investigate further to see whether the correlation was significant or not.
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On 09/11/2019 at 4:58 PM, octave said:
And another one.
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I like the idea of flywheels; after the oil shocks of the 70s flywheel research was often in the news.
Simple technology, no complex energy conversion. Just a composite flywheel spinning at high speed in a vacuum chamber under the floor of your car or bus, linked to a generator.
We don't hear much about them lately.
Came across this video, you may find it interesting.
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I like the solar car race but I wish there was a category for more normal cars, by which I mean 2 seats and in principle able to be registered.
I would also have an electric car race with solar recharge and more than one battery pack allowed, as an associated event .
This concept car was designed and built by members of a team that one the solar race 3 times. Not pure solar though.
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I like the solar car race but I wish there was a category for more normal cars, by which I mean 2 seats and in principle able to be registered.
I would also have an electric car race with solar recharge and more than one battery pack allowed, as an associated event .
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The battery for the SA grid cost us 40 cents per watt-hour, which is just under half of what you get from hobbyking, but that battery was so big it cost millions.
I couldn't find a price for a replacement 64kWh battery for the Kona, but guess it would be about $40,000. This guess leaves the cost of the rest of the car at over $20,000 which is reasonable. This is better than my hobbyking figures, but not by so much that the argument changes.
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SO at $1 per watt-hour, or $1000 per kWh, or $60,000 for 60 kWh,
Actually for around this price you can pretty much buy a 60kw battery pack wrapped up in a Hyundai Kona EV
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I wish your graph was right Octave. It indicates to me that my 0.1kWhr battery in 2018 should have cost $17.60.
Instead I paid over $100.
I bet you can't actually buy a 1kWhr for $176 .
To be fair we may comparing retail price with price to manufacture. But the more important point is that the cost of battery storage is reducing rapidly.
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Imagine a giant flywheel spun up by solar power and slowed by consumption. If no rpm limit, it could store a months worth of sunshine for two days of use. Can we do it with chemicals? Yes, one day. If we could kick uranium or thorium atoms up to a higher activity then use heat from decay when we need it. I am confident it will happen, but not in my lifetime.
I guess I am more of a techno optimist than you are.
There is no reason to believe that progress will not continue at the pace it has in the recent past and in all likelihood it will increase.
New York, spot the 1 car among the horses.
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13 years later ,spot the 1 horse among the cars
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I wish your graph was right Octave. It indicates to me that my 0.1kWhr battery in 2018 should have cost $17.60.
Instead I paid over $100.
I bet you can't actually buy a 1kWhr for $176 .
Bruce you cant necessarily equate small batteries with
I wish your graph was right Octave. It indicates to me that my 0.1kWhr battery in 2018 should have cost $17.60.Instead I paid over $100.
I bet you can't actually buy a 1kWhr for $176 .
The price of a small battery may not directly relate to large batteries.
"At the Stanford Global Energy Forum last month, Lei Zhang, founder and CEO of Envision Energy, made an extraordinary pronouncement. He said the cost of manufacturing EV battery cells would fall below $100 per kWh by 2020 and would be less than $50 per kWh by 2025 according to Driving, a Canadian automotive news site.
The conventional wisdom is that when the price for EV battery cells falls below $100 per kWh, that is when electric cars will become price competitive with conventional cars and the EV revolution will go into hyperdrive. We can’t know for sure, but many industry observers believe Tesla is very near that threshold for the battery cells it manufactures at its Gigafactory 1 in Nevada, if it has not already crossed over it. In general terms, the current industry standard for EV battery cells is believed to be $145 per kWh.
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Today my wife and I are in our solar powered van. We can watch tv or do most things we want. Gas for cooking. The two things we can’t run are the microwave and the aircon, neither matters today. A step change is needed to make us fully solar.
In 1990 we built a house in the bush off the grid. We paid $590 for each of our 60 watt panels. A 60 watt panel (if you could be bothered buying one this small) is $156. Bear in mind given inflation $590 is an enormous amount. The enormous advances in technology will mean that in the near future it will not matter whether you understand climate science or not, it will just be cheaper and more efficient.
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Here's the problem: there is no cheap battery. My Jabiru uses an 8.4 amp-hour battery at 13.2 volts and cost just over $100. Now 8.4 amps for 1 hour at 13.2 volts is 110 Watt-hours.
So I paid about $1 per watt-hour and it was real cheap, most pay 4 times as much. ( they get better control-stuff built into the box though )
SO at $1 per watt-hour, or $1000 per kWh, or $60,000 for 60 kWh, the idea is real expensive.
The world is crying out for a battery which will store electricity for a few cents per kWh, I wish I could invent one.
Battery prices are falling rapidly.
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I am just having a solar system installed at my place and did consider a tesla powerwall but decided against it as it is not quite there yet on a purely economic basis. (about $8000 for a 14kw powerwall plus installation) The prices are falling and efficiency is increasing. For some people they are already economic. Note I did say I could foresee a time in the near future. I did live for 20 years on a bush property with no mains electricity, in this case battery plus solar was economically superior.
It is easy to think that the rapid technological progress if the 20th and early 21st century some how has reached an end but people are not great at predicting the future. IBM thought there would be an extremely limited market for the computer now we all have one in our pocket.
Vehicle to grid is already beginning used.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/vehicle-grid-technology-revving
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What we need is to produce our electricity as needed locally.
I strongly agree with this. One reason I am not a fan of nuclear (as it is done at the moment) is that it is very centralized and gives control to large corporations. I can see a time where all houses will have solar and storage and perhaps a suburb that is interconnected whereby power is automatically traded between households. I also see a place for EV vehicle to house. In my case being semi retired and doing some work from home I find my car (not an EV at this stage) sits idle. A 60kw battery would provide power at peak times or evenings quite easily and maintain enough range for my use.
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Yeah, both. Fires and ice, neither is evidence of anything. Weather is not climate.
Individual events are not evidence but trends are.
The fire season in both hemispheres is getting longer is it not?
Again I am going to stick with overwhelming majority of scientific consensus on this until there is convincing evidence to the contrary is published and peer reviewed.
Today I watched the press conference by these guys. https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/11/14/fire-chiefs-bushfires/ Now deniers usually claim that climate change is a scam by people who want to overthrow the economic system or scientists who are merely trying to get research dollars (of course research dollars could also be gained from the fossil fuel industry). These guys have don't have either of these motives as far as I can see. The one I am fairly certain is that a denier will come up with a rationalisation as to why these people are speaking out. It must be hard work being a denier, having to dismiss The majority of the worlds scientific organisations and the majority of scientists in favour of the odd contrarian.
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The northern hemisphere is in the grip of an early and intense winter weather. It has been described as unprecedented. In North America the weather has been compared to January, with 97 local low temperature records set for November. Interesting.
I am guessing you see this as some kind of evidence that climate change is a hoax. Cherry Picking is common tactic amongst deniers. If you believe an instance of record cold is significant in itself then surely you would also attach the same importance other extreme events such as the fires in California. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/11/04/forecasters-california-fire-season-could-last-into-december-expect-more-large-blazes/
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I reckon the greens really don't understand the latest stuff on nuclear energy, where the radioactive waste and thermal runaway problems have been overcome.
Bruce as I have said many times here I am not philosophically opposed to nuclear. I believe it is drawing a long bow to suggest that the only impediment to nuclear power in this country is the greens. I would strongly suspect that if a nuclear power station or waste facility were to be proposed in the most politically conservative location in Australia that opposition would not be only from greens but from local residents.
The impediments to building a nuclear power facility in Australia are are more complex than "it would be a goer if only the greens would us". There are countries around the world where what the public want or not are not an impediment to what the government does. Are there any countries who derive all of their power from nuclear? If not an if it is so cheap and easy then why not?
I am quite interested in all sorts of technologies including nuclear but I am not sure what the new technologies regarding waste processing are, perhaps you could enlighten me.
I have posted the above clip before, it is not anti nuclear but it does highlight some of the present problems.
I am all in favour of researching new so called small modular reactors and I am especially interested in research into travelling wave reactors which are supported by the Gates foundation.
I am most definitely not a fan of large reactors such as Hinkley Point C which has become enormously expensive and behind schedule and involves large overseas corporations to build.
I don't think that any one technology will be the answer. Nuclear is unlikely to happen here anytime soon and far from the greens being the biggest impediment I would suggest that the biggest impediment is the coal loving conservatives. Nuclear only makes sense in terms of climate change mitigation but these very same people say there is no problem.
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We are quite happy with the place my father went into. Of course he would rather be at home but this is not possible. Since he went in life has improved for them. My mother visits every day and can stay overnight if she wishes. He is treated very well but it does help that he does not have any dementia and other than some medical needs is affable and liked by the staff. If I was to criticize anything it would be the low staff ratios on weekends. Well meaning staff with too much work. My father's only complaint is that although they serve a glass of wine three days a week he is not impressed with the quality. We are putting a bar fridge in his room which we will ensure is stocked with his favourite NZ sav blanc.
Less frail residents come and go from the facility as they please.
Nev like you I have no wish to end my days in such a place however in my father's case his life has improved. Earlier this year we visited (we live in a different state) and in the middle of the night we could hear my mother trying to take care of him and him crying an saying "I don't know what you want me to do" pretty sad to hear. After weeks of this my mother pretty much lost it and gave up. Now he is reasonably happy and they spend the day together watching TV or reading or he will surf the net on his beloved Ipad (not bad for 91). In this case aged care was literally a life saver.
To inject a few facts into the discussion the cost everyone pays in aged care is $51.63 per day which is the basic daily fee, this equates to 85% of the aged pension. There is a second fee which is the care fee which is means tested and is between $0 and $252 a day, In my fathers case he pays $10 a day Any extra costs are on a fee for service basis for extras. My father pays a few dollars a week for wine.
There is a lifetime cap on the care fee of $27754 per year or $66610.
You can pay for the accommodation fee (fully or partially) by paying a RAD which is around $300000 more or less but depends on the particular place. This is refunded in full when you "leave" to you or your estate What happens here is that the interest from your RAD pays for some or all of the accommodation fee.
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I reckon the current situation with old folks homes is a great example of people wanting more from governments than they are prepared to pay for.
They want to dump their oldies yet have them taken good care of without cost to themselves and their inheritance.
It would be easy to fix: increase the charges for those who don't want to do voluntary work. This would take more backbone than is available I fear.
Bruce we have just navigated this system. My we put my father into an aged care facility because my mother could no longer look after him. When you suggest that people "dump their oldies yet have them taken good care of without cost to themselves and their inheritance." I wonder if you are aware of the costs? If someone were to be trying to preserve their inheritance they would try to keep their loved one at home. Even basic aged care takes pretty much all of my fathers pension and their savings will be eventually eaten into down to I think $49500 each. Their house is protected until my mother inevitably goes in when the house will become an assessable asset.
It is a complicated system too get your head around but basically since 2014 people have been required to substantially contribute to their aged care.
The climate change debate continues.
in Science and Technology
Posted
Two interesting articles.
Hydrogen future
Hydrogen can cut emissions and boost exports