[geo] AP Story on SRMGI Meeting
AP reports on the recent SRMGI conference here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110403/ap_on_hi_te/eu_the_sunshade_option Any thoughts or impressions from those of you who might have attended? Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com http://geoengineeringpolitics.blogspot.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
RE: [geo] Wind and wave energies are not renewable after all
Although I am member of Environmentalists For Nuclear (EFN) I suspect that it is our nuclear sponsors and Australian uranium mining who have concocted this concern of winds running out in the aftermath of Japan nuclear disaster in order to dismiss the renewables as serious alternative. In any case, it will take decades to build such capacity which should not be our immediate concern at all. Albert Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2011 20:17:40 + Subject: Re: Re: [geo] Wind and wave energies are not renewable after all From: voglerl...@gmail.com To: d.na...@gmail.com CC: agask...@nc.rr.com; andrew.lock...@gmail.com; geoengineering@googlegroups.com Hi All, Last year I read a short comment by Dr. Caldera on High Wind energy harvesting posted on Bill Gates website http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Conversations/What-About-Wind. Dr. Caldera stated if we were to meet future power demand by this source exclusively, we must intercept more than 1% of natural flows. I think when we get above a 1% change in a natural system, we need to be concerned about large scale unintended consequences.. And, now I see this report by Dr. Kleidon reporting concerns about Boundary Layer Winds and Wave Energy. I am somewhat disappointed that such exotic extrapolations are getting serious play on the issue of renewable energy. First, I believe Dr. Gaskill statement in this tread is the the clearest thinking on this issue of the use of these renewable energies. This planet is in fact solar powered and the solar energy that it receives is far more than we can use. Also, Boundary Layer winds are effected by the difference between the rotational speed of the planet and that of the total (fluid) mass of the atmosphere. High altitude winds also get impacted by this differential to a certain degree. Wave energy has not just the solar energy input, but, the added lunar diurnal gravitational influence. I am not an expert in any shape or form, but, I have twirled a coffee cup and watched how the boundary friction between the cup and fluid causes the fluid to move. And, I have stood by the shore and watched the force of a tide rise and fall and watched the wave production from that force. On a global scale, these basic physical forces are clearly significant enough to be considered into the equation. Looking beyond just the solar energy input/effect seems worth factoring into these types of calculations. We should not be looking to calculate any renewable energy option into the ground. We will need all of them (including High Wind) to power our civilization. Dr. Gaskill, when they wake you up, I'll cook breakfast! My reading of the article suggested that the authors of the study were principally claiming that wind has an impact on climate, so it is already being used. What wasn't clear from the article was what type of impact reducing the energy level of winds all over the globe through the prolific use of wind turbines might have. In a warming world, I understand we should expect stronger winds. On a simplistic generalized level that might not be relevant to local climate, slowing those stronger winds down might have an ameliorating effect on climate change. Hence the claim that The magnitude of the changes was comparable to the changes to the climate caused by doubling atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide might not be as bad as it is made to seem. As usually, I'm grasping at straws, but as a layman, that's what stood out for me. Nando On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 3:15 PM, Alvia Gaskill agask...@nc.rr.com wrote: Wind and wave energy are the result of the conversion of solar energy into kinetic energy, i.e. the motion of molecules. Once converted into kinetic energy it's a use it or lose it proposition. Extracting kinetic energy from the atmosphere or the ocean doesn't mean it won't be replaced by more energy from sunlight. Planting more trees will also intercept winds, albeit without the electricity generation. Who funded this research? The same people who want to prevent contact with alien civilizations? I note that the Royal Society was also a party to that one too. Note to Royal Society. When you actually find something under the bed I should be afraid of, wake me up. - Original Message - From: Andrew Lockley To: geoengineering Sent: Friday, April 01, 2011 8:10 Subject: [geo] Wind and wave energies are not renewable after all Wind and wave energies are not renewable after all 30 March 2011 by Mark Buchanan Magazine issue 2806. Subscribe and save For similar stories, visit the Energy and Fuels and Climate Change Topic Guides Editorial: The sun is our only truly renewable energy source Build enough wind farms to replace fossil fuels and we could do as much damage to the climate as greenhouse global warming WITNESS a howling gale
Re: [geo] AP Story on SRMGI Meeting
You know, given the way things go, it's much more likely that if anything is done at all, other nations will come begging the U.S. to do something, rather than the scenarios commonly presented by the scaremongers at this conference. Did you see how other nations jumped right on that Libyan thing, telling the U.S. to MYOB, we can handle it? Of course, after the Arab League (joke) and the Security Council approved the No Fly Zone and people actually started getting killed (happens when you fire missiles at the ground where people are), then they decided it wasn't really what they had approved. So when the little countries beg the bad old USA to do something about the global warming in 2050 cause they're too hot or too hungry and it doesn't turn out exactly like they wanted it to or imagined it should, one can expect they will be upset. Buyers remorse is always the worse kind. Especially when the buyer is wearing rose-colored glasses. - Original Message - From: Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com To: geoengineering geoengineering@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 9:20 Subject: [geo] AP Story on SRMGI Meeting AP reports on the recent SRMGI conference here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110403/ap_on_hi_te/eu_the_sunshade_option Any thoughts or impressions from those of you who might have attended? Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com http://geoengineeringpolitics.blogspot.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
Fwd: [geo] AP Story on SRMGI Meeting
This seems to have been the usual sort of governance wonks, who don't realize that to make concrete governance decisions you need to know a lot about the technology and how it plays out. Until we do, there's little point to such pontificating. Much like Asilomar. Gregory Benford On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.comwrote: AP reports on the recent SRMGI conference here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110403/ap_on_hi_te/eu_the_sunshade_option Any thoughts or impressions from those of you who might have attended? Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com http://geoengineeringpolitics.blogspot.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
Re: [geo] Truth still inconvenient
See also LA Times story: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-climate-berkeley-20110404,0,772697.story Critics' review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming A UC Berkeley team's preliminary findings in a review of temperature data confirm global warming studies. By Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times April 4, 2011 A team of UC Berkeleyhttp://www.latimes.com/topic/education/colleges-universities/university-of-california-berkeley-OREDU0197.topicphysicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus http://www.climate.gov/ on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project http://berkeleyearth.org/was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called the legitimate concerns of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated. But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is excellent We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups. The hearing was called by GOPhttp://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/parties-movements/republican-party-ORGOV004.topicleaders of the House Science Technology committee,http://science.house.gov/hearing/full-committee-hearing-climate-changewho have expressed doubts about the integrity of climate science. It was one of several inquiries in recent weeks as the Environmental Protection Agencyhttp://www.latimes.com/topic/environmental-issues/environmental-cleanup/u.s.-environmental-protection-agency-ORGOV48.topic's efforts to curb planet-heating emissions from industrial plants and motor vehicles have come* *under strenuous attack in Congress. Muller said his group was surprised by its findings, but he cautioned that the initial assessment is based on only 2% of the 1.6 billion measurements that will eventually be examined. The Berkeley project's biggest private backer, at $150,000, is the Charles G. Kochhttp://www.latimes.com/topic/economy-business-finance/charles-koch-PEBSL00421.topicCharitable Foundation. Oil billionaires Charles and http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/06/nation/la-na-koch-brothers-20110206David Kochhttp://www.latimes.com/topic/economy-business-finance/david-koch-PEBSL00422.topicare the nation's most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels, the largest contributor to planet-warming greenhouse gases. The $620,000 project is also partly funded by the federal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where Muller is a senior scientist. Muller said the Koch foundation and other contributors will have no influence over the results, which he plans to submit to peer-reviewed scientific journals. Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, which contributed some funding to the Berkeley effort, said Muller's statement to Congress was honorable in recognizing that previous temperature reconstructions basically got it right…. Willingness to revise views in the face of empirical data is the hallmark of the good scientific process. But conservative critics who had expected Muller's group to demonstrate a bias among climate scientists reacted with disappointment. Anthony Watts, a former TV weatherman who runs the skeptic blog * WattsUpWithThat.com*, wrote that the Berkeley group is releasing results that are not fully working and debugged yet But, post normal science political theater is like that. Over the years, Muller has praised Watts' efforts to show that weather station data in official studies are untrustworthy because of the urban heat island effect, which boosts temperature readings in areas that have been encroached on by cities and suburbs. But leading climatologists said the previous studies accounted for the effect, and the Berkeley analysis is confirming that, Muller acknowledged. Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming? he asked in his written testimony. We've studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no. Temperature data are gathered from tens of thousands of weather stations around the globe, many of which have incomplete records. Over the last two decades, three independent groups have used different combinations of stations and varying statistical methods and yet arrived at nearly identical conclusions: The planet's surface, on average, has warmed about 0.75 degrees centigrade (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since the beginning of the 20th century. Temperature data were the focus of the so-called 2009 Climategate controversy, http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/petitions.html in which opponents of greenhouse gas regulation alleged that leaked emails from a British climate
Re: Fwd: [geo] AP Story on SRMGI Meeting
Yes, but it's hard to see how many of the technologies we talk about can be developed, and their consequences understood, in the absence of a regulatory framework. I don't see how a system such as stratospheric aerosols could be developed, tested, and refined without a facilitative policy context. In practice, experimentation will cross national boundaries, so it's impossible to remove policy and governance aspects from the equation. I'm saying what's been said a million times before, but I think it's important to stress that technology on the scale of geoengineering is inseparable from governance, and they have to be developed together. Josh On Apr 4, 10:12 am, Gregory Benford xbenf...@gmail.com wrote: This seems to have been the usual sort of governance wonks, who don't realize that to make concrete governance decisions you need to know a lot about the technology and how it plays out. Until we do, there's little point to such pontificating. Much like Asilomar. Gregory Benford On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.comwrote: AP reports on the recent SRMGI conference here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110403/ap_on_hi_te/eu_the_sunshade_option Any thoughts or impressions from those of you who might have attended? Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com http://geoengineeringpolitics.blogspot.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
[geo] Another look at gunnery?
Hi I've been going over some reports and notes recently, notably the Aurora report http://people.ucalgary.ca/~keith/Misc/AuroraGeoReport.pdf The report makes it pretty clear that they've not done a huge amount to expand on gunnery as a tool. Specifically, the report states that: In the 80-100 kft range, the relative simplicity of the gun system begins to look attractive despite the high recuring cost of shells, if the payload fraction can be increased Back to basics here. Gunnery was developed by the military. Navies need portable guns that aren't fired often - the exact opposite design criteria that geoengineers need. Sailors therefore have short thick barrels with massive overpressures, and robust shells to withstand the high g forces a short barrel requires.. This is absolutely nothing like what we need for geoengineering. We need long guns that work at low overpressure. Low overpressure means a lightweight shell casing, a less tight barrel seal leading to lower friction and hence lower wear and thus lower costs. I think we need to look at completely different gunnery technologies, as well as just looking at gun redesign. My favorite is the ram launcher. This works with a loose (sub calibre) shell as it doesn't rely on barrel friction, so there's not the wear and cooling problem you get with a gun. It doesn't require expensive propellants, as you can run it on a cheap fuel/air mix. The acceleration is continuous, not declining like with a gun - so it's much gentler. In fact, accelerations as low as 600g with a 1.2km barrel are possible - and that still gives you 8kms/s launch speed - well over what's needed for accessing the stratosphere. That's 1/10th the acceleration in a conventional gun (although you do need to initiate the projectile with a primary launcher - a ram accelerator can't self start). In case people need a reminder, the ram projectile works by firing a loose-fitting projectile which relies on aerodynamic effects to ingnite fuel behind it by compression ignition, like a ramjet. It travels through the propellant, rather than being pushed in front of it. As a result of the loose fit and low launch stresses, the shells are likely to be very much thinner, cheaper and less well-engineered than conventional shells, and it may even be possible to make the shells reusable or at least recyclable. What do other people think of this? For more info on the technology, check the following links: http://www.tbfg.org/papers/Ram%20Accelerator%20Technical%20Risks%20ISDC07.pdf and for an improved version, check http://www.galcit.caltech.edu/~jeshep/icders/cd-rom/EXTABS/178_20TH.PDF A -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
Re: [geo] Another look at gunnery? (and adding an alternative Seitz albedo thread topic)
Andrew etal 1. I once looked at an all-electromagnetic (linear motor) launch approach that might be a low cost alternative for what you want to do. Should be a lot of literature on it. 2. Changing subject, I don't believe this list has had mention of an alternative (bubbles - entirely ground-based) albedo-modifying approach.. Hopefully others can point out serious risks, if applied soon to the Arctic, which application isn't specifically in the following Seitz draft article: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4737323/Seitz_BrightWater.pdf?sequence=1 Ron - Original Message - From: Andrew Lockley and...@andrewlockley.com To: geoengineering geoengineering@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, April 4, 2011 5:43:40 PM Subject: [geo] Another look at gunnery? Hi I've been going over some reports and notes recently, notably the Aurora report http://people.ucalgary.ca/~keith/Misc/AuroraGeoReport.pdf The report makes it pretty clear that they've not done a huge amount to expand on gunnery as a tool. Specifically, the report states that: In the 80-100 kft range, the relative simplicity of the gun system begins to look attractive despite the high recuring cost of shells, if the payload fraction can be increased Back to basics here. Gunnery was developed by the military. Navies need portable guns that aren't fired often - the exact opposite design criteria that geoengineers need. Sailors therefore have short thick barrels with massive overpressures, and robust shells to withstand the high g forces a short barrel requires.. This is absolutely nothing like what we need for geoengineering. We need long guns that work at low overpressure. Low overpressure means a lightweight shell casing, a less tight barrel seal leading to lower friction and hence lower wear and thus lower costs. I think we need to look at completely different gunnery technologies, as well as just looking at gun redesign. My favorite is the ram launcher. This works with a loose (sub calibre) shell as it doesn't rely on barrel friction, so there's not the wear and cooling problem you get with a gun. It doesn't require expensive propellants, as you can run it on a cheap fuel/air mix. The acceleration is continuous, not declining like with a gun - so it's much gentler. In fact, accelerations as low as 600g with a 1.2km barrel are possible - and that still gives you 8kms/s launch speed - well over what's needed for accessing the stratosphere. That's 1/10th the acceleration in a conventional gun (although you do need to initiate the projectile with a primary launcher - a ram accelerator can't self start). In case people need a reminder, the ram projectile works by firing a loose-fitting projectile which relies on aerodynamic effects to ingnite fuel behind it by compression ignition, like a ramjet. It travels through the propellant, rather than being pushed in front of it. As a result of the loose fit and low launch stresses, the shells are likely to be very much thinner, cheaper and less well-engineered than conventional shells, and it may even be possible to make the shells reusable or at least recyclable. What do other people think of this? For more info on the technology, check the following links: http://www.tbfg.org/papers/Ram%20Accelerator%20Technical%20Risks%20ISDC07.pdf and for an improved version, check http://www.galcit.caltech.edu/~jeshep/icders/cd-rom/EXTABS/178_20TH.PDF A -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups geoengineering group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
