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Ken Fabian

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Everything posted by Ken Fabian

  1. @studiot my point was to clarify for readers that CO2 in mixed air doesn't separate and sink, even under those circumstances. We don't get stratification of the mixed air, we see stratification of pockets/volumes with different CO2 concentrations that have not mixed - yet. Sources will keep it that way but without them the enclosed air will - eventually - homogenize. Or I should say no significant stratification under ordinary Earth gravity; run it through powerful centrifuges and it can become significant. It is a common misunderstanding (whilst not claiming it of you) that CO2, being more dense, will sink to the bottom - and that the higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations nearer ground level are a result of the CO2 separating rather than the sources of CO2 being at ground level and there being a lag time in mixing. At small scale it mixes by diffusion. At larger scales by bulk air movements, ie wind and turbulence. For example thunderstorms will carry air from ground level to the stratosphere in one go, mixing vigorously as it goes.
  2. 2) - I think CO2 concentrations in confined spaces only stay high if there is a source, ie it starts with high concentrations and air mixing is impeded, by lack of air movement. A A fully enclosed space filled with air will still end up well mixed due to diffusion, not separated. A deep shaft with high CO2 that is open at the top will gradually lose CO2 until it has similar concentrations to the open air. No, not lying. Stop trying to sell the notion that climate scientists must be incompetent or biased, ie wrong; climate science is not about "selling" anything other than the best possible understanding of how our climate system works and responds to change, both natural and human caused. That isn't complete understanding but more than enough to know that the global warming problem is real, very serious and won't be self limiting over the timescales that matter to human civilisation and to remnant natural ecosystems.
  3. Thanks iNow - that answer does address the question. I do admit to some lingering doubts about how these economic benefits are calculated - I suspect a rosy glasses/PR team point of view - but accept that it is delivering them. Comparisons to the economic value of funding other things instead will always be difficult and speculative but still is valid to ask.
  4. To be honest I'm a bit disappointed with most of the comments. A bit too much falling back on the old truisms about serendipitous spin offs IMO rather than providing examples of how LHC has been delivering them - because not all research projects do deliver them. thewowsignal might not be contributing much to the discussion but it is a good question. Sure, the LHC's budget is small by the standards of the global economy but that is a disingenuous argument; it isn't a pot of money just waiting for uses to be put to, most of it - more than exists it seems, via borrowing and money creation - is spoken for and still leaves them short. There is no shortage of alternative uses where tangible benefits would ensue, that aren't getting enough. There are tradeoffs. Even the old "space programs delivered so much" thing - where truly massive amounts of government funding delivered some tangible technological advances with economic benefits - dodges the question of whether equivalent funding of other kinds of R&D would have done as much or more. These aren't arguments that much impress me. As science research project budgets go "high end" things like the LHC are very high cost and it is a legitimate question whether they are good value - because there are no shortages of underfunded research projects, with that same innate potential for serendipitous spin offs. Yes, pure research has delivered spin offs with useful applications and I am generally supportive of most kinds of R&D - and I'm pleased that some nations that can afford it do so. I think a complete understanding of the building blocks of matter, even without spin-offs does represent something intrinsically valuable - but not unquestioning support when it comes to how to get there. It isn't entirely clear to me that it is best achieved by this research project rather than a different one.
  5. Sounds like reasonable questions even if a regular internet search should provide an answer to how much it costs. But it is clear - even without knowing the specific numbers - that by most science lab standards it costs a LOT of money. I'm in favour of supporting research for the sake of understanding the building blocks of matter but it isn't clear how it has practical implications and of course there are trade offs; funding isn't infinite and bigger budgets for the LHC can mean reduced budgets for other things. Is it good value for money? I have no idea and with pure research we aren't necessary chasing specific applications, rather we aim for a better understanding of how things really work and hope for applications to emerge. Better understanding of what goes on with fusion and of what is required for fusion energy applications? Better medical or other diagnostic imaging? "Better" thermonuclear weapons? It would be interesting to hear what real world impacts people here think it might have.
  6. So much being said about Elon Musk right now but surely it is as simple as him being a bog standard anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-union free market Libertarian who's commercial successes give him an inflated idea of his own insights in other areas. His Longtermist human destiny to leave Earth behind thing is a bit idiosyncratic but the temptation to try and remake the greater nation, economy, society more to his liking is not so unusual - just most people don't have the money or influence for it. More to his liking will almost certainly pare down to the same old unexceptional "what is good for my business is good for the nation" that other wealthy industrialists espouse. Which puts him firmly in the US Republican camp irrespective of how welcome the successes of EV's and batteries are to those concerned with the climate problem - who, by the failure of those on the Right to treat it seriously, are more likely to lean Left. The significance of social democratic policies (even the US has them, even if explicitly not referred to as such) to the opportunities for long term capitalist wealth creation won't get any credit. Like other rich and successful entrepreneurs his dealing with politicians and political parties will, unlike ordinary citizens, come with high levels of personal access and is likely to be a lot less ideological than it is transactional, especially given one of his major businesses depends on bidding for taxpayer funded contracts... but not his taxes.
  7. The value to fisheries may be there but there is no existing arrangement (as far as I know) for financing of seagrass habitat maintenance by the fishing industry - and I expect attempts to do so would be opposed. Like a lot of the value derived from environmental "services", they have been treated as free. Taxpayers will foot the bill and the fishing industry will - like most businesses - fiercely resist paying more taxes.
  8. It won't be a major climate solution and can only be an adjunct to building an abundance of clean energy to displace fossil fuel burning - which remains our single most effective action, the one that is not optional. Saving the seagrass that exists - preventing it's loss, which would add to atmospheric CO2 - looks like the more significant thing and that appears to require that shift to zero emissions to prevent the ocean heating that could damage existing area and slow the sea level rise that could kill them. Farming seagasses might help but unless it has some other commercial value to sustain it the funding will be hard to come by and is likely to get better results elsewhere, such as supporting that essential growth of clean energy.
  9. I've had a long running deep distaste for "rhetorical" violence - which often goes direct to the "kill them" option because "hit the Speaker of The House with the Official Gavel because she is a (leading) Democrat" doesn't have the rhetorical impact of "Hang Mike Pence". Most people would assume it is just rhetorical... but most people aren't subjected to politically motivated violence. To anyone who has it probably sends chills down their spines, possibly with flashbacks. At the heart of much violence, from minor to all out war is a belief that "they deserve it".
  10. Because of global warming those deposits are better left where they are and our efforts at building new energy supply should be focused on low/zero emissions options. Fossil fuels are too polluting. @Sensei I tried an upvote but clicked on down due to clumsiness; removing it and changing to up either didn't work (but it said it removed it) or someone else (x2) downvoted your comment, just in those few seconds. (Just tried again - the little x was there, like it was still mine - it did remove this time. I won't try the upvote again, but take it as given - Ken) I do think we are at or have crossed a significant tipping point on clean energy, even if it takes time to flow through sufficiently to influence those with Doubt, Deny, Delay as their climate policy. The fossil fuel supporters are doing all they can to encourage the view that we have a green energy crisis rather than a fossil fuel energy crisis - and use the sense of crisis plus the abundance of money from profiteering to encourage emissions reductions efforts be set aside. I don't think that will work. Going by Australia, that had more than a decade of pro-fossil fuels national government, the electricity industry has already shifted to supporting renewables. The only not-renewables new energy investment now current in Australia is a single gas plant, by government decree - by the previous Australian government.
  11. @awakening As the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - and getting energy from nothing counts as an extraordinary claim and you aren't providing any evidence. It may appear to you like people are closed minded and refuse to listen but people who have convinced themselves they have a perpetual motion/free energy solution - and remain closed minded and refuse to listen to people who point out why it won't work - are surprisingly common. Working examples are not. Conservation of energy isn't an arbitrary rule for excluding amateur scientists, it comes from a good understanding of physics, supported by observation and experiment. It doesn't take examining and understanding your proposed method to have very high, approaching absolute confidence that it won't work - sorry but Conservation of energy (more correctly conservation of mass/energy) has that level of confidence. Thus the requirement for extraordinary evidence, such as a working example in it's most basic form (no unnecessary or confusing embellishments) that can be independently examined and verified. For a verified working prototype one consequence would be a Nobel prize for whoever can explain where the energy is coming from. If it came from world leading Physics labs it would be astounding - and probably still be widely disputed. From an amateur it is just unlikely to be correct.
  12. @Philandes Just build lots of clean energy and let the coal plants close; there is nothing so good about coal power plants that we should go out of our way to preserve their viability. Quite the opposite - like so much is wrong about them that we should be going out of our way to get rid of them. We have more options now. The scale of greenhouse construction required would be staggering and coal plant operators are mostly struggling to remain economically viable and taxpayers are not going to support it... This taxpayer sure won't. I think your idea won't work - The exhaust gases won't make fertile soils - more likely they would contaminate soils or require treatment first, to be benign, without any specific benefits. Greenhouse plants can't take enough CO2 out of air to be effective as Carbon Capture; plants can't take out that much. The CO2 that greenhouse plants take in becomes CO2 again through decomposition; it doesn't remove CO2 from the carbon cycle. There is just too much CO2 - we now make more CO2 than all other waste combined, several times over. There isn't anything we make more of besides things like sand and gravel that we don't actually make. Stopping doing the things that make CO2 waste - making energy by other means - is always going to be a better option. @TheVat Agree 100%. The gas and oil industry is offering to do CCS for us IF taxpayer funding is provided to them to do it - so kind of them - but not at levels that would make a difference (apart from sounding 'green') and NEVER out of their revenues, not even revenues at the hyper profit levels currently enjoyed. They like Carbon Capture when they can pump the CO2 down oil wells to force more oil out of nearby wells - the single biggest use. They like it when they can take CO2 out of low quality natural gas they otherwise could not use, to make it more saleable (eg Australia's Gorgon Gas project, the single largest CCS project). They like it best when they get taxpayer funding to do it - and must think it hilarious (in private) when they get emissions reduction funding for activities that increase overall production of fossil fuels, that they know can't ever work at large scale to eliminate emissions. But I am not laughing. For CCS to be able to allow unrestricted use of fossil fuels without emissions it has to become the single largest industry in the world - but without any intrinsic way to be profitable. The largest industry ever, because we make more CO2 than anything else barring things like gravel that we don't actually make; for each ton of fuel burned there is 2 to 3 tons of CO2 - and it should be more than that, but for incomplete, inefficient burning. Any capture methods that combine CO2 with other materials, including plants, has to be that much larger again.
  13. If you are confident you know what it is you don't know then skip to the parts you feel you need, but if you aren't sure, go through them all in order and see. It shouldn't take long to find out whether each element is understood, then jump ahead, without doing all the exercises. Or not. My own experience is that missing something along the way can make what you are trying to learn a lot more difficult - the curriculam tends to designed to provide foundations that can be built on. I tried something similar, more to see if I could recover what I'd learned and lost than learn from zero - I can't say it went well and I suspect some of the parts I struggled with went all the way back to missed lessons at school, far too long ago. In my late 60's I don't take it in as readily as back then. Or retain it so easily... better than average recall got me through school, but now I struggle to remember where my glasses are... when they are hanging on a cord around my neck.
  14. Going by my own experience capillary action appears able to maintain high moisture levels in standing trees (Eucalypts mostly around here, in Eastern Australia) for many years after they died. Sawing standing dead trees into firewood still seems to require some additional time stacked to dry fully. Preferably they have been dead long enough that bark and sapwood are rotted/eaten away, but before the termites make much impact on the heartwood. That the wood hasn't been lying on the ground means less dirt and grit and makes it easier on the chainsaw, but I tend to use what is around and accept shorter intervals between sharpening. It also seems like simply drying green wood doesn't produce the best firewood and guides for Australian landholders providing their own often recommend a period of a few years of 'green' wood being kept deliberately damp, allowing bark and sapwood to rot away and saps to leach away before drying. Not using sapwood and leaching out of saps can be important because they can cause dangerous build up in chimneys/flues, especially with open fireplaces. It seems to be less important with modern enclosed wood heaters, that achieve higher temperatures and burning efficiency, ie can tolerate wood cut green and fast dried with sapwood still present. Some of the longest lasting, most termite resistant Eucalyptus timber seems to season best when left standing - least splitting or checking - with the downside of being hardest to saw when seasoned. More usually, commercially, the wood is milled green and stacked to air dry or else kiln dried. We still use some firewood but increasingly we use reverse cycle air-con (air source heat pump) for heating.
  15. There are big uncertainties and the IPCC reports do include mention of them. The sea level rise from thermal expansion is linear with respect to ocean temperatures and those do follow air temperatures but ice sheet melt (Greenland and Antarctica mostly) has high potential for non-linear contributions. The (average) rate of rise is currently a lot less than 6" per decade but it is accelerating. Places like the US Gulf of Mexico coast is running about twice the global average. Counter-intuitively the sea levels are falling closest to where land based ice has been lost, mostly Greenland so far, due to lowered local gravity from the loss of mass. This NASA video showing sea level changes (based on satellite data) shows this effect -
  16. The link also said - Sound like about the time the plants had ceased to rely on the nutrients that came in their cotyledons they had problems. Stunted roots is an especially bad sign. Likely that some nutrients are present but some important ones are either not present or insufficient.
  17. It takes active propulsion and navigation for such a thing to stay where it is put; sunlight pushes on things, the larger the exposed area the more it pushes. The lower the mass ie thinner, the more vulnerable. Probably to being eroded too. Lagrange "points" aren't truly stable either. Fun to speculate but I'm not convinced there is any need or even any benefit. It certainly isn't commercially viable to do much of anything suggested in this thread - most of which requires tech that doesn't exist and extraordinary financing - and there isn't a compelling case for colonising and terraforming for any "greater good", as a taxpayer funded program. Going back to the original post - I don't see how complex robotic machinery could be made without a whole lot more materials, equipment, industrial processes than suggested, without a whole advanced industrial economy's worth. Some of important materials are not economically viable to produce without a large economy making sufficient demand, let alone make them from moon rock, which has not undergone the geothermal, hydrothermal processes that separate and concentrate them into ores. Nuclear powered robots making nuclear power plants for robots? Is there even any concentrated ore for thorium? Evidence of thorium is of trace amounts scattered about, probably leftover from meteorite impacts. It may be fun speculation but that is all.
  18. The ability to utilise Infrared would be a big step forward - and not primarily for achieving higher conversion efficiency in sunlight but by making it possible to use low grade heat, including back radiation from nighttime sky or heat from the ground, or waste heat. It would open up the potential for 24/7 energy from a wide variety of sources, either to avoid storage requirements or by opening new possibilities for thermal energy storage. Besides thermo-electric generators there are Optical Rectennas that might manage this as well some other possibilities arising out of graphene research - but none are standing out as viable. Yet.
  19. Consider the airborne litter problem; an accident could leave sections of lighter than air materials floating around. Even widespread use of aerogels could be a problem - light enough to be blown about, not heavy enough to stay where it lands.
  20. But the chemical compounds they are part of are affected when the atom undergoes radioactive decay. Not just the radiation from that decay damages biochemistry, the change from one element to another does too, both by breaking up the compound they were part of and from the chemical effects of the resultant compounds. I think the harms from radioactive materials are more biochemical in nature than direct radiation damage.
  21. I am not familiar with how the fracking bans came about in the UK but it sounds like potential for earthquakes was the putative reason, rather than climate and emissions - but I expect a large part of opposition to it was and is based on the latter and earthquakes used because, for whatever reasons, those concerns were not counted as a legitimate basis under whatever legislation exists for objecting and opposing them. That is, the planning processes in place by neglect or design failed to include emissions as relevant or significant? Whether it is climate science denial by the new PM or renewable energy denial or genuine belief in "only fossil fuels are good enough" (alarmist fear of going without) or being beholden to or cowed by the fossil fuel industry probably only Liz Truss can say. But probably won't. Being cowed actually has some legitimate basis; this is an industry that is sending economies into recession, not by the supply shortages or higher production costs but by massive price rises delivering windfall profits. They could cut their prices to mere very good profit levels to save economies but they won't and they appear quite willing to use the sense of crisis to encourage putting climate and clean energy concerns aside. Whether the high prices will work like a carbon price that incetivises renewables remains to be seen but looks likely to me - it is like they are putting a carbon price on themselves, only one where the revenues flow to the FF industry and they can use it to promote fossil fuel use and dependence. Or else a last ditch attempt to extract profits before renewables growth goes beyond merely slowing fossil fuel growth and results in fossil fuel decline. Here in Australia we saw a big backlash against the apathy on climate from our major political parties with Greens and Teal independents getting a lot of support. (Our conservatives colour themselves blue, these centre-right leaning candidates campaigned on climate action, thus the blue mixed with green "teal" that may even began as a kind of insult but has been embraced by them.) Can that happen in the UK?
  22. I should make mention of "preference deals" - where candidates and parties make deals about where to put each other on their "how to vote" handouts in order to gain some advantage with those preferences, in case they can't get enough first preference votes. Or to prevent some other candidates benefiting. It is an unedifying aspect. Whilst I personally decide the order of my preferences a lot of people simply follow what their preferred party or candidate suggests. Often it can be in the form of agreeing to put some an independent candidate who shares some values with them ahead of the "no.1 enemy" major party. Sometimes it is a show of putting some much disliked party or candidate last. Our politicians are capable of all the same bad behaviors as other places, if they think they can gain advantage and get away with it. If they could disenfranchise blocs of voters inclined against them they would. The checks and balances that have been introduced along the way do seem to prevent the worst but it is still a long way from perfect.
  23. Our Australian system of voting is a "preferential" (transferable?) ballot, with some variations between States and Federal and between upper House and lower (Senate vs House of Reps) - some require all candidates numbered, some allow leaving blank spaces. It is also compulsory to vote... well, to turn up or post a ballot; it can be left blank. I don't find it a great burden and it does give a sense of confidence that the results are truly representative. We number our choices, from first preference to last. When votes are counted the candidate with the least first preference votes is eliminated and the ballots that voted for them are re-counted, with their second choice used - and so on until there are two candidates and one winner. Upper House is on a State sized "electorate" and that gives opportunities to smaller parties to get representation in proportion to their popularity. Lower House is many geographic electorates and favors major parties by winner takes all. I think similar to US and other nations. Some countries require absolute majority (>50%) to win and preferential voting would prevent a need to go back around for a second election where there are more than 2 candidates and none reach that threshold. I read about follow up elections and think our preferential voting is better than that. Other places it is the candidate with the highest vote - even if less than 50% - that wins. I like preferential voting but don't really know if it is better or gives outcomes different than a simple highest vote wins - but it does allow "protest" votes for independent or minor party candidates without losing the option to choose between the major party candidates and I think that does facilitate sending a message about levels of community concern about particular issues to major parties. And most recently we have seen the major parties lose seats to independents and minor parties - the rise of The Greens and "Teals" (who are centre-right leaning climate action supporting and loosely aligned independents - our conservatives are "blue", so blue mixed with green). I don't know that preferential voting made a lot of difference but it there may have been some protest votes from people who didn't expect them to win, who may have voted for a major party first if they had. Whatever the system used it seems like it is public confidence in it that seems most important. I can't say I have ready solutions (besides Vote!) for where that confidence is absent. We have (for example) Statutory bodies for deciding electoral district boundaries - but that wasn't always the case; we did have a culture of gerrymandering. Perhaps fortunately it was not so entrenched that public opinion could be subverted enough to successfully obstruct doing something about it. Although rural voters do still get more bang for their votes, with smaller voter numbers per electorate - and that favors conservative parties. I should say that for all the good I see from the sorts of government Australia has there is no shortage of serious failing and things to criticise - nor that the trend is always consistently towards doing it better. I see "soft" corruption - undue influence, regulatory capture, partisan media, support for "rent seeking" and favors - as perniciously persistent and problematic. Thus the issue of a standing anti-corruption watchdog at the Federal level is one that could have long reaching consequences. In a roundabout way that could result in less government - the wasteful contracts that go to party supporters that evaded scrutiny for example can end up reduced when there are anti-corruption bodies.
  24. Well, I don't think "less equals better" is necessarily true or works as a better scale for 'betterness', at least not for good governance; the devil is in the detail. I think introducing bodies empowered to investigate and expose corruption can be a case where more bureaucracy is better (something currently on the agenda where I live, with and because of strong popular support) and taking them away or refusing them because of a simplistic belief in less government and less regulation can lead to worse, not better outcomes. Simplistic ideals and ideas, like that less government is always better government are easier to popularize than complex systems of rules and regulations, checks and balances but the systems of checks and balances, even if they don't work perfectly they do work (where I live), whilst the regulation free idealistic version looks hypothetical and if it works at all only seems to where there is pre-existing social homogeneity - and probably with a liberal dose of the indoctrination that Proudhon has in his list. I see the relatively safe and prosperous society I am part of as evidence of messy, imperfect government working better than it's absence. I suspect the levels of complexity our societies have are essential to the kinds of industrial economies that give us much of the extraordinary prosperity and personal freedoms so many of us enjoy. I note that Proudhon doesn't appear to see the autocratic, hierarchical corporate model as intrinsically different to autocratic government - but it looks like modern Libertarians support the freedom of such organisations to exist and be autocratic - can even have that freedom for organisations, so long as they aren't government organisations, as a priority. People may be free under that model to choose not to work for them or not purchase their services or products but if they are monopolies - and seeking to become monopolies seems to be common to them and absence of regulation supports their freedom to do so - that can and probably will end up oppressive and exploitative. More so and worse because of the lack of government. I think it can take a sustained history of regulation for behaviors and attitudes to change and for the voluntarily not engaging in crime or corruption or exploitation to be normalised and widely recognised as "better". And it will still require vigilance - and education that no doubt could be seen as indoctrination. I think Libertarians, like most idealogical activists, are being naive and are open to being exploited. Anarchism/Libertarianism - past the fictional introduction to these ideas from Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" as a teen (no laws, cool) - has looked unlikely to actually work to me. It makes me think of someone I knew who was inclined to approach a garden or kitchen renovation with tear it down, rip it out and then be left amidst the mess scratching her head - what do I do now?
  25. Not that hard to argue against, surely. I think the worst of Proudhon's litany are made more likely, not less, by the absence of governance. The being numbered, licensed, listed and so on hasn't been especially onerous or done me serious harm - no matter how infuriating it seems sometimes - but most of the ones on that list that truly hurt are not part of my personal life experience. I put that down to having representative government and the rule of law. Admittedly government began in the form of the toughest gang taking the spoils. We have gotten better at it. A lot better in some cases. From consent of the governed obtained under duress to willing consent and participation seems good to me. I suspect even doing it badly is better than not doing it at all. Doing government better looks like a better goal than doing it less. Did Proudhon apply his principles to commercial companies and criminal enterprises? Sounds like he did - anarcho-syndicalist communes, autonomous collectives and all maybe? If ever those become possible I think it will be a sustained history of doing government better - not revolution - that makes it happen.
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