sethoflagos

Only if you believe the advertising slogans of the authoritarian right. The irony is quite clear in the Auschwitz welcome: "Arbeit macht Frei"

Although the wattless current does no work, it still has to be accommodated in the supply manifesting in larger cross-section conductors and larger generator kVA demand. Getting the kVA back closer to the kW load via a capacitor bank can yield substantial savings.

And there's no possible justification for that? Retired IT manager has a bash at terraforming tropical paradise. What could possibly go wrong?

We are in the 21st century. Was no soil analysis performed prior to excavation? Never mind an EIA. Even now when the project seems to have gone tips up, the OP is trying to get free advice off the internet rather than employ the professional services that should have been on board before shovel touched dirt. The pH problem was foreseeable. It doesn't surprise me that this project is based in Thailand. It has a very familiar ring to it. I've seen many similar scenarios over the years here in Nigeria.

RFO is a real slow burn fuel so they're probably close to isothermal combustion through most of the power stroke. Hence they can achieve the high cylinder pressures and consequent high torque output without incurring extreme combustion temperatures. Similar to how power stations limit NOx with staged combustion.

This is consistent with your base sediment clay being carbonate rich - ie a marl, as mentioned above. And your solution is to... change the environment? No qualms about social responsibility when it conflicts with short-term commercial interest?

You get very similar figures for gas turbines too (their inlet compressors typically run also at 25 bara). Whatever the technology, it's always limited by the available metallurgy.

Just some ballpark figures to give an indication how deep this rabbit hole goes: For a 10:1 (isentropic) compression ratio of inlet air @ 300 K, 100 kPa, compression stroke ends at 754 K, 2,511 kPa. (~ 350 psig) Theoretical adiabatic, isochoric, stoichiometric flame temperature of isooctane ~ 2,900 +754 - 300 ~ 3,354 K By Pressure Law, Peak Theoretical Combustion Pressure = 2,511 * 3,354 / 754 = 11,170 kPa (~1,600 psig) And yet car engines appear able to run for quite a while without the spontaneous catastrophic disassembly such figures may suggest. This observation is consistent with actual instantaneous P,T values not exceeding 50% of the above by very much.

Quite. And 'liberating' vast quantities of sequestered carbon dioxide in the attempt.

It's similar to the pH range of Malham Tarn, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a national nature reserve in the UK. The pH of lakes is determined not so much by what is in the water (an effect) but by the underlying sediments either of the catchment area or the lake itself. Does the OP proposal consider destruction of eg. a 100 foot thick bed of marl, along with potentially a productive and highly specialised ecosystem?

Indeed. In passing, I find it remarkable how the General Compressibilty Chart can be reasonably accurate for all materials irrespective of their individual peculiarities. I guess it must be dominated by the ratio of intermolecular bonding energy to kinetic energy or similar simple relationship.

Perhaps, but it can have a considerable impact on engineering. Vapours (Tr < 1.0 in attached chart) depart from ideal gas behaviour markedly more so than gases (Tr > 1.0).

In my younger days, CEGB engineers called it 'ot fog.

No, no, yes, and no. Liquid water cannot exist above its critical temperature of 647 K (374 oC) at any pressure. Above that temperature, steam is a gas: below it, a vapour. (The distinction is due to whether or not it is possible for a vapour/liquid equilibrium state to exist at a particular temperature).

Yes, there has to be more distance between the two for the distinction to make sense, doesn't there. Sanity seems to restored when I consider them as extremes of a spectrum with eg. the raccoon at one end and the xanthopan at the other.

You've got me thinking now! If instead of the black and white flowers of daisyworld, we had two species of flower that were simply different and a nectar feeding 'generalist' bird that could feed from either though not particularly efficiently. Would there be an evolutionary advantage in splitting into two closely related species that each were optimised for just one flower species? Would the potential gains in feeding efficiency offset the doubling(?) of the average distance between their preferred flowers? Providing one of the flowers survived a catastrophe, then both the generalist and one of the specialists might too. Both the energy budget and survivabilty factors are not as clearcut as I imagined. This case actually blurs the lines between generalist and specialist for me. A group of closely related specialists could simply be viewed as a generalist hedging his bets. Another case of the dangers of making sweeping generalisations in regard to complex systems?

Exactly! Hence my earlier comment: A good point indeed, and yet I have a lingering reservation. High species diversity tends to be associated with highly specialised niche partitioning and complex, often Byzantine levels of species interdependence and coevolution. In times of stress, these tend to be the systems most vulnerable to collapse and they do so quite quickly. I'm not sure they provide that much of a defence. Born survivors tend to have much less fussy lifestyles.

Just a small point. Sickle cell disease is the unfortunate result of inheriting an abnormal B-globin gene from each parent. Having a single sickle cell gene (as in the case of Mrs Seth) confers significant malaria resistance without the symptoms of sickle cell disease, but it does make one a carrier, which is routinely uncovered in blood tests. It's significantly less of a problem now than it used to be.

I think the default condition comprises a moderately stable environment populated by a biota optimally adapted to thrive in those specific environmental conditions. If a genetic or behavioural change occurs in one species such that it starts to significantly alter the conditions in which it thrives, then that seems to be a recipe for evolutionary suicide does it not? As presented, this is a relatively straightforward, self-sustaining mechanism that provides the basics of Gaia without appealing to evolutionary foresight (or new age spiritualism). But... The empirical background came predominantly from the studies of modern (at least, pre-industrial) ecosystems. These in turn have been shaped by a global climate that from the close of the last glaciation 10 kya has until very recently been unusually stable by geological standards. It may well be atypical. We should also point out that it was initialised ~3.5 bya with the development of photosynthesis and advanced gradually raising free oxygen levels from ~1 ppm to ~2% by ~1.9 bya, with the GOE proper occurring over the final half billion years or so of that period. Obviously, we have a fairly coarse-grained perspective on such distant times, and there may well have been a series of lethal pulses in O2 concentration as each stage in the sequence of oxygen reducing buffers reached saturation point in turn. However, the picture we see is one of sustained hostility to life for one third of the planet's existence. This was not an overnight catastrophe like the Chixulub impact. For an immense period of time, this was situation normal (afu). GOE is not an isolated example: plants had another good go at wiping us out when they conquered the land in the Devonian and sent atmospheric O2 levels shooting up to ~30%; the advent of sea floor burrowing destroyed the highly productive seabed bacterial mats of earlier times. I'd make the case that such stability we observe is never more than transitory - the seeds of revolution are always ready in the wings. Indeed, imho they need to be in order to periodically begin anew. It's very tempting to write these off as 'special cases' when they threaten such such a seductive idea as Gaia. But nature is, as someone once said, red in tooth and claw. We idealise and anthropomorphise it at our peril.

For me, the evolution of photosynthesis is quite a serious challenge to GH. At the time, all organisms were anaerobic. Oxygen, merely a waste product of photosynthesis, was poisonous to (almost?) all lifeforms including the photosynthsisers. It is estimated that the Great Oxidation Event aka the 'Oxygen Holocaust' reduced the planets biomass by >80% though admittedly, the fossil record is so sparse at this time, such figures have large error bars. If this outline is accurate, then the development of photosynthesis, while advantageous at least in the short term to the cyanobacteria responsible, can hardly be described as advantageous to the whole planetary ecosystem at that time. If GH is relevant to this epoch, we seem obliged to accept that photosynthesis was evolved for the benefit of the aerobic organisms that followed in the wake of the GOE. This is contrary to all we have learnt about evolution in that it is clearly blind to future consequences. GH seems to put the cart before the horse. Life does not adjust the environment to the benefit of life. Rather life adapts to live in synergy with the changes in the environment to which it is subjected.

I've been watching your comments on feedback with increasing interest, and you raise important points a) because there is an awful lot of misunderstanding mixed in amongst the loose terminology, and b) because it gets really complicated really quickly. Loosely, feedback occurs whenever a process output is fed back into the input thereby modifying the subsequent output. However, there are some major provisos here, particularly with regard to causal links. 'Feedback' cannot as of current scientific concensus refer to the transfer of anything back to an earlier point in time. It therefore is not a transfer from an output back into the input that created that output. It is a transfer from an output phase into a subsequent input phase. Some examples may help explain: This one is curious since mathematicians tend to irk engineers by insisting that pendulum type system really are controlled by feedback, because... reasons. I think the reasoning goes that since the equations of motion for an ideal, frictionless pendulum are time-reversible, they do not contradict the assertion that the last maximum displacement was a consequence of the next rather than vice versa. ie mathematically they are indistinguishable from a process controlled by negative feedback. Maybe that's a simplification, but at least we both agree that this system does not feature feedback. Compare with a father pushing a child on a swing. Hopefully, the father monitors the vertical displacement on the forward swing, compares that against some recommended maximum enjoyment criterion and adjusts his push at the top of the backswing accordingly. If we assign a phase angle 0 to the top of the backswing, and a phase angle pi radians to the top of the forward swing, it is clear that the input is being modified with an antiphase addition from the output - classic negative feedback. Arguably so, I think. Consider the following reaction. 2H2S + SO2 -> 3S + 2H2O If the reactants are initially dry, the reaction does not proceed. But add a small squirt of water to get it started and the reaction rate will rapidly accelerate via positive feedback. The output product phase is 'fed back' (at least partially) into the input reactant phase by eg. turbulent mixing and the reaction becomes self-sustaining, limited only by the continuing supply of reactants.

At best, GH seems to say no more than stable is stable, unstable is unstable. What is there to disagree? At worst, it implies (at least for some adherents) that stable is good, unstable is bad. This strikes me as more of a political idea than a scientific one. Looking back over the last half billion years or so, the Cambrian, later Devonian, late Carboniferous, the Triassic and early Cenozoic were all periods of great biotic instability. These amount to a substantial time percentage of the total. But far from being negative, each of these episodes led to major diversifications and advances of life forms, far more so than the 'good' periods of relative stability. Arguably, stability tends towards a gradual decline as the reduced need to adapt quickly often leads to the loss of the power to adapt quickly. Evolutionary potential tends to be remain concentrated in the small, generalist and opportunistic forms who often lead the recovery of life after an extinction event. If you want a more political allegory, try the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons. Similar ideas.

I'm sorry, but I'm having difficulty following your reasoning here. Surely, for each stage of a simple lossless cycle, the output moreorless by definition eventually returns as the input - a positive feedback loop of unity gain. What am I missing here? Without feedback playing a substantial part in the carbon cycle, it's hard to see how tipping points could even be a thing, positive or negative. Again, I seem to be missing the point you're trying to make. Perhaps it's age catching up with me. Geological weathering, irrespective of the local climate, requires an external energy input to maintain itself indefinitely, doesn't it? Does not the overwhelming majority of that energy come ultimately from the sun? A clue might be in the large amount of sulphuric acid in the Venusian atmosphere. Carbonates and strong acids tend not to coexist for very long.

The carbon in the methane feedstock gets oxidised to CO2. The hydrogen product derived from the methane feedstock ultimately produces H2O. How is this significantly different to simply combusting methane in a single (and far less costly) process? By what Byzantine mental process are we to understand your use of the term 'green'?

Indeed. I can see how homeostasis manifests at an ecosystem level: populations that consume a vital resource faster than it can be replenished will see birth rates decline and mortality increase; likewise, genetically homogeneous over-dense populations are likely to be thinned out by disease. These are classic negative feedback loops that have an intrinsically stabilising effect on all ecosystems. Extending this idea to the far more complex biochemical processes of an individual seems problematic as @exchemist has suggested. There's just too much going on in there for such a simplistic mantra to help understand the fine detail. Midway between these two levels, the potential impact of a game-changing single point mutation in the genome of a single individual is worth considering. Even a modest increase in the reproductive success of that individuals descendants creates a self-sustaining positive feedback that can completely overturn the status quo in relatively few generations. Entire new phyla have arisen through such events. Evolution is blind to future consequences. It operates strictly in the present and cares not a jot for long-term stability. Weathering is driven mainly by insolation; plate tectonics is predominantly driven by the gradual loss of the planet's internal heat. Neither is steady-state in any sense other than their usually extremely slow evolution towards a final lifeless thermodynamic equilibrium. Hence: Yes * 2