Global warming

This concern is evoked in several topics of which Magenn - #152 by dougselsam. It is a complex topic needing a careful and complete analysis, otherwise it will remain in Lounge category.

As a beginning:

A major worldwide crisis could also be generated by an exaggeration of the collapse concern.

Decarbonized energies are envisaged to mitigate the global warming. Renewables such as wind (of which AWE with an expected higher capacity factor which can be decisive) are progressing but they are still intermittent (excepted hydroelectricity) and now require a backup with fossil as for in Deutschland, that with an increasing of CoÂČ emissions. If there is urgency, nuclear can provide both controllable and decarbonized energy for a massive production, let alone other concerns like radioactive waste. But in some countries of which France we heard about the reduction of the nuclear part, leading to the deduction of the relativising of the importance of global warming.

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Hi Pierre!
Nuclear is great as long as you can guarantee the population will remain smart enough to handle the waste. Otherwise, the idea that World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones will change to everyday confrontations being fought flinging nuclear waste by hand and maybe slingshots.

One big thing about AWE is the possibility to get a much larger capacity factor - ie increasing the number of days with useful power production. This will reduce the need for smoothing out power. This is dependent on getting to high altitudes, made possible only with large scale and probably also multi wing AWE.

Another thing that we dont discuss alot here is the problems related to destroying habitats for wildlife when erecting windmills. Its a real issue because most people refuse to have windmills in their backyard (also because of real issues with sound and visual disturbances). Norway is the prime example with Europe’s best wind resources, and also some of Europes largest areas not yet touched much by human activity. AWE could help us get past this problem by just being different, and maybe more acceptable in people’s backyard rather than some remote location. The safety aspect seems the most critical issue for AWE here, as well as going high altitude.

This is one reason I’m into AWE at the moment. I truly believe there is a chance we could make a difference wrt global warming.

Nuclear is ok except of our increasing dependence on technology. Tsjernobyl is the prime example of societal decay making us incapable of doing it safely. They could not afford to shut it down even when the risks were too high. And waste of course. And apparently its more expensive than wind anyway.

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Yes but until you get to a 100% capacity factor, we still need the redundancy of keeping a backup (fossil-fueled?) power plant ready to spool up with spinning reserves when needed. This is expensive. It reminds me of letting the kids handle a task, but making sure there are still adults ready to take over when the kids can’t make it happen. By the way, while it is seen as desirable to split up these conversations into branch topics, I think it gets impossible to keep re-categorizing every post. I mean, I think within just a post or two, we’re already “off-topic” from the new topic. We’re discussing "increasing capacity factor by operating at higher altitudes, (a long-discussed theme), avoiding destruction of habitats (though windfarms tend to preserve habitats, and preserve wildlife, according to the Audubon (Autobahn?) Society), NIMBYism, including noise and visual disturbances, Norway’s untouched wilderness areas, safety as a critical issue, and once again, a mention of higher altitudes - all in a “topic” of “global warming”. Not sure why people want to try to fit conversations that inevitably jump from topic to topic, into some category of one specific topic, but it does not seem possible to actually accomplish. I think what’s really going on is, at some point, everything that can be said, has been said, and its time to do something new if you want to have something new to talk about.
By the way, with regard to habitat and land use, I’ve been very puzzled from day-one that solar farms are not being built below windfarms. Here in the Southern California we have some of the largest windfarms located adjacent to some of the largest solar farms. Why not combine them? Why would they not be co-located on the same plot of land? You have all that open space below wind turbines, and a ready grid-connection. WTF?

And also, needing less material, AWES can be movable and follow the wind changes in intensity.

You just didnt know:

https://www.wartsila.com/media/news/20-03-2018-wartsila-delivers-world-s-largest-solar-hybrid-power-plant-reducing-annual-co2-emissions-by-as-much-as-18-500-tons-2143797

Your comment about capacity factor: of course you need a plan B for days with no wind and solar. IN NORWAY we have a lot of hydropower (this was an attempted joke)



 anyways, the Plan B could be batteries which are coming down in price, or used from electric cars, or god forbid a coal plant. Still, wind power is kind of synchronized regionally, as is solar, so any wind plant with larger capacity factor will necessarily be more valuable, as the dimension of the plan B may be reduced


If this turns out to be true.
Virtually every “new” wind energy “breakthrough” claims to offer lower-cost electricity in some way, whether it is “less material”, a “higher capacity-factor”, “more power”, “less intermittency” “doesn’t need to aim”. “doesn’t need a tower”, etc. And many if not most also imagine thgeir systems will be more trnsportable, but that is usually only an artifact of the fact they are (wisely) building demos at a smaller scale. But many concepts build at a smaller scale for the wrong reasons: Their design is so bad it can only be built t small scale, and building at a larger scale would quickly reveal how ridiculous the idea is. I’d place Kleiner-Perkins’ “FloDesign” ducted turbines, later called “Ogin” in this category. I tried to warn the two principals of the company, Bill Joy and John Doerr, that ducted turbines were already long-disproven, nine years ago (Techonomy Conference 2010 at the Ritz Carleton in Lake Tahoe, California) but they wouldn’t listen. I think it was eventually hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on a concept that every real wind person already knew wouldn’t work. The scary thing is I’ll bet they made money on it, through utilization of “the greater fool theory” where they made a bad investment, knowing they could find a “greater fool” to buy it for even more than they paid. But a telltake clue was they never built a very big one. Why? Because of the main driving force mking wind turbines cost-effective in the first place: Low solidity. While a solar panel must physically cover its entire “swept” area, a wind turbine’s blades need only cover about 2% of the area they “sweep”. But if you add a funnel, that jumps up to more like a nearly 100% solid surface. All of which must be ble to withstaand 100 MPH winds. So if you wnted to turn a modern 5 MW turbine into a ducted turbine, you;re going to have a solid funnel hundreds of feet across. What are you going to make it out of? Concrete? Fiberglass? 50 times as much fiberglass s you would need to sweep the same area with set of blades? So when I cite “idiots, idiots, idiots” in wind energy, I’m not kidding, not exaggerating. The only thing that distinguished the “FloDesign” funnel from previous funnels was a few little squiggles that were supposed to counter the induced rotation in the flow - interesting but how could any such minor adjustment change the big picture of requiring 50 times the material? Not to mention any such scheme to increase windspeed through a rotor requires even the rotor itself to have increased solidity to slow it down for noise reasons, so half the advantage is thrown away before you even get started (Makani). The repetitive crap that crackpots come up with as improvements in wind energy are typically so ignorant and retarded, it’s difficult to believe anyone could seriously promote it, yet they do, and people keep falling for it.

2 Likes

Yes, but it is the people who dare to think something «worse» who can find other than incremental improvements. People who go for inferior solutions, but that turn out to be superior in time.

Before this happens, the design must go through a phase of optimization and further invention. Its a fools errand because most of the time, as you say, it’s a dead end.

So maybe you need to be professor Crackpot to make AWE work. I am learning heaps every day at Kitemill building a solution that many of you guys debunk regularily. And I still think maybe it’s possible. So do the people at Makani and Ampyx and many others, for their respective designs. So did you @dougselsam with the Wind Serpent.

The better approach (and I seem to be repeating nyself here) is to give honest feedback to each others, but not try to say that this or that is doomed, eg:

«@dougselsam, won’t that shaft of the windserpent be extremely heavy with scale?»

or

«@dougselsam, how will you deal with larger blades rotating slower, thus transferring less energy through the shaft»

rather than

«@dougselsam, you should stop thinking about the Wind Serpent, because it’s a doomed project, and further development will only show the concept’s infeasibility. By the way you must be out of your mind to spend time on this, and you clearly don’t understand _____»

Because I believe that if we don’t have guys like you «turning the stones» we will be stuck with ground based wind power for a while yet. I dont want you to use my judgement on your project, rather I want you each to use your own best judgement. Just because you are a different person with different experiences and a different mind.

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Yes all good points and I certainly have plenty of people telling me how stupid everything I do is. Check out this video, with a third of a million views, and almost a thousand comments, the most prominent of which express opinions of how unworkable the idea might be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55HfnGR6kQ&t=5s
A real inventor, like me, LOVES the negative comments. Like any record-setting effort, the real fun is accomplishing something everyone said “couldn’t be done”!
Otherwise all you’d be looking at is “Oh yeah, of course this works, big deal.” - boring!
Without naysayers, this would be no fun! But I know how well my crazy machines work, so I hope to develop more wind energy contraptions of this general type, as well as others. My point though is not so much about people trying new things, but people dumping inordinate resources into “trying” typical, well-known, repetitive pitfalls in wind energy that have long disproven themselves. Like an “explorer” stuck in the rut of a known bad road, so heavily-traveled as to be littered with rusting vehicle carcasses from previous “explorers” getting stuck-in-the-muck at the same exact place. Or just applying no logic. The normal thing is some person who, if you were around them, you would slowly realize they are kind of nuts, or even completely nuts, insisting that some long-disproven or just dumb-on-its-surface idea is “the answer”. When there are unlimited new things to try, why try disproven ideas? It just shows a lack of understanding of what is, combined with a lack of imagination regarding what could be. If people want to waste a hundred-million dollars on some long-disproven idea that any wind energy person could explain the well-known pitfalls of, and someone else wants to try to rationalize it, at some point, you just have to give up on explaining anything to them. Lemmings. DaBiri comes to mind, continually trying to rationalize darrieus turbines. There is never any logic to these people. He wants to place shorter turbines below regular wind turbines in a windfarm. As though these turbines would not slow the wind for the existing turbines! And he’s going to choose Darrieus turbines for this task. Why? Because of some phantom, imagined “everything is different now!” effect. (meanwhile the company producing the turbines he used is out of business
) And because people always want to place vertical-axis turbine at a low height. Why a low height? Because they might be difficult to support at a higher height due to vibration. And due to a general denial of reality. If you’re the type of person who can’t see what makes good turbine, you’re probably also the type to ignore placing it into a strong wind. What can you say to these people? Nothing - they won’t listen. Hence the character of “Profethor Crackpot!” “Hey kidth!” :)))

OMG I just realized we’re completely “off-topic” Now what are we gonna do? :O
 . . . . .

Here - let’s get back on-topic:


A short video explaining how Earth freezes over completely.

So we were told kids would never see snow after 2015 in the DC area.
I think DC had unprecedented snowfall that year instead.
How about Southern California today?
Land of “endless summer”?
Here’s our X-mas Blizzard warning:
Active Weather Alerts
Winter Storm Warning
Issued: 3:36 AM Dec. 25, 2019 – National Weather Service


WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 AM
PST FRIDAY


  • WHAT
Heavy snow expected. Travel will be very difficult to
    impossible. Total snow accumulations of 4 to 8 inches below 4500
    feet, 12 to 24 inches from 4500 to 6500 feet, and more than 24
    inches above 6500 feet with localized amounts to 35 inches
    possible. There will also be strong gusty east to southeast
    winds. Tree branches could fall with power outages possible.

  • WHERE
San Bernardino County Mountains.

  • WHEN
6 PM today to 6 AM Friday. The most widespread and
    heaviest snow is expected on Thursday.

  • ADDITIONAL DETAILS
Be prepared for significant reductions in
    visibility at times in heavy snow, blowing snow, and fog.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS


A Winter Storm Warning for snow means severe winter weather
conditions are expected. If you must travel, keep an extra
flashlight, food and water in your vehicle in case of an
emergency.

***Me? It was cold on the slopes yesterday - brrr! I’ll be skiing again today - maybe snowboarding. Then the great escape, as the next 3 feet of snow begins to fall. Good thing my gas-guzzling SUV has 4-wheel-drive! :)))

Thank you for your generous contribution to global warming

Today’s LA Times presents a more data-driven science overview of Global Warming in Doug’s area-

"Scientists say there’s no doubt that climate change has amplified the extreme events of the last decade, mostly because the state’s average temperature is rising.

California as a whole has warmed by 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the 20th century, according to the state’s Natural Resources Agency. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says Southern California is about 3 degrees hotter than it was 100 years ago."

Regarding Magenn; of course an alleged energy scam based on Magnus can invoke Global Warming fears to raise millions. Magenn’s principal took in 25 million from Cold War Star Wars research based on Magnus tech that could never have worked as promised. Global Warming plus Magnus then drew 8 million more from naïve investors hoping to get rich and save the world. Some readers here may yet think Magnus to be more than curving trajectories slightly in ball sports.

Its also clear that statistical Global Warming scientific data is not in service to politics as such, but supports Precautionary Principle risk reduction wisdom. CO2 has been known as a greenhouse gas for two centuries. Many of us were called to AWE before unequivocal geophysical data, like drastic ice mass loss globally. In seafaring, the smart captain is a “professional pessimist”. Over-confidence by warming doubters cannot deter the concerned from developing AWE to responsibly address the vast risk. If we do fall into an Ice Age instead, AWE is then the most promising tech for ice travel and settlement.

And for those interested in global warming and emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2, take a look at the map, with live CO2 emissions figures by country or region (gCO₂eq/kWh).

Now France : 46 g with 75.78% nuclear
, compared to Germany : 591 g with 33.14% coal, 15.87% gas, 4.6% wind
, so more than 12 times more. As the wind is intermittent, a fossil back-up is required.

Thank You for “drinking the Kool-Aid”! :slight_smile:

Just saw this in the news.
From Forbes:

IEA Chief Predicts New Target Date For ‘Peak Oil’

Link: IEA Chief Predicts New Target Date For ‘Peak Oil’
First sentence:
“We’ve seen these predictions before, and they have always been wrong.”

Meanwhile, does anyone notice, we’re long past the previously-threatened “point of no return”?
I guess being accurate is too much to ask.
The history of oil is that they have always said “we’re at peak oil”, ever since, I think, the first oil well.
Certainly, it’s been true for the past 50 years that I can remember. Back then they just said there was no more left.
How many times does anyone have to receive what turns out to be wrong information, before a teeny amount of skepticism develops? :slight_smile: