tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62489601067287104412024-03-14T01:54:12.981-07:00Dieoff DebunkedThe original big daddy Peak Oil website was the dieoff site. It's premise is loosely based on the Limits to Growth book from the 1970s which said population will go up in the 21st century and then crash. In this blog I will examine some of the ideas behind peak oil and then demonstrate why we're not all going to die horribly as per dieoff.comDBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.comBlogger110125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-55378523987412844322015-09-01T22:28:00.004-07:002015-09-27T12:46:05.504-07:00This is a major, major breakthrough. Just pencilling this in for now to remind myself to make a blog post.
High efficiency artificial photosynthesis to methane at 10% efficiency from solar OR direct electrical to methane conversion at greater than 50% efficiency.
The implications of this are staggering.
Original paper is here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01254<br />
<br />
<br />
So why is this such a big deal? The answer to that is the efficiency of nature’s own photosynthesis pathway. Basically nature’s own photosynthesis pathway while it is efficient in the sense that it does the job, the percentage of sunlight hitting the Leafs of the plant or whatever green surface of the plant or algae or bacteria uses to convert the sunlight via photosynthesis into carbohydrates this percentage is really pretty small. We're talking about something on the order of less than 5%. So to have an artificial photosynthesis and a cheap one as well which has an efficiency of somewhere on the order of 50% is really quite impressive it’s 10 times better than nature. <br /><br />Not only is it 10 times better than nature it is also better than the high-end solar cells that are currently available on the market. In the end result the photocells, the solar panels will in fact be more energy efficient overall because the produce electricity which is not subject to carnot efficiency because its use case is not heat engines. <br /><br />But the particular use case where solar panels is really good is actually not a great use case for this which could be for example aeroplanes or heavy duty trucks. This artificial photosynthesis which creates some kind of precursor organic chemical to hydrocarbon fuels can be produced by intermittent energy sources like wind power or solar power and then stored for use when required by those particular use cases. This makes airlines semi renewable. What it also does is create yet another substitute pathway to swap out fossil fuels and thus eliminate any possible any rapid decline rate it when/if peak oil eventually gets here.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-4843635664142503782014-12-10T21:36:00.002-08:002014-12-10T21:49:45.849-08:00The Doomers part 1Meanwhile, down at the Gunchester....
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To be continued...DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-65346517256425730092014-12-10T19:13:00.002-08:002014-12-10T19:16:06.106-08:00Doom by low oil prices?Oil prices continue their precipitous plunge into the abyss.
<BR>
<BR>
Unless, however, you believe economics is bogus (and most doomers do), you'd be inclined to think that this is a good thing.
<br>
<br>
I've heard various conspiracy theories that the collapse in prices is caused by various groups who want to stick it to various
other groups.
<br>
<br>
One other possibility is this: Saudi et al, not only are not on the cusp of massive oil depletion at Ghawar etc but in fact see the writing on the wall. There is now a theoretical cap on oil prices. We can substitute transportation by fossil fuels to non-fossil fuels in a variety of use cases by a variety of methods. Everything from electric cars, trucks and trains to nuclear powered freighter ships. If we wanted to, we have the technical means to substitute away. So will we?
<br><br>
I happen to think that the situation we are in is this:
<br>
In a market based global economy (which more or less our little blue planet is, give or take a few definitions and basket-case states), generally the best priced items win. If oil prices remain high, the substitutes will chip away and chip away.
<br><br>
An electric car such as a volt (in which you do most of your driving using electricity) is basically a permanent stripping away (for at least the lifetime of the vehicle) of several barrels per unit of time of demand.
<br><br>
Now scale that up and imagine what it actually looks like for a large producer of oil:
The oil price is set at the margin - the last few barrels of supply set the price for all the barrels. Right now demand is 96 some million barrels per day but supply is 98 million some barrels per day.
<br><br>
Now if we are to believe the more conservative economists, it isn't substitution that is causing this, it's a slowdown in China and Europe being in the doledrums that is causing a buyers market.
<br><br>
So why does Saudi not cut production?
<br><br>
Well you can believe the conspiracy theorists (e.g. they are trying to crush the Iranians/Venezuelans/Russians etc)
<br><br>
OR
<br><br>
Maybe the Saudis see the long term writing on the wall and they are trying to slow down the long term fall in price?
i.e. to spell it out: Is Saudi scared of Tesla????
<br><br>
Now an interesting corrollary is this: I happen to love the idea of electric cars. But I don't want to pay $40-80K for one.
The Tesla market shouldn't be much affected because, being a luxury market, it's price insensitive.
<br><br>
BUT.... the cheap end of the market (e.g. the Nissan Leafs and the Chevy Volts) ought to be a little more price sensitive.
Will it be, or will they throw in the towel and let the Chinese eat their lunch when oil prices go back up in the next business cycle?
Who knows, but interesting times.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-87634133898581394042014-12-08T22:36:00.002-08:002014-12-10T19:18:36.253-08:00Breakthrough grid storage tech?Company to watch:
Applied Exergy Inc.
These guys are privately owned right now.
What they appear to have, however, is what looks like a breakthrough grid storage technology.
Basically they work with the concept of Exergy.
<br><br>
If I horribly bastardize the physics concept of Exergy what we're talking about
is the amount of work potential available when a component of a thermodynamic
system goes from one temperature to another.
<br><br>
How they appear to have harnessed this, is by taking energy from renewable sources
such as wind, solar etc and attempting to store it in the form of slushy ice-water.
So when power is abundant (i.e. when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining),
much of that energy is stored.
<br><br>
Now the advantage of this system is basically comparative.
If you look at the (massive) amount of stored energy just sitting there in fossil
fuels, it's massive. The dirty (no pun intended) little secret of fossil fuels,
however, is that though it's got somewhere on the order of 4x the energy density
of our most prevalent technical storage solution (lithium-ion batteries), what
we're missing is that by the time you get it out of the ground, process it, refine it,
transport it and finally burn it inside of an internal combustion engine you only
have about 18% of the stored energy actually available for useful work.
<br>
It's horribly inefficient.
<br><br>
Compare that, however, with batteries. Your electric motors are some 90% efficient
and batteries return also on the order of 90% of their stored electricity out.
So if you use an electric motor driven vehicle powered by batteries you get
90% of 90% of 90% which is 73%. <br>That's a whopping FOUR times more efficient than
fossil fuel powered vehicles. <br>That also, by the way is the reason why fuel cells
are a non-starter technology from an energy perspective. Splitting water into
hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis, collecting the hydrogen and then compressing it,
then transporting it, then burning it in fuel cells takes you down to somewhere around
30% of the original energy. <br>Which is why I rag on fuel cells as not being competitive
in almost all use-cases.<br> (Which is not to say there are no viable use cases for fuel cells,
there *are* but mass transportation of personal vehicles is not one of them).<br><br>
So.... that brings us to Applied Exergy's solution: The efficiency of their exergy based
process is about 80% on returned energy. So 90% of 80% of 90% is 65%. Which is not too too
far off what we get out of lithium ion batteries, if you were using it for electric
transportation. Which is pretty decent in fact. <br><br>That said, obviously electric transportation
itself is a horrible use-case because you'd have to transport the ice-water, store it etc etc
so you would get nowhere near the energy efficiency back.<br><br>
Where it shines, however, is in grid storage. We're talking about large format batteries
than can stored megawatt hours (or greater at a time). Lithium Ion batteries can do this,
but they cost a significant amount. Water on the other hand is pretty cheap. So these puppies
make what I think is a very, very compelling case for a grid storage solution.<br><br>
So... where are we on this one?<br><br>
Well Applied Exergy is a private company and it looks like they might be a startup also.
They're not listed on any stock market exchange and they may also never actually bring anything
to market. But, and here's the but... If they *do* have what they say they have then this little
company could be a game changer for renewable power. Definitely one to watch.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-88636901518252585432014-01-30T10:28:00.002-08:002014-03-07T17:58:15.799-08:00Tesla Model S drives across the US from NYC to LA in 6 days. Not too shabby.A 62 year old Model S owner drove from New York city to Los Angeles in his model S by using Tesla's network of supercharger stations, thus bringing us closer to the day when range anxiety even of the extreme "I want to drive coast to coast" kind will be forever banished.
<br><br>
There are still huge areas of the country that don't have superchargers in them but this is a huge win for electric vehicles in general. A standing ovation to Tesla for making this possible. Exciting times!
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DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-35827485496232155412013-09-03T08:43:00.001-07:002013-09-03T08:43:14.382-07:00Mid Term Energy Independence?So much as I'd prefer that we in North America switch over to electric driving it increasingly looks like that we don't need to do it in a hurry (the Europeans on the other hand need to do it last decade because they depend on the Russians and the Middle East for their Oil Supplies, neither of whom are their best buddies).
<br><br>
Occidental Petroleum and Pioneer Petroleum have trialed some test wells in the well known (but up till now considered unrecoverable reserves) massive permiam basin in West Texas called the wolfcamp.
<br><br>
What's interesting about the Wolfcamp is that it's similar to the bakken but is a strata ten times as deep. In fact there is so much oil in it recoverable using horizontal drilling technologies that it appears to be second in size to the world's biggest petroleum field (the Ghawar in Saudi Arabia).
<br><br>
Why that's interesting is that North America over the last decade has gone from declining production (and having to import more from potentially hostile regions (like it looks the the Europeans are going to have to do unless they switch aggressively to electric transportation) to increasing production. Given that in the last five years, petroleum demand in Nroth America in aggregate has declined and supply has gone up (and continues to do so) - currently at 16 million barrels per day compared to demand of 19 million barrels per day) - it's not outside the realm of possibility that North America is petroleum independent within the next five years.
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No dieoff for us then.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-78928361994900639642013-07-30T10:19:00.002-07:002013-07-30T10:19:17.149-07:00Dieoff by Famine doomers just received another slap upside the headOne of the tenets of dieoff by peak oil is that (allegedly) oil = fertilizer and there are no alternatives (allegedly).
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So let's run with the false assertion that there were no non-oil based alternatives to fertilizer up till now.
Why is that? What does that mean?
<br><br>
Well the reason is this (or would be if it were 100% true): Most crops cannot obtain nitrogen fertilizer from the air though some can (notably legumes like peas). Those that can do not need nitrogen fertilizer or only a very little amount.
<br><br>
What are the consequences of this?
<br><br>
Well this means that we have to put artificial nitrogen fertilizer on our fields which leads to over-use which leads to nitrogen runoff which leads to fertilizer reaching the ocean which creates algae blooms which depletes oxygen which leads to fish dieoff in the ocean yadda yadda.
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So it's a bit of a catch-22.
<br><br>
You need to put fertilizer on your crops to feed all the people but if you do it you poison the oceans which means people get less fish and the ecosphere has issues etc yadda yadda
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And when the oil runs out (assuming that we see a peak and rapid decline) fertilizer will become too expensive and crop yields will decline and we can't get anything back from the ocean because the ocean is already contaminated.
So we're fucked right?
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Not really.
<br><br>
We can clean up the ocean by using targeted amounts (and thus less) fertilizer and thus limiting runoff. We also don't need to worry about oil going to fertilizer drying up because oil *isn't* the only source of nitrogen fertilizer. It's only (currently) the cheapest. Prior to the discovery of massive amounts of cheap oil, in the early industrial age, nitrogen fertilizer was mostly produced in Norway from hydro-electricity through a process which cracks the nitrogen out of the air and makes it into ammonia. So if need be we could go down that route again.
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But....
<br><br>
The anti-apocaliptic horseman of science rides to the rescue once more.
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Turns out that researchers at the University of Nottingham in the UK have discovered a way to make the bacteria which fix nitrogen from the air in legumes, useful for all sorts of crops.
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One of the non-legume crops which has been colonized by nitrogen fixing bacteria is sugar cane in Brazil. After an extensive study of those bacteria species, the U of N researchers discovered one particular species which will readily colonize all sorts of crops.
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The process is something like (I'm horribly paraphrasing here to come up with an analogy): make dried probiotic with the appropriate nitrogen fixing bacteria and coat the seeds of the corresponding crops with it. When the seeds sprout, the bacteria in the probiotic colonize the roots of the crops, thus enabling them to fix nitrogen from the air just like legumes can.
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The upshot?
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Doom from peak oil induced lack of nitrogen fertilizer has thus been postponed.
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-53458446713066147342013-06-06T08:52:00.000-07:002013-06-06T08:57:55.809-07:00New Battery Post: Lithium Sulphur with 4x energy density using cheaper materials than Li-IonScientists at the Oak Ridge National Lab have recently cracked the elusive holy grail of Sulphur-Lithium batteries.
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Sulphur is a very abundant element and thus even if the energy capacity were equal to or less than that of Lithium-Ion it would still be a breakthrough because it would make batteries cheaper and thus enable better the substitution away from fossil fuel powered vehicles.
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But it isn't equal to Lithium-Ion. Li-Ion batteries have an energy density of about 170 Milliamp hours per gram. These new batteries have an energy density of 1200 milliamp hours per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles.
<br><br>
This is significant. In a previous post I took the pessimistic case that with current generation electric vehicles the battery costs are such that driving one gives an equivalent cost of $6 per gallon for the most expensive electricity generated from all-renewables using very expensive vanadium flow batteries to store electricity off-peak. This is the most expensive possible scenario: a world in which everyone drives electric vehicles using current generation electric vehicles and all electricity production is from wind or solar. And the cost is equivalent to $6 a gallon today's money plus the cost of the vehicle meaning the average driver would pay $600-$800 per month in car loan plus aprrox $200 per month in electric "gas" for a total monthly driving cost of $800-$1000 per month.
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These new batteries would mean that potentially the cost of electric "gas" would go down in an all-renewable world AND the cost of the monthly payments. If the cost breakdown of the batteries in an electric vehicle are the same as today ($10Gs for the vehicle and $20Gs for the batteries) then we would have $10Gs for the vehicle and $x for the batteries. Taking the cost of the materials as being the same but the range is 1200/170 = 7 times greater, let's do some math.
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Now the current range of e.g. the leaf is 120 miles. That sucks. Let's bring it up. We want at least a range of 400 miles. So that's 400/120 = 3.33 times more battery. So we have 3.33/7 = 0.47 times the cost of the current batteries to give us 400 miles range instead of 120 miles range.
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So at $20Gs for the initial price of the old-style battery, we have 0.47 x $20Gs = $9400 for the cost of the new and improved battery. Which gives us a price of $19,400 for the new and improved Nissan Leaf with a range of 400 miles. Not too shabby. This brings the price of the monthly car payment down from $600-$800 a month to $19,400/$30,000 = $388 to $517 per month for a total monthly driving cost of $588 to $717. That's *hardly* going to break the bank. And this is the *pessimisticly EXPENSIVE* case.
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Now of course these batteries are still in the lab, but let's consider the implications in keeping with die-off debunked.<br><br>
Well first of all clearly there's going to be no die-off at peak oil because we don't need oil for the largest part of current oil consumption (transportation). We can extrapolate further from there but that's for another post. Enough to mention that in this current world we have plenty of options for CHEAP electricity. We don't need to use expensive all-renewable electricity with batteries to store it. We could have a combination of cheap renewables, no batteries for storage, with off line backup utilizing nuclear, gas-powered, coal-powered, whatever. In other words I'm being way the hell too pessimistic in my calculations and likely what we're going to see is that cheap electric vehicles will start to chip away at the edges of any peak oil decline and we will HARDLY EVEN NOTICE it happening.
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Now I say "chip away at the edges" rather than replace into insignificance because of one small inconvenient fact. North Americans i.e. the muppets of the global driving population will en-masse do something entirely stupid and counter-productive: Instead of choosing to drive e.g. Nissan Leafs with a 400 mile range costing $20Gs, they will instead prefer to drive F-150s or equivalent (whether fossil fuel powered or electric) due to their insistence on all the repeated myths they tell each other as to why the "NEED" large trucks for daily driving rather than "WANT". So North Americans will instead not take up electric vehicles at the same rate as other parts of the world because the largest market will be electric F-150s (or equivalent) with only a 120 mile range instead of nissan leafs (or equivalent) with a 400 mile range. Meaning that North America won't come into the electric game until the tail end of the switch-over. But never-mind - gas prices will probably not rise much higher than $6-$10 per gallon as a result of subsitution in the rest of the world.
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The knock on effect of course will be that the rest of the world will be able to industrialize and buy automobiles because they will no longer be limited by the availability of cheap gasoline and instead will have the availability of cheap electricity with which to drive. And mobility creates markets.
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So the conclusion is this: instead of seeing die-off because of peak oil or else "limits to growth" club-of-rome scenarios, we're going to see continued global growth and more of the global population lifted out of poverty. Business as usual in other words.
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Die-off? Hit the snooze button.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-17686830099299374412013-05-30T14:58:00.001-07:002013-05-30T14:58:58.527-07:00Oh Look at this: Unsubsidized renewables cheaper than fossil fuel in AustraliaSo one of the many whines we hear from naysayers and doomers is that renewables can never be cost competitive with fossil fuels and thus what's the point of doing them.
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I've always begged to differ as it's obvious that with falling renewables prices it would be inevitable that at some point a line would be crossed where it just made economic sense to replace fossil fuel power with renewables. That line has been crossed in Australia (and likely in other areas as well).
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Bloomerg New Energy Finance has this to say:
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A study conducted by BNEF’s Sydney analysis team, who painstakingly priced the various different sources of electricity by Australian Dollar per Megawatt hour for new builds shows that electricity produced from a new wind farm costs AUD 80/MWh whereas a new coal plant is AUD 90/MWh and a new baseload gas plant is AUD 95 /MWh.
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It's important to note that these are unsubsidized costs.
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If carbon pricing were included the cost of a new coal plant goes up to AUD 143/MWh and that of a new gas plant to AUD 116/MWh.
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Most of the naysayers are operating on a mix of outdated information and hearsay. Michael Liebreich the CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance says “The perception that fossil fuels are cheap and renewables are expensive is now out of date”.
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“The fact that wind power is now cheaper than coal and gas in a country with some of the world’s best fossil fuel resources shows that clean energy is a game changer which promises to turn the economics of power systems on its head."
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Doomers: sit up and take notice.
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-87239524120268177652013-04-25T08:25:00.000-07:002013-04-25T08:25:20.057-07:00New Flow Battery Created at Stanford out of inexpensive materialsOne of the currently technically feasible battery storage systems for large scale (but intermittent) sources of power from renewables such as wind, solar and wave is flow batteries.
<br><br>
These batteries can be scaled up to pretty large storage sizes such as tens of megawatt hours and so are definitely a technical solution to storage of intermittent power.
There are currently a few places in the world where there are ongoing trials, such as a wind farm in Ireland, a couple of places in Japan and some south Pacific islands.
<br><br>
The issue with these batteries is, however, that they are often complicated and made of rare materials such as Vanadium. Also required is a membrane to separate the two liquids between which electrons flow. This membrane has to be replaced every so often, adding to the expense.
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A team at Stanford, however, has solved a couple of these problems at least in the lab by the creation of a flow battery without a membrane and also using the relatively inexpensive and abundant materials lithium and sulfur.
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A utility scale system would be capable of being scaled up to handle many megawatt hours.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-16287587434260500742013-04-24T10:35:00.001-07:002013-04-24T10:35:42.862-07:00Diesel from BacteriaSo I'm not holding my breath waiting for biofuels from algae or whatever but nevertheless this is interesting as it shows just how far we're coming along in the development of biotech with plug-in parts to the genome that do exactly what we want them to do:
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Professor John Love from Biosciences at the University of Exeter and his team have modified the ubiquitos E.Coli bacteria to produce a bio-equivalent version of diesel.
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This is revolutionary because it's not just some kind of fatty acid or ester which needs a convoluted and possibly energy intensive method to process the chemicals into diesel or gasoline, instead it's a drop-in replacement.
<br><br>
Prof Love and his team worked with Shell on this and though it's not ready for commercialization and still faces a number of hurdles to bring it there, it's nevertheless very interesting.
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-44241557624230471022013-04-18T10:00:00.001-07:002013-04-18T10:00:54.943-07:00Death by Mathusian Collapse: The horseman of famineJust a short post today.
<br><br>
So the premise of the one particular doom scenario (reminiscent of Thomas Malthus and loosely tying into the Limits to Growth crowd) is that the population will increase to say for example 10 billion people and we will all starve.
<br><br>
The doomers like to tie this together with the fact that the green revolution from the 1960s where we (they would say <i>narrowly</i>) avoided famine by increasing crop yields to keep up with population and that the green revolution recently appears to have stalled.
<br><br>
Well my doomer friends, here is yet another nail in the dieoff-from-famine doom scenario:
<br><br>
By sheer and utter accident it turns out that a scientist trying to replicate some extinction events hypothetically caused hundreds of millions of years ago by the toxic gas Hydrogen Sulphide seeping out of the oceans, has instead discovered that the plants growth faster, germinate quicker and produce significantly more biomass.
<br><br>
Frederick Dooley, a University of Washington doctoral student in biology who led the research has this to say:
<br>
"With wheat, all the seeds germinated in one to two days instead of four or five, and with peas and beans the typical 40 percent rate of germination rose to 60 to 70 percent." he said
<br>
"They germinate faster and they produce roots and leaves faster. Basically what we've done is accelerate the entire plant process," he said."
<br>
"The most significant near-term promise, he believes, is in growing algae and other stock for biofuels."
<br>
<br>
Oh well. Maybe doom from famine is postponed a bit longer.
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-83159738528349341742013-01-31T14:32:00.002-08:002013-01-31T14:32:10.242-08:00Doomers are like ZombiesDoomers are basically zombies because there is an endless supply of them and their brains are already partially eaten because they keep coming up with the tired same old shit over and over again.
<br><br>
There is one post on some scientific site today allegedly debunking the possibility of running our current (and a few years down the line) civilization off of renewable resources.
<br><br>
I won't even bother posting the link because it's a tired reheat of droning doomer arguments but it riles me that such gibberish is given airtime.
<br><br>
The argument basically boils down to this: It’s expensive so don’t do it. What if population grows? The horror: if population grows to infinity then obviously you can’t have infinite growth so nyah.
<br><br>
Recommendations are the same old tired hippy/druid/English teacher bullshit: cut back on growth. Live with what you have today. Keep those who are in grinding poverty still in grinding poverty because if we grow then maybe some small furry creatures might be displaced from their environment.
<br><br>
Here’s my debunk of their debunk: I’m not going to waste my breath taking you seriously. It’s like the unending supply of doomer trolls in the dieoff/peakoil forums repeating the same tired old mantra. It gets tiresome repeating how things actually work. Instead I’m imagining an episode of the Walking Dead where I’m eating a bag of popcorn on the roof with a few cases of ammo shooting the zombie doomers down in the streets who caught the Rage Virus from their cans of MREs from Savinar.
<br><br>
What’s funny to me is that they think that “you can’t grow forever” counts as any kind of valid argument for “don’t try to grow today, tomorrow, the next day and for the next century or more”. It’s also amusing how little grasp they have that the economy *doesn’t* grow in a straight line to-the-stars trajectory: just like China’s blistering growth of the 90s slowed down in the 2000’s and has slowed down further. Also like the way Microsoft grew like blue blazes in the 90s etc etc.
<br><br>
I recommend these doomer idiots read Joseph Schumpeter and get a handle on creative destruction and Kondratieff business cycles. I also recommend they actually do the math to figure out exactly how far away we are from any putative “limits” to growth here on Earth never mind if we used some of the energy we could harness to pull in resources from off-Earth.
<br>No doubt they’d dismiss that as sci-fi, all the while doing so using a globe spanning computer network that has all the current knowledge of mankind accessible from star-trek like communicators (i.e. “cell phones”) from anywhere on Earth.
To quote a friend of mine: Sheesh!
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-34883023230775359782013-01-24T22:21:00.000-08:002013-01-24T22:23:12.921-08:00Ooops might I have been right about *smoke*In one of my previous posts I debunked the idea that the warming which we've seen could be caused solely by Carbon Dioxide and is most likely caused by smoke and aerosols (i.e. black soot).
<br><br>
http://dieoffdebunked.blogspot.ca/2011/11/death-by-carbon-dioxide.html
<br><br>
Surprise surprise turns out I was right.
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2013/2013-01.shtml
Da-da-da-dum!
<br><br>
Well guys that's quite the easier problem to tackle than Carbon Dioxide isn't it? And we can handle it quite comfortably by putting particle scrubbers on smoke stacks while NOT shutting down the economy.
<br><br>
So what are we waiting for?
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-90676984793412028772012-12-14T09:50:00.003-08:002012-12-14T12:03:43.668-08:00Global Warming Leads to the death of the Amazon? Not.So after a genetic survey of Amazon tree species it has been determined that many of the species have survived for a surprisingly long time in the region (over 8 million years in some cases). Previously it had been believed that most tree species originated in the cold Quaternary Period (in which we are now), beginning some 2.6 million years ago.
<br><br>
In fact, of the 12 species surveyed, seven have been around for at least 5.6 million years and three for more than 8 million years.
<br><br>
This means that many of the common amazon tree species were around during previous periods of high temperatures induced by previous instances of rapid CO2 induced climate change such as the early Pliocene (3.6 million years ago to 5 million years ago) which was equivalent to the IPCC's moderate carbon emission scenario. During the highest emission IPCC scenario, temperatures will be equivalent to what they were during the Miocene (5.3 to 11.5 million years ago).
<br><br>
The implications are clear: Amazon tree species can survive extreme temperatures up to and including those predicted for the most extreme emissions scenario.
<br>So no tree dieoff then.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-48821761801116779782012-12-13T20:24:00.000-08:002012-12-13T20:30:31.165-08:00Even I'm SurprisedSo I have to say that even though I'm a big fan of electric vehicles I hadn't realized exactly how far along we are.
<br>
Allow me to explain:
<br><br>
It seems that a private company in the US (note *not* a subsidized government entity but a private company) has installed more than 10,000 chargepoints all across the USA and Canada. Apparently you can get some kind of payment card and use it to pay for electric charge exactly the same way you would for gas at a gas station.
<br><br>
From the looks of it most of the major metropolitan areas in the Eastern Half of the country are covered. i.e. you can drive from one major city to another no problem as well as drive from the northeast round the lower states and all the way along the bottom to California and up the coast to Vancouver in Canada.
<br><br>
It's pretty light in the mountain time zone region tho so basically I still need a Chevy Volt or a Plug in Prius to get from where I am to the more connected regions and will still need to rely on gasoline for at least 1,000 miles. The rest of the country, however, looks pretty impressive.
<br><br>
The following is the map:<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6JP22lb7EBWwVjBKWEje3vX_Ukw0eqByTQBzeTQPwGmEnmm6ZP_tcqZCgWb9q5zWDV4IhAYYM1NGMpXd2Kwh4614B_LE7Sh-LKSUQx0hNfu8nV83UYO-KZgU7sHOUCPPgEtaf5Kzf_7E/s1600/Electric-Charging-Stations-Map-Dec2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="229" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6JP22lb7EBWwVjBKWEje3vX_Ukw0eqByTQBzeTQPwGmEnmm6ZP_tcqZCgWb9q5zWDV4IhAYYM1NGMpXd2Kwh4614B_LE7Sh-LKSUQx0hNfu8nV83UYO-KZgU7sHOUCPPgEtaf5Kzf_7E/s400/Electric-Charging-Stations-Map-Dec2012.jpg" /></a></div>
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-40186854479913853642012-12-10T06:42:00.000-08:002012-12-13T20:31:36.356-08:00Well There's a SurpriseThe draft of the IPCC Global Warning Report for 2013 is circulating (quite why they make a report every year is beyond me, but nevertheless).
<br><br>
Notable take-homes are the following:
<br><br>
There will be no catastrophic increase in hurricanes. Instead tropical storms will increase their wind speed somewhat but the overall number of hurricanes will *decrease*.
<br><br>
Wetter regions will get *wetter* (instead of "turn into deserts" as previously predicted).
<br><br>
Drier regions will allegedly get drier. Interestingly however, measurements in the real world over the last 60 years have shown no such drying trend in regions like Spain or the U.S. South-west in spite of the fact that global temperatures have increase by 1C (a full third of the project increase).
<br><br>
And last the keynote: instead of a few inches, global sealevels will increase by about a meter.
<br><br>
Now the last one is in fact something that needs a resolution, but the answer isn't to funnel money to corrupt third world governments (who will then turn round and park it in swiss bank accounts instead of fixing the problem) nor is the answer to kill the economy. The answer is to continue as we are now, gradually decreasing our carbon content in a drive towards a high percentage of renewable based energy as well as looking at ways to shore up sea-wall defenses.
<br><br>
Here's a prediction: there will be a whole bunch of Dutch companies making plenty money on consulting work.
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-29439695594411638192012-12-06T08:14:00.003-08:002012-12-13T20:38:42.845-08:00Synfuel to partly offset Peak Oil declines?Chris Floudas, a professor of chemical engineering at Princeton, has just published a paper outlining a strategy for replacing the entire U.S. transportation oil supply with synthetic fuels from a feedstock comprised of a combination of non food crops and other (more abundant than oil) fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. The fuel would be competitive at a $/barrel price of between $80-$110.
Now, we’ve known for some time (at least the 1930s) that you can convert coal to liquids and natural gas to liquids so this is not new news. What’s different is the persistently high oil prices, which makes the process cost competitive with oil based fuels.
<br><br>
So let’s make a couple of assumptions here:<br><br>
1. Oil prices stay high because markets are tight due to inability to raise production much<br>
2. Using Prof Floudas’s numbers, 47 large plants would produce 71 percent of the total transportation fuel<br>
3. Although US/Canadian oil production is increasing, globally we see a decline rate
<br>4. We are meeting some (but not all) of the decline rate by a combination of increased fuel efficiency and substitution to electric vehicles.
<br><br>So what does that look like?
<br><br>For each percentage point of global decline rate, like for like, we need to replace 1% of the total U.S. fleet, which is 25 million vehicles. Now naturally, the fleet turns over once every 17 years so this gives us 100/17 for a percentage turnover every year which is about 6% of the fleet.
<br><br>If every single one of those vehicles doubled fuel efficiency from 15 mpg to 30 mpg we could handle a 3% decline. That’s probably unrealistic, however, as Americans are notoriously conservative when it comes to changing their driving habits. <br>So how many are realistic? <br><br>Well right now we are selling about 50,000 priuses a year in the U.S. so let’s make a wild guess and say we sell 100,000 fuel efficient vehicles per year today. <br>Is it realistic to say in the face of peak oil we might see demand double? So let’s say 200,000 fuel efficient vehicles per year. That’s close to one percent. <br><br>So we therefore cover a half percentage point of decline rate with fuel efficient vehicles.
<br><br>
Let’s be super optimistic and say we can cover another half percent by replacing oil consumption all together by selling 100,000 all-electric vehicles per year. So we’ve got x-1 to cover with synthetic fuel (where x is the decline rate).<br><br>
But let's imagine that we are uber-pessimists. Let's ignore the contribution to covering the decline rate from fuel efficient vehicles and electric vehicles (never mind compressed natural gas vehicles) and instead just look at how many plants we need to build and what it will cost us to do it. <br><br>
So let’s be super pessimistic and say the decline rate is at the high end (say 10%).<br>
So in the case of the U.S. that’s 1.3 million barrels needs to be replaced every year for transportation.<br><br>
Using Prof Floudas’s numbers 71 percent of the total transportation requires 47 large plants, so that’s about 2/3 of a percent per plant each year. <br><br>So we need 15 large plants per year. That’s a cost of $226 billion per year. <br><br>Which is about 700 bucks per U.S. citizen per year or about 60 bucks per month or about 12 bucks per week.<br><br>
So that’s the pessimistic case. <br><br>Now is that going to break the bank? Hmmmm.
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-71893842661693296092012-12-04T06:57:00.001-08:002012-12-04T06:57:58.888-08:00Not really a debunking, just an idea for todayJust musing a little. So it seems to me that the critical piece in order to get to escape velocity for abundant energy (read renewable [and to a lesser extent nuclear]) is the batteries. Now you've heard me rant about batteries repeatedly and some may argue that I am in fact a battery nut. Not the case, just I think it's an optimal strategy.
So... here's a thought: given that there's a vast number of possible chemical and material configurations for the anodes and cathodes of advanced (cheap!) batteries and a limited number (though still large) of researchers, then why not crowdsource the sifting through the materials?
Has anyone else thought of this? Is anyone doing it right now? (I'll have a dig around on the internet to see if I can't come up with a story or two on it...)
On the flipside, there's still a non-zero possibility that "peak oil" is way out there due to the continuing and ongoing increases in production from the likes of the Bakken in the U.S.
Interesting times...DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-62746796361653691622012-11-26T11:57:00.002-08:002012-11-26T11:57:57.555-08:00Renewable Energy getting to escape velocity?So one of the main objections that the naysayers seem to have is that renewable energy is "too intermittent" and there is no way of overcoming this since the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. In the case of wind it's often said by the naysayers that wind is uselss because you would need to have equivalent capacity of standby fossil-fueled plant in case of a 3-sigma event such as took place in Texas a few years ago where the wind failed for blow for 4 days straight.
Well maybe, perhaps.
BUT, and it's a very large but, the problem isn't one of intermittency per se because it can be solved by various means. Again, like "peak oil", it's one of expense. Is it cheaper to run on fossil fuel powered plant or is it cheaper to run on renewables?
The "no substitute" doomers point of view doesn't even come in to the picture. Quite clearly renewables are a substitute. The intermittency issue, however, is in fact one of expense rather than non-existent technology because you could, for example, distribute wind farms at large distances from each other and cancel out on average the non-wind-blowing days because it's far less likely (a 6-sigma event?) that the wind will fail to blow everywhere. Likewise, you could also "store" electricity in e.g. large groups of refrigerators (such as are found at port facilities) or else use pumped storage such as is used in hydro electric facilities.
Batteries don't even come in to it. Not, however, because they don't work. Clearly they work. It's cost. Nobody has considered using batteries for wind farms (or solar farms for that matter) because the cost per kW/h once you factor in up front costs, is prohibitive compared to fossil fuel powered electrical generation.
That, however, is on the cusp of being about to change. This: http://www.mhi.co.jp/en/news/story/1211221593.html
The executive summary of the above link is that mitsubishi heavy is investing in a pilot project using large format li-ion batteries as a backup for a wind farm on some islands in the North of Scotland.
Now what's interesting about this is that the wind farm already has a connector to the mainland where electricity is much cheaper. They are just doing this to store electricity from the overflow. That tends to suggest that they are closing in on it being cost-competitive to build wind farms with built in battery storage instead of using a connector link to the main grid.
That, if true, opens all sorts of interesting possibilities, not least a further reinforcement and debunking of dieoff.
DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-15075528804625106462012-02-29T07:11:00.000-08:002012-02-29T07:11:21.277-08:00Death by DesertificationThose who like to predict doom from "global warming" typically say that any increase in temperature will inevitably lead to crop failure, massive storms, more powerful storms, sea level rises, drought and desertification.<br />
<br />
In fact in the greatest hothouse epoch of all geological time, the Eocene (caused by a superspike in greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide - and possibly a large pulse or many pulses of methan) where the temperature was as much as 20C in the arctic area, mid and high latitude regions were SIGNIFICANTLY wetter than today.<br />
<br />
Here's the proof:<br />
<br />
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6028/455.abstract<br />
"This increased offset could result from suppression of surface-water δ18O values by a tropical, annual moisture balance substantially wetter than that of today. Results from an atmospheric general circulation model support this interpretation and suggest that Eocene low latitudes were extremely wet."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And warm temperatures + wetter weather = greater productivity of plants.<br />
<br />
Greater productivity of plants = higher crop yields.<br />
<br />
Higher Crop Yields = larger sustainable human population.<br />
<br />
So much for the doom from warming theory.<br />
<br />
It's *cooling* we need to worry about.<br />
<br />
Oops. Please try harder dear climate modeler "scientists". FAIL.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-31061822093593168252012-02-16T09:09:00.000-08:002012-02-16T09:09:55.453-08:00Further Collapse of the economy due to the increased automation of jobs by software?Some commentators reckon that many of us will end up put out of work by sofware in the near future and that thus all of the wealth will inevitably end up in the hands of a very few (say the famouse "1%). That sounds plausible but is very simplistic, *Marxist* and not at all taking into account the realities of the situation:<br />
<br />
Even today most work is already done by computers. <br />
I doubt that all of the jobs will be eliminated for a simple reason: the banks can't allow it to happen or they will collapse. <br />
More likely we will continue with the scenario we have now of boom and bust and the average knowledge worker fitting the "I will pretend to work and you will pretend to pay me" scenario whereby<br />
they are effectively thinking most of the time then pushing buttons for a small amount of time to produce products/deliverables. <br />
Additionally unless we get strong AI, where is the basic research going to come from to produce new generations of products? <br />
The "rich" can't simply gobble up all manufacturing capacity and that's all there is to the economy. <br />
Even today the vast majority of the economy is in services. Some of that can be further automated but the thinking cannot yet be.<br />
Many companies biggest resource (tired old cliche but still true) is their intellectual property generated by humans.<br />
Are the rich so much smarter than the rest of us that they can generate *all* of the intellectual property all by themselves unassisted?<br />
In the other extreme nightmare scenario where the rich don't give a shit about services and new intellectual property and are interested in shrinking<br />
the economy down to automated manufacturing and high end services with no new intellectual property due to lack of scale (i.e. stagnation) and the rest of us are in blinding poverty:<br />
I reckon that would be a recipe for revolution, never mind the fact that the aggregate economy would shrink and there would be less rich people.<br />
It's not in the interests of the rich to put everyone out of work. We're a "resource" and the more productive we are the richer they are.<br />
I suspect that instead we may just see more booms and busts instead as the only way to drive the fake economy and create jobs will be to print money<br />
and force it through handfuls of pre-picked "winners" like the zombie companies of japan.<br />
On the other hand one other super optimistic scenario might be in the absence of strong AI we simply incrementally upgrade the tools that each worker is using.<br />
We're making the assumption that only university educated people can use automated software or hardware tools.<br />
That's not even true today. Call centers use highly automated systems. Yes we may get to the stage that many of the "scripted" call centers could be<br />
automated and that would thus throw people out of work, right? Well it comes down to a combination of trickle down economics combined with a zero sum game.<br />
If the game is zero sum (i.e. no net new profit caused by further automation) then yes, when their jobs are automated out of existence there will be no new<br />
jobs. In all likelihood, however, the profit margin of companies who use automated software tools instead of people will increase because otherwise why do it?<br />
It doesn't make sense for a company to invest in automated software tools to do a job if humans are cheaper. So we can definitively say that profit margins will<br />
increase. This will means the owners have more money to spend. Now here's a question: Do higher income people or business owners spend most of their money on a. manufactured product<br />
or b. services? Here's a further question: do higher income people spend a higher or lower share of their income on *personal* services?<br />
The answer is of course more. Therefore those displaced from low end service jobs will find themselves doing more personal services which are not automated.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, what about the higher end jobs that currently require a university degree or significant training. <br />
Surely some of those jobs will be eliminated by more intelligent automated tools?<br />
Think again. If the tools are semi intelligent themselves then with adequate training even dummies will be able to operate them in all but the most limited set of circumstances since.<br />
Instead the dummies will find themselves enfranchised in much the same way that high paying manufacturing jobs in the city raised the income of poor farm workers<br />
who left the land to find work in factories and in places like Detroit they ended up being middle class instead of working class or poor.<br />
<br />
Now you may be sceptical especially if you think that the economy is zero sum. In fact, the economy always has been about the growth of some sectors<br />
of the economy and the collapse of others. That's because of the continual development of new products as scientific research advances.<br />
There is currently massive change in China but apparent stagnation in the Western world. Western commentators seem to think that there<br />
is a global problem of stagnation. There is not. There is a temporary imbalance whereby China and other "developing" countries are cheaper<br />
because of labor and/or better more modern supply chains. That does not mean that the *global* economy is shrinking. On the contrary.<br />
The real challenge facing us in the West is to develop new industries. New industries are based on new products and are created in a process<br />
called "creative destruction" whereby the old non-competitive industries collapse and are replaced by the new. Horse drawn carriages were replaced<br />
by automobiles. How many people can name the most successful manufacturer of horse drawn carriages in the 19th century? Not many. It's gone.<br />
But GM, Ford, Nissan et cetera are here and are shortly to be in fierce competition with Chinese competitors who may or may not be more effective than they are.<br />
Likewise, the likes of Bell and AT&T etc have had to contend with the rise of cellphones and cable companies have had to contend with the rise of the internet.<br />
Telegraph companies had to contend with the telephone before them et cetera et cetera.<br />
<br />
Right now the two main risks to the economy growing are nothing to do with the automation of jobs by information enhanced software tools.<br />
Those two risks are the debt overhang from the housing bubble in the western (and especially English speaking) countries as well as shifting growing demand<br />
for transporation away from oil as conventional oil supplies peak and start to decline. <br />
<br />
In all cases, the problems need to be solved by *more* innovative products which in turn will generate new industries which we desperately need in order<br />
to replace the industries we cannot compete with against rising stars like China.<br />
<br />
<br />
Where will these new products come from? <br />
Basic research and design. <br />
<br />
In fact in an abstract sense the core of the economy itself *is* is R & D and *everything* else is support for R & D. Let's take a look at how that part of the economy<br />
will be affected by increasing automation:<br />
<br />
<br />
Those of us who are university educated are in no danger of being automated out of existence, we'll simply be using more and more and more powerful tools and adding much more value<br />
than we currently are. Take a university researcher for example. One researcher is useful, but much of the work is currently spent searching literature and collating and correlating<br />
the existing research. The internet has now enabled lay persons to do the same thing with the use of google and simply doing a mathematical combination of all the relevant keywords.<br />
A layperson could not understand all of the texts thrown up by the correlated keyword searches but could certainly cut down the amount of time spent on this by said researcher.<br />
If that job were automated further so that some semi intelligent tool could correlate successfully and pull up everything specific to what the researcher is looking for,<br />
then they could spend more of their time on the experimentation. The experimentation itself can be speeded up significantly also by automation.<br />
So does that put the researcher out of business? On the contrary. It increases productivity *massively* and the pace of scientific progress will jump by orders of magnitude.<br />
Now could we somehow find some basic ways to plug in laypersons to this process? Indeed we can and we have. There is a game that currently exists for folding proteins.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-83453554430144935532011-11-20T11:55:00.001-08:002012-01-28T10:22:29.937-08:00More battery breakthroughsSo things are getting interesting in the battery arena.<br />
<br />
Right now we have batteries for electric cars that cost around $20,000 for 150 mile range, which while it will avert a collapse in the transportation and logistics network if it is all we have (it's not), the price is currently so high that it's not *very* competitive with lower end internal combustion based engines.<br />
<br />
We really need at a minimum, double the range and half the price to bring costs and utility to a level at which the average buyer of today's vehicles will purchase them on mass.<br />
Even better, obviously would be a battery which has three times the range and half the cost or less of today's batteries.<br />
<br />
Well as it happens, the batteries we are using today are 2003's technology. While it may be frustrating to watch that it's taking something like 9 years to produce batteries with adequate range and pricing, compared with information technology which improves by 2X it's performance every 18 months, we are nearly there. As I make it there are now four viable improved battery technologies in the lab at a pre-production stage. There are, in fact, more than four promised technologies but if we put faith in batteries promised by large organizations with the funding and the process, engineering and production capacity to actually bring the technology to market in any kind of meaningful way then there are four.<br />
<br />
They are:<br />
IBM's battery 500 which is the result of millions of hours of supercomputer advanced simulation of different chemistries of anodes and cathodes for the holy grail of lithium batteris: lithium air. If this battery is real then it will have a 500 mile range for the same cost as today's batteries. Definitely adequate. On an off topic note, I wish there was a paper somewhere explaining how their model worked, because the way they rapidly scanned over 20 million chemicals make me suspect AI was somehow involved and that would be even bigger news than just a new battery. IBM promises to have a prototype ready by 2013 and if successful, it hopes a battery manufacturer will license the technology and be in production by 2020.<br />
<br />
Toshiba's SCiB lithium titanate battery with double the range and the same cost, coming to market in 2013.<br />
<br />
Nissan has developed a new better anode in it's battery which it uses in the Nissan leaf which currently has a 100 mile range. It plans to release these new batteries with double the range in 2015.<br />
<br />
Altairnano, LG Chem and A123 Systems all have a variety of more efficient cathode's for more advanced lithium ion batteries with lower costs.<br />
<br />
It's also worth pointing out that there are also magnesium chemistry batteries in the lab as well as Iron phosphate lithium batteries and various other technologies being worked on that are further away from the market.<br />
<br />
Now a corrollary to the battery advances and cost reductions is the reduction in intermittency of renewable sources of electricity such as wind and solar. The problem of intermittency isn't really a problem of technology, since we already have technical solutions to these problems: geographic dispersement of wind farms, hydro storage, compressed air, vanadium flow batteries etc etc, it's really a problem of price (same as with electric cars). If prices of batteries become low enough that they can be added on existing electric renewable infrastructure with no large scale increase in price to the consumer it will be a no brainer to do so.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-49578344054507289722011-11-09T23:22:00.000-08:002011-11-09T23:22:14.588-08:00Death by Carbon Dioxide?The global warming models propounded by the climate change scaremongers suggest warming of a "dangerous" level of 4-8C. Quite why an *average* temperature increase across the whole planet over a whole year including both daytime and night-time temperatures of that level is quite so scary escapes me. I'd like to see more granular data explaining why such and such an increase over a smaller region would be catastrophic over a smaller timescale for example.<br />
<br />
But I'm not going to look at that today. Instead I'm going to look at the *science*.<br />
<br />
If we examine the actual math, the scientific equation for absorbtion/emissivity by carbon dioxide produces three salient facts.<br />
1. It's about a ONE degree increase in temperature per DOUBLING of carbon dioxide<br />
2. All things being equal absorbtion and emissivity are roughly in balance. The more radiation coming in, the higher the emissivity. End result is it should be a wash.<br />
3. Increases in temperature are *instant* if you double carbon dioxide. There is *no* lag.<br />
<br />
So what gives?<br />
<br />
Well the climate "scientists" are quoting temperature increases of much higher than one degree and absorbtion/emissivity model says it should be a wash so that means that the higher temperature increases are due to something else instead of carbon dioxide since carbon dioxide only leads to an increase of one measly degree per doubling.<br />
<br />
At one degree per doubling that means going from pre-industrial times i.e. 200 parts per million we should see a one degree increase to 400 parts per million and a two degree increase to 800 parts per million and a three degree increase to 1600 parts per million and a four degree increase to 3200 parts per million and a five degree increase to 6400 parts per million and a six degree increase to a 12800 parts per million.<br />
<br />
We have to go to ridiculous volumes of carbon dioxide to get to the high numbers proposed by the climate "scientists".<br />
<br />
So what can possibly be causing it since we *have* seen an increase in temperature? (Although it has to be said that the observed increase in temperature is not as high as the scary climate models propounded by the scaremongers).<br />
<br />
Well in order to get to "scary" levels of temperature increase there has to be a lag effect since the observed temperature increase hasn't corresponded with scary temperature increases.<br />
Also we have to have significant positive feedback effects such as the melting of the ice sheets and the reduction of forest cover.<br />
<br />
Now we can definitively say that both ice sheets and forest cover have decreased and that both of these are positive feedback effects thus increasing the temperature increase we would normally see above and beyond the temperature increase of one degree per doubling of carbon dioxide on it's own.<br />
<br />
Additional negative feedbacks are cloud cover and smoke/aerosols, with increased cloud cover tending to decrease temperature and smoke/aerosols tending to crease temperature.<br />
<br />
Putative positive feedbacks increasing warming include methane gas increases.<br />
<br />
Now the observable facts are these:<br />
<br />
Ice cover has decreased. Forest cover has decreased. Cloud cover has decreased. Fossil fuel burning has increased. Carbon dioxide emissions have increased. Smoke and aerosol emissions have increased.<br />
<br />
What can we speculate from this?<br />
<br />
Decreasing ice cover should lead to increased temperature increases over and above carbon dioxide emissions.<br />
Decreasing forest cover should lead to increased temperature increases over and above carbon-dioxide emissions.<br />
Fossil fuel burning will increase both carbon dioxide and smoke and aerosol.<br />
Carbon dioxide increases should lead to a one degree increase in temperature per doubling (which is piffling little as shown above compared to actual concentrations observed).<br />
Smoke and aerosol increases should have lead to a lowering of temperature below what has been observed.<br />
<br />
So to explain any not observable putative future temperature increases over and above the one degree per doubling as well as the not-observed increase over one degree by the observed increase in carbon dioxide increases we have to invoke very large feedback effects.<br />
<br />
i.e. increase the melting of ice cover by a large amount and increase the amount of deforestation and invoke possibilities such as the release of methane from methane clathrates on the ocean floor.<br />
<br />
But here's the rub: once *all* the ice has melted and the entire planet has been converted to agriculture by removing *all* of the forests there's *no more* possible positive feedbacks from those two drivers. Likewise methane persists in the atmosphere for only a handful of years and though it's a *much* more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, once the methane degrades into carbon dioxide the amount of warming is again limited to one degree per doubling. Not really a substantial amount.<br />
<br />
So we're left with clouds.<br />
<br />
So to pin the blame on carbon dioxide we have to invoke a huge positive feedback by showing that increasing carbon dioxide increases cloud cover which increases temperature.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately the data goes in the opposite direction. Increasing cloud cover results in a cooler world, not a warmer one.<br />
<br />
But *yet* the temperatures have increased and carbon dioxide has also increased (although by not as much as the scary models which include the ridiculous positive feedbacks). So what gives?<br />
<br />
Cloud cover has actually decreased.<br />
<br />
But that doesn't make sense if it's carbon dioxide that's driving it.<br />
<br />
In fact, it's *not* carbon dioxide that's driving it though it *is* man-made emissions that are driving it.<br />
<br />
<br />
It's *smoke*.<br />
<br />
Now here's an interesting fact: millions of years ago there were massive eruptions called the "eruption of the deccan traps" which released a shit-load of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere probably because the deccan traps were sitting on top of huge coal deposits. But here's the rub: although temperatures increased by a whopping amount (12C or thereabouts and then quickly leveled out to about a 6C increase), carbon dioxide alone could not have possibly done that. Even if you invoke a pulse effect melting the methane clathrates then you'd have had at *most* a temporary spike so there should only have been the 6C increase. But the data show otherwise. Looks like there might have been something else. I suspect it's smoke.<br />
<br />
Getting back to present times:<br />
<br />
If we remove smoke from the picture and increase carbon dioxide we should see an increase in temperature MEDIATED BY an increase in cloud cover.<br />
<br />
But we don't see that. Instead we see decreased cloud cover and a temperature increase *exactly* predicted by the increase of carbon dioxide. So the putative predicted temperature increase by the climate change scaremongers is due to alleged positive feedbacks.<br />
<br />
Now we've already shown that there's a limit to the duration of the positive feedbacks so they can't generate *possibly* generate a "runaway greenhouse effect". We've also shown that carbon dioxide emissions by themselves should only create a one degree increase per doubling AND that should be mediated by increased cloud cover. Once the positive feedback mechanisms of melting the icecaps and deforestation have done their job we should only see a one degree increase from then on per doubling and the huge volume of carbon dioxide emissions required to get to multiple doublings of emissions is absolutely staggering.<br />
<br />
In other words in order to go for a horror scenario the only possible blame we can pin on emissions is that of smoke and aerosols. Smoke and aerosols are what lead to reduced cloud cover. If we continue to increase our burning of fossil fuels we will continue to increase our smoke/aerosol emissions and *that* will amplify any increases in temperature above one degree in any continuing way.<br />
<br />
So what we ought to do is not limit emissions per se, if we want to decrease temperature increases to only one degree per doubling we have to reduce smoke/aerosol emissions.<br />
<br />
But we're not seeing that as a position by the greenies. Instead we're seeing an attack on multiple levels against all forms of industrial activity on a large scale. But that position isn't justified by the effects of increased carbon dioxide emissions by themselves and if we remove smoke/aerosols from the equation then we need to increase our carbon dioxide emissions by an unfeasibly massive amount in order to get to so called "scary" temperature increases.<br />
<br />
So what gives?<br />
<br />
The actual position propounded by you greenies is not based on a desire to limit carbon dioxide emissions per se. Instead it's based on limiting interference with the global ecosystem by man made means and from that angle, *everything* is being attacked from the burning of fuels, to agriculture, to extractive mining, to transport of products and/or the transport of people in order to allow the ecosystem to return to a natural state with no interference by humankind.<br />
<br />
So basically if you're in favor of human dieoff, let's put the greenies, the druids and the ecologists in charge.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6248960106728710441.post-70744610909618672442011-10-31T21:27:00.000-07:002011-11-03T22:59:05.474-07:00Somewhat off topic almost science fiction like dieoff scenariosSo I've revisited the carter catastrophe using the mediocrity principle and also looked at a possible extinction event with relevance to us (competition from an equally intelligent competitor species).<br />
<br />
Life has existed for approximately 3.5 billion years and the sun has existed for approximately 4.5 billion years.<br />
Since we have no evidence of life other than our own and our sun has existed for only 4.5 billion years then by the principle of mediocrity we have to say that every newborn star in the galaxy that fits the category of our sun (i.e. G class stars) will develop life after 1 billion years and life will continue once it has gotten started in spite of extinction events and that there shall be at least five extinction events during the 3.5 billion years of life.<br />
<br />
What can we say about the species existing? Well nothing much during the entire period because we don't have the data but we can say that right now we have about 10 million species right now and approximately 1 in 100,000 species are what can be classified as "living fossils" or in other words species that have survived a significant percentage of the time that animal life has existed. Some of these living fossils have been around for 450 million years and it's therefore arguable that they have been around since the beginning of vertebrate life. Thus we can say that some species have existed unchanged and have not gone extinct in the entire period that animal life has been around and have passed through 5 major extinction events. That said since we have no examples of living fossils longer than the period of animal life (500 million years) we cannot argue that they last any longer than 500 million years. We have to say that's the top line.<br />
If we accept the principle of mediocrity for species we can therefore say that 0.001 percent of all species will be long lived during the 4.5 billion years after a star forms. According to the principle of mediocrity we also have to say that 1 in 100,000 of all *intelligent* species will be long lived. Intelligent species are us. Only one species. 1 in 10 million. So one in 100,000 x 10 million intelligent species should therefore last 500 million years and the rest will last the normal period of time at the most which is 2 million years for a species. <br />
Now 100,000 x 10 million makes 100,000,000,000 is 100 billion. Which gives us an answer that there are *no* long lived intelligent species in our galaxy and in fact there is only 1 long lived species in 100 galaxies. But let's ignore that inconvenient fact for now.<br />
<br />
Since we have no evidence of any intelligent species that last 500 million years unless it is us (and we're not there yet) then we have to leave the putative long lived species out of the picture. Even though right there we have resolved the fermi paradox.<br />
<br />
Now the interesting thing is this: intelligence clearly isn't normal because it's only 1 in 10 million species. So can we apply the principle of mediocrity to it? Hard to say, but let's say that we can at least with regards to *other* potential intelligent signal transmitting species.<br />
We need big brains, hands, and communication in order to generate human like intelligence (i.e. a species that can send signals. We have to exclude the possibility that stellar travel is possible because we haven't done it but since we have sent signals then by the principle of mediocrity so can other intelligent species like ourselves). How common are the conditions that lead to the development of intelligence? Big brains obviously, but that's not all. Whales, Elephants and Dolphins all have big brains and though it can be argued that they communicate, that's not enough. We need coordinated communication, big brains and tool making. Tool making requires hands. There are several species with hands but only us with big brains.<br />
Coordinated communication exists in wolf packs and other pack animals. Coordinated communication also exists in herds of prey animals. So we can argue that the three things that together can lead to an intelligent species that can make tools are fairly common. We can likewise argue that the thing required to kickstart civilization in addition to tool making, coordinated communication and big brains is agriculture. There are several species that do this such as ants among others and if you broaden the definition to symbiosis there are many many species. So the conditions for the development of agriculture by tool making, big brained coordinated communication intelligent creatures are common. It just takes a long time. Not till the last 10,000 years. We can also say that it's only during the last 100 years of a 4.5 billion period since a new star formed that a species can send a signal. We can also say that it can't possibly have happened in the *first* 4.5 billion year period of the universe since all stars in that period were only type I stars (i.e. no heavy elements surrounding them) and we have to wait until type II stars are formed. So that cuts out the possibility of a long lived species appearing in the first part of the history of the universe. Now the first type II stars formed around 9 billion years ago so that means that in our galactic space we ought to have had at least two intelligent species that lasted 500 million years within the sphere of the nearest 200 galaxies. But we're talking GALAXIES!!! It's one thing to meet the ridiculous challenge of interstellar colonization and quite another to meet the challenge of intergalactic. Never mind that we have to assume that the two putative civilizations *stayed civilized* during the entire period *and* coincided with us. Likely? I think not.<br />
<br />
But lets get back to signals from our putative signalling civilization.<br />
<br />
What we can't say is whether such a signal will be received or indeed whether it can even be understood over stellar distances because although we have been sending signals for some 100 years via radio waves we haven't in fact received anything, so it may in fact be impossible to receive signals stellar distances via our level of technology.<br />
<br />
But we can't say anything about that because we have no evidence so instead looking at the evidence (i.e. we can SEND signals and nothing about whether they can be received) let's ask the question how many species can send signals?<br />
<br />
About 1 in 13 stars in the Galaxy are G Class stars which are the same type of star as the sun.<br />
Since the principle of mediocrity demands that we aren't special we have to say therefore that all G type stars in the galaxy have life and the capacity to generate intelligent species.<br />
That is to say there are 100 billion stars in the galaxy approximately 7 billion of which are G class. If G class stars are evenly distributed then since the average distance between stars is about 5 light years then that means the average distance between civilizations like ours ought to be 5x13 = 65 light years.<br />
<br />
In our sphere shaped region of space we will have thousands of stars capable of signalling us at<br />
the current time if the principle of mediocrity is true. So either we're not listening or <br />
we can't hear or there are no signals.<br />
<br />
But... the ingredients for life seem to be pretty common all throughout the universe so that's<br />
probably not it. And if life gets started we have to assume that it will eventually lead<br />
to something like us, so something else must be happening...<br />
<br />
If we argue that over the last million years there has been at least one other contender intelligent species but only we discovered agriculture then that pushes the light cone out to 130 light years. There we have one possible explanation for why we haven't received any signals yet if they are understandable or receivable over stellar distances: the signal hasn't reached us yet.<br />
<br />
So that's fairly straightforward. We're going to receive signals sometime in the next 50 years if we're not unique and we are capable of receiving or understanding the signal at our current level of technology.<br />
<br />
So now let's look and see if we can determine how long we're going to last.<br />
We can conjecture that we have about a 1 in 100,000 chance of surviving 500 million years<br />
and 99,999 chance of surviving less than that. Australopithecines lasted about 2 million years<br />
so we can argue that we have an evens chance of lasting 2 million years. Homo Sapiens has been<br />
around for about 200,000 years and neanderthals also lasted about 200,000 years.<br />
So we can say we have close to evens chance of lasting 200,000.<br />
So our time could be up about now or else we have about a 49% chance of lasting another 1.8 million years and about a 1 in 100,000,000,000 chance of surviving 500 million years.<br />
So most species around us last somewhere from 200,000 to 2 million years and hardly anyone lasts 500 million years. We have to rule out the possibility that any species lasts 4.5 billion years which are our time chunks for the formation of intelligent species from single celled life beginning to end.<br />
<br />
So which is it? How long do *we* last.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately we can't know without receiving any more signals. If we don't receive *any* signals within the next 65 years that would indicate that civilizations that are capable of signalling other civilizations are rarer than can be predicted just from obverving us which in turn says that we are missing something in our predictions from the principle of mediocrity. On the other hand, if we receive signals from *all* of the predicted civilizations then we can fairly confidently say that in a sphere of space containig 100,000,000,000 civilizations, one of them will be composed of a species that will last for 500 million years. It doesn't, however, say that during that 500 milllion years it will maintain the ability to signal for that entire length of time, just that there should be one long lived species.<br />
<br />
It's also interesting to note that dinosaur killer events take place approximately 700 million years so it's quite possible that a long lived species will be born, life it's life and then die out in between those large extinction events, so large extinction events might not be what put an end to it.<br />
<br />
In the case of the short lived species (200,000 to 2 million years) it's even less likely that<br />
a dinosaur killer event would put an end to them because they simply don't happen often enough<br />
and if there are lots in a volume of space then the small chance of an extinction event taking<br />
place during the 2 million years for all of them is vanishingly small.<br />
<br />
What *can* we say?<br />
Well during the last 200,000 years there were at least two and potentially up to five competing<br />
intelligent species in the same spot and only one of us survived so we can say that in a 200,000<br />
year space an intelligent species has about a 50% to an 80% chance of being outcompeted by another intelligent species and about a 50% to a 20% chance of surving the competition.<br />
<br />
Since we can rule out extinction events such as dinosaur killers doing us in and we can rule out visitation by star faring aliens we have to assume that it's competition from another intelligent species right here on Earth. We do in fact have a candidate: sufficiently intelligent machines. So let's look at that.<br />
<br />
If we then take the roughly 49.999999% chance of being wiped out right now multiplied by 20-50%<br />
we have thus about 10-25% chance of surving competition by another species plus 49.999999% of surviving at least 1.8 million years and some small fraction of surving 500 million years then it's at worst about a 40 per cent chance of extinction with a 60% survival likelihood and at best 75% of surving *if* we are the better fitted to the conditions.<br />
<br />
Now that's where it gets interesting.<br />
Since the only example we have is of a fitter species outcompeting less fit species, what's so<br />
special about us? Are we more violent, more cooperative, simply better at acquiring resources or what?<br />
<br />
In fact in the case of the neanderthals and the denisovans they have left 6% of their DNA in us and somewhat around 10% in total including<br />
other species. So statistically if it's us that get outcompeted it looks like we don't get wiped out, we get absorbed.<br />
<br />
<br />
Since what we're most likely to be facing in the near future in terms of competition is that from our machines and<br />
more specifically competition from intelligent machines we can argue that if we are to go extinct we probably will hold out for quite<br />
some time and eventually get absorbed by our machines which will be somewhat like us and have some<br />
of us in them and thus we can probably safely rule out an extinction event predicated by an unfriendly AI<br />
in a hard takeoff scenario, though we cannot rule out partial extinction by machines.<br />
<br />
So somewhere between 40% likely we will be absorbed by machines and 60% likely we will still be<br />
recognizably human in 1.8 million years with a vanishingly small chance that we will be recognizably human in 500 million years.<br />
<br />
Interestingly, we're going to have to become significantly more intelligent to defeat machine intelligences or else our machine intelligences will be incapable of becoming much more intelligent than us and we outcompete them in some other way but in either case it's likely that our ability to process data will increase significantly. What's interesting about that is it could answer the question of whether we are capable of understanding or receiving messages transmitted over stellar distances but we just don't have the technologies.<br />
<br />
In any case, as far as I'm concerned the fermi paradox is resolved. Putative signalling civilizations are too far apart, there's no proof we are even capable of hearing their signal, they won't coincide with us in time *and* there might be a "great filter" which wipes them out.<br />
Or not.DBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07695268078574303413noreply@blogger.com0