Isn’t the bulb black from the mould? Don’t think I want a mouldy bulb….

And I didn’t know that haggis grew on plants – I thought it was a Scots dare? Isn’t all Scottish cooking based on a dare ?-) (I’m one of those sick puppies who actually likes haggis, and the pipes, and whiskey, and oatmeal, and mutton stew, and … must be the Gaelic part ‘o me ancestry muckin about…)

Noow joost how do I goo ’bout getten’ mesilf one o these herrrre haggis plants? It would be save me ( not to mention the sheep) a grrreat deal o fussin aboot ‘n worrrry!

Obligatory ON T. comment: Has anyone tried teflon coating blades for ice rejection? At least to keep the chunks smaller. Though frankly, I’d expect a wave system to be more productive and less trouble give all the coastline. See: http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com/products.htm
for an example of one I find nicely done.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1083949_home_turbines_a_waste

> I have a black tulip growing between the haggis plants.

> Any offers for a black tulip bulb?

Not if it comes with the haggis!

CO2 was out jogging one nite, he heard a scuffle down an alleyway and without thinking of the consequences decided to go and investigate.

Down the alleyway he found Gaia slumped over in a pool of blood with a large knife sticking out of her back.

CO2 was very fond of Gaia, he pulled the knife from her back and threw it away in disgust, he then tenderly cradled her in his arms – accidentally getting blood all over his hands.

At that time, the IPCC and GISS showed up and slapped CO2 into handcuffs.

“Ha” the IPCC said, ” Caught Red Handed”.

“Your nicked”, said GISS.

“But it wasn’t me”. implored CO2.

IPCC and GISS laughed at CO2. “And who is going to believe you – we have all the evidence we need.”

A few bystanders had gathered, and one said “Find a rope, CO2s not fit to live.”

“Hang him high” the gathering crowd shouted.

And in the shadows, a figure strolled into the alley way, scooped up the knife, calmly cleaned it and put it away.

“Hmmm – proceeeding just as planned.” the figure remarked with a sly smirk as he strolled away.

Stephen – CO2 is innocent.

Give it time.

Wait a minute!
Kicked off the snow and got into my greenhouse.

I have a black tulip growing between the haggis plants.

Any offers for a black tulip bulb?

Please remember that I was watching “The BBC News” at 10 o’clock.
BBC = British But Crap.

Sorry if I offended anyone; but that is the BBC.

The BBC say that wood burning stoves are environmentally friendly so there!!
You guys out there in the colonies must have it all wrong!
This is the BBC telling us that wood burning stoves will save us money and that we can stay warm. Mind you we cannot afford to have hot/warm food or have any lighting, but we cannot have everything.

He explained “That trees consume CO2 when they grow and the burning of wood is environmentally friendly.” Clearly a form of good man made CO2.
-end quote

Fascinating… Here on the Loony Left Coast of the USA, the local Air Quality Police have announced that anyone using wood heat on a forbidden day will be subject to punishment. How one is to know it’s going to become a ’spare the air’ day when lighting the fire at 5 am is a bit unclear…

You must [burn | not burn] trees to save the planet!!! Perfectly looney…

Chris Ward said
I’m beginning to think that strong AGW is the biggest scientific fraud in history. Trouble is, unlike the Piltdown Hoax, this fraud threatens the future prosperity and freedom of the world.
-end quote

Get a copy of “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. Unfortunately, the dictum to “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” would argue for AGW as a popular delusion rather than Fraud… except maybe on the part of folks who ought to be smart enough to know better… Tulips anyone?

For the U.S. at least, windmills can replace natural gas powered turbines for some small percentage of load at not too much increase in management problems. Doesn’t do much for base load coal / nuke displacement, though…

DAV,

Your points about storage and geothermal limits are true, but only in the context of cost effectiveness. These problems are all solved AT A COST. It’s just that the cost is well above any reasonable price folks would pay given the alternative (vastly cheaper) oil, coal, and nuclear. We could drill deep enough to power the whole place on geothermal, it is just incredibly stupid to do so with several hundred years of coal and several thousands of nuclear. Similarly we could use wind with storage, at a high cost.

An example? There is a city in Alaska that has a giant battery bank to keep power going to the city when the generator plant is down. There is no grid out in hellengone so battery UPS becomes cost effective on a city wide scale (they really want electricity to the heater, fan & lights during Alaska nights!).

A mix of wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, gas turbine, fuel cell, co-generation, nuclear and some storage is possible and manageable. In fact, it’s what Pacific Gas & Electric does now. They have a pumped storage facility in the hills… It all runs great as long as the State doesn’t get involved.

The exact mix would be best chosen by markets rather than by politicians with law degrees (and little education in engineering or business economics… They are the folks who brought us buying electricity at mini-bar prices from Enron… all priced on the spot market only.)

The good news is that, post California bureaucracy induced electricity shortages, I have 2 standby generators so I can always use them rather than my wood heater on ’spare the air days’… at least as long as we have gasoline available… even though it has to be “Special” California gasoline…

Sigh. Why are governments so stupid? Rhetorical, I know…

Yes we need change and planning but… The lead time needed is about 10 years, all told, to build most major facilities. We have so many to choose from that there is no energy shortage, and never will be, unless we are so stupid as to let it happen. Hubberts Peak says that the oil took about 100 years to reach peak so it ought to take about 100 years to drop off to near zero, so we have time. Oil production is a bell curve like shape.

The alternatives, in no particular order, and an idea of the scale available are:

Coal & related. We have about a 250 to 400 year supply depending on who you trust and what you assume. About 1/3 of the U.S. sits over coal. South Africa runs on coal liquids and it’s a 1940’s invention. Add in the tar sands and oil shales and we have 1000 years plus. Cost is higher than oil, but not by much, for liquid fuels. The biggest barrier to use is cheaper oil.

Natural Gas. “Lots”. The more we look the more we find. If ocean floor clathrates can be harvested, the potential supply runs to several hundreds to thousands of years.

Direct solar (thermal or photovoltaic) about a 100 x 100 mile square in the desert to power the U.S. (storage is an issue but solvable at a price via any/all of pumped water, compressed air, thermal storage, flywheels, batteries, etc.) It runs out when the sun runs down. Call it a few billion years.

Algae farms. About the same area, but best sited near exiting coal plants for CO2 enrichment and sewage plants for nitrogen et. al. enrichment. Same few billion years of sun. Exact area depends on technique used. Open ponds take more, sealed ‘reactors’ less.

Other biomass. Larger area needed, depending on species, and could range up to a 100 x 1000 mile swath for the U.S. as a whole. A bit much… But at 50 tons / acre / year for some species it can contribute a great deal. Algae is better yield (10 to 100 times better) but trickier to grow than trees and grass.

Wind. While the whole of the U.S. could be powered by the wind in the area to the east of the Rockies and west of the Mississippi with lots of room to spare, storage is an issue just like for solar and frankly, while I like the looks of windmills I’m personally bothered by the air pressure variations and noise. I’m also not fond of the tendency to murder birds and bats… Australia is the proposed site for a thermal / wind system that solves these problems (air skirt over hot land, central tower with small turbines inside. Don’t know if you would call it an air turbine or a solar collector…)

Wave / tide. An area of about 100 x 1 miles would power all of California with exiting machine designs (about 1/10 of the U.S. population). Our coastline is far far longer than that. 1000 miles for the west coast?

Geothermal. “Lots”. Depending on how you define it, it’s highly variable. Is a ground source heat pump ‘geothermal’? It is certainly a good idea… Powering Iceland and parts of California today, among others. The amount is more than needed for the whole world. It’s mostly a matter of how much you want to spend to drill deep enough.

Trash. One of my favorites. We can easily turn our trash and lawn clippings into liquid motor fuels (gasoline and Diesel) for our existing cars. My best estimate is that what I “produce” each year on my fractional acre is about what our cars eat. I don’t think we’re running out of trash any time soon. This is proven technology in production in the Los Angeles area trash system.

And last, but biggest and best: Nuclear. Conventional Uranium is about 1000 years+ but isn’t known for sure since no body really cares. Reprocessing moves it out to about 10,000 years with breeders. Add in Thorium reactors and you get to about 20,000 years (Thorium is running right now in several places). Then, the killer: A scientist in Japan invented a polymer that absorbs Uranium from sea water. It can be recovered at about $140/lb. Well inside the economical range, but not presently price competitive with Uranium from dirt. The neat part? More Uranium erodes into the ocean each year than is needed to power the whole planet. We run out of energy when we run out of planet.

Any proposition of the form “We are running out of energy” or “We must conserve” or “Efficiency we save us” is just fundamentally broken. All we need to do is effectively use the cheapest sources available to improve life for everyone on the planet as quickly as possible. A wealthy society can afford to set large parts of the planet aside for parks; a poor one can not…

There is no energy shortage and there never will be. There is a shortage of imagination and willingness to act sensibly.

My thesis, which I call “My Thesis of UN Nincompoops” is that every government in the world did what we did, sent our most non-competent but annoying ‘diplomats’ as far away from our government as we could: to the U.N. We just didn’t expect them to actually get any power to do anything stupid once they were there. Oops!

George, Brilliantly expressed – and succinct as well.

The fact that the ice cores are both physical evidence and “repeatedly” demonstrate CO2 lagging temperature – and never the other way around – should not only be the nail in the coffin but also the stake through the heart of the AGW hypothesis.

Thanks

“Researchers a the University of Calgary found that the vast majority of bats found dead at a wind farm in Southwest Alberta suffered severe injuries to their respiratory systems consistent with a sudden drop in air pressure – called barotrauma.1 The findings, published in the most recent issue of the journal Current Biology could potentially have far-reaching consequences on bat populations.
”
http://cleantechnica.com/2008/08/29/study-finds-high-rate-of-bat-deaths-caused-by-drastic-changes-in-air-pressure-at-wind-farm/

From what I remember reading a long time ago a bat will almost eat it’s
weight in insects each night so we are loseing thousands of very usefull
critters?

Reply: There’s a post and thread on that, see here. ~ charles the moderator

I wasn’t sure at first, so I got out my copy of AIT which I keep in my office desk, and yes Stepen’s version is shorter.

So now I know what is wrong with my posts Anthony; I just don’t give enough details for people to grasp what I’m trying to say.

But Stephen’s tome will serve a valuable purpose if it just communicates one idea to those who read it.

One of the truest things in Stephen’s essay, and also in Al Gore’s book (see pages 66/67); the correlation between CO2 levels in the ice cores, and the purported temperatures recorded in those ice cores, is absolutely irrefutable, and as is clearly evident in Gore’s book, although he went out of his way to hide that fact; is that the temperature changes ALWAYS occur BEFORE the CO2 changes. People who have that raw data say the correlation coefficient is maximised when you delay the temperature data by 800 years; but if you look closely at those curves, you will see that a second analysis is called for, which isolates the rising edge data from the falling edge data, and does a separate cross correlation, on just the rising edges, and just the falling edges.

I haven’t done that other than eyeballing the curves, but I believe what you will find, is that rising Temperature edges PRECEDE rising CO2 edges by less than 800 years, but falling Temperature edges PRECEDE CO2 edges by more than 800 years, and you will also find that the CO2 edges fall much more slowly than they rise; the decay time constant is much longer than the rising edge time constant.

Now the CO2 graph in Gore’s book, has an actual ppm scale, while the temperature graph has no scale at all. So he deliberately scaled the two curves so that the average amplitude of the changes are similar for both curves so they look alike.

Now that is perfectly fair; if one graph has steps that are 10 times the size of the other, it doesn’t help in a comparison; but since the temperature scale is quite arbitrary, so is the origin of that graph, so if you shift the origin, you can easily overlap the two curves on top of each other rather than vertically separate them, as they are in Gore’s book. That is what any 8th grade science student would have done with that data.

Then it would be painfully obvious, what the only useful information in those graphs is; namely that the relative timing of the edges shows that the CO2 changes ALWAYS follow the Temperature changes, and by something in that 800 year range.

When I went to school (longer ago than I care to remember) it was fashionable to have the cause of something happen before the effect of that cause. Having the cause of something not happen until 800 years later than the effect; is bloody unsportsmanlike; it’s not Cricket !

That relative timing would be a statutory bar to any thesis that CO2 causes global warming.

Just for Kicks now; we presently have a significantly rising CO2 edge going on right before our eyes. So what if we went back 800 years in time from that rising edge which would put us around 1208 AD; what the hell was going on then to cause the CO2 to rise now.

Well I do believe that was right in the middle of the Mediaeval warm period from about 900 to 1400 AD. Well Michael Mann says there was no such thing; but what does he know; after all his famous hockey stick curve from IPCC in 2001 or thereabouts says right on it;- “NORTHERN HEMISPHERE”.

So I guess the hockey stick was just a local anomaly, and not a global effect after all. Later expurgated versions of the hockey stick omit those fateful two words; but you can check the original for yourself.

I don’t just make stuff up.

So I know this is a wind farm thread; but when I saw that word ice; I just flipped out I guess.

Speaking of ice; at Vostock station where many of those cores come from, the temperature has gotten close to -90 C officially, and surpassed that anecdotally. At that temperature, there are NO greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and you have CO2 snow on the ground as well; you are about as close to outer space as you can get on earth.

Now isn’t that a wonderful place to choose to dig up representative information about the climate of the whole planet?

Just asking of course

What I actually meant was a vertical windmill and not a horizontal windmill. For some reason I had them backwards. I had to google vertical windmills and find an image. But yes you are right that they are far more efficient and as someone else pointed out do not have the “paddlewheel” problem, unlesss he had vertical and horizontal backwards as I did.