I have some other things to attend to this weekend, posting will be light from me. But I’ve arranged for some entertainment.
Willis will be posting some of his tales of the sea, which will appear below this posting.
Other WUWT authors are welcome to make submissions also.
Also, since the plane of the solar system is perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy, anything flying through interstellar space is going to likely arrive from a direction outside of the plane of the solar ecliptic.
@farmerbraun;
Well, when you get to their step #2; ”channeling the wind to increase its speed” you also get a thing called “back pressure” (NO climate science didn’t invent “back” anything, “back EMF” and “back pressure” effects have been understood for decades). And that eliminates any “amplification” of the energy in the wind. The venturi effect they appear to rely on DOES NOT AMPLIFY ENERGY.
So if they want to spend their money on this I say go ahead, just don’t ask for a taxpayer subsidy.
Way back when engineers where perfecting steam locomotives for railroads (1900-1940’s) they understood “back pressure” and tried to minimize its effect on the flow of steam through a system.
It always exists and all you can do is tradeoff it’s harmful effects on efficiency, you cannot eliminate it.
Cheers, Kevin.
RACookPE1978 says:
Crosspatch says:
How far out must the Saturn 5 hit the asteroid to give it enough delta v to miss the earth?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You guys are going to way too much trouble. Just have the United Nations declare earth orbit an asteroid free zone. I lived in a city that declared itself a nuclear free zone, and it was never hit with a nuclear blast, not even one. I think it has to pass in the Security Council though, so it has to be unanimous there. You never know what the Russians are going to veto and why, so for plan B, I say we dispense with all the calculations required for the Saturn 5 to get to the asteroid and instead simply move the earth out of the way. I have a concluding remark about moving the earth that I am assured would get snipped.
I have an idea: How about we drill a tunnel through the Santa Cruz Mountains in California at about Loma Prieta. The tunnel could gradually taper to the center where it would have a rather robust wind turbine. The tunnel could also carry infrastructure such as power and communications cables and maybe even pipelines. In the winter we can have rather furious storms and the wind would absolutely rip through that tunnel. During the summer, we have a “heat low” in the valley and air would be pulled in from the coast. In the fall, the wind reverses direction and we often get a gusty offshore flow. But there would be another advantage, too. In the winter the air that flows through that tunnel would not be forced over the mountains and made to drop its moisture. It would act as a conduit for additional moisture inland. A series of these tunnels could be made along those hills and a series of power stations so constructed from them. At the same time, it would allow a significant amount of moisture to reach farther inland that it otherwise would. The rain that currently falls on the Santa Cruz hills runs out to sea as there are no reservoirs to catch it. This would allow more of that moisture to move inland where there ARE places to catch it.
We could do the same with the hills in the East Bay between, say, Fremont and Pleasanton and more in the Diablo range between Livermore and Tracey. This would pump a LOT of water into the central valley AND provide a large amount of wind energy that is much more efficient than the current wind turbines on towers and they would not kill birds. The tunnel entrances could be screened. What we could end up with is a path for moist air from the coast all the way to the central valley and a huge amount of energy production at the same time.
The turbines I have in mind would more closely resemble jet engines than what people normally associate with a wind turbine with what looks like propeller blades.
Research program to examine using impact vehicle to affect an asteroid:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Technology/NEO/Don_Quijote_concept
Why did they name the program “Don Quixote” when that name is usually associated with romanticized futility???
” DocMartyn says:
February 15, 2013 at 6:50 pm
I have an observation and a few questions.
I have seen quite a few electrical furnaces that were used for annealing steel coils. The steel would be heated to red hot, then allowed to cool. Looked into such furnaces at the steel makers where my father worked many times.
I have never seen red hot air. Why isn’t the air in the furnace heated by bouncing of the walls of the steel to red hot?
How can I see red hot air?
Lets say I take 20 meter pipe, half a meter in diameter and with a 1o centimeter diameter hole all through. I surround in heating coils and heat the whole length to red hot. Looking down the length, will I see red hot air? If not, why not?
Now don’t do the flame thing, most of the red/orange of flames comes from heating carbon particles.”
Gases unlike solids and liquids do not emit full blackbody spectrum.
Gases do emit parts of blackbody spectrum.
Most gases are transparent.
And If a gas emits a certain wavelength, then it absorbs this wavelength- so the gas would be less transparent to the wavelengths it emits [it would absorb them].
The color red is wavelength which part of visible spectrum, if the atmosphere emitted red light, it also would absorb the red light from the Sun.
If you compare air to water, water absorb red light fairly well. Sunlight passing thru around 15 meter of water will have most of the red light absorbed, which mean anything which is the color of red below 15 meter of water will not look red, it look grey or blackish.
So one knows the air does emit much of any visible light spectrum if heated, else our atmosphere would absorb them and we would not see these colors, but it’s possible air absorbs and emit some portion of the red spectrum. You would check the emissivity of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and H20 gas. And if any of these gases had part red light spectrum it absorbed and emitted, it would have to be rather insignificant, and human eyes might not even have evolved see it well.
Since it has to be fairly dim red light, you would also need to shield your eyes [or sensor] from the intense glowing metal [it will be a far more intense light] and the air between you and the glowing air would also absorb some this same spectrum of red light.
So at best you have some small portion of red light spectrum which will not very bright [it will be very dim] and air between you will absorb some of it.
Would 20 meter of pipe be long enough?
Should check the emissivity of the gases involved first:
http://astro.u-strasbg.fr/~koppen/discharge/
So apparently both nitrogen and oxygen would emit a portion of red light. Also:
So I would guess that 20 meters of pipe might work.
@John Bell: Not everything you do not understand is wrong. And also, the earth day is not all good… it stinks of the fake Green agenda… which is the opposite of what Green means. After all CO2 is green in that it supports the existence of all plant life.
Seeing as we’re asking questions, there’s something I’d love an explanation for that I saw on more than one occasion back in the summer of maybe 1973 or 1974. At the time I was keen on fly fishing by night for sea trout on the river Rheidol in Wales.
High in the sky, I saw what could have been taken as a star had it been stationary. Not a bright star like one might see in the major constellations, but one that you’d probably miss if it weren’t moving. It moved noticeably, but not in a straight line; not exactly zig-zagging, but certainly not straight, although in the same general direction.
Had that been all, my guess would have been that it was a satellite. However, there was another identical object that moved exactly in sync with it, maybe as far off as the apparent distance between the tip and ball of my thumb held at 18″ from my face. The one object was somewhat in advance of the other.
I thought about some kind of refractive phenomenon; after all, it was summer and the air nearer the ground would probably have still been pretty warm at that time of night. But then, I thought, why would I have seen two objects rather than one? Wouldn’t the whole sky have been refracted by the same air near the ground?
Any suggestions?
Ref
Charles Gerard Nelson says:
February 15, 2013 at 2:23 pm
Yeah Charles,
I heard this interview and I am sure that it raises a number of points that some of our more knowledgeable bloggers on sea level would seriously question.
Perhaps some of them would care to listen to the interview which lasts for about 5 mins or so:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/csiro-expert-responds-to-sea-level-sceptic/4517986
The main point to me was if the ABC had a listener who had hard evidence that what the Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr was saying about Kiribati was wrong why in heavens name did they not get HIM on and allow him to explain his case instead of getting a CSIRO “expert” to prove Bob Carr right and the listener wrong?
Not that I resent Australia helping the cash strapped Kiribati in repairing their main road but statements like “Without help in the fight against climate change, Kiribati could be uninhabitable by 2030” sound absolute b…..t to me:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/15m-to-help-kiribati-fight-climate-change-damage-20130211-2e763.html
And as you say Dr John Church’s responses to the unknown listener’s specific objections sounded like absolute gobbledegook.
Maybe you saw the twin GRACE satellites:
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/
“GRACE satellites were launched on March 17, 2002, on-board Rockot, from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Siberia.
The satellites were injected into a 500 km altitude, near circular polar orbit. ”
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/operations/configuration.html
Recently watched part of this “Nova” program:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/earth-from-space.html
Did not get to see all of it, but what I did see was extremely interesting
NOAA are claiming hundreds of new temperature records in the US last year.
It seems like most stations have only been operating since the 1960’s though.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/noaa-deception-over-record-temperatures/
crosspatch says:
February 15, 2013 at 9:13 pm
“What we could end up with is a path for moist air from the coast all the way to the central valley and a huge amount of energy production at the same time.”
Well, and it would be very expensive due to all the tunnel boring. So, how many years for break even. Nobody doubts that PV panels and wind turbines produce energy; it’s the cost that makes it questionable. (And the bird killing in case of wind turbines in nature reserves)
(Adding energy storage is trivial, we just don’t do it because it doubles the cost AGAIN.)
Your idea reminds me of Technocracy Inc. (founded by M. King Hubbert et. al. in the 1920ies or 1930ies) who wanted to run all of America with hydropower (and replace capitalism with a centrally planned economy, and democracy with technocracy)
Please forgive a blatant piece of off topic advertising. My hobby, which I pursue with a passion, is counted cross stitch embroidery; usually associated with females. Please visit
http://www.eac.ca/auction.html
and specificly
http://www.eac.ca/auction/auc-cripwell.html
If anyone is interested, my email address is bf906@ncf.ca.
And with regards to the break even: Often this is just understood as greedy capitalist vulture nitpicking; but when I talk about EROEI instead of ROI, one could ask, how long does the turbine have to turn to produce the energy needed to bore the tunnel, make the cement needed in construction, and produce the steel etc needed for the boring machine.
If the Keynesian Obama regime decides that a payback time of say 500 years is worth it, have they already depleted the possible projects with an energy payback time of 350 years?
pat says:
February 15, 2013 at 2:54 pm
“15 Feb: Bloomberg: Sally Bakewell: Canadian Pension-Backed Group Plans Wind Power for Prison. Partnerships for Renewables, backed with 100 million pounds ($155 million) of Canadian pension and infrastructure-fund money, will build as much as 500 megawatts of wind power at land owned by U.K. prisons and other bodies…”
Perhaps prisoners should be put on stationary bikes that would be able to produce electricity. They could ride in shifts so that the power would be constant. It would keep them all busy for most of the day, it would release pent up energy that is used for plotting evil deeds and fighting. It would also eliminate the need for yard exercise, a place where lot’s of trouble takes place. In cases of large prison populations, they could use this method to power the nearby town.
RACookPE1978 says:
February 15, 2013 at 7:19 pm
“1) Assume a empty but fully tested and ready-to-fill Saturn 5 on the launch pad. A 5, 50 or 500 ton asteroid is discovered coming in at nominal velocity, and will impact earth in 60 days.
How far out must the Saturn 5 hit the asteroid to give it enough delta v to miss the earth? ”
The Saturn V is a staged rocket. The first and largest stage is used to lift fuel for itself and the two other stages and is then discarded. The second stage continues this mission. The result is only the third stage and the payload reaches orbit. The third stage was then used to put the payload into the lunar trajectory that would take it to the Moon. So only the payload would be available to deflect an asteroid, not the entire rocket.
FWIW, I saw two Apollo launches live, Apollo 12 and 13. To this day I consider the launch of a Saturn V rocket as the most awesome man made thing I have ever witnessed. The most awesome natural thing I have witnessed is the winter surf at Sunset Beach on Oahu, Hawaii.
Here’s an interesting picture from 1963 on the Atlantic website:
Admiral Richard Byrd’s “Little America III” station, built in Antarctic in 1940, was spotted by a Navy icebreaker sticking out of the side of this floating iceberg in the Antarctic’s Ross Sea, on March 13, 1963. The old outpost was buried beneath 25 feet of snow, 300 miles away from its original location. A helicopter pilot flew in close and reported cans and supplies still stacked neatly on shelves. (AP Photo/Official U.S. Navy Photo)
Link
I’m happy to report that my neighbor and I collected 80 gallons of maple sap from our little stand of maple trees this week. Conditions were perfect: warm during the day and below freezing at night. Sap is coming in at 2.75% sugar which is very good.
So yet another year of zero impact of AGW on our humble little maple operation.
It’s interesting that refraction has come up. I watched a documentary recently that followed the work of one scientist who spent years investigating the Titanic disaster, and concluded that the ultimate culprite was refraction.
Based on studying local ships logs for temperature readings, he noticed how an extremely abrupt temperature sheer was occuring exactly at the coordinates of the Titanic collision. Even the logs from a nearby ship, mentioned the word “refraction” several times.
Similar modern day examples of refraction lead to an optical illusion, in which the horizon appears to be raised above where it should be. In normal circumstances, the lookout on the Titanic would have seen the iceberg by virtue of it blocking the starlight as it loomed over the horizon. If refraction occurs, the horizon would have “lifted” to such a level that it would have blocked the stars. In effect, the iceberg would have been invisible as a dark object against the dark background of the ocean.
I was watching another tv programme which discussed how a doctor at the turn of the last century, tried to measure scientifically the existence of the soul. He did this by building a balance onto which he placed the death bed of tuberculosis patients. His experiment consisted of detecting if a weight loss occured at the moment of death, which would represent the departure of the immortal soul.
After carrying out 6 weighings, he found a weight loss of between 1 1/2 and 2 ounces immediately after the death of each patient. He concluded that this was the soul departing the dead. Nobody has ever tried this experiment since, and there are no explanations for the weight loss.
Of course, souls don’t exist do they, so why bother? We know there is no such thing as a soul because no scientific apparatus has ever detected one. No, a soul, if it exists, is completely undetectable, being invisible and having no interaction with matter, which makes it an article of faith, not science.
Look up into the sky at night, and you will certainly not see the dark matter that holds the galaxies together. You won’t see it, because dark matter does not interract with photons. Dark matter doesn’t interact with ordinary matter either.
Do you see where I’m going with this? You could have a block made out of dark matter right in front of you and it would be completely invisible – light would pass straight through it. Your hand would pass straight through it. The only signal that it exists would be in the minute gravitational attraction, since dark matter has mass.
If dark matter exists everywhere, why not in association with the brain? Could a soul made of dark matter be the thing measured by doctor McDougall all those years ago?
Sort of related to twinkling and refraction:
We’ve had a lot of fog this winter. Some days I notice a sharp veil or curtain in the middle of the fog. Close to me, about 20% opaque; beyond the veil, about 60% opaque. When cars pass through the curtain, they almost disappear. The line doesn’t correspond to a difference in altitude. Is this just perceptual? My log retina ‘recalibrating’ linear reality? Or do these sharp distinctions really exist?
Australian Labor government poll ratings plunge just a week or so after Al Gore virtually told Australians to vote for them.
The Curse of Gore again? I wonder whether he once heaped praise on our own UK ecoloon ex-minister and future jailbird Chris Huhne?
S. Meyer says:
February 15, 2013 at 3:52 pm
A friend of mine, in Germany, made me aware of this:
This is what really annoys me about science reporting these days.
Here we have story on the making of a prototype that hasn’t even been made or tested to see if it works!
That’s NOT a science story.