I’ll be offline for a few hours, and won’t be able to publish anything new for a few hours as I’ll be without Internet access, though I may get lucky and have a moment midway where I can check in.
Guest posters are welcome to publish stories, and moderators are encouraged to post news tips.
Feel free to discuss items of interest within WUWT topic policy.
Anthony
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Do you believe in fate? The Hindenburg Omen is upon us……
@Dirk H –
Therre is a good deal of documented anecdotal evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was substantially warmer than today. You don’t reed an instrumental record to prove this when wine grapes were widely grown in England at that tome, and can’t be grown there today. There is similar, if more limited evidence, for the Roman/Han Chinese Climate Optimum and the Hittite-Minoan-Mycen3ean period.
On another subject – Yahoo News has been particularly aggressive in publishing disinformation and scare stories about climate change. Their latest bit of flatulence claims that the Earth is hotter now than it has ever been, and gettihng hotter and hotter,. Of course Yahoo’s management is among der Fuehrer’s favorite crony capitalists. That wouldn’t mean so much but for the fact that Yahoo is carrying der Fuehrer’s lies about global warming to millions of people who read their slop.
From what I see going on at Yahoo and still going on in the mainstream media, skeptics are still not effectively getting the truth out there. It’s especially important that skeptics find a way to communicate to the lower-income people and young people that are so fond of His Obomanation how der Fuehrer’s tax policies, and most notably also, his energy policies are squeezing them financially and destroying employment opportunities, in short, twice screwing them over – and wasting precious resources that could do a lot towards genuine environmental objectives like cleaning up pollution and providing clean water for people in developing countries.
Think how many people in Africa might have been provided with clean water with the billions paid to the likes of Mann et al., and flushed down the venture capital toilet of so-called “renewables” – and by the way, let them know how dirty those “renewables” really are. This is the kind of thing that people need to be told.
dbstealey says:
June 11, 2013 at 5:43 pm
Open Thread?
OK, then…
Iowahawk waxes lyrical on the all-American carbon-belcher
Honorable mention to: Harrison Ford, Robert Redford, and John Travolta. Liberal hypocrites one and all. Almost forgot Al Gore.
Dyspeptic Curmudgeon says: June 11, 2013 at 3:06 pm
Let’s hope it goes through! In the meantime, Esther Wrightman’s MPP wrote a very nice letter:
http://ontario-wind-resistance.org/2013/06/11/mpp-mcnaughtons-letter-to-attorney-general-re-nextera-v-esther-slapp-suit/
For those who might be interested, I added my voice to the chorus of support yesterday.
Of blighters, blightings and big wind bullies
Mike jarosz says:
June 11, 2013 at 8:18 pm
dbstealey says:
June 11, 2013 at 5:43 pm
Open Thread?
OK, then…
Iowahawk waxes lyrical on the all-American carbon-belcher
Honorable mention to: Harrison Ford, Robert Redford, and John Travolta. Liberal hypocrites one and all. Almost forgot Al Gore.
In re R Redford USA TODAY had this today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/06/10/president-obama-climate-change-column/2407783/
Natural disasters not odd coincidences: Column
Robert Redford 1:08 p.m. EDT June 11, 2013
Obama has expressed worry about climate change, but he needs plan to address it.
He proves his celebutard status by waxing on about how all the bad things in the world are down to CO2, and how Obama absolutely must completely flush the Constitution, although the Bamster’s done a fairly thorough job of that already, to put a stop to the incredible Carbon Menace. What a putz!
stan stendera says:
June 11, 2013 at 1:36 pm
—————————————-
Starting about 1 month ago, I started receiving ‘ANTHONY’ junk emails in my Outlook mailbox on a daily basis. This is probably related to the trouble I was having at Newsvine every time I commented on Colorado Bob’s seeded articles. I would have to do a system restore afterwards. I noticed that the new poster, Jai Mitchell, commented on WUWT about a link to Colorado Bob, in one of his first comments on WUWT. I take it that there is a direct connection. My computer skills are limited. I know I have weak spots and people like this CB are willing to take advantage of that to screw with me. He is a friend of Physicist Retired, also at Newsvine, and felt that I ‘betrayed’ PR with too many tough questions. especially towards the end of last year when I started pushing the question “Why was there no further warming despite the large increase of co2?”. All of a sudden a new blogger ‘One Dirty Rat’ started doing leading questions that Physicist Retired would then answer. They were indirectly directed at me, and so I responded by saying something about his sockpuppet and his attempts to intimidate me by showing that they knew some details about my life. I do not take kindly to threats, nor would I ever consider leaving this conversation, regarding Climate Change, as I feel that I am now doing what I was meant to do. Strange as that may seem.
stan stendera says:
June 11, 2013 at 1:36 pm
“…Someone is posting comments on Bishop Hill’s website using his (Anthony’s) name….”
Stan: Are you referring to the comment under the post ‘Mad Men – the Prequel’ (9 June)?
.
Rossi, third party reviewers, and the E-Cat HT2
I mentioned a little while ago I’d post something about the third party review of Rossi’s E-Cat the next an Open Thread rolled around.
May last fullsize post on the subject was over a year and a half ago, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/28/test-of-rossis-1-mw-e-cat-fusion-system-apparently-successful/ to get up to speed.
The original E-Cat could produce boiling water, but couldn’t run much hotter. Good for space heating and grain drying, both large consumers of lowgrade heat.
Since then Rossi has come up with a high temperature unit and refinements in a unit he calls the E-Cat HT2. These devices can produce high temperature steam, and that means E-Cats can run power plants.
The third party review was done by folks who have been involved in studying some of Rossi’s work in the past, and the test ran at Rossi’s R&D area in Italy. This leaves the reviewers too close to Rossi for Anthony’s comfort, so this is not the third party review Anthony was looking for.
The review is at http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf
The reactors are cylinders, 33 cm long and 10 cm in diameter. The key parts of the reaction include nickel, hydrogen, and a catalyst that Rossi has yet to disclose but says it’s inexpensive. The reactors are designed to have too little fuel to go into thermal runaway, so they use resistive heating to get to operating temperature and then that cycles off and on to keep things at the proper temperature.
There were three runs:
November 2012: This test was a failure no useful numeric data was collected. However, there was substantial heat production as the steel case shell of the test unit melted. The report has some visible light and infrared images of the device before it melted. The IR camera says the reactor was running at about 800°C
December 2012: This test ran at a lower temperature and the device stayed intact. Measurements and calculations report the reactor emitted some 1568 watts radiatively and 466 watts by convection. The power input was 360 watts, so all in all, the ratio out::in, the coefficient of performance, was 5.6.
The net energy produced over the 96 hour run, scaled to the 0.236 kg inner core, was 681 kWh/kg.
March 2012: This used a newer variant of the reactor, the E-cat HT2 (or Hot Cat version 2). This was run for 116 hours at a cooler temperature and wound up producing net energy 470 kW/kg. This is some three orders of magnitude greater thand other sources of energy, ranging from batteries to natural gas to Anthracite and aluminum.
The tests were terminated at a predetermined time. Another test to start soon will run for six months.
There are people skeptical of the recent results, but it’s getting difficult to find where the missing input energy is coming from. The reactors were pre-charged with a small amount of hydrogen so there was no tank of gas; a safety ground wire was removed; the AC power source was monitored for voltage, current and phase variations.
jack morrow says:
June 11, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Just read an article about the magnetic N. Pole racing toward Siberia. What’s up?
Hi Jack
It would be nice to know, and considering that there is some coincidental correlation to the climate change, you would think that science would put some more effort in finding out.
You must watch this
http://iceagenow.info/2013/06/delegate-global-warming-means-longer-colder-winters/
stuart L says:
June 12, 2013 at 12:22 am
> You must watch this
http://iceagenow.info/2013/06/delegate-global-warming-means-longer-colder-winters/
I’m not good with direct orders, I’m especially untolerant of of people on FaceBook who post a link and expect readers to follow it.
Please write a sentence or two of real description. The URL certainly doesn’t make it look like a must read. Must view. Whatever.
Re: Ric Werme says:
June 11, 2013 at 10:17 pm
Thanks for the e-cat update. Any word on actual delivered commercial sales and expected “in service” dates? A demonstration production plant is badly needed before most people will be convinced. Considering the potential for redefining our energy infrastructure, world attention and effort seem to be lacking. It certainly deserves our attention… valid or not. GK
G. Karst says:
June 12, 2013 at 6:40 am
Re: Ric Werme says:
June 11, 2013 at 10:17 pm
Not much in terms of firm dates. In fact, nothing in terms of firm dates.
Things are taking a turn to more of a “real” business – Rossi has a new manufacturing partner and he appears to have lost control of running the project. The partner’s name hasn’t been disclosed, and they’ve required Rossi to say a lot less about how things are going.
A lot of people are dismayed by some of that, but I’m not. Various notes:
It was obvious to me that Rossi wouldn’t be satisfied with boiling water at atomspheric pressure and would get distracted toward something like the Hot Cat.
He has a second model of Hot Cat that looks to me is just begging to be bolted on to the side of a boiler with the hot end facing in. And can be replaced with a future HT 3 during replacement for refueling.
If the Hot Cat works the way it should and appears to in the paper, then there’s no way Rossi could muster the manufacturing demand that will come when commercial units perform as promised. He absolutely needs a big manufacturing company that can deal with that, and knows boilers and power plants. GE or Siemens would be good. Anything smaller and China will wipe them out in a couple years. Manufacturing ramp up will cost hundreds of millions, there’s no way Rossi can (or should) maintain control.
Manufacturing anything takes much longer than anyone realizes. This is about the time frame I was expecting, the earlier promises of units in Home Depot by the fall a year or two ago had no chance of being met.
I still expect major regulatory approval delays in the US. Less than the nuke-in-a-home water heater, but I’m expecting the first units may go to countries that don’t drag their heals as much as the DoE will do here. OTOH, the attempts with the first units at least means regulators have some idea about what’s coming and it would be really nice if they’ve been involved.
At any rate, I think all the major R&D tasks are done or underway, the folks who want to know how it works are left out, but tough noogies. Heck, Rossi doesn’t know how it works. That’s okay, we only figured out aspirin in the 1970s. There are a number of trade secrets and schedules that would be nice to know about, but this isn’t a public works project. There’s probably all sorts of fascinating stuff going on behind the scenes. Count the cars in factory parking lots that leave late in the evening.
Will it all work? I don’t know. Will there be last minute hangups in manufacturing? Of course, probably dozens, there always are.
And of course, it could all be a big scam or an astounding case of self-delusion, but that’s getting less likely.
goldminor says:
June 11, 2013 at 9:58 pm
————————————–
Today is the first day that I have not received a junk email from ‘Anthony’. Whoever that might have been.
REPLY: Well it isn’t me, I don’t spam people. Probably a bot. – Anthony
Kev-in-Uk says:
June 11, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Can anyone recommend good factual solar power websites with real/genuine guidance for small solar panel applications.
Try here:
http://www.enviroharvest.ca/electric_solar.htm
What Output can you really expect ?
Time of year (angle of sun and number of sunlight hours), haze, clouds, rain and snow and of course location all affect the performance of your photovoltaic array. Performance logs taken over a period of years from a location a number of miles from you may not apply exactly to your location, however, they will be a good indication of what you can expect.
The following measurement is based on how many Watts are actually produced not the number of sunlight hours in a day.
Based on logs developed over the past three years at our area in Ontario at a Latitude of about 450 North we get an annual average of almost 3 3/4 hours of sunlight per day taking into account all of the points listed in the previous paragraph. To get to the point quickly, expect about ONE Hundred kilowatt hours of power per year from a 100W photovoltaic panel. If your usage is only in summer you can expect about 5 usable hours of sunlight daily in our area. Latitude has less to do with available light than environmental conditions. South of us humidity haze and smog reduce productive hours to just over 3 1/2. To the north of us in the Sudbury area they average just under a four hour annual average.
One of the few useful/truthful sites.
check this out:
Obama Quietly Raises ‘Carbon Price’ as Costs to Climate Increase
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-12/tougher-regulations-seen-from-obama-change-in-carbon-cost.html
quote:
Buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens is a change in the U.S. government’s accounting for carbon emissions that could have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline.
The increase of the so-called social cost of carbon, to $38 a metric ton in 2015 from $23.80, adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations. The figure is meant to approximate losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops.
“Daily Sun: 12 Jun 13”
http://spaceweather.com/
“Sunspot number: 14”
Ooooooooooooooooh noooooooooooooooo! Derrrrrrrrrrrrechoooooooooooooo!
Hey wait a minute, isn’t that a cold thing?
Heck, Open Thread, here are some laughs brought to you buy the comedic climate models. (The Central England Temperature trend has been heading south).
UK DROUGHTS PROJECTIONS CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING.
@ur momisugly the real Anthony…It never crossed my mind that it came from you.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is here in Aus visiting PM Gillard in an attempt to sell the message that we need to tackle climate change by reducing GHG emissions. It’s refreshing to see our leader is using a reliable source of science.
Open Thread fodder:
Lord Monckton on the late, great USA.
apology upfront: I am totally naive consumer (not a scientist or expert in ANYTHING) of solar energy—and I should not be—we have 15 BP solar panels that are about to be removed (due to recall and potential for FIRE?!) and we are working with One Block off the Grid to install a new system. (Just got through pushing BP from low ball compensation offer to enough to cover removal, new system and roof but that was done without lawyer—just nerve and stupidity?) Found this site today and now I wonder—why are we doing this? We are to pay about $9,000 to a company as “advance” on 20 years of energy. The old system dealt with SRECs…..I think my husband and I are close enough to the last hippie age that we think this is a good idea—seems to RIGHT—but are we actually spending MORE to get LESS? And if it’s true that solar industry is continuing dependence on subsidies, etc. are we adding to the phenomenon by investing again?
We are in NJ and didn’t even think we had a shot at this green thing until 2006 and the 2/3 tax subsidy from NJ—but our own governor is now accused of lowering value of SRECs.
I think unless we hire any of you (and I bet you are expensive?!) to counsel us, we may be walking into the woods of a fairy tale…..and the wolf in waiting will be the eventual fall of the industry—that will have our $9,000 electric bill paid in advance! Go ahead……rip me apart and learn us some wisdom before we part with our money! Thank you, seriously, for anything I see as a result of this post. Susan and Richard, Denville, NJ
Anthony:
Would you like to add this presentation to your graphical views of the climate?
http://s1291.photobucket.com/user/RichardLH/story/70051.
I will keep it updated but it can be derived very easily from the source data.
WillR says:
June 12, 2013 at 9:55 am
thanks will – a couple of additional snippetts in there. still struggling on the pump scene!