Driver to drive?

On Mar 6, 10:42 pm, makol...@yahoo.com wrote:

and China and India and the rest of the developing world
will simply not restrict energy use (lots of nasty coal) for our
benefit.

They may well do it for their own benefit, Anthropogenic global
warming is already starting to crimp their food output...

Really?  How so?

What specific aspect of the climate has changed in a MEASURABLE way
enough to impact agricultural output in China a NEGATIVE way?

The aspect that this year gave northern China the worst drought in
half a century

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/05/china-food-farming

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On Mar 6, 11:16 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:23:59 GMT, James Arthur





bogusabd...@verizon.net> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:18:50 +0000, Martin Brown
|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 05:57:18 +0000 (UTC), d...@manx.misty.com (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

 As best as I can remember, it's 7% or about that according to someone
giving an answer and probably providing a cite.  (IIRC and the usual
similar "horse puckey disclaimers").  From atmospheric CO2 increase
around 35% from the 280 ppmv having some consideration being
"pre-Industrial-Revolution-baseline") as of when I asked the question
resulting in that answer.

 7% increase of plant growth from 35% increase in atmospheric CO2
concentration?  For a simple approximation at a mathematical relationship,
I see log(1.07)/log(1.35) indicating plant growth rate being proportional
to atmospheric CO2 concentration raised to the .23 power, though I suspect
such power to increase towards unity when our planet is/was "more CO2
starved" and to correspondingly decrease when atmospheric CO2
concentration increases past the 370-380 ppmv or whatever that was
relevant to 7% increase of plant growth that I remeber (how correctly?)
being result of increase from pre-industrial-revolution-"baseline" that
was/"was" 280 ppmv.
That's a great calculation for people who don't believe in evolution..
Why do you say that?

Only some plants growth rates are limited by CO2 concentration. Many
plants growth rates are limited by the available light intensity and/or
other environmental factors like water, temperature and humidity.

You also need water and plants tend to struggle to get it reliably
everywhere but in the humid tropics with daily rainfall. The result is
that they vary the stomata openings for diffusion according to water
stress. And the devious plants of the Crassulaceae and related C4 plants
using CAM photosynthesis only open their stomata only at night to
capture CO2 so as to avoid unnecessary daytime water loss.

One of the early papers of photosynthesis yield measured against CO2 and
light intensity is online at:
http://jgp.rupress.org/cgi/reprint/22/1/21

If I have done the sums right to convert from umoles CO2/litre to ppm
you can multiply by 37 so the range they tested was about 160ppm to
9000ppm. The peak productivity was around 5000ppm in ideal conditions..

At high light intensities where the process is truly diffusion limited
the yield tracks CO2 almost linearly, but at lower light intensities the
improvement was around 10% for a doubling of CO2 concentration. This is
still worthwhile enough that commercial greenhouses exploit it.

And conventional farmers will exploit it too, as they select breeds
that do better as the CO2 level rises. Plants are of course presently
optimized for, or lagging a bit behind, the existing CO2 levels.
Future-gen crop plants may have a very different response to CO2,
because they will have been designed to do so.

Most agriculture can provide lots of water and sunlight and
fertilizers, so adding CO2 might have substantial affects on yields.
Plants may also shift to needing, say, less water if they have more
CO2, which would benefit marginal farming cases.

John

In praise of carbon dioxide
Posted: June 07, 2008, 12:04 AM by NP Editor

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/6/6/i...

"The [satellite survey] results surprised [NASA scientists] involved
in analyzing the NASA data. They found that over a period of almost two
decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%.
[...] each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500
grams of greenery per year.

Why the increase? Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point
to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas
indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature’s fertilizer, bathing the
biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2
to bulk themselves up — carbon is the building block of life — and
release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal
life."

Experiment trumps theory.

Gaia. We are a part of the world.

The part that is working hard on setting up its own personal global
extinction.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On Mar 6, 10:41 pm, Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-I...@My-
Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:23:59 GMT, James Arthur

bogusabd...@verizon.net> wrote:

[snip]







In praise of carbon dioxide
Posted: June 07, 2008, 12:04 AM by NP Editor

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/6/6/i...

"The [satellite survey] results surprised [NASA scientists] involved
in analyzing the NASA data. They found that over a period of almost two
decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%.
[...] each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500
grams of greenery per year.

Why the increase? Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point
to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas
indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature’s fertilizer, bathing the
biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2
to bulk themselves up — carbon is the building block of life — and
release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal
life."

Experiment trumps theory.

Cheers,
James Arthur

Unless you're a leftist weenie.  Then things are as you dream them ;-)

Leftist weenies don't dream about weapons of mass destruction in Irak,
and aren't fooling themselves with the idiot conspiracy theory that
claims that anthropogenic global warming is a confidence trick
perpetrated by the overwhelming majority of the world's climatologists
(in pursuit of larger research grants).

I think Jim's going in for projection here.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 15:28:25 -0800 (PST), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

You must know nothing about the Chernobyl accident; read up on it. It
was an inherently unstable reactor,

You don't seem to know what you are talking about. The reactor wasn't
"inherently unstable" alhtough it doesn't seem to have been well-
designed The idiots had to do something quite dramatically stupidn to
get it to blow up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

I'm impressed at how your prejudices constantly overpower your ability
to think or to research. This was right in your face:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Causes_of_the_disaster

"The reactor had a dangerously large positive void coefficient. The
void coefficient is a measurement of how the reactor responds to
increased steam formation in the water coolant. Most other reactor
designs produce less energy as they get hotter, because if the coolant
contains steam bubbles, fewer neutrons are slowed down. Faster
neutrons are less likely to split uranium atoms, so the reactor
produces less power. Chernobyl's RBMK reactor, however, used solid
graphite as a neutron moderator to slow down the neutrons, and
neutron-absorbing light water to cool the core. Thus neutrons are
slowed down even if steam bubbles form in the water. Furthermore,
because steam absorbs neutrons much less readily than water,
increasing an RBMK reactor's temperature means that more neutrons are
able to split uranium atoms, increasing the reactor's power output.
This makes the RBMK design very unstable at low power levels, and
prone to suddenly increasing energy production to dangerous level if
the temperature rises. This was counter-intuitive and unknown to the
crew."


And it's even more impressive how consistantly you get simple control
theory concepts wrong.

John

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:50:54 -0800, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 15:28:25 -0800 (PST), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:


You must know nothing about the Chernobyl accident; read up on it. It
was an inherently unstable reactor,

You don't seem to know what you are talking about. The reactor wasn't
"inherently unstable" alhtough it doesn't seem to have been well-
designed The idiots had to do something quite dramatically stupidn to
get it to blow up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster


I'm impressed at how your prejudices constantly overpower your ability
to think or to research. This was right in your face:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Causes_of_the_disaster

"The reactor had a dangerously large positive void coefficient. The
void coefficient is a measurement of how the reactor responds to
increased steam formation in the water coolant. Most other reactor
designs produce less energy as they get hotter, because if the coolant
contains steam bubbles, fewer neutrons are slowed down. Faster
neutrons are less likely to split uranium atoms, so the reactor
produces less power. Chernobyl's RBMK reactor, however, used solid
graphite as a neutron moderator to slow down the neutrons, and
neutron-absorbing light water to cool the core. Thus neutrons are
slowed down even if steam bubbles form in the water. Furthermore,
because steam absorbs neutrons much less readily than water,
increasing an RBMK reactor's temperature means that more neutrons are
able to split uranium atoms, increasing the reactor's power output.
This makes the RBMK design very unstable at low power levels, and
prone to suddenly increasing energy production to dangerous level if
the temperature rises. This was counter-intuitive and unknown to the
crew."


And it's even more impressive how consistantly you get simple control
theory concepts wrong.

John

Unfortunately, Slowman is representative of the types of people now in
full-charge of our government :-(

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

How severe can senility be? Just check out Slowman.

 

[James Arthur]

John Larkin wrote:

bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

Future-gen crop plants may have a very different response to CO2,
because they will have been designed to do so.

Most agriculture can provide lots of water and sunlight and
fertilizers, so adding CO2 might have substantial affects on yields.

It is also going to favour weeds, who will be busy evolving for their
own benefit, from a much wider distribution of genomes, and without
the additional cost of providing food for us. And how does agriculture
provide additional sunlight?

Farmers know how to control weeds. If you offered the average farmer a
10% increase in both crop and weed growth rates, I bet all of them
would sign up. We are agressively selective breeding and GM tweaking
crops, while nobody is doing that for weeds.

Plants may also shift to needing, say, less water if they have more
CO2, which would benefit marginal farming cases.
This presumably explains why paleology tells that stomata density
tends to drop when CO2 levels are high.

Yes; more CO2 means less interface surface and less water loss.
Photosynthesis is not particularly efficient at the whole-plant level,
so plants don't really need more sunlight.

Without having to know much biology, the general observation is that
when a multivariable system is fully optimized, everything trades off
against everything else. So if you make CO2 gathering easier, other
parameters can crank up.

John

Right. Humans raised at high altitude develop bigger lungs,
adapting to the thinner air.

Most people live at sea level, and have smaller lungs and
chests.

Conclusion:
a) oxygen stunts lung development.
b) oxygen is bad for people.

James Arthur

 

On Mar 7, 2:18 am, James Arthur <bogusabd...@verizon.net> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
Future-gen crop plants may have a very different response to CO2,
because they will have been designed to do so.

Most agriculture can provide lots of water and sunlight and
fertilizers, so adding CO2 might have substantial affects on yields.
It is also going to favour weeds, who will be busy evolving for their
own benefit, from a much wider distribution of genomes, and without
the additional cost of providing food for us. And how does agriculture
provide additional sunlight?

Farmers know how to control weeds. If you offered the average farmer a
10% increase in both crop and weed growth rates, I bet all of them
would sign up. We are agressively selective breeding and GM tweaking
crops, while nobody is doing that for weeds.

Plants may also shift to needing, say, less water if they have more
CO2, which would benefit marginal farming cases.
This presumably explains why paleology tells that stomata density
tends to drop when CO2 levels are high.

Yes; more CO2 means less interface surface and less water loss.
Photosynthesis is not particularly efficient at the whole-plant level,
so plants don't really need more sunlight.

Without having to know much biology, the general observation is that
when a multivariable system is fully optimized, everything trades off
against everything else. So if you make CO2 gathering easier, other
parameters can crank up.

John

Right.  Humans raised at high altitude develop bigger lungs,
adapting to the thinner air.

Most people live at sea level, and have smaller lungs and
chests.

Conclusion:
  a) oxygen stunts lung development.
  b) oxygen is bad for people.

More carbon dioxide may be good for plants, but it's a greenhouse gas,
and so the plants will also have to cope with higher temperatures,
different rainfall and more energetic weather.

Lauding the benefits of extra CO2 in the air as a sort of fertiliser
while ignoring the effects of the climate changes that the extra CO2
would produce is more than a little disingenuous.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On Mar 7, 12:03 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 14:53:52 -0800 (PST), bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Mar 6, 11:16 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:23:59 GMT, James Arthur

bogusabd...@verizon.net> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:18:50 +0000, Martin Brown
|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 05:57:18 +0000 (UTC), d...@manx.misty.com (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

<snip>

Gaia. We are a part of the world.

The part that is working hard on setting up its own personal global
extinction.

Insanely absurd, unless you always trust extrapolation and always
ignore feedbacks.

You can describe the relationship between CO2 concentrations in the
atmosphere and the surface temperature of the planet as an
"extrapolation" if you like.

It tells us - once again - that you don't understand the physics
involved or the geological results that back up the climate models.

It is a bit hard to understand why you want to advertise that you not
only don't know what you are talking about but also don't realise how
little you know, but you are an adult, and can make a fool of yourself
anyway you like.

The "feedbacks" that you are accusing me of ignoring seem to be
positive rather than negative. The Milankovich cycles can't be
explained without substantial postive feedback, and the new data about
the relatively rapid and substantial cooling 34 million years ago that
prompted me to start this thread does seem to be difficult to explain
without a fair measure of positive feedback - the formation of an ice
sheet on Antarctica doesn't seem - on its own - to be enough to
explain a 5 degree Celcius drop in global temperature.

It occurred in a rather different context than the Milankovich cycles
that have been messing us about for the last few million years.

A nice reflective ice sheet over Canada, Northern Europe, Northern
Russia and Siberia obviously raises the albedo of the planet and
provides a pretty obvious positive feedback mechanism, but Antartica
is nowhere near as big and doesn't intercept all that much sunlight at
the best of times, so explaining the large temperature drop at the
Eocene-Oligocene boundary does seem to need a different mechanism.

If we managed to reverse that mechanism to warm ourselves back up to
Eocene temperatures, life might get excessively interesting.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On Mar 6, 11:37 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 10:33:13 -0800 (PST), bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Mar 6, 6:16 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:18:50 +0000, Martin Brown

|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 05:57:18 +0000 (UTC), d...@manx.misty.com (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

 As best as I can remember, it's 7% or about that according to someone
giving an answer and probably providing a cite.  (IIRC and the usual
similar "horse puckey disclaimers").  From atmospheric CO2 increase
around 35% from the 280 ppmv having some consideration being
"pre-Industrial-Revolution-baseline") as of when I asked the question
resulting in that answer.

 7% increase of plant growth from 35% increase in atmospheric CO2
concentration?  For a simple approximation at a mathematical relationship,
I see log(1.07)/log(1.35) indicating plant growth rate being proportional
to atmospheric CO2 concentration raised to the .23 power, though I suspect
such power to increase towards unity when our planet is/was "more CO2
starved" and to correspondingly decrease when atmospheric CO2
concentration increases past the 370-380 ppmv or whatever that was
relevant to 7% increase of plant growth that I remeber (how correctly?)
being result of increase from pre-industrial-revolution-"baseline" that
was/"was" 280 ppmv.

That's a great calculation for people who don't believe in evolution.

Why do you say that?

Only some plants growth rates are limited by CO2 concentration. Many
plants growth rates are limited by the available light intensity and/or
other environmental factors like water, temperature and humidity.

You also need water and plants tend to struggle to get it reliably
everywhere but in the humid tropics with daily rainfall. The result is
that they vary the stomata openings for diffusion according to water
stress. And the devious plants of the Crassulaceae and related C4 plants
using CAM photosynthesis only open their stomata only at night to
capture CO2 so as to avoid unnecessary daytime water loss.

One of the early papers of photosynthesis yield measured against CO2 and
light intensity is online at:
http://jgp.rupress.org/cgi/reprint/22/1/21

If I have done the sums right to convert from umoles CO2/litre to ppm
you can multiply by 37 so the range they tested was about 160ppm to
9000ppm. The peak productivity was around 5000ppm in ideal conditions..

At high light intensities where the process is truly diffusion limited
the yield tracks CO2 almost linearly, but at lower light intensities the
improvement was around 10% for a doubling of CO2 concentration. This is
still worthwhile enough that commercial greenhouses exploit it.

And conventional farmers will exploit it too, as they select breeds
that do better as the CO2 level rises. Plants are of course presently
optimized for, or lagging a bit behind, the existing CO2 levels.
Future-gen crop plants may have a very different response to CO2,
because they will have been designed to do so.

Most agriculture can provide lots of water and sunlight and
fertilizers, so adding CO2 might have substantial affects on yields.

It is also going to favour weeds, who will be busy evolving for their
own benefit, from a much wider distribution of genomes, and without
the additional cost of providing food for us. And how does agriculture
provide additional sunlight?

Farmers know how to control weeds. If you offered the average farmer a
10% increase in both crop and weed growth rates, I bet all of them
would sign up. We are agressively selective breeding and GM tweaking
crops, while nobody is doing that for weeds.

Plants may also shift to needing, say, less water if they have more
CO2, which would benefit marginal farming cases.

This presumably explains why paleontology tells that stomata density
tends to drop when CO2 levels are high.

Yes; more CO2 means less interface surface and less water loss.

So far, so good.

Photosynthesis is not particularly efficient at the whole-plant level,
so plants don't really need more sunlight.

This is an interesting - if implausible - revelation, and would
explain why trees wouldn't bother trying to grow higher than their
neighbours, if it were true.

In fact plants need water, minerals, sunlight and CO2 in order to
grow. Their rate of growth is going to be limited by whichever of
these components is hardest to get hold of, and it usually isn't CO2.

When sunlight is the limiting factor - as it often is - you get tall
trees competing with one another for sunlight ...

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen



<snipped the rest of the nonsense>

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On Mar 7, 12:20 am, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 14:53:52 -0800 (PST), bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:

The part that is working hard on setting up its own personal global
extinction.

Insanely absurd, unless you always trust extrapolation and always
ignore feedbacks.

   If he doesn't understand a simple aluminum electrolytic, how can he
claim to understand the so called global warming?

Michael Terrell doesn't appreciate that you can make better
electrolytic capacitors with tantalum than aluminium.
Why should he? Technicians don't have to worry about the tricky stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolytic_capacitor

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Tim Williams]

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:tsg3r4l33v9kec50anp39ksk17du0vpsi4@4ax.com...

I'm impressed at how your prejudices constantly overpower your ability
to think or to research. This was right in your face:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Causes_of_the_disaster

"The reactor had a dangerously large positive void coefficient. ...

It was a bad design, but it wasn't a bomb. Realize that many other RBMKs
operated smoothly for years. Only one exploded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK
"Some RBMK designs did include control rods on electromagnetic grapples,
thus controlling the reaction speed ..."
Still a lot more blowupable than, say, a U.S. design, but the operators
still had to go above and beyond to make it fuck up. And approximately the
same thing (including operator stupidity) can happen, and did in one case,
with all American PWRs and BWRs.

All big disasters have multiple contributing factors. Some have a
more-or-less dangerous basis (like overall reactor stability), but one
which, under normal operation, will never fail because other factors are in
place. "Control theory concepts" end up having very little to do with it.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

 

[Tim Williams]

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:elm2r49jtfor2hb3hcjtit7oi1ferurjnq@4ax.com...

What would I do with four kilowatts of continuous electric power? I
can't imagine wanting anything like that, any more than I want to eat
8000 calories of food, or drink 12 gallon of beer, per day.

I'm ashamed to see you've missed the point. I hope it is due to my lacking
skill of explanation, because you are a quite capable mind. I shall try
harder.

But even then, I don't see how you interpret "average power consumption" as
"that which is used for satisfying basic human needs". As you stated
before, that amounts to little more than 100W (maybe 1 or 10kW counting
total system losses like photosynthesis). Surely it should be obvious that
this power is consumed by the support (heating, lighting, transportation)
and industry (fabrication, and more and more nowadays, computation) which
those humans have invented? I mean, wouldn't it be immediately obvious on
writing your post that you wouldn't directly ingest four kilowatts? That's
obviously not what I said, so what made you think it was?

Quantum limits on >>fabrication and computation
are immensely small, there's nothing stopping us from being efficient.
Imagine using six orders of magnitude less power consumption...<snip

Six orders is silly. We couldn't see at night, we couldn't toast
english muffins, we wouldn't have refrigerators or forced-air heat, no
running water, no TV or computing after dark.

Um? Since when were illumination, heating, pumping or ventilation subsets
of "fabrication and computation"? Clearly I said nothing of the sort. In
fact, I specified exactly what kinds of activities can be reduced that much.
So why did you decide to ignore that statement?

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

 

On Mar 7, 1:50 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 15:28:25 -0800 (PST), bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
You must know nothing about the Chernobyl accident; read up on it. It
was an inherently unstable reactor,

You don't seem to know what you are talking about. The reactor wasn't
"inherently unstable" alhtough it doesn't seem to have been well-
designed The idiots had to do something quite dramatically stupidn to
get it to blow up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

I'm impressed at how your prejudices constantly overpower your ability
to think or to research. This was right in your face:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Causes_of_the_disaster

"The reactor had a dangerously large positive void coefficient. The
void coefficient is a measurement of how the reactor responds to
increased steam formation in the water coolant. Most other reactor
designs produce less energy as they get hotter, because if the coolant
contains steam bubbles, fewer neutrons are slowed down. Faster
neutrons are less likely to split uranium atoms, so the reactor
produces less power. Chernobyl's RBMK reactor, however, used solid
graphite as a neutron moderator to slow down the neutrons, and
neutron-absorbing light water to cool the core. Thus neutrons are
slowed down even if steam bubbles form in the water. Furthermore,
because steam absorbs neutrons much less readily than water,
increasing an RBMK reactor's temperature means that more neutrons are
able to split uranium atoms, increasing the reactor's power output.
This makes the RBMK design very unstable at low power levels, and
prone to suddenly increasing energy production to dangerous level if
the temperature rises. This was counter-intuitive and unknown to the
crew."

And it's even more impressive how consistantly you get simple control
theory concepts wrong.

If that was a "simple control theory" concept, the Russians wouldn't
have got it wrong when they designed the reactor. Seventeen RBMK
reactors were built and twelve of them are still running, so the
"dangerous instability" seems to be tolerably hard to provoke.

Once a device has managed to fail catastrophically, it is usually
possible to work out the failure mechanism,
and any number of Saturday night quarter-backs will tell you how it
should have been designed.

Both British and US reactors seem have had their own weak points

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

and if we build and operate enough of them we'll probably find a few
more. On the whole, I'd prefer that we tested our capacity to get
things wrong with slightly less dangerous toys.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On Mar 7, 2:13 am, Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-I...@My-Web-
Site.com> wrote:

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:50:54 -0800, John Larkin





jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 15:28:25 -0800 (PST), bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:

You must know nothing about the Chernobyl accident; read up on it. It
was an inherently unstable reactor,

You don't seem to know what you are talking about. The reactor wasn't
"inherently unstable" alhtough it doesn't seem to have been well-
designed The idiots had to do something quite dramatically stupidn to
get it to blow up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

I'm impressed at how your prejudices constantly overpower your ability
to think or to research. This was right in your face:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Causes_of_the_disaster

"The reactor had a dangerously large positive void coefficient. The
void coefficient is a measurement of how the reactor responds to
increased steam formation in the water coolant. Most other reactor
designs produce less energy as they get hotter, because if the coolant
contains steam bubbles, fewer neutrons are slowed down. Faster
neutrons are less likely to split uranium atoms, so the reactor
produces less power. Chernobyl's RBMK reactor, however, used solid
graphite as a neutron moderator to slow down the neutrons, and
neutron-absorbing light water to cool the core. Thus neutrons are
slowed down even if steam bubbles form in the water. Furthermore,
because steam absorbs neutrons much less readily than water,
increasing an RBMK reactor's temperature means that more neutrons are
able to split uranium atoms, increasing the reactor's power output.
This makes the RBMK design very unstable at low power levels, and
prone to suddenly increasing energy production to dangerous level if
the temperature rises. This was counter-intuitive and unknown to the
crew."

And it's even more impressive how consistantly you get simple control
theory concepts wrong.

John

Unfortunately, Slowman is representative of the types of people now in
full-charge of our government :-(

Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson outdoes himself. The people in
charge of the U.S. government are politicians, and I'm no politician.
Furthermore, they are US politicians, and probably share John Larkin's
delusion that US engineers don't screw up, whereas I've seen enough
crappy US engineering to be aware that US engineers are just as
fallible as the rest of us.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

In alt.engineering.electrical Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:
|
| phil-news-nospam@ipal.net wrote:
|>
|> In alt.engineering.electrical Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:
|> |
|> | phil-news-nospam@ipal.net wrote:
|> |>
|> |> On Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:51:33 -0500 Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:
|> |>
|> |> | I have no problem reading and identifying moronic concepts.
|> |>
|> |> You have no skill in reading electrical enginering or technology. All the
|> |> rest is fiction in your mind.
|> |
|> |
|> | Yawn. Another lame attempt to slur my name. The 'fiction' is that
|> | you believe the crap you dream up will work. What have you ever done in
|> | the real world? My design ideas are in space, aboard the ISS, used to
|> | track everything launched by NASA, the ESA, and by NOAA to track and
|> | control their LEO Weather Satellites. I also came up with the idea of
|> | uplinking a subcarrier channel to a C-band satellite from a different
|> | site than the main carrier. This was for United Video's microwave
|> | division for their EPG service on the WGN feed. It eliminated two
|> | leased phone lines from Salt Lake City where the mainframe computers
|> | were, to the WGN uplink in Chicago. It provided a more reliable service,
|> | and the savings of over $15,000 a month for the company I worked for.
|>
|> You could have made a lot more contributions to the world if you had the
|> ability to read English and did not have the attitude of distorting what
|> people say so you gain the ability to make assertions that are really false
|> and lets you blame it on them. I'm not going to play your penis length
|> game. There's no way to verify the truth or significance in anything you
|> say.
|>
|> Maybe you really did those things in the past and maybe they will work fine.
|> But your brain is certainly not keeping up. Damaged?
|
|
| Keep throwing your hissy fits, Phil. You can't design anything, and
| continue to show the world what a fool you are.

What did you think I designed?

You're the one that doesn't understand how to extend the life of a battery
by reducing its load.


|> |> |> The unit is more likely to fail if you let the battery carry the full load,
|> |> |> instead of letting the battery share the load with what power it can get from
|> |> |> the available mains voltage.
|> |> |
|> |> |
|> |> | Then the battery is too small, or too old. An overly complex design
|> |> | isn't the answer to crappy maintenance.
|> |>
|> |> It doesn't matter what the battery size is, small, medium, or large. If you
|> |> power the loads entirely from the battery, it will last a shorter time than
|> |> if you power the loads half from the battery and have from the mains.
|> |
|> |
|> | If the battery size doesn't matter, then use eight AAA cells.
|>
|> You are a complete lunkhead if you haven't figured out by now that this is
|> about comparing the SAME SIZE BATTERY with 2 different wiring schemes, one
|> where the battery carries the full load, and the other where the battery
|> carries half the load. If YOU can't figure out the basic concept that when
|> a battery only carries half the load, it runs longer, then I guess I need
|> notify NASA, ESA, NOAA, that they might some flawed engineering running and
|> their missions are at risk of things like premature battery failure. That
|> is, if you aren't lying.
|
|
| That wasn't what you stated. You said the battery size doesn't
| matter, not how the same size battery was used. You claim I can't read,
| yet you can't even read what you wrote.

And the statement is correct. The size does not matter for the principle
to apply. If you understood what the principle is, maybe then you would
understand that it works no matter what size of battery is involved. If
the load on the battery is reduced, it will last longer.


|> |> |> And I did not specify a particular design. If you want to discuss the failure
|> |> |> modes of a particular design, then go ahead and spell out what that design is
|> |> |> and we can discuss how and why it might fail (break down). If you do that, do
|> |> |> keep in mind that it was your design, not mine.
|> |> |
|> |> |
|> |> | You didn't specify a design because you can't. It is another of your
|> |> | ignorant 'Gee Whiz!!!' ideas that won't work.
|> |>
|> |> Whether I can or not is irrelevant. I didn't try. So it doesn't matter.
|> |> What I did was ask about the concept. You suggested it would fail, so you
|> |> are the one that has a specific design in mind. YOUR DESIGN is a failure.
|> |> You said so.
|> |
|> |
|> | I didn't try to design anything, because your concept is so flawed.
|> | That is something you never see in the stupid crap you dream up. Your
|> | stupid idea would be dropped in ten seconds in a design review, and you
|> | would be told to clean out your desk.
|>
|> You think that the concept of running a battery at half load to extend its
|> run time, relative to the same size battery running full load, is a flawed
|> concept?
|
| I never said that. I stated that a properly sized battery was need
| but as usual, you can't read and comprehend anything. Properly sized
| means that it has a reasonable reserve, and in exchange will give you a
| longer run time, if needed before the power is restored, or a backup
| generator comes on line. A larger battery is more reliable than the
| Rube Goldberg crap you come up with. You need to learn the KISS method
| if you want things to keep working.

Whatever size you have, if the load is reduced, the battery runs longer.
If you do ever need it to run that long, maybe you got a too large battery.

The real world involves UPSes that in most cases have limitations on the
battery size, while the market wants longer run times. The "proper sizing"
is just not something that is easily doable. That's a concept that applies
when setting up large scale batteries with separate chargers and inverters.
And I've done that for two mainframe data centers.


|> Now I have to say it ... what an utter moron.
|
|
| We know you're a moron.

You've proven your ignorance.

--
|WARNING: Due to extreme spam, googlegroups.com is blocked. Due to ignorance |
| by the abuse department, bellsouth.net is blocked. If you post to |
| Usenet from these places, find another Usenet provider ASAP. |
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (email for humans: first name in lower case at ipal.net) |

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

phil-news-nospam@ipal.net wrote:

In alt.engineering.electrical Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:
|
| phil-news-nospam@ipal.net wrote:
|
|> In alt.engineering.electrical Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:
|> |
|> | phil-news-nospam@ipal.net wrote:
|> |
|> |> On Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:51:33 -0500 Michael A. Terrell <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:
|> |
|> |> | I have no problem reading and identifying moronic concepts.
|> |
|> |> You have no skill in reading electrical enginering or technology. All the
|> |> rest is fiction in your mind.
|> |
|> |
|> | Yawn. Another lame attempt to slur my name. The 'fiction' is that
|> | you believe the crap you dream up will work. What have you ever done in
|> | the real world? My design ideas are in space, aboard the ISS, used to
|> | track everything launched by NASA, the ESA, and by NOAA to track and
|> | control their LEO Weather Satellites. I also came up with the idea of
|> | uplinking a subcarrier channel to a C-band satellite from a different
|> | site than the main carrier. This was for United Video's microwave
|> | division for their EPG service on the WGN feed. It eliminated two
|> | leased phone lines from Salt Lake City where the mainframe computers
|> | were, to the WGN uplink in Chicago. It provided a more reliable service,
|> | and the savings of over $15,000 a month for the company I worked for.
|
|> You could have made a lot more contributions to the world if you had the
|> ability to read English and did not have the attitude of distorting what
|> people say so you gain the ability to make assertions that are really false
|> and lets you blame it on them. I'm not going to play your penis length
|> game. There's no way to verify the truth or significance in anything you
|> say.
|
|> Maybe you really did those things in the past and maybe they will work fine.
|> But your brain is certainly not keeping up. Damaged?
|
|
| Keep throwing your hissy fits, Phil. You can't design anything, and
| continue to show the world what a fool you are.

What did you think I designed?

Absolutely nothing that has ever worked.

You're the one that doesn't understand how to extend the life of a battery
by reducing its load.

Bullshit. I stated several times in this thread about choosing the
proper capacity which isn't using them at 99% of their rated capacity.
I am a firm believer in properly de-rating a design so it is never
stressed beyond reason, but your blind ignorance forces you to ignore
what anyone tells you.

As you can see a few lines down I stated : Then the battery is too
small, or too old. An overly complex design isn't the answer to crappy
maintenance. then you tell me I would chose too small of a battery,
once again proving you have zero comprehension of anything you read.

|> |> |> The unit is more likely to fail if you let the battery carry the full load,
|> |> |> instead of letting the battery share the load with what power it can get from
|> |> |> the available mains voltage.
|> |> |
|> |> |
|> |> | Then the battery is too small, or too old. An overly complex design
|> |> | isn't the answer to crappy maintenance.
|> |
|> |> It doesn't matter what the battery size is, small, medium, or large. If you
|> |> power the loads entirely from the battery, it will last a shorter time than
|> |> if you power the loads half from the battery and have from the mains.
|> |
|> |
|> | If the battery size doesn't matter, then use eight AAA cells.
|
|> You are a complete lunkhead if you haven't figured out by now that this is
|> about comparing the SAME SIZE BATTERY with 2 different wiring schemes, one
|> where the battery carries the full load, and the other where the battery
|> carries half the load. If YOU can't figure out the basic concept that when
|> a battery only carries half the load, it runs longer, then I guess I need
|> notify NASA, ESA, NOAA, that they might some flawed engineering running and
|> their missions are at risk of things like premature battery failure. That
|> is, if you aren't lying.
|
|
| That wasn't what you stated. You said the battery size doesn't
| matter, not how the same size battery was used. You claim I can't read,
| yet you can't even read what you wrote.

And the statement is correct. The size does not matter for the principle
to apply. If you understood what the principle is, maybe then you would
understand that it works no matter what size of battery is involved. If
the load on the battery is reduced, it will last longer.

|> |> |> And I did not specify a particular design. If you want to discuss the failure
|> |> |> modes of a particular design, then go ahead and spell out what that design is
|> |> |> and we can discuss how and why it might fail (break down). If you do that, do
|> |> |> keep in mind that it was your design, not mine.
|> |> |
|> |> |
|> |> | You didn't specify a design because you can't. It is another of your
|> |> | ignorant 'Gee Whiz!!!' ideas that won't work.
|> |
|> |> Whether I can or not is irrelevant. I didn't try. So it doesn't matter.
|> |> What I did was ask about the concept. You suggested it would fail, so you
|> |> are the one that has a specific design in mind. YOUR DESIGN is a failure.
|> |> You said so.
|> |
|> |
|> | I didn't try to design anything, because your concept is so flawed.
|> | That is something you never see in the stupid crap you dream up. Your
|> | stupid idea would be dropped in ten seconds in a design review, and you
|> | would be told to clean out your desk.
|
|> You think that the concept of running a battery at half load to extend its
|> run time, relative to the same size battery running full load, is a flawed
|> concept?
|
| I never said that. I stated that a properly sized battery was need
| but as usual, you can't read and comprehend anything. Properly sized
| means that it has a reasonable reserve, and in exchange will give you a
| longer run time, if needed before the power is restored, or a backup
| generator comes on line. A larger battery is more reliable than the
| Rube Goldberg crap you come up with. You need to learn the KISS method
| if you want things to keep working.

Whatever size you have, if the load is reduced, the battery runs longer.
If you do ever need it to run that long, maybe you got a too large battery.

Sigh. You can't even tell there is anything outside the box, can
you?

The real world involves UPSes that in most cases have limitations on the
battery size, while the market wants longer run times. The "proper sizing"
is just not something that is easily doable. That's a concept that applies
when setting up large scale batteries with separate chargers and inverters.
And I've done that for two mainframe data centers.

Whoopee. Two whole jobs. Get back to me when you know what your
trying to do. y starting with say 50% extra batter capacity, they will
last longer, and still be usable as they start to degrade, as well as
handle surges if something has to be restarted while the system is
running on the UPS.

|> Now I have to say it ... what an utter moron.
|
|
| We know you're a moron.

You've proven your ignorance.

Phil, you are a world class ignoramus who lives to put layer after
layer of cheap lipstick on the pigs you dream up. Your other hobby is
separating fly shit from pepper, under a broken microscope.

Keep showing everyone what a fool you are. Some people enjoy watching
you go down for the third time, so they can toss you a concrete life
preserver.

No one expect you to ever learn anything or to admit what a fool you
really are. You make Roy look smart, by comparison.

--
http://improve-usenet.org/index.html

Goggle Groups, and Web TV users must request to be white listed, or I
will not see your messages.

If you have broadband, your ISP may have a NNTP news server included in
your account: http://www.usenettools.net/ISP.htm

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 7 Mar 2009 00:17:36 -0600, "Tim Williams"
<tmoranwms@charter.net> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:tsg3r4l33v9kec50anp39ksk17du0vpsi4@4ax.com...
I'm impressed at how your prejudices constantly overpower your ability
to think or to research. This was right in your face:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Causes_of_the_disaster

"The reactor had a dangerously large positive void coefficient. ...

It was a bad design, but it wasn't a bomb. Realize that many other RBMKs
operated smoothly for years. Only one exploded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK
"Some RBMK designs did include control rods on electromagnetic grapples,
thus controlling the reaction speed ..."
Still a lot more blowupable than, say, a U.S. design, but the operators
still had to go above and beyond to make it fuck up. And approximately the
same thing (including operator stupidity) can happen, and did in one case,
with all American PWRs and BWRs.

In commercial BWRs, loss of water coolant stops the fission reaction.
And core meltdown also stops the fission. Now only latent isotopes are
generating heat, presumably in a puddle of molten gunk in the botton
of the containment vessel. These are hot but have short half-lives so
cool off a lot in hours and days. If it melts through, it's going
down, not up. There's no graphite to catch fire and spread isotopes
over millions of square km. There's a huge difference from dynamically
unstable graphite reactors that are safe only when thay are carefully
managed.

All big disasters have multiple contributing factors. Some have a
more-or-less dangerous basis (like overall reactor stability), but one
which, under normal operation, will never fail because other factors are in
place. "Control theory concepts" end up having very little to do with it.

Control theory has nothing to do with the safety of a high-energy
dynamic system? Do you even own a car?

John

 

[John Fields]

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 21:14:07 -0800 (PST), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

On Mar 7, 12:20 am, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net
wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 14:53:52 -0800 (PST), bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:

The part that is working hard on setting up its own personal global
extinction.

Insanely absurd, unless you always trust extrapolation and always
ignore feedbacks.

   If he doesn't understand a simple aluminum electrolytic, how can he
claim to understand the so called global warming?

Michael Terrell doesn't appreciate that you can make better
electrolytic capacitors with tantalum than aluminium.

---
I don't think that's a valid extrapolation since all he claimed was that
you don't understand simple aluminum electrolytics.


JF

 

On Mar 7, 4:28 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sat, 7 Mar 2009 00:17:36 -0600, "Tim Williams"





tmoran...@charter.net> wrote:
"John Larkin" <jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:tsg3r4l33v9kec50anp39ksk17du0vpsi4@4ax.com...
I'm impressed at how your prejudices constantly overpower your ability
to think or to research. This was right in your face:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Causes_of_the_disaster

"The reactor had a dangerously large positive void coefficient. ...

It was a bad design, but it wasn't a bomb.  Realize that many other RBMKs
operated smoothly for years.  Only one exploded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK
"Some RBMK designs did include control rods on electromagnetic grapples,
thus controlling the reaction speed ..."
Still a lot more blowupable than, say, a U.S. design, but the operators
still had to go above and beyond to make it fuck up.  And approximately the
same thing (including operator stupidity) can happen, and did in one case,
with all American PWRs and BWRs.

In commercial BWRs, loss of water coolant stops the fission reaction.
And core meltdown also stops the fission. Now only latent isotopes are
generating heat, presumably in a puddle of molten gunk in the botton
of the containment vessel. These are hot but have short half-lives so
cool off a lot in hours and days. If it melts through, it's going
down, not up. There's no graphite to catch fire and spread isotopes
over millions of square km. There's a huge difference from dynamically
unstable graphite reactors that are safe only when thay are carefully
managed.

And Three Mile Island, which was just barely safe when it was
carelessly managed.

I'm sure that even America's infallible engineers will eventually
manage to find some way of beating the superior design of US boiling
water reactors, and create their own Chernobyl-sized disaster if we
give them enough time and enough reactors.

All big disasters have multiple contributing factors.  Some have a
more-or-less dangerous basis (like overall reactor stability), but one
which, under normal operation, will never fail because other factors are in
place.  "Control theory concepts" end up having very little to do with it.

Control theory has nothing to do with the safety of a high-energy
dynamic system? Do you even own a car?

My experience with engineers who have claimed to understand control
theory suggests that it is a poor substitute for common sense.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

- Show quoted text -

 

On Mar 7, 12:07 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 14:58:30 -0800 (PST), bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Mar 6, 10:42 pm, makol...@yahoo.com wrote:
and China and India and the rest of the developing world
will simply not restrict energy use (lots of nasty coal) for our
benefit.

They may well do it for their own benefit, Anthropogenic global
warming is already starting to crimp their food output...

Really?  How so?

What specific aspect of the climate has changed in a MEASURABLE way
enough to impact agricultural output in China a NEGATIVE way?

The aspect that this year gave northern China the worst drought in
half a century

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/05/china-food-farming

"Worst drought in half a century" implies that things were about as
bad 50 years ago. And presumably this drought isn't as bad as some
other drought farther back in time. And much of the water woes in
China are self-inflicted.

There have been floods and droughts somewhere in the world since the
dawn of recorded history.

That's the trouble with noisy signals. Southern Australia seems to be
in the middle of the worst drought for a thousand years, but that too
could just be coincidence.

The onset of the Younger Dryas probably looked like just a
particularly bad winter when it started. Temperatures in Europe and
North America dropped 5 degrees Celcius over a decade, and stayed low
for 1300 years before recovering just as fast.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen