The Ukraine War Will Go On Forever...

[David Brown]

On 21/04/2022 16:43, Ricky wrote:

On Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 10:28:08 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 21/04/2022 14:35, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 2:16:04 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 20/04/2022 19:28, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

The bulk of the Norwegian land mass is actually below the Arctic
circle. The days get pretty short at midwinter, but sunlight doesn\'t
turn off from equinox to equinox.
Do you ever get surprised when people call you a condescending twat?
Are you really trying to tell me the most basic geographical facts about
the country I live in?

This is the sort of crap that is common in this group, even if not commonly from you. You have no reason to be blatantly insulting like that. That is more the domain of Phil A or others. Yes, he is pointing out issues that apply to your country because that is the country being discusses. Are you PO\'d that he isn\'t throwing in the towel and say, \"Geez David, you are right!\"? Because you\'re not.

After trying to tell me that Norway gets as much sun power as Australia
and solar panels should be as good here as they are there, he then tries
to explain to me where the Arctic Circle goes in this country.

Because you seemed to be unaware. He was pointing out that most of the country (and most of the people) is where sun does shine and solar cells *are* still effective. If you can\'t handle a simple conversation...

You could only reach that conclusion if you (or he) did not read what I
wrote, or filled in some gaps with your imaginations. (The scenery does
not change, as you say - this happens all the time in this group, even
amongst the rational and logical members. I suspect the popular use of
the utterly crap google groups interface, and the almost total lack of
snipping, is partly to blame.)

People in Norway /do/ have some solar panels. We even have some on the
roof of our factory. I never suggested that we don\'t have them, or that
they don\'t work. But they are not remotely as effective here as they
are in a country or area that has much less average cloud cover, and
much higher angle of sun.

In Australia (excluding perhaps some of the rainier parts at the
coasts), you can use solar power for serious power generation - it is
reliable, consistent, and you collect a lot of power for the land usage
and for the panel area.

In Norway, it can only ever be a small supplement. You make a small
amount of electricity during summer, at the time you need it least (we
heat by electricity). Oslo and the main population areas in Norway are
certainly below the Arctic Circle, but in the middle of winter they have
about 6 hours of weak daylight - you get practically nothing from solar
panels. We only have them at all because Norwegians have a lot of money
and like to feel \"green\" - the break-even time for the cost of panels on
your house roof is about 20 years or so, last I heard.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 5:40:54 PM UTC+10, David Brown wrote:

On 21/04/2022 16:43, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 10:28:08 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 21/04/2022 14:35, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 2:16:04 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 20/04/2022 19:28, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

The bulk of the Norwegian land mass is actually below the Arctic
circle. The days get pretty short at midwinter, but sunlight doesn\'t
turn off from equinox to equinox.
Do you ever get surprised when people call you a condescending twat?
Are you really trying to tell me the most basic geographical facts about
the country I live in?

This is the sort of crap that is common in this group, even if not commonly from you. You have no reason to be blatantly insulting like that. That is more the domain of Phil A or others. Yes, he is pointing out issues that apply to your country because that is the country being discusses. Are you PO\'d that he isn\'t throwing in the towel and say, \"Geez David, you are right!\"? Because you\'re not.

After trying to tell me that Norway gets as much sun power as Australia
and solar panels should be as good here as they are there, he then tries
to explain to me where the Arctic Circle goes in this country.

Because you seemed to be unaware. He was pointing out that most of the country (and most of the people) is where sun does shine and solar cells *are* still effective. If you can\'t handle a simple conversation...


You could only reach that conclusion if you (or he) did not read what I
wrote, or filled in some gaps with your imaginations. (The scenery does
not change, as you say - this happens all the time in this group, even
amongst the rational and logical members. I suspect the popular use of
the utterly crap google groups interface, and the almost total lack of
snipping, is partly to blame.)

People in Norway /do/ have some solar panels. We even have some on the
roof of our factory. I never suggested that we don\'t have them, or that
they don\'t work. But they are not remotely as effective here as they
are in a country or area that has much less average cloud cover, and
much higher angle of sun.

It you mount the solar panels so that they are at right angles to average elevation of the sun in the sky, they will work just as well in Norway as Australia.

There are parts of Australia that are far enough from the coast that they don\'t see clouds very often, but they are too far from the people who would buy the electricity generated out there to be an attractive place for solar farms.

In Australia (excluding perhaps some of the rainier parts at the
coasts), you can use solar power for serious power generation - it is
reliable, consistent, and you collect a lot of power for the land usage
and for the panel area.

It isn\'t reliable or consistent - at least not in the short term - and we use the grid to get geographical averaging. Day to night needs pumped storage and grid batteries, not to mention quick-start gas-fired turbine generators, which we will probably use less and less as we get more storage built. There are also wind farms.

> In Norway, it can only ever be a small supplement.

Twaddle.

You make a small amount of electricity during summer, at the time you need it least (we
heat by electricity).

That\'s a choice, and you deliberately exaggerate the summer-winter difference. You have effectively asserted that power generation stops at the autumn equinox, and doesn\'t start up again until the spring equinox, which isn\'t the way it works. It\'s a sinusoid, not a square wave.

> Oslo and the main population areas in Norway are certainly below the Arctic Circle, but in the middle of winter they have about 6 hours of weak daylight - you get practically nothing from solar panels.

Only if you\'ve laid them flat on a roof that isn\'t sloping the right way. \"Practically\" - in this context - is a rhetorical flourish.

We only have them at all because Norwegians have a lot of money and like to feel \"green\" - the break-even time for the cost of panels on
your house roof is about 20 years or so, last I heard.

That might have been true ten or twenty years ago. Solar panels have got a lot cheaper recently. The kind of people who like nuclear reactors don\'t keep up to date about the competition .

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[David Brown]

On 21/04/2022 18:02, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 12:28:08 AM UTC+10, David Brown wrote:
On 21/04/2022 14:35, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 2:16:04 AM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 20/04/2022 19:28, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

The bulk of the Norwegian land mass is actually below the
Arctic circle. The days get pretty short at midwinter, but
sunlight doesn\'t turn off from equinox to equinox.
Do you ever get surprised when people call you a condescending
twat? Are you really trying to tell me the most basic
geographical facts about the country I live in?

This is the sort of crap that is common in this group, even if
not commonly from you. You have no reason to be blatantly
insulting like that. That is more the domain of Phil A or others.
Yes, he is pointing out issues that apply to your country because
that is the country being discusses. Are you PO\'d that he isn\'t
throwing in the towel and say, \"Geez David, you are right!\"?
Because you\'re not.

After trying to tell me that Norway gets as much sun power as
Australia and solar panels should be as good here as they are
there, he then tries to explain to me where the Arctic Circle goes
in this country.

I didn\'t tell you that Norway gets as much sun power as Australia.
For a start Noway has 5% of the area of Australia,

Surely it is obvious that we were always talking about \"per unit area of
land\" ?

and that area is
tilted further away from incoming solar radiation.

You certainly wrote as though you missed that one. It seems you think
the prime difference between generating solar power in Norway and
Australia is that you just need to tilt your panel a bit.

You don\'t cover the whole country with solar panels to collect solar
power - you put up enough to generate the power you need, and you
tilt them so the sunlight hits them more or less square on. If you
put them up right each solar panel will generate much the same amount
of power - averaged over the year - in Norway or Australia, but
you\'ve got to work harder to get that result in Norway. Sticking them
well up the sunny side of steep hills isn\'t as easy as laying down
solar panels in a flat field

I really don\'t believe you have thought this through - physically,
sociologically, environmentally, geographically or economically.

You are used to a country that has a lot of wide open spaces. Outside
of the cities, it is mostly endless plains - and away from the coasts,
cloud and rain is only occasional. Land space is cheap, flat, and easy
to build on, and will give you reliable and predictable solar power.
Obviously you need energy storage for fluctuations over the day and
night, but not much more than that. And since this would be far from
people, the sociologically cost would be zero and the environmental cost
minimal.

Norway is not like that. Our flat land is mostly either built on, or
farmland, or some high heaths that are marshes in the summer and under
two meters of snow for half the year. Our hills are either grazing
land, forest, or mountains that again are covered in snow and ice for
half the year. You can\'t build solar power of any significance anywhere
here. You could build a bit on some hills, but the environmental and
social costs (people here put great social value on relatively
undisturbed nature - and great economic value on the tourism it brings)
would be very high compared to the power generated. And again, they\'d
be covered in snow half the year.

Even if you were to ignore the economic costs, and ignore all
environmental costs, and bureaucracy, and landowners\' rights, and found
a south-facing hillside, there are still big issues. One thing about a
hilly and mountainous landscape is that hills have other hills nearby -
with a low-lying sun, you have shadow during a lot of the theoretical
daylight. (There is a famous town in central Norway, Rujkan, which is
far south of the Arctic Circle but which has no direct sunlight for
almost exactly half the year due the surrounding mountains.) Even when
there is direct sunlight, without shadows, and without much cloud (and
we have a /lot/ of cloud), the sun moves across the sky. For solar
panels on flat ground near the tropics, you can tilt the panels for
optimal capture - on a hillside in the far north, you\'d need to move the
panels around the hill. Clearly that is impossible - so you have to
accept that they will generate only a small fraction of the total power
you\'d get in other places.

If you aren\'t interested in discussing the facts, why are you
here? Why are you in this conversation? If the facts are not
correct, explain why. It\'s that simple.

I\'m fine with discussing facts - and correcting people, or being
corrected myself, as need be. And I\'m fine with people having
different opinions or thoughts.

Though not as fine as you like to think.

Perhaps - but the same applies to pretty much everyone here.

But I\'m not keen on being patronised, and having someone on the
other side of the world try to tell me what things are like /here/
- right down to simple clear facts.

Sadly, you got \"your simple clear facts\" slightly wrong, because you
didn\'t think hard enough about what you were saying.

Maybe I used uglier wording than was called for. Maybe \"twat\"
sounds worse to you (and possibly Bill) than it does to a Brit - it
really is not a strong term at all (and nothing even remotely in
Phil A\'s class). Maybe I have been hanging around this group too
long and lowered my standards towards the mean.

\"Twat\" is pretty rude. I worked in the UK for 22 years, and used the
word from time to time.

Then perhaps I need to be more specific - to a /Scot/, it is not a
strong term. (I would not have used that word if I had thought it would
be interpreted as being so rude as it apparently has been.)

This group never has been a good place for calm and reflective
conversations. Even the most rational and knowledgeable posters
here regularly fail to listen to others in their eagerness to make
their own points - willingness to learn is close to zero, while
frustration is high.

I come and go in this group - maybe it\'s time to leave for a
while. Experience shows that pretty much the same people will be
saying pretty much the same things next time I rejoin.

There is useful content here, but not a lot. A certain amount of
ritualised squabbling gives people something to do until an
interesting technical question shows up.

Agreed. And I think it is important to view it as \"ritualised
squabbling\", rather than anything personal.

Unfortunately, it is sometimes too easy to go overboard, either in what
we write, or how we interpret what we read.

 

[Chris Jones]

On 20/04/2022 05:55, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 2022-04-19 21:16, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
tirsdag den 19. april 2022 kl. 21.04.07 UTC+2 skrev Ricky:
[...]

Don\'t turn to the French for nuclear. They can\'t seem to build a
nuke for less than $20 billion these days and it will be a decade
late in commissioning. Their nuclear projects are mostly
disasters.


yeh, only 56 reactors and producing +70% of the country\'s electricity
...


The reason it\'s so hard to make new ones these days is the crippling
regulatory environment. My work also involves radioactive stuff.
We\'re so bogged down it\'s hard to get anything done at all.

Of course, it\'s all for our own and the public\'s safety. You can\'t
criticize that or you\'ll be deemed irresponsible.

It\'s almost funny. I *know* we all get a daily dose of ~10uSv, just
from the ordinary environment, but the extra few hundred nSv I
occasionally get from working on slightly radioactive stuff seems
to justify lots of extra rules, lots of paperwork, regular
inspections, special labs and protective gear. Granted, those are
sometimes necessary, but sheesh, a bit of common sense would be
welcome. A few uSv extra on occasion aren\'t going to make a
difference!

Yes, it would take some effort to incorporate common sense into the
rules, and the people who come up with the rules have no incentive to do
that, as the cost of complying with the rules is not their problem.

Where I work, sources of ionising radiation (including UV) have to be
registered and licensed with the country\'s nuclear regulator. It not
always required by law, but some people at the institution have made it
our policy to always do it, and have the job of making us do it, and I
guess they would not want to be out of a job. So, we have a solar
simulator which produces radiation very precisely identical to sunlight,
(therefore including some UV) and a lot of paperwork explaining how hard
we will try not to expose ourselves to this radiation, and we mustn\'t
lose or sell or move the device without the correct permission. On the
other hand, we can open the window and expose ourselves to the same
spectrum and intensity from the real sun (weather permitting) without
any paperwork, and they even let us go outside.

I think the solution is to subcontract all of the experimental work to
an institution in another country.

 

[bitrex]

On 4/22/2022 5:03 AM, David Brown wrote:

Norway is not like that.  Our flat land is mostly either built on, or
farmland, or some high heaths that are marshes in the summer and under
two meters of snow for half the year.  Our hills are either grazing
land, forest, or mountains that again are covered in snow and ice for
half the year.  You can\'t build solar power of any significance anywhere
here.  You could build a bit on some hills, but the environmental and
social costs (people here put great social value on relatively
undisturbed nature - and great economic value on the tourism it brings)

Yeah, Norway = lil racist country full of vicious bigots who love
\"nature\" it\'s kinda like the United States in that regard, it\'s great if
you\'re rich & white but sucks shit if you\'re anyone else you\'ll never be
able to find housing you can afford or get anywhere in life.

 

[bitrex]

On 4/22/2022 9:14 AM, bitrex wrote:

On 4/22/2022 5:03 AM, David Brown wrote:

Norway is not like that.  Our flat land is mostly either built on, or
farmland, or some high heaths that are marshes in the summer and under
two meters of snow for half the year.  Our hills are either grazing
land, forest, or mountains that again are covered in snow and ice for
half the year.  You can\'t build solar power of any significance
anywhere here.  You could build a bit on some hills, but the
environmental and social costs (people here put great social value on
relatively undisturbed nature - and great economic value on the
tourism it brings)

Yeah, Norway = lil racist country full of vicious bigots who love
\"nature\" it\'s kinda like the United States in that regard, it\'s great if
you\'re rich & white but sucks shit if you\'re anyone else you\'ll never be
able to find housing you can afford or get anywhere in life.

Norway deports Syrian refugees to Russia:

<https://youtu.be/Llk8neba1jo>

Norway prepared to accept 100,000 Ukraine refugees:

<https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/norway-prepares-to-receive-over-100000-refugees-from-ukraine/>

lol Norwegian men must be hoping for some cheap dates with broke
Ukrainian blondes.

 

[Ricky]

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 5:03:26 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

On 21/04/2022 18:02, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 12:28:08 AM UTC+10, David Brown wrote:
On 21/04/2022 14:35, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 2:16:04 AM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 20/04/2022 19:28, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

The bulk of the Norwegian land mass is actually below the
Arctic circle. The days get pretty short at midwinter, but
sunlight doesn\'t turn off from equinox to equinox.
Do you ever get surprised when people call you a condescending
twat? Are you really trying to tell me the most basic
geographical facts about the country I live in?

This is the sort of crap that is common in this group, even if
not commonly from you. You have no reason to be blatantly
insulting like that. That is more the domain of Phil A or others.
Yes, he is pointing out issues that apply to your country because
that is the country being discusses. Are you PO\'d that he isn\'t
throwing in the towel and say, \"Geez David, you are right!\"?
Because you\'re not.

After trying to tell me that Norway gets as much sun power as
Australia and solar panels should be as good here as they are
there, he then tries to explain to me where the Arctic Circle goes
in this country.

I didn\'t tell you that Norway gets as much sun power as Australia.
For a start Noway has 5% of the area of Australia,
Surely it is obvious that we were always talking about \"per unit area of
land\" ?

That is a silly distinction. Land is the least expensive part of solar farms. Don\'t tell me land is so valuable for farming that you can\'t use it for solar farms. At your latitude you can put solar on hills that otherwise would not be very suitable for farming.

and that area is
tilted further away from incoming solar radiation.
You certainly wrote as though you missed that one. It seems you think
the prime difference between generating solar power in Norway and
Australia is that you just need to tilt your panel a bit.

You don\'t cover the whole country with solar panels to collect solar
power - you put up enough to generate the power you need, and you
tilt them so the sunlight hits them more or less square on. If you
put them up right each solar panel will generate much the same amount
of power - averaged over the year - in Norway or Australia, but
you\'ve got to work harder to get that result in Norway. Sticking them
well up the sunny side of steep hills isn\'t as easy as laying down
solar panels in a flat field
I really don\'t believe you have thought this through - physically,
sociologically, environmentally, geographically or economically.

I like that, \"sociologically\". Lol What are the negative sociological impacts of solar farms in Norway? You\'ve already said people put up solar panels to \"feel good\" about it.

You are used to a country that has a lot of wide open spaces. Outside
of the cities, it is mostly endless plains - and away from the coasts,
cloud and rain is only occasional. Land space is cheap, flat, and easy
to build on, and will give you reliable and predictable solar power.
Obviously you need energy storage for fluctuations over the day and
night, but not much more than that. And since this would be far from
people, the sociologically cost would be zero and the environmental cost
minimal.

Norway is not like that. Our flat land is mostly either built on, or
farmland, or some high heaths that are marshes in the summer and under
two meters of snow for half the year. Our hills are either grazing
land, forest, or mountains that again are covered in snow and ice for
half the year. You can\'t build solar power of any significance anywhere
here.

I have no reason to believe that is remotely accurate. Land to support solar panels only needs to be land, solid and stable. There is always lots of that in any country. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

You could build a bit on some hills, but the environmental and
social costs (people here put great social value on relatively
undisturbed nature - and great economic value on the tourism it brings)
would be very high compared to the power generated. And again, they\'d
be covered in snow half the year.

Not if they are nearly vertical. Snow tends to not stick on things that are steeply sloped. As to the day length, I\'ve read they are using solar panels as heat sinks for powering thermoelectric generators at night! That would be interesting to see how well that works in the North.

Even if you were to ignore the economic costs, and ignore all
environmental costs, and bureaucracy, and landowners\' rights, and found
a south-facing hillside, there are still big issues. One thing about a
hilly and mountainous landscape is that hills have other hills nearby -
with a low-lying sun, you have shadow during a lot of the theoretical
daylight. (There is a famous town in central Norway, Rujkan, which is
far south of the Arctic Circle but which has no direct sunlight for
almost exactly half the year due the surrounding mountains.) Even when
there is direct sunlight, without shadows, and without much cloud (and
we have a /lot/ of cloud), the sun moves across the sky. For solar
panels on flat ground near the tropics, you can tilt the panels for
optimal capture - on a hillside in the far north, you\'d need to move the
panels around the hill. Clearly that is impossible - so you have to
accept that they will generate only a small fraction of the total power
you\'d get in other places.

I can\'t believe you are so poorly equipped to consider the geometry of the situation.

Whatever. Clearly there is no point to discussing this further. Enjoy.

--

Rick C.

-+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[David Brown]

On 22/04/2022 15:14, bitrex wrote:

On 4/22/2022 5:03 AM, David Brown wrote:

Norway is not like that.  Our flat land is mostly either built on, or
farmland, or some high heaths that are marshes in the summer and under
two meters of snow for half the year.  Our hills are either grazing
land, forest, or mountains that again are covered in snow and ice for
half the year.  You can\'t build solar power of any significance
anywhere here.  You could build a bit on some hills, but the
environmental and social costs (people here put great social value on
relatively undisturbed nature - and great economic value on the
tourism it brings)

Yeah, Norway = lil racist country full of vicious bigots who love
\"nature\" it\'s kinda like the United States in that regard, it\'s great if
you\'re rich & white but sucks shit if you\'re anyone else you\'ll never be
able to find housing you can afford or get anywhere in life.

What a strange and distorted viewpoint you have picked up from somewhere.

Some of the political parties are rather keen on the \"help refugees
where they are\" line. And there certainly some of the distinctions
between handling of refugees can appear racist (and some of them, for
some people at least, /are/ racist). But the reality of the current
situation in Ukraine is actually significantly different from that in
Syria, and the refugee situation is significantly different.

I can\'t deny that there are racists in Norway, and other kinds of
bigots. But I certainly /can/ deny that the country is \"full\" of them.

 

[Ricky]

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 3:40:54 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

In Norway, it can only ever be a small supplement. You make a small
amount of electricity during summer, at the time you need it least (we
heat by electricity). Oslo and the main population areas in Norway are
certainly below the Arctic Circle, but in the middle of winter they have
about 6 hours of weak daylight - you get practically nothing from solar
panels. We only have them at all because Norwegians have a lot of money
and like to feel \"green\" - the break-even time for the cost of panels on
your house roof is about 20 years or so, last I heard.

https://teknologiradet.no/en/the-solar-revolution-and-what-it-can-mean-for-norway/

It seems not everyone shares your pessimism.

--

Rick C.

-+-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[bitrex]

On 4/22/2022 9:46 AM, David Brown wrote:

On 22/04/2022 15:14, bitrex wrote:
On 4/22/2022 5:03 AM, David Brown wrote:

Norway is not like that.  Our flat land is mostly either built on, or
farmland, or some high heaths that are marshes in the summer and
under two meters of snow for half the year.  Our hills are either
grazing land, forest, or mountains that again are covered in snow and
ice for half the year.  You can\'t build solar power of any
significance anywhere here.  You could build a bit on some hills, but
the environmental and social costs (people here put great social
value on relatively undisturbed nature - and great economic value on
the tourism it brings)

Yeah, Norway = lil racist country full of vicious bigots who love
\"nature\" it\'s kinda like the United States in that regard, it\'s great
if you\'re rich & white but sucks shit if you\'re anyone else you\'ll
never be able to find housing you can afford or get anywhere in life.

What a strange and distorted viewpoint you have picked up from somewhere.

Some of the political parties are rather keen on the \"help refugees
where they are\" line.  And there certainly some of the distinctions
between handling of refugees can appear racist (and some of them, for
some people at least, /are/ racist).  But the reality of the current
situation in Ukraine is actually significantly different from that in
Syria, and the refugee situation is significantly different.

I can\'t deny that there are racists in Norway, and other kinds of
bigots.  But I certainly /can/ deny that the country is \"full\" of them.

Oh okay. That\'s kinder to Norway than I would\'ve expected, but I don\'t
believe you were born there? Sometimes I think ex pats tend to see their
new digs with rose-tinted glasses.

I\'ve lived in the USA my whole life and I\'ll tell you straightforwardly
what you\'ve heard is pretty much true it\'s full of bigots and assholes, lol

 

[corvid]

On 4/19/22 16:53, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Our back yard is a jungle already. Snakes, skunks, raccoons,
possum, coyotes, squirrels, scrub jays, hummers, junkoes (sp?),
feral cats, wild parrots, giant ravens.

A wild turkey has been spotted down in the village.

Is it legal to own an air rifle?

I guess he isn\'t cruel like you.

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 22 Apr 2022 10:32:43 -0700, corvid <bl@ckb.ird> wrote:

On 4/19/22 16:53, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Our back yard is a jungle already. Snakes, skunks, raccoons,
possum, coyotes, squirrels, scrub jays, hummers, junkoes (sp?),
feral cats, wild parrots, giant ravens.

A wild turkey has been spotted down in the village.

Is it legal to own an air rifle?

I guess he isn\'t cruel like you.

Some people just like to kill things. I suspect it\'s the genetic
hunter instinct.

Mo won\'t kill a bug in the house. She traps them and sets them free
outdoors. Mosquitoes excepted.




--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon

 

[bitrex]

On 4/22/2022 10:19 AM, Ricky wrote:

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 3:40:54 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

In Norway, it can only ever be a small supplement. You make a small
amount of electricity during summer, at the time you need it least (we
heat by electricity). Oslo and the main population areas in Norway are
certainly below the Arctic Circle, but in the middle of winter they have
about 6 hours of weak daylight - you get practically nothing from solar
panels. We only have them at all because Norwegians have a lot of money
and like to feel \"green\" - the break-even time for the cost of panels on
your house roof is about 20 years or so, last I heard.

https://teknologiradet.no/en/the-solar-revolution-and-what-it-can-mean-for-norway/

It seems not everyone shares your pessimism.

Maine seems okay with expanding solar energy. It\'s actually pretty sunny
there on average in the wintertime (November and December in particular
in New England can often be pretty dull months weather-wise, where high
pressure system gets locked in and it\'s just cold with average temps in
the 40s or 30s for weeks at a time), and colder weather means higher
efficiency for the panels, despite at the winter solstice northern Maine
doesn\'t get much more than 7 hours of daylight.

Is David Brown even a real Norwegian name? I want the opinion of an Olaf
Svjerginborginjergen on the topic

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 6:39:08 AM UTC-7, Ricky wrote:

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 5:03:26 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 21/04/2022 18:02, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

I didn\'t tell you that Norway gets as much sun power as Australia.
For a start Noway has 5% of the area of Australia,
Surely it is obvious that we were always talking about \"per unit area of
land\" ?
That is a silly distinction. Land is the least expensive part of solar farms. Don\'t tell me land is so valuable for farming that you can\'t use it for solar farms. At your latitude you can put solar on hills that otherwise would not be very suitable for farming.
and that area is
tilted further away from incoming solar radiation.

You certainly wrote as though you missed that one. It seems you think
the prime difference between generating solar power in Norway and
Australia is that you just need to tilt your panel a bit.

Huh? Parts of Norway have midnight sun in summer, and zero daylight
hours in winter. Tilt the panel to point at the sun, and it\'s pointing
at dirt, in darkness.

And when the sun is near the horizon, a 1 square meter aimed solar panel shades
a kilometer or so behind it. You don\'t get much benefit per acre that way.

You are used to a country that has a lot of wide open spaces. Outside
of the cities, it is mostly endless plains - and away from the coasts,
cloud and rain is only occasional. Land space is cheap, flat, and easy
to build on, and will give you reliable and predictable solar power.
Obviously you need energy storage for fluctuations over the day and
night, but not much more than that. And since this would be far from
people, the sociologically cost would be zero and the environmental cost
minimal.

Norway is not like that.... You can\'t build solar power of any significance anywhere
here.

I have no reason to believe that is remotely accurate.

Geometry suggests it to be true. Examine a globe.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 12:53:47 PM UTC+10, whit3rd wrote:

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 6:39:08 AM UTC-7, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 5:03:26 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 21/04/2022 18:02, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

I didn\'t tell you that Norway gets as much sun power as Australia.
For a start Noway has 5% of the area of Australia, and that area is tilted further away from incoming solar radiation.

Surely it is obvious that we were always talking about \"per unit area of land\" ?

That is a silly distinction. Land is the least expensive part of solar farms. Don\'t tell me land is so valuable for farming that you can\'t use it for solar farms. At your latitude you can put solar on hills that otherwise would not be very suitable for farming.

You certainly wrote as though you missed that one. It seems you think the prime difference between generating solar power in Norway and Australia is that you just need to tilt your panel a bit.

Huh? Parts of Norway have midnight sun in summer, and zero daylight hours in winter.

Bit of it are above the Arctic circle. The bulk of the country isn\'t - quite.

> Tilt the panel to point at the sun, and it\'s pointing at dirt, in darkness.

in the middle of winter.

> And when the sun is near the horizon, a 1 square meter aimed solar panel shades a kilometer or so behind it.

That\'s always true when the Sun is near the horizon, which happens twice a day wherever you are.

In Norway, that can be for a lot of the day, so you\'d put your solar panels on on the sunny sides of the steepest hill you could find.

> You don\'t get much benefit per acre that way.

More if you pick your acres carefully, on ground that isn\'t flat.

<snipped patronising advice about some parts of Australia - mostly the bits where ther population density is really low>

Norway is not like that.... You can\'t build solar power of any significance anywhere here.

I have no reason to believe that is remotely accurate.

Geometry suggests it to be true. Examine a globe.

Applying geometric arguments based on a smooth globe doesn\'t get good results in hilly regions - which do seem to show up in Norway.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 8:43:32 PM UTC-7, bill....@ieee.org wrote:

On Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 12:53:47 PM UTC+10, whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 6:39:08 AM UTC-7, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 5:03:26 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 21/04/2022 18:02, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

I didn\'t tell you that Norway gets as much sun power as Australia.
For a start Noway has 5% of the area of Australia, and that area is tilted further away from incoming solar radiation.

Parts of Norway have midnight sun in summer, and zero daylight hours in winter.
Bit of it are above the Arctic circle. The bulk of the country isn\'t - quite.
Tilt the panel to point at the sun, and it\'s pointing at dirt, in darkness.

in the middle of winter.

And when the sun is near the horizon, a 1 square meter aimed solar panel shades a kilometer or so behind it.
That\'s always true when the Sun is near the horizon, which happens twice a day wherever you are.

Yeah, but let\'s consider 63 degrees north (Alesund), about mid-Norway and well below the arctic circle.
At winter solstice, the maximum the sun rises above the horizon there is 3.5 degrees.

From two weeks before winter solstice, to two weeks after, it rises above the horizon by
a maximum (at noon) under 3.6 degrees...

> In Norway, that can be for a lot of the day, so you\'d put your solar panels on on the sunny sides of the steepest hill you could find.

A lot of the day is right. Norway gets more energy using their hills for hydroelectric power than for photovoltaics.
Acres of ocean illuminated by sunlight really IS a cost-effective collector, even at high latitudes.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 7:01:16 PM UTC+10, whit3rd wrote:

On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 8:43:32 PM UTC-7, bill....@ieee.org wrote:
On Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 12:53:47 PM UTC+10, whit3rd wrote:
On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 6:39:08 AM UTC-7, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, April 22, 2022 at 5:03:26 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 21/04/2022 18:02, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

I didn\'t tell you that Norway gets as much sun power as Australia.
For a start Noway has 5% of the area of Australia, and that area is tilted further away from incoming solar radiation.

Parts of Norway have midnight sun in summer, and zero daylight hours in winter.
Bit of it are above the Arctic circle. The bulk of the country isn\'t - quite.
Tilt the panel to point at the sun, and it\'s pointing at dirt, in darkness.

in the middle of winter.

And when the sun is near the horizon, a 1 square meter aimed solar panel shades a kilometer or so behind it.
That\'s always true when the Sun is near the horizon, which happens twice a day wherever you are.

Yeah, but let\'s consider 63 degrees north (Alesund), about mid-Norway and well below the arctic circle.
At winter solstice, the maximum the sun rises above the horizon there is 3.5 degrees.

From two weeks before winter solstice, to two weeks after, it rises above the horizon by
a maximum (at noon) under 3.6 degrees...

In Norway, that can be for a lot of the day, so you\'d put your solar panels on on the sunny sides of the steepest hill you could find.
A lot of the day is right. Norway gets more energy using their hills for hydroelectric power than for photovoltaics.

There\'s no conflict between using hills to collect rain and to support solar panels.

> Acres of ocean illuminated by sunlight really IS a cost-effective collector, even at high latitudes.

What helps even more is the Gulf Stream, which ships warm water up from the tropics to the Norwegian coast. A lot of that solar energy got collected on the way to Norway.

Alaska doesn\'t seem to do as well.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 22 Apr 2022 10:32:43 -0700, corvid <bl@ckb.ird> wrote:

On 4/19/22 16:53, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Our back yard is a jungle already. Snakes, skunks, raccoons,
possum, coyotes, squirrels, scrub jays, hummers, junkoes (sp?),
feral cats, wild parrots, giant ravens.

A wild turkey has been spotted down in the village.

Is it legal to own an air rifle?

I guess he isn\'t cruel like you.

Some people just like to kill things. I suspect it\'s the genetic
hunter instinct.

Mo won\'t kill a bug in the house. She traps them and sets them free
outdoors. Mosquitoes excepted.

I meant to suggest that you can eat the turkey. In rural areas it would
be seen that way, and not cruel.




--
Defund the Thought Police

 

[server]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2022 02:31:05 -0400, \"Tom Del Rosso\"
<fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 22 Apr 2022 10:32:43 -0700, corvid <bl@ckb.ird> wrote:

On 4/19/22 16:53, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Our back yard is a jungle already. Snakes, skunks, raccoons,
possum, coyotes, squirrels, scrub jays, hummers, junkoes (sp?),
feral cats, wild parrots, giant ravens.

A wild turkey has been spotted down in the village.

Is it legal to own an air rifle?

I guess he isn\'t cruel like you.

Some people just like to kill things. I suspect it\'s the genetic
hunter instinct.

Mo won\'t kill a bug in the house. She traps them and sets them free
outdoors. Mosquitoes excepted.

I meant to suggest that you can eat the turkey. In rural areas it would
be seen that way, and not cruel.

That turkey was a block from the Canyon Market and half a mile from
Safeway, hardly a rural food desert.

Mo makes great turkey meatballs, but we buy ground turkey.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[none]

In article <t3p1p8$rlk$1@dont-email.me>,
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 20/04/2022 14:14, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at 5:16:33 PM UTC+10, David Brown wrote:
On 20/04/2022 07:08, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at 8:06:56 AM UTC+10, Dimiter Popoff wrote:
On 4/20/2022 0:22, David Brown wrote:
On 19/04/2022 20:29, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 4/19/2022 20:39, John Larkin wrote:

snip

Perhaps, but gas and petrol are short term solutions anyway. Since
the EU (and the world) needs to do something about producing less
smoke going seriously nuclear looks like the only viable option.
Sort of like the French have done it. The main brake against nuclear
has been the fear that waste can fall in the wrong hands to build
weapons from (not the pollution nonsense the media spread for the
masses). So more spectrometry gadgets will be needed... the steam
engine I hope to build in my backyard won\'t come for free .

The big problem with nuclear power is that it takes a long time to build
the plants. (Yes, the build cost is a problem too - but it\'s a problem
that can be solved by throwing money at it, unlike the time problem.)

Of course we need to start building the nuclear power plants /now/,
while we also work on short term solutions.

Only if you haven\'t bothered to think how much you a re going to
have to charge for each kilowatt hour of energy you sell to your
customers to let you make a profit.

It takes a long time of course but much of it is due to over-regulation,
like Jeroen suggested.

Then again some twenty of France\'s 56 nuclear reactors were all shut
down for a while recently while mistakes in the original build were
corrected, Nuclear plants have got more expensive recently because we\'ve
learned more about how they can go wrong. Solving problems that you can
anticipate is cheaper that solving them after they\'ve made themselves
obvious, but it isn\'t free,

Then the word \"nuclear\" still spells suicide for many if not all
politicians - which is the biggest problem, after decades of training
the public to perceive the word like this now is pay time.

It\'s taken a long time for all the problems posed by dealing with
long term radio-active waste to be fully appreciated. They haven\'t been
by any means solved. Nobody has yet set up a repository for long term
storage - several hundreds of thousands of years - and they may never
succeed. Not in my backyard is a potent slogan.

But we have no other sane option, we have to start building now
indeed and cover by short term solutions.

The Australian power generation industry doesn\'t see it that way.
They are building new solar farms and new wind turbines at a great rate,
because they produce electricity more cheaply than any other source and
quite a bit more cheaply than nuclear plants. They are starting to
invest grid-scale batteries, and the Australian Federal Government is in
the process of extending our biggest hydroelectric scheme to offer a lot
of pumped storage.

https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/snowy-20/about/

The nuclear option strikes me as totally insane at any number of levels.

Different power generation choices make sense in different places, and
have different costs (not just monetary costs - space, environment and
pollution are all costs). In Australia, solar power should be all over
the place - you have plenty of sun, and plenty of space. Here in Norway
it\'s a very different matter - solar power is much more expensive,
simply because there is not as much sun.

There\'s actually more in your summer.

No, there is not more sun - there is less sun here in summer than you
have during your winter. There are more hours of daylight (the full 24
hours for at least some of the year, once you are above the Arctic
Circle). But the power from the sun is far lower - we are at a much
steeper angle, and have a lot more cloud cover.

And even if it were true, it would be useless - batteries can give you
some stability for day to day variation of power, but not keep you going
for half the year.

And wind power works pretty much everywhere.

It works where there is reliable wind - the tops of hills, or in the
middle of wide plains with little interruption. Australia has lots of
plains - Norway does not. So they can only be put at the tops of hills,
and even then it has to be relatively accessible hilltops (unlike most
of our hills) relatively near people and infrastructure (unlike most of
our hills). And people don\'t want them there.

There could certainly be more off-shore wind generation in Norway, but
even that has its challenges here. We have rather sharp slopes to deep
sea, making it more expensive than when you have shallower seas available.

(We also have a big social challenge for wind power in Norway - no one
wants to see a windmill disrupting nature hillsides or sea views.
Norwegians also do not want nuclear power stations anywhere near them,
or gas power. They want to believe that we could be self-sufficient
with cheap, clean hydroelectric power if only we stopped selling
electricity abroad, and that expensive, ugly or polluting electricity
generation is a problem for other countries. It\'s not true, of course,
but it\'s hard to convince some people.)


Nuclear power is, without any doubt in my mind, the right answer for
Norway going forward (it works for Finland and Sweden).

You may need to do a bit more work on your mind. Nuclear power is
quite a bit more expensive than wind power.


Nuclear power has many advantages over wind power (as well as
disadvantages). Cost in dollars is not the only measure of the best
choice of power generation. Usable land space is a premium in Norway -
nuclear takes a fraction of the space compared to wind. Accident, death
and injury rates per generated unit are negligible for nuclear power in
comparison to other methods, including wind. (The few accidents that
have occurred lead to a lot more publicity - you never year about all
the accidents involved in mounting or maintaining wind turbines.) The
impact to the environment and nature, in the way Norwegians want to see
and use their nature, would be much less with nuclear power than wind power.

Then there is the stability of the supply. For power generation, you
want a base constant stable supply, with extra generation when there are
peaks in the demand. Wind power is not stable (unless it is very high
masts out at sea), and goes up and down independently from demand.
Nuclear power (which is very stable) combined with hydroelectric (which
we have, and which can be turned up and down quickly as needed) is an
ideal combination - far better than covering half the country in
windmills and massive lithium battery arrays.

But solar and wind power combined with good grid storage (maybe
sodium ion batteries?)
could well be the right answer for Australia.

Vanadium flow batteries seem to be correct choice on technical grounds.


Yes, except that vanadium is poisonous and expensive, and there is
significant energy inefficiency in the charge/discharge cycle. If
someone figured out a good basis for flow batteries that avoid these
problems, that would be good news.

Beryllium is proposed to use in modern reactor design.
It is likewise extremely toxic, not on a par with lead or cadmium.

Groetjes Albert
--
\"in our communism country Viet Nam, people are forced to be
alive and in the western country like US, people are free to
die from Covid 19 lol\" duc ha
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst