I keep seeing TED talks referenced here and there. I really need to start checking that site more often. Here are a couple of cool presentations.
Amory Lovins on winning the oil endgame (sure to enrage all you car-haters out there):
Larry Brilliant makes the case for optimism, or at least that's what the talk is called -- I watched it, and actually he makes an incredibly powerful case for pessimism, followed by a much weaker case for optimism:
Here David Keith talks about shooting sulfur particles up into the atmosphere to slow global warming -- the good and the bad. He comes down against it, but on the way he's incredibly informative:
Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power?
Slideshow: Our favorite green mustaches
The Climate Post: Big hopes for Al G.
Comments
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:05 am
19 Dec 2007
A few observations of Lovin's presentation:
Luckily fossil oil replaced whale oil when it did. Time to replace fossil oil.
He used the term "advanced" biofuels instead of "next generation" fuels.
He shows off his carbon fiber test parts. Boeing has been using this stuff for over a decade.
He matter-of-factly tells us car makers could produce cars for 2/5 lower capital intensity. I hope this fact is more of a fact than his hydrogen powered car. Lovin's has never actually built a hyper car to my knowledge.
Figures we can get 6 billion gallons from cellulosic and a little bit of biodiesel, thinks Brazilian ethanol should be allowed.
Had to plug hydrogen twice (quickly without much ado, and almost under his breath).
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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odograph Posted 9:12 am
19 Dec 2007
FWIW, Pop!Tech Pop!Casts are another good source.
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odograph Posted 9:24 am
19 Dec 2007
"Free" might relate to recent threads about limits to growth.
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GreenEngineer Posted 9:58 am
19 Dec 2007
It's a question of mass-producibility. Composites of all sorts have been in use for decades, but are typically labor-intensive and low-throughput due to the required cure time for the epoxy.
In aerospace, the weight savings justifies the extra cost. In cars (run on cheap oil) not so much.
RMI has done some pretty interesting work on the mass production problem, and has spun off Fiberforge to commercialize it.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:34 pm
19 Dec 2007
If Amory Lovins can show Boeing how to reduce fuel consumption by 2/3 without sacrificing safety, performance or cost I am sure Boeing would be happy to make him a multimillionaire in exchange for that information. His statement that it can be done with known materials and technology is not credible.
A review of the attachments to his book shows that Lovins has combed research papers for ideas to improve aircraft performance. He assigned each one a generous fuel reduction factor. Here they are, with improvement factors.
Blended Wing Body, (BWB), 20%
Ultra Efficient Engine Technology, (UEET), 24%
Boundary Layer Ingestion, (BLI) and Active Flow Control, (AFC), 5.5%
"Filling the wake" and eliminating flaps, 3.9%
Improvement from a 2010 to a 2025 vintage, 20.7% Very fuzzy language here but apparently improvements based on the use of even lighter materials in the future to reduce empty weight and fuel load.
Air traffic control system efficiency improvements, 11% Clearly not an aircraft efficiency factor but he rolls it in here as if it is.
Load factor improvement, 5.1% Another factor not related to aircraft efficiency.
These factors should be called "Potential 25 Year Beyond State of the Art Efficiency Factors". Amory Lovins deliberately mislabels these things as "State of the Art" (SOA) , aircraft technology.
The casual reader is lead to believe that all of these concepts have been fully researched and developed, and are gathering dust on a shelf because the manufacturers are too lazy to implement them.
He assumes that we can scrap the entire existing fleet of planes and replace them, overnight, with a new fleet having all the new technology, then he calculates the difference in energy consumption, and says that this is the amount we are wasting. He wants to pressure airlines to scrap existing planes before they are worn out because his spreadsheet says that will save energy. He does not give credit for the energy consumed to manufacture existing planes, and he does not take a penalty for the energy consumed to make the new ones. He uses these same techniques for his other analyses as well.
The reality is that Boeing and Airbus are in a fierce fight for market share and they are doing everything possible to reduce fuel consumption without cutting margins so thin as to get a bunch of people killed.
A carbon fiber airbus fin snapped off a few years ago near New York City killing all aboard, and their new jumbo jet wing snapped during testing, below the design limit, they are not leaving any efficiency on the table. Boeing is swamped with orders for its newest plane, and is producing them as fast as possible.
BWB planes are slower then conventional airliners, trips will take more time and airlines will have to buy more seats for the same capacity factor.
For the past few hundred years technology has been emerging at a rapid pace, and will continue to do so. Amory Lovins will take credit for any of these technologies that pan out and will blame engineer's lack of creativity for those that don't, but the reality is that the progress of aviation is proceeding as quickly as possible and will not be affected by trendy reports out of Aspen.
Lovins may be the greatest snake oil salesman of our time. Of course, the best snake oil has some active ingredients, usually corn ethanol.
Humans have gone from wood to coal to oil.
Converting 13 ounces of uranium to fission products will release an 80 year lifetime supply of energy, not just electricity, for one average American. They will be less radioactive than uranium ore in 270 years.
That is the next big step.
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:25 am
20 Dec 2007
He is now talking about 3-D printing (intersecting lasers cure plastic, kinda like a hologram). We also used that at Boeing for super complex part mock-ups a decade ago. He suggests it might be used to make complex moving machines, like watches. I don't think so.
He talks about giving digital data away (freeware and others) to attract just a few buyers. I've used that idea with some success.
Ha, his computer battery runs out and throws him for a loop. His presentation stalls. You would think this exec might have anticipated that. Some IT guy will probably get blamed ...
His last slide is of a housewife with the first home computer. He tells us with a wry smile on his face that the only use they could think of for it was to record recipes. He then tells us that of course nobody does that (except my wife and daughter). Home computers were pretty worthless until the Internet came along. Well, that burned up 45 minutes.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:29 am
20 Dec 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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odograph Posted 12:58 am
20 Dec 2007
Not all technologies expand at the same pace.
We are finding "information" technologies easier than tough old problems, like moving a ton a thousand miles. As an illustration, in 1980 a home computer went "a mips" and a passenger car went 20 mpg. Today a computer goes "a few thousand mips" and a passenger car goes maybe 50 mpg.
That implies that growth has not been, and will not be symmetric. We'll grow, but into a domain we still don't understand.
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odograph Posted 1:01 am
20 Dec 2007
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:04 am
20 Dec 2007
I'm withholding support for nuclear until it can fix its problems. Reactors have to be fool proof. Proliferation of weapons grade material must be impossible. Waste has to be dealt with. We will also run out of high grade ore and turn to the low grade stuff, which takes a lot of energy to mine and process, not to mention the mines will be a mess. I much prefer the idea of an infinite supply of clean fuel, wind, solar, etc.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 1:07 am
20 Dec 2007
A great new aircraft composite material uses aluminum and fiber/resin in a sandwhich construction that stops cracking and reduces weight.
It struck me that using aluminum on the outside reduces processing quite a bit, standard stamping can be used. No extensive surface finishing, as with resin fiber surfaces, before paint is needed. The parts can be powder coated and then the resin and paint both cured in the same step.
As many layers of resin and fiber and aluminum as needed for strength can be built up in the stamping mold. The resin fiber layers sprayed on then another layer of aluminum stamped on over it.
The lack of actual prototypes produced by Lovins' is part of his strategy maybe? those who produce prototypes are seen as competition by the auto industry. Upstarts to be discredited and crushed. He is trying to get automakers to accept his technology and use it themselves.
In a corporate monopoly gaming system, this might be a better way to go. His boosterism of fuel farming and hydrogen is troubling. He seems to play the corporate game, trying to get inside the belly of the beast and change its feeding habits.
The danger of that route is cooption. Hydrogen and fuel farming hype endangers his credibility. Is there anything worse than Brazilian ethanol from agrichem sugar? Maybe palm oil? I guess he is boosting both.
Talking up plugin hybrid hypercars would be a much better choice. It's a shame when people who ought to know better, waste their brief cultural limelight promoting horrible boondoggles rather than real solutions.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 1:41 am
20 Dec 2007
Due to the incredible mismanagement and corruption of government/industry and the ever more violent weather swings from GHG climate change, and homeland security, most medium length trips between cities on the train would be over before passengers even get off the ground at the airport.
Another big area of research for fuel efficiency would be solid oxide fuel cell/turbofan engines. Boeing is working on this technology on a small scale for backup generators to power planes on the ground while waiting for takeoff, so the main engines need not be running until just before actual flight begins. A huge amount of fuel is wasted this way.
Takeoff also uses a large percentage of the fuel needed for air travel. Accelerating the plane to takeoff speed could be helped with superconducting linear acceleration technology installed under the runway surface, it could also supply an electric power burst to fuel cell/turbine engines.
Boeing happy to make anyone (but their executives) multimillionaires, for technology they already have or can easily steal? Hehehey. More silliness. Oh well.
Monopoly industries are not innovators. They choose instead to boost the bottomline by killing competing technological advances, by buying them up and bribing government to regulate them to death.
If they do pursue new technology, like the solid oxide fuel cell/turbine it is generally reserved for military projects (unmanned aerial vehicles in this case) and priced way above any competitive level.
I think Lovins strategy is to use publicity and public opinion to break these road blocks. But how will that work if he concentrates on hydrogen and fuel farming? Not gonna happen if he damages his credibility with this nonsense.
It's exactly what Obama did, go straight to corporate cooption by boosting nuclear, clean coal, and fuel farming. It shows that his presidency would most likely be bush style corporate spokesmanship. His inexperience makes him vulnerable to corporatism. The Clintons do not bow to corporate power, even though they work with it.
Lovins is trying to do that, but failing. maybe Hillary can put Lovins to work in her administration? That might be the way to get him back on the greener track.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 2:45 am
20 Dec 2007
Bio,
I was antinuclear when I took my first course in nuclear engineering. The problems fall into two categories, real and perceived.
The real problems are not difficult, solutions are available. The perceived problems are more difficult because they result form the failure of our education system.
A recent study showed that U.S. children placed 29 in math and science, behind Croatia, Iceland and Latvia, see page 23 of the pdf.
http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/13/39725224.pdf
For a review of the real problems I recommend Dr. Cohen's excellent book, available free.
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/
Regarding uranium supply, using sea water uranium, first and second generation reactors can support 10 billion people for a few hundred years at the U.S. level, with no mining, advanced reactors can stretch that to over 30,000 years.
http://npc.sarov.ru/english/digest/132004/appendix8.html
Consider these two reactors. They have passive safety systems and are designed to absorb a full meltdown without hurting anybody.
http://www.areva-np.com/common/liblocal/docs/Brochure/BRO ...
http://www.ans.org/pubs/magazines/nn/docs/2006-1-3.pdf
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amazingdrx Posted 2:59 am
20 Dec 2007
It is all for the best though, free speech shows up the nuclear advocate position for the crankery and self delusion it really is.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:03 am
20 Dec 2007
If it came down to coal or nuclear, I'd go nuclear but that is not the choice at hand. Your arguments mostly depend on future, unproven technologies and also don't solve all problems. If the technology finally arrives to solve those problems, I will support it, as I would biofuels.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 12:02 pm
20 Dec 2007
Bio,
That is an ironic statement, because in reality fission is the only proven technology that can replace coal at this time at an affordable cost and with the required level of reliability.
I would like to see your proposed design to replace coal using well proven technology, with a cost estimate, including the cost of backup energy sources, and a reliability analysis. I agree with you on this.
Until a given piece of technology passes the commercial viability test I don't much care to fantasize about it.
We can have abundant clean affordable energy for 400 years using safe well proven fission technology. Beyond that will require some R&D.
You give no examples, what do you see as the # 1 problem?
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:20 pm
20 Dec 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:35 am
21 Dec 2007
Just remember that your electric bill only pays for 1/3 of the electricity that supports your life.
Without fission, about half your electricity will continue to come from coal for quite a while, which kills 20,000+ Americans each year, maybe over a million world wide, in addition to its global warming impact.
http://www.cleartheair.org/dirtypower/docs/dirtyAir.pdf
And it releases 100 times more radioactivity into the envirfonment than nuclear power.
There is a tiny risk from using fission, and a vastly greater risk from not using it.
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Biodiversivist Posted 8:11 am
21 Dec 2007
The argument boils down to, "Is it a choice between coal or nuclear?"
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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