apsmith’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Thorium reactors owned and managed by the United Nations!!! On Dyson - one sign he's smarter than he is brave: he has not signed this ridiculous "petition" to the American Physical Society, despite his prominent position there (as an APS Fellow): http://www.openletter-globalwarming.info/Site/open_letter.htmlOn Is Freeman Dyson really "brave"? posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago 20 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Though I hasten to add, if you're going to have CAFE-like rules, make them as tight as possible. So kudos to Obama for doing this, and I don't think the arguments in this article make it one bit less right to tighten them up.

  What manufacturers should do, given CAFE, is realize that it constrains them to pair up vehicles, in a sense. They can only sell a (profitable) Hummer if they also sell (at a loss) a Volt, because of how the average fuel economy works between the two. So given that constraint, the profit shouldn't all be allocated to the Hummer in manufacturing accounting, but should be evenly divided between the two cars, because you can't sell the Hummer without the efficient car to meet the average requirements.

  Let's just hope Detroit gets managers and finance folk smart enough to figure this stuff out.

  On Fuel economy in context posted 6 months ago 13 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  I think there's a subtle effect here that you're missing - why are fuel-efficient cars money-losers for American manufacturers? Because of CAFE standards. Since the fleet average has to reach a certain level, manufacturers have to under-price the efficient cars to sell enough of them to keep the average up. That means they look like money-losers in all their financial analyses. And the manufacturers get stingy on innovation and marketing for that class, since it looks like they're not making money off them. Until they collapse.

  A better system, other than simple fuel taxes which would also do the trick, would be the sort of feebates Amory Lovins (who I'm not generally a fan of) has proposed. This way the manufacturers can directly see higher prices and actual profits on their more fuel efficient cars, while the government shuffles the money from gas guzzler purchases (imposed fees on purchase) to efficient car purchases (rebates). Otherwise manufactures simply have a continuing disincentive on fuel economy, simply because the CAFE standard exists.

  On Fuel economy in context posted 6 months ago 13 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Definitely 92 miles by 92, not 92 sq miles

  The relative efficiency of solar thermal vs. photovoltaic is only a factor of 2 or 3, not a factor of 100 or more. So yes, we would definitely need cover an area close to 100 miles on a side.

  But that said, even that isn't really that much area. The US has an "impervious surface area" (roads, buildings, etc.) considerably larger than that, so it's well within the range of our capabilities.On Solar thermal can save us, but it needs public clamor posted 1 year, 5 months ago 35 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  He's not on those lists because he's *old*

  Joe - I respect you, but I also respect Dyson for his great contributions to physics many decades ago. The Tiger Woods of physics of recent history was, almost without question, Richard Feynman; Feynman developed his own approach to quantum electrodynamics that has become an extremely useful calculating tool (Feynman diagrams) in the 1950's; around the same time the traditional quantum mechanics people (Schwinger) developed their more mathematical-looking perturbation theory approach. Dyson was the one who proved the two methods were equivalent, essentially by putting Feynman's diagrams on a firm theoretical footing, and one of the fundamental equations still used in quantum field theory is the Dyson equation.

  So Dyson isn't Tiger, no. But he wasn't far off in his prime about 40-50 years ago. Now, well, he's like many of those curmudgeonly old physicists - in fact I suspect he was good friends with Frederick Seitz as they're both Princetonites. There are Dysons and Seitz's and Roy Spencer's who we just have to deal with somehow or other. Denigrating their past contributions is probably not the best approach...On CEI deniers praise Andy Revkin, diss Tiger Woods posted 1 year, 5 months ago 9 Responses