Global warming?

[Undertoad]

Well yeah sure i wasn't thinking of like 0-50 in 10.2 seconds with my lawnmower.

Y'know what's funny though. If you had like 8 actual horses, hitched up, you still couldn't go faster than one horse's power.

If I had a carriage company, I would hitch up like 16 horses. People would trust it. I would hitch them up in groups of four, so it would be 4x4 horses. You can't hook em up 2x8 because the reins would be too long. And you can't hook em up 8x2, because that would be too wide, and it would look weird.

Enter to win a 1 hp bio-fuel powered hybrid, the Naturmobil....:

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/horse-power/

...minus the horse, of course.

[ZenGum]

TW, what's your reason for not taking hydrogen seriously as a fuel?

Here's what I have in mind:

Use photovoltaic cells to generate electricity from sunlight. Use that electricity to split water into hydrogen (and oxygen). Put the hydrogen into your car, run it through a fuel cell, drive, produce water as exhaust.

I see some problems - every time you change energy from one form to another there is loss. Present photovoltaics are inefficient. I don't know about the efficiency of electrolysis, or fuel cells. But with time, these things should improve, and economies of scale etc should lower the price.
Carrying hydrogen around is also a bit tricky, but doable. Many cars run on gas (as in LPG or CNG, not gasoline).

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Y'know what's funny though. If you had like 8 actual horses, hitched up, you still couldn't go faster than one horse's power.

Again - application of a changing load. A horse's legs are a one speed transmission. How fast does a 200 horsepower car go when always in first or second gear? No horse has overdrive. If properly adapted to changing loads, one horsepower could easily maintain 60 MPH.

Meanwhile, we are innovating. Nobody uses reins. Each horse is computer controlled. Move your eyes left and the horse goes in that direction. Holding reins means too much wasted energy.

[glatt]

Modified bicycles can reach highway speeds powered only by humans.

[tw]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

TW, what's your reason for not taking hydrogen seriously as a fuel?

That is not hydrogen as a fuel. That hydrogen is only a transmission media. If hydrogen is a fuel, then the Energizer battery is also a fuel. Problem with hydrogen as a fuel; by the time it gets used, something like one in ten units of energy remain for use.

Using photocells, then hydrogen may be a storage medium. IOW as a rechargeable battery. Currently batteries based in hydrogen are not as good as other materials. Storage of energy is one of the most difficult problems that has been largely ignored since WWII. The Energizer Rabbit battery was developed in WWII. Little existed to replace it due to a lack of R&D. Especially when battery companies were owned by companies such as Sara Lee.

Gasoline is a fuel. Coal is a fuel. Uranium is a fuel. Hydrogen (ie water) has no energy until energy is provided by a fuel or other energy source. Storage of energy in hydrogen is ineffective. Hydrogen is used in rockets because significant energy can be wasted to concentrate higher energy per pound and because that energy can be controlled. Even in space, hydrogen is a poor energy storage medium.

Biggest problem with hydrogen include storage losses due to thermodynamics. Other interesting technologies considered bind hydrogen to other materials. But that technology also required high temperatures - ie 200 degrees C.

Hydrogen as a fuel was promoted by Rick Wagoner (GM) and by George Jr in one State of the Union address. A year and years later, even George Jr stopped promoting hydrogen as a fuel.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Stick to the evidence and reasoned argument based on it.

Weren't these hackers making public the evidence behind the official reasoned argument? Are you saying we don't want the evidence, we can't handle the evidence?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Y'know what's funny though. If you had like 8 actual horses, hitched up, you still couldn't go faster than one horse's power.

Hitching them up creates a load, so multiples sharing that load, might be able to go a tiny bit faster. But, if you want to create a significant increase in speed, put 'em on stilts.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Weren't these hackers making public the evidence behind the official reasoned argument? Are you saying we don't want the evidence, we can't handle the evidence?....

The only thing I have seen posted from the hackers to-date are e-mail exchanges between scientists at the research institute....with no context. Is that evidence of anything?

Havent you ever written an e-mail to a colleague that could be interpreted in ways other than you intended....especially by one with a political agenda opposed to yours?

I certaintly dont think it has reached the level that UT suggested of being "Major, major global warming news"

Where's the beef?

[xoxoxoBruce]

A group of Russian hackers broke into systems at a Climate Research lab in East Anglia. Today they released 162 megs of data, code, and emails. One of the lab directors has said the documents are genuine.

Taking UT at his word... and I have no colleagues.

[ZenGum]

Thanks, TW, but there was some strange stuff there (even by your standards).

Hydrogen (ie water) has no energy...

ie = id est, that is. Hydrogen is not water, we both know that.
Your point in much of your post seemed to be that hydrogen is a storage medium for energy. So what?
Call it a storage medium or a synthetic fuel, that is just semantics. For that matter, we could say that coal and gasoline are just storage media for the energy from sunlight that hit earth 100 million years ago, and uranium is a storage medium for the energy from a supernova 6 to 10 billion years ago. There is a difference, in that with hydrogen, we put the energy in there deliberately, but with the others it was there already, but ... so what?
A tank of hydrogen does not slowly lose energy the way a battery does sitting in the draw. You made some comment about losing energy due to thermodynamics, can you expand on that?

[TheMercenary]

Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming.

While few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate -- nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal -- public debate persists. And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...=moreheadlines

A group of Russian hackers broke into systems at a Climate Research lab in East Anglia. Today they released 162 megs of data, code, and emails. One of the lab directors has said the documents are genuine.

The only thing I have seen posted so far are a handful of e-mails, with no context.

I am not saying it might not be true that studies were "fudged", I just havent seen links to any such evidence anywhere yet.

Here is one example from the most commonly cited e-mail:

Michael E. Mann, who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said in a telephone interview from Paris that skeptics are "taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious."

In one e-mail from 1999, the center's director, Phil Jones, alludes to one of Mann's articles in the journal Nature and writes, "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

(skeptics point to this e-mail and scream...."see...they are fudging data")

Mann said the "trick" Jones referred to was placing a chart of proxy temperature records, which ended in 1980, next to a line showing the temperature record collected by instruments from that time onward. "It's hardly anything you would call a trick," Mann said, adding that both charts were differentiated and clearly marked.

But Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said this and other exchanges show researchers have colluded to establish the scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...pid=sec-nation

People will read into the e-mail exchange what ever best suits their agenda.

Is this e-mail evidence of "fudging" data or "colluding to establish the scientific consensus..."? Not IMO.

Is it earth shattering news? I dont think so.

[TheMercenary]

I could be read it as a possible concerted effort to deceive via coercion rather than putting all the data out in the public scientific community and allow it to be peer reviewed by any interested party.

[Clodfobble]

So UT, does this mean scientists are just as corruptible as the rest of us after all?

[TheMercenary]