On Monday, October 11, 2021 at 3:27:30 AM UTC-5, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> anti...@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
> > Stephen Fuld <sf...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
> >> On 10/10/2021 12:02 AM, BGB wrote:
> >>
> >>> Also, none of those countries seems to use the same voting system as the
> >>> US ("first past the post" + "winner takes all"). Which was the point I
> >>> was getting at here. Namely, that a system like the one the US uses is
> >>> prone to almost invariably collapse down to two parties.
> >>
> >> I think a bigger difference is that they don't have the people vote for
> >> the leader directly. They are Parliamentary systems where the people
> >> vote for a local candidate of a particular party, and the parties, not
> >> the people choose the leader. I do believe the local elections are
> >> "first past the post".
> >
> > AFAIK most countries use "proportional representation". How does
> > it work? In Poland in 2015 we had 41 voting districts and 460
> > places in parlament. That is on average sligthtly more than 11
> > members of parlament per districts. Each candidate represented
> > some party. There were voting thresholds: party which get less
> > than 5% of votes were disqualified. Parties could form
> > coalition and then coalition needed at least 8% of votes.
> > In each district places were distributed using D'Hooft rule.
> > Basically, there is "price" (number of votes) for place. Each
> > party gets as many places as its votes allow. Within party candidates
> > are sorted according to number of votes they obtained
> > and places available to party are allocated starting from
> > higest scoring candidate. Normally description of this
> > procedure is much more complicated, but effect is that
> > "price" is set at level so that all parties together get
> > exactly places allocated to disctrict.
> Norway is similar but not exactly equal. We just had a nation-wide
> election that resulted in a new coalition taking over this week.
>
> The election system is based on the old 19-county division of the
> country and 169 delegates to the parliament: 150 of them are distributed
> to the districts, using the "each person gets one vote, while each
> square km gets a bit more than one vote" in order to make sure that
> rural, lower population districts gets a stronger representation.
>
> Within each district the representatives are distributed proportionally
> to the number of (human) votes.
>
> At the end of this process each party which have received at least 4% of
> the total vote count takes part in the final proportionality equalizer,
> where 19 additional representatives, one from each district, is handed
> out so as to make the total representation level as close to
> proportional as possible. In effect this means that a party which gets
> 3.8% can end up with one or two representatives, while hitting 4.2% gets
> them six or seven.
>
> The math used for that final stage usually results in some candidates
> getting in or not with hair-thin margins, since the actual person
> selected depends both on the local district vote count and the total
> vote counts for each party.
>
> The nicest part is that today the exiting cabinet is delivering the
> budget for next year, while the new prime minister and cabinet takes
> over the responsibility for it later this week. :-)
>
> Terje
>
> --
> - <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
> "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

Have a few theories about American democracy:
The key feature is overlapping jurisdictions
If one level of government goes bad and the next level up or down works correctly,
then the other level(s) take up the slack.

In the final analysis government is a competitive business, people are mobile and
will move to where government offers better value for your tax dollar.
For instance the mob took over Newark NJ and extracted taxes without providing value.
All the big companies left and tax revenue and the city shrank.

Another favorite idea: one's vote is proportional to taxes paid. So it someone manages
to avoid taxes, then their vote does not count (in practice there needs to be a baseline
vote as a result of citizenship and probably an addition for military service).

On 10/11/2021 2:32 PM, Marcus wrote:
> On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>
>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>> onto the grid ??
>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>> <
>> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
>> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
>> and as industries consume more energy.)
>
> Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
>
> Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
> maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
> only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
> are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
> up at a faster pace...
>
> A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
> with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
> This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
> wind, which is at some 25%).
>
>>>
>>> Personally, though, I think that if we _really_ want to stop global
>>> warming, we need to have a solution that's acceptable to... more
>>> conservative Americans. (Including some who still wouldn't vote
>>> for Trump.)
>> <
>> If no more carbon was emitted into the atmosphere starting tomorrow,
>> the earth will continue to warm through 2300 !! probably close to 5ºC.
>> {Science news a few weeks ago}
>
> Yep. We're pretty much screwed. Stopping global warming is not going to
> happen (but it does not hurt to slow it down to give people and cities a
> chance to adapt to new water levels etc).
>

Unless it slows down, sometime soon; at current rates by ~ 2200-2300 we
will be at similar CO2 levels as what was present during the
Permian-Triassic extinction event (*1), which is, arguably not good...

*1: Assuming linear emissions at the same rate. Given it was pretty much
accelerating ever since thoughout the late 20th century, it is possible
that "business as usual" could hit these levels by ~ 2150 or maybe sooner.

Nevermind just the warming or rising sea levels.

Like, ideally, people should cut this stuff out before we risk the mass
die-off of pretty much all complex plant and animal life on the planet...

On 10/11/2021 10:21 AM, Tom Gardner wrote:
> On 10/10/21 15:55, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 10/10/2021 5:19 AM, Tom Gardner wrote:
>>> On 09/10/21 16:02, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>>> I certainly agree with that.  And, as I said elsewhere, we are far
>>>> from perfect.  But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that e.g.
>>>> western Europe with its US "influence", was far better off than
>>>> eastern Europe with its Soviet "influence".  And just ask the people
>>>> of Hong Kong about Chinese "influence". :-(
>>>
>>> Yes indeed.
>>>
>>> But it is equally keeping sight of the fact that the USA wasn't
>>> "in Europe" for solely altruistic reasons.
>>>
>>> Europe gave the US an unsinkable aircraft carrier, mobile missile
>>> sites, and listening posts, a few hours/days to mobilise while
>>> the Soviets were rolling across Europe, and markets for their
>>> trade goods.
>>
>> Of course, that is true.  The US benefited as well as the western
>> European countries.  But contrast that with eastern Europe, where the
>> Soviet Union benefited, but the countries no so much. :-(
>
> As someone that went through the E/W Germany borders 6 times
> in the 1970 (and again in Nov 89 less than a week after the
> fall!), the differences were /very/ apparent :)
>
> I also knew someone that trotted around the USSR determining
> reception of the BBC radio, and he confirmed all the propaganda
> stories we were brought up on.

The situation is a little different for someone like myself (Gen Y), who
isn't old enough to remember the USSR or Cold War in any sort of
first-hand sense; pretty much all of it mostly reduced to things one has
heard about or seen on TV.

Instead, the majority of my life has existed in the whole "War on
Terror" era.

But, I am old enough to have experienced first-hand the era of CRT
monitors and dial-up modems. Well, and started using computers and
poking around at writing code when I was still fairly young.

And, in some sense, a lot of my current projects still exist within the
confines of vestiges (or "legacy") of code I wrote back in middle and
high-school... (Some of which was admittedly kinda asinine, like
high-school age self being like "Sure, why not, XML DOM seems like a
great format for ASTs!"; despite being much of a lifetime later, in
BGBCC, I am still left with some of the fallout from these original
design choices, *1...).

*1: Though, admittedly, BGBCC was not itself written while I was in HS,
it was a fork of a fork of code I had written in HS, which is where the
whole XML DOM for ASTs thing came from... But, not exactly like I can
travel back a few decades and be like "Damn it, no, use JSON instead!
Put the libxml2 away and please don't look at it again!". Past self,
"But what about using SQL for ...?", slaps it out of past selves' hands.

Well, for better or worse, the next generation is trying to build their
empires on Python and Haxe and similar; yet to be seen for how many of
them, this will come back to bite them...

Though, when some Gen Z guy manages to become a millionaire by writing a
rhythm game in a few thousand lines of Haxe, it almost seems like it is
time for me to just put on a hat and go ride off into the sunset...

Marcus wrote:
> On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>
>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>> onto the grid ??
>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>> <
>> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
>> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
>> and as industries consume more energy.)
>
> Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
>
> Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
> maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
> only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
> are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
> up at a faster pace...
>
> A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
> with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
> This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
> wind, which is at some 25%).

10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
the world is currently using.

Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
adjust to only using significant power during daytime.

Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
going offshore is better.

Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.

Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
output level swing?

Terje

--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

On 10/12/2021 1:56 AM, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> Marcus wrote:
>> On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>>> onto the grid ??
>>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>>> <
>>> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
>>> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
>>> and as industries consume more energy.)
>>
>> Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
>>
>> Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
>> maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
>> only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
>> are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
>> up at a faster pace...
>>
>> A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
>> with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
>> This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
>> wind, which is at some 25%).
>
> 10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
> learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
> the world is currently using.
>
> Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
> and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
> needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
> end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
> cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
> some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
> adjust to only using significant power during daytime.
>

I guess one possibility could be converting water (probably from the
ocean) into H2 and O2, or alternatively, someone devises a practical way
to convert water and CO2 back into a usable fuel.

Reacting H2 and CO2 to produce CH4 and H2O, and maybe polymerizing the
CH4 back into longer-chain hydrocarbons; using massive amounts of solar
power to pull all this off.

Then one can ship off the gases in large tanks to use as combustible
fuels (or use fuel-cells, but these are fairly expensive compared with
gas turbines or combustion engines).

I guess another crazy idea would be large air-ships, which double as a
flying cargo ship for liquified gas canisters, and also as a large
storage tank for gaseous hydrogen (also serves as a lifting gas). So,
giant flying fuel tanks.

Could in premise put lots of solar in places like Nevada and Utah, but
not a whole lot of water there. Could almost make sense to run a
pipepline through the Rocky Mountains to allow piping in large amounts
of ocean water (could maybe also be used as a water supply for Vegas and
Phoenix and similar as well, as an alternative to doing the whole
"reclaimed water" thing).

Places like California and Israel have access to both deserts and the
ocean (as do many places in West Africa, ...).

> Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
> going offshore is better.
>
> Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
> phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
> the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
>

Possible, but only really relevant to coastal areas.

Granted, I guess transmission lines can go a long ways, so say, much of
the US could benefit if a bunch of tidal stuff was built in, say,
Louisiana and similar...

> Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
> really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
> possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
> output level swing?
>

Most reactors can be throttled.
Though, ideally, don't really want yet more light-water-reactors though.

> Terje
>

MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
>> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
>> of certain trade agreements.
>>
>> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
>> are common in many places around the world. China had no
>> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
>> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
>> factors.
>>
>> Now this:
>>
>> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
>>
>> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
>> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
>> any country to be able to monopolize.
>>
>> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
>> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
>> place to reduce pollution!
> <
> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> onto the grid ??

Yes, of course!

a) Switching all cars to EVs increase the need for electricity by
something like 4% (depending upon where in the world you are).

b) Running a refinery takes a _lot_ of electricity! In fact, it takes so
much that a modern EV use less KWh to drive a given route than an
average ICE vehicle needs to produce the gasoline/diesel it will burn.

With a highly efficient modern small diesel the case isn't quite that
clear, but EVs will definitely be a part of the solution.

Terje

--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

On 2021-10-12 08:56, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> Marcus wrote:
>> On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>>> onto the grid ??
>>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>>> <
>>> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
>>> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
>>> and as industries consume more energy.)
>>
>> Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
>>
>> Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
>> maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
>> only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
>> are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
>> up at a faster pace...
>>
>> A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
>> with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
>> This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
>> wind, which is at some 25%).
>
> 10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
> learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
> the world is currently using.
>
> Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
> and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
> needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
> end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
> cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
> some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
> adjust to only using significant power during daytime.

That's an obvious and huge drawback. I wonder what new doors would open
up if we stopped thinking that we need 100% energy efficiency, though.
E.g. with coal etc, we sure do not want to throw away 50% of the
produced energy - but with solar and wind? Does it matter if we
overproduce and/or have losses in energy storage solutions? It seems to
me that even low efficiency/durability energy storage solutions could be
viable. And rather than thinking electrical batteries there are plenty
of other options, suitable at different scales (water + gravity (dams),
heating/freezing liquid/gas, kinetic/flywheel, etc).

> Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
> going offshore is better.
>
> Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
> phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
> the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
>
> Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
> really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
> possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
> output level swing?

Another thing about nuclear is that it's a very centralized energy
source (unless someone comes up with super-safe mini-scale plants that
people are fine with having in their neighborhoods). E.g. in Sweden we
have traditionally had a ~50/50 split between hydro and nuclear (wind
is replacing nuclear in recent years, though), but we have >10x the
number of hydro power plants compared to nuclear power plants.

Wind and especially solar are much more suitable for distributed energy
production, which in turn has benefits in terms of resilience and such.

/Marcus

Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> writes:
>Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
>and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
>needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
>end up with an energy storage problem:

We built pumped-storage hydro in the 70s to store the night-time
surplus from river hydro, coal, and (German) nuclear power plants, so
that would be no problem in principle, except:

* the rise in energy production and consumption means that the
pumped-storage systems of yesteryear are no longer sufficient

* Solar power is much less when the wheather is cloudy. Maybe a rare
problem in the Sahara, but there you have the political instability
as a problem.

* Wind power also suffers from longer (and less predictable) cycles
than the day-night consumption patterns.

I think though, that when you consider a larger political entity like
the EU, the USA, or China, low production in one place can be
compensated by high production elsewhere. You are not going to have
clouds and calm wind everywhere at the same time.

And they are building bigger pumped-storage facilities, e.g.,
<https://www.verbund.com/de-at/ueber-verbund/news-presse/presse/2016/10/07/reisseck2>

>Is is just as obvious that we
>cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries

There have been fantasies of using electric car batteries for that,
but it is going to need some interesting marketing to pull this off.
Maybe the kind of marketing Xerox employed to get their copiers into
the market, i.e., lease batteries rather than selling them with the
car.

>Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
>really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
>possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
>output level swing?

No new reactors needed. There are reactors in production (forgot the
name, but one of them is in Germany) that have been designed for
reaction times on the order of minutes (shutdown probably has to be
more gradual to avoid Xenon poisoning, or you then have to live with
not being able to restart the reactor for a day or so). However, the
economics of nuclear power mean that such a reactor is still driven at
maximum utilization. Apparently the fuel and other marginal costs are
so cheap that you don't shut the reactor down even when electricity
price is low. Instead, you rather sell it at a low price to a
pumped-storage facility (or something that's not quite that, in order
to save taxes). So while nuclear power is expensive in fixed costs,
it is cheap in marginal costs.

- anton
--
'Anyone trying for "industrial quality" ISA should avoid undefined behavior.'
Mitch Alsup, <c17fcd89-f024-40e7-a594-88a85ac10d20o@googlegroups.com>

Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:

> I think though, that when you consider a larger political entity like
> the EU, the USA, or China, low production in one place can be
> compensated by high production elsewhere. You are not going to have
> clouds and calm wind everywhere at the same time.

If you look at the EU, you will have a dark season everywhere at
once, and you will also have EU-wide calm periods. One or two weeks
is not uncommon, this is the feared "Dunkelflaute" (dark wind lull).

I've run a few calculations a few years back. If you wanted to
bridge two week's electricity demand in winter of Germany alone,
you would have to lift Lake Constance by 200 m. Lake Constance
has around 1/6 of the annual rainfall on Germany, so any reasonable
amount of hydro storage is going to involve geoengineering on
a scale that nobody has even dreamt of up to now.

Storing the energy for two weeks in Tesla batteries (assuming they
are 100% full, can be used to 100%) would cost around three times
the gross anual national product of Germnany.

The interesting question is: How far do you want to bridge the
Dunkelflaute, and where do you decide to stop investing and
shut down your whole country, or the whole of the EU?

On 2021-10-12, Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> wrote:
> MitchAlsup wrote:
>> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
>>> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
>>> of certain trade agreements.
>>>
>>> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
>>> are common in many places around the world. China had no
>>> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
>>> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
>>> factors.
>>>
>>> Now this:
>>>
>>> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
>>>
>>> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
>>> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
>>> any country to be able to monopolize.
>>>
>>> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
>>> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
>>> place to reduce pollution!
>> <
>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>> onto the grid ??
>
> Yes, of course!
>
> a) Switching all cars to EVs increase the need for electricity by
> something like 4% (depending upon where in the world you are).
>
> b) Running a refinery takes a _lot_ of electricity! In fact, it takes so
> much that a modern EV use less KWh to drive a given route than an
> average ICE vehicle needs to produce the gasoline/diesel it will burn.
>
> With a highly efficient modern small diesel the case isn't quite that
> clear, but EVs will definitely be a part of the solution.
>
Electricity is cheap to produce eg wind power water power all clean
sources.
> Terje
>

--

7-77-777
Evil Sinner!
with software, you repeat same experiment, expecting different results...

Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
> On 2021-10-12, Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> wrote:
>> MitchAlsup wrote:
>>> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
>>>> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
>>>> of certain trade agreements.
>>>>
>>>> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
>>>> are common in many places around the world. China had no
>>>> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
>>>> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
>>>> factors.
>>>>
>>>> Now this:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
>>>>
>>>> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
>>>> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
>>>> any country to be able to monopolize.
>>>>
>>>> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
>>>> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
>>>> place to reduce pollution!
>>> <
>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>> onto the grid ??
>>
>> Yes, of course!
>>
>> a) Switching all cars to EVs increase the need for electricity by
>> something like 4% (depending upon where in the world you are).
>>
>> b) Running a refinery takes a _lot_ of electricity! In fact, it takes so
>> much that a modern EV use less KWh to drive a given route than an
>> average ICE vehicle needs to produce the gasoline/diesel it will burn.
>>
>> With a highly efficient modern small diesel the case isn't quite that
>> clear, but EVs will definitely be a part of the solution.
>>
> Electricity is cheap to produce eg wind power water power all clean
> sources.

I agree with that, more or less, but you didn't respond to my post which
was how a liter of gasoline or diesel require so much electricity to
refine it that you can more or less bypass the refinery and the ICE
pollution and instead use the electricity in an EV.

Terje

--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 9:56:57 AM UTC+3, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> Marcus wrote:
> > On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
> >> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> >>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> >>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> >>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> >>>> onto the grid ??
> >>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
> >>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
> >> <
> >> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
> >> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
> >> and as industries consume more energy.)
> >
> > Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
> >
> > Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
> > maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
> > only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
> > are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
> > up at a faster pace...
> >
> > A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
> > with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
> > This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
> > wind, which is at some 25%).
> 10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
> learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
> the world is currently using.
>
> Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
> and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
> needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
> end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
> cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
> some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
> adjust to only using significant power during daytime.
>
> Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
> going offshore is better.
>
> Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
> phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
> the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
>
> Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
> really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
> possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
> output level swing?
> Terje
>
> --
> - <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
> "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

You forgot to state a summary: if storage is solved then generation become trivial. But storage is not solved yet.

On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 4:09:14 PM UTC+3, Michael S wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 9:56:57 AM UTC+3, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> > Marcus wrote:
> > > On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
> > >> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> > >>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> > >>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> > >>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> > >>>> onto the grid ??
> > >>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
> > >>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
> > >> <
> > >> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
> > >> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
> > >> and as industries consume more energy.)
> > >
> > > Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
> > >
> > > Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
> > > maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
> > > only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
> > > are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
> > > up at a faster pace...
> > >
> > > A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
> > > with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
> > > This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
> > > wind, which is at some 25%).
> > 10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
> > learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
> > the world is currently using.
> >
> > Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
> > and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
> > needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
> > end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
> > cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
> > some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
> > adjust to only using significant power during daytime.
> >
> > Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
> > going offshore is better.
> >
> > Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
> > phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
> > the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
> >
> > Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
> > really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
> > possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
> > output level swing?
> > Terje
> >
> > --
> > - <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
> > "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
> You forgot to state a summary: if storage is solved then generation become trivial. But storage is not solved yet.

P.S.
Majority of the storage can be replaced by breakthrough it distribution. But only by really huge breakthrough.
Mere RTS wouldn't do.

On Monday, October 11, 2021 at 5:40:19 PM UTC-5, JimBrakefield wrote:
> On Monday, October 11, 2021 at 3:27:30 AM UTC-5, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> > anti...@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
> > > Stephen Fuld <sf...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
> > >> On 10/10/2021 12:02 AM, BGB wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Also, none of those countries seems to use the same voting system as the
> > >>> US ("first past the post" + "winner takes all"). Which was the point I
> > >>> was getting at here. Namely, that a system like the one the US uses is
> > >>> prone to almost invariably collapse down to two parties.
> > >>
> > >> I think a bigger difference is that they don't have the people vote for
> > >> the leader directly. They are Parliamentary systems where the people
> > >> vote for a local candidate of a particular party, and the parties, not
> > >> the people choose the leader. I do believe the local elections are
> > >> "first past the post".
> > >
> > > AFAIK most countries use "proportional representation". How does
> > > it work? In Poland in 2015 we had 41 voting districts and 460
> > > places in parlament. That is on average sligthtly more than 11
> > > members of parlament per districts. Each candidate represented
> > > some party. There were voting thresholds: party which get less
> > > than 5% of votes were disqualified. Parties could form
> > > coalition and then coalition needed at least 8% of votes.
> > > In each district places were distributed using D'Hooft rule.
> > > Basically, there is "price" (number of votes) for place. Each
> > > party gets as many places as its votes allow. Within party candidates
> > > are sorted according to number of votes they obtained
> > > and places available to party are allocated starting from
> > > higest scoring candidate. Normally description of this
> > > procedure is much more complicated, but effect is that
> > > "price" is set at level so that all parties together get
> > > exactly places allocated to disctrict.
> > Norway is similar but not exactly equal. We just had a nation-wide
> > election that resulted in a new coalition taking over this week.
> >
> > The election system is based on the old 19-county division of the
> > country and 169 delegates to the parliament: 150 of them are distributed
> > to the districts, using the "each person gets one vote, while each
> > square km gets a bit more than one vote" in order to make sure that
> > rural, lower population districts gets a stronger representation.
> >
> > Within each district the representatives are distributed proportionally
> > to the number of (human) votes.
> >
> > At the end of this process each party which have received at least 4% of
> > the total vote count takes part in the final proportionality equalizer,
> > where 19 additional representatives, one from each district, is handed
> > out so as to make the total representation level as close to
> > proportional as possible. In effect this means that a party which gets
> > 3.8% can end up with one or two representatives, while hitting 4.2% gets
> > them six or seven.
> >
> > The math used for that final stage usually results in some candidates
> > getting in or not with hair-thin margins, since the actual person
> > selected depends both on the local district vote count and the total
> > vote counts for each party.
> >
> > The nicest part is that today the exiting cabinet is delivering the
> > budget for next year, while the new prime minister and cabinet takes
> > over the responsibility for it later this week. :-)
> >
> > Terje
> >
> > --
> > - <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
> > "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
> Have a few theories about American democracy:
> The key feature is overlapping jurisdictions
> If one level of government goes bad and the next level up or down works correctly,
> then the other level(s) take up the slack.
>
> In the final analysis government is a competitive business, people are mobile and
> will move to where government offers better value for your tax dollar.
> For instance the mob took over Newark NJ and extracted taxes without providing value.
> All the big companies left and tax revenue and the city shrank.
>
> Another favorite idea: one's vote is proportional to taxes paid. So it someone manages
> to avoid taxes, then their vote does not count (in practice there needs to be a baseline
> vote as a result of citizenship and probably an addition for military service).
<
OK, you just kicked 50% of the voters out of voting. I wonder how the various parties
that depend on their votes will react.
<
BTW that 50% is comprised of 48.5% lower class, and 1% upper middle class and
0.5% "1%-ers".

On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 2:50:26 AM UTC-5, BGB wrote:
> On 10/12/2021 1:56 AM, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> > Marcus wrote:
> >> On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
> >>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> >>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> >>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> >>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> >>>>> onto the grid ??
> >>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
> >>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
> >>> <
> >>> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
> >>> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
> >>> and as industries consume more energy.)
> >>
> >> Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
> >>
> >> Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
> >> maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
> >> only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
> >> are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
> >> up at a faster pace...
> >>
> >> A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
> >> with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
> >> This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
> >> wind, which is at some 25%).
> >
> > 10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
> > learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
> > the world is currently using.
> >
> > Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
> > and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
> > needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
> > end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
> > cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
> > some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
> > adjust to only using significant power during daytime.
> >
> I guess one possibility could be converting water (probably from the
> ocean) into H2 and O2, or alternatively, someone devises a practical way
> to convert water and CO2 back into a usable fuel.
<
When you perform electrolysis on water with salt in it you get H2 and Cl2
not H2 and O2. And while CL2 makes an efficient oxidizer, you really don't
want the HCl it produces..........
<
>
> Reacting H2 and CO2 to produce CH4 and H2O, and maybe polymerizing the
> CH4 back into longer-chain hydrocarbons; using massive amounts of solar
> power to pull all this off.
>
> Then one can ship off the gases in large tanks to use as combustible
> fuels (or use fuel-cells, but these are fairly expensive compared with
> gas turbines or combustion engines).
>
>
> I guess another crazy idea would be large air-ships, which double as a
> flying cargo ship for liquified gas canisters, and also as a large
> storage tank for gaseous hydrogen (also serves as a lifting gas). So,
> giant flying fuel tanks.
>
>
> Could in premise put lots of solar in places like Nevada and Utah, but
> not a whole lot of water there. Could almost make sense to run a
> pipepline through the Rocky Mountains to allow piping in large amounts
> of ocean water (could maybe also be used as a water supply for Vegas and
> Phoenix and similar as well, as an alternative to doing the whole
> "reclaimed water" thing).
>
> Places like California and Israel have access to both deserts and the
> ocean (as do many places in West Africa, ...).
> > Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
> > going offshore is better.
> >
> > Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
> > phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
> > the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
> >
> Possible, but only really relevant to coastal areas.
>
> Granted, I guess transmission lines can go a long ways, so say, much of
> the US could benefit if a bunch of tidal stuff was built in, say,
> Louisiana and similar...
> > Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
> > really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
> > possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
> > output level swing?
> >
> Most reactors can be throttled.
<
With time constants of about 1 day. If a light water reactor has been running
for 1 year it takes about 7 days for it to cool sufficiently you no longer have
to run the cooling water pumps. This was Fukushima's problem.
<
> Though, ideally, don't really want yet more light-water-reactors though.
>
>
> > Terje
> >

On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 1:56:57 AM UTC-5, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> Marcus wrote:
> > On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
> >> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> >>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> >>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> >>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> >>>> onto the grid ??
> >>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
> >>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
> >> <
> >> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
> >> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
> >> and as industries consume more energy.)
> >
> > Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
> >
> > Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
> > maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
> > only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
> > are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
> > up at a faster pace...
> >
> > A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
> > with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
> > This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
> > wind, which is at some 25%).
> 10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
> learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
> the world is currently using.
>
> Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
> and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
> needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
> end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
> cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
> some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
> adjust to only using significant power during daytime.
>
> Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
> going offshore is better.
>
> Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
> phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
> the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
>
> Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
> really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
> possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
> output level swing?
<
Both Nuclear and Coal have time constants over 1 day to get up to optimal
thermal efficiency. Thereby, these plants are fired up, placed on line and
then run at 100% power for 6 months to 6 years, before they are taken
off line for maintenance. These are the base load generators (>40% of
the entire capacity) and a major reason we have all those street lights
the power companies need something to consume all the base power
when everyone is asleep.
<
> Terje
>
> --
> - <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
> "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 3:31:13 AM UTC-5, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> MitchAlsup wrote:
> > On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> >> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
> >> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
> >> of certain trade agreements.
> >>
> >> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
> >> are common in many places around the world. China had no
> >> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
> >> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
> >> factors.
> >>
> >> Now this:
> >>
> >> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
> >>
> >> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
> >> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
> >> any country to be able to monopolize.
> >>
> >> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
> >> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
> >> place to reduce pollution!
> > <
> > Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> > come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> > energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> > onto the grid ??
> Yes, of course!
>
> a) Switching all cars to EVs increase the need for electricity by
> something like 4% (depending upon where in the world you are).
<
To get down this low, they have to be 5× more thermally efficient that
your Hybrid Honda.
>
> b) Running a refinery takes a _lot_ of electricity! In fact, it takes so
> much that a modern EV use less KWh to drive a given route than an
> average ICE vehicle needs to produce the gasoline/diesel it will burn.
<
Citation ?
>
> With a highly efficient modern small diesel the case isn't quite that
> clear, but EVs will definitely be a part of the solution.
<
EVs will be "THE" solution for transportation needs of less than 200 miles
(300 Km) but will remain a nuisance for trips of 500 Miles or more.
<
> Terje
>
> --
> - <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
> "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

chris <chris-nospam@tridac.net> writes:

[...]

> I've been monitoring the climate change issue for over a decade, and
> it's not so clear cut as those with an agenda would claim. Climate
> change, yes, but no evidence for a climate emergency. [...]

You're deluded.

JimBrakefield <jim.brakefield@ieee.org> writes:

[...]

> Another favorite idea: one's vote is proportional to taxes
> paid.

Should be proportional to what percentage of their income
is paid in taxes. And that should include all taxes, not
just income tax -- taxes like social security and sales
tax make up a big chunk of the tax bite for ordinary
people, and they are sharply regressive.

MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> writes:

[...]

> Both Nuclear and Coal have time constants over 1 day to get up
> to optimal thermal efficiency. Thereby, these plants are fired
> up, placed on line and then run at 100% power for 6 months to 6
> years, before they are taken off line for maintenance. These
> are the base load generators (>40% of the entire capacity) and
> a major reason we have all those street lights the power
> companies need something to consume all the base power when
> everyone is asleep.

And that's why we have all those friggin street lights? That by
itself is sufficient reason to switch off of these technologies.

On 10/12/2021 7:40 AM, MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 3:31:13 AM UTC-5, Terje Mathisen wrote:
>> MitchAlsup wrote:
>>> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
>>>> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
>>>> of certain trade agreements.
>>>>
>>>> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
>>>> are common in many places around the world. China had no
>>>> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
>>>> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
>>>> factors.
>>>>
>>>> Now this:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
>>>>
>>>> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
>>>> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
>>>> any country to be able to monopolize.
>>>>
>>>> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
>>>> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
>>>> place to reduce pollution!
>>> <
>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>> onto the grid ??
>> Yes, of course!
>>
>> a) Switching all cars to EVs increase the need for electricity by
>> something like 4% (depending upon where in the world you are).
> <
> To get down this low, they have to be 5× more thermally efficient that
> your Hybrid Honda.
>>
>> b) Running a refinery takes a _lot_ of electricity! In fact, it takes so
>> much that a modern EV use less KWh to drive a given route than an
>> average ICE vehicle needs to produce the gasoline/diesel it will burn.
> <
> Citation ?
>>
>> With a highly efficient modern small diesel the case isn't quite that
>> clear, but EVs will definitely be a part of the solution.
> <
> EVs will be "THE" solution for transportation needs of less than 200 miles
> (300 Km) but will remain a nuisance for trips of 500 Miles or more.

I have heard it asserted that half of the energy cost of a car is
driving it, and the other half is building it. So if AI can make
self-drive taxis universal enough to get half the car fleet off
driveways then you cut 25% off the global transportation budget.

On 10/12/2021 9:34 AM, MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 2:50:26 AM UTC-5, BGB wrote:
>> On 10/12/2021 1:56 AM, Terje Mathisen wrote:
>>> Marcus wrote:
>>>> On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>>>>> onto the grid ??
>>>>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>>>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>>>>> <
>>>>> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
>>>>> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
>>>>> and as industries consume more energy.)
>>>>
>>>> Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
>>>>
>>>> Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
>>>> maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
>>>> only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
>>>> are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
>>>> up at a faster pace...
>>>>
>>>> A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
>>>> with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
>>>> This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
>>>> wind, which is at some 25%).
>>>
>>> 10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
>>> learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
>>> the world is currently using.
>>>
>>> Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
>>> and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
>>> needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
>>> end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
>>> cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
>>> some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
>>> adjust to only using significant power during daytime.
>>>
>> I guess one possibility could be converting water (probably from the
>> ocean) into H2 and O2, or alternatively, someone devises a practical way
>> to convert water and CO2 back into a usable fuel.
> <
> When you perform electrolysis on water with salt in it you get H2 and Cl2
> not H2 and O2. And while CL2 makes an efficient oxidizer, you really don't
> want the HCl it produces..........
> <

I wasn't saying that one would be running electrolysis on raw seawater
though, I know this much.

Reverse osmosis is a thing. It takes power to pump water through a
membrane, but power is something one has plenty of in this scenario.

There is also solar desalinization as well, where the heat from sunlight
is used to boil (and thus distill) the water. Could potentially get
clean / potable water after the steam is used to drive a turbine or
similar, then do electrolysis on the output.

In this case one could have the seawater serving multiple purposes
within a concentrating solar facility.

Either way, one ends up with a few major waste products:
NaCl, MgSO4, LiO, ...

Both strategies should also be able to produce enough clean water that
it could be used as a water supply for any nearby cities as well, as
opposed to needing to rely on rainfall and natural rivers / lakes.

It is likely that there could be higher water output than it would be
viable to convert via electrolysis.

Design could be tweaked based on how much excess potable water is needed
for any nearby cities in the area.

>>
>> Reacting H2 and CO2 to produce CH4 and H2O, and maybe polymerizing the
>> CH4 back into longer-chain hydrocarbons; using massive amounts of solar
>> power to pull all this off.
>>
>> Then one can ship off the gases in large tanks to use as combustible
>> fuels (or use fuel-cells, but these are fairly expensive compared with
>> gas turbines or combustion engines).
>>
>>
>> I guess another crazy idea would be large air-ships, which double as a
>> flying cargo ship for liquified gas canisters, and also as a large
>> storage tank for gaseous hydrogen (also serves as a lifting gas). So,
>> giant flying fuel tanks.
>>
>>
>> Could in premise put lots of solar in places like Nevada and Utah, but
>> not a whole lot of water there. Could almost make sense to run a
>> pipepline through the Rocky Mountains to allow piping in large amounts
>> of ocean water (could maybe also be used as a water supply for Vegas and
>> Phoenix and similar as well, as an alternative to doing the whole
>> "reclaimed water" thing).
>>
>> Places like California and Israel have access to both deserts and the
>> ocean (as do many places in West Africa, ...).
>>> Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
>>> going offshore is better.
>>>
>>> Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
>>> phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
>>> the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
>>>
>> Possible, but only really relevant to coastal areas.
>>
>> Granted, I guess transmission lines can go a long ways, so say, much of
>> the US could benefit if a bunch of tidal stuff was built in, say,
>> Louisiana and similar...
>>> Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
>>> really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
>>> possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
>>> output level swing?
>>>
>> Most reactors can be throttled.
> <
> With time constants of about 1 day. If a light water reactor has been running
> for 1 year it takes about 7 days for it to cool sufficiently you no longer have
> to run the cooling water pumps. This was Fukushima's problem.
> <

OK. Didn't take into account that the time to throttle it was longer the
daytime cycle.

I guess the question would be how much (or how quickly), one could
throttle the output of a molten salt reactor or similar.

There is the pebble bed reactor, but it does not seem like there is any
obvious way to throttle this design.

>> Though, ideally, don't really want yet more light-water-reactors though.
>>
>>
>>> Terje
>>>

On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 10:53:46 AM UTC-5, Ivan Godard wrote:
> On 10/12/2021 7:40 AM, MitchAlsup wrote:
> > On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 3:31:13 AM UTC-5, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> >> MitchAlsup wrote:
> >>> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> >>>> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
> >>>> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
> >>>> of certain trade agreements.
> >>>>
> >>>> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
> >>>> are common in many places around the world. China had no
> >>>> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
> >>>> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
> >>>> factors.
> >>>>
> >>>> Now this:
> >>>>
> >>>> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
> >>>>
> >>>> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
> >>>> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
> >>>> any country to be able to monopolize.
> >>>>
> >>>> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
> >>>> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
> >>>> place to reduce pollution!
> >>> <
> >>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> >>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> >>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> >>> onto the grid ??
> >> Yes, of course!
> >>
> >> a) Switching all cars to EVs increase the need for electricity by
> >> something like 4% (depending upon where in the world you are).
> > <
> > To get down this low, they have to be 5× more thermally efficient that
> > your Hybrid Honda.
> >>
> >> b) Running a refinery takes a _lot_ of electricity! In fact, it takes so
> >> much that a modern EV use less KWh to drive a given route than an
> >> average ICE vehicle needs to produce the gasoline/diesel it will burn.
> > <
> > Citation ?
> >>
> >> With a highly efficient modern small diesel the case isn't quite that
> >> clear, but EVs will definitely be a part of the solution.
> > <
> > EVs will be "THE" solution for transportation needs of less than 200 miles
> > (300 Km) but will remain a nuisance for trips of 500 Miles or more.
<
> I have heard it asserted that half of the energy cost of a car is
> driving it, and the other half is building it. So if AI can make
> self-drive taxis universal enough to get half the car fleet off
> driveways then you cut 25% off the global transportation budget.
<
Trains get several hundred miles to the ton/gallon
Trucks get several miles to the ton/gallon
<
By your logic, trains would have taken over bulk transportation......
The opposite has actually happened.

On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 11:02:39 AM UTC-5, BGB wrote:
> On 10/12/2021 9:34 AM, MitchAlsup wrote:
> > On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 2:50:26 AM UTC-5, BGB wrote:
> >> On 10/12/2021 1:56 AM, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> >>> Marcus wrote:
> >>>> On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
> >>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> >>>>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> >>>>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> >>>>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> >>>>>>> onto the grid ??
> >>>>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
> >>>>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
> >>>>> <
> >>>>> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
> >>>>> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
> >>>>> and as industries consume more energy.)
> >>>>
> >>>> Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
> >>>>
> >>>> Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
> >>>> maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
> >>>> only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
> >>>> are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
> >>>> up at a faster pace...
> >>>>
> >>>> A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
> >>>> with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
> >>>> This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
> >>>> wind, which is at some 25%).
> >>>
> >>> 10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
> >>> learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
> >>> the world is currently using.
> >>>
> >>> Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
> >>> and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
> >>> needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
> >>> end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
> >>> cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
> >>> some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
> >>> adjust to only using significant power during daytime.
> >>>
> >> I guess one possibility could be converting water (probably from the
> >> ocean) into H2 and O2, or alternatively, someone devises a practical way
> >> to convert water and CO2 back into a usable fuel.
> > <
> > When you perform electrolysis on water with salt in it you get H2 and Cl2
> > not H2 and O2. And while CL2 makes an efficient oxidizer, you really don't
> > want the HCl it produces..........
> > <
> I wasn't saying that one would be running electrolysis on raw seawater
> though, I know this much.
>
> Reverse osmosis is a thing. It takes power to pump water through a
> membrane, but power is something one has plenty of in this scenario.
>
>
> There is also solar desalinization as well, where the heat from sunlight
> is used to boil (and thus distill) the water. Could potentially get
> clean / potable water after the steam is used to drive a turbine or
> similar, then do electrolysis on the output.
>
> In this case one could have the seawater serving multiple purposes
> within a concentrating solar facility.
>
>
> Either way, one ends up with a few major waste products:
> NaCl, MgSO4, LiO, ...
<
Just lob these back into the sea.
>
>
> Both strategies should also be able to produce enough clean water that
> it could be used as a water supply for any nearby cities as well, as
> opposed to needing to rely on rainfall and natural rivers / lakes.
>
> It is likely that there could be higher water output than it would be
> viable to convert via electrolysis.
<
Me thinks you should lookup the desalination facilities on aircraft carriers
and submarines before coming to any near final conclusions.
>
>
> Design could be tweaked based on how much excess potable water is needed
> for any nearby cities in the area.
> >>
> >> Reacting H2 and CO2 to produce CH4 and H2O, and maybe polymerizing the
> >> CH4 back into longer-chain hydrocarbons; using massive amounts of solar
> >> power to pull all this off.
> >>
> >> Then one can ship off the gases in large tanks to use as combustible
> >> fuels (or use fuel-cells, but these are fairly expensive compared with
> >> gas turbines or combustion engines).
> >>
> >>
> >> I guess another crazy idea would be large air-ships, which double as a
> >> flying cargo ship for liquified gas canisters, and also as a large
> >> storage tank for gaseous hydrogen (also serves as a lifting gas). So,
> >> giant flying fuel tanks.
> >>
> >>
> >> Could in premise put lots of solar in places like Nevada and Utah, but
> >> not a whole lot of water there. Could almost make sense to run a
> >> pipepline through the Rocky Mountains to allow piping in large amounts
> >> of ocean water (could maybe also be used as a water supply for Vegas and
> >> Phoenix and similar as well, as an alternative to doing the whole
> >> "reclaimed water" thing).
> >>
> >> Places like California and Israel have access to both deserts and the
> >> ocean (as do many places in West Africa, ...).
> >>> Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
> >>> going offshore is better.
> >>>
> >>> Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
> >>> phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
> >>> the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
> >>>
> >> Possible, but only really relevant to coastal areas.
> >>
> >> Granted, I guess transmission lines can go a long ways, so say, much of
> >> the US could benefit if a bunch of tidal stuff was built in, say,
> >> Louisiana and similar...
> >>> Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
> >>> really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
> >>> possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
> >>> output level swing?
> >>>
> >> Most reactors can be throttled.
> > <
> > With time constants of about 1 day. If a light water reactor has been running
> > for 1 year it takes about 7 days for it to cool sufficiently you no longer have
> > to run the cooling water pumps. This was Fukushima's problem.
> > <
> OK. Didn't take into account that the time to throttle it was longer the
> daytime cycle.
<
Also note: steam power is quadratic with respect to throttling, so you have
to run about 3/4 throttle to get 1/2 power out of it. And ALL of the coal and
Nukes are steam based. {Hint: 3/4 power raises the cost of energy by 40%
and kills thermal efficiency.}
>
> I guess the question would be how much (or how quickly), one could
> throttle the output of a molten salt reactor or similar.
<
If the power ends up being generated by steam turbines, the above holds.
<
Even Natural Gas Combined Cycle power plants have this property,
although a better time constant and a slightly lower differential cost structure.
>
> There is the pebble bed reactor, but it does not seem like there is any
> obvious way to throttle this design.
> >> Though, ideally, don't really want yet more light-water-reactors though.
> >>
> >>
> >>> Terje
> >>>

On 10/12/2021 7:47 AM, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
>> On 2021-10-12, Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> wrote:
>>> MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>>>> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
>>>>> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
>>>>> of certain trade agreements.
>>>>>
>>>>> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
>>>>> are common in many places around the world. China had no
>>>>> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
>>>>> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
>>>>> factors.
>>>>>
>>>>> Now this:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
>>>>> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
>>>>> any country to be able to monopolize.
>>>>>
>>>>> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
>>>>> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
>>>>> place to reduce pollution!
>>>> <
>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>> onto the grid ??
>>>
>>> Yes, of course!
>>>
>>> a) Switching all cars to EVs increase the need for electricity by
>>> something like 4% (depending upon where in the world you are).
>>>
>>> b) Running a refinery takes a _lot_ of electricity! In fact, it takes so
>>> much that a modern EV use less KWh to drive a given route than an
>>> average ICE vehicle needs to produce the gasoline/diesel it will burn.
>>>
>>> With a highly efficient modern small diesel the case isn't quite that
>>> clear,  but EVs will definitely be a part of the solution.
>>>
>> Electricity is cheap to produce eg wind power water power all clean
>> sources.
>
> I agree with that, more or less, but you didn't respond to my post which
> was how a liter of gasoline or diesel require so much electricity to
> refine it that you can more or less bypass the refinery and the ICE
> pollution and instead use the electricity in an EV.
>

FWIW: In one past place I lived, they were basically burning raw crude
oil to run the generators. In areas near the generator, there was a
persistent smell like that of burning tires in the air...

Not sure what their emissions were like.

> Terje
>