Adventures in Fuel Economy, Energy Use, Physics, and Life

I call shenanigans on Rocket City Rednecks

2011-11-25T23:20:00.000-08:00

There's a show on the National Geographic Channel called "Rocket City Rednecks." The basic idea revolves around one Travis Taylor who, apparently, "has worked with the Department of Defense and NASA for the last 25 years." Taylor lives in Huntsville, Alabama and, with his father (who, apparently, worked in the Apollo program in the 1960s), a nephew (who, apparently, has a high IQ), a brother in law (who, apparently, holds a Ph.D. in physics), and some other guy whose background and qualification are unstated, get together on weekends and create wacky science projects and experiments. Some seem to be simply for grins, whereas others are represented to have some component that would, in some way, serve humanity. An example of the latter is their "Tornado-Proof Outhouse." You can see synopses for some (but not all) of the episodes here.

Unfortunately, the one I have in mind is not listed there. I recorded it on my DVR and then recorded that on my iPhone so the video here is not... um .. of pristine quality. But that's not necessary to make my point. The episode is called "Power My Party Boat" and involves attaching two paddle wheels to a pontoon boat, anchoring the boat in the Tennessee River, and having the passing current generate electricity by turning the paddle wheels.

They utilized automobile alternators (one, with which they had problems, from a salvage yard and the other new) to actually generate the electricity, ran the current (the electrical current, not the river current) through a voltage regulator into a set of batteries. The electrical current was thus used to charge the batteries. They then used a pair of inverters to supply energy to a "kegerator" (a refrigerator with a keg of beer inside and a tap). a flat screen television, a laptop computer, and a string of lights.

Here's a video clip:

I was extremely dubious when they described the plan, the video cinched it. But let's run a plausibility analysis. I'll list the items they claimed they were powering, and a very conservative estimate of the power consumption of each. We have the following:

A "kegerator": 100 watts
A flat panel television (I'll assume 32", Energy Star qualified): 77 watts
Laptop computer: 20 watts
Light string (20 lights, incandescent, at 0.4 watts per light): 8 watts

The total is 205 watts and I've been VERY generous.

In order to determine the plausibility, we need to know the size of the paddles and the speed of the river. While I can't find definitive data for the speed at the location the Rednecks utilized, this paper mentions "there are some sites with velocities in excess of 5 fps (feet per second)." The show mentioned 3 fps, I'll average the two and go with 4 fps or 1.2 meters/second.

As to the size of the intercepted stream, I'm estimating that each paddle wheel intercepts about 2 square feet (again, generous) or 0.19 meters^2. I'll round to 0.2 meters^2 and multiply by two for two wheels. Thus, the intercepted stream is 0.4 meters^2.

The basic equation for determining the power in a stream of moving water is P=(rho*A*V^3)/2 with A the area, V the speed (assuming the area is perpendicular to the velocity of the stream flow), and rho the density of the water. Here we have rho=1000 kg/m^3; V=1.2 m/s; A=0.4 m^2. Thus, the total power in the stream intercepted by the paddles is about 690 watts.

Now, a paddle wheel is not the most efficient way to extract energy from passing water. The best sources I found were here and here. The Rednecks seemed to have built an "undershot" water wheel, whose efficiency seems to top out at 25%. Considering the slapdash nature of the construction, I'm going with the 20% listed in the second article. This means that, before the alternators, the voltage regulator, the batteries, and the inverter, the system could deliver about 0.2*690 or 138 watts.

And yet the lights were on, the beer was cold, the television and computer were working. What gives? I suspect that the batteries were supplying the power at the rate of 205 watts (or likely more), and the paddle wheel system was simply slowing the rate of discharge. I'll concede that, if I were on the boat, I'd be able to live with intermittent operation of most of those appliances, so it's possible that the river could supply my energy needs in such a circumstance. And the wheels could certainly have been built much bigger - available power scales directly with area. But I'm disappointed because the show, as presented, was quite misleading.

Bell Laboratories and incentives

2011-11-13T15:07:00.000-08:00

For decades, Bell Laboratories and innovations in fundamental research leading to commercial production were nearly synonymous. Claude Shannon and information theory, Shockly, Bardeen, and Brattain and the transistor, Tibor Rado's amazing 1962 paper "On Non-Computable Functions" which introduced us to the busy beaver function, radio astronomy, the C programming language, the laser, and a truly incredible variety of geniuses and inventions owe their origin to Bell Labs. Seven Nobel prizes stem from work at Bell Laboratories.

Unfortunately (imho, ymmv), in 1982 AT&T entered into a Modification of Final Judgement pursuant to an antitrust suit filed in 1949 which required the divestiture of the Bell Operating Companies from AT&T. Bell Laboratories is now the R & D subsidiary of a French-owned firm, Alcatel-Lucent. Alcatel-Lucent announced in 2008 that it was withdrawing from basic research in materials science, physics, and semiconductors to direct its research investment to more "immediately marketable areas."

This is a symptom of the incentive system built into capitalism in its current implementation. Obviously, I'd rather have a dollar in this quarter than a dollar in a year. Even given the choice of, say, $1.00 now versus $1.10 in a year I need to determine the likelihood that the contract to give me the $1.10 in a year will be honored, that the entity promising the $1.10 to me will have the means to pay it, that my assumptions regarding what $1.00 will buy today versus what $1.10 will by in a year are valid, etc.

When adjusting for investment in basic research, I must add to this the likelihood that marketable results will follow from the funded research. And, if I'm on a board of directors for a publicly held company (or even a closely held company) then I must satisfy the owners (to whom I owe, by law in theory if not in actuality, a fiduciary duty) that my research and development investment should provide the largest return on the invested capital. If I don't satisfy them, there's a body of attorneys ready and willing to sue me on a contingency basis.

So who's to fund basic research? The Federal Government has had an active role in this research both through the system of United States Department of Energy National Laboratories and through the funding of research at various Universities. Of course, prospective President Rick Perry, among others, will do away with the Department of Energy (at least if he can remember or, perhaps, write it on his hand). And Republicans (a party of which I used to be a member) cast a very wary eye on the National Science Foundation - the governmental agency that provides the lion's share of basic research funding (leaving out the National Institues of Health, which funds much medical research but is, course, also under attack, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - particularly hated due to its support of research on anthropogenic global warming).

So non-governmental industry is highly incentivized not to undertake basic research and the government not only has the Republican hatred for objective research but also startlingly large budget deficits and an enormous debt thwarting its ability to provide funding for this research. No wonder we're falling behind.

Government can't or won't do it, private industry can't or won't do it - whom does this leave? I would propose that a few fundamental changes in the structure of incentives would go a long way. I advocate the following:

Amend the antitrust laws to allow consortia of companies to work together through an organization funded by the participating organizations
Change the tax structure on capital gains to significantly reduce the incentives to pursue short term results at the expense of long term gains.
Litigation reform to make the losing party responsible for court costs and legal and expert fees of the prevailing party.
For suits that would require massive expenditures to defend, require plaintiffs to post a bond.
A "basic research risk bank" under the direction of arpa-e with 10 figure funding.
Reconfigure and then make permanent the Research & Experimentation Tax Credit. This reconfiguration would be toward applying the credit to basic research and eliminating the requirement that it be "useful in the development of a new or improved business component" of the taxpayer.

Over the next few weeks, I'll try to hang some meat on the bones outlined above since I'm certain that Congress and the President are reading.

Update: on the other hand, maybe all is not lost.

Worst phish bate ever

2011-11-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

I can take a joke as well as the next guy but this phishing attack was so unbelievably bad that it's insulting.

Click either jpeg to embiggen

Come on now. At least give it the old college try.

The arrogance of engineers

2011-11-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the lack of posting. Between a large business deal, my starting of graduate school, and attempts to become conversant, if not fluent, in Mandarin, time has become quite precious. I even thought of abandoning my blog for a while but decided against it. For those who do take the time to read my thoughts, thanks!

So, back to work!

There have been many blog posts and articles written alleging the arrogance of physicists when it comes to believing that their superior understanding of the basic forces, energies, and interactions of our universe gives them the ability to quickly synthesize all of the pertinent information in any field in which physics is involved. They then, it is said, feel entitled to make authoritative pronouncements that those who've devoted as many years to the study of their own field (say, climatology for example) have it all wrong. The iconic example is Freeman Dyson, a truly brilliant man.

While there's likely a kernel of truth to this accusation of arrogance, there's another field whose practitioners can give physicists a run for their money. I speak of engineers (mechanical, structural and aerodynamic seem to be the worst offenders).

As my regular readers will know, I'm a pilot. Everyone I know who's involved in any way with aviation will acknowledge that Burt Rutan is one of the most original thinkers, brilliant designers, and skilled fabricators in the field of aircraft design in the last, say, 50 years if not more. Rutan retired from the firm he founded, Scaled Composites, in November of 2010.

In the U.S. general aviation world (i.e., non-scheduled flying including corporate, private, etc.) there is no bigger event than the annual EAA Airventure gathering. Many attendees have built kits designed by Rutan. On July 29, 2009 ( coincidentally, my birthday) Rutan made a presentation entitled "Non-Aerospace Research Quests of a Designer/Flight Test Engineer." A pdf of the presentation can be found here (though the title is different - "An Engineer's Critique of Global Warming 'Science'" and subtitled "Questioning the CAGW theory," the essentials are the same).

The document comprises a full 98 pages and is replete with graphs (many of the usual ones, some of his own), photos, and quotations. It's a superb example of the "it's not happening, and if it's happening we didn't cause it, and if we caused it's probably good anyway, and if it's not good we can adapt because we've been to the moon and the bottom of the ocean and we fly in the stratosphere" line of argument.

Rutan has been quoted as saying that “If someone is aggressively selling a technical product whose merits are dependent on complex experimental data, he is likely lying. That is true whether the product is an airplane or a Carbon Credit." He is convinced that his engineering skills enable him to understand climate science as a "hobby" in a way that enables him to debunk the accumulated knowledge of those who've made the study of climate their life's work.

In the presentation linked above, Rutan includes on page 95 a quote (or at least I think it is - Rutan's use of quotation marks is sporadic) from one James P. Hogan (more in a moment) as follows: "Science doesn't really exist. Scientific beliefs are either proved wrong or they quickly become engineering. Everything else is untested speculation." Hogan, who was a prolific writer (he died in 2010), authored a tome entitled "Kicking the Sacred Cow," described on his site as "A Collection of nonfiction essays questioning scientific issues that I believe have become dogmatized, where institutionalized science rejects or ignores evidence inconvenient to preconceptions and established theory."

Among the topics covered by Hogan, as shown in the "Summary" page, are intelligent design, "Did Relativity Take a Wrong Turn?," "Catastrophe as Ethics" with subtitle "The Case for Taking Velikovsky Seriously" (seriously???), and a variety of essays on "Environmentalist Fantasies." I ask you.

Now, it might be said that I'm painting with a broad brush - Rutan's excessive zeal in celebrating his depth of understanding shouldn't tar all engineers and I don't mean to do that any more than the authors cited above mean to tar all physicists. But I've spent more time than I should have reading the comments on skeptical blogs, and a frequent theme is "I'm an engineer. We design things that have to work or lives will be lost. We're much smarter and better equipped to understand climate than a bunch of computer modellers." Of course, there's no way to know if these commenters are actually engineers.

My firm employs eight registered engineers and none of them obviously exhibit this characteristic so I suspect that it's a small minority, just as with physics. But it's worth thinking about the tendency for experts in some fields to think their knowledge base and skill sets transcend the boundaries of their own field and enable them to become experts in unrelated or tangentially related fields without putting in the time to learn from first principles. An excellent complementary personality characteristic to brilliance is humility. Or, quoting that well-known liberal, Dirty Harry Callahan, "A man's GOT to know his limitations."

CO2 and the Nissan Leaf

2011-09-25T18:47:00.000-07:00

Image Credit: Biomass Technology Group

In an earlier post I gave a few of the details of the Lexus CT 200h I've been driving for a few weeks now. Then, in my immediate predecessor post I discussed the fact that a much larger portion than I'd have thought of the electricity supplied by Anaheim Public Utilities, my electrical provider, comes from the burning of coal. Finally, in a much earlier post, I discussed the Nissan Leaf. The question to be addressed here: given my driver profile, which of the two vehicles would have the smaller carbon footprint with Anaheim Public Utilities supplying my electricity?

Starting with the CT 200h, let's calculate the CO2 emissions per mile (for my driving style). I'm averaging 51.16 m.p.g., and from this EPA site I find that running a gallon of gasoline through the internal combustion engine in a car (see the site for the assumptions which seem very reasonable) results in the emission of 8.8 kilograms of CO2. So dividing 8.8/51.16 yields 0.172 kilograms (172 grams) of CO2 emitted per mile.

I'm not sure of the accuracy, this site says a Prius, at 51 m.p.g. city and 48 m.p.g. highway, emits 127 grams/mile. I achieve mileage this good, so I should have a similar number. On the other hand, here at Grist we read that the Prius emits 238 grams per mile. These are large discrepancies. Since the EPA site lists its assumptions and since these seem reasonable, and since the number calculated from them is intermediate between the other two, that's what I'm using.

The Leaf would have gotten most of its energy from my home and thus, as best I can determine, 65% from the burning of coal, 20% from the burning of natural gas, and 15% from renewable sources (hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, and biomass in that order - I'm assuming no emissions from these). Here we find that the Leaf uses 34 kilowatt hours per 100 miles or 0.34 kilowatt hours/mile.

I'd need to supply this electricity, and I'll assume that the charging system is 85% efficient and that the transmission from the power plant is 80% efficient. That means that the output of the sources of my electricity need to supply 0.34/(.8*.85) or 0.50 kilowatt hours to propel my hypothetical Nissan Leaf for a mile. 65% of this half a kilowatt hour, or 0.325 kilowatt hours would be supplied by burning coal. From the same site I used in the previous post, I find that a typical 500 megawatt coal power plant will emit 3.7*10^6 (short) tons of CO2 to produce 3.5*10^9 kilowatt hours. Thus, the production of a kilowatt hour entails the emission of 1.06*10^(-3) tons of CO2. This is 0.962 kilograms, so the burning of coal to charge the Leaf will result in 962*0.325 or 313 grams emitted per mile.

For the 20% of my electrical energy supplied by natural gas, this site shows (after some calculations, from the details of which I will spare my patient readers) that the 0.2*0.5=0.1 kilowatt hours that will derive from that source will produce 59.6 grams of CO2.

Thus, driving a mile in the Leaf will entail the emission of 313+60 or 373 grams of CO2. This is higher even than the high Grist site estimate for a gasoline powered Prius and over twice the estimate I derived for my CT 200h from the EPA site. I'd, without a doubt, spend less money on electricity in the Leaf at $0.14 per kilowatt hour vs. $3.899 (today) per gallon of gasoline in the CT 200h but my CO2 footprint would be over twice as high. And this is in the allegedly green state of California.

Finally, I'm now driving about 21,000 miles per year, thereby emitting 3.6 tonnes or 4.0 short tons (US tons of 2000 pounds) of carbon dioxide.

A tonne of coal

2011-09-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a hot few weeks in Southern California and, unfortunately, I like it chilly. Thus, my air conditioning system has been quite busy lately. I received my utility bill yesterday and, though I knew it would be high, it exceeded my expectations. Anaheim Public Utilities bills on a bi-monthly basis and my current bill represents 62 days of consumption. The total electrical usage was an eye-popping 4,473 kilowatt hours. This is an average rate of a bit over 3 kilowatts continuously. Ouch!

Along with our bill, we receive a "power content label" that tells us the energy resources used to supply our electricity and the percentage (estimated for 2010 and I used these estimates for the information to follow) of electricity supplied by each.

Let's take a look at coal: I entered the query "how much coal is burned to produce a kilowatt hour of electricity?" into Google and followed a link to this site. It could be that I should look at a variety of sources but, for my purpose in this post, this is close enough. There I found that a ton (a short ton) of coal, burned in a modern generating facility, will yield 2,460 kilowatt hours of electricity. I will assume that its transmission to my house is 80% efficient, so that ton will yield 1,968 kilowatt hours at my service entrance (where the meter is). This converts to 2.169 kilowatt hours/kilogram of coal burned.

Looking at the Power Content Label, 65% of my 4473 kilowatt hours, or 2,907 kilowatt hours were supplied by burning coal. Yes, I understand that, for these particular 62 days that might not be the right percentage, but it's the best number I can find. In any event, these 2,907 kilowatt hours required the burning of 1,340 kilograms, or 1.34 metric tons ("tonnes" - note that this is 1.48 "short tons" or 2,954 pounds) of coal. This is 21.6 kilograms/day of coal being burned to keep me cool, pump my pool water, light my house, entertain me, etc. Looking here, I see that a reasonable approximation (not knowing the nature of the coal being burned) of the density of the coal is 1000 kg/m^3 so, during the 62 days, about 1.3 m^3 of coal was burned to supply me with 65% of my electricity needs.

Frankly, I was surprised by the high percentage of coal estimated to be used by Anaheim Public Utilities to supply electricity. We have two large nuclear generating facilities in Southern California as well as a huge plant west of Phoenix, AZ. Further, Hoover Dam is about 300 miles away.

Before I purchased the Lexus CT 200h, I'd contemplated, among other vehicles, the Nissan Leaf. While that vehicle would definitely have reduced my driving costs per mile, I'm now suspecting that it wouldn't have reduced my vehicular carbon footprint. That estimate will be the subject of my next post.

CT200h

2011-08-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

In a previous post I mentioned that I'd purchased (more accurately, my Company purchased) a Lexus CT200h hybrid. I've now run a few tanks full of fuel through the vehicle and, to a certain extent, gotten accommodated to its driving characteristics (not so good) and its technology (adequate but nothing special in 2011). One thing the photo at left doesn't reveal is that this car is SMALL!

The vehicle's propulsion system consists of a small (1798 cc) Atkinson cycle internal combustion engine with a maximum power output of 73 kilowatts (98 horsepower) and two motor generators - one that's engine driven and can charge the battery or provide additional power to the other, a drive motor. It features four "modes": Normal, Eco, Sport (amusingly), and EV. In the EV mode the car can go a bit under two miles at a bit under 30 m.p.h. on battery power alone.

The CT200h incorporates a couple of features that obviate some of the fuel economy measures I employed in the Land Rover LR3 HSE I previously drove. The internal combustion engine shuts off at stops. It also shuts off on downhills, converting gravitational potential energy to charge the battery. It also employs regenerative braking.

With all that, stated candidly, the vehicle is a dog. Why, then, did I select it? It's comfortable, it has a reasonable technology platform, it's quite reasonably priced (by Lexus standards - I got out the door for less than a Chevy Volt would cost before the tax credit), and it's capable of excellent fuel economy. It's EPA rated at 43 m.p.g. city and 40 m.p.g. highway using regular gasoline. In my five tanks full I've averaged about 52 m.p.g though I'd hoped for better. I've not tried the "pulse and glide" method - it's simply more work than I want to devote to fuel economy.

Above is the output of a (trivial) Mathematica program I use to estimate fuel economy. Its prediction in the case of both the LR3 that I used to drive (and my wife now drives) and the CT200h are pretty close to the numbers I actually achieved at the pump. Of course, the calculation is for 55 m.p.h., the fastest I drive.

In the news in the last month, we see that President Obama and "Detroit automakers" reached an agreement to raise the CAFE standards to 54.5 m.p.g. by 2025. Of course, this resulted in an outcry that this is another example of big government interference in the free market and an example of creeping socialism. Maybe it is. But impossible, or even impractical, to achieve, it is not. I'm driving a comfortable vehicle that, while by no means quick or fast, comes close to this without any radical driving techniques (I haven't even tried drafting). As you may have noted, it's currently 2011.

Anaheim Energy Field

2011-08-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

The City of Anaheim, using a $350,000 grant together with internal funding, has taken what was previously an unused three acre (what's three acres? think three American football fields, including the end zones, and you'll be close - this helps me to visualize it) site beneath power transmission lines and installed a park facility with a walking path, a lunch/picnic area, and some open field area for recreation. The facility is now called Anaheim Energy Field.

56 kW Solar array

The unique aspect of this facility is the installation of two sets of solar photovoltaic panels. One set, consisting of 385 panels, is in a fenced off area and at ground level. The other set is integrated with the three sun shades for the picnic and play area. It also utilizes artificial turf and drought resistant plantings. I went to visit this park a couple of weeks ago to see how it looked and how it was being utilized.

Across field viewing shade structures

I was there on a beautiful Sunday afternoon from about 2pm until 3:30pm, and during that time I was alone for all but 15 minutes. For those minutes, one individual came by and did some pull ups on one of the park's installations. I took a bunch of photos (on my iPhone, so the quality is low) and explored the park. I'm not sure why it isn't being utilized, the artificial turf is quite nice, the picnic areas are well maintained, and it's altogether a nice place to spend some time. Perhaps people are afraid of the power lines, though I hope not.

The movers and shakers getting iCeL tour
(Photo credit: City of Anaheim)

When I got home, I dove a bit deeper into the park and its technology. As it happens, the City of Anaheim (where I live) and scandal-prone former Anaheim mayor Curt Pringle had worked out a deal with a "green energy startup" called iCeL Systems, Inc. This firm was to supply a system of "smart batteries" that can both charge and discharge simultaneously (don't ask me) and that would enable Anaheim Energy Field to deliver energy continuously rather than only when the sun shone. Anaheim paid iCeL nearly $100,000 for the pilot project. I won't link to their site as Google reports that there is a risk of virus infection by visting.

Unfortunately, the iCeL system was never implemented and the firm itself had an involuntary petition for liquidation under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code filed against it in May of 2010. As it happens, Chaz Haba, iCel's founder and CEO has what could be described as a colorful history as an energy and electronics entrepreneur.

In any event, I wondered if the solar panels were operational. I sent an inquiry on the "Anaheim Anytime" web site and received a phone call the same day from Dina Predisik of Anaheim Public Utilities. Ms. Predisik was very open (though she couldn't speak on the iCeL matter) and assured me that the panels have been generating electricity since 2009.

The panels on the sun shades are rated at 20 kilowatts, and those in the field at ground level are rated at 56 kilowatts. They are expected to deliver 114,000 kilowatt hours/year, thus the "capacity factor" is 18%, not bad at all. Looked at another way, this is the power available from about a 22 kilowatt (NOT megawatt or gigawatt) generating station operating at 60% capacity factor (fairly typical for fossil fuel generating stations). Clearly, they are not massive energy providers. Without a doubt though, they're a good example of "distributed generation."

While I'm proud of my city for installation of what is clearly a positive development with respect to turning a vacant and overgrown field into an environmentally friendly recreation area, the cautionary tale here is that where non-expert governmental officials become enamored with cutting edge and ostensibly "green" technologies, the opportunity for malfeasance is great.

I used to be a Republican

2011-07-26T16:11:00.000-07:00

For those who are used to posts with hypermiling, energy, or physics content, my apologies for the following political rant.

I consider myself to be conservative. I believe in conserving natural resources. I believe in conserving the rights affirmed in our Constitution and its amendments (in particular, the Bill of Rights). I believe in personal responsibility. I believe in living within my (and our) means. I believe in granting others the right to differing opinions and acknowledge that, while I can campaign and proselytize for my beliefs, I must grant that same right to those with different beliefs and compromise with them. I believe that, on occasion, I will not get what I want and that that's OK. I believe that a mature individual accepts this. To me, these beliefs represent true conservatism and used to be the positions represented by the Republican party.

But now, the Republican party is a party of extortionate thugs. In order to change an existing policy (with respect to FAA funding) to the liking of those in whose pocket they dwell, they are willing to hold thousands of people hostage economically and flush millions of dollars down the toilet. I might even agree with the owners of the pockets on the specific policy issue (it revolves around unionization) but I don't believe in scorching the Earth to get my way at the point of a metaphorical gun.

The Republican party is now the party of ignoring evidence. "If it doesn't fit with my belief system/philosophy, it doesn't exist. Don't confuse me with facts." This leads to the possibility of ignoramuses such as Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum, or Rick Perry becoming the Republican nominee for President of the United States. These are people who reject science in the name of letting students decide and support a false balance between evidence based science and facts on the one hand and faith-based superstition on the other. Quoting Professor Steven Dutch of the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, "If your religion says something that conflicts with objective evidence, your religion is wrong." Governor Perry's response to the drought in his state? Pray for rain.

The best that they can come up with for the crying, aching, desperate need for a coherent, far-reaching energy policy is "drill baby drill." This shows all the depth of understanding of third graders. Worse yet, they may understand it all too well but venally sacrifice sound long-term policy for short term political gain.

Further, the Republican party has decided that, no matter what concessions are made by Obama and the Senate Democrats (for whom I have no love whatsoever), it's more important to pander to their so-called base than to honor the obligations of the United States. It grieves me that this is what has become of their vaunted "American exceptionalism," i.e., in their minds we are the exception to having to pay debts. To make this point, they are willing to create an unpredictable amount of turmoil.

I am no longer a Republican. It's saddens me that the party has chased me away. On the other hand, don't confuse me for a Democrat.

Embarrassed to be conservative guest post

2011-07-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

I can't come close to the piquancy (great SAT word) of Baratunde Thurston's torpedoing of Michelle Bachmann's ludicrous signing of the FAMiLY LEADER pledge (the lower case i is, sadly, not a mistake).

Michelle Bachmann is running for president on a pro-slavery, anti-porn platform? - Blog - baratunde.com

My government loves me and only has my very best interests at heart

2011-07-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

My government loves our Constitution, and its only goal is to Constitutionally protect my life, my liberty, and my pursuit of happiness. Of course, that's why they have prohibited me from playing poker for actual money online. I know that this can only be because their love and regard for me is so very high that they must do all in their power to prevent anyone, including me, from being able to engage in any activity that could conceivably cause me harm.

They are able to provide this desperately needed action of protecting me from myself by implementing the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, a document that is erroneously believed to have the purpose of limiting their powers. But such beliefs are foolish - it's clear that the Commerce Clause is applicable to stopping me from harming myself and others by playing poker online for money because there is no conceivable activity or lack of activity to which that Clause cannot be applied by our benevolent protectors in Congress.

Fuckers.

Note: In my 218 posts, this is my first (and hopefully last) f-bomb.

New car, minimal carbon reduction

2011-07-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been contemplating replacing my Land Rover LR3 HSE with a new vehicle - something much more fuel efficient (despite the fact that I've gotten about 28% better fuel economy than the EPA rating for the LR3). Through a series of unfortunate circumstances, my hand was forced.

In the post linked above, I contemplated the Chevy Volt and the Ford Fusion Hybrid. Which did I purchase? Neither. Instead, I drove away with a newcomer, the Lexus CT 200h. This is a well-appointed, VERY small hybrid. Its EPA ratings are 43 m.p.g. city, 40 m.p.g. highway, and 42 m.p.g. combined. This exceeds the Ford Fusion Hybrid and will enable me to save something like 575 gallons of fuel per year and $2,400 on fuel costs (the number is greater than simply gallons times price because the LR3 requires premium while the CT 200h needs only regular).

This is certainly happy news, so why has my family's carbon footprint not decreased significantly as a result of this change? The unfortunate circumstances referred to above involved the total loss of the vehicle my wife had been driving (thankfully, no injuries occurred to any of the involved parties). The decision was to take the insurance settlement and purchase the LR3 from my Company and make it my wife's vehicle. Now, she does absolutely no hypermiling and puts a spectacular number of miles on a vehicle (on the order of 60,000 per year). Her previous vehicle was no fuel miser at 14 m.p.g. city, 23 m.p.g. highway, and 17 m.p.g. combined but many of her miles are highway miles where she'll get about 18 m.p.g. by my estimate. Thus, she'll add about 500 gallons per year for a net reduction in fuel consumption for my family of a mere 75 gallons.

Now, moving on to the CT 200h, this is a vehicle that shares the drivetrain of the Toyota Prius and is thus amenable to some of the more exotic hypermiling techniques such as pulse and glide. I will certainly run through a few tank fulls of fuel prior to experimenting with that technique so that I have a baseline for comparison. Frankly, I'm not so sure that I want to work that hard to drive. And with respect to another technique - drafting - the CT 200h is very small and very low. Thus, the danger level is increased (not to mention not wanting to damage a new vehicle's finish by rocks being thrown).

I'll make another post at a later time with some specifics of the CT 200h (Cd, weight, engine and motor sizes and ratings, etc.)

Hierarchy of qualifications to evaluate research-like information

2011-07-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

I habitually listen to Radio Paradise when working (or playing) at the computer. The station's web site is equipped with a comment facility for the music Bill Goldsmith plays, and with listener fora where all manner of topics are discussed. There's a denizen of the fora with screen name "nuggler" with whom I've exchanged barbs in the song comment areas. In the fora, nuggler is about as rabidly anti (Israel, "big Pharma," American military, Republican, "big oil," etc.) as anyone with whom I've ever interacted.

Nuggler is also fairly tin foil hat conspiracist with respect to HIV-AIDS, GMO crops, "allopathic" (i.e., done by actual doctors) or "Western" medicine as opposed to CAM (complimentary/alternative medicine), etc. He believes the strain of E Coli recently determined to be responsible for multiple deaths in Germany was genetically engineered. He had a long rant about one Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who has supposedly developed an effective cancer cure involving "antineoplastons" that big Pharma and the FDA have brutally squelched.

So, I read a little bit about Dr. Burzynski and some of the material regarding him from his own site and from sites like Quackwatch and Science Based Medicine. I'm obviously ill-equipped to digest material from the primary medical literature both by background and by opportunity cost of time. So again, I have to decide whom to believe. I went into this a bit in a previous post regarding Anthropogenic Climate Disruption. Thus, it's back to a "who seems most credible" situation which is not at all easy (or at least it hadn't ought to be).

So I decided to propose a little hierarchy of how much confidence to have in one's ability to trust one's interpretation of research conclusions (especially conflicting conclusions) based on background and proximity to that research. This is what I came up with, I welcome suggestions and criticisms.

I did the research.
I am an expert in the specific subject area of the research and, though I didn't do the research, I have fully read and understood it.
I have some specific knowledge in the particular area and deep knowledge in the general area of the research.
I have a reasonable background in the general area of the research.
I have done formal research, but not in any area related to that being evaluated.
I have studied this area in depth, but not in any formal venue.
I have completed a formal program of study though not one related to the topic at hand (this shows, at least, some ability to absorb and synthesize complex information).
I have evaluated the coherence of the arguments propounded with respect to agreeing and disagreeing viewpoints.

These levels are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But, if I'm at any level less than this, the fact is that I simply should not allow myself to have an opinion. "It fits the way I'd like the world to work and believe it to be" simply will not suffice.

Wait... what? Fox News "poll"

2011-07-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

This is a screen shot of the result (after I "voted") of a Fox News Poll. I find it confusing. The response gathering the most votes is "No, it's purely a scare tactic." The implication is that running into the so-called "Debt Ceiling" is not a real problem. But, if that is the case, then why would raising it be a big deal to the typical Fox News reader? That is, if not raising it would not have dire consequences, then what purpose is it serving? I suppose that it could be quibbled that "no, it's not the ceiling we're saying is merely a scare tactic, it's the date. We think it's really September 4, (or whatever)." Because, you know, the average Fox News reader is well-attuned to the details of when specific obligations will be unable to be met. Is this really the level to which political economic debate has sunk?

Daily Kos makes sense - say WHAT??

2011-06-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

It's true. There's a long article in Daily Kos (I was sent there by clicking on a link in a Tweet by @mtobis) by Mark Sumner that addresses steps to be taken in the two major areas of energy use in the U.S. - transportation and electricity. It has none of the insane leftist tripe typically characteristic of Daily Kos. And, I have to say, Daily Kos is not as wacky as it was a couple of years back. Yes, back in the waning days of the Bush administration and the 2008 Presidential election I wandered over there a bit. As I've repeatedly stated I try very hard, in electronic, print, and broadcast media, to listen carefully and critically to both "left" and "right" wing outlets.

In any event, it's well worth 20 minutes of your time to read. I have a few relatively minor criticisms:

Sumner states that "Nearly all the energy numbers in this article came from the bounty of data made available at the U.S. Energy Information Administration site." All well and good but I'd sure like specific footnoting for many of the statements.
Wind energy suffers from significantly more obstacles than Sumner indicates. Many who live near them hate them. Sumner suggests placing wind farms atop Appalachian peaks that may otherwise be removed in "mountain top removal" type coal mining. Maybe so, but many would find that to be (almost as) equally revolting.
Sumner proposes a tax on gasoline and diesel fuel that starts at $0.01/gallon and increases by that amount each month for 10 years. I think a larger tax more quickly is crucial.
Sumner makes almost no mention of distribution other than advocating the speeding up of "smart grid" technology.

But one key point explored by Sumner but often overlooked in dissertations about our electricity generating needs is that many, if not most, of the installations that currently provide our baseload power are at or beyond their expected service life and will need to be replaced in any event. Thus, the choice is not between spending money on replacing many of our current energy resources or not; it's between replacing many of our current energy resources in a systematic method geared toward reliability and independence from fossil fuel imports and spending much more money on ad hoc, sub-optimal "tourniquet" solutions as price fluctuations and equipment breakdowns force immediate action.

It's by no means a scholarly article with references, etc. but I highly recommend reading it. By the way, ~~Dr. Tobis~~' Bruce Sterling's comment in Dr. Tobis' re-Tweet that sent me to the article was "Great Program. Now do it while broke with planet on fire." So I guess despair is the solution.

Update: Corrected attribution of despair quote.

Central Air for sale - cheap!

2011-06-14T15:59:00.000-07:00

I'm attending the Clean Technology Conference and Expo 2011 in Boston, MA. One of the featured programs is the CTSI Utility Challenge, where early stage firms in the Clean Tech "space" vie for recognition of their technology by a panel of judges from the Utility and Municipal sectors.

One of the 15 finalists was 7AC Technologies, a firm whose technology uses a "Liquid Desiccant Chiller" for cooling buildings. The Company's representative caught my attention when he stated that "a typical residential central air conditioning unit costs as much annually to operate as its initial purchase price." Really?

I looked into the A/C unit at our house in Anaheim Hills (not known for a Mediterranean climate, and I like it very cool) in a post in 2009. I determined at that time that the 1995 Goodman Manufacturing unit draws about 5,890 watts when cooling. I'd measured it at about 5,000 watts but I'll go with the higher number to make my point.

I will estimate on the high side that the A/C unit is on about 12 hours per day for 150 days per year. This certainly does not underestimate its usage. Thus, I'd use 12*150*5.89, or 10,600 kilowatt hours. I'm paying $0.14/kilowatt hour so this usage will cost me slightly under $1,500. And I'm in a hot area, with an old and inefficient A/C unit with our thermostat set at around 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

I want my new central A/C unit for $1,500! I wonder why the speaker felt it necessary to MSU (make s _ _ t up)?

Shall I become an expert on Anthropogenic Global Warming?

2011-06-13T21:27:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I must. In the past, I've concluded that I can comfortably decide how to vote, purchase, act, etc. with respect to the possibility of mankind-caused climate disruption due to the burning of fossil fuels and the resultant carbon dioxide emissions (hereafter abbreviated by "AGW" - anthropogenic global warming) by determining whom to trust as "experts." I've linked several blogs that clearly support the notion that we are dangerously destabilizing the atmosphere/ocean system by our prodigious carbon dioxide emissions.

But, while such as "Watching the Deniers," "Eli Rabett," and others discount many, if not most, who are skeptical of the AGW claim as lacking in intelligence, being in the pay of fossil fuel interests, the Chamber of Commerce, or other less than savory motivations, there is a sizeable contingent of folks who seem to have intelligence and integrity and yet who argue against AGW. Some aren't even listed in Sourcewatch. The one who's caused me to ask the question in the title of this post is Warren Meyer of the Coyote Blog.

Meyer is (apparently) a small business owner and avowedly a political and philosophical libertarian. I'm a medium sized business partner and inclined toward a libertarian philosophy. I'm inclined to think that libertarianism will meet its downfall in the excessive discounting of the long term so that when people acting in their individual interest recognize the phenomenon of energy descent it will be (if it isn't already) too late. I would be interested in Meyer's opinion of the societal goal directed behavior that was necessary to enable the U.S. to fight and win the Second World War.

And while Meyer acknowledges that his credentials to speak as an expert on climate change do not come from peer reviewed papers, a professorship in the Earth Sciences Department of a University, or a Doctorate in a Climate Science related field, the arguments in the paper linked above are compelling and, were it not for a couple of years of absorbing the information in the "pro AGW" (exceptionally stupid phrase) blogosphere I would have found them dispositive. He states that he thinks his paper should be read as journalism rather than a scientific paper.

So what am I to make of this? If I rely on the experts mentioned above, Meyer is to be ignored. And yet I find that to be problematic. Dr. Tobis, Eli Rabbet, Steve Carson, etc. are not going to take the time to absorb Meyer's paper, dissect it, and summarize its errors and misconceptions. My choices are thus to ignore it or to learn enough to evaluate it on its merits myself.

Specifically, Meyer argues that:

There is no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and it is pretty clear that CO2 produced by man has an incremental impact on warming the Earth’s surface. However, recent warming is the result of many natural and man-made factors, and it is extraordinarily difficult to assign all the blame for current warming to man. In turn, there are very good reasons to suspect that climate modelers may be greatly exaggerating future warming due to man. Poor economic forecasting, faulty assumptions about past and current conditions, and a belief that climate is driven by runaway positive feedback effects all contribute to this exaggeration. As a result, warming due to man’s impacts over the next 100 years may well be closer to one degree C than the forecasted eight. In either case, since AGW supporters tend to grossly underestimate the cost of CO2 abatement, particularly in lost wealth creation in poorer nations, there are good arguments that a warmer but richer world, where aggressive CO2 abatement is not pursued, may be the better end state than a poor but cooler world.

This is far different than Dr. Tobis, Grinzo, Rabbet, et al would contend. But I need more than simply "Meyer is wrong, we know, trust us." I guess I will have to build my edifice of knowledge from the ground up.

Split personality

2011-06-05T19:27:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm talking about me. I'm currently reading some of the posts of John Michael Greer, the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America. Don't laugh, this is one extraordinarily intelligent, thoughtful, and perceptive man. His posts cover the topic of the inevitable end of our era of profligate energy waste based on plentiful fossil fuels. He has many innovative ideas and, as I read, I think "I could do that" and that it would actually be productive and enjoyable.

But, as I sit in front of my iMac 11.3 with its 27" display and quad core i7 Sandy Bridge processor on the second floor of our 2,500 ft^2 house in suburbia, contemplating my work week in our Engineering Consulting firm in the construction sector and whether or not my airplane's annual inspection will be completed this week, planning my trip to Boston next weekend for the Clean Technology Conference and Expo, planning to meet with some people for the purpose of developing new business opportunities with the hope of being able sell the Piper Saratoga and purchase a Piper Meridian turboprop aircraft and build a custom home on a hillside in the desert exurbs - let's just say I'm a bit conflicted.

On the one hand, it could be a case of "hope for the best, plan for the worst." On the other, it could be that I'm simply full of BS. But I do intend to rekindle the steps I planned to start taking and documenting in my other blog (which has a single entry from over three years ago). To that end, I have some skills in the Archdruid's suggested portfolio, having learned to do some woodworking and machining and possessing some tools for those purposes. Such skills will probably be at a premium in James Kunstler's World Made By Hand. By no means do I think that such changes will have a measurable effect on the trajectory of civilization, but they should enable me to be better equipped for what's to come - for better or worse.

It's fun to contemplate arming myself to the teeth, providing a bunker for myself and my family, and figuring out how to provide for the bottommost two levels in the ubiquitous Maslow's hierarchy of needs in a post-apocalyptic world. But I'm not sure that that's a constructive approach for a 56 year old businessman, even one who was a Boy Scout and can self-sufficiently camp in the desert and is very familiar with firearms.

So, what (watt?) can be done? Well, in the most recent billing period, my household used electricity at the continuous average rate of 1.92 kilowatts. What about cutting that by, say, 40%? I've blogged previously about replacing my Land Rover with, say, a Chevy Volt. Of course, I'd be using electricity to charge it, so adjustment in the 40% reduction in electricity use would be in order. My tools are located about 70 miles from where I currently sit, I will be bringing them here. I have a roof that's ideally suited for a solar installation, and sufficient room for both solar photovoltaic electricity and solar water heating. I'll seriously look at these types of investments of time, financial resources, and energy in the ensuing few months. Implementation of some more of the Archdruid's recommendations may well follow.

Another foolish "fuel saving" gadget

2011-05-30T15:37:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned previously, I frequently listen to SirisuXM RadioClassics. This particular channel has advertising on the half-hour. I was listening the other day and heard an ad for the "Platinum 22," which promised dramatic increases in gasoline mileage. The product comes from National Fuelsaver.

Upon checking, I found that this concept has been around for decades and its idea is that huge amounts of gasoline are not burned in the cylinders of an internal combustion engine. The spiel continues that the purpose of a catalytic converter is to utilize a platinum catalyst to burn this fuel after it leaves the engine. The Platinum 22 claims to inject microscopic amounts of platinum through the vacuum system into the cylinders, and thus to catalyze much more complete oxidation of fuel in the cylinders.

The "22" comes from a claim that, in a typical engine, only 68% of the hydrocarbon fuel is oxidized (!) and the Platinum 22 boosts this to 90%, a 22% increase. Never mind that this is actually a 32% increase. There is a huge variety of other specious claims of, for example, non-existant government agencies having run tests to verify that the product works as claimed, etc. A look here at an EPA report debunks this claim (refer to No. 7, "Conclusion").

A complete debunking of the concept is available here, by a Tony (last name unknown), a UK "Chartered Engineer" who has worked in the automotive industry for Land Rover, BMW, Bosch, and others. His site should be your first stop when you hear about a miraculous fuel saving device. Suffice it to say that, rather than 22%, more like 2% of the fuel entering an engine is not oxidized. Evidence of this is presented in the linked page.

Among other things, Tony points out that if the catalytic converter in the exhaust (not using the Platinum 22) were to be burning 22% of the fuel from the tank, almost one third (22/68) as much heat would need to be dissipated from the converter as that from burning fuel in the engine. Note that the engine uses a complex system of water jackets, a water pump, and a large heat exchanger (the radiator) to dissipate the heat from fuel burned in the engine. That 32% as much heat could conceivably be dissipated by the catalytic converter, which is without any cooling system, is completely out of the question.

It's disappointing to me that SiriusXM allows such pixie dust to be advertised.

Update: I sent the following to SiriusXM, we'll see what happens.

YouTube - Was Extra Equipment Attached To Flight 175? (The plane that struck the south Twin Tower on 9/11)

2011-05-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Was Extra Equipment Attached To Flight 175? (The plane that struck the south Twin Tower on 9/11)

OK, disclaimer up front. I am emphatically not a conspiracy theorist and I'm not claiming that the events of 9/11 were anything but the act of 19 hijackers. In fact, I'd downloaded the Tracker Video Analysis and Modeling Tool and was looking for video to utilize to familiarize myself with the software. I downloaded a high resolution video of the North Tower collapse to see if I could dispel the notion that the towers had fallen at a free fall velocity as claimed by the conspiracists, unimpeded by the piston effects of air in the buildings, structural and non-structural building elements, etc. In this, I was arguably successful:

This is the plot of the "y" position of an identifiable spot on the antenna atop the North Tower at the start of the collapse and followed for about 2.25 seconds. Fit to a parabola, the "a" parameter should be the 0.5*g in the term s=0.5gt^2, the equation for gravitational acceleration. For free fall, "a" should be 16 (this was done in feet and g=32 ft/s^2). The -12.2 would indicate an acceleration of 24.4 ft/s^2, implying that there is an upward vertical force acting against gravity, consistent with the factors mentioned above.

All well and good (though I'm certain that it's unconvincing to the conspiracy sector), but then I looked at the video linked above. My initial motivation was to chuckle at the silliness of some of the videos, and this I did. In the case of the linked video though, I have to concede that while I'm unwilling to agree that it is proof that the Towers were not hit by hijacked civil airliners, I also cannot explain its key elements to my complete satisfaction.

I'm certainly interested in any deeper analysis and possible explanations for what seem to me to be anomalies. The best I've seen in explaining the points raised is in this video, part of a series entitled "9/11 Debunked" and subtitled "Debunking every single 9/11 conspiracy theory, one at a time." But there's nagging doubt as to whether this is the explanation.

Regardless, the inability to explain every single detail in such a complex chain of events is certainly not sufficient to posit an inside job.

Why greenhouse gas warming doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics « JoNova

2011-05-30T00:32:00.000-07:00

Why greenhouse gas warming doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics « JoNova

Joanne Nova is an Australian skeptical climate blogger whose blog is quite a popular link from the vast universe of such blogs. The link above takes you to a post that I'd never expected to see there. A guest blogger explains that the the Greenhouse Effect, or downward longwave radiation makes the Earth's surface warmer than it would otherwise be and, in so doing, does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

One statement (though far from the most general) of this most fundamental of physical principles is the Clausius formulation: No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature. Many skeptics simply state that a cooler atmosphere warming a warmer Earth is in violation of this law and thus the Greenhouse Effect is falsified and no further discussion is necessary.

Of course, this is incorrect. The wonderful site Science of Doom has a series of articles that explain this thoroughly, but the naysayers will not be dissuaded. I'm somewhat amazed that there's a glimmer of acknowledgement of reality at Joanne's site.

And, in the intervening few days since I started this post, Joanne received so many comments to her post above that she started another thread where she sensibly replies to Joseph Postma's paper and comments. This development actually seems to me, in some small way, to be hopeful.

Gasoline tax thoughts

2011-05-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

The U.S. faces a variety of problems, some of which fall into the topic space of my blog. Among these are:

Use of primary energy at an unsustainable rate
Emission of greenhouse gasses at an unsustainable rate
Massive trade deficits
Reliance on unreliable, at best or hostile, at worst sovereign nations to supply much of our primary energy
Massive and unsustainable deficits at nearly all levels and units of government

And all of these problems are beset by "sub problems."

What could immediately be done that would have a significant effect on all of these problems? I offer a $1/gallon gasoline tax. It's quite a thorny problem to calculate precisely what effect this would have on consumption and on tax receipts, given the difficulties of capturing an accurate number for the price elasticity of demand of gasoline, particularly since such a tax would be (at least for the moment) over 25% of the pre-tax price. But it would surely either reduce consumption of primary energy or increase government income, or both.

It would unquestionably reduce consumption, particularly over an extended period as people adjusted where they live, their vehicle choices, their decisions with respect to public transportation, etc.

Such a tax is, to an extent, Pigovian in that it would work toward building the externalities of gasoline usage into its price. But it's not strictly such a tax, in that I haven't made any attempt to actually calculate what those externalities may be. The obvious one is pollution of all kinds. But, of course, there are others. One would be the military expenditures necessary to ensure that the Straits of Hormuz remain open, etc.

So, were such a tax to be implemented, what would the immediate effects be? In the very short term, the price elasticity of demand for gasoline (a measure of the effect that an increase in price has on consumption) is low, that is, large price changes produce relatively small changes in demand. Here it's estimated that the elasticity figure in the short term is 0.2, i.e., a 1% increase in price will produce a 0.2% decrease in consumption. Using some numbers quickly gleaned from the EIA web site I suspect it's lower - as I mentioned above, firm numbers are difficult to determine.

But if 0.2 is the number and a ballpark figure for gasoline prices is about $3.85/gallon, then a $1/gallon, that is, a 26% increase would produce a 0.2*26% or a 5.2% decrease in consumption. In the long run, the site listed above gives the number 0.7, implying a long-term 18% decrease as people make the adjustments above. This tax would then produce somewhere in the vicinity of $130B in annual revenue.

Now, other than staple foods and necessary medical supplies, it would be hard to think of a more regressive tax so some of the proceeds would need to go to those who are hurt most severely by such a tax, possibly in the form of an adjustment in the earned income tax credit.
But it is clear to me, based on the problems listed above, that we need to convert less primary energy. Thus, a tax that directly impacts that activity and, and least in part, recognizes the externalities of gasoline consumption would be a step in the right direction.

One possible effect of such a tax would be to cause many more people to adopt some of the driving habits I've been refining over the last five years.

A hectowatt or a kilowatt?

2011-05-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not an expert on radiative physics, but I've had a bit of physics here and there. There's a long-running debate on whether or not so-called "downward longwave radiation," that is, infrared radiation emitted by the Earth's surface after absorbing the Sun's shortwave (centered in the visible light band) radiation and subsequently absorbed and re-emitted by greenhouse gases can cause the Earth to be at a higher temperature than it would otherwise be. In fact, there's even debate as to whether it exists, this despite the fact that it's been accurately and repeatedly measured. That's the 324 W/m^2 (watts per meter squared) in the graphic above. And Science of Doom has a thorough explanation extending over several posts.

I thought I'd see how it works for my body (as usual, making a bunch of assumptions and estimates). I have figured that my rest metabolic daily calorie requirement is 1900 kilocalories. 1900 kilocalories in 24 hours is 92.0 watts. This is very straightforward. Since I'm in thermal equilibrium (for practical purposes), this heat mut be dissipated.

On the other hand, I also used a thermometer to measure my skin temperature to be 93.3 degrees F or 307.2K (Kelvins). I looked here to get a figure of 0.97 for the emissivity (the ratio of the energy radiated by a material to that emitted by a "black body" at the same temperature) of human skin. Finally, I went here to get an estimate of 2.00 m^2 for my body's surface area. This gives me sufficient information to determine the power I'm radiating using the Stefan Boltzmann Law (erroneously ignoring evaporation, conduction and convection):

Here, P is power in watts, sigma is Boltzmann's constant, 5.67*10^(-8) watts/K^4, A is surface area in m^2, and e is emissivity. Plugging in the numbers, I get P=980 watts. This is certainly a considerably higher number than 92 watts, the rate at which my resting body is converting food energy to thermal energy, what gives?

Let's look at this the other way: supposing that all heat dissipation in my body is by radiation, what temperature would my skin need to be at for me to radiate at 92 watts? Rearranging the Stefan-Boltzmann law:

This gives me T=170K or -154 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow, quite chilly. Have I discovered a flaw in the Stefan Boltzmann Law? Should the Nobel committee be called? Probably not. What is happening is that both my internal thermal energy and the radiative energy I'm absorbing from my surroundings are contributing to my outgoing radiation.

But the walls, the monitor, etc. are BELOW the temperature of my skin, at about 70 degrees F. Do these incoming (980-92) 888 watts warm me? Let's think about how we might get a grip on this question. First, a thought experiment: suppose that, somehow, the environment suddenly stopped supplying radiative energy to me (never mind how this could happen). What then?

I could continue to radiate at 980 watts, but that energy would need to come from somewhere. Assuming I didn't want to burn my flesh, food would supply it. My caloric intake would need to increase by a factor of greater than 10 (980/92) to keep the fires stoked. Failing this, I'd begin to chill to the 170K above (never mind that I'd soon perish), while my internal regulating processes attempted to maintain a normal temperature by burning whatever was available. I think it's safe to say that the radiation from my surroundings, which are at a measurably lower temperature than my skin, keep me warmer than I'd otherwise be. Now, substitute the Sun for my metabolism, the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for my surroundings, and the Earth's surface for my skin and the analogy is complete.

A specialty within a specialty

2011-05-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

Just when you think you've seen it all.

A wealth of data and analytics

2011-05-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

While I certainly don't minimize the human, economic, and ecological consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I must tip my hat to British Petroleum for the depth and availability of the data they gather with respect to energy use.

Likely I should have found it before, but I've just stumbled upon US Energy in Context: Data & Analysis of US Energy Supply, Production & Consumption, a freely available 360 page pdf compendium whose richness of information I've only barely begun to evaluate.

The document was published in October, 2008 so the data is a couple of years old and, of course, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is not included.

But if you're interested in any aspect of energy production, delivery, or consumption (keeping in mind that energy is never produced or consumed, but y'all know what I and they mean) this is a "must download." It even includes a lengthy chapter on the technology of oil and gas extraction, concentrating at length on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Ironically enough, it includes much data on oil spills.

Another must for the energy analyst is bp's Statistical Review of World Energy 2010. Here, you'll find links to a comprehensive library of pdfs, Excel spreadsheets, and a java "Energy charting tool" that I've only just started to play with.

If energy is your passion, these are invaluable sources. I hope that the loss of stock value and public credibility doesn't have the same effect on BP as the U.S. budget cuts had on the Energy Information Agency.

Die Hard 2

2011-04-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

This is, by no means, a movie review blog but I just can't resist here. I've wasted a few minutes watching part of "Die Hard 2." The extent to which the way the airplanes, the air traffic control system, the communication systems, etc. work is confused and distorted is unparalleled. It's said that a film maker can ask the audience to suspend disbelief for one major item. After that, the minor items have to be right. This movie doesn't merely break this rule, it obliterates it. Nearly every aspect of the way the systems mentioned above work is rendered incorrectly.

A great example is when Sam Coleman, a reporter who's standing at the airport, ostensibly with a gaggle of airplanes who are in a low fuel emergency circling the vortac in a holding pattern because terrorists have disabled the instrument landing system and taken over the communications system, says "I can see airplanes circling above me." Really? Do you suppose that, perhaps, the pilots can see the airport?

When Colonel Stuart wants to punish the Airport Manager, he adjusts the instrument landing system by turning a dial and using a light pen and "lowers sea level to minus 200 feet" so an airliner, whose tanks are "as dry as a martini" and which is "running on fumes" will fly into the concrete. Never mind that the ILS system does not work this way (altitude information is gotten from the - ready now - altimeter) and the descent rate of an airliner at 200 feet, what does this airplane, whose fuel tanks are supposedly as dry as a popcorn fart, do when it crashes into the runway? It erupts into a massive oily orange and black fireball, that's what it does.

I won't bother to wonder why the aircraft don't talk to approach control or ARTCC and, oh, go to an alternate airport. And, while we're at it, the Mythbusters in Episode 88 demolished the idea of lighting a trail of leaking kerosene (jet fuel) and having it catch up to an airliner to blow it up as happens in the climactic scene in Die Hard 2. Then there are the little things. ~~The news helicopter pilot won't set down in front of the terrorists' 747 because he won't "play chicken with a 20 ton plane." Hello? An EMPTY 747 weighs well over 200 tons.~~ OK,OK, it was pointed out to me that he says "200 ton plane." Repeated listening using the digital video recorder has confirmed this. My apologies.

But: below is a screenshot from Die Hard 2 where General Esperanza and Colonel Stuart are in their "getaway plane," a Boeing 747 of late 1980's (pre glass cockpit) era. Above it is a photo of an actual 747 cockpit of that vintage. Are you kidding me?

The one-time suspension of disbelief is used on McLane's circumstances. There are probably dozens of small errors, seemingly no five minute period could elapse without one. Just like newspapers, every time, without exception, some subject is covered in which I have either specialist or personal knowledge, there are factual errors.

Thinking of another new vehicle

2011-04-10T20:04:00.000-07:00

The Land Rover LR3 HSE that has been my vehicle since November of 2006 now has about 95,000 miles on the odometer. I've stabilized at around 21 m.p.g. in the truck, which isn't so bad for a vehicle rated at 13 city and 17 highway. But it's getting a bit tired and fuel prices are on their way back up with, in my opinion, not excellent chances of dramatic decreases.

So, with the encouragement of our CFO (surprisingly), I'm thinking of a new vehicle. Unlike the last replacement which resulted in the LR3, fuel economy will be a primary consideration. I've fairly well narrowed the list down to two vehicles: the Ford Fusion Hybrid and the Chevy Volt. Each will achieve dramatically better fuel economy than the LR3 but they are quite different vehicles.

The sticker price of the Volt is around $40,280 with an available $7,500 tax credit for a net price of $32,780. With a couple of options (not many are available) the figures come to $42,395 and $34,895 respectively. The Fusion Hybrid, specced out as I would purchase it, comes to $33,260. Shockingly, this is about $8,585 above the non-hybrid Fusion.

With respect to fuel costs, my estimate is that the Fusion would use about 42 gallons per month compared to approximately 91 for the LR3. This is assuming that I'd get 46 m.p.g., based on information gleaned from a blog devoted to hypermiling the Ford Fusion Hybrid (seriously!). Thus, I'd spend about $170/month on regular vs. $392/month on the premium fuel demanded by the LR3 (all estimates in this post are based on regular gasoline at $4.09/gallon and premium at $4.39/gallon).

It's more than possible that I would not use any gasoline on some months with the Volt - if I leave home with a full charge and recharge at the office (actually close by at our laboratory since that has accessible outlets) I might only burn gasoline when going to meetings from the office. But speculation has to enter here and, using an estimate of trips that would require gasoline and this article about the mileage in "extended range" mode (i.e., using the internal combustion engine to charge the battery) I estimate that I'd use about 12 gallons per month, costing about $47.50.

But I'd also be using electricity. Using information from the same page, I'll estimate that I'd get 32 miles out of the 10.4 kilowatt hours usable in the battery pack. And subtracting the gasoline miles above from the annual total, I estimate that 17,700 miles per year would be on electricity purchased from the electric utility. Finally, I'm speculating that the average cost/kilowatt hour will be $0.12 for an annual and monthly electricity cost of about $690 and $58 respectively, or a total cost to provide motive power of a bit over $105.50/month. Note that this is $286.50 less than the LR3 and $64.50 less than the Fusion Hybrid.

I'm not completely sure why the U.S. government is in the business of subsidizing my Volt purchase but, without it there'd be no way I'd consider a four seat commuter car for over $42,000. With it, this looks like a viable purchase. For most, it likely would not be. The things that make it compelling are that it would replace a gas hog, and that I drive 23,000 miles/year.

There are a couple of non-financial considerations that push me toward the Fusion Hybrid. The first is that the Sync system looks pretty cool. The second is that Ford did not need to declare bankruptcy and undergo a takeover by the U.S. government. They survived the economic storm on their own and are doing well. Philosophically, I'd like to reward that. The economics may rule that out. The decision is not final, however. In a subsequent post, I'll determine the net present value of each vehicle given what we'd spend, what we'd get for the LR3, the fuel savings, and a discount rate base on our company's actual cost of funds.

YouTube - MrKenringweatherman's Channel

2011-03-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

YouTube - MrKenringweatherman's Channel

This esteemed gentleman, who apparently has quite a following in New Zealand, claims (among many other hilarious contentions) that the fact that your hand doesn't get warm when you hold a can of Coca Cola implies that carbon dioxide can't be connected to global warming.

It's slightly comforting to know that the U.S. isn't the only nation infected with pseudoscientific crackpottery.

We're saved!

2011-03-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

I was in Washington DC for the arpa-e Energy Innovation Summit February 28 through March 2. Never having been in our Nation's Capital before, I went a day early so that I could at least get a tourist blow by of some of the landmarks. I can say that much was deeply moving and it was a bit surreal to see these iconic buildings and memorials.

I was on my way to the Pentagon Memorial (for those who died in the 9-11 terrorist attack in both the Pentagon and on American Airlines Flight 77) and about to enter a tunnel through which we walked to get to the Memorial when I saw what I instantly knew will surely be the savior of us all, at least from an energy standpoint.

"There's the answer to all of our problems" I said to myself, "a solar powered compactor for a city trash receptacle." And here I was thinking that the government funded arpa-e program was necessary! But am I being unfair with my cynicism? I noted that the manufacturer was BigBelly Solar and visited their web site where I found that, indeed, theirs is a significant product. It may not save the world, but it represents the sort of thinking that will help.

According to the information on their web site (and taking them at their word), they hold five times the amount of trash as a conventional trash receptacle of equal size by utilizing solar energy to compact the waste on in the container. This saves 80% of the trips required to empty the container, thus reducing fuel use and carbon (and other pollutant) emissions.

Further, the compactors utilize a wireless monitoring system to notify owners of the need to empty them, thus eliminating wasted trips for partially full containers. Among others, the Cities of Albany, Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as Brown University have implemented the BigBelly Solar Collector system.

Far from my initial opinion that they're "greenwashing" in action, these modernized versions of the humble trash receptacle are innovative and energy saving. I'm going to see if the City of Anaheim, where I live, and the City of Long Beach, where I work, have plans to implement the BigBelly Solar Collector solution.

RealClearMarkets - Articles - The Rich and Their Taxes

2011-02-28T19:33:00.000-08:00

RealClearMarkets - Articles - The Rich and Their Taxes

Evil California homeowners and their failure to repeal Proposition 13

2011-02-28T18:50:00.000-08:00

Those evil, selfish California homeowners passed the infamous Proposition 13 (I won't link it until later because this is a riddle), thus depriving the State of the financial wherewithal to adequately fund its operations and the pension funds of the various public employee unions. That's the wailing and moaning we hear from Sacramento and, in fact, from around the Country.

Is it true? I've culled some data and made some charts to investigate (all charts can be enlarged by clicking on them). First, let's see the California budget from 1970 to present:

Can anyone guess from this when Proposition 13 was passed? Ah, but California's population has increased as we see here:

So naturally, the budget would increase. So let's look at the budget per capita:

I still challenge anyone to guess when Proposition 13 was passed. Wait, I hear you! What about inflation? Yes, this has a major effect, let's see California's budget in constant 1970 dollars:

Was Proposition 13 passed in, say, 1993? 2008? Well, for a final chart, let's see the budget per capita in 1970 dollars:

OK, time to end the riddle. Proposition 13 was passed by the voters of California in June of 1978. That year, California's per capita budget was about $371 1970 dollars. It peaked in 2008 at a bit over $690 and, even in the teeth of the recession and California's budget crisis, the most recent year stood at $538 or 45% higher than before Proposition 13 took effect.

In an earlier post I showed the outflow of funds from California to the Federal government, and certainly the cost of undocumented immigrants (or illegal aliens, depending on your political orientation) in the educational and criminal system has had a major effect. But that population is included (as much as possible) in the census data from which the per capita figures are derived.

For these reasons, I have a very hard time developing sympathy for the crocodile tears shed by the political class over the devastation wrought by Proposition 13. Full disclosure: I am a homeowner.

Burning fuel to learn to save energy

2011-02-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

Ironically enough, I flew from Los Angeles International Airport to Dulles International outside of Washington, DC to attend the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit. The speakers include former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Department of Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu. The purpose of the Summit is to bring together developers of disruptive energy technologies, venture capitalists, regulators, and ARPA-E officials to discuss opportunities, successes, and failures. Frankly, I'm quite excited to be here.

But...anyone could be forgiven for thinking that this is a bit reminiscent of climate change conferences taking place in Bali. I wonder how many joules of stored fossil fuel energy were converted to dissipated thermal energy in the process of putting on such a conference? An estimate of that number will have to await my attendance so that I can determine the number of attendees, where they're from, what was hauled in to display, etc.

But I certainly converted a lot of fuel on the way here, and will convert more when I return to California on Thursday. I flew on an American Airlines Boeing 737-800. The flight was direct and, according to Wolfram Alpha, the distance was about (because the flight couldn't be quite direct) 2,288 miles. According to Wikipedia, in a two class layout (I flew coach, of course), this aircraft carries 162 passengers and was completely full.

On the way out of the aircraft, I asked the First Officer how much fuel had been burned on the flight, and he kindly checked his documentation and stated that the burn had been "just a bit under 20,000 pounds." I'm going to go with 20,000 since I have no firm definition of "just a bit." Using figures from Wikipedia again, the density of Jet-A fuel is 804 kilograms/meter^3 or 6.710 pounds per gallon so the flight burned 2,981 gallons of fuel. So the aircraft achieved 2,288/2,981 or 0.7675 m.p.g. But it did so while carrying 162 passengers, and so it achieved 124 passenger m.p.g. This is a slightly better figure than would be achieved in a car carrying 4 passengers at 30 m.p.g. And it did so at something like 550 m.p.h. I realize that carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere at 37,000 feet is more harmful than that emitted on the ground but this is still pretty impressive efficiency and is a testament to engine and aircraft designers.

I expect to come away from this conference with a much firmer grasp on the extent to which it is reasonable to expect such a means of transportation to be available in the future.

Field rules of evidence interpretation

2011-02-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

Hanna's rule: If it did, then it can. Discovered teaching geology field classes.

Ryan's law: If they are, then they do. Discovered during inspection of contractors' activities.

The Hanna/Ryan tautology: If something's wrong, then something's wrong. Discovered during aviation activities.

How to get to Berkeley (other than study)

2011-02-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

I tried, I really did. I'm going to have a transportation-intensive eight days beginning February 26. I'm flying to Washington, D.C. and returning, followed by a trip to Berkely, CA. Ironically enough, the Washington trip is for the arpa-e Energy Innovation Summit and the Berkely trip is for the American Physical Society Second Conference on the Physics of Sustainable Energy: Efficiency and Renewables.

While travelling to D.C. by any means other than airlines is out of the question, I thought that perhaps the Berkely trip might be a good opportunity to utilize something less energy intensive. My first thought was Amtrak. I was willing to leave from Anaheim and get somewhere near Berekely and fend for myself after that.

The one-way rate is extremely competitive at $53.00 but I need to depart Anaheim at 6:01pm, change to A BUS (!) in Santa Barbara at 9:45pm and arrive in Oakland at 5:55am Saturday morning. I would not envy the experience of those sitting next to me at the conference, to which I'd go directly by taxi from the bus station. Out of the question.

How about an intercity bus? Various sites claim that this is the most fuel-efficient form of transportation available (though, of course, factors such as frequency of stops, proportion of urban travel, load factor, etc. will cause individual trips to vary). So I checked Greyhound. For $51.92 I can leave Long Beach at 8:35pm and arrive in Oakland at 5:05am. This is a bit better but still leaves no time for a shower.

I did a perfunctory analysis of an arbitrarily designed merit index of different modes of transportation in a previous post and determined that, for a trip of intermdiate length such as this one, the order of preference of transportation modes would be: airline, driving my Land Rover; flying a business jet (if I had one); bus; and my Saratoga. I didn't include trains in that analysis but it hardly matters here since Amtrak will put me on a bus for the vast majority of the trip. This experience certainly bears that anlysis out.

One final option would be to switch vehicles with my partner and drive his Prius. Google Maps shows this to be a 396 mile trip taking somewhere between 6 1/2 and 8 hours (depending on traffic). I'd likely spend $56 on about 16 gallons of gas. In the Land Rover it would take about $143 to buy 38 gallons of more expensive (premium) gas. Since I'm alone though, and the airlines typically get somewhere in the range of 50 miles per gallon per occupied seat, it's a toss up for fuel with the Prius and quite a bit quicker.

Strictly in dollar terms, the Prius wins by a factor of about 9 (since I'd be purchasing tickets late). But it's symptomatic of where we stand in transportation that the two modes of transportation of which the green community is most enamored are completely out of the question and the villians of the eco-movement (airlines and owner occupied vehicles) are my realistic choices.

Too personal?

2011-02-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

I tend to listen to the radio while I shower and get ready for the day. During the week I listen to KNX, the local outlet of CBS Radio. The format is "all news all the time," but on weekend mornings it's food news. This interests me not in the slightest. So I'll often turn to KPFK, the local Pacifica outlet. Here, I'll often find intelligent (though frequently infuriating) discussion.

Last Sunday, there was a woman being interviewed regarding meditation and mindfulness. I've not practiced meditation but she claimed that, among other things, regular practice of meditation would have a beneficial effect on ability to concentrate, to imagine, and to reduce stress. These things all sounded good but, being in the shower, I couldn't log onto a website or take notes. Thus, I remember neither the interviewee's name nor the name of her book.

Here it is the next Saturday and I wondered if her book might be available in a Kindle edition (I'm too impatient to wait for a print version - perhaps meditation could help). So I went to the Amazon site and searched for "meditation mindfulness". The first couple of pages returned didn't trigger the "ah ha" reaction so I thought I'd search for an appropriate book even it it wasn't the one the KPFK person wrote.

I found a book on the second page that had a title that sounded appropriate, "Meditation for Beginners: Techniques for Awareness, Mindfulness and Relaxation (For Beginners (Llewellyn's)). Gosh, sounds perfect, I'm a beginner!

I thought I'd check the reviews, the synopsis, and the author information and found the following:

A professional astrologer for over twenty-five years, Stephanie Jean Clement, Ph.D., is a board member of the American Federation of Astrologers and a faculty member of Kepler College and NORWAC. Her Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology has prepared her to work with clients in defining their creative potential and refining their creative process. Her published books include Charting Your Career; Dreams: Working Interactive, What Astrology Can Do for You; The Power of the Midheaven; Charting Your Spiritual Path with Astrology; Meditation for Beginners; and Mapping Your Birthchart.

Seriously? What do I make of this? There's pretty much nothing such a one could say about any subject that I could take seriously. Does this represent the reality of the supposed benefits of meditation?

Update: Based on Michael Tobis' comment and a brief review of the conclusions for the papers at the page he linked, I decided to not dismiss meditation and mindfulness out of hand. I went to the archives of KPFK (they handily archive many of their broadcasts) to find the book and author - it's Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program. It doesn't seem Kindle-friendly in that there are CD's included in the dead tree version and, according to a reviewer, some formatting issues in the Kindle version as well. I guess I'll see if I can locate the book at a Barnes and Noble or Borders. If not, I'll order from Amazon and wait out the couple of days.

The "Gadgetman Groove"

2011-02-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

There's a very nice gentleman named Ron Hatton who sells a vehicle modification called the Gadgetman Groove. The modification consists of utilizing a Dremel tool to cut a groove in the throttle body of a fuel injected car (though the site indicates that it's possible to modify multi and tuned port injectors and carbureted sysems as well) just past the throttle plate. Hatton states that by doing so, it causes "amplification of the pressure wave" thus providing "more fuel blended with the air at the point of ignition" and "more complete combustion."

There is a collection of youtube video testimonials from satisfied customers who've had the modification done to their vehicle, with some very dramatic claims for fuel economy increases. Here is the most extreme claim I saw, where Kyle claims an increase from 12 m.p.g. to 27 m.p.g. while going 5 to 10 m.p.h. faster.

There was an internet dustup (in which I participated) regarding the Groove at an Ecomodder blog post about the Groove back in July of 2010. It was very clear to me that Ron is no crook and really believes in this "technology." However, his web site at the time (since changed) discussed having a car tested on a dynamometer at Automotive Testing Laboratories in Mesa, AZ. The results were posted at Ron's site (they're not there now) and showed a decrease in fuel economy and an increase in emissions in both the FTP (Federal Test Procedure) and the HFET (Highway Fuel Economy Test) protocols. Ron attributed this to an inappropriate choice of vehicle and its poor mechanical condition. To the best of my knowledge, Ron was responsible for the choice of vehicle and the test protocol.

In any event, I'd more or less forgotten about the Groove, but received an email that someone had posted a comment to the thread. This turned out to be "Dave," an ex-policeman who has had the Groove installed, is quite satisfied, and posted to defend Ron against a "hatchet job." I replied that I believe that both he and Ron believe, but that none of this constitutes evidence.

But let's take a look. Kyle's 1993 GMC truck was claimed to exhibit a 125% increase in miles per gallon. So, call the initial m.p.g. "x." Then, after the modification, the m.p.g., with a 125% increase, he would be getting 2.25x miles per gallon. Inverting this fraction, that means he's using 1/2.25 or 4/9 as many gallons per mile. The conclusion is that the other 5/9 of the gallons were not burned or were burned in such a way as to not move the car. To emphasize, this is NOT the 75% of the heat from burned fuel that's wasted due to thermodynamic limitations, friction, etc., this is fuel that is supposedly NOT BURNED! How about a tangible example? Suppose that Kyle has an 18 gallon tank. Every time he filled up pre-Groove, 10 of those gallons were not burned. This is Kyle and Ron's claim!

This is about as good an example as could be hoped for of the futility of reliance on anecdotal testimonial evidence. I am reasonably sure that not only Kyle and Dave and the other youtube stars on the Groove web site, but that Ron Hatton as well are truly convinced of the efficacy of this simple modification.

And yet I am not claiming that the Groove produces no benefits, only that there's no valid evidence that it does produce them. If Ron stated that the result of multiple runs of blind testing of otherwise identical vehicles under controlled conditions showed an improvement of 5% in m.p.g. with a standard deviation of 1.5% and a confidence level greater than 95% I'd believe it and consider the modifcation for my vehicle. But I wouldn't consider spending $500 based on a series of enthusiastic youtube testimonials.

Drafting experiment

2011-01-15T23:22:00.000-08:00

I've posted a couple of times about drafting to increase fuel economy. And the Mythbusters have covered this as well. There seems to be no question that it's effective, witness the Tour de France and Nascar. So, what is the nature of the improvement?

I can only get better fuel economy if I have to overcome less force to go forward. Drafting certainly doesn't change rolling resistance or drivetrain losses, hence it can only affect aerodynamic drag. As I've discussed on previous occasions, aerodynamic drag, D, can be modeled by

where rho is density, v is speed, Cd is drag coefficient, and A is frontal area. At a fixed speed (where Cd will also be constant) the only thing that can change is rho, the density. Thus, my working hypothesis is that drafting is effective due to a zone of lowered pressure behind the front vehicle.

I've purchased the Vernier LabQuest and a variety of sensors, one of which is the Gas Pressure Sensor which measures absolute (not gauge) pressure. I determined to see if I could measure this effect. I attempted to do so by cracking my window and extending the inlet tube of the sensor through the crack. My idea was to approach to and withdraw from the rear of the truck, recording my estimate of distance from the truck and the time as shown on the LabQuest display on my iPhone. I'd be looking for a reduction in measured pressure as I approached the truck.

So how did it go? Not so well. After multiple attempts, if anything, I recorded a trend to lower pressures as I moved away from trucks, higher as I moved in. And yet that can't be right. Or can it? This was a poorly designed experiment in that all factors that might affect the measured pressure were not controlled. My speculation is the confounding factor is the fact that I am on a freeway with hills and a general upward trend (I was eastbound, that is, away from the ocean toward the inland area). As I climb, the pressure will decline by about 0.012 kilopascals/meter and the range measured in the entire experiment was about 0.3 kilopascals, which would represent a climb of something like 25 meters. Now, the experiment was over a period of about 250 seconds and a driven distance of about 6 kilometers so such a variation in elevation is certainly not out of the question.

How can I get a better result? Since I don't have maps that indicate elevation and location with sufficient accuracy to adjust the pressure data to remove elevation changes, I can only think of two options. First would be to repeat the experiment in a controlled location. This is very difficult in that I don't have access to a truck and a suitable location. What else? My plan is to run the experiment and note the location, then to run it at the same location with no drafting. This should give me the ability to subtract out changes caused by elevation changes. A negative result would cause major head scratching, stay tuned.

Economics - doomers and the BIG view

2011-01-09T20:12:00.000-08:00

As I've previously expressed, I have a difficult time with economics (though I got A's in all my economics and finance courses in college). I think this is, at least in part, because it's abstracted from reality in that it's based on "money." Money necessitates a social structure such that something that has little or no actual value (greenbacks can't be eaten though I suppose they can be burned; electronic entries in a computer file don't even have this value).

There is a huge body of blogging (this last one uses the same template on blogger as I do) devoted to a doomer viewpoint predicting various degrees of collapse ot the economy and society. The consensus on such sites is that debt levels are completely unsustainable and will overwhelm all attempts to return to business as usual. Whether such a return is desireable is a different question but I think we can all agree that a return to a hunter gatherer society would not be. And if our doom is imminent, there are steps I need to take while I can.

So what is debt and when does it become unsustainable? In thinking about this, I find it helpful to ignore money. There is a certain amount of "stuff" that has been created by mankind and another, smaller, amount of stuff that has been returned to the universe in one form or another (solid, liquid, and gaseous refuse and heat). The difference is the amount of stuff we have collectively at this point in time. We use this stuff to sustain ourselves, to derive pleasure and comfort, and to create opportunities to get more and better stuff and to repay debt. Time engaged in productive (however one chooses to define it) activites is part of the stuff that we have. And there are other things that can't be touched that constitute stuff in this analysis. Movies, software, plays, and music come immediately to mind.

So, with this in mind, I think it's fair to characterize debt as a commitment to give some (greater) amount of stuff in the future in return for access to some (lesser) amount of stuff in the present. Upon assuming this debt, we decide to use some of it to derive sustenance, comfort, and pleasure and some to create opportunities to get more and better stuff. Whatever stuff is left over can be used to repay debt. Or, if you're the creditor, stuff should be used to repay debt followed by using it to create opportunities to get more stuff to enable the continuation of debt repayment and anything left over can be used to derive sustenance, comfort, and pleasure.

The last concept I need for my ultra-simplistic analysis is the concept of time value of money and discount rate. This captures the idea that it's better to have an amount of stuff now than the same amount of stuff in the future. The discount rate is that amount by which the value to get an amount of stuff one year from today is lowered from the value of getting the stuff today.

Thus, I'll theorize that debt and standard of living is sustainable if the World Gross Stuff Product ("WGSP") is sufficient to meet the continuing requirements of sustenance, comfort, pleasure, opportunity for stuff creation and have enough stuff left over to pay back the interest and principal of the borrowed stuff from newly created stuff. Is there enough stuff and are "we" continuing to produce enough stuff?

I'll need the following:

The total amount of stuff created (or mined, grown, etc.): S_c
The total amount of stuff discarded as waste stuff or waste heat: S_w
The rate of stuff use for sustenance: S_s
The rate of stuff use for new stuff creation: S_n
The effectiveness of creation of new stuff as a function of stuff used in its creation: dS_p/dS_n where S_p is stuff produced (or extracted or grown). Hopefully this will increase with time.
The rate of stuff production as a function of time: dS_c/dt (where t is time)
The rate of stuff "wasting": dS_w/dt
The discount rate for stuff: i (for interest)
The total amount of stuff owed in the future and the terms thereof: S_to

This will be my model, and with it I can speculate that we're sustainable as long as, for all t, there's sufficient stuff created to provide for sustenance, new stuff creation, and paying interest and principal on stuff. All I have to do is get data or approximations or estimates for those nine parameters. A large problem here is that they're mostly measured in money. But I have to proceed with this, there's really nothing better.

I'm well aware of the dwindling availability of easily and cheaply acquired concentrated solar energy in the form of crude oil, natural gas, and coal. But many of the doomer variety (and I do not use this noun disparagingly, I have doomer tendencies myself) predict doom even without such effects and so that's where I intend to start.

This analysis makes no account for the fact that the universe (not to mention the small portion of it to which we have access) cannot provide an infinite amount of stuff nor can it contain an infinite amount of waste. Nor does it account for the desires of a large portion of humanity to catch up with the rate of stuff creation and utilization enjoyed by the so-called "developed nations." It further takes no account of misallocation of stuff (the market is supposed to take care of that). And it ignores the possibility of increasing amounts of stuff having to be invested to procure the energy to create more stuff. Whatever conclusions may be reached, these considerations will certainly make them overly optimistic. However, I believe that manipulation of the parameters will provide guidance on where changes may be effective.

This project will, of necessity, be a fairly lengthy process upon which I'm just getting started. I'll post the results or, if it really takes a long time, status of progress. In the mean time, comments on the model are welcomed. If you're wondering why I've decided to post these thoughts now, it's because I haven't posted anything in almost a month.

Is California getting a raw deal?

2010-12-12T20:34:00.001-08:00

OK, it's clear that California is a financial basket case. It's also true that, with a disfunctional legislature pandering to a bunch of vested interests, much of the pain is self-inflicted. That said, everyone should take a look at this graphic:

This is the amount of dollars received from the Federal Government for each tax dollar sent Washington D.C.'s way from 1981 through 2005. The source of the data is The Tax Foundation. Does anyone notice a trend here?

I totalled the defict for those years (and from all I've seen it's as bad or worse since 2005) and the cumulative deficit (including the early years when it was a surplus) is $489B (that's right, half a trillion dollars). Now, the incoming governor (meet the new boss, same as the old boss - will we get fooled again?) Jerry Brown met with the legislature to discuss how to handle the estimated $26B deficit CA is currently running.

The Tax Foundation figures are disputed, particularly with respect to their treatment of deficit spending. That said, recovery of 10% of the Tax Foundation's calculated deficit would go a long way toward curing California's budget ills. Unfortunately, even if the Feds said "OK, you're right, here's $48.9B" the ills that got us here would remain.

Wikileaks and the reaction

2010-12-07T21:35:00.000-08:00

It's difficult to know exactly what to say about the Wikileaks saga and it's well outside my typical topic space. But its importance is hard to overstate and I feel like I must commit my thoughts to my virtual soapbox.

I am not in agreement with Julian Assange's expressed goals and I don't think that I have a right to know every syllable of every email, cable, and phone conversation of anyone who receives a check from a Government agency of any type. Diplomats must have the ability to speak in confidence and those in the military must be able to operate in secrecy. There truly are bad people out there who want to kill them and to kill us and our allies. That said, I do think that the reaction of the U.S. Department of Justice, of various members of the legislature, and a number of commercial enterprises is contemptible. And, of course, the those venal and cynical morons who are continually seeking to cause me to disavow conservatism wasted no time in accusing the Obama administration of not acting harshly enough.

We criticize the Chinese when they censor the internet or crack down bluntly on free speech of any kind, and yet our government is attempting to block (by, among other things, coercion of the sites hosting Wikileaks) any access to the site of an organization that has not been indicted, let alone convicted of any violation of law. The indivdual who founded the AA group in which I got sober says "if you'd be embarrassed if someone found out about what you're doing, you should stop doing it."

Through Michael Tobis' Only In It For The Gold Post I followed a link that, I believe, captures my position fairly accurately. The post is well worth reading in its entirety and is not very long but a key quote is:

The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us “You went after Wikileaks’ domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply because you decided you don’t like the site. If that’s the way governments get to behave, we can live with that.

There are many things that have been done in my name that lead me to believe that Bin Laden, et al, have achieved a huge victory. The USA Patriot Act allows prosecution without the right to confront witnesses, criminalizes telling anyone that one is under investigation under its provisions, criminalizes contributing money even for peaceful purposes to arbitrarily (e.g. Wikileaks) designated "terrorist organizations," and facilitates surveillance of U.S. citizens (not to mention anyone outside the U.S.) that is, for all practical purposes, unlimited.

Have I added anything to the debate here? No, but I do feel better having gotten it published.

When ignorance becomes a movement: The rise of Snookiism - By David Rothkopf | David Rothkopf

2010-11-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

When ignorance becomes a movement: The rise of Snookiism - By David Rothkopf | David Rothkopf

The "embarrassed to be conservative" meme of my blog is, I'm afraid, becoming more and more prevalent. Why is it necessary to celebrate ignorance in order to be "conservative?"

C: Did a scientist say it?
S: Yes
C: Did he/she go to a college or university?
S: Yes, of course
C: Then I don't believe a word her or she says. All colleges and universities are nothing more than institutions for brainwashing attendees into believing in one-world government and the socialist agenda.
S: But we're talking about (climate, public health, evolution), not politics.
C: You weren't paying attention, were you? It's all part of the conspiracy for one-world government and the socialist agenda.

I really don't want this blog to become a platform for political commentary, and my belief in preserving the environment, fiscal conservatism, personal responsibility, minimal government intrusion, and the brilliance and timelessness of our Constitution is unshaken. But the TMZ/MTV/"I don't really like reading books"/Jersey Shores/Rush Limbaugh/Marc Morano/Glenn Beck absorption of the American dialogue is filling me with grief for the disappearance of thinking, moral conservatism.

Hello? Is there anybody out there?

Update: I tried my first xtranormal movie to illustrate my point.

What can the wind do?

2010-11-19T17:59:00.000-08:00

After my post regarding the wind turbines atop Houston's Hess tower, I thought a very brief and very elementary primer on wind power might be in order. Moving air posesses kinetic energy in accordance with E=1/2*m*v^2. This energy can be harnessed to generate electricity. So how much energy is this?

Let's look at the turbines from the Hess Tower that I discussed in the post. Here, each turbine intercepts an area of 8.25 m^2. Let's let s be the wind speed (since the turbines have a vertical axis the wind direction doesn't matter, so we don't need the vector quantity) in m/s (meters per second). Then, in one second, each turbine will intercept a volume V of 8.25*s m^3 (meters cubed). Assuming air has a density, d, of 1.16 kg/m^3, the mass,m, of air intercepted in a second is V*d=8.25*s*1.16 kg. This mass, moving at a speed of s m/s has a kinetic energy, E, of 0.5*m^s^2 or 0.5*8.25*s*1.16*s^2.

One thing to note before moving on is that s is present twice - once to the first power and once squared - meaning that the available energy PER SECOND (remember, we are talking about the amount of energy available in one second's worth of wind) is proportional to the cube of the wind velocity. Now, the total available energy per second in the wind is otherwise known as power. In other words, this number is the power that would be produced at a given wind speed, s, if 100% of it could be converted to electrical energy. Of course it can't, and we'll get to that later.

So, where are we? For a speed, s, the kinetic energy, E, per second, or power, P, in watts passing through one of the Hess turbines is 0.5*8.25*1.16*s^3 or, P=4.785*s^3 watts. Like a good physicist, let's check the units: 0.5 is dimensionless; 8.25 is m^2; 1.16 is kg*m^(-3); s is m*s^(-1) but it's cubed so that factor has units m^3*s^(-3). Thus, we have: for m, m^2*m^(-3)*m^3 or m^2; kg is merely kg^1; for s we have s^(-3). The total is kg*m^2*s^(-3). Now, power is energy per second, or force * distance/second, or (mass*distance/time^2)*distance/second. This is kg^1*m*s^(-2)*m*s^(-1) or kg*m^2*s(-3). The units check. For ANY equation relating physical quantities, the units on each side MUST match, this is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the equation to be valid.

Let's stick a number in and see what we get. A 15 m.p.h. wind is fairly robust, how much power is available for the turbine's conversion to electricity? 15 m.p.h. is 6.71 m/s, the total power (through an area the size of a single Hess turbine) is 4.785*6.71^3 or 1,443 watts. If it all could be converted to electricity, it would light a little more than 14 100 watt light bulbs.

Of course it can't all be converted. One excellent intuitive way of understanding this is that the kinetic energy comes from the speed, to extract it all we would need to bring the wind to a complete stop, requiring a solid wall at the "turbine" location, something that obviously cannot work. Albert Betz was the first to calculate the absolute theoretical maximum energy that could ideally be extracted from wind. This is called, appropriately enough, the Betz Limit, and it's 59.3%.

Now a real turbine will not approach this limit, and horizontal axis wind turbines, at least in steady wind, are more efficient than vertical axis wind turbines like those at Hess Tower. From the data available at the Cleanfield Energy site (the manufacturer of the Hess turbines) I estimate that the claim is that the turbines are about 37% efficient.

I've included a chart showing the total power in wind, as well as the Betz Limit and the power at 37% efficiency for wind from 0 to 30 m.p.h. The actual numbers apply specifically to a single Cleanfield turbine like the ones on the Hess Tower, but the shapes apply to all wind turbines, and keep in mind that the turbines typically don't turn at all until the wind speed reaches somewhere around 8 or 10 m.p.h. (Click to enbiggen).

Here's a graph showing the Betz Limit power in wind for speeds from 2.5 m/s to 20 m/s (about 5.6 m.p.h. to 44.7 m.p.h.) and turbine area of 5 m^2 to 25 m^2. Note the extreme dependence on turbine size and, especially, wind speed.

Could the boys and girls at the Wall Street Journal please buy Keith Johnson a calculator?

2010-11-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

As I read some of the news of the day, concentrating on some of my RSS feeds for wind related stories, I was drawn to this article in the (formerly) esteemed Fox Financial News Wall Street Journal. The thrust of the article is that offshore wind power is expensive to install. I have no reason to think that that's not true, it looks like South Korea expects to pay about $3.32M per megawatt, a lot of money in anyone's book.

But in the linked article we find:

"Take the new proposal for the world’s biggest wind farm by another Texas oil man, peak oil prophet Matt Simmons. His Ocean Energy Institute proposes building a 5,000 megawatt deepwater wind farm in the Gulf of Maine, blessed with some of the world’s strongest sustained winds.

The problem is that, as envisioned, the Maine offshore wind farm would be very expensive—and that vision includes some very optimistic assumptions.

Ocean Energy figures capital costs for the project could go as high as $4.5 billion a megawatt, a lot more than Mr. Pickens projects for his massive Texas wind farm. All in, the costs for the Maine project could come to $25 billion, or $5 billion a megawatt, the Ocean Energy folks told Earth2Tech. That compares to upfront costs of about $600 million per megawatt for old-fashioned coal-fired plants."

Woah. Let's see here. $5B/megawatt for 5,000 megawatts. That's $25T (trillion). But didn't he say that it would cost $25B? Yes, he did. So, which is it? I can assure my panic stricken windpower fans that $25B is correct for an installed cost of $5M/megawatt.

Keith Johnson is the lead writer of the Environmental Capital section of the Wall Street Journal which "provides daily news and analysis of the shifting energy and environmental landscape." It's led by Journal energy reporter Russell Gold.

The first commenter pointed out the three order of magnitude error, saving me the trouble.

I don't have a barometer but I have an iPhone

2010-11-18T17:22:00.000-08:00

There's an old apocryphal tale of a high school physics student taking a test who's asked "how would you use a barometer to measure the height of a building?" The expected answer is "measure the barometric pressure at the bottom and the top, use the pressure lapse rate with altitude to determine the height." This was not the answer given by the student. When his teacher marked the answer as incorrect, the student protested, telling the teacher that there are many ways to use a barometer to find the height of a building. The teacher was curious and asked the student to name a few. The student came up with (in addition to the obvious answer above):

On a sunny day, set the barometer on a sidewalk and measure the height of the barometer and its shadow. Measure the building's shadow, apply the ratio.
Drop the barometer from the roof, time its descent to the street and use s=.5*g*t^2.
From the roof, tie the barometer to a string, lower it until it almost touches the street. Set it swinging and measure the period, and apply t=2*Pi*(L/g)^0.5
Measure the height of the barometer, use the core stair to count barometer heights to the top of the building, multiply.
The easiest? Take the barometer to the building manager and say "I have a fine barometer here, and if you'll tell me the height of your building, I'll give it to you."

Not having a barometer handy, I didn't do any of those, but I used the Pasco SPARKvue program on my iPhone to measure and record the acceleration during an elevator trip from the third floor to the 11th of the Hilton Americas-Houston where I'm staying. The program will email the data in CSV format. I then used Excel to numerically integrate the acceleration and the velocity to find displacement. The distance worked out to be 100' 1 1/2" for the eight floors, a floor height of about 12.5'. This is a little more than I'd have estimated. The hotel has 19 floors and, I assume, a mechanical penthouse, so I'm going with 19*12.5 + 10 (the mechanical penthouse will be shorter) for a total of 247.5'.

The top (and steady) speed reached by the elevator (a Schindler) was 7.9 m.p.h. The peak acceleration was about 0.8 m/s^2, less than 0.1 "g". And if my iPhone were as smart as it (and Steve Jobs) thinks it is, it could distinguish acceleration from gravity in a closed elevator cab. Oh, wait...

A wind blows in Houston

2010-11-17T20:55:00.000-08:00

I'm at the ASNT (American Society for Nondestructive Testing) Fall Conference and Quality Testing Show in downtown Houston, TX. I'm staying at the Hilton Houston Americas, with a northward view across Disovery Green Park. I was here in May of 2009 for the Clean Technology Conference and Expo and saw an office building under construction. It's now completed, it had been called Discovery Tower but has now been renamed Hess Tower since the Hess Corporation (formerly Amerada Hess) leased all 872,000 square feet of space in the building.

As I looked out my 11th floor window at the 30 story tower, a spinning motion caught my eye. I looked up at the tower and, sure enough, there appeared to be a series of vertical axis wind turbines adorning the top of the tower. They are certainly eye-catching and, to my uneducated eye, add to the visual appeal of the building. But do they provide enough energy to justify their cost to manufacture, install, and maintain?

Information as to the cost and expected energy output is sparse in the google-verse though I did see that Cynthia Cisneros of KTRK did a brief television piece about it. She exhibited her and her editor's cluelessness by stating that each of the 10 turbines is "designed to generate approximately 3.5 kilowatts per hour." She does state (and I've read at a couple of other sites) that the turbines should generate sufficient energy to light the building at night or to power two office floors.

I was able to finally determine that the turbines are manufactured by Cleanfield Energy, headquartered in Ontario, Canada and that they are Cleanfield's Model V3.5. They're "designed to harness urban wind efficiently and effectively." On their web site Cleanfield provides a specification sheet for the turbine which I would copy here if it weren't for fear of a lawsuit.

But using the "Estimated Energy per Year" chart and an average wind velocity of 4.5 meters/second (downgraded for the urban setting from an 80 meter wind average wind velocity chart here) I'll estimate that each turbine will provide about 1,500 kilowatt hours/year for a total of 15,000 kilowatt hours/year, or 15 megawatt hours/year. Note that this is a capacity factor (assuming 3.5 kilowatts rated power) of 1,500/(3.5*24*365) * 100% or about 4.9%.

Now, I suppose that Hess Corporation gets a better deal on energy than I do, but it's probably not too far off to figure they pay about $0.10/kilowatt hour. So, by avoiding the purchase of 15,000 kilowatt hours they'll save something like $1,500. I don't know what the generators cost but I suspect that the net present value of the investment is negative no matter how small Hess' cost of capital.

I've found a couple of estimates for electricity use in office buildings on a "per square foot" basis, at 18.9 and 17 kWh/year. If I assume that the Hess building is MUCH more efficient at, say, 15 kWh/year/ft^2, then at 872,000ft^2/30 floors there are about 29,000 ft^2/floor. Two such floors would use 870,000 kilowatt hours/year. Use of a median rather than an average electrical energy usage might cut this number by about a third (very optimistically) so let's say 580,000 kilowatt hours/year might be a reasonable lower bound. I don't think the turbines will do it. They'd supply about 1,250 ft^2, a small office.

A video is here:

$200M/day, 34 naval vessels, raining kittens and puppies

2010-11-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

I'm going to have to come up with a new name for my personal political viewpoint, I can't continue to be associated with what are commonly referred to now as "conservatives."

I've mentioned on a couple of occasions that I make it my habit to listen to and read from sources of editorial opinion that span the political spectrum, e.g., I listen to both KPFK, the local Pacifica network outlet where National Public Radio is regarded as a bunch of right wing reactionaries and tools of the bourgouisie, and to KRLA, the Salem Radio Network outlet where Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager, Dennis Miller, Bill Bennett, and Glenn Beck (!) hold forth.

I was listening to Mike Gallagher Wednesday evening to sample the conservative talk radio reaction to Tuesday's election. I was hearing generally what I expected when my ears pricked up as Gallagher started going on about Obama's visit to India. He said he'd read that $200M per day would be spent on the trip, including hotels, security, air transport, 34 naval vessels, etc. He didn't buy into this figure with complete abandon, saying that it was from an Indian newspaper, and prefacing some of his remarks with "if this is true..." But in speaking with subsequent callers he did rail against Obama using that figure.

Now, as it turns out, even the hardcore conservatives have distanced themselves from the story, but just how clueless do you have to be to hear such a thing and not immediately reject it out of hand? What mental processes must have broken down to make a person WITH A NATIONALLY SYNDICATED TALK SHOW so credulous that he even momentarily took such a thing seriously?

Does being a conservative mean that if someone tells you it's raining kittens and puppies you worry about taxes being raised to clean up the poop?

Embarrassed to be a conservative yet again

2010-10-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

As regular readers will know, I don't only frequent the sites of those who accept the idea that mankind's emissions of greenhouse gasses are an imminent threat. I have discussed my sojurns to Climate Depot, Watts Up With That, Joanne Nova, etc. While I frequently find the posts themselves to be frustrating, the comments are often infuriating and the links to the blog sites hosted by the commenters can be downright frightening.

Such was the case when I looked at a comment on Anthony Watts' post entitled "Global air and sea temperatures starting to drop rapidly." One Alex Rawls has a site called Error Theory. Mr. Rawls says that he was in a Ph.D. program in Economics at Stanford but that his research led him to "moral theory and constitutional law" at which point he dropped the program and went out on his own. The Error Theory blog has as its summary, quoted in its entirety, "Moral science has two halves. There are the implications of thinking straight about fact and value (ideal theory) and there are the implications of not thinking straight. Ideal theory is the foundation, error theory the daily battle."

Reading his most recent post of October 28, I agreed with a fair amount of his material. It consists of some takedowns of camaign ads of the despicable, loathsome (I don't like her) Barbara Boxer. So far so good. But when I saw a picture of Alan Keyes and a description of him as a hero, alarm bells went off. It turns out that Rawls' passion is detailed at his web site entitled Crescent of Betrayal.

That site is dedicated to stopping the construction of the Flight 93 National Memorial by Architect Paul Murdoch. Readers will recall that United Airlines Flight 93 was the Boeing 757 that was brought down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania by passengers to prevent radical Islamic hijackers from using the airplane as a guided missile. So, what's the problem with the memorial? It's at the site of the crash and the actual location of the crash is surrounded by a broken circle. Rawls believes that this is an Islamic Crescent.

There's a tower with 40 wind chimes symbolizing those who died. The chimes hang in the concave portion of a semi-circular tower. If you stand on the ground and gaze up, Rawls believes you are looking at the Flight 93 victims hanging in hell below the Heavenly crescent at the top of the tower.

As is usually the case with conspiracy theorists, Rawls has a whole series of arcane facts and figures to back up his contention. For example, if you stand in the center of the open part of the circle and look toward the center of the enclosed area, it's the proper direction to face Mecca. And when the shadow of the tower touches the trees, forming part of the closure of the circle, it's time for afternoon prayers.

It's difficult to criticize this - Tom Burnett, Sr., father of Flight 93 victim Tom Burnett, Jr. is a part of the campaign to stop the Memorial. I'm sensitive to the feelings of the friends and families of those who lost their lives in Pennsylvania, in New York, and at the Pentagon. But this kind of fear and hatred mongering does no one any good. What evidence is there that Paul Murdoch secretly (or not so secretly) venerates the terrorists and wants to shame the victims?

As it turns out, the design has been controversial and its abandonment has been a cause celeb for such intellectual luminaries of the conservative movement as the above-mentioned Keyes and ex Colorado Representative, erstwhile Republican Presidential candidate, and current Colorado Gubernatorial candidate in the Constitution Party, Tom Tancredo. Yes, it's hard to hold my head high as a conservative these days.

The art of disinformation

2010-10-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

Marc Morano, over at the climate disinformation aggregator site Climate Depot, summarizes a sequence of email exchanges and episodes involving TV Weatherman Anthony Watts of the Watts Up With That (WUWT) climate change skeptic site and centered on an invitation Watts received to participate in a debate at California State University Chico (CSUC) as follows:

Anthony Watts 'disinvited' to debate: University claims it can't handle a slideshow

For his part, in his post about the episode, Watts characterizes it similarly:

The season of disinvitation continues: Chico State University can’t handle a slideshow

So, from this I infer that CSUC invited Watts to make a presentation of some sort and that, upon hearing that Watts intended to utilize a powerpoint presentation, said that "I'm sorry, we don't have the facilities for that, we retract our invitation." The truth is that Watts was invited to be one of three representatives of the "pro" side of a debate about passing California's Proposition 23.

Prop 23 is intended to suspend the implementation of California Assembly Bill 32 (AB32), called the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. This bill has a variety of provisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state and is strongly opposed by various energy companies, natural resource extraction companies, and warming skeptics, etc. who have invested huge sums of money in support of Prop 23. The purpose of this post is not to delve into whether or not Prop 23 should be passed. Rather, it's about Watts' and Morano's characterization of the events surrounding Watts' invitation to this debate.

Upon receipt of the invitation, Watts asked if he could utilize a PowerPoint presentation. He gave a variety of reasons for his desire to do so, including his disadvantage in a debate involving statements and rebuttals due to a partial hearing loss, his position as a television personality and familiarity with the visual medium, and his desire to make the debate an educational experience for his audience.

The organizers turned him down on this, stating that the debate was to utilize the traditions of oral argument. Several emails were exchanged, but CSUC was adamant that visual aids weren't to be allowed. They were willing to provide accommodation for his hearing disability but not to change the debate format. The key email from Watts is:

From: “Anthony Watts”
Date: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 11:13 AM
To: “Wolf, Thia”
Cc: “Peterson, Sue” ; “John Rucker” ; “Justus, Zachary”
Subject: Re: Invitation to the Great Debate

Hello Ms. Wolf,

Thank you for your reply.

{Snip by King of the Road}

To deny visuals in a public debate is in my opinion, a sad commentary on CSUC’s program. Even in a court of law the prosecution and the defense are allowed visuals. How else would they explain forensic science to a jury? Get with the times!

Given the disadvantages I will face, and unless there is some sort of accommodation for me to present at least some visuals, I see no other option but to decline your invitation.

I await your reconsideration,

Best Regards, Anthony Watts

(Emphasis mine)

In other words, when CSUC wouldn't change the debate format to meet Watts' conditions, he declined. He made a bunch of noise about going into hostile conditions at a disadvantage in the snipped portion but the bottom line is that CSUC wouldn't meet his demands and so he declined. Both in the headline and later in the post, Watts disingenuously characterizes this chain of events as himself being disinvited.

Further, nowhere does CSUC say they can't handle slides. They make it quite clear that the format was determined in advance to be oral argument only and that they would not change because of Watts' demand.

This is the nature of the disinformation promulgated by the denizens of the seething so-called skeptical swamp. As to Watts' and Morano's specific complaint here, I offer the following:

How to conduct a poll

2010-10-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

Current Poll

» Will humans continue to be responsible with the resources of the Earth when the AGW Climate Change theory has been disproved?

I will continue to be responsible with the resources of the Earth.
It would make no difference to the Earths resources if we did not recycle household waste.
I'm confused and only recycle to save the world from "Man Made Climate Change."

I am FAR from an expert on climate or on climate change, anthropogenic global warming, human caused climate disruption, etc. I read frequently about it at a dilettante level and have several climate related blogs in my blog roll. I read a fair amount of "skeptical" material as well as that of those who support the mainstream consensus of the scientific community at large that CO2 emissions are causing climate disruption and will continue to do so with increasingly negative consequences without dramatic societal changes.

In the former (skeptical) category I was reading a blog called Climate Realists which seems to represent itself as both a clearinghouse of skeptical climate information as well as a venue for semi-scholarly discussion. I won't express an opinion on the level of scholarship, but in the sidebar, I found the so-called "poll" copied above. In terms of the concentration of hidden assumptions and logical fallacies, it seems to be nearly unique. In fact, it can only be intentionally so.

"Will humans continue to be responsible with the resources of the Earth..." This ludicrously implies that humans are doing so now.
"When AGW Climate Change Theory has been disproved." Really?
The first two selections are not mutually exclusive and, together, seem to imply that being responsible with the resources of the Earth consists of recycling
The third selection makes at least two gratuitously insulting implications: that accepting the consensus position of mainstream science on the effects of CO2 emissions indicates confusion and that people who take this position believe that recycling will "save the world."

Now I'm sure that the owner of the blog is aware of these things and I imagine he or she would say "it's meant to be tongue in cheek" but is this really a good way to advance the dialog? But then, I suppose that isn't their aim.

What to make of quotes by smart folks

2010-10-07T22:03:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article on Vernier's (a maker of physics and chemistry laboratory instruments and software primarily for high school physics students) web site about an experiment in which their Labquest unit and some of their temperature probes were used in an project to determine the effect of roof color on the temperature of a dwelling.

In the article, I read that Energy Secretary and Nobel Prize laureate, Dr. Steven Chu had stated that "Giving roads and roofs a paler color would have the same effect of removing every car in the world off the roads for 11 years." My eyebrows went up for a couple of reasons. First, I have a hard time understanding what is even being claimed. Second, any interpretation I was able to make seemed implausible.

I used that quote as a Google search phrase and found quite a few places repeating the quote but the best I could do for an original source was in the Telegraph, a British newspaper. There, the amplified quotation was "If you look at all the buildings and if you make the roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour and if you do that uniformally (sic), that would be the equivalent of... reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars in the world by 11 years – just taking them off the road for 11 years,"

I'm sorry, but that is just a very confusing statement. Is the implication that making this change immediately and for all time would cumulatively equal the amount of carbon emissions due to the world's cars for 11 years? The confusion stems from having a time frame for the cars but not for the houses and buildings. This is, in my opinion, more unit ambiguity, and Dr. Chu has a Nobel Prize! Further, is that all the cars on the road today, or the cumulative emissions of those cars plus the cars to be added over the next 11 years?

I suspect that rough numbers will suffice to see what Dr. Chu might be talking about and whether it makes any sense. So just how much carbon is emitted by all the world's cars today? Here I find the following:

"The authors present the image of a coal train that stretches 55,000 miles, long enough to circle the globe twice, carrying 314 million metric tons (314*10^6 tonnes) of carbon - the amount of CO2 emitted by U.S. cars and trucks in the year 2004."

Argh. "314 million metric tons of carbon" and the amount of "CO2 emitted." CO2 is 72.7% oxygen and 27.3% carbon by weight. So are they referring to 314/.273 or 1150 million tonnes of CO2 containing 314 million tonnes of carbon or is it 314 million tonnes of CO2 containing 85.7 million tonnes of carbon? Sneaking in the back door by looking at annual gasoline consumption, assuming gasoline is more or less n-heptane which is 84% carbon by weight approximated the carbon to 316 million metric tons and that's closer than I deserve so I'm going with 314*10^6 tonnes of carbon from 1150*10^6 tonnes of CO2. The article cited states that the U.S. contributes 45% of the world's automotive CO2 emissions so the world's total is estimated at 2555*10^6 tonnes of CO2. This is for 2004, so we multiply by 11 to see what Dr. Chu was talking about. This yields 28.10*10^9 tonnes of carbon.

Now, what about roofs and pavements? This is a dramatically more difficult estimate and I'm going to rely on the scholars. Here is the best article I could find without paying. An abstract of an original paper (the earlier of the two cited in the article above) is at Springerlink and for $34 you can have the whole paper. I'll quote the abstract here:

Increasing urban albedo can reduce summertime temperatures, resulting in better air quality and savings from reduced air-conditioning costs. In addition, increasing urban albedo can result in less absorption of incoming solar radiation by the surface-troposphere system, countering to some extent the global scale effects of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Pavements and roofs typically constitute over 60% of urban surfaces (roof 20–25%, pavements about 40%). Using reflective materials, both roof and pavement albedos can be increased by about 0.25 and 0.15, respectively, resulting in a net albedo increase for urban areas of about 0.1. On a global basis, we estimate that increasing the world-wide albedos of urban roofs and paved surfaces will induce a negative radiative forcing on the earth equivalent to offsetting about 44 Gt of CO2 emissions. At ∼25/tonne of CO2, a 44 Gt CO2 emission offset from changing the albedo of roofs and paved surfaces is worth about 1,100 billion. Furthermore, many studies have demonstrated reductions of more than 20% in cooling costs for buildings whose rooftop albedo has been increased from 10–20% to about 60% (in the US, potential savings exceed $1 billion per year). Our estimated CO2 offsets from albedo modifications are dependent on assumptions used in this study, but nevertheless demonstrate remarkable global cooling potentials that may be obtained from cooler roofs and pavements.

Note that the abstract doesn't mention a time period over which the 44 Gt (gigatonne, or billion metric tons) offset occurs. The article linked above seems to clarify it as the total offset, and splits the offsets into 24 Gt for roofs and 20 Gt for pavements, along with the assumptions as to the increases in albedo necessary. And the abstract is very clear that they are discussing tonnes of CO2, not carbon, so we have to to take 27.3% of the 44 Gt for a total reduction of carbon of 12 Gt. This is less than half of the 28.1 Gt I found for worldwide automotive carbon emissions for 11 years. Still, it's a surprisingly large number, much more than I'd have estimated off the top of my head (like ~~Mr. Spock~~ Sherlock Holmes, I never guess).

Am I a Malthusian?

2010-10-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

I was struck with another case of SIWOTI syndrome in a link I followed from Michael Tobis' Only In It For The Gold blog. He linked to a post called "Walking Back to Happiness" at the blog site Hot Topic from New Zealand. There, one Tom Bennion, who hosts a site called stopflying.org/, gave a very thorough exposition of the rationale behind his decision to stop travelling by air and his rebuttals of the counterarguments he's encountered when explaining his position to others.

In his brief autobiographical introduction he explained that he's a married, 46 year old lawyer (don't get me started, perhaps the legal profession is different in New Zealand) with three small children. He spends some bytes implying but not stating that many climate scientists who undoubtedly should know better exhibit hypocrisy by flying, especially for vacations.

Well, be that as it may, I commented that no single act (at least not one ordinarily carried out by a "typical" westerner) is as damaging to the environment in terms of carbon footprint and other environmental degradation as bringing a child into the world. So "pot-kettle-black" and all that. I was accused of being "another Malthusian." I did mention resources but my comment was meant to home in primarily to carbon footprint. Now I concede that having a child is more meaningful than flying to Copenhagen, even if it's for a conference on climate change. But it's still a decision to take an action much more likely to damage the Earth for future generations.

Or so I think. But I haven't run the numbers to get an estimate, so I'd best do so. Should it turn out that I'm incorrect, I'll apologize on the site. As usual, this will involve much estimating. I'll use estimates that make the best case that the child is likely to be less harmful, so I'll use a relatively high number of flights over very long distances and use New Zealand rather than U.S. primary energy consumption.

I'll start with a comparison of the lifetime primary energy use of a New Zealand resident which should be a reasonable proxy for the carbon emissions consequent to supplying that energy. Starting with the Energy Information Agency website I find that New Zealand converted primary energy at a per capita rate of 211.2*10^6 btu/year in 2006 (a rate of a bit over 7000 watts as compared to about 11,000 in the U.S.). And at this post at the Litebucket site it's stated that New Zealand derived 71% of it's primary energy from fossil fuels in 2008. As an aside, the other 29% was derived from renewables, a very laudable figure. So, the average New Zealander converts about 0.71*211.2*10^6 or 150.0*10^6 btu/year of fossil fuel energy (regular readers know I hate saying "consumes energy"). Now, I'll assume that a child lives to be 70, so he or she will consume 70*150*10^6 btu or 10.5*10^9 btu in his or her lifetime.

Now let's look at flying. I'll assume that a heavy user flies a round trip of 3000 miles (6000 miles out and back) twice per month, so this heavy airline commuter logs 144,000 miles per year. Let's suppose he or she does this over a 40 year period and hence totals 5.76*10^6 miles. This sad person will be assumed to be on a plane that's 80% full. This site shows that the worst airline gets a trifle over 60 seat miles per gallon of jet fuel, I'll use that. The assumption of 80% full reduces this to 48 miles per gallon for the individual, and 1/48=.0208 gallons/mile. Multiplying this by 5.76*10^6 miles, we find that this heavy airline user will be responsible for the burning of 120,000 gallons of jet A fuel. Here we find that Jet A releases 123,608 btu/gallon so our traveler will convert (123,608 btu/gallon)*(120,000 gallons)=14.83*10^9 btu during his or her flying career. This is about 1.4 times the energy converted by the average New Zealander during his or her lifetime.

Now, it may be objected that there are many variables not considered (type of flying, increasing efficiency of the New Zealander lifestyle, and many, many more) but the two scenarios, child and extreme air traveler are of the same order of magnitude. The writer of the post in question has three children. If we consider that it's not unreasonable for a person to replace him or herself and his or her spouse, the writer has added one beyond that. So the one child beyond the replacement number is on the order of 2/3 as intensive an emitter of CO2 as what is by any reasonable judgement an extreme user of airline travel. Look for my tepid mea culpa at the site.

CA ISO system status

2010-09-27T21:57:00.000-07:00

It's been a VERY hot day, with all-time temperature records broken in Southern California. How is the California Independent System Operator (CA ISO who manages our grid) handling it?

Not really so bad (click on graphic for a larger view).

The Airbus A319 saga - epilogue

2010-09-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

Here, here, and here I've posted about various data-gathering exercises and calculations regarding the Airbus A319. The data was gathered on two flights, one on takeoff from Laguardia in New York to O'hare in Chicago, and the other on landing from Chicago at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, CA. I mentioned that the calculated landing speed seemed too low and that the landing roll seemed too short.

As it happens, my office window overlooks Long Beach Airport where Jet Blue provides service using the very similar Airbus A320. Rhett Alain over at his Dot Physics blog posted an article on an iPhone 4 app from Vernier Software and Technology called Video Physics. It allows the use of iPhone videos to do rudimentary analysis of the physics (position, velocity in the x and y axes) involved and to email the data files to a "real" computer for further analysis in Vernier's Logger Pro software.

I took video of a couple of Jet Blue's A320s on takeoff and landing and used the Vernier products to determine the speeds. As I suspected, my estimate of 152 knots for the A319 takeoff speed at Laguardia compared fairly well with the measured speed of 167 knots for the A320. The landing speed was another story. My accelerometer measurements and numerical integration with a taxi speed assumption let to a calculated landing speed for the A319 of 99 knots. My measurement for the A320 was 129 knots. This comports much more favorably with my knowledge of aircraft operations and what I've seen on the web.

I'll be travelling to Houston in November; I suppose it's possible that my iPhone will accidentally be measuring acceleration on takeoff and landing on that trip as well.

Will ingenuity save us?

2010-09-18T15:47:00.000-07:00

As is my wont, I entered a conversation on Joanne Nova's global warming skeptic blog site. The nature of my comments revolved around my contention that we won't be able to bring the underdeveloped world to the standard of living of the developed world since that would require increasing our primary energy consumption by about a factor of four, even without an increase in population.

The sentiment on that site is that progress is non-linear and unpredictable and that human ingenuity will result in breakthroughs that can make it possible for all seven or even nine billion people to live on Earth at western standards of living. People opine that gains in efficiency will enable more to be done with less - one person said that "a worker lying naked on a beach with an iPhone can be more productive than a whole office with several tons of gear in 1978." Really? Let's take a look.

I pulled statistics from an Energy Information Agency web site and Angus Maddison's web site and combined them into a spreadsheet. I was able to compile data from 1980 through 2006, surely a time when the efficiencies cited above would be in play. A couple of interesting charts emerged, the first shows per capita gdp as function of per capita energy use.

It looks an awful lot to me as if per capita gdp is purchased primarily with per capita primary energy use. Next, I looked at the ratio of per capita gdp to per capita energy use from 1980 to 2006.

Hmm. This is the the amount of gdp produced by a quantity of energy expended each year. The fact that it is increasing definitely shows a trend in favor of a more efficient use of energy to produce economic output but I see no indication of a breakaway trend; certainly nothing that will enable us to bring a western standard of living or anything close to the developing world at rates of primary energy use that are remotely feasible.

I'm hugely in favor of nuclear energy, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and other ways of extracting energy from the environment and I do believe that a standard of living that a Westerner such as myself could accept can be achieved for the world. Such things require focused effort, long-term planning, and massive investment. I'd like to think the free market and ingenuity would find the solution, but I see little sign of it.

*Extensively edited to fix typos. I have GOT to be more careful about proofreading before hitting the PUBLISH POST button.

More on Moller International and the "Skycar"

2010-09-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

Back in March of 2009, I made a couple of posts (here and here) about the Moller Skycar. I questioned some of the claims made for the vehicle with respect to fuel economy and speed. The other day, a comment on the second of my posts related to Moller mentioned that my posts had been discussed on the Moller blog site. I'll quote the comment by a blog visitor and the answer by Bruce Calkins, Moller International's General Manager, in full:

A long time skeptic - Query re: concerns about range and fuel efficiency

I was curious to know what Moller International thinks of the speculations by this blogger here: http://hamiltonianfunction.blogspot.com/2009/03/moller-sky-car.html and here: http://hamiltonianfunction.blogspot.com/2009/03/horsepower-fuel-efficiency-and_31.html I'm not sure I agree with all his assumptions, but he makes a pretty damning case. I would be interested to here the company's reaction.

Bruce Calkins - Skeptics talk about fuel economy of the Skycar

There is a saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The blog entries seem to fit into this category. While the maximum hp and burn rate are correct, the assumption that we remain at that rate for anything more than the few short seconds while we are operating in VTOL mode is not. Our hp requirement in cruise is about 120 hp, with the corresponding fuel burn rate. Range projections are based on the reduced fuel burn rate. We are currently evaluating a hybrid fuel-electric propulsion system that might reduce the total installed power requirement replacing it with a temporary electrical "boost" system for the VTOL-mode operations. If you would like a more detailed paper on the subject, email me.

Before I comment on this I want to state that Dr. Moller is, without a doubt, a brilliant man and an extraordinary aerodynamic engineer. Certainly, he's far beyond my expertise. That said, he and those with whom he works have a long history of making claims that are never fulfilled. A good place to start reading about this aspect is at Wikipedia's Skycar page.

Now, Mr. Calkins is stating that the Skycar will cruise using 120 horsepower. The Skycar specifications page states that the cruise speed at 25,000 feet is 305 m.p.h. and that "max mileage" is greater than 20 m.p.g. It's not stated what airspeed is utilized to achieve this mileage. It may be very much lower than 305 m.p.h. In my airplane, the maximum range airspeed (that is, the airspeed at which I can achieve the greatest number of miles per gallon) is about 24% lower than normal cruise speed. Interestingly, on another page the claim is that "M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 275 MPH (maximum speed of 375 MPH) and achieve up to 20 miles per gallon on clean burning, ethanol fuel." I'll use this and supplement it with information in a paper hosted on Moller's web site. However, one thing I note is that none of the referenced pages give a categorical statement that the Skycar can achieve a cruise speed of, say, 275 miles per hour while it's getting 20 m.p.g. Instead, statements such as that quoted above can be backed away from by saying "well, yes, it can get 20 m.p.g. at the minimum point on the thrust required as function of airspeed curve," typically not far above the maximum L/D (lift/drag) ratio airspeed.

But let's proceed. We'll start with the assumption of steady flight in cruise. The conservative claim above is that the Skycar will do 275 m.p.h. in cruise and Calkins states that it uses "about 120 horsepower." OK, as I've mentioned any number of times, power is equal to force times speed, so force is equal to power divided by speed. The Google calculator makes this division and handily converts the units to newtons, yielding a thrust of 728 newtons.

Now, as we learn in high school physics or in airman ground school, for an airplane in unaccelerated flight (as the Skycar would be under the cruise condition assumed here) thrust=drag, and lift=weight. Hence, we're considering a total (lift induced plus parasitic) drag of 728 newtons for an aircraft travelling at 275 miles per hour. We need to determine if this is plausible. Without a lot of mathematical derivation, it's pretty easy to show that Thrust=Weight/(Lift/Drag). That means that Lift/Drag=Weight/thrust. Here we have (using 2400 pounds or 10,676 newtons as the "gross weight") that Lift/Drag=10,676/728=14.66. But the specifications page referenced above has the so-called maximum L/D (the maximum ratio of lift to drag) as 12.5. Now, this maximum ratio is at a specific airspeed, any other speed will produce a lower L/D ratio. 14.7 cannot be achieved.

The Moller International web site does not give sufficient data to go much further (wing span, wing area, flate plate area, etc.) so I can't really do much more than this. I will say that the figures claimed by Moller International are likely not outlandish but, in my opinion, they are very significantly exaggerated.

Unit ambiguity in the New York Times?

2010-09-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

I've made several posts (here for example) decrying people's cluelessness with respect to scientific concepts and, in particular, with respect to units. But do we have an example in the New York Times? I follow the New York Times Twitter feed (nytimesscience) and read the following: When It Comes to Car Batteries, Moore's Law Does Not Compute http://bit.ly/bSuX3e. Naturally, I clicked on the link and it took me to an an article on the rate of advance in battery technologies, both with respect to energy density and charging rates. All very interesting, and the interview subjects were from IBM and Better Place.

But about midway through the article, I read the following:

He illustrated the challenge of building a battery with the energy density of gasoline by recounting that it took 47 seconds to put 13.6 gallons of gas in his car when he stopped to fill up on the way to San Francisco. That’s the equivalent of 36,000 kilowatts of electricity. An electric car would need to pump 6,000 kilowatts to charge its battery.

Does this make sense? Let's parse it.13.6 gallons of gasoline contains (at 125*10^6 joules/gallon) 1.7*10^9 joules. Putting this in the vehicle in 47 seconds yields a "rate of energy transfer" of 1.7*10^9 joules/47 seconds, or 36.2*10^6 joules/second or just over 36,000 kilowatts. OK, so far so good.

But where does the 6,000 kilowatts come in? Well, the internal combustion engine (ICE) in the gas powered car might use energy at something like 22% efficiency, so the 1.7*10^9 joules might translate to 3.74*10^8 joules of useful work. OK, an electric motor with the power to drive a car will typically have a minimum efficiency of 92%, so that means that we'll need 3.74*10^8/.92 = 4.07^10^8 joules of electrical energy put into the battery. Doing this in 47 seconds yields a charging rate of 8.6*10^6 watts or 8,600 kilowatts. Not really so far off, and I guess that that's where the figure came from.

Stepping back, it's a very good illustration of why we love fossil fuels. Suppose IBM and Better Place succeed in creating a lithium air battery with the required energy density and ability to accept a charge at the rate described above. Now, imagine a "charging station" with, say, 4 cars charging their batteries at the rate of 6 megawatts, and imagine that you're at a corner with another station across the street doing the same. As I drive around, this is not at all an unusual circumstance at some times of day. So, at this corner, we'll need to be able to supply at least 48 megawatts of electrical power. That's about 5% of the power from a gigawatt generating station (this is a big facility). Getting energy from a power plant to a charging station at this rate, with the ubiquity of today's gas stations, is an incredibly difficult transmission problem

As I've demonstrated in a previous post, I believe it will be possible to install sufficient capacity to supply electrical energy to a fleet of electric cars. But the ability to deliver it at an acceptable rate to batteries that can store it is definitely the sine qua non of the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

The Chevy Volt - is it for me?

2010-09-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

I've already posted about the Chevy Volt and the mileage claims made for it. But the time is coming to replace the Land Rover LR3 HSE that I've been driving since 2006. The Land Rover is owned by my Company and, in the current economic environment, there's little excuse for being provided with such a vehicle. I've mentioned my partner and the BMW X5 he drove, also owned by our Company. He's purchased a Toyota Prius (NOT company owned).

So, I'm wondering what to drive. The choices really seem to be the Nissan Leaf, the Volt, and the Prius. I'm leaning against the Leaf because it's range is about 100 miles on a charge and, though my commute is about 62.5 miles round trip, I sometimes need to go to meetings from the office or go to places other than the office from home and there's no infrastructure to charge the Leaf "on the road."

The Prius is all well and good but, well.... my partner got one. So, what about the Volt? It has much to recommend it for my application - though it's only estimated to get 40 miles on a full charge prior to using the internal combustion engine (ICE) to supply energy to the electric motor and my one-way trip to work is about 30 miles, I can charge it at the office and use the ICE only in the circumstances described in the previous paragraph. So, decision made, right?

Not so fast. This vehicle has an MSRP of $41,000 for the base model. A tax credit (not sure how the money is actually collected) of "up to" $7,500 is available bringing the price after the credit down to $33,500. This is a high price for what is really a four passenger commuter car. So how does the energy situation compare to my current vehicle and to others I might consider?

In order to estimate potential savings some assumptions will need to be made regarding how often and for how far the ICE in the Volt would be used. So, I'll figure that I'll do my normal commute four days per week and that I'll plug the Volt in at the office (actually, down the street at the laboratory) during each of those days so that the ICE isn't used. On the fifth day, I'll assume I go to the office and then leave for a meeting 35 miles away, that is, 70 miles out and back from the office, and then another 32.5 back to the house. I'll also need to use the fact that the Volt is specified at 50 m.p.g. when the ICE is running the electric motor. I can, no doubt, do better than that but I'll use it.

Using these figures, I estimate that I spend $61.91 per week or $3,219.34 annually on gas in the Land Rover, and that I'd spend $22.94 per week or $1,193.04 annually for gas in the Prius, and $17.44 per week or $907.00 annually on gas plus electricity for the Volt.

Now, the Land Rover is paid for but not by me (except indirectly). The Company will get a minor cash infusion by selling it. I'd estimate that the Prius will cost about $7,000 less than the Volt after all is said and done (that is, purchase price out the door). The $286/year isn't going to make up that difference, so the rational thing to do is to buy a Prius, assuming that a pure ICE vehicle is ruled out. More to follow.

A319 - the final chapter

2010-09-04T15:33:00.000-07:00

I've discussed the accelerometer data I gathered on takeoff and landing in Airbus 319's, and I made some calculations with the data involving engine thrust and energy dissipated in braking. The final calculations I've made involve takeoff and landing rolls of the aircraft.

Excel makes it very easy to perform numerical integration of a time series of data such as that gathered by the Pasco Sparkvue software on my iPhone. The basic idea is that the sample rate was set at 20 Hz, so a data point was gathered every 0.05 seconds. I assume that acceleration is constant between samples, multiply the duration of 0.05 seconds and add it to the previous velocity to get the new velocity. Rinse and repeat. Do the same to integrate velocity to get distance.

On takeoff, initial speed is 0 and initial distance is 0. On landing, initial distance is 0 but initial speed is back-calculated by assuming a speed when braking stops. In my earlier posts, I assumed a speed at the end of brake application of 10 knots but that gave fairly unrealistic landing speeds and rolls. I adjusted to 15 knots which is acceptable by the A319 operating manual (max. taxi speed is 20 knots, 10 knots in turns). This gave a more believable touchdown speed and landing roll (though still, I suspect, too low and too short).

I calculated the distance from start of takeoff roll to rotation to be 4,350 feet and, as I mentioned in the earlier post, the rotation speed to be 152 knots. I find these numbers to be pretty credible. For landing, I calculated the touchdown speed to be 99 knots and the landing roll to be 2,800 feet. The latter two numbers are suspect, hopefully an A319 pilot will comment. Or, perhaps, I can install an A319 simulation in MS Flight Simulator and try it myself.

The bracelet rage

2010-08-28T22:57:00.000-07:00

Was I asleep? I don't even remember where I read the first article about some sort of bracelet designed to, in some fashion, harmonize your energy field or some such. I do remember, though, that it was just this past Wednesday!? This particular one was the Power Balance Bracelet. I read about it and sadly shook my head. Its makers claim to embed frequencies into a hologram that "resonate and respond to the natural energy field of the body."

Then,THE VERY NEXT DAY, I was talking to a person with whom I work and noticed an unusual looking bracelet on her wrist. Innocently, I asked her what it was and she mumbled something about "balance" and told me that she'd give me a card from the guy that sold it to her. Sure enough, she had an EFX BRACELET that uses a hologram that "contains algorithms and frequencies" that interact positively with your body's energy field at the cellular level. As someone commenting on a site said, "how could that not work?"

Next, my stepson asked me to email his Spanish teacher, holding a note out for me to read. "Why, what's that bracelet you're wearing?" I asked, knowing the answer. Andre doesn't know the name of it but it's all the rage on his football team. I shook my head and told him it's useless. "No," he said, "they proved it works." See below.

Now I'm watching ESPN and see a series of advertisements for the iRenew Bracelet with its "Biofield Technology." And they have a quantum physicist! You can't go wrong if you're dealing with energy and have a quantum physicist on your side.

All three show the same "tests" to demonstrate the efficacy of the bracelets. There's one where the ~~victim~~ ~~mark~~ subject holds their arms out to their side and lifts a leg. The ~~grifter~~ tester pushes down on the arm sticking out to the side with the raised leg at about bicep level, first without (always) and next with (always) the bracelet. Due to learning, the ~~mark~~ subject will do better at resisting the second time and the ~~snake oil salesperson~~ vendor will state that it's due to the curative powers of the bracelet.

There's another where it's purported to enable a person to rotate farther from front to rear at the waist as measured by an arm extended out foreward. As usual, the "with the bracelet" test is second. You can go to any of the linked sites and see videos of these "tests" in action.

Back in the 1970s there was a pyramid craze. People wore wire pyramids on their heads to increase their intelligence or sleep better. I remember being offered ... an illegal substance commonly rolled into cigarette shaped cylinders and smoked ... with the kicker that "it was cured under a pyramid." People go to Sedona, Arizona for a "harmonic convergence" and then buy crystals. This sort of woo has always been around I guess, the new aspect is the word salad involving words like quantum, biofield, resonance, hologram, algorithm, and cellular.

Two of the three companies above offer to donate part of the price of some of their items to charitable causes - Save the Seas and Ovarian Cancer. I guess that's a good thing, in the way that you'd want the guy that mugs you to donate some of the proceeds to Jerry's Kids. The sites talk about scientific studies and evidence but I can't see anything except testimonials.

The placebo effect is well known and I'm all for it but the gullibility shown by the ability to make a living selling these pieces of plastic for $30 is another sign of the descent into the abyss of the level of scientific literacy of the average American. In the Far East some believe Rhino horn or shark fin or some other animal part will give them virility or cure them. We smile condescendingly and "tsk tsk" and send our money off for pieces of plastic with holograms embedded with frequencies to tune our biofields.

Update: Rhett Allain at Dot Physics has a supplementary and probably better explanation for the success of the first test described above in his post here.

A brief essay on logic

2010-08-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

While driving, I typically listen to Sirius Satellite Radio dividing my time between BBC World Service and Radio Classics (a channel devoted to the old time radio dramas and comedies). BBC is advertisement free (excepting adverts for its own programs of course) but Radio Classics has advertising for various things, including other channels, on the half-hour. One of the channels advertised is BB King's Bluesville.

During the commercial, BB King comes on and says (as close to verbatim as I can remember) "I'm the mayor. And if BB King doesn't like it, I figure no one else will either." Huh. This is, in first order predicate logic, known as an implication, i.e., if A then B, or A->B (pronounced "A implies B"). This implication is, as the saying goes (and as can be shown in a truth table), logically equivalent to ~ B -> ~ A (man, I wish I had more symbols in the Blogger interface: -> is an implication arrow; ~ is negation or "not" so that ~ B -> ~A should be read "not B implies not A").

To BB's statement, this translates to "if not 'no one else will like it then not BB King doesn't like it.'" Next, "not no one else will like it" translates to "there exists someone who will like it." And "not BB King doesn't like it" translates to "BB King likes it." Thus, BB's statement is the logical equivalent of "if there exists someone who will like it then BB King likes it." There probably is no music such that there does not exist someone who will like it. Thus, there is probably no music that BB King does not like.

I'm guessing that that's not what he meant.

More on the Airbus A319 data

2010-08-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I discussed gathering some data from the Airbus A319. I want to look into this a bit more, and consider some of the forces involved. Starting with takeoff and looking here I find that the standard maximum takeoff weight of the aircraft is 64,000 kilograms and that its range at that takeoff weight is 3391 kilometers. There are several variants of the aircraft but I'll assume that the figures cited are correct. There were no empty seats on the plane but Wolfram Alpha tells me that the distance from New York Laguardia to Chicago O'hare is 1180 kilometers so I assume that a partial fuel load was carried. The maximum fuel capacity was found here to be 24,210 liters or 24.21 m^3, which, at 804 kg/m^3, has a mass of 19,465 kg. I'm going to speculate that the aircraft carried 2/3 of its maximum fuel capacity, which should meet FAA regulations and United's standard operating procedures, for a weight savings of 6,488 kilograms.

So we're contemplating an aircraft with a mass of about 57,512 kg. and an average "mid roll" acceleration of about 3.4 m/s^2 by my data. So, as usual F=m*a, and the force the engines are applying is 195,500 Nt or about 44,000 pounds of force. This is, for the two engine aircraft, 22,000 pounds per engine. I've checked various sites and determined that the specific aircraft was likely the A319-131 model with IAE 2500 series engines with thrust rated in the 25,000 pound force range. Thus, the data is clearly on the right track. I do so love it when that happens.

How about stopping? The aircraft from Chicago O'hare to John Wayne Airport in Orange County was also an Airbus A319, presumably another "dash 131" as they say in aviation. Since it was also full and traveled a considerably larger distance, I'll assume that it started at 64,000 kilograms. Here I find that my flight took 3 hours, 42 minutes, or 3.7 hours. I find here that, as an estimate, the A319 burns maybe 5,000 pounds mass or about 2,270 kilograms of fuel per hour so I estimate that the aircraft burned 3.7*2,270 kilograms from its 64,000 starting weight to land weighing 55,600 kilograms.

Touching down at 90 knots (I suspect this is actually a bit slow) or 46.3 m/s, the airplane has a kinetic energy of 0.5*55600*46.4^2 or 59,850,000 joules. It stops braking at 10 knots or 5.14 m/s and then has about 734,000 joules of kinetic energy (non-intuitively, not that far from my Land Rover LR3 HSE at 55 m.p.h.). The brakes have dissipated (that is, turned into heat) about 59,000,000 joules in about 27 seconds. This equates to a rate of energy dissipation of 59,000,000/27 or 2.19 megawatts. They are actually assisted in this disspation by burning jet fuel in a process called "reverse thrust" but in the end, that's the kinetic energy that is dissipated. Of course, braking is an extraordinarily efficient process for turning kinetic into thermal energy, slowing the plane down by reverse thrust is much less efficient but, in the end, it's all turned into dispersed thermal energy.

Next post: Integrate again for length of takeoff and landing roll.

Airbus A319 on the runway

2010-08-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

Like most modern "smart phones," the Apple iPhone has accelerometers on all three of its axes so that it knows its orientation. This enables the screen to flip, games involving motion to be played, etc. Various companies have produced apps to enable the user to have access to the acceleration data gathered by the accelerometers, I've posted about playing with that feature before.

Of course many have pushed this capability farther than I have, but Rhett Alain at his Dot Physics blog reviewed some of these apps and did a brief review of the Pasco Sparkvue app. Pasco is a company that makes various sensors that are typically used in Physics classes. The Sparkvue app is made to allow the use of their sensors with the iPhone, but includes access to the iPhone accelerometers. I purchased this app, and will likely also purchase some of the sensors as well.

I was in New York City (Queens, actually) for a conference held by the American Society for Nondestructive Testing, ASNT. By a freak accident (the flight crew is quite adamant that such things must not happen), on takeoff from Laguardia Airport, I happened to have left the iPhone on (in airplane mode) and Sparkvue running with the y axis very close to parallel to the longitudinal axis of the airplane, recording data. Shockingly, the same thing happened upon landing at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. I have GOT to be more careful about this.

But, having gathered the data anyway, I thought I'd spend a few minutes playing with it. The Sparkvue software enables adjustment of units ("g's" or meters/second^2) and sampling rate. I used meters/second and 20 Hz. I've inserted graphs of the speeds determined by numerically integrating the acceleration data below, I cut off the takeoff data at about 30.3 seconds because that's when the aircraft "rotated" (lifted the nose wheel off the runway, that is, began to leave the runway) and I didn't account for the fact that the downward acceleration of gravity now had a component along the y-axis of the iPhone, giving a falsely high reading of acceleration (the Equivalence Principle).

I intend to go back and attempt to correct this by estimating the so-called "deck angle" (the angle between the aircraft's longitudinal axis and horizontal) and backing it out of the numbers. This will enable me to estimate the aircraft's acceleration once airborne.

For landing, I did approximately the same thing, but I wanted to know the touchdown speed of the aircraft. Data was recorded until the aircraft was at its taxi speed and turning off the runway. I estimated this to be 10 knots and used the "goal seek" facility of Excel to determine what starting speed would give 10 knots when acceleration was deemed to have reached zero.

I have no idea how accurate the accelerometers are in an iPhone, but the numbers calculated are within the realm of plausibility. I estimated Vr (rotation speed in pilot speak) to be about 152 knots, and touchdown speed to be about 90 knots. A knot is a nautical mile (6080 feet) per hour or about 1.15 statute miles per hour. The graphs are below:

YouTube - A Turing Machine - Busy Beaver 4-state

2010-08-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

The busy beaver function is, as far as I know (and I've looked around a bit), the fastest growing function currently known. I first learned about it here. I'd known of Turing machines from general reading but have never taken a formal course in computer science (sadly). But Mike Davey has built a Turing machine and used it to demonstrate a four state busy beaver.

If you want to know more about the busy beaver function and why it's interesting, a good place to start is at the link above.

YouTube - A Turing Machine - Busy Beaver 4-state

Science Digestive: My application for a job as a Homeopath

2010-08-15T20:44:00.000-07:00

More fun poked at homeopathy. I admit that it's a soft target.

Science Digestive: My application for a job as a Homeopath

Creationism Lives - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

2010-08-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

I'm a regular at Dr. Michael Tobis' blog Only In It For The Gold (his blog's name is a sarcastic reference to the meme that climate scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to promote climate change in order to get rich from grant money). Michael has a "mt's shared items" section where he links to articles that he finds interesting. Often, he'll link to Andrew Sullivan's blog from the Atlantic Magazine (a magazine I really enjoy) entitled "The Daily Dish." He's currently linking to the article Creationism Lives - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan which quotes portions of a Scientific American article bemoaning the level of scientific ignorance in the United States. And apparently, the origin is the National Science Foundation's bienniel report, Science and Engineering Indicators. It reports the results of surveys in various countries that indicate many Americans don't believe, for example, in evolutionary theory.

By and large, I agree with Sullivan's point here, but the article he cites (and his quotation of it ends with) includes the following: "Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.” Hmmm.... if someone phoned me and said "I'm taking a survey, do you agree that the universe began with a big explosion?" I would say "no." If they asked if I agreed that what is commonly known as the "Big Bang Theory" is currently the most likely explanation for the origin of our universe, I would say yes. The Big Bang, as presently understood, was not in any way an explosion. So, would I be marked down as another example of American scientific illiteracy?

I believe that whoever published the information quoted by Sullivan was attempting to further the case that Americans don't understand science. Paraphrasing A. Conan Doyle through Sherlock Holmes, the writer had not the gift of the true journalist, the knowledge of when to stop. The author succeeded only in showing the limits of his or her understanding of science, or at least of cosmology.

CO2 Now | CO2 Home

2010-08-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

I've seen widgets on various web sites that track atmospheric CO2 and, in glancing at one, something caught my eye. I determined to visit the source site, called CO2 Now | CO2 Home to verify that what I'd noticed was accurate. Here's the image I looked at:

Now, what disturbed me is that the year over year increase was about 72% larger in the July, 2009 to July 2010 period (0.606%) than in the July, 2008 to July 2009 period (0.352%). This is quite disturbing in that the July 2009 to July 2010 period is one of subdued economic activity in much of the so-called developed world (to be fair, much of the previous period could also be described in this way).

Here's a brief graph of world GDP from 2005 to mid - 2010:

(Source: http://www.economicswebinstitute.org/ecdata.htm and http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTDECPROSPECTS/EXTGBLPROSPECTSAPRIL/0,,contentMDK:20370107~menuPK:659160~pagePK:2470434~piPK:4977459~theSitePK:659149,00.html)
Note that while world GDP declined for the first period noted in the CO2 concentration above and rose at about 3.3% for the second, the dip in GDP is not mirrored by a reduction in slope of the graph of atmospheric CO2 concentration for the period. I don't know whether the absence of a decrease in rate of growth of CO2 concentration is due to a statistical fluke, measurement error, volcanic eruption, or the increased use of coal to provide primary energy in emerging economies - China and India in particular. But an increased growth rate of atmospheric CO2 concentration without an increase in the rate of growth of economic activity is a disturbing data point.

Moldova??

2010-07-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

I'd always just used Google Analytics to check my meager traffic flow, not noticing the "Stats" tab on my Blogger dashboard. I've been looking that over and it's pretty cool. But, amazingly, when I look at the "Audience" tab, for last week the country with the second largest number of pageviews on my blog was Moldova. That's right: USA; Moldova; Canada. On the all time list, Moldova is in sixth place behind: USA; Canada; Germany; Philippines; and Japan. What am I saying that's of keen interest to Moldovans? Please chime in!

xkcd on homeopathy

2010-07-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

Click here to visit the original.

Subsidies, no, no subsidies...

2010-07-04T15:46:00.000-07:00

One of the criticisms I read consistently of governmental encouragement of renewable energy (feed in tariffs, renewable portfolio standards, tax incentives, etc.) is that this artificially distorts markets, thereby leading to inefficiencies. "Let the free market decide" is the cry from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Petroleum Institute, etc.

So it strikes me as ludicrous and ironic to read the extent to which the oil industry relies on subsidies, and to read the rationalizations provided for it. I've mentioned many times that I'm philosophically inclined toward market-based policies but that I believe they'll be insufficient to get us through times of diminishing primary energy supplies at increasing prices and sporadic availability, together with climatic effects of burning fossil fuels with very large inertia with respect to delays between emissions changes and effects.

So what we seem to have here is proposing that technologies that could help with our energy and climate dilemmas fend for themselves while those that contribute most to the variety of problems receive massive subsidies. Can anyone call this sane? There is absolutely no question that we need, and will continue to need, fossil fuels in massive quantities far into the future. They are intrinsic to much more than the generation of electrical energy and liquid fuels for transportation. But converging events make weaning ourselves from those areas where it's possible on a generational time scale critical. Because corporations' only responsibility is to maximize shareholder value, and shareholders value reliable short term returns above all else whereas the needed developments are quite long term, market intervention will, I'm sorry to say, be necessary.

The "TRANS" system

2010-06-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

I've run across a remarkable set of articles by an individual named Carl Johnson, who is beyond all doubt a lateral thinker. He has a high degree of mathematical and physical sophistication and the spectrum of issues he's contemplated is quite broad. He has a large set of articles on global warming, whose overall thrust is that "we're doomed," i.e., that the situation is dramatically worse than the worst case scenarios of the IPCC and the estimates of mainstream climatologists. I'm not going to go into those, but a starting point for those who'd like to is here.

But I'd like to look at an innovative transportation system Mr. Johnson designed in 1990, called the TRANS System. It involves "pods" in pneumatic tubes travelling cross country at 200 m.p.h., and locally at 60 m.p.h. and 30 m.p.h. The idea is to turn the "drag" concept upside down, the pod being propelled through concrete tubes by the drag force of air being pumped by at 230 m.p.h. Johnson also envisions elimination of wheel drag by lift provided by the Bernoulli effect. He ultimately envisions a system wherein people and goods can be transported to within two blocks of 98% of possible destinations in the U.S. at prices about 20% of today's and costs of 10% (the difference being used for reduction of the national debt).
There's no math in the linked page, though not because Mr. Johnson doesn't have abilities in that discipline - he's a graduate from the University of Chicago in "nuclear physics." There's lots of claims about the price to move a pound of freight or a pound of passengers. But there's no explanation of how those figures were derived. Beyond capital costs, of course (which Johnson also estimates), the primary operating expense would seem to be keeping hundreds of thousands of miles of air moving at 230 m.p.h. There are also costs associated with the various control systems he envisions.

While the state of research on such systems is not highly active, it's also not non-existent. A brief article with further references of the use of so-called "PCP" (pneumatic capsule pipeline) systems for freight transportation by Dr. Henry Liu of the International Freight Pipeline Society can be found here. It's clear from reading this article and others that Johnson's system represents a large jump in sophistication, particularly with respect to the velocities involved (over 100 meters/second vs. approximately 20 meters/second). Johnson also discusses a "linefill ratio" (the proportion of the tube occupied by freight or passengers) of 50% where the state of the art using blowers is about 3% and the hope is to use linear induction motors to increase this to 15%. There is also an extensive article on utilization of a PCP system for freight transport in New York City here.

Let's think about the power involved in such a system. We'll ignore any change in potential energy required for elevation change. Using the D'Arcy-Weisbach equation and estimating things like the surface roughness of the inner surface of Johnson's concrete tube (he suggests a teflon lining and believes that, even with a Reynolds number on the order of 1.7*10^6, laminar flow can be maintained) and the operating pressure of the system, I can calculate a pressure drop of about 21.8. Pascals/meter. This is a loss of one atmosphere every approximately 4.6 kilometers. So, ignoring the mass of the cars (not particularly accurate since, according to Johnson's design, at peak capacity they might occupy on the order of one half the volume of a tube) we need enough power to provide a pressure boost of 21.8 Pascals in a distance of one meter and a diameter of two meters, or a volume of 3.14 m^3. This should be an amount of work of 21.8*3.14 or 68.5 joules. At 230 miles per hour, it needs to do this in 0.097 seconds. So the power required for that meter is 68.5 joules/.097 seconds, or about 704 watts.

Running some quick numbers for drag, lifting and moving the capsules would require another 440 watts for a subtotal of 1144 watts. Then, assuming a 3 meter long capsule with a mass of, say, 250 kilograms, accelerating it to 89.4 meters/second in maybe 30 seconds will take about 745 newtons. It will take 1340 meters to get to speed, so the power used in accelerating is 745 newtons*1340 meters/30 seconds or 33.3 kilowatts. Just as a rough estimate, in 100 kilometers, maybe 150 such accelerations are taking place, so the system must provide 150 capsules*33,300 kilowatts/100,000 meters or 50 watts/meter. Thus, the total estimated power required is, in round numbers, 1200 watts/meter. The energy requirements are starting to look "scary big." Does this level of power usage make any intuitive sense? Well, I have a vacuum cleaner that uses 11 amps at 110 volts for a power of 1210 watts. The vacuum cleaner is simply moving air, albeit turbulent even at much lower Reynolds number but through a much smaller area and over a shorter distance.

In any case, if I'm even close, a 100 kilometer tube would use 120 megawatts. Assuming that it's half full of capsules, and each capsule is 3 meters long, there are 16,600 capsules. Comparing this to cars, let's assume that 16,600 cars are moving at 55 m.p.h. and getting 25 m.p.g. These cars would use 10.1 gallons/second, each gallon containing 120*10^6 joules or 1.22*10^9 joules/second or watts. This is 1.22 gigawatts or 10.2 times as much power as the Trans system.

Now, there are many, MANY considerations beyond these factors. For example, no accounting of the primary energy (well to wheel for the cars, primary source to generator to fans for the Trans system) was done. And the system would use the energy to move the air regardless of whether there was a single capsule or the tube was filled to capacity whereas cars only use fuel when in use. But let's assume only 10% capacity utilization. The cars would still use about as much energy as the pods, and the pods would be almost four times as fast. Mr. Johnson may have a good idea from an energetic point of view. I wonder, though, how people would take to being in a fully enclosed capsule in a sealed tube?

*Edited to correct factor of 10 error. The advantage of the TRANS system is diminished considerably by this correction and likely constrained to be used in areas where high load factors are expected to be the norm.

A telling symptom of crackpottery

2010-05-29T14:39:00.000-07:00

The anti-science cult has quite a few sub-cults: anti-vaccination; creation science and anti-evolution; 9/11 truthers; homeopathy supporters; climate change skeptics, etc. I have a secret fascination for reading such nonsense. This has been a guilty pleasure for me for quite a while - I also am drawn to watch, in fascinated horror, such as Benny Hinn, Robert Tilton (for a different take on Tilton, see here), and other "spiritual healers."

In perusing the web sites devoted to such belief systems (I say belief systems as opposed to bodies of knowledge) there's often an element of paranoia - "there's a huge, malign conspiracy to quash the truth, a truth to which I and those of like belief have access." One way this frequently expresses itself is in the demand for debate. See the comment at 10:16 on May 29, 2010 here, the touting of a debate at the Oxford Union here or the report of an "evolution debate" here for examples.

Why is this? Are questions of science, nature, and fact settled by debate? Obviously not. I actually participated in debate in High School and was coached in the skills necessary to prevail in a formal debate on such topics as: Resolved: Taxpayer funds should be used to flouridate Rockford, Illinois' drinking water. Of course, I'd need to be fully prepared to argue the affirmative or the negative side. It involved gathering facts that support either argument and being prepared to defend against such arguments gathered by the opposing side. The judging was quite formal and a winner was always declared.

This is what the supporters of creationism, anti-vax, homeopathy, etc. want - the ability to utilize clever tactics to convince an audience lacking in specialist knowledge for the purpose of persuading the greater public and thereby influencing public policy. But debating skills (at least insofar as convincing a non-expert audience on scientific topics) do not equate with the ability to ferret out the truth from disparate data. Either skill takes dedication and perseverance to develop; scientists choose the latter and thus may fall very short on the former.

Thus, when looking at blogs and web sites with viewpoints on subjects on which I'm not an expert (and no one really has a blog or web site arguing the arcana of the physics of acoustic propagation in steel or the acceptable level of heat input in a flux core weld), if I see a lot of clamoring for debate or the citation of the results of debate, I become immediately skeptical of the viewpoint being espoused.

A dip into the strident atheist, liberal pool

2010-05-03T20:48:00.000-07:00

I read several of the blogs at the blog host ScienceBlogs. In fact several are on my blog roll. One that I don't link is Pharyngula. I've mentioned in a previous post the frustrations I've had commenting there. PZ Myers, the publisher (owner?) of the blog posted a cartoon lambasting libertarians (it was, IMHO, on point to an extent) and asking if they have a sense of humor. The self-righteous, holier than thou (but in a Godless way) chest thumping began immediately.

Now, I have libertarian leanings, though I well recognize the shortcomings of the doctrinaire libertarian agenda, particularly on a finite planet where we're going through all resources like an alcoholic goes through a bottle of gin (not speaking hypothetically here). But, being a glutton for punishment and suffering from SIWOTI syndrome, I waded in. The model of Pharyngula is as follows: PZ Myers writes on a subject of derision (typically involving one of a few subject areas such as intelligent design, theism, Catholicism in particular, etc.) and then the participants pile on and deride. It's almost competitive.

I didn't support the libertarian position per se but I pointed out that, for such an enlightened congregation, they sure did seem like a bunch of (quoting myself here - see comment #216) insufferable, self-congratulatory windbags after screen name Azkyroth declared a characteristic of libertarians to be (comment #26) "insufferable smug self-righteousness" without a hint of irony. Well, of course a spiralling war of name-calling ensued with me using such words as sycophant, accusing them of tribal and herd-like behavior, and mentioning that they had a devotion to PZ that seemed like worship of a god (as an aside, to offer a counterexample to my assertion that they simply fall in line, Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom, pointed out that there had been disagreement on whether video games are art). I actually forswore name-calling after a few rounds, though I did state on multiple more occasions that I felt they were pack-like. I do and they are.

For my trouble, I was called: arsehole, asshole, fuckwit, arrogant idiot, Asshole of the Road (that's pretty clever, huh?), a sad little man, snarky asshole, fuckwit of the road, a moronic fucking asshole, and a dicknosed clownshoed fuckburger (though there was an element of irony in this last - see comment #367). The "troll" and "tone troll" accusations were plentiful, but that's to be expected. Then, in comment #377, a_ray_in_dilbert_space offered the following (quoted in its entirety):

KOTR, Have you in fact observed interactions here at Pharyngula? I would call your attention to something you might have missed. To wit, the blog functions in an almost entirely unregulated manner. Comments are posted immediately. No pre-monitoring. No censorship. And yet, the signal to noise ratio is higher here than at most blogs where monitoring is much more heavy-handed.

Now ask yourself: How does that work? How is it that a blog on evolution, biology, atheism and liberal politics is not completely overrun by the much more numerous and vociferous Faux News crowd? When you understand that and understand the role "tone" plays in that process, you might understand the dynamics here a bit better.

I think his point is that the insult hurling and name calling directed at dissenters keeps the signal to noise ratio high by keeping the riff raff out. I don't frequent Faux News (the closest I come is an occasional bout of self-flagellation at Watts Up With That) but, by reputation, the denizens thereof do not shy from such battles. I leave it to readers to conclude whether a_ray's point is well-taken.

The misrepresentations of my comments, the tortured logic, and the failure to comprehend in the zeal to take me down were manifest, but too numerous to list. As an example, Kagehi, in comment #231, was bemoaning the fact that in Arizona, you can't challenge being fired unless you can show that you were fired because you're in a protected class (among many other complaints about the perceived lack of employee rights in Arizona).

I replied as follows: "So, a job is your right? Should you also be able to force another company to hire you? Should the government determine how many employees your employer has? Where they locate their facilities? When you get promoted? What furniture you have in your office? What else? When a fired employee sues and loses, will the government pay the company for its defense? Will they implement any sort of penalty for such suits being brought frivolously?" Multiple subsequent comments, despite my pointing out that it was incorrect, assumed that I'd implied that Kagehi stated that these things had happened. I implied no such thing, but Kagehi clearly wants at least one of them to happen as evidenced by his complaint in #341 that companies can "refuse you work for purely arbitrary reasons."

All in all, I learned from it. But SIWOTI syndrome is a disease that has flareups, so it's possible I'll go back there again.

The consequences of turning

2010-04-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

In my post on Highway m.p.g. I recommended always travelling in such a way that your destination is at a lower elevation than your starting point. And in my post on headwinds I believe I showed conclusively that one should always travel with, rather than against, the wind. But to these, I'd like to add another recommendation: always travel in such a way so as to have no need to turn.

Turning a vehicle uses extra fuel in an obvious way, i.e., it increases the distance traveled. But it uses extra fuel in another way as well. As noted by Sir Isaac Newton, changing the momentum of an object requires a force - this is his famous "second law of motion," commonly summarized as "F=m*a." But momentum is a vector quantity (it has both magnitude and direction) so changing direction at a constant speed means momentum is changing. This requires a force which the road applies to the vehicle through the tires (in reaction to the tires applying this force to the road - Newton's third law of motion). This force must ultimately originate in the prime mover of the vehicle and, for internal combustion driven vehicles, must come from the burning of fossil fuels.

So how much fuel are we talking about here? I've calculated the forces involved in traveling in a straight and level line at 55 m.p.h. before, in my vehicle this takes a force of about 805 newtons. If I look at a circle with a circumference of 3.667 miles (this was chosen only to make it a four minute circle at 55 m.p.h.) and hence a radius of 939.2 meters (slightly less than a kilometer) then, utilizing the equation for centripetal force (F=m*(v^2/r)) I can determine that the force required to turn the vehicle is 1,777 newtons. This force must be developed in addition to the 805 newtons required to overcome aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance. Thus, driving in this particular circle more than triples the amount of force required at 55 m.p.h. and hence more than triples the fuel used to travel any given distance in this manner.

Now, obviously, unless you have a number and a bunch of corporate logos on your car, you won't be driving continuously in a circle but this does illustrate the effect of having to apply the force required to make the car turn. Thus Rob's rules of fuel efficient driving are as follows:

Travel downhill only
Travel downwind only
Do not turn

Follow these three simple rules and I promise you dramatically improved gas mileage!

Update: DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU! In my rush to get a post done in April, I made the simplest of freshman physics errors. Thanks to Ed Davies (see comments) for causing me to give it enough thought to see the error. There's no question about the centripetal force, however, no energy is added to the car. This makes sense - its mass doesn't change (reduces slightly, actually, as fuel is burned); it's speed doesn't change; and it doesn't change its position in a field. So both its kinetic and potential energy are constant. What gives? Well, energy is added by work being done on an object. It's true that the road exerts a force on my vehicle but that force is perpendicular to the instantaneous displacement of the vehicle at all times. The centripetal (road on car) force is directed to the center of the circular path, the displacement is tangential. Work is the product of force times displacement IN THE DIRECTION OF THE FORCE (defined as the vector dot product of the force and the displacement). Since there is never any displacement in the direction of the force, no work is done on the vehicle and thus no energy is added and the engine needn't do any more work.

As to my comment about the airplane, it stays at a constant altitude and slows down, thus its energy is reduced. So, does that mean that it's doing work on its environment? It does, reflected in the motion of the air displaced.

The rules will still work - a straight path is the shortest so you'll use less fuel by always travelling in a straight line. But your miles per gallon won't go up. And I could quibble by saying that taking turns deforms the tires and point out the hysteresis losses in going into and out of turns. But really, I just goofed.

How does one blush online?

Not to pooh pooh NASA, MIT, et al, but...

2010-04-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

In my blog list is a link to a site entitled "Altternative Energy. It's an interesting site and frequently has items well worth reading and other times more silly or trivial. But today I saw an article about an aircraft called the "Puffin. This is a concept aircraft designed by one Mark Moore, a NASA aerospace engineer. The article quotes briefly from and links to the NASA site about the Puffin.

It's a single person vehicle ostensibly capable of vertical take offs and landings and a top speed of 150 m.p.h. (thought it's stated that the Puffin is more efficient at lower speeds). It's 12 feet long with a wingspan of 14.5 feet. It's stated to weigh 300 pounds empty, with 100 pounds for batteries and 200 pounds of payload (pilot and baggage). It's electrically powered and its motors develop 60 horsepower. Its range "with current battery technology" is stated to be about 50 miles.

Well. First, it doesn't exist, even as a prototype. But Analytical Mechanics Associates has produced an animation that can be seen in a YouTube video. According to the video, a one third scale validation model was to have been tested in March for hover capability, with transition to forward flight demonstrated after that. I have been unable to determine if these test flights have actually taken place.

But what about the plausibility of such a craft? Let's start with battery capacity. I'm going to assume the Puffin will achieve its 50 mile range at 100 m.p.h. I'll also assume that the 60 horsepower are required to achieve the top speed of 150 m.p.h. Since power required varies generally with the cube of speed for forces, such as aerodynamic drag, that vary with the square of speed, I can roughly estimate that the Puffin will require 60/1.5^3 (1.5 is the ratio of 150 m.p.h. to 100 m.p.h.) or about 17.8 horsepower. I'll be generous to the claims and assume zero reserves of energy. Thus, the batteries must supply 17.8 horsepower for 30 minutes to go 50 miles at 100 m.p.h. Googling (17.8 horsepwer)*30 minutes in kilowatt hours returns the conversion to the 6.64 kilowatt hours that are required.

Moving on to this excellent battery site I find that Lithium-ion batteries have the highest energy density available currently at 128 watt-hours/kilogram. Thus, I'll need 6,640/128 or 51.9 kilograms of batteries. This mass weighs 114 pounds here on Earth. This 6,640 watt-hour battery pack will cost an estimated $28,000.

For fun, I ran through the same calculation at 50 m.p.h. (the stalling speed in forward flight is not indicated, nor are such aerodynamic characteristics as flat plate area, propeller efficiency, lift/drag ratios at various speeds, etc.) and determined that, with no energy to spare the batteries must store 1,660 watt-hours of energy weighing 28.6 pounds and costing $7,090. But this battery pack could only maintain 150 m.p.h. for a little over two minutes.

OK, let's finally figure a 100 pound Li-ion battery pack. This 45.4 kilogram pack should provide about 5,810 watt hours. That capacity will provide 60 horsepower for just slightly under eight minutes. And remember, this is to "dry tanks" and includes no increment for such things as vertical takeoff and transition to level flight (very energy intensive phases for aerial vehicles with which I'm familiar). Finally, let's realistically assume that it would be nice to have a 10% reserve. How fast can you fly to have a 50 mile range with the 100 pound battery pack and have such a reserve? It's kind of a nitpicky problem in algebra and units, but the answer is about 89 m.p.h.

So my conclusion is that, while the claims may not actually be false, they seem quite misleading. You may be able to go 50 miles (and glide, powerless, to a landing); you may be able to go 150 m.p.h.; you may be able to take off vertically with a payload of 200 pounds; but you won't be able to load up 200 pounds, take off vertically, and fly 50 miles at 150 m.p.h. to your destination.

PA32R-301T

2010-04-04T15:27:00.000-07:00

That's the model number of my Piper Saratoga, a 1981 model. Now, I know what you're thinking (at least if you haven't followed my blog for long and maybe even if you have). What's a guy who writes about energy savings, fuel efficiency, and peak oil doing in a private airplane?

The answer is that I've wanted to fly since being a small child and thus I acquired my Airman Certificate ("pilot's license") in 1981. In 2001, well before I began to concern myself with energy related matters, I acquired the airplane. I've been all over the country in it, and have flown it for around 500 hours.

As transportation security measures have increased, the attractiveness of driving to the hangar, performing the preflight inspection, taxiing out and flying to the airport nearest my destination (as opposed to an air carrier airport) becomes more and more attractive. This increases the range I'm willing to fly myself. There are drawbacks as well: I don't have the weather capabilities of the airlines; outside of about 650 (nautical or 748 statute) miles I'll need to stop for fuel; adverse winds have a huge effect on ground speed; and it's quite costly. For very long distances, the airlines are significantly faster though with the hub and spoke system, one hour early arrivals, waiting for baggage, and other delays, the distance at which airlines are faster door to door is longer than one might think. Also, for business meetings, having my transportation ready when I am means that I don't have to leave early to catch my flight.

Parsing the model number, PA stands for Piper Aircraft, it's the 32 series (no significance to that), R indicates that its landing gear is retractable (chicks don't dig fixed gear), 301 is the maximum continuous horsepower of the Lycoming TIO540-S1AD engine (actually, it's one more for some obscure reason), and T indicates turbocharging. As to the engine, T is turbocharged, I is injected, O is (horizontally) opposed (cylinders), 540 cubic inches is the displacement. It's a "dash S1AD" variant, the nomenclature has no obvious significance.

So I have a turbocharged aircraft capable of developing about 300 horsepower. This power is only used on takeoff and initial climb, typical cruise power is about 70% of this number or about 210 horsepower. Just for fun, if I assume that the engine efficiency at this power setting is 25% and that there are about 125*10^6 joules in a gallon of avgas, my airplane should burn 18.04 gallons/hour. I actually run at a flow of about 18 gallons/hour as shown on my fuel flow meter (pilots, obviously continuously concerned with fuel, think in terms of pounds or gallons per hour). As I've repeatedly stated, I just love it when calculations and data or two methods of calculation agree.

These 18 gallons at 13,000 feet will typically take me about 168 nautical miles or 193 statue miles (the "knot" is one nautical mile or 6080 feet per hour). So, in terrestrial terms, I get 193/18 or 10.7 m.p.g. Not really so good. The Saratoga is known as a bit of a sky-borne SUV, it has six seats and three baggage areas. It's a little draggy and a bit heavy in comparison to piston single engine airplanes.

For a given amount of shaft power, the airspeed achieved (at any particular "density altitude") is controlled by propeller efficiency and total drag. I can increase my range and consequently my "specific range" (miles per gallon) by flying at slower airspeeds. At about 140 knots (a bit over 160 m.p.h) I can reduce the fuel flow to around 10 gallons/hour. This works out to 16 m.p.g., more along the lines of what you might expect for a fuel thirsty road vehicle.

But one of the main reasons people buy airplanes is to go fast, and so I rarely use this method. It can, however, result in a quicker trip if the extended range results in the elimination of a fuel stop. Such a stop typically adds about 45 minutes to a trip. But really, by the time I've been in the plane over five hours, I'm ready for a stop.

Finally, if I put passengers in three of the five seats remaining (more than that results in the need to fly with partial fuel loads, thus reducing range) I can achieve a reasonable figure for "passenger miles per gallon" of 42.8. To be candid, that rarely happens though. No amount of mental gymnastics can make N8409Y a fuel efficient way to travel.

A man whose self-love knows no bounds

2010-03-31T19:13:00.000-07:00

My greatest daily number of hits ever came subsequent to my Psychologist in the house post. The visitors came primarily from Marc Morano's "Climate Depot" site. He's a "denialist" (from the mainstream climatology side) or a "skeptic" (from those who disagree with mainstream climatology on anthropogenic global warming) whose specialty seems to be torpedoing what he perceives to be the liberal dogma. Among other accomplishments, he spearheaded the Swift Boat attack on Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.

There's no question that he's a superb ex tempore debater and an effective advocate for the Alfred E. Neuman position on anthropogenic global warming. His site claims to be a clearinghouse for news on climate science and policy, but it had best be a certain kind of news.

But if there's one thing Morano loves more than s _ _ _ stirring, it's Marc Morano. He's a veritable mother lode of self-citation. In order to keep track of his self-citation, I'm going to start logging the occurrences of "Morano" on his site. I'll periodically report, with raw data as well as trend analysis. Does anyone think I can get Steve McIntyre interested? In any event, yesterday's count was 24, today's is 26.

Update: Climate Depot's "Morano" count hovered in the mid '20s for a couple of weeks; but in the last couple of days has dropped to four. I wonder if he stopped by here?

Leasing the sun

2010-03-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

There may be many such firms but I've been hearing radio commercials for a company called "Solar City." The business model is to provide rooftop photovoltaic systems at little or no initial cost. Solar City maintains ownership of the system and leases it to the home or business owner. The claim is that the total cost to the owner (lease payment plus paying for the much smaller amount of electricity used) is less than the electric bill prior to installing the system. They have a javascript application in which you install such information as your typical electric bill, your zip code (then followed by actually pointing to your house on a map), your roof slope and direction, and your electricity provider. It then returns a 15 year projection of savings, with a graphical representation of lease payments, electric bills, and the electric bills that would have been paid. There's an estimated rate of increase built in. The result of my initial inquiry looks like this:

Note that, at the outset, I can save $4.00/month. Not a lot. But I used my current electric energy usage. What if I significantly increase my usage by the purchase of a Nissan Leaf? In my post on the subject I estimated that I'd need to utilize about 17.5 kilowatt hours per day to charge the Leaf. Now, of course, I'd be charging it during the daytime rather than at night so the system would need to be sized for my use other than the Leaf plus the 17.5 kilowatt hours per day, a total I'd estimate at about 66 kilowatt hours per day. Though the javascript application doesn't allow one to play with such fine points as what can be run during the day and during the night and the system doesn't allow for storage, adding the Leaf makes a difference:

Ah, $7/month, now we're getting somewhere. Of course, the Leaf is also busily saving me money. Further, it's better to have $7/month than not to have it and I could save a few bucks more by replacing my wife's car with a Leaf. Or not.

Now, in principle, I've eliminated a large portion of my carbon footprint (moreso if I can ~~coerce~~ persuade my wife as well). If I could really do so, and if the solar system replaced 90% of of my household electricity and all of the energy use of mine and my wife's cars, using the information used in preparing this post and this post I can estimate that as much as 25% of my family's carbon footprint could be eliminated. This is well under the 95% that would appear to be required, but it's better than replacing incandescent bulbs with compact florescent bulbs. After appropriate due diligence, I may do so.

Baseball: thirsty sport

2010-03-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

I follow a few sports, chief among them are Major Leauge Baseball, NFL Football, college football, and NHRA drag racing. I'm not a zealot and can't quote statistics as many can but I'm emotionally invested in the outcomes. But clearly, these sports and all others require the use of some form of fossil fuels; would their elimination make a big difference in our overall consumption? As I've mentioned, the "Fermi Problem approach" to such questions appeals to me. As it turns out though, it's a difficult problem, at least for me.

I've completed my Fermi analysis of three sports (Major League Baseball, college football, and NFL football). I did this at a very superficial level, only estimating the fuel used by the fans driving to the games and travel by the participating teams. Such a calculation involves estimating the answers to a myriad of data points, among others: how many games per season; how many fans at each game; how many fans in each vehicle attending the game; how far the average vehicle traveled to and from the game; what is the average fuel economy of the vehicle used; how far and by what means did the visiting team travel to the home team's venue; what is the fuel economy of the means utilized by the visiting team; and others. I didn't estimate the coal burned in field lighting, the natural gas used in heating the hot dogs and nacho cheese, the coal burned to power the HDTVs watched by fans not actually attending the game, and many others.

With those limitations in mind, the results of my speculation are as follows (in decreasing order of fuel used):

College Football: 9.0*10^6 barrels/year
Major League Baseball: 4.2*10^6 barrels/year
NFL Football: 1.0*10^6 barrels/year

I arbitrarily speculate that NBA basketball uses considerably less fuel than Major League Baseball not because an NBA team plays fewer games per season (since visiting teams in baseball typically play several consecutive games at each location) but rather because the venues are smaller and thus fewer fans travel to each game. Similar considerations apply to hockey. I think each of the major motor sports (NHRA, NASCAR, IRL) use much less still, because there is only a single event each active week, though it extends over multiple days. A similar consideration applies to golf.

In each of the sports I estimated, by far the largest fuel use was by fans traveling to the games. This use was typically an order of magnitude larger than that by team travel (anywhere from 8 to 40 times as large). And finally, the use by the three sports I estimated totals about 0.19% of our nation's annual oil consumption of about 7.5*10^9 barrels/year. Let's suppose that the sports I've looked at represent 10% of the oil consumed in all sports, then "sport" would be responsible for about 2% of U.S. oil consumption. I suspect this is high, since the fuel is consumed primarily by individuals and the "average person" I know likely doesn't use 2% of her oil consumption on sports. Thus, elimination of all spectator sporting activities is yet one more way not to get us out of our energy dilemma.

34 Max?

2010-02-21T16:51:00.000-08:00

Through a series of links, I wound up at a blog advocating mechanically (or electronically, I presume) limiting the maximum speed of passenger vehicles to 55 kilometers/hour (34 m.p.h.). Scott (the blog's publisher) lists the benefits, among others as: elimination of oil imports; reduction of CO2 emissions to below 1970's levels;
reduced loss of life and reduced injuries in motor vehicle accidents; reduced air pollution from exhaust; reduced particulates from tire wear; reduced energy in automobile manufacturing due to smaller and lighter components; reduced expenditure for infrastructure maintenance; increased motivation to use (now comparatively much faster) public transportation; and others.

He addresses many of the objections he anticipates as well, though I doubt that many who contemplate his suggestion will agree that he has adequately done so. He moderates his comments and states that a huge portion of the comments he's received consist only of name calling and doesn't publish them. In fact, there are very few comments published. I left several; time will tell if he publishes them.

And though a few of the comments I posted related to his erroneous use of "exponentially" and his stating that aerodynamic drag (as opposed to power required to overcome it) varies with the cube of speed (rather than the square), my main point of contention was that he makes broad claims (elimination of oil imports, reduction of CO2 emissions to pre-1970's levels) with no data or calculations to support them. This is something I try never to do, as claims without backup are plentiful on the 'tubes. I'm willing to be convinced, but he'll have to convince me.

Further, I am instinctively opposed to mandates and top down controls, so I suggested that the externalities of fast driving be paid for by those doing the driving, probably by a tax. With OBD-II on all modern cars, this could easily be accomplished at registration renewal time without big brother-like GPS tracking. The idea would be that people would be taxed on the extent to which they exceeded, on average, some speed and probably multiplied by the number of miles driven. I can already hear the howling!

But let me do his job and suppose such a thing was done. Would we eliminate oil imports? This needs to be a two part question because we'd use less energy to travel and use less energy to manufacture automobiles. For the first part, I'm going to assume that the adjustment has been made and that enough of the new variety of cars optimized for such a maximum speed are on the road to use them as the de facto standard. In the real world, that will take a while but let's see where it leads us.

We used (in 2005) 320,500,000 gallons of gasoline per day at 17.2 m.p.g. I made liberal (but not completely unrealistic) assumptions on vehicle characteristics of weight, drag coefficient, rolling resistance, and area and calculated in the usual way - details can be provided if requested- and determined that we'd be able to get vehicles achieving about 134 m.p.g. after this rule is implemented and the situation stabilizes as described. At that rate, we'd save about 87.2% of the gasoline we now use, or 279,000,000 gallons per day. Now, we get about 19.5 gallons out of a barrel of oil, so we'd save about 14.3 million barrels per day. This is, in fact, more than we import so Scott is correct. This doesn't even include savings from reduced energy use in manufacturing lighter vehicles. I'll attack that, and CO2, in a subsequent post.

Who's in?