A telling symptom of crackpottery

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

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

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:

1. Travel downhill only
2. Travel downwind only
3. 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...

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

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 become 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

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

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

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?

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?

The Nissan Leaf

I've posted a couple of times on supplying the necessary electrical energy to replace our passenger automobile fleet with electric vehicles, and I also discussed the Chevy Volt. An all-electric vehicle appears ready to enter the fray in late 2010 - the Nissan Leaf. While Nissan seems to be playing it close to the vest (the vehicle's weight and price as well as many other specifications are not given), between Nissan's site and Autoblog's site some conclusions can be reached.

Let's look at the combined aerodynamic and rolling resistance efficiency of the vehicle. The Leaf is claimed to deliver about 100 miles on a full charge, the lithium ion battery pack capacity is stated to be 24 kilowatt-hours or about 86.4 megajoules. The electric motor is less than 100% efficient in its use of the energy in its source. Based on this page and the 80 kilowatt (or 107 horsepower) motor in the Leaf I'll use 92% (the table shows the minimum as 91.7%). Also, the Leaf site discusses "0% to 100% charge" so I'm going to assume that the vehicle uses all 24 kilowatt-hours of energy in the battery pack to go 100 miles. Thus, the Leaf uses .92*24=22.1 kilowatt hours or 79.6 megajoules to go 100 miles.

How does this compare to "miles per gallon?" The 79.6 megajoules is the energy in about .66 gallons of gasoline, but the internal combustion engine is quite inefficient so I'll use 22%. Then we'd be considering a car that goes 100 miles on (0.66/0.22) or about 3 gallons. Thus, we're looking at a car whose efficiency in terms of aerodynamics and rolling resistance is about that of a gasoline burning car getting 33 m.p.g. Seems quite reasonable, though certainly not awe inspiring.

How about cost? I drive about 62 miles per day year around, so I'd use about 62/100 of a full charge, or about 14.9 kilowatt-hours from the battery pack. Let's assume the charging system is 85% efficient, so I need (14.9/.85) or 17.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity. This would probably be at a marginal rate of $0.17/kilowatt-hour since I'd invariably be over my baseline rate with the City of Anaheim. So I'd spend 17.5*0.17 or  $3.01 per day on energy to drive. This is, of course, $3.01/62 or $0.049/mile. Right now in my Land Rover LR3 HSE I'm spending about $0.14/mile on gasoline. The Leaf would provide considerable savings, amounting, in the course of a year, to about $2,060. Certainly, that's nothing at which to sneeze (grammatical pedant that I am).

As to performance, the Leaf boasts a torque (from a dead stop) of  280 Newton-meters (208 pound-feet) and a top speed of over 140 km/h (87 mph). It will accept a full charge from a compatible 220 volt system in about 8 hours, about twice that from a 110 volt circuit. At a suitable quick charge station, it will take an 80% charge in under half an hour and a boost good for about 35 miles in about 10 minutes. Such suitable stations are, at the moment, mostly a distant dream however.

What about creature comforts? It appears to be quite comfortable, modern, and light. It will have room for at least four adults, MP3 connections via USB, a proprietary system built into the satellite navigation system to indicate charging facilities within range, systems to allow one to receive emails from the car on their smart phone and to control certain functions (heating, cooling, etc.) remotely via that smart phone. All things considered, I'm going to look very closely at the vehicle when it becomes available.

Addendum: How much might I reduce my costs if I built a solar charging system to charge the vehicle's battery pack during my working hours? I went here to find the insolation available, using average insolation, the month of March, and a horizontal flat plate to see this map:

Conservatively, 4.5 kilowatt-hours/meter^2/day are available on average. If I'm fortunate, maybe I can create a collector of 2 meter^2. If I'm even more fortunate and technology smiles, perhaps I can find cells with 18% efficiency and provide circuitry to charge the vehicle. Thus, I'd get 2*4.5 kilowatt-hours*0.18 or about 1.6 kilowatt-hours. This would be enough to bring the vehicle from, say, 65% charged to 71.7% or to go a little less than an extra seven miles.  To bring it from fully discharged to fully charged would take a little under 15 days. I can do perhaps a little under twice as well in June but still, seemingly not worth the trouble and expense.

More reasons to be embarrassed to be called conservative

I am really not interested in having this become a political blog but, as mentioned in earlier posts, I want to be conservative. That is, I want to conserve our natural and cultural heritage, I want to conserve our resources, our civil liberties as enshrined in the Bill of Rights and elsewhere in the Constitution and its amendments, I want to conserve the rule of law, I want to conserve what's left of our nation's wealth.

So what am I to make of the descriptor "conservative" being used to characterize people who hold opinions such as those expressed by the participants in this clip? Here we see, as we saw with Bush, a celebration of intellectual laziness in the guise of condemning the "elite." We wouldn't think of such condemnation of elite athletes, but by God let no one more learned than Homer Simpson dare to govern us.

When one is expected to apologize for holding informed opinion based on study and inquiry and to celebrate a so-called "leader" who can't remember the list "energy, budget tax cuts, lift American spirits" it's about time to pack it in.

The Onion vs. The Science Channel

I've mentioned on several occasions my level of disappointment with the Discovery Network's lineup of channels and shows and the extent to which they have debased the original concept of bringing some level of scientific authenticity to the wasteland that is television. But a big hat tip to Michael at Only In It For The Gold for pointing me to the far superior Onion treatment.



Udate: So I'm watching "G Word " ("G" is for green, I suppose) on Planet Green (a Discovery Channel) and the host, Summer Rayne (think Johnny Rivers - "taps at my window"), is in Abilene, TX interviewing someone from AES Energy Systems at their Buffalo Gap wind energy facility. It's not really bad until Ned Hall, their President, says "this machine is 1.5 megawatts." Summer asks "and what does that mean?" Hall says "it's enough electricity for your home for the whole year." Ummm, an analogous inanity would be me saying "my car goes 125 miles per hour. That's enough to go from here to San Francisco." And this, let me repeat, is the President of an energy company.

Climate "reparations"

In my post on my family's carbon footprint I concluded that we are major offenders. My friend Michael Tobis of the blog "Only In It For The Gold" provided a link to an interview by Amy Goodman of the Democracy Now web site, television, and radio program. The interview was with Naomi Klein, an author and journalist with a decidedly anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, some would say anti-western point of view (though I snarkily note that her books are for sale at the usual outlets).



The interview centered on the contention that the (primarily western) countries most responsible for the carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas) emissions should be responsible for both the most drastic reductions in emission rates (i.e., primarily in the reduction in the burning of fossil fuels) and for providing the capital to developing countries likely to be most affected by climate change for mitigation of the effects of climate change and for steering their economies toward a trajectory of sustainable development. This latter is considered to be much more expensive than the non-sustainable model exemplified by western economies.



This certainly seems to be a reasonable position at the outset - we in the U.S. emit at about five times the worldwide average per capita and, until recently, were the largest emitter as a nation. China has now surpassed us as a nation, and this will be of note later in this post. Klein characterizes this position as "you broke it, you bought it."



We've certainly benefited from our emissions, achieving a standard of living to which many citizens of the countries demanding "reparations" aspire and doing so by converting fossil fuel to carbon dioxide and water at prodigious rates. So is it really as simple as "you Americans have emitted the carbon dioxide that will drive climate change. You must pay for the mitigation and you must pay us to develop in a way different than the one you chose."



Let's look at China and the U.S. The Union of Concerned Scientists web site shows that, in 2006 the U.S. emitted 5902.75 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, while China emitted 6017.69 million metric tons. For the U.S., this is 19.78 metric tons per capita, while for China it's 4.58 metric tons. That makes us four times as bad, right?



Sorry, I don't totally accept that. If we're "bad" for our per capita emissions, then why is China not equally "bad" for its population? The fact is, the Earth doesn't care whether a ton of carbon dioxide was emitted by one person or by five. China's land area is almost identical to that of the U.S., so it's not as if their percentage of the land area of the Earth somehow justifies their enormous population. And as China's wealth increases so will its emissions, despite China's pledge to reduce its so-called "carbon intensity."



What, then, for countries such as Bangladesh? Here's a country that is inundated regularly by flooding and is desperately poor. And yet it's the seventh most populous country in the world and has a population density 35 times that of the United States. That density has increased by about 2 1/2 times since 1970. When looked at in terms of CO2 emissions per capita, the U.S. is about 709 times as intensive as Bangladesh. When looked at by CO2 emissions per U.S. dollar of purchasing power parity adjusted GDP, the U.S. is about twice as intensive (this reflects the extremely low GDP of Bangladesh). Finally, when looked at in terms of CO2 per unit of land area, the U.S. is about 2.2 times as intensive, reflecting the large population of Bangladesh compared to the relatively small land area. Interestingly, Bangladesh has a higher economic output per unit of land area than the U.S.



While one can endlessly play games with countries' numerical data, I want to make the point that the contention that it's as easy as requiring the "rich" countries to pay for all consequences of atmospheric CO2 and for the sustainable development of the developing (poorer) nations is naive. This would, in many cases, merely be rewarding overpopulation. Overpopulation is the 700 pound gorilla in the room and, no matter what else we do or stop doing, if we don't control population it's all for naught.



No one should think, based on this, that I believe that we as a country, or that I individually can wash our/my hands of responsibility. We certainly have a huge role to play in emissions reduction, mitigation, sustainable development, and humanitarian aid to countries who "missed the boat" on the easy and carefree exploitation of fossil fuels. But totaling each country's cumulative emissions, dividing into world cumulative emissions to derive the fraction of "responsibility" for reduction, mitigation, and sustainable development investment is not something that I believe is right or that I could support.

Mundane examples of energy

I was walking up the hill to my house and started to think about energy. I thought I'd give a few examples. For starters, my "resting metabolism" is somewhere around 1900 kilocalories per day. This is energy per unit of time, or power. Using Google's terrific calculator, this converts to a more familiar figure for power, 92 watts. So it takes about the same amount of energy to run me for an hour as to light a small room for an hour.



OK, now how about the hill? Using Google Earth I find that I gained 91.1 meters in elevation on the climb. Using the National Geodetic Society's Surface Gravity Predictor I find my local gravitational acceleration to be 9.795 meters/second^2, or as Rhett over at Dot Physics prefers, 9.795 Newtons/kilogram. I know this rounds to 9.80 but it's kind of cool to find and use the more precise number. My mass is an embarrassing 84.82 kilograms, so raising it up that hill requires converting 84.82*9.795*91.1 (mass*gravitational acceleration*height) or 75,690 joules of food energy to do the work to accomplish. This is 18 kilocalories (the type referred to in nutritional discussions as "calories")or a tiny bit over four plain chocolate M&M's. I don't use the energy in the M&M's with 100% efficiency though. In this post I estimated an efficiency of 11% to 14% so I'll figure that I'd need to eat about eight times as much fuel energy or 32 plain chocolate M&M's.



Of course more is burned since I'm lifting my feet up and down, swinging my arms, etc. To estimate this, I'll add a "walking briskly" amount to the climb energy. The linked site says I'll burn about 460 kilocalories/hour in my "brisk walk." I run down the hill and walk up, so I'm going to speculate that the running aspect makes up for the energy gain of going down hill. I do try to keep my heart rate in the so-called training zone so this shouldn't be too far off. This run/walk takes me about 42 minutes, and so should burn about (42/60)*460 or 322 kilocalories. Adding the 18, my exercise burned about 340 kilocalories or 1,420,000 joules. This is also about 395 watt hours, so this amount of energy will light a room (with a 100 watt bulb) for about four hours. It's also the amount of heat energy released by the gasoline in about one and a half shot glasses. My Land Rover LR3 HSE would possess this amount of kinetic energy (not counting the energy of the rotating masses) when traveling at about 73 m.p.h.

But seriously folks...

I was watching "Planet Mechanics" (a mildly interesting show that won't save the world but makes more sense than the silly "Discovery Project Earth" series). While reading Dr. Michael Tobis' latest post in his blog "Only In It For The Gold" during a commercial break, I heard, out of the corner of my ear, a commercial for Dr. Frank's Joint and Muscle Pain Relief." The anecdotal claims being made were impressive, so I listened a little more closely and heard the word "homeopathic." Quoting a famous line from the history of my beloved White Sox, "say it ain't so Joe!"



One of my constant sorrows is the susceptibility of the American public (the only public with which I'm familiar) to the most ludicrous pseudoscientific claptrap. But to see such a product advertised on a network representing itself as educational was shocking.



Delving into the website, I perused the producer's explanation of homeopathic cures and of so-called "homeopathic provings" which they take care to explain are "entirely different than the scientific double blind study methods most people are familiar with." I just bet they are. Allow me to quote further from the site: "Homeopathic "provings" are, in essence, the proof that homeopathic scientists and doctors use to demonstrate to themselves that specific homeopathic ingredients work for specific symptoms" (emphasis mine). Nope, I'm not kidding.



The idea, as I understand it, is that you expose healthy subjects to random substances and see what symptoms are caused. Then you take the substance, dilute and agitate the substance in a special procedure ritual called "succussing" to concentrations as low as one trillionth the original (or even lower). This is then used to cure the symptom caused by the substance in its original concentration. You just can't make this stuff up (though Samuel Hahnemann could).



Of course, the practitioners of this lunacy are immersed in conspiracy theories revolving around the iron grip of "big pharma" and "allopaths" (i.e., real doctors) controlling the media, the research institutions, etc. I haven't the patience to debunk this hooey, though such sites as Quackwatch do an excellent job of it. But it pains me to see people encouraged to send money to such charlatans on an educational channel.



Update: In my noodling around to find information on this bunkum, I happened upon this site. I may have to change my template.



Update 2: Looking at their "Our Formula" page, I note that they claim 10 "homeopathic ingredients." Though there seems to be a mathematical error wherein they think 10^-6 is one ten millionth and they claim that all ingredients are diluted "one trillion times or more," it appears as if five of the ingredients are diluted to one millionth of their original concentration and five were diluted to 1 part in 10^30. Hmmm... It looks like the container holds 40ml of "substance." Considering that Avogadro's number (the number of molecules in a mole of the substance) is about 6*10^23 and a mole of water is about 18 cm^3 (or 18ml) and this is mostly water at 1 g/cm^3, there are probably somewhere on the order of 2.2 moles or 1.2*10^24 molecules in a bottle. For the ingredients being diluted to 1 part in 10^30, this means there's about a chance in 800,000 that a molecule of any such ingredient will be found in a bottle. Seriously.

What's my house worth?

I live in Southern California, an area of the country where by almost universal agreement, housing prices are completely out of touch with reality. But what does this actually mean? What "should" a house be worth? Of course the first answer is that something is worth whatever a willing buyer will pay that a willing seller will accept. Thus, my house was "worth" what I paid for it when I bought it. But no willing buyer at that price could now be found and economists say that housing values are retreating to a "more normal" level. But what does this mean?



Let me start by saying that I'm no real estate expert, nor am I an economist. I'm merely a curious person who likes to read and analyze, particularly with numbers. Now I recall reading, many years ago, an expert's opinion that a house should ultimately be valued at the net present value of the cash flows that would be available by renting the house. I can use this as a starting point and see where it gets me.



So then, what "should" be the value of a house based on the rent assumption? As is usually the case in my blog posts, I have to make some assumptions and estimates Let's assume that a household has an income of $70,000/year and can devote 35% (as is often recommended) of the 65% left after taxes, or $15,925 per year to housing. Let's further assume that this household occupies a house of 1500 ft^2 (neither excessively small nor large). Further, let's assume that the house requires about 4% of its value in maintenance each year and 2% in taxes and insurance. I'll assume that a real rate of return (net of inflation) of 7% is the minimum requirement. Finally, I'll assume that, over the "period of interest," inflation as applicable to the home purchaser is at 4%.



All right, then what amount of money would allow the receipt of $15,925/year less the taxes, insurance and maintenance to result in a return of 11%? Simplistically, the equation is 15925-.06*x=.11*x. Solving yields a house value of $93,676.47, or $62.45/ft^2. I purchased my house for dramatically more than that so, by this criterion, I overpaid. Ah, but our household income exceeds $70,000/year so it's reasonable to assume I'll rent a nicer home with my income. Adjusting the rent by the income ratio (probably a pretty bad assumption) I can estimate that I overpaid by a factor of about 1.8.



Of course, I also purchased the property my house is on, the safety of the neighborhood in which I live, the school system my children attend, etc. It's hard to put a monetary value on these things, but I could rent them as well. This isn't making me feel good, so what about the replacement value? Well, evaluating building a home with the materials in my house, together with the landscaping, hardscaping, etc. might cost about 3/4 of what I paid for the house. Adding the land value gets me somewhat closer to the actual price paid.



So what can be concluded? Well, to start, the fact that the replacement value of my property isn't that far off of what I paid for it combined with the fact that using the rental value evaluation yields a much lower number shows that Southern California housing is out of the price range of "average" incomes even without regard to the "asset bubble" aspects of it. Duh. It also may portend a continuing secular downward trend in residential real estate values. $70,000/year is not poverty level income, even in California, so I think I'd best be prepared for lower valuations.

"18 Kids and Counting (19 now)", "Quiverfull", seriously?

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 18 children (now 19 with their newest indefinitely in neonatal intensive care) are the central focus of the TLC reality show 18 Kids and Counting. And there's an Evangelical Christian movement called "Quiverfull" whose primary tenet is to eschew any form of birth control and "joyfully accept children as a gift of God" in accordance with God's direction to "be fruitful and multiply." And, in fact, the Duggars are conservative Baptists. That said, two things need to be made very clear before going on: the Duggars claim no association with the Quiverfull movement; and, though covert white supremacy motivations are sometimes attributed to the Quiverfull movement, it appears to be a genuine philosophy of adherence to the joyful acceptance of what members believe to be God's divine direction.



But, motivations aside, what impact do such decisions have? While it's a certainty that the human population does not now and has never grown at a well-defined exponential rate, this is quibbling. The Earth's population has, for the past 100 years or so, exhibited a doubling rate on the order of 60 years. While the actual number is by no means beyond debate, surely we can all agree that there's some maximum number beyond which the Earth's resources cannot support us in a standard of living we'd accept, whether that number is nine billion, 12 billion, or two billion.



This makes the celebration of a bodily function that any gerbil can master not merely inane but harmful. We've seen an increasing number of amoral fame seekers doing "whatever it takes" to achieve a low brow fame by getting onto reality shows (e.g., the balloon boy Heenes, Tareq and Michaele Salahi and the White House party crash, the so-called octomom) It seems clearly destructive to grant celebrity to those who engage in an obviously non-sustainable practice.



Regardless of where you may stand on anthropogenic global warming, carbon footprint is a reflection of energy and resources used and these are indubitably strictly limited, classical economics notwithstanding. And nothing a person can do contributes more to carbon footprint and hence resource utilization (that is, depletion) than having children. And having them in the United States, where we each use energy at the rate of 11 kilowatts is as destructive as it gets.



I remember when "TLC" stood for "The Learning Channel," but a look at their program guide shows that they left that concept behind years ago. I'm sure they did so because the American appetite for actual learning is minimal and more advertising dollars can be gleaned with reality television. This is sad to such as I of course, but I see no likelihood of a reversal of this trend. And I'm by no means in favor of the imposition of top down rules on content. But is it really necessary to celebrate a lifestyle that can hardly be beat for the expediting of the destruction of civilization?

Push lawnmower?

Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, makes the provocative claim that global warming is unstoppable. It's a very interesting argument and is reminiscent of Jevon's Paradox. I'll have to do more thinking before I post on the crux of Dr. Garrett's main argument, this post is about a minor point in the article linked above.



Garrett opines that conservation and efficiency are useless in the long term with respect to minimizing humanity's primary energy conversion but yet he bicycles to work, line dries his clothes, and uses a push lawnmower. Ah, there's something into which I can sink my meager teeth. Is using a push lawnmower more Earth friendly than an electric or gasoline mower? I'm going to make a guess and then see if I can confirm or refute the guess with numerical estimates. You'll have to trust that the guess is prior to the calculation. My guess is that the electric lawnmower is most Earth friendly, followed by the push mower with the gas mower bringing up the rear.



First, I'll have to state my definition of Earth friendly. I'm going to go with primary energy consumption for all inputs, i.e., for the electric mower it will be the electrical energy used by the mower plus the energy required to generate and transmit the electricity. The gasoline will be the gas used by the lawnmower plus all energy used in extracting, refining, and distributing the gasoline. I won't include gas for the car to go to the gas station since that trip will be added to a fuel trip for the car. For the push mower, it will be the energy used by the person pushing plus the energy used in planting, fertilizing, harvesting (or slaughtering, etc.), and distributing the food providing the energy. I won't include the embedded energy in the lawnmowers, though that may hurt the push mower. Needless to say, there's ample room for error in this analysis but damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.



Let's set the lawn as follows: 1,500 meters^2 (a little over 16,000 feet^2 or about 0.37 acres). Starting with the gas mower, I'll look at the Honda HRX217K2HMA. It has a cutting width of 21" but I'll use 20", there must be some overlap. Its maximum self-propelled speed is 4 m.p.h., I'll go with 3 as an average. Cutting 1500 meters at 20" requires 1.84 miles of mowing, at 3 m.p.h., that will take 0.613 hours. Sounds about right. The mower uses the Honda GCV190 engine, which uses 1.21 quarts/hour of gasoline. Therefore, it will use about 0.742 quarts or about 0.186 gallons to mow the lawn.



Using the estimates from my previous post, the 0.186 gallons will require a total on the order of 2.84*10^7 joules of primary energy from an oil well. To this I must add the energy required to walk 1.84 miles and using other figures from the same post, this will require 181 kilocalories or 6.4*10^6 joules of primary energy to produce. This is yields a total of 3.48*10^7 joules (Big hat tip to Chris for pointing out the factor of 100 error in my original post).



For the electric mower, I'll use a rechargeable, the Earthwise 20 in Cordless Electric Lawn Mower. I'll reduce the cutting width by an inch as for the gas mower and find that I'll travel 1.93 miles. I'll figure that I'm going a little more slowly, say 2 m.p.h., since it's not self-propelled. Thus, I'll need 0.96 hours or 58 minutes. The specification says that a charge is good for 45 minutes (give or take) so I'll need 1.29 charges. This is for a 24 volt, 17.2 ampere-hour battery that I'll assume we recharge when it's 80% discharged. Thus, a charge uses 1.19*10^6 joules and the lawn takes 1.54*10^6 joules of electricity from the wall socket. Again using figures from my earlier post linked above and assuming some fossil fuel (coal, natural gas) is used, this quantity of energy will require about 5.27*10^6 joules of primary energy to provide the battery charge.



Since the electric isn't self-propelled, I'll be working harder to push it, so I'll estimate about half again the caloric input as for the gas mower, or 9.6*10^6 joules of fossil fuel input to push it for a total of 1.49*10^7 joules total. Note that, by my estimate, it takes more fossil fuel to have me push the lawn mower than to power the swirling blades.



Finally, let's look at the manual, reel, or push mower. I'll use the Brill Razorcut 38 Push Reel Lawn Mower. The cutting width of this mower is 15.2", I'll reduce it by an inch as above and find that I have to walk 2.58 miles. Since I'm doing all the work, I'll assume that I can move at about 1.75 m.p.h. and thus I'll mow for 1.47 hours. This handy page says that, at 180 pounds, I'll burn 447 kilocalories/hour for a total of 659 kilocalories. Again going back to the earlier post linked above, producing the food to power me through this walk will take about 2.34*10^7 joules of fossil fuel energy.



It would seem that my instinct was correct. In increasing order of energetic impact, it's the electric, followed by the manual, and finally, bringing up the rear, the gas powered mower. My original analysis was off by a factor of 100 with respect to the energy contained in the gas mower's fuel burn (blush) so it isn't as bad as I'd first calculated.



Finally, take a look at what is, in my opinion, the best solution. Here's the Epic Cordless Electric Solar Mower Model EP21H. It features 45 minutes on a charge, has a 21" wide cut, and the optional solar panel will recharge it in about three sunny days. This will leave the 9.6*10^6 joules of food energy as the only fossil fuel consumption to mow your lawn.

The silliness of the "Discovery Project Earth" series

I watched "Infinite Winds" on Planet Green. This is one of a series of programs in the "Project Earth" series purporting to use technology to save the Earth. Some of them are related to energy generation, others to geoengineering. They have a team, consisting of an entrepreneur, an engineer, and a scientist to assist people with ideas. This episode features the idea of helium filled airships equipped with turbine blades and generators to capture winds above the level of interference from trees and buildings and transmit it to the ground.



The link above will take you to the so-called "lab book" for the episode. It's divided into three preliminary tests and a "Final Test." The first preliminary test is apparently meant to determine the winds at altitude. In order to determine this, Dr. Basil Singer, a "quantum physicist," uses a powered parachute and a gps system to check winds at various altitudes (though, as a pilot, I must say that I was not clear on how their system measured airspeed, a necessity when using gps ground speed to determine wind speed and direction). Unless a series of tests over a period of time is taken, this is worthless. There's ample data and well-established theory available regarding the general variation of wind with increasing elevation. Such a one-time flight is completely useless with respect to the gathering of useful data.



The next preliminary test was of the cable to connect the airship to the ground and conduct electrical energy. Dr. Jennifer L. Languell, "the Engineer," concocted a scheme to use a crane and a series of cars, lifting them with the cable. They needed to lift five cars and keep the headlights on. Now, as it happens, I'm a partner in a firm that has (get ready) test equipment for exactly this sort of thing. We can perform tensile testing ranging to 600,000 pounds force. I estimate that we could have tested five samples (when gathering data, more than one sample is nice) and given actual numerical results for the maximum tensile load, complete with load vs. displacement data while continuously monitoring electrical continuity for, oh, say... $2,500.



Wind data gathered during Dr. Singer's flight were used in a wind tunnel to model the performance of the proposed airship and turbine. Modifications were made to the prototype model to eliminate uncontrollable spinning. No detail was given with respect to how scaling laws were implemented during this testing so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the appropriate dimensionless variables were utilized.



Finally, the team went to the field (where, exactly, is a subject of dispute) with a 21 meter prototype. The first effort was a failure, mainly because the generators (mounted at each end) deformed the airship to such an extent that it failed to rotate. Two weeks later, the team reconvened, having changed the configuration of the turbine blades and added internal bracing. The airship turbine was able to finally deliver about 200 watts and was deemed a success, with hugs all around.



Now, the prototype flown is on the order of .059 times the "flat plate area" of the proposed product, so we can expect that airship to intercept about 17 times the wind of the prototype. Let's assume that the wind is, on average, 3 times as fast at the proposed height at which the airship will be flown. This yields 3^3 or 27 times the available power. Let's also generously assume they are able to triple the efficiency of the system. Then we can expect 200*17*27*3=276,000 watts or about 280 kilowatts. We read here that a megawatt is anticipated (though the show itself states that it will be 1.5 megawatts).



It should be noted that the forces on the tether will scale with the wind-facing area of the airship and the square of wind speed. The airship, in turn, must lift this cable, though the helium volume and hence the buoyant lift scales with the cube of length. And, of course, the tether itself will be subject to wind loads. I haven't run any numbers because I have insufficient data but this may be problematic. Be that as it may, Fred Ferguson, the Canadian airship engineer responsible for the concept, envisions nine million full-sized airships providing for the the majority of the Earth's electrical requirments.



To Discovery Network's credit, they include a page listing some objections to the idea that such turbine airships will replace fossil fuels. However, the show itself reminded me very much of a high school science fair project, but with more money. It's a shame that the public is given the impression that this actually constitutes science. The problems facing us with respect to energy sources and climate change are too serious for this sort of cavalier approach. I won't waste my readers' time with the other episodes in the "Project Earth" series, suffice it to say that they are no better. My advice? Stick with Bill Nye the Science Guy.

More on adoption of electric cars

In my previous post on going electric I looked at the total generating capacity in the United States as compared to average usage and the electrical requirements of replacing the U.S. personal transportation fleet with electric vehicles. Of course, this is the most cursory look possible. Among other things, as Geoffrey Styles of the blog "Energy Outlook" pointed out, efficient management of the grid via utilization of available capacity at times of low baseline consumption would be required and might even be sufficient.



It's also clear that it wouldn't be the case that on, say December 31, 2011 there would be almost no electric cars on the road (as today) and on January 1, 2012 all personal vehicles would be electric. Mathematicians have developed several methods that purport to model the adoption and spread of technology. Among these are the logistic function and the Gompertz function. So what might the adoption and market penetration of electric vehicles look like, and how quickly, if at all, would generating capacity need to be added?



In reply to President Obama's call for one million plug in hybrids and electric vehicles, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has stated that this number could be easily surpassed.



Based on a paper concluding that the logistic function best represented the adoption of cellular phones in Taiwan, I'm going look at the logistic function and adjust the coefficients so that the ultimate adoption is 235,000,000 vehicles and 2,000,000 are on the road in 2015. I'll estimate an annual growth rate of 20%. The resulting logistic equation is N = ((235x10^6) 2000000)/(2000000+233000000 e^(-0.2 t)) where N is the total number of electric vehicles and t is the time in years. Using Wolfram Alpha (if you click this link, the equation will already be input, you can change the parameters at will) the plot looks like this:







Given that it's said that readership in a blog is reduced by half for every equation posted I'm reluctant to say it but, using calculus, we can determine the rate of change of the population of electric vehicles (that is, how many electric vehicles will be added each year) and determine, at any given time, approximately how much additional demand on the grid will accrue. If we differentiate the equation above (this is kind of backwards in that the logistic equation stems from a differential equation representing the rate of change) we get: d/dt(((235x10^6) 2000000)/(2000000+233000000 e^(-0.2 t))) = (2.1902*^22 e^(-0.2 t))/(233000000 e^(-0.2 t)+2000000)^2. The plot looks like:







At the risk of completely alienating every reader, we can find the maximum rate of addition by taking the second derivative, setting it equal to 0 and solving for t. Plugging this t back into the first derivative and evaluating will give us the maximum rate of addition. But this is such a cascade of estimates that I'll spare the details and just look at the graph. It appears that the maximum rate is about 12,000,000 electric vehicles per year in 2039. That's a long way out and such predictions are obviously fraught with possibilities for error. But I don't know how to do any better.



How much capacity will these 12,000,000 added vehicles per year demand? Let's assume that each vehicle travels 12,000 miles per year and uses 0.2 kilowatt-hours/mile. Further, similarly to the previous post on electric cars linked above, I'm going to assume that the overall efficiency of the transmission and charging systems, we'll need to generate twice what the vehicle uses, or 0.4 kilowatt-hours/mile. So, we'll need to generate 12,000,000 cars*12,000 miles/car/year*0.4 kilowatt-hours/mile=57.6*10^9 kilowatt hours/year. Google's calculator conveniently converts this to 6,570 megawatts or about 6.6 gigawatts of added capacity per year required at the peak. A modern large generating facility will have a nameplate capacity of about a gigawatt so this seems eminently achievable using nuclear power or with the invention of, as my friend Michael likes to say, the boron guy.