CA ISO system status

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

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?

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"

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, in unaccelerated cruise flight, 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?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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??

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

Click here to visit the original.

Subsidies, no, no subsidies...

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

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

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.