Windkraft im Faktencheck (5 Punkte, die kaum jemand kennt)

Sehr empfehlenswert! Wie wurde Deutschland zu einer Bananenrepublik? Der enorme Ausbau der unzuverlässigen, ineffiziente, und Natur verschandelnden Windenergie ist ein tolles Beispiel dafür. So viel Dummheit!

Is hydrogen power for transportation an alternative or an option?

Advanced German navy submarines are powered by hydrogen! Only clean water vapor comes out of the exhaust. Well for a few submarines this may make sense and  is of not much concern. However, if you have millions of hydrogen powered cars driving daily in the streets of urban centers sometimes for hours, this is an entirely different situation!

How about steel production in blast furnaces powered by hydrogen?

The video does not really cover storage and safety!

How about public transportation bus fleets? They cost a lot of money!

The video also suggested we should build solar power based hydrogen generating plants in the desert. How environmentally friendly is that? 

Very annoying that this video way too frequently insists on such ideological terms as green hydrogen power or zero emissions etc.!

That some of the staff at at the DLR (German Aerospace Center) are shown with face masks. A bit pathetic!

SED Chancellor Merkel's typical hand gesture is popular

Wind Turbines Are Killing High-Conservation Birds

Recommendable! Huge, little reported scandal!

Nuclear Fusion In Compact Spherical Reactors

Posted: 5/25/2015

Trigger

Just read “The new shape of fusion”. This is a summary of current developments in tokamak fusion reactor technology. In particular, it contrasts torus versus spherical shaped tokamaks.

Compact Spherical Reactors

“ Later, one of the company's suppliers showed them a new multilayered conducting tape, made with the high-temperature superconductor yttrium-barium-copper-oxide, that promised a major performance boost.

Lacking electrical resistance, superconductors can be wound into electromagnets that produce much stronger fields than conventional copper magnets. ITER will use low-temperature superconductors for its magnets, but they require massive and expensive cooling. High-temperature materials are cheaper to use but were thought to be unable to withstand the strong magnetic fields around a tokamak—until the new superconducting tape came along. The company changed direction, was renamed Tokamak Energy, and is now testing a first-generation superconducting spherical tokamak no taller than a person.

Superconductors allow a tokamak to confine a plasma for longer. Whereas NSTX and MAST can run for only a few seconds, the team at Tokamak Energy this year ran their machine—albeit at low temperature and pressure—for more than 15 minutes. In the coming months, they will attempt a 24-hour pulse—smashing the tokamak record of slightly over 5 hours.

Next year, the company will put together a slightly larger machine able to produce twice the magnetic field of NSTX-U. The next step—investors permitting—will be a machine slightly smaller than Princeton's but with three times the magnetic field.”

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this private company or any other private company can finally pull of the feat of generating energy through nuclear fusion.

The Coal Question Revisited

Motivation & Relevance

Who and when originated those recurrent notions of “The Limits To Growth” (1972), “Peak Oil”, “Overpopulation” (1798) and the like? Something that piqued my curiosity. In my opinion, these are all fallacies or results of lazy analysis and some form of determinism.

Not surprisingly, if they are fallacious notions, then they consequently lead to wrong if not sometimes dangerous prescriptions.

The Coal Question

The book by this title is one of the best known publications by economist William Stanley Jevons (1835 – 1882).

In this book Jevons recognized the importance of energy in economic production. He raised the issue that since coal was a limited resource that sooner or later prosperity and progress would succumb to declining extraction of coal. He also contended that population growth could not continue in the face of increasing coal depletion.

Fallacies

In these cases, conclusions and forecasts are based on determinism and simplistic forecasts. Human ingenuity, the now famous unknowns and necessity is the mother of invention are omitted or overlooked.

Human Ingenuity – A little Understood Concept

Wikipedia, e.g. has a very unsatisfactory entry under human ingenuity as of 6/9/2013, which I find surprising. Even the world’s largest encyclopedia is no resource on this subject. Encyclopedia Britannica does not seem to have any entry on this subject.

Like inventions or innovations, humans are still rather clueless about scientific or technological progress.

The Bonanza Of Green River Crude Oil

Peak (Snake) oil anybody! Bury peak oil nonsense as fast as you can!

On May 10 2012, in testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the Director of Natural Resources and Environment at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, said that the “[o]il shale deposits in the Green River Formation [in the western Rocky Mountains] are estimated to contain up to 3 trillion barrels of oil, half of which may be recoverable, which is about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.” Unfortunately, most of this massive oil shale deposit lies beneath federal land, where the Obama administration and its radical environmentalist supporters can keep it locked away.

In case you do not believe me, read following:

http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/hearings/HHRG-112-%20SY20-WState-AMittal-20120510.pdf

The Curse Of Nuclear Power

Demagoguery Drowns Voice Of Reason

Recent and frequent comparisons of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Japanese nuclear power plants affected by the earthquake are at best disingenuous and at worst irresponsible demagoguery.

Post-Modern Superstition

Medieval superstition in the 21^st century against nuclear power by too many people on this planet still reigns supreme. Poor education of our children for decades in science and technology explains a lot about the paranoia surrounding nuclear power.

Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Too many people of this world are still confusing nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation since 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not nuclear power plants.

Madame Curie & Her Husband

Marie Curie, one of the giants of science and radioactivity research and humanism, is reported to have died of the side effects of long-time exposure to radioactive rays. However, she died at age 66 in 1934 She survived her beloved husband by 28 years, who died of a horse carriage accident.