Chorley is dry

sorry lee, i'll see pauls 25 feet and raise to 12 ish feet in a straight line - my 'office' is directly under my bedroom although the walk down the stairs is a bit longer.
fuel cells look to be the thing the automotive industry is pinning their hopes on with biofuels filling the gap.
cheers

julian

 

I think that's very much an assumption.

The BBC says it's going to be sunny in Stirling on Saturday. If it rains they were wrong. Joe Green's Climate Change Advisory Panel says the Gulf Stream will be flowing the other way by 2075 it's a bit of a wait to find out if he's right.

Paul

 

Of course, it's piss-easy to make a climate change model work when you have some weather data all the way back to the 1500s to compare it against, ie, running the model from say, 1890-1990, and seeing how far out of whack your model is compared to the real data. Try predicting the FUTURE to that kind of resolution (ie, how hot, will it rain, etc, a day ahead) though and see how far you get - it wasn't so long ago that a 1-day forecast was as accurate as the 5-day ones are now. Think about it...

 

hehe, fair play Julian.

Ya i think fuel cells are the future, I saw on Top Gear that GM have a car (not in production yet) that runs on these, costs about $1m at the moment but has potential.

 

The climate has been changing for 4 billion years, give or take. 500 years of variably accurate data isn't obviously a sound basis for an empirical model...

Paul

 

How do the fuel cells work? Surely producing the hydrogen and oxygen gas uses a fair amount of energy in itself, even if water is the only bi-product at the end of use?

 

No idea Dom, I don't have an engineering O Level They were keeping very tight lipped about it on the program.

I'd be ok at a google exam though What is a fuel cell, This peice of text is interesting not sure how workable it is, but just think you could create teh Hydrogen from your compost bin, how cool would that be.

Could this be the holly grail, a never ending supply of fuel? Sounds too good to me, there has to be a catch (which of course there is its high development costs).

 

unfortunately entropy means that you'll never get that perfect water - hydrogen - water cycle as you still need to dump energy into the process - if you imagine a fuel cell as a nifty better battery then you'll not be far off. what is needed is heavy investment on making solar energy work - it's the only real sustainable source of energy with a future - it also has minimal environmental impact - we should be putting large mirrors / collectors in space and either focussing raw sunlight onto solar farms or converting it in space and beaming it down as microwaves once down here we can do what we want with the stuff from making hydrogen for fuel cells to working out what tesla was on about when he spoke about electrical transmission without wires.
ANY other root source of energy needs a finite resource as fuel and so will run out and/or have an impact on the environment. yes the sun is a finite resource but when that runs out who's gonna care and we're not going to make the sun burn any faster by collecting waste energy that would otherwise dissipate in deep space. hell after a while we should grind up the solar system and make a niven ring or dyson sphere then we'd be sorted. i'll get back in me box now.....
cheers


julian.

 

Bio-Ethanol is one form of Solar Energy

 

if you want to be pedantic pretty much any energy we can use is solar energy in one way or another.

 

Yep, thats why people who scream global warming at every opportunity make me laugh, because in reality, its all just speculation.

 

Been watching too much Star Trek there Julien !

 

freeman dyson is a respected scientist who proposed the dyson sphere as a way of collecting more or the suns energy. currenly only about 1 billionth of the suns output fall on the surface of the earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

much as i enjoy star trek as escapist enjoyment it does have a tendancy to turn real science into 'startrek science' and therefore rule it out a possible in most peoples minds.
cheers


julian

 

You also need a flux capacitor if you're going to run on Mr Fusion:


That said, biogas/hydrogen from rotting veg sounds like a good idea.

My problem with solar (well, photo-voltaic anyway) is - how much energy does it take to make a solar cell, in comparison to the amount of energy it can re-release?

As for nuclear/Chernobyl - I realise you can't judge nuclear power on one accident, but let's face it - a nuclear facility blowing up is far far worse than the muck a coal-fired station belches out. Also, how do you successfully and safely get rid of all the waste matter? Also, Chernobyl 4 was an inherently unsafe (ie, didn't fail safe) design - one which is still in use in many places around the world. More recent designs are safer mind you.

Having said all that, one of the highlights of my life so far was a school trip to Hinkley Point A in 1990 - now THAT was a day worth going to school for - one very interesting little visit. T'was a bit weird wearing a geiger counter for the day, but seeing them changing a fuel rod was pretty cool. I didn't see Homer Simpson anywhere - assume he was taking a tea break...

 

dom,
you wouldn't be reliant on photo-voltaic cells for example a mirror is used to concentrate sunlight on a generator satelite - the satelite uses a closed steam turbine to generate electricity - condensing is done using vacuum / shade as the coolant so you get that for free. the energy generated is transmitted as microwaves back to a base station - with various failsafes to ensure the beam remains focussed and on target. what you have then is minimal loss from atmospheric effects and a damn clean, pretty much infinitely renewable energy source. biggest problem is the up front and any repair costs but hopefully if some of the privateer spaceships 'get off the ground' so to speak we'll see this sort of thing in the future.,
cheers


julian

 

The problem with photo-voltaics is that they have a short life. The ones you can install on your roof will have fallen to something like 50% efficiency after 20 years and have to be replaced. This makes rooftop solar a VERY expensive proposition (and that's before you add in the batteries you'll need if you want to go off-grid).

 

Really I didn't think they where that bad, you've been doing your home work I can see, what so about wind if that just as problematic. I'm serioulsy considering having solar for the hot water, I'll cost £3k to install solar water system but to replace my boiler (which eats through gas like its going out of fashion) is the same price, but I don't know anyone who's had this done, I want to get some good advice and avoid the cowboys.

 

Solar hot water is a much better idea as the installation is much cheaper and should last donkeys years with minimal maintenance. You'll still need to top it up with gas in winter though.

 

Solar hot water is used a lot in Portugal. Cheap to install and works a treat.

Michael.