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Post by nautonnier on Nov 30, 2008 22:34:48 GMT
Hi Alex4ever: We can never be certain in this world. All we can do is look at past patterns. We are in a cooling period. We just don't know what will happen next. Science makes progress by having theories, and checking them out against what happens. Long term climate change over decades is slow science! It will take many, many lifetimes to really understand what is going on. Some folk will have theories, and may predict what happens in the next few years. This does NOT make them correct. It may be just luck. Or maybe, they are right. Anyone who is absolutely sure shouldn't be trusted!! But given all the patterns, cycles and theories, many of us at this board know that something unusual with the climate is going on, which appears to be connected in some way with the solar cycle. The current cooling period may be a return to conditions of the middle of last century, or maybe to something much colder. But it is fair to warn everybody, it may get very cold soon. Unfortunately, the drop into cold appears in the past to have been a little too precipitate to be called 'slow'. Looks like a decade at most to drop into the level of cold that stops crop yields and starts wars. We are already 3 years into this. I am in Florida - so I have less cause for concern than people in more Northern latitudes. But a sudden food crisis could find everyone with a problem. Also, due to the political action against them, no new power stations are being built apart from in China. I expect rolling blackouts in the western democracies except perhaps France and Belgium who are almost totally nuclear powered. Its not a case of certainty its a case of hazard analysis - warmth and CO2 leads to more crops not less and lower energy consumption. Cold leads to reduced crop yields and more energy demand. From a hazard analysis point of view it makes more sense to prepare for cold.
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Post by Ole Doc Sief on Dec 1, 2008 4:09:28 GMT
Hi Alex4ever: We can never be certain in this world. All we can do is look at past patterns. We are in a cooling period. We just don't know what will happen next. Science makes progress by having theories, and checking them out against what happens. Long term climate change over decades is slow science! It will take many, many lifetimes to really understand what is going on. Some folk will have theories, and may predict what happens in the next few years. This does NOT make them correct. It may be just luck. Or maybe, they are right. Anyone who is absolutely sure shouldn't be trusted!! But given all the patterns, cycles and theories, many of us at this board know that something unusual with the climate is going on, which appears to be connected in some way with the solar cycle. The current cooling period may be a return to conditions of the middle of last century, or maybe to something much colder. But it is fair to warn everybody, it may get very cold soon. Unfortunately, the drop into cold appears in the past to have been a little too precipitate to be called 'slow'. Looks like a decade at most to drop into the level of cold that stops crop yields and starts wars. We are already 3 years into this. I am in Florida - so I have less cause for concern than people in more Northern latitudes. But a sudden food crisis could find everyone with a problem. Also, due to the political action against them, no new power stations are being built apart from in China. I expect rolling blackouts in the western democracies except perhaps France and Belgium who are almost totally nuclear powered. Its not a case of certainty its a case of hazard analysis - warmth and CO2 leads to more crops not less and lower energy consumption. Cold leads to reduced crop yields and more energy demand. From a hazard analysis point of view it makes more sense to prepare for cold. Wait a minute! Do you mean all those solar panels on my government building won't meet their power production estimates if it becomes cloudy and cold and snowy. And running out of storage space for spent nuclear fuel assembly which will require early shut down of one of our Nuclear Power plants will further worsen our energy production short falls. Why we might need to plan for such events,....then again, better not as that will require us to work.
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Post by jimg on Dec 1, 2008 6:09:56 GMT
Work, not entitlements?
Now there's a novel concept!
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Post by woodstove on Dec 1, 2008 14:17:09 GMT
G'day, Kiwi! I'm not sure anyone believed the negative terrain in 2000 meant a switchover. I wasn't following these things then, so I know I didn't. In terms of the current switchover, it's not my opinion, but rather that of Don Easterbrook, a respected expert on the PDO, as well as NASA, as you can see here: icecap.us/images/uploads/WashingtonPolicymakersaddress.pdf. Addressing the Washington Policymakers in Seattle, WA, Dr. Don Easterbrook said that shifting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) from its warm mode to its cool mode virtually assures global cooling for the next 25-30 years and means that the global warming of the past 30 years is over. The announcement by NASA that the (PDO) had shifted from its warm mode to its cool mode (Fig. 1) is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007) and is not an oddity superimposed upon and masking the predicted severe warming by the IPCC. This has significant implications for the future and indicates that the IPCC climate models were wrong in their prediction of global temperatures soaring 1°F per decade for the rest of the century. I agree that the Sun underlies all things oceanic/atmospheric, but I suspect it will be some time before we understand how the major ocean cycles correlate with it. I also agree that we won't know before we know when it comes to whether the PDO switchover is going to endure.
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Post by alex4ever on Dec 1, 2008 18:41:34 GMT
Does he take into account the possibility of having a major solar minimum too? He doesnt mention that. Or other factors, he only mentions just the PDO. So implications will be worse than that if something else happens at same time?
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Post by nautonnier on Dec 2, 2008 3:47:53 GMT
Unfortunately, the drop into cold appears in the past to have been a little too precipitate to be called 'slow'. Looks like a decade at most to drop into the level of cold that stops crop yields and starts wars. We are already 3 years into this. I am in Florida - so I have less cause for concern than people in more Northern latitudes. But a sudden food crisis could find everyone with a problem. Also, due to the political action against them, no new power stations are being built apart from in China. I expect rolling blackouts in the western democracies except perhaps France and Belgium who are almost totally nuclear powered. Its not a case of certainty its a case of hazard analysis - warmth and CO2 leads to more crops not less and lower energy consumption. Cold leads to reduced crop yields and more energy demand. From a hazard analysis point of view it makes more sense to prepare for cold. Wait a minute! Do you mean all those solar panels on my government building won't meet their power production estimates if it becomes cloudy and cold and snowy. And running out of storage space for spent nuclear fuel assembly which will require early shut down of one of our Nuclear Power plants will further worsen our energy production short falls. Why we might need to plan for such events,....then again, better not as that will require us to work. There's a nice job for someone - out on the roof with a brush in icy and snowy conditions trying to get the snow off the solar panels. Another one of hypothesis and practice issues. The same actually applies to windmills - the efficiency of a propeller drops significantly with only minor icing (frost) forming on the surface of the propeller. (several pilots will attest to over exciting incidents caused by sudden loss of thrust from an iced up propeller) Of course in the desert it will be dust on the solar panels that will be a real task going around a suite of solar panels the size of Arizona cleaning them, getting the roosting birds off them and removing the guano etc. I bet no-one thought of that when they said there would be jobs in provision of green energy
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Post by ron on Dec 2, 2008 4:17:05 GMT
I thought of that!
I also imagine that some person smarter than I would invent something akin to a windshield wiper to keep panels clean without having to pay someone to wipe the collection surfaces down every night.
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Post by msphar on Dec 2, 2008 4:48:48 GMT
Some other solar panel characteristics in the real world:
These things are typically spec'ed at very low operating temperatures, heat causes them to lose efficiency.
Over time they tend to lose some output as well.
Its best to rotate individual panels to maintain orthogonality to incoming sunlight. This will require increased spacing among panel arrays as well as complicated site specific custom mounting structures.
Power storage during non-sunny hours.
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Post by alex4ever on Dec 2, 2008 13:08:14 GMT
Second round with cold air masses in Europe starts from 8 of December. ;D This will be better i guess. How strong this will be or how much it will last and which regions will be affected? We will have the first answers till the end of the week for sure. It seems big so many regions will be affected. Just be patient for the news to come ;D Canada will experience lots of strong cold waves by 8 of Dec too. Really strong and many, the one after another without a single pause to rest ;D Winter surely is here...
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Post by ron on Dec 2, 2008 15:33:40 GMT
Some other solar panel characteristics in the real world: These things are typically spec'ed at very low operating temperatures, heat causes them to lose efficiency. Over time they tend to lose some output as well. Its best to rotate individual panels to maintain orthogonality to incoming sunlight. This will require increased spacing among panel arrays as well as complicated site specific custom mounting structures. Power storage during non-sunny hours. Are you coming late to this debate? We've talked about this stuff before You seem to be thinking about photovoltaic panels. Those are incredibly inefficient. The current best approach is likely to be solar thermal. Several designs of solar thermal electric plants also incorporate thermal storage into their design -- some actually store the heat first and have a secondary system that draws the energy down to make tha powa.
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Post by alex4ever on Dec 2, 2008 20:12:45 GMT
Ok more recent data shows that this new cold mass that is going to affect Europe soon, is mostly going to affect central and east Europe. Czech Republic will propably be affected most of all countries so stop panicking now ;D . I must get panicked because i do not see any significant cold air masses to affect us til 15 of Dec. It is still early to say , i hope to a change till then. It may be coiincidence that we wont have any cooling since then but winter 2006-2007 really affected me because it was the first time in recorded history that we didnt have significant cold mass in my country and it was the first time that it didnt snow in my city, we only had an early cold mass at 22 of Nov. I hope this pattern not to be followed again this year ;D Last year was surely better and i want to believe that this year will be even better!
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dresi
Level 3 Rank
Posts: 120
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Post by dresi on Dec 3, 2008 14:18:25 GMT
Yes, it's looking good by 11th December
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Post by msphar on Dec 3, 2008 18:31:18 GMT
Ron - "The current best approach is likely to be solar thermal."
Not sure what bleeding edge stuff you are referring to, but the current state of wind powered generators, and PV solar panels have some incredible weaknesses to overcome as you rightly point out. I'll wait for any new technology to get through some reality testing before hitching my wagon up to it.
Currently the ridge of mountains running south from Heavenly Valley contains very little snow. The West is missing out on winter's better attributes. The Canadians and Eastcoasters are not sharing...
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Post by ron on Dec 3, 2008 21:46:06 GMT
What bleeding edge stuff? You take a mirror, angle it so that it reflects the sun onto a heat collector of one sort or another, you take the heat and make steam which drives turbines which are connected to these big stators (I'd guess)...
There are some other things, like Stirling Engines that are pretty efficient right now too.
Why does it seem that nearly everybody here thinks that solar power needs to come from PV cells?
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Post by woodstove on Dec 3, 2008 22:07:44 GMT
What bleeding edge stuff? You take a mirror, angle it so that it reflects the sun onto a heat collector of one sort or another, you take the heat and make steam which drives turbines which are connected to these big stators (I'd guess)... There are some other things, like Stirling Engines that are pretty efficient right now too. Why does it seem that nearly everybody here thinks that solar power needs to come from PV cells? You convinced me, at least to some extent. The images of solar thermal on wiki are promising, one of them taken in the Pyrenees quite dramatic: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy
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