Vacation Deniers


  • kills Dumbledore

    I'm gonna go with "lizard person". There are always lizard people at these things



  • @Jaloopa said:

    I'm gonna go with "lizard person". There are always lizard people at these things

    Can you stop slandering the lizardpeople already?!


  • kills Dumbledore

    who said anything about slander? As cold blooded creatures, they obviously have a strong interest in the climate


  • FoxDev

    @Jaloopa said:

    I'm gonna go with "lizard person". There are always lizard people at these things

    Why would a Silurian be-
    @Jaloopa said:
    As cold blooded creatures, they obviously have a strong interest in the climate

    Oh. Carry on then ;)


    Also, I must have taught this Firefox the word Silurian at some point…


  • kills Dumbledore

    @RaceProUK said:

    Silurian

    I guess there would have been a lot of lizard types around back then...



  • @boomzilla said:

    via wikipedia: (thanks discourse)

    a fluoride-based, molten, liquid salt for fuel.

    😯* That'll be fun to work with!!

    @boomzilla said:

    reworking major parts of our economies by fiat based

    This - worse yet - reworking other people's economies by fiat.

    CBA to go find it...

    precautionary....

    stewardship....

    There are enough non-linearities in the underlying physics that I'm precautiously in favor of good stewardship of the planet...

    ... but doing it by fiat is clearly not good stewardship of relationships with other people.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ijij said:

    in favor of good stewardship of the planet...

    Now...let's decide what we mean by good stewardship, eh? 😉


  • Fake News

    @ijij said:

    That'll be fun to work with!!

    It's much better to work with it in liquid form, than in gaseous form, yes?
    @ijij said:
    worse yet - reworking other people's economies by fiat

    Even worse yet, reworking other people's economies by force. (While I'm an American, I rather strongly detest the "nation-building" that "my" government is doing currently - shit that wouldn't be necessary if we were truly energy-independent. Also, Russia wouldn't have Europe by the balls if Europe weren't so reliant on natgas that's piped through Russian-controlled territory - so Europe needs to rectify its cranial-rectal inversion problem on the energy front as well - and, again, no, renewable energy isn't a panacea. Iceland is the only "European" country that approaches energy independence, given its crazy abundance of geothermal energy. If they start harnessing that energy to recycle organic waste into petroleum, look the fuck out.)



  • @Jaloopa said:

    As cold blooded creatures, they obviously have a strong interest in the climate

    Aye, I'm sure they do ;)

    @ijij said:

    That'll be fun to work with!!

    Actually -- ionic fluorides aren't much (if any) worse to work with than any other material at that temperature, and better than many. The main issue with the carrier salts used so far, actually, is beryllium poisoning, and that can be circumvented using pure LiF at the expense of some thermal properties.



  • @tarunik said:

    using pure LiF

    I thought we were shooting for energy independence ;)

    [Wikpedia on Lithium][1]

    In June 2010, the New York Times reported that American geologists were conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan believing that large deposits of lithium are located there. "Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large as those of Bolivia, which now has the world's largest known lithium reserves."[49]

    At least reactors pumped full of Li+ shouldn't end up running amok.


    Filed under: wait, can I use Li+ should that be Li+=0 ??


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ijij said:

    energy independence

    Overrated, like most forms of protectionism.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Overrated, like most forms of protectionism.

    At least its overrated and not irrelevant.

    I'm doing better.


  • Fake News

    @boomzilla said:

    Overrated, like most forms of protectionism.

    Why is it overrated?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @lolwhat said:

    Why is it overrated?

    Same reason as other forms of protectionism. Better to get stuff for a good deal than to overpay at home. Plus other benefits of trading.

    That's not to say that there aren't energy security issues when you rely on someone like Putin. But buying oil, say, from Canada and Mexico doesn't bother me at all.



  • @lolwhat said:

    Why is it overrated?

    We should take all of Canada's energy before starting to consuming our own, duh. That way later on when Canada's dry (get it? haha) we can sell it back at hugely inflated prices.


  • BINNED

    @lolwhat said:

    Why is it overrated?

    To expand on what @boomzilla said:


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @antiquarian said:

    To expand on what @boomzilla said:

    And to further clarify: overrated is not a synonym for "worthless."


  • Fake News

    Now the question is, why things are so much cheaper Over There than they are here.



  • @lolwhat said:

    Well, yes, but the energy density of fossil fuels - at least, the liquid kind - is unbeaten by anything else today. Even the latest generation of electric-car batteries doesn't come close, nor will they absent some seriously revolutionary breakthrough. Oh, and we already have plenty of technology built into vehicles and other things, at least in the First World, to reduce such pollution drastically.

    Comparing the energy density of a battery to the energy density of fossil fuels?

    TDEMSYR

    Where do you think the energy in the battery came from?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @abarker said:

    Where do you think the energy in the battery came from?

    With an electric car, it could have come from solar or wind or whatever. But it will still suck (as a car) compared to filling up with gas. I think that was his point.



  • @boomzilla said:

    With an electric car, it could have come from solar or wind or whatever. But it will still suck (as a car) compared to filling up with gas. I think that was his point.

    Could being the operative word. The US EIA estimates that in 2011 only 21% of generated electricity was from renewable sources.1 In the US, it was only 12.9%. And based on my experience, that varies greatly by location.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @abarker said:

    Could being the operative word

    Yes, but that was kinda the point.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @boomzilla said:

    Recycling at its finest. In a few decades, landfills will be sought after investments for all the easily recoverable stuff in there.

    As a person who has built a few (dozen) landfills in his life, I can say with relative certainty that is not going to happen. Leachate is some very nasty stuff and it breaks down almost everything.

    It will even eat most grades of stainless steel. It would make it nearly impossible to harvest. Besides that, you also have a constant danger of spontaneous combustion when you excavate trash. It is pretty impressive really.

    I won't say it is impossible, but we will exhaust every other option before it would ever become feasible.


  • Fake News

    @boomzilla said:

    With an electric car, it could have come from solar or wind or whatever. But it will still suck (as a car) compared to filling up with gas. I think that was his point.

    Really, I was coming more from the angle of:

    1. Batteries can store only X J/kg/m3 - and that's when they're brand-new. Of course, their capacity degrades over time - oops.
    2. Gasoline (or diesel) has Y J/kg/m3.
    3. Y >> X

    And, to go further than my original statement, that all means that you need a heavier car to be able to drive the same distance, you need to plug the thing in once you get wherever you're going and hope it's sufficiently charged once you're ready to drive somewhere else, the electric transmission/distribution infrastructure needs to be there, there are line losses associated with getting energy into the car via that infrastructure, you're replacing the fucking batteries every few years...


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @lolwhat said:

    Really, I was coming more from the angle of:

    Yeah, I summarize it all as "sucks as a car." YMMV


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @boomzilla said:

    Yeah, I summarize it all as "sucks as a car." YMMV

    You and others are batshit crazy in this thread, but I will agree with you on this point. ;)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Polygeekery said:

    You and others are batshit crazy in this thread,

    Me? I've talked perfect sense here. It's other people who said they don't care what the science says.


  • BINNED

    You don't have to be crazy to post here, but it sure helps.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I am not going to engage you, I don't need to inflate my post count at the moment. ;)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Polygeekery said:

    I am not going to engage you,

    That's probably for the best. I wouldn't want to have to expose you as a science denier, too.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Ok, I had not yet, but I am now...


  • Java Dev

    Once they find a way to synthesize carbohydrate fuel, or anything else that works in an internal combustion engine, you won't ever hear anyone seriously suggest this battery crap ever again.



  • Good day to you too! And how are you fairing on this fine $SEASON's $TIME_OF_DAY?


  • Fake News

    Just tap a landfill's methane offgas, then, and burn it (already done in some places) - or better yet, get organic waste into the fuel cycle before it even hits the landfill.


  • Fake News

    @IngenieurLogiciel said:

    fairing

    faring



  • @lolwhat said:

    @IngenieurLogiciel said:
    fairing

    faring

    that's fair


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @lolwhat said:

    Just tap a landfill's methane offgas, then, and burn it (already done in some places)

    That is actually pretty common. As part of the process of building and maintaining landfills, we would drill gas wells in to the trash hills and build a pipeline to carry that gas to a power generation facility. One facility that we worked at had its own generators that produced an excess of power that they fed back in to the power grid. The building had 4 gigantic Caterpillar engines in it. IIRC, they were 24-cylinders each and the building had to be built around them they were so large.

    The amount of methane gas put out by landfills is absolutely staggering. The landfills that did not use it to generate power would still collect it and burn it through large open torches. We referred to them as "eternal flames" as they would continue to burn for decades after landfills were closed.


  • Fake News

    @Polygeekery said:

    We referred to them as "eternal flames" as they would continue to burn for decades after landfills were closed.

    I see your eternal flames and raise you the Centralia mine fire.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I phrased that poorly...

    When I said:

    @Polygeekery said:

    One facility that we worked at had its own generators that produced an excess of power that they fed back in to the power grid.

    It was in reference to that one facility having such a huge power generation setup. Most of them generate power and feed some of it back in to the grid. Most of them also had purified feeds running to their maintenance shops where methane was burned for heat, they would burn it for their steam generators in their wash bays, their offices were heated with electric heat of various sorts that were fed from the power generation facilities, etc.

    Landfills are horribly smelly and dirty places, but if you can look past all of that...they are surprisingly self-sustaining.

    Landfills that take in a lot of C&D waste would typically crush all the concrete that comes in and turn it in to aggregate that they would use to maintain their roads and then sell the excess to contractors and such. They typically employ some sort of magnetic separation in order to keep ferrous materials out of the landfill. They recycle tires as they are nearly impossible to bury. Lots of organic wastes would get composted. Most landfills have public outreach projects so that they are better received by the community so they would build things such as: RC airports, shooting ranges, archery ranges, soccer fields, softball and baseball fields, etc.



  • @Polygeekery said:

    They recycle tires as they are nearly impossible to bury. Lots of organic wastes would get composted. Most landfills have public outreach projects so that they are better received by the community so they would build things such as: RC airports,

    Describes the local dump* where I grew up. They were next to the local quarry/cement plant as well... they piped methane over there and some fraction of the tires were burned at the cement plant to improve the quality of the cement (via processes that might as well be alchemy to me).

    It was a nice setup.


    *Dump. Why do need PC words like "landfill"? We took the big yard debris to "the dump".


  • FoxDev

    @ijij said:

    Dump. Why do need PC words like "landfill"? We took the big yard debris to "the dump".

    I prefer the English idiom of 'taking stuff to the tip' ;)


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Just the tip.



  • @lolwhat said:

    or better yet, get organic waste into the fuel cycle before it even hits the landfill.

    A couple different times I've toyed with getting the conversion kit to run my diesel pickup truck on waste vegetable oil, many fast food restaurants will give it to you for free since they normally pay to have it disposed of. But I always run into articles claiming the EPA is about to ban it.



  • So, this seems to be a disagreement between two points of view:

    1. We don't know what the climate will do in the future, but we probably want to change our behaviour on the offchance that we'll have better outcomes in the future.
    2. We don't know what the climate will do in the future, so we should just continue doing things the same way we've always done them, everything will probably be fine, or it won't but there's nothing we can really do about it.
    Does that seem like a fair analysis of the discussion so far? :trollface:

  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @mott555 said:

    A couple different times I've toyed with getting the conversion kit to run my diesel pickup truck on waste vegetable oil, many fast food restaurants will give it to you for free since they normally pay to have it disposed of. But I always run into articles claiming the EPA is about to ban it.

    When the temperature is warm enough outside, your vehicle would need no conversion. Diesel engines can run off of filtered vegetable oil just fine with no modifications. Even better if you mix in a little diesel to help thin it a bit.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @mott555 said:

    But I always run into articles claiming the EPA is about to ban it.

    Follow-up question...where did you see that? I went to do a search and what I am finding is the EPA suggesting it?



  • The problem is I have an LB7 Duramax and the LB7's have a horrible fuel injector design that is prone to failure. The conversion kits install a second, heated fuel tank just for the waste oil because it's much more viscous than diesel fuel. You start and stop the truck on plain diesel, but you have a fuel supply switch to change to vegetable oil when the tank is warmed up and the oil has thinned out. You really don't want to be pushing thick oil through crappy injectors at high pressure.

    @Polygeekery said:

    Follow-up question...where did you see that? I went to do a search and what I am finding is the EPA suggesting it?

    I don't recall specifically, it's been a few years since I last looked into it. It was mostly hearsay on diesel truck forums.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    On point #1, makes sense. I know some vehicles will run just fine on straight vegetable oil. You know more about the Duramax than I do though.

    @mott555 said:

    I don't recall specifically, it's been a few years since I last looked into it. It was mostly hearsay on diesel truck forums.

    I would look in to that again. I could not find anything, and people spout BS all the time about what the guv'ment is going to do. I think the bigger problem would be the paying of road taxes and states becoming involved there. As it currently is, most of our road taxes are paid at the pump. No pump, no taxes paid. Guv'ment tends to get bent out of shape when someone figures out a way to avoid taxation.



  • I recall reading from one guy who didn't do anything special and ran his on pure used vegetable oil. He burned through a set of fuel injectors every 12 - 18 months, but figured $2500 for new injectors was well worth free fuel.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @tar said:

    Does that seem like a fair analysis of the discussion so far?

    No.


Log in to reply