Posted by Twisted Truckers on Thursday, December 5, 2019
Search Results for: Photo
I often wonder if low cost thyristors existed in the first half of the century to produce buck and boost converters if the electrical grid would use direct current.
I often wonder if low cost thyristors existed in the first half of the century to produce buck and boost converters if the electrical grid would use direct current. High voltage DC doesn’t suffer from impedance, although it is more dangerous to touch as there is no zero point for seized muscle of a human to release themselves from it. High voltage DC is also much more difficult to break with a mechanical switch, due to a lack of zero point to prevent arcing, which is why they usually use thyristors rather than mechanical switches to break DC current.
Climate Strike
Climate Strike!
The latest attempt to increase awareness around climate change is the Climate Strike protests that popped up around the world 🌍 last week.
Most reasonable people agree 👍 climate change is happening and that the ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the air is problematic – you personally may be only dumping a few tons a year into the air but there are millions who live in cities that are dumping trillions of tons into the atmosphere. 🌆
What to do about it? On paper 📄 the trendy green technologies of the day are often brought out – solar panels, wind turbines, LED light bulbs 💡 and of course electric cars 🚙 . But when you look at the math – land use, cost and technology limitations – the math is hard to make work. Most of the technologies proposed are just swaps of fossil and more energy intensive technologies for slightly less energy intensive ways of doing things. ⚡
You have those who advocate behavioral changes – eat less meat 🍖 and dairy 🐮, recycle ♻ more, use public transport 🚍. Maybe buy more products made from hemp 🌿, buy trendy green things and skip the straws and the plastic water 💦 bottles. Those things certainly feel good if you are interested in the saving the earth 🌎. But they aren’t systematic changes.
You have governments like New York State promising they’ll work for ambitious climate goals. 🗽 They make long lists of promises and laws 📑 but their promises don’t always add up to their actions as they dig deeper into the next generation of fossil technologies ⛽ ignoring the consequences of their own actions.
What’s the solution? I don’t know for sure but I think sin taxes on fossil fuels can help. 💰 Oil, coal and natural gas are underpriced, they are too cheap to burn, distorting the value of the energy ⚡ services they provide. I like most people don’t want to pay more for electricity or gas for my big jacked up truck 🚚 but I know if it hurt in my pocket more I’d be a lot more responsible with my use of energy.
But of course, the politicians don’t want to implement unpopular policies, because they want to be reelected and loved by their constituents. And if they get voted ❎ out of office, their replacement will just roll back 🔙 their unpopular policies.
Electricity really is a cheap source of energy
When you think about it, $30 a month plus 15 cents per kilowatt hour is a pretty darn good price for being connected to the electrical grid. A kilowatt hour is about 3/4th of a horsepower, produced over an hour of highly reformed energy that can be power even the most delicate of electronics or turn over large motors with ease and efficiency.
A typical house has a 200 amp feed in it, which means you have roughly 150 horsepower worth of electricity at your disposal to distribute throughout your house. Unlike a gas motor, it doesn’t cost you anything at idle, and your pay directly proportional to your use. You can flip a switch on and get instant torque or power from electricity.
Most electric appliances are quite efficient to converting electricity into useful work – almost all the waste is on the generating plant side, not on the consumer side. The generating plant maintains the turbines, buys the fuel, and disposes of ash. No smoke in your backyard or noxious fumes.
When at off-grid living, the truth is electric generated on site is far more expensive and less flexible than grid power. It might be much cleaner and the cost of use is fixed entirely by your capital costs – and is reduced each kilowatt you consume. But it’s still not as cheap and flexible as grid power.
Replace income taxes with a carbon tax
I think we should replace the corporate and income tax with a high carbon tax…
The economics of a high carbon tax is simple. If gasoline is $15 gallon people will motor a lot less and if electricity is $500 a month per household, ipeople will use a lot less. Sure there will be a lot of pain in the short run but people will find ways to survive if polluting practices are expensive. Efficient businesses and efficient practices are rewarded with a carbon tax.
We want to encourage wealth and investment in society. A carbon tax and repealing taxes on individuals and businesses will encourage investment rather than consumption. There is too little savings and too much consumption.
I think we need to stop focusing on the poor, and focus on what’s right for our country as a whole – economic growth, jobs and promotion of efficient practices. There is too much waste in society that high taxes on carbon could root out of society – even if it hurts a certain people as times change.
Bill McKibben Book ‘Falter’ Details Possibility of Human Extinction – Rolling Stone
Oh, it could get very bad.
In 2015, a study in the Journal of Mathematical Biology pointed out that if the world’s oceans kept warming, by 2100 they might become hot enough to “stop oxygen production by phyto-plankton by disrupting the process of photosynthesis.” Given that two-thirds of the Earth’s oxygen comes from phytoplankton, that would “likely result in the mass mortality of animals and humans.”
I think the politicians aren't taking the threat of Climate Change seriously, because it would require difficult choices in the short-term, that aren't popular. In democracies, it's very difficult for elected officials to do things that will get them unelected by enacting policies that the public doesn't really like. Most people are focused on what "feels good today", with ignorance of the long-term consequences of their actions. It's actually, pretty damn scary where we as a globe are rapidly plunging towards.
Green New Deal
I often hear from liberals that climate change is an immediately solvable problem, that with modest changes to our live-styles and much higher taxes on the rich, we can address the problem and have a better society for all. It’s a very hopeful message, but also a very unscientific and frankly quite naive message to boot.
If addressing climate change in the serious fashion needed to address the worse impacts on it was an easy, inexpensive to thing to do, it would have been done a long time ago. If we could just immediately switch over to cheaper, more reliable battery electric cars, and meet all our needs by a few solar panels, we’d do it now.
But the truth is switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy is much more technically challenging, and will require changes to our own lifestyles, and maybe a reduction to the human population through an expanded death penalty. It’s going to be amazingly expensive, and difficult on economy. But ignoring the problem is likely to be more expensive.
Most of that technology is getting better, thanks in a big part about government research and incentives that are pushing the market that way. But solutions aren’t cheap, nor easy, or without requiring often significant lifestyle changes. There needs to be an adult conversation, not memes and blaming the other political party for all our woes.
This is why I’ve really had little interest in Green New Deal, because I don’t think it’s serious or workable deal. Maybe it’s a message bill that will eventually get more flush on it’s bones and enacted, but as it is it won’t do much for serious problems we face today.
