I am curious as to why you chose that particular methane image and why you are particularly alarmed at its results. 1.85 micromoles is not particularly alarming IMHO if I am understanding the mixing ratio correctly. Seems to me the author of that particular image was looking for shock value color scheme rather than displaying results. I mean come on a variable of .15 micromoles across the planet and the color scheme varies between cool blue to hot red? Translation to me is So What. Seems pretty uniform. I find this imagery much more revealing when looking into methane: http://www.gmes-atmosphere.eu/d/ser...ane!macc!od!enfo!ch4_flux_inversions!201107!/ Link chosen at typically highest N.Hemi concentration. The major sources of methane do not appear to be human related (except maybe china and you have to account for the natural production there also). Original links here: http://www.gmes-atmosphere.eu/d/services/gac/delayed/ Looks like we should chop down all the rain forests if we want to impact methane (not really). But where exactly do you plan on putting these machines to impact methane?
Continuing comment of post 1580: last is ~1.2MW / acre, and 1.5 acre is 65,340sq ft. So simple scaling would give my machine about 1,800KW /65 = 27.7KW peak power rating but lets reduce that to 20KW peak power per unit; however, it could be in stronger more steady winds higher up and power of the wind goes as the cube of wind speed. Thus on an annual basis probably could make about the same energy per unit of "swept area". 500 of them deployed would make 24 hours per day, about 10,000KW or 10^7W or about 1% of the sun's UVc at earth surface, if your "billion watts" is correct. I'm not sure but due to the very cheap design (only high volume production component) 500 of my machines might cost about the same in construction as one Vestas V90 - but have not found its installed* price. *Including huge concrete base, tower transport to site & crane rentals. My easy to assemble PVC design and gas bag all goes to the site on an 18 wheeler truck. Economy was the key stone of design process. BTW, being forced to estimate the power has been helpful. Probably there is only one planetary gear set, not two, inside the 12inch short, on-axis, PVC tube at each end of the unit. The sun gears drives a larger disk gear, about 2 feet in diameter, not one PMA inside the 12 inch PVC tube. I.e. there are 4 or 5** PMAs mounted on the outside of that 12 inch PVC tube with back end turned towards the balloon and small gears that are spun by this larger gear spinning just beyond the end of the 12 inch PVC tube. One main reason for this tube existence has always been so the Y tether's ends have case with three short rolling cylinders captive in that case. I.e. these rollers are close spaced and generally opposite to the tether as entire structure is trying to break free from the tether's pull. - A short 12 inch OD light weight tube will have better stiffness to weight ratio than an on-axis steel rod would have but may need to be the "schedule 20", not schedule 40 PVC pipes used for building the balloon cage. I.e. twice the common wall thickness and even that doubled, as described in patent draft, where the tether pull is applied. ** 10 PMAs total, five at each end of my wind machine rated for 2Kw continuous duty I think are commonly available in such volume for charging car batteries that they are the cheapest generators on the market. certainly a lot easier to keep cool in strong wind stream than under car's hood next to warm engine. PMAs have built in fan and I'm almost sure it is "over heating" when charging a nearly dead battery that sets their power rating.
replying to post 15 82's question: But where exactly do you plan on putting these machines to impact methane? I don't plan on putting them any where as they are not profit making with the current low price of carbon off-sets (only about 1% of what it was a decade or so ago - so even most exchange markets have closed. Can some one tell me how to get (and edit if I don't want all) the post I am replying to, to appear in pink background text at start of my posts? In reply to Trippy's post 1581: I'm not defending the English I quoted from or their data, which I may have miss understood. Their spherical balloon with small part covered with PV cells was new Idea to me and claimed to be very competitive with ground based PV in England; Probably in large part as easy to track sun so cells are normal to its rays and also often well above the lower clouds (or the "English fog").
They are amazingly efficient - don't have the losses that common florescent lamps do as there is no phosphor absorbing the UVc of the Hg spectrum (the strongest lines of all) to convert to visible. - About 50% of the 50W electrical input is radiated as UVc - 25 watts output.
Yes.* They are quite dangerous to humans.** I put them high enough to keep the OH radical and ozone concentration at ground level near zero, but you raise a very good point. might be not only cheaper, but feasible in arctic where grid power is available, to put the UVc producing lambs inside a fenced off (chain link for air flow) area. My invention may not be feasible there where it would be most useful if it gets coating of heavy ice. BTW, I have noted that I don't know the best "wind catcher" designs. I want to add that two "half scale" units (central section only 10 feet long) can be made with same PVC pipe expense (std PVC pipe length is 20 feet) as one full scale unit and both for less than half the other costs. (No gears or PMAs and only 2 x (1/8) volume of He required as that scales with the cube of the linear dimension.) The swivel at the end of their tethers could be at mid point of a full scale unit's tether later so testing has no wasted expense in the tether. To make the side-by-side test in same air stream of differnent wind catcher designs, installed on only the central section, one does not need to lift any PMAs or UVc lamps (or their cost). Just use a set of four rectangular "blades" perpendicular to the axis at both ends (mounted on the short 12 inch axial cylinders) to dissipate the energy. - Paint alternate blades white or black and image their reflected light on 2 photo detectors whose signals display on two beam oscilloscope (or feeds into two cheaper battery-powered frequency counters) to see which is spinning faster - making and dissipating the greater energy in turbulences at the ends of the unit only. * Also at present PV cells are not competitive with grid power, which like the PVs is mainly capital cost - I think my invention has lower capital cost, than even grid power, but perhaps not due to scale factors. (I call the UVc lamps an operating cost, sort of like power company's fuel) as they need to be replaced perhaps ever 10 years, but I think less than 20 as it is mainly the damage at turn on that kills them. - Mine rarely turn on as wind is steady at 500 feet altitude, (day and NIGHT) but they would dim in slow wind. This is part of why I convert their power to mid frequency audio - period of short near zero voltage applied keeps the ionization in the tube high at all times. ** Even just looking at their UV will soon give you great pain - sunburnt eyes. One fellow Physic graduate student using a UV lamp looked at it too much and had to be sedated to end his pain.
Well, there are plenty of wind turbines whose hubs are several hundred feet above the ground. Thus if separation is what you want, that would give you a stationary platform to mount them, However, I think might be a mistake to try to cure the results of the problem rather than deal with the problem itself. Any "extra" power we have would be, IMO, much better spent to provide power for our power needs, or charging power for EV's, or charging power for pumped storage. Doing so reduces CO2 emissions directly (by reducing the amount of coal burned) and reduces methane emissions indirectly (by reducing demand for natural gas, and hence reducing leakage and intentional releases during drilling.)
I agree on all your points. If you have wind generator on a tower, it costs almost nothing more to feed its captured power into the grid and displace some fossil fuel generation of that energy. One of the capital cost saving of my system is no cost of copper wires to the ground. Also I don't know if UVc light made even 500 feet above ground is high enough to avoid health hazards. I think if it is effective at removing CH4 and with red lights in a marked "no fly" zone 1000 feet above ground should be permitted as it was until recently. Certainly ceasing to used fossil fuel for cars is much better - and actually with "negative cost" both environmentally and in dollars if oil is $90/brl and sugar cane alcohol is the new fuel. - that has been my main suggestion in posts and several threads I started here for more than six years. Only progress has been that finally the EPA and Congress has realized that the corn to alcohol program not only adds a lot of cost to the tax payers (as well as to their grocery bills) but is also worse environmentally (due to the increased NOx) than just using pure gasoline instead of "gasohol." PS I don't know why for first time ever, my post 1588 did have your post with pink background quoted at top. This one like all others not quoting from a public site / literature don't have that - forcing me to tell what post I am replying to. If reply to a post here I always right click on the "reply" next to the post number and then left click to open text box (I think) but obviously not if it has already opened.
Another unqualified crank. Coleman started his career in 1953 at WCIA in Champaign, Illinois, doing the early evening weather forecast and a local bandstand show called At The Hop while he was a student at University of Illinois. After receiving his journalism degree in 1957, he became the weather anchor for WCIA's sister station WMBD-TV in Peoria, Illinois.
Bare links on this forum are attempts at deception without accountability. In that one, an old weatherman instructs us on physics he doesn't know about, an old physicist makes claims about biology and paleontology he doesn't know about, a retired astronaut become former Republican Senator earns his keep at an Exxon financed think tank by repeating the talking points, and all three assert that there has been no global warming for 10, or maybe 18, or anyway some number of, years. So they can't read a trend line on a graph, either. His essays are goofy, fact free compilations of bad reasoning and worse politics. Why would anyone read anything else he writes? It's a deliberate lie, a myth created by fossil fuel industry media manipulators to sucker the ignorant and gullible.
Remember what you (plural) have said here and why you've said it--it will help you to make sense of your environment.
Thanks to your relentless attacks on science in the name of religious fundamentalism, I do not need any reminders that the Bush era tactics of trying to destroy scientific evidence in order to promote laissez faire economics is still kicking and screaming, in the manner of a brain damaged child who reaches adulthood but never outgrows the terrible twos.
What I will remember was the deceptive editing you did to my posting - the what and why of that dishonesty would indeed help make sense of an environment here that includes your otherwise inexplicable apparent inability to read with comprehension, or argue anything. So enlighten me: why did you carefully remove my designation of the responsible parties in the creation of the myth of "climate-gate"? Why did you combine selections from a paragraph addressing your bare link to bullshit with selections from a different responce to a different poster addressing the nature of "climate-gate" ?
I had said "Currently slightly more than half the net absorption of solar energy is heating the oceans. That will cease to be the case. When it does in 4 or 5 decades, the land will feel the full effect of the net solar heating - and worse - of the greater rate of water evaporation from the oceans." and here is part of Aqueous ID's long post 1555 replying to that. Sorry I did not respond sooner. Answer to your question is: Only at temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, ~5000K. I.e. sunlight falling on the ocean will always transfer energy to it (even some to ice sheet). What I was trying to say was that as the ocean surface warms, more heat will be being removed and given to the air. - Mainly by more evaporated H2O molecules as conduation to the air at nearly the same temperature as the ocean is less, I think, than the 540 calories each gram of rain water releases as it makes the phase transition from vapor to liquid. As the solar energy absorbed by the dry land and ocean on average is constant or actually slightly decreasing each year with more clouds forming, and the energy the ocean transfers to the air is increasing, it is obvious my statement is true - as the years go by the net fraction of the current solar energy being absorbed: that "~50% will cease to be the case." It would have been more clear it I had said that effect in positive rather than negative terms. I. e. would have been better /more easily understood/ if I had said: "The fraction of the solar energy absorbed would increase from the current 50% to near unity (100%) rather than just the fraction will cease to be 50%. In some sense it is even incorrect to say half the current solar energy absorbed is "being stored in the ocean" as "stored" implies it will some day be given back - it will not be - the increased solar heating (to be about double in 40 to 50 years) is not a return of "stored solar heat" but is the cessation of 50% being stored. - Subconsciously that was why I spoke of the "50% ceasing to be stored." That is what is really happening and very serious. I am very glad my post was not clear and you asked what was I trying to say. Very few understand that in 40 or 50 years it will be the same as it the sun were twice as great a heat source for Earth. - That is dam important and should shut up all deniers. Mankind is in "deep yoghurt" and probable already doomed to extinction before 2100. People calling me "an alarmists" will not change these sad facts.
Well 71% of the insolation is over water, so I guess you only need to show that about 21% of that is lost to evaporation. What does that mean, that the rate of evaporation is going to change? I suppose it will. But thermal equilibrium will prevail. The molecules just below the surface layer -- the ones that don't get knocked into vapor -- will rise in energy just the same. Ok but water evaporation is limited by saturation. Of course that level rises a little with temperature so of course it will also increase. But not much, right? Enough to account for crashing specific ecosystems, but not enough to crash most of them. Ok but there can be no oceans at >373K. Which follows from the difference between 5000K and 373K. That's a little confusing. Maybe it would help to clarify that evaporation accounts for some transfer of heat from warm water into cooler air, usu. aloft. I suppose you could speak to conduction with cool surface air, but you need to treat that statistically over the geoid which I think works the other way. Ok but that is limited to some some extent. The vapor either condenses or it doesn't, and that's a function of weather. The moisture has to rain out to lower the vapor pressure at the surface before the cycle can repeat, right? Obviously there are exceptions, as in hurricanes, but even if we were to apply the premises of those apocalyptic weather movies we'd effectively have a couple of perpetual global hurricanes -- but even those would have to cycle. Is that happening? It's really the energy transferred to the air by the Sun, trapped by the greenhouse effect. I think here you would want to compare the relative feedbacks of land albdeo vs, say, the evaporation/condensation cycles. I didn't follow that. In my mind thermal equilibrium reigns, except where the masses of air and water are prone to form boundaries due to thermoclines. I would think your strongest argument would be the one that forecasts rising water vapor uptake as the atmosphere warms. But I don't see how that leads to sharp changes somewhere in the near future. But even if heat transfer into the surface water became perfectly efficient, there is always colder water at depth. I guess I'm not following you here. I find that confusing. In network modeling we refer to the duals of, say, electrical and thermal capacitance. Just as a capacitor stores charge, bulk matter absorbs heat. But whether or not that happens depends on the sign of the potential difference, and that in part depends on the impedances of the other elements in the network. That assumes the model for thermal capacitance breaks down somewhere but I haven't understood the rationale that would think so. Well, yeah, wherever ideas don't jibe there is nearly always a basis for meeting somewhere in the middle. I haven't followed that rationale. How is the heating of the oceans any different today than it has been since our emergence from the last interglacial? Since climate deniers are lost on really basic stuff like the greenhouse effect, and the reason CO2 is the highest impact anthropogenic GHG, I think they will never understand you. I can reasonably understand those basic principles, and I still don't quite follow you here. I understand that's your position, I just don't understand how you arrived at it. Unfortunately there is a blurring of the epithet here. By the deniers' standard, all people who attest to the truth of global warming are "alarmists". On the other hand, if you tell someone like me that most ecosystems will crash by the end of the century, I might feel you have an apocalyptic view of the future (like in some of your economics posts) but it's not the same thing as what a denier means by "alarmist" so I will probably just question your premises and wonder why you are so cynical of the future in general.
