[D Man]

Thanks for that Sombra. Nice to see the press pressing something a little different!

I also saw Penn and Teller do a much more entertaining and colourfull version on Bullshit!!

I do think the time is ripe. We need it (fossil fuels are painfully finite and renewables are hopelessly inefficient intrusive and expensive), and its demostrably safe. A lot of people either realise that now, or just dont care (a testament to its innocuity!).

[Tsundoku]

@D Man
No worries.

In other news: is this a wave (pun intended) for the future? With cost being less of a factor as people seem more willing (in the supposedly green-aware first world) to pay more for clean power.

http://news.ninemsn.....aspx?id=302994

Waves could power Australia '10 times over'
Friday Oct 5 18:00 AEST
By Denham Hitchcock
National Nine News

An underwater wave farm could provide zero-emission energy and desalinated water on an infinite scale — enough to provide for Australia's needs ten times over.

It sounds like wishful thinking, but Australian company Carnegie Corporation claims has underwater pictures and a successful trial to prove it might be possible.

The company's system is called CETO, named after the Greek water goddess.

It relies on a series of underwater inflatable buoys, attached to giant pumps.

As the swell moves the buoys back and forth, it drives the pumps and forces high-pressure seawater through pipes leading back to shore.

There the water is either split to spin a turbine to create electricity or forced through filters to create desalinated water.

A small trial off Perth has allowed the company to gain further investment and it's now preparing to install a commercial site.

The project is worth $500 million and would involve a battalion of pumps in long rows covering an area of two hectares.

Michael Ottaviano from Carnegie Corporation said a system on this scale would "provide enough power for about 25,000 households and enough water for about 200,000".

With so much wave activity around the Australian coastline, there would be enough energy to power our current consumption ten times over, he said.

The company is looking at sites around the country, but so far two in NSW stand out, at Newcastle and Kurnell.

Kurnell is also the site of the state government's planned desalination plant, due to be constructed at a cost of $2 billion.

The desalination plant has already upset Green groups, which claim it will suck a phenomenal amount of electricity, creating a similar amount of greenhouse gas.

The CETO system is said to be zero emission, but there is a catch.

The energy it produces costs about the same amount to supply as wind power, which is more expensive than coal.

It's also unproven on a large scale.

However Carnegie claims the cost of water from its desalination is about the same as a conventional desalination plant, but without the harmful emissions.

As politicians clamber for the green vote, clean energy is high on the shopping list and so far wind farms and solar panels have been the preferred choice.

There's already a similar wave energy generator at Port Kembla that uses the air forced by the swell to spin a turbine. That project has upset locals, whose ocean vista has been blocked by a giant barge.

Australia has some of the most consistent waves and swell anywhere in the world.

"It's the equivalent of the Saudi Arabia of an oil field that hits our shores every day of the week, every day of the year," Mr Ottaviano said.

----------------------------

Cheers,

La Sombra, just swell

[D Man]

I hope 'replenishable' energy like that can really become viable some day. But as it is, thats just talking about the kinetic energy in waves. Nothing about how to convert it into electricity and deliver it to a national grid.

The facilities required are exremely expensive and short-lived. Making something that can withstand salt water and the weather hammering it is very difficult, and even harder to get to give a financially viable net return of energy because of the short operational lifetime and high production and maintanence costs of the technologies.

[phart]

Thelomen Toblerone;192468 said:

It's true, I dont know what the bloody hell all these activists are going on about when they bitch about nuclear power- I enough about it lazily doing an A-level ffs to realise it's one of the best viable options for energy we have.

Pollution wise it's minimal obviously, the amounts of energy it can put out are huge (especially if we can get a working Tokamak and get fusion going properly), and the risks are tiny, especially considering the higher level of education people working in them in the west (and also the high security) would have.

The only problem is disposing of used up radioactive material, but we could just make a massive stockpile in the middle of Siberia or Antarctica or the outback or something and bury it deep and it'll be ok.

You too cover most things, new generations of reactors radically reduce the amount of waste, i would use nuclear as a stop gap to renewable, unfortunately with science there are so many misconceptions about, the dirty bomb being another which demonstrates the leyman's lack of knowledge regarding radiation.

[phart]

chill;203452 said:

A little bit of conspiracy theories...

So, nuclear energy is much safer than most people believe (I admit myself being among them before I was educated by D man:)).
Then why all this paranoia? How come the media focuses on the bad sides of nuclear energy (waste, in particular) instead of good ones? How come people believe that every bit of nuclear waste is a deadly threat that cannot be appropriately dealt with? Why is Czernobil mentioned in almost every public discussion about the safety of nuclear powerplants, when it's clear that it's the product of human stupidity?

Whose interests stand behind all this? Who wants us to use petrol and gas and continue to pollute our planet? Who will lose the most if we start using new sources of energy?

hmmm... now that's a tough one...

It's lazy journalism it takes years of training and studying to be fully cognizant of all aspects about radiation basically to become expert and by that i mean expert enough to explain it simply to leyman as D-man has excellently done (brilliant post mate i don't work directly in the industry but i am a scientist am i right in saying that the sr90 will degrade even further through pure beta emmsions to yttrium? Which must have a halflife of a couple of days?)

So no journalist is bother going to read all the neccessary information and as a result they shouldn't be listened to, would you let the journalist teach your kids in physics, i wouldn't and i certainly wouldn't trust their illeducated(not perjorative merely descriptive)stand point, a classic example as i have already pointed out is the dirty bomb, the only damage by one would be the damage done by the convential blast and the damage to economic growth in the place it was detonated, i.e. London city centre or New York.

Damn i've typed this out without realising the sarcasm, oh well at least it might help others.

[phart]

D Man;213895 said:

I hope 'replenishable' energy like that can really become viable some day. But as it is, thats just talking about the kinetic energy in waves. Nothing about how to convert it into electricity and deliver it to a national grid.

The facilities required are exremely expensive and short-lived. Making something that can withstand salt water and the weather hammering it is very difficult, and even harder to get to give a financially viable net return of energy because of the short operational lifetime and high production and maintanence costs of the technologies.

There is no money going into this sector really though if there was a proportinate amount of monies enetering the research then we can say with a little confidence a lot of these problems may have been solved or circumvented, for a Union isle not to develop this is weird in my opinion.

Other companies apart from Renewable Energy Holdings are developing technologies, two that come to mind are WaveGen and Ocean power delivery.

[Dag]

phart;230592 said:

It's lazy journalism it takes years of training and studying to be fully cognizant of all aspects about radiation basically to become expert and by that i mean expert enough to explain it simply to leyman as D-man has excellently done (brilliant post mate i don't work directly in the industry but i am a scientist am i right in saying that the sr90 will degrade even further through pure beta emmsions to yttrium? Which must have a halflife of a couple of days?)

So no journalist is bother going to read all the neccessary information and as a result they shouldn't be listened to, would you let the journalist teach your kids in physics, i wouldn't and i certainly wouldn't trust their illeducated(not perjorative merely descriptive)stand point, a classic example as i have already pointed out is the dirty bomb, the only damage by one would be the damage done by the convential blast and the damage to economic growth in the place it was detonated, i.e. London city centre or New York.

Damn i've typed this out without realising the sarcasm, oh well at least it might help others.

Errm... A good journalist will read tons and tons of books and papers to get informed about the topic he/she is working on. And a good journalist will interview and quote different scientists who are very well capable of educating your children in physics and who know what they are talking about. A good journalist will choose as his/her interview partners different experts with different points of view and will give all viewpoints the same space in the article.

And there still are good journalists in this world.

So please, next time you start spitting at something, don't generalize.

[phart]

Dag;230604 said:

Errm... A good journalist will read tons and tons of books and papers to get informed about the topic he/she is working on. And a good journalist will interview and quote different scientists who are very well capable of educating your children in physics and who know what they are talking about. A good journalist will choose as his/her interview partners different experts with different points of view and will give all viewpoints the same space in the article.

And there still are good journalists in this world.

So please, next time you start spitting at something, don't generalize.

Apologies i was referring to the lazy journalism we were discussing in the thread, sorry you missed that i thought no disclaimer would be neccessary as it seemed readily apparent to me, again i apologise i was not referring to all journalists, and i wasn't spitting either and i clearly stated it was not pejorative there is not much else i can do now sorry.

Now onto your points.

It takes years to make oneself cognizant with the subject, do journalists do that, i would suspect no, so the point still stands. even reading non stop for about 2 weeks would still put you at leyman level in my opinion and as such shouldn't be venturing any standpoint which is digestible through mass media.Also how can this journalist understand the theories without the education to back them up, for instance i can read as many books as i want about Brain surgery but no surgeon is ever going to let me actually do it or teach it.

But you're right there are still good journalists so maybe you could provide me with a link to a fair and balanced journalist written piece for one of the major newspaper to illustrate your point and also add to the debate here?

[Skywalker]

phart;230619 said:

(snip) It takes years to make oneself cognizant with the subject, do journalists do that, i would suspect no, so the point still stands. even reading non stop for about 2 weeks would still put you at leyman level in my opinion and as such shouldn't be venturing any standpoint which is digestible through mass media.Also how can this journalist understand the theories without the education to back them up, for instance i can read as many books as i want about Brain surgery but no surgeon is ever going to let me actually do it or teach it.

But you're right there are still good journalists so maybe you could provide me with a link to a fair and balanced journalist written piece for one of the major newspaper to illustrate your point and also add to the debate here?

Um... to counter your point a bit tangentially, I would like to talk about specialization. The whole point of a journalist being a "journalist" (and a scientist being a "scientist") is that they specialize. That's a great idea - the scientist can be a good deep scientist, and the journalist an expert wordsmith. Which brings us to what exactly the journalist's job is:

The journalist's job when reporting on any subject is to report, not to opine. There is usually a separate "op-ed" section that goes with the implicit caveat that it is a platform for the author to opine, not report, and will therefore allow bias to creep in to a reasonable degree. (I'm sure you will find fantastic examples of journalism with integrity in both categories - simple reporting/ journalling, and in opinion writing)

A good journalist can get away with having a layman level understanding of the subject matter - a great journalist will specialize and get more knowhow and understand the nuances of the subject matter.

The fact is though, a responsible journalist would depend on accurately quoting the subject experts (in verbatim or good precis form), and maintain objectivity in any report.

[phart]

sky_walker;230643 said:

Um... to counter your point a bit tangentially, I would like to talk about specialization. The whole point of a journalist being a "journalist" (and a scientist being a "scientist") is that they specialize. That's a great idea - the scientist can be a good deep scientist, and the journalist an expert wordsmith. Which brings us to what exactly the journalist's job is:

The journalist's job when reporting on any subject is to report, not to opine. There is usually a separate "op-ed" section that goes with the implicit caveat that it is a platform for the author to opine, not report, and will therefore allow bias to creep in to a reasonable degree. (I'm sure you will find fantastic examples of journalism with integrity in both categories - simple reporting/ journalling, and in opinion writing)

A good journalist can get away with having a layman level understanding of the subject matter - a great journalist will specialize and get more knowhow and understand the nuances of the subject matter.

The fact is though, a responsible journalist would depend on accurately quoting the subject experts (in verbatim or good precis form), and maintain objectivity in any report.

Exactly its the 6 ft wide 2ft deep or vice versa thing. Now as i scientist i know the truth about all this stuff (or the truth as it is believed at the moment science can refine and even exclude existing principles) So obviously the scientific community is informed as evidenced by the other correspondent in here who works in the industry, most of my colleagues at my university and the students understand what we see as the truth through observable multiple tests. So thats their job done.Our speciality.

Now to get that information out to the general public we go to the other specilists you mentioned, but wait, no one outside the scientific community seems to think the same as us ( on a generalised scale as evidenced by newspaper reports this forum and others etc.) So why is that, who is not doing their job, now i'm not for the moment saying this hasn't be covered well in some publication like the economist, science weeksly etc.

Don't you think it's weird that most scientists believe this way (especially the ones who work in the field) but the "common people" have a differing views, i can assure you it wasn't the scientist who peddled this information.

Would you say this demonstrates the specialised skills of journalists on the main or do the journalists report the facts and the rest of us just don't get it.

Would you say journalists have done a good job in getting the information across in the main? What are your reasons for the information being distorted if not bad journalism, as part of my duties i teach undergraduates and on almost a weekly basis i have to correct some myth concerning physics originated in the press, or so claimed anyway by the student, lol.

Did they do a good job with dirty bombs? What about the mass media hysteria around cold fusion etc. Good journalists must exist and i extend the offer to provide me with a well written article on this subject with one of the major newspapers, there must be some. That was an good example of bad science and bad journalism. EDIT by that i meant the cold fusion debacle.

I know what a good journalist should do and i agree.

There are some cracking investigative journalists and i would love to go into a debate involving 24 hour news the need for invention and specualtion, and if the industry in the whole did such a good job ( here in the UK) then i wouldn't get my private eye every two weeks


Also to add my point isn't about good journalism but merely the disparity in belief between "leyman" and "experts" and one would assume it was the journalists job to make sure no such disparity existed, sorry for the verbose reply.

[Skywalker]

phart;230664 said:

(snip) So why is that, who is not doing their job, now i'm not for the moment saying this hasn't be covered well in some publication like the economist, science weeksly etc.

Don't you think it's weird that most scientists believe this way (especially the ones who work in the field) but the "common people" have a differing views, i can assure you it wasn't the scientist who peddled this information.

Would you say this demonstrates the specialised skills of journalists on the main or do the journalists report the facts and the rest of us just don't get it.

(snip) What are your reasons for the information being distorted if not bad journalism, as part of my duties i teach undergraduates and on almost a weekly basis i have to correct some myth concerning physics originated in the press, or so claimed anyway by the student, lol.

(snip)Also to add my point isn't about good journalism but merely the disparity in belief between "leyman" and "experts" and one would assume it was the journalists job to make sure no such disparity existed, sorry for the verbose reply.

Hmm... I'd refer you to an earlier post I had made on another thread - I think it has relevance here... besides I would be eager to discuss the contents thereof with a true scientist.

The problem with science - and I speak of fundamental research more than the applied sciences - as I see it is in this age is that it is so specialized/ complex, the average joe is unable to understand its intent and content.

You cannot break quantum chromodynamics into a 30 second punchline for the layman. You cannot explain why quarks have "colors" or why String theory would be a good GUT (or what is wrong with Quantum Mechanics or Relativity in the first place) to a layman.

I was a student of engineering some years ago, and an avid reader of "popular science" books by Carl Sagan and Penrose and Hawking. I did not have the time or the inclination to get into the mathematics driving their theories, but I had an insane urge to understand the way the universe works.

I picked up this book by Hawking and Penrose one day and realized when they launched into talking about geodesics and Reimannian manifolds that I had no hope of satisfying my curiosity. After giving up on that book (which perhaps I shouldn't have picked up in the first place) I didn't read literature in that category for a long time... until a few years ago Chaos theory drew me on another journey into fractals and non-linear equations that recently crashed to smithereens on another wall of math.

I think nowadays understanding science well enough has become a FULL TIME, taxing exercise. The best I could do as someone with an interest in science then is to try and live a rational, agnostic life adherent to the principles that make up a "scientific temper". I shall trust data (to the extent that Herr Heisenberg allows), put it to repeatable tests for verification, and be prepared to have my world-view shattered time and again, since nothing is irrevocable but the truth as it is illuminated at a given moment.

Personal manifesto apart, I think that is the big challenge we face these days when discussing anything from evolution to nuclear power to faith and topics eschatological:

Everything is just too darn complex!

[phart]

sky_walker;230691 said:

Hmm... I'd refer you to an earlier post I had made on another thread - I think it has relevance here... besides I would be eager to discuss the contents thereof with a true scientist.

The problem with science - and I speak of fundamental research more than the applied sciences - as I see it is in this age is that it is so specialized/ complex, the average joe is unable to understand its intent and content.

You cannot break quantum chromodynamics into a 30 second punchline for the layman. You cannot explain why quarks have "colors" or why String theory would be a good GUT (or what is wrong with Quantum Mechanics or Relativity in the first place) to a layman.

I was a student of engineering some years ago, and an avid reader of "popular science" books by Carl Sagan and Penrose and Hawking. I did not have the time or the inclination to get into the mathematics driving their theories, but I had an insane urge to understand the way the universe works.

I picked up this book by Hawking and Penrose one day and realized when they launched into talking about geodesics and Reimannian manifolds that I had no hope of satisfying my curiosity. After giving up on that book (which perhaps I shouldn't have picked up in the first place) I didn't read literature in that category for a long time... until a few years ago Chaos theory drew me on another journey into fractals and non-linear equations that recently crashed to smithereens on another wall of math.

I think nowadays understanding science well enough has become a FULL TIME, taxing exercise. The best I could do as someone with an interest in science then is to try and live a rational, agnostic life adherent to the principles that make up a "scientific temper". I shall trust data (to the extent that Herr Heisenberg allows), put it to repeatable tests for verification, and be prepared to have my world-view shattered time and again, since nothing is irrevocable but the truth as it is illuminated at a given moment.

Personal manifesto apart, I think that is the big challenge we face these days when discussing anything from evolution to nuclear power to faith and topics eschatological:

Everything is just too darn complex!

Skywalker i would be delighted to have a debate/discussion with yourself, not anything as grand as the destiny of mankind,yet, i am off on thursday so will come back up and read your other post and give this reply the thread it deserves as i said in another thread i'm only on to get heroes then head.

QCD, explains the interaction of sub atomic particles which have different properties which define how they interact with each other.

As Feynman said any one who says they understand Quantum mechanics are lying and since Gross et al only got the Nobel prize in 04 for their part in "discovering" one of the two main principles of QCD (Aysmtopic freedom i think of is it confinement one of the two anyway)

Sorry mate got to fly but will certainly come back to give your post the reply it deserves, i'm not omniscient with physics though, so i might not be much use and some subjects, but i guess that was what you were saying with the specialisation, though you didn't answer my points on journalism... joking.

Cheers mate a lot to think on there.

[Skywalker]

phart;231168 said:

Sorry mate got to fly but will certainly come back to give your post the reply it deserves, i'm not omniscient with physics though, so i might not be much use and some subjects, but i guess that was what you were saying with the specialisation, though you didn't answer my points on journalism... joking.

No worries... I'm an incredibly patient, debate-starved rationalist

And don't worry about omniscience... the aim for me in any debate is to walk away with some food for thought...

[tharinock]

here is my stuff to add. im pretty tired right now and haven't read much, so i apologize if it has already been stated. Here are some facts about nuclear powerplants given to me by somebody who used to work in one (a friends father). fact: the walls on a nuclear powerplant are thick enough to survive a plane crash. fact: nuclear powerplants CAN NOT EXPLODE. there is just physically not enough of the radioactive isotope of uranium to explod. a nuclear meltdown is just radiotion leaking into the ecosystem outside of the plant. Also, nuclear powerplants are the safest energy source. there have been a total of two or three meltdowns in the entire history of power plants. combustible fuels can explode if something goes wrong. this happens quite often. there are no downsides to using nuclear powerplants that i can see.

[Tsaritsa]

Errr

I suffer from thyroid disease because of Chernobyl

And I was far far away in the Mediterranean coast of turkey

There were a lot of infant deaths on the black sea coast and a lot of women giving birth to disabled children. The fact of the matter is, the true catastrophe has never been touched on

The suffering day after day of people who were actually in the vicinity…and in Turkey and surrounds…people who are still living with the effects today..is never documented

The Turkish Government had a cover up, and although we were told not to eat anything from the Black Sea region, it was not really enforced…in a largely uneducated country, people are not going to really care what the government is crapping on about.

Especially if the staple in their diet is fish & tea and all of a sudden they cannot have the fish from the sea in which their livelihood comes from, or drink the tea …a custom which is steeped into their day to day lives and sometime even substitutes as a meal…tea with bread in mornings for example is one common meal

It was the 80’s, most people in villages do not even know how to read today let alone back then..and what the hell is a nuke plant? They don’t know or care, it is somewhere beyond their reality

My point is…I think it is a very very good idea to take nuclear power very seriously and treat it with caution

[JoJo]

I was one of Hyman Rickover's boys, a nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy. I have a good idea of what happened in Chernobyl. The short version is that the reactor operators violated a bunch of safety regulations and precautions and lost control of the plant.

Can Chernobyl happen again? Certainly. Is it likely to happen? Probably not. Is nuclear power safe? Generally, yes.

BTW, if anyone would like a description of what happened at Chernobyl, I can explain it in fairly non-technical terms. But the explanation will be rather lengthy.

[Ashaman]

Morgoth;192591 said:

On a more amusing note, Norway has the largest known deposit of [insert chemical name I can't remember here], which supposedly is the main ... ingredient in what is genereally refered to as the next level of nuclear powerplants. God has blessed america? Pah! Norway must be the most spoiled country in the world..

@CI - I could go on and on about how vital the UN is, but alas, this is not the right topic, and I can't be bothered:p

said element are thorium, and litle norway sits on the worlds third largest reserves of that, (considering only 4,5 million inhabitants that generaly good for coming generations of Norwegians )
any way her is a wired article about thorium powered reactors: http://www.wired.com...s/2005/07/68045 (copy paste) (nwm i am new to this linking url's in different forums =/ )
The best whit this is that it is ABSOLUTELY fool proof, becorse the whole reactor are suposed to be submerged in molten lead (Pb), and if it over heat it will expand the volume of molten lead and flood the whole thing whit it and shut it down. but all this is some 20 years inn to the future , IF we start to day.

[Cold Iron]

Ashaman;280515 said:

but all this is some 20 years inn to the future , IF we start to day.

If I had a dollar...