What Do We Think About Climate Change

Don't look like the old Millbrook built lugger is doing too well speedwise - there again with only half the crew they can't drive her like the original crew (no gold at the end of the rainbow either) or maybe the old bootneck is just getting lazy in his old age!

the 'walrus

 

Mmmm... not enough injuns to row 'er, could be too many chiefs Oh yes, no slaves

He he... Pericles's link finally loaded. I guess they were waiting for the boat to drift on to the next plotable location before updating the page Look real bad if the yellow block is on the same spot all the time.

Since they are nearing Africa, they won't be doing too bad once they reach there. In Africa time they will be doing really very good

Maybe we are just spoiled. In the old days we had runners here in SA. If you wanted a date with a Voortrekker chick, you'd send the runner to go and ask her. You'd wait a couple of days for the runner to get back with the answer, people lived far apart then. No use taking a horse and ride it out there, good grief. Not for a woman, no.

Before then I guess things were even slower. South Africa was only 'discovered' in 1752... I just hope this epic voyage isn't going to take as long, couple of generations will exchange deck hands there.

Did you English have swimmers to communicate with other countries back then ? Doubt you had runners there and taking the ship to cross sea to see how everyone else was doing with the wheel seems like a lot of effort.

Come to think about it, if they do take this long, and with global warming and the seas rising and all, when the epics reach South Africa our capital Pretoria may have it's own harbour.... and the journey would be 600km further to .AU then

 

but what are we doing about it

On the one hand there's oil dependency, a bad thing for people who look like me and speak my language. On the other is global warming. Whatever the other hand actually is (big argument always going on here and there) there is little doubt that the two problem are related.

Oil is a gift, it is locked-up CO2, few of us think releasing it all is a good idea. Oil is also our best source of all sorts of things. So what do we do? We burn it. Good thinking. Our great-grandkids are going to hate our guts.

Have to disagree about internal combustion engine efficiency, my van gets more than double the mileage of my first NA car, same weight, or my van gets the same mileage as my last UK car, three times the weight. Definitely an improvement, but room for more. Short of getting a smaller vehicle that is; the laws around here take a dim view of my disposing of sufficient members of the family to get the rest in a Civic, but I digress.

Improving ICE efficiency is a high priority; time for cranking up the legislation. Oh, wait, the oil patch finances the people running for US president. With that angle, notmuch going to happen along those lines.

Well, on to the next one, reliable oil/gas/coal-free energy. Hm, don't fancy leaving the afore-said great-grandkids a shitload of used nuclear fuel, but there's fusion energy, which nearly works, and there has been an international effort running for a couple of decades to develop the technology. Oh, wait, my own country dropped out of that ten years ago and the people who made the most progress, Russia and US have cut their contributions drastically. Still, the Japanese and French are carrying things along ... oh, wait, not the French! Even they don't know what their angle is. But they have one.

Still, we can trust the guys at Sandia, right? They're all scientists. Oh, wait, isn't that where nearly all the US military nuclear development is done? Wonder what their angle is.

Wind energy? Helps a bit. Think about it; on a calm day. Solar energy? I was thinking about that the other day, then I looked out the window and it was night. Trouble with solar is you need it most when it isn't there.

There is a better short-term return from conservation than substitution of other energy sources, and even that isn't getting a lot of attention any more. I have recently changed my furnace to a high-efficiency unit, installed more attic insulation, insulated the (attached) garage and am having new, better insulated exterior doors installed all round the house. Paid tax on every one of them. Government incentives? They exist in theory; just like alternative energy sources.

Ooops, it has degenerated into a rant. How utterly untypical of this forum!

 

But ancient kayaker, thanks for the oversight and chuckle.... 'tis Muckin Funday and the most interesting thing I did (on the weekend) was have a long and interesting chat with Bob Oram, and I am happily convinced that his 39C in "motorsailor" form is for me and within budget.... So the push is on to sell homes and build a boat to be ready for whatever happens and enjoy the rest of our days communing with nature on the top of an ocean regularly visiting (at our discretion) various shores and rivers & creeks on our voyage of wandering/wanderlust....

Also went to visit "Swiss-Chris" who has almost completed his sailing version of the 39C - quite a pleasant afternoon evening talking boats, drinking and eating and solving the problems of the world by inventing a "wanking machine" guaranteed to give instant gratification to men sailing solo...

 

I hope the "wanking machine" is not driven by steam; there's a nasty precedent for that. On mature reflection, it is not for me unless I deck over my canoe ...

 

Booze....

 

mind you Fanie if it does flood that high they won't need to go via SA anyway, admittingly the oil slick across that desert region might be a bit nasty but what the hell, it will be under water!

 

Safe you are back

 

Also Front and Centre?, but not all over yet.... What is your news lad?

 

Your car is more efficient because modern computer-controlled ICE's can operate at or near peak efficiency always. Formerly peak efficiency was only achieved in a narrow range. Stationary engines always operated at peak efficiency, now transport engines can too. But the peak efficiency number has hardly moved in 50 years. This is because the same basic designs and architecture from from 50 years ago are what we still use.

Jimbo

 

The van probably has lower peak efficiency than the engine in my old UK banger because of lower compression ratio, lower octane fuel and emission controls.

A farmer assured me some years ago that an ancient pumping engine he had used much less gas per tonne of water pumped than his (then) brand-new new Honda pump. It used the old bang and gasp cycle in which a full charge of fuel/are mix was admitted when the revs dropped too low and the rest of the time it free-wheeled with the valves disconnected or something. It seemed to pop off about every fifth cycle.

I recall claims from years ago that the same kind of full-throttle acceleration followed by coasting with the engine off got amazing gas mileage. Which probably explains why truck drivers like to go flat out. And yet "they" encourage us to use the throttle gently for good mileage.

The on-off theory works according to the Carnot cycle, and in other fields too; Class-C electronic amplifiers are far more efficient than linear amplifiers. If it works in cars why can't that concept be used in modern transportation? Surely a simple energy storage or smoothing device like a spring could be added to the transmission.

 

Growing up on a farm has some benefits. The "ancient Pumping mechanism" would have had a huge flywheel, and the "bang" kept this going. Would have been very efficient, as the total output was stored in the flywheel.

It doesnt translate to modern moving vehicles due to extra weight - although flywheel vehicles do get a lot of attention from time to time.

the other "con" was the large amount of metal it took to build these ancient machines, and the high maintenance of the equipment.

 

rwatson,

"and the high maintenance of the equipment."

no........very low maintenance in fact, I still have in the back shed the original hit n miss engine that was on the genset for the Darwin airport during the war, it still runs perfectly well.....maintenance is something that was not invented for these old flywheel engines at all.

 

I think RW was referring to the lubrication by hand and cleaning dirt off the exposed crank to protect the bearings from damage. The hit and miss engines I have seen had a water jacket of the evaporative type that would have had to be refilled regularly. You would not have been able to just fill up the tank, start her up and let her run for the day while you got on with work around the farm. On the other hand they would have been built very solidly and produced little power for their weight so with such little stress wear would have been minimal if you looked after it. I did a little research and their main enemies seems to have been dirt and frost.

My point was about fuel efficiency; somewhat related to the topic. Carnot's theorem leads to the equation E = 1 - T1 / T2 where T1 and T2 are the source and sink (absolute) temperatures. E is the maximum efficiency which is never realised in practice. In an internal combustion engine T1 approximates to the gas temperature after ignition; this increases when the compression ratio if an engine is increased which, in a gross simplification, is why modern high compression engines and diesels get better economy. It also suggests that an engine on full throttle should be more efficient than an idling engine assuming full combustion. This not a rigourous explanation by any means.

I recall listening to the old London Transport double decker diesel buses idling, they would rev up briefly then the engine would coast slowing down until it was time to put on another burst. They used a variety of engines, Dodge, Guy, Perkins, but they all did the same thing. Some diesels still do that though most seem to idle at constant revs like a gasoline engine.

This is way outside my expertise, but the question remains, were those old hit and miss engines as efficient as my farmer acquaintance claimed and if so, can the efficiency of a modern engine be improved by the same means?

 

2009 International Conference on Climate Change

Sunday March 8, 2009 - Tuesday March 10, 2009 from 2:00pm - 2:00pm
Marriott Marquis Hotel
1535 Broadway
New York City, New York

Organizer: Heartland Institute. The organizers of a March 2008 conference that brought together more than 500 scientists, economists, and other experts on global warming today unveiled plans to hold a second conference on March 8-10, 2009, once again in New York City.

Read more at: http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/newyork09.html

Cheers.