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7617. jexster - 7/31/2008 6:23:52 PM Pickens on his energy plan
7618. jexster - 8/1/2008 2:33:31 PM Major Discovery at MIT Promises to Unleash Solar Power Revolution 7619. wonkers2 - 8/1/2008 3:38:11 PM Wow! I hope that one works out. It could save us from self-immolation. 7620. concerned - 8/1/2008 6:01:25 PM I've already read about this. Interesting that there's no mention that it exceeds the maximum 50% efficiency of electrolysis, which suggests, given the general adulatory tone of this puff piece, that it doesn't. That's a lot of wasted energy. 7621. concerned - 8/1/2008 6:02:22 PM It could save us from self-immolation.
Care to explain your reasoning? 7622. jexster - 8/1/2008 10:33:03 PM Under the Bonnet - Continental GT Speed
This puppy will melt some polar ice TD!
6L V12
The sooner we do Greenland the faster we can get to all that Arctic oil 7623. jexster - 8/1/2008 10:36:32 PM 7620...read the article for yourselves
Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.
More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.
"This is just the beginning," said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. "The scientific community is really going to run with this."
Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.
The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that "this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science."
The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources - governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years. 7624. jexster - 8/1/2008 10:38:57 PM Unless McExxon's elected and Exxon gets another 1.2 billion in tax cuts to fund their Propaganda for Climate Change Deniers Foundation 7625. concerned - 8/2/2008 3:51:19 AM According to every realistic projection, nobody has to worry about Greenland for the next 500 years, if ever. 7626. concerned - 8/2/2008 3:52:11 AM Re. 7606 -
Buy two of them, rejexst. Then you'd have a pair of something. Tatas. 7627. alistairConnor - 8/2/2008 10:03:12 AM Nobody has successfully modeled the Greenland icecap yet, Con. That's why it was left out of the IPCC models, not because it's not melting, but because nobody has a handle on the rate and mechanisms. Give it five years, and it will be better understood. 7628. thoughtful - 8/3/2008 2:57:59 PM #7618...Man I hope it isn't cold fusion all over again.
Seems like every time we have a run up in oil prices we have the wackos coming out of the woodwork telling us how we can improve our gas mileage by adding water to the tank, or adding a device to our air cleaner etc etc....and we have someone with scientific blush coming up with the greatest new breakthrough in energy since the discovery of fire. 7629. iiibbb - 8/3/2008 5:19:42 PM Indeed I hope it works.
The polywell stuff is intriguing as well, but I think that's got some problems.
I'm very hopeful we can eliminate carbon as our main energy source. 7630. alistairConnor - 8/3/2008 7:57:56 PM The problem is, the carbon (oil and coal) is so very very cheap and easy. Even when it's "expensive". I hope I can have a hydrogen fuel cell one day, to hook up to my PV panels. But it's not just the engineering, it's the cost. Will it ever be cheaper than fossil carbon? Only when fossil carbon becomes really rare, I suspect. 7631. wonkers2 - 8/4/2008 3:03:10 AM Those "wackos" are M.I.T. professors. Of course that doesn't mean it will work outside the laboratory in the real world. 7632. iiibbb - 8/4/2008 3:15:05 PM MIT PostDoc...
If it works, I'm sure he'll be a professor soon enough. 7633. thoughtful - 8/4/2008 3:54:35 PM And stanley pons of cold fusion fame was chair of the Univ of Utah Chemistry dept.
Pedigree does not ensure success.
"Harvard University's Judah Folkman electrified cancer researchers 5 years ago when he and his colleagues reported on a new compound that could shrink tumors in mice virtually to nothing by cutting off the blood supply to tumors, rather than by poisoning patients with toxic drugs. Now, as clinical trials of the widely heralded cancer treatment endostatin are about to be expanded, two groups report that they couldn't get it to work." 7634. iiibbb - 8/4/2008 4:24:33 PM "There is no such thing as a free lunch"
Something my undergraduate adviser would repeat over and over and over.
But I don't think that Solar's problem is that it's more expensive than Carbon. The problem that it's start-up cost is so high. If I were in a place I thought I'd be living for the rest of my life I'd definitely spring for it. But I just can't afford it as a short term expense. 7635. concerned - 8/5/2008 12:28:38 AM Re. 7627 -
I have to call 'bullshit' on that, AC.
Of course Greenland has been modeled. And the models say there's a snowball's chance in hell that the mile and a half thick Greenland ice cap will substantially reduce within a millennium regardless of what humans do. Any shorter time frame than a thousand years would require the climate in Greenland to rival that of the tropics. And not even the looniest whackjobs will go that far.
Actually, the last I heard, Greenland is accreting ice.
7636. concerned - 8/5/2008 12:31:35 AM Try not to lose track of the fact, too, that the continental glaciation in NA took over five thousand years to melt even with temperature forcing greater than what is predicted for Greenland.
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