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Showing posts from February, 2018

Less Arrogance

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The CAGW discourse could be less contentious if climate alarmists tamed their arrogance. Here is some humble advice on how this could be achieved: 1. Accept, off the bat, that Earth's climate system is extremely complex and thus that neither you, nor anybody else fully understands it. 2. Don't try to frame EVERYTHING that happens as "consistent with what you would expect from a warming planet." This reduces your credibility or worse, makes you sound like a clown. 3. If your premise is that increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are a serious problem then BEHAVE as if you believe this is true. You don't need to completely eliminate your fossil fuel use (an impossible feat for you as for anybody else) but at least engage in token actions such as eliminating all air travel. 4. This is a critical one. Again, if CO2 is a very serious issue, then you need to become a card carrying nuclear power advocate. And if you are already a closet nuclear sup

ITER: Going Nowhere Fast

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If no further cost increases happen and everything works according to the plan, in a few years ITER will be able to produce 500 MW of heat (not electricity). This heat will just be released to the atmosphere without producing any useful electricity (ITER will not even have an electrical generator). This heat dump into the atmosphere is planned to take place during 2035 if no additional delays occur.  The input for producing this output is calculated to be 50 MW of heat. However, since the input heat will be produced with electricity, at a 40% efficiency for the generator it actually requires a thermal input of 50 / 0.40 = 125 MW of heat. So the net heat production of ITER should be 500 MW - 125 MW = 375 MW. If this heat were used to power an electrical generator (at say, 40% efficiency) its output would be 150 MW.  The cost of ITER, so far, is projected to be 20 billion euros, so per GWe of capacity it corresponds to 20 / 0.125 = 160 billion euros. And again, this cost does