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28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

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Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#181

Post by Tiktaalik »

bjourne wrote: post #165
morkalork wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently that isn't true and just shifting the blame away from the pesticide and agricultural industry which have decimated insect populations. Which are the food source for many birds. Much like blaming consumer's personal choices for CO2 emissions.

"We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals." https://www.nature.…

It's an apples and oranges sort of issue here.

I have no doubt that stray and feral housecats in the cities and suburbs are killing great numbers of common house sparrows, but the things that are driving down numbers of endangered birds in rural and remote areas (where feral cats are not a problem) is habitat loss and the decline in food sources (ie. berries and bugs).

Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#182

Post by piaste »

Karellen wrote: post #94
piaste wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good that you are aware it's a crazy thought :) Nothing wrong with looking into it though. Wikipedia offers: > Movement of tides causes a loss of mechanical energy in the Earth-Moon system: this results from pumping of water through natural restrictions around coastlines and consequent viscous dissipation at the seabed and in turbulence. This loss of energy has caused the rotation of the Earth to slow in the 4.5…

> at this rate the Earth will stop rotating in 50 billion years, That's not what the link you posted says. It states that that's when the Earth-Moon system will be tidally locked, so that the Moon orbits the Earth at the same rate that the Earth rotates around its axis. Kind of if the earth slowed so that one "day" took the equivalent of 28 days now. The earth would be locked with one side always facing the moon, so…

You're right, my mistake.

Ignoring for a second both the human factor and the Sun having gone red giant much earlier... I wonder what kind of ecosystem that would create. If the Earth were tidally locked to the Sun (which is what I was picturing in my confusion), it would clearly end up as two deserts with a tiny strip of life along the twilight circle. But how would complex life evolve to adapt to a 28*24h day/night cycle? We do have decently-sized ecosystems in caves so long nights aren't insurmountable, but being baked to really high temperatures for a month and then cooling down to freezing for another month sounds like quite a challenge.

Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#183

Post by orbital-decay »

bjourne wrote: post #165
morkalork wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently that isn't true and just shifting the blame away from the pesticide and agricultural industry which have decimated insect populations. Which are the food source for many birds. Much like blaming consumer's personal choices for CO2 emissions.

"We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals." https://www.nature.…

How significant is that number? Is it large or small? How much of it is offset by larger populations of well-fed birds and rats in cities? In many countries, people specifically feed stray cats to keep cities rat-free, and predatory birds are often used for pest control (huge crow flocks terrorizing parks etc).

Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#184

Post by carlosjobim »

jtriangle wrote: post #159
out_of_protocol wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> too many problems for wildlife There were a meta-analysis regarding population of birds in areas with/without wind turbines, found no statistically significant difference (unlike coal, where difference was huge)

Yeah, if you're looking to save the birds, the first order of business is to ban cats, because turns out those cute little guys are rather adept at bird murder.

I've never seen a cat kill an eider or goldeneye.

Offshore wind turbines kill and disturb specific species of birds. Grouping all birds together is of no use.

Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#185

Post by bbor »

tremon wrote: post #158
bbor wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all seriousness, I’ll throw in “the unexpected breakthroughs in intuitive AI will aid this effort.” I sincerely think that LLMs will at least make R&D cheaper. Beyond that, “we haven’t been to the moon” isn’t a fair summary of our tech imo - a HUGE portion of that is political in origin, and private companies have invented reusable rockets which is pretty damn important

I sincerely think that LLMs will at least make R&D cheaper. How, exactly? Because to me it's just as likely that LLMs will hallucinate alternative solutions based on their flawed world model which will send numerous unfortunate researchers on wild goose chases that turn out to be exactly that. And I expect the volume of impossible-yet-probable-sounding solutions will dwarf the actual costs saved by using an Automated…

Long story short: every engineer and scientist in the country will suddenly get 100 interns. Will they make perfect work? Hell no. But current levels of Intuitive Computing LLM tech can be extended to much higher levels of autonomous/agential behavior, and that’s all you need to bring computers from a tool to a partner.

Your criticism of an all-in-one induction system / Reasoning Engine is well founded, no disagreement from me. I just think that they’ll be able to help in myriad, smaller ways. Finding synergies, analyzing data, designing and employing frameworks/simulations/tools specific to the researcher’s work, and just generally being a bank of knowledge that can be easily browsed through complex linguistic filters.

IMO :) I am an optimist. Maybe it turns out chatgpt is the best we get, in which case I’m very very pessimistic about our chances of meaningfully solving climate change, rocket-launched-lunar-dust or no. So… I have a “fingers-crossed” based leap of faith in my reasoning somewhere

Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#186

Post by mercutio2 »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #118
debok wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A kettle uses ~1.5KW, a geyser ~2KW, an oven ~5KW, a stove about ~3KW. These are fairly high estimates I got from some quick googling. If you add these all up, and account for some more appliances (HVAC, fridge/freezer etc.), I think it is safe to estimate that a household less than 20KW at peak, even though it is a fairly high estimate. So going backwards from there, 1.2MW = 1200KW and 1200KW / 20KW = 60 households…

(What’s a geyser?)

In the US, this is called a tankless water heater.

I’m not sure where in the world calls them geysers, but I agree it’s not a term you’ll hear in the US!

Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#187

Post by tga_d »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #181
bjourne wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals." https://www.nature.…

It's an apples and oranges sort of issue here. I have no doubt that stray and feral housecats in the cities and suburbs are killing great numbers of common house sparrows, but the things that are driving down numbers of endangered birds in rural and remote areas (where feral cats are not a problem) is habitat loss and the decline in food sources (ie. berries and bugs).

Feral cats are extremely common in rural areas (though not in remote areas). Ask anyone who's lived on a farm or ranch about "barn cats".

Regardless, "the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals" sounds unambiguously not great, even if they're mostly not endangered.

Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#188

Post by ralfd »

card_zero wrote: post #26
throwbadubadu wrote: post #12

More renewable is good.. but there is always one fear in my crazy mind about these: This isn't actually renewable but taking energy out of a huge reservoir (Same for solar if pea counting, but solar is really endless until the end of the solar system).. and if we'd scale it massively the result could be another catastrophe. (Same btw. with geothermal?). (Btw.. I maybe got tidal wrong, so if it is just taking energy f…

Some numbers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power#Principle (last paragraph). Tidal energy is wasted by natural coastlines all the time, being converted into heat and erosion. If this effect is constant, it looks like the day gets longer by 7 minutes 12 seconds every 36.5 million years. (I calculated that because it's a 1% reduction in rotational energy.) Human extraction of tidal energy is much smaller th…

Sanity check with quick googling:

> Geological evidence ... indicate that 620 million years ago the day was 21 hours, says Mardling.

Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#189

Post by evv555 »

card_zero wrote: post #26
throwbadubadu wrote: post #12

More renewable is good.. but there is always one fear in my crazy mind about these: This isn't actually renewable but taking energy out of a huge reservoir (Same for solar if pea counting, but solar is really endless until the end of the solar system).. and if we'd scale it massively the result could be another catastrophe. (Same btw. with geothermal?). (Btw.. I maybe got tidal wrong, so if it is just taking energy f…

Some numbers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power#Principle (last paragraph). Tidal energy is wasted by natural coastlines all the time, being converted into heat and erosion. If this effect is constant, it looks like the day gets longer by 7 minutes 12 seconds every 36.5 million years. (I calculated that because it's a 1% reduction in rotational energy.) Human extraction of tidal energy is much smaller th…

>Tidal energy is wasted by natural coastlines all the time

Erosion is a major part of Earth's carbon cycle[1]. It's not a given that you can scale this technology without impact.

1. https://carbonclaire.com/the-carbon-cycle/#:~:text=The%20geo....

Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

#190

Post by ComputerGuru »

zaroth wrote: post #155
ComputerGuru wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much dust would you need to shoot up to affect a statistically significant change in the amount of sunlight getting through?

A fuckton. Roughly 100 million tons annually of lunar regolith launched into L1 by railgun. https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...

:blink:

And this was being discussed credibly as "something we'll be doing in the near-term future?"

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