How Australia got hot for solar power

Thursday, August 3rd, 2006

From How Australia got hot for solar power:

“The tower will be over there,” Davey says, pointing to a spot a mile distant where a 1,600-foot structure will rise from the ocher-colored earth. Picture a 260-foot-diameter cylinder taller than the Sears Tower encircled by a two-mile-diameter transparent canopy at ground level. About 8 feet tall at the perimeter, where Davey has his feet planted, the solar collector will gradually slope up to a height of 50 to 60 feet at the tower’s base.

Acting as a giant greenhouse, the solar collector will superheat the air with radiation from the sun. Hot air rises, naturally, and the tower will operate as a giant vacuum. As the air is sucked into the tower, it will produce wind to power an array of turbine generators clustered around the structure.

The result: enough clean, green electricity to power some 100,000 homes without producing a particle of pollution or a wisp of planet-warming gases.

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Shadeburst: The three thousand feet sounds highly suspect. A formation of WW2 Forts would drop all its bombs simultaneously on a signal from the lead bombardier. As the formation was spread out across the sky, side- as well as long-ways, and the bombs were released over a period of a few seconds (during which time the formation had traveled a thousand feet) the intention was to bomb an area, not a pickle-barrel pinpoint. In addition, Europe being Europe, the target might often be obscured by cloud, in...
Gaikokumaniakku: Also, the cars may or may not be well-designed but the charging stations apparently were designed to be convenient for copper thieves.
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M. Mack: Elon sounds pretty “Old School,” like Henry Ford and his right hand man “Cast Iron” Charlie Sorensen. Between them, they defined the auto industry, with the moving assembly line, one worker doing one task, and setting up the River Rouge plant to be vertically integrated, from the iron ore being turned into steel and iron in blast furnaces on site all the way to the cars rolling off the end of the line, and close to every step in between.
Elmer: Few decades back Marlin made the Supergoose, a 10-gauge bolt action shotgun with a 36-inch extra full choke barrel, took 3 1/2 inch 10-gauge shells, had a 2-round box magazine. Heavy, ugly, slow rate of fire unless you knew how to run a bolt gun, but it brought down geese at distances a 12-gauge could only dream about. Might be pretty good against drones. About the same time Ithaca made a 10 gauge 3 round semi-auto shotgun, also took 3 1/2 unch shells; IIRC, a 32 inch full choke barrel was...
Phileas Frogg: Blanket censorship of internal criticisms and critiques, without respect to their efficacy, is a sure sign of a social group lacking the internal social flexibility to withstand a serious external threat to their cohesion. The only thing keeping them together is the static nature of their circumstances; change that and there is a high likelihood of failure. Such a group is ossified and ready to break. I hesitate to put a number on it, but I’m willing to wager that a shockingly small...
Lu An Li: For McChuck and thank you. Makes sense. Unity of command.
McChuck: Just as there can only be one king, and army may only have a single commander. Command, by its very nature, rests upon a single head. Two commanders will constantly butt heads, confusing the troops and adding to the natural chaos of war. They often end up fighting each other more than the enemy. Even if they have the best of intentions, two commanders will inadvertently misdirect each others’ troops and interfere with each others’ plans.
Lucklucky: Maybe bad translation. But i think it means it is better to have 1 good and 1 bad than 2 good to be able to choose.
Lu An Li: “I believe it would be better to have one bad general than to have two good ones.” Someone explain this to me.
Gaikokumaniakku: After the lemur bites the millipede, it sprays its toxic secretion, which the lemur then rubs all over its fur. Research suggests that there is a practical purpose to this: the benzoquinone secretion functions as a natural pesticide and wards off malaria-carrying mosquitos. The secretion also acts as a narcotic, which causes the lemur to salivate profusely and enter a state of intoxication.
Freddo: If you want to reach the mass market you need an equally sized megaphone (or a lot of luck). A push by Oprah will do it, Joe Rogan probably to a lesser extend. Amazons algorithm and star rating have been wokified to the point of uselessness; goodreads fast approaching the same point. Aspiring writers get the advice to build their own internet presence, but that of course is a lot of work by itself. I like the concept of a book bomb where a group of like-minded authors do a push of a new novel.
Felix: And, no mention of romance novels. Aren’t they supposed to be 50% or better of books sold? Sure, there are big name romance writers. A lot of them, if the grocery store is indicative. But. No mention?
Felix: Jim, what are the important, unread books you have in mind?
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Phileas_Frogg: Jim, Your comment is obviously true, and yet the religion of those Ellis Islanders has managed to intellectually persevere, and indeed dominate, in intellectually rigorous fields, and in particular at the most intellectually rarified branch of the government (SCOTUS is 6 Catholics, 2 Protestants, 1 Jew). It is an odd paradox. I suspect we’re seeing a selection process take place where the less intelligent, curious, and literate Catholics are ending up non-Catholic, while the more...
Jim: Pre-World Wars America was so much more literate than now that it may as well have been another planet. Nor has the displacement of Americans by the descendants of Ellis Islanders helped much.
Jim: No one buys books because no one reads books. There are books of great importance that practically no one has had access to for dozens or hundreds of years now available for free on the Internet Archive, and they have been “viewed” only a handful of times, let alone read. It would be comical were it not so tragic.
David Foster: Does this include books sold for Kindle and other e-readers? Sounds like it doesn’t. Also, I wonder how much more effectively books could be marketed by people outside the publishing establishment.
Phileas Frogg: And yet they continue to furiously, and quietly, ban or hide titles that they consider dangerous as rapidly as ever. Just ask Aleksandr Dugin, Harold Saltzman, or Jean Raspail. Odd.

Isegoria

How Australia got hot for solar power

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