Solar issues

Solar Thermal Plants Losing out to Photovoltaics - Technology Review

The article notes that big solar thermal plants are still (mostly) semi-experimental and therefore hard to finance, and also the "power tower" types that use large arrays of carefully aligned mirrors to concentrate the sun onto one point tend to involve bulldozing a lot of animal habitat. With PV, you can build above the critters.

Someone in comments notes, though, that the article doesn't consider another solar option: arrays of tracking dishes which power their individual stirling engines. Here's one such array with 60 dishes in Arizona. (Yeah, that's still not so big at 1.5 MW, and I'm not sure how they deal with cloudy days when the sun keeps coming and going.)

I used to follow Inifinia Corporation in the US, because I thought it had the coolest looking design for a stirling engine solar power dish. I see they are still around, and have added a website for their "Powerdish" which claims 24% peak conversion efficiency. They still aren't into the domestic market (and the dish is kinda large for your average house yard anyway,) but with a 25 year life, and claiming to be cheaper than other solar alternatives, they look like a good option for rural properties (and even in arrays.)

In the firing line

Australian volcano eruptions overdue, new study confirms

Using the latest dating techniques, scientists from the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences and the Melbourne School of Engineering have calculated the ages of the small volcanoes in the regions and established the recurrence rate for eruptions as 2,000 years.

With the last volcano eruption at Mt Gambier occurring over 5,000 years ago, scientists say the areas are overdue...

“Although the volcanos in the region don’t erupt on a regular sequence, the likelihood of an eruption is high given the average gap in the past has been 2,000 years,” Professor Joyce said.

“These are small eruptions and very localised but depending on the type of eruption, they could cause devastation to thousands of people,” he said.

The regions of Western Victoria and adjacent south-eastern South Australia demonstrate a history of activity by young monogenetic (single short-lived activity) volcanoes. Similar young monogenetic provinces are found in northeast Queensland.

Professor Joyce suggests it might be a good idea to local governments to think about what to do if an eruption takes place, as they do in Auckland.

Which reminds me, I recently heard on the Science Show a brief mention of Auckland's Rangitoto Island, which only formed in an eruption 600 years ago. (I've been there once, many years ago, but I remember it as very pretty.) As this New Zealand site explains, it's an area absolutely ripe for a new volcano that could come through anywhere:

All of Auckland’s volcanoes come from one magma source. Underlying Auckland is a diffuse pool of magma that occasionally finds its way to the surface. Unlike a ‘classic’ volcano – such as Mt Taranaki or Mt Ngāuruhoe with a single vent through the crust – in Auckland, the magma finds different routes through the crust and erupts in a different place each time.

Each volcanic cone in Auckland stems from a separate eruption from the pool of magma that lies under the city. It’s unlikely that the magma will push through in the same place twice, so each volcano that can be seen on today’s landscape can be thought of as dormant. However, the underlying magma is still active – it may come through at a new place and form a new cone next week, next year or next century.

Obviously, the town planners who let the city be built there have a lot to answer for! :)

The goose that keeps on giving

Sceptic's Nazi jibe ends his lectures

I thought there was something fake about Monckton's rapid, completely unreserved, often repeated apology for using the swastika in a lecture when he referenced Garnaut and others.

Initially, I thought he had used the Nazi symbol so that if anyone did call him out on it, he could complain about use of climate change "denialism" and how no one apologises for that.

Turns out he had a much more direct incentive: his Australian tour organisers had booked him into 3 German Clubs.

What a maroon.

Monckton's lecture presumably contains no new content from what he delivered last time he was here, and his talking points have been comprehensively dealt with already. (In fact, at many places.)

His influence is on the wane; it was a waste of money bringing him out.

As will be, I am sure, the IPA's forthcoming hosting of Vaclav Klaus.

They only look nice and clean

Atmospheric cloud water contains a diverse bacterial community

Atmospheric cloud water contains an active microbial community which can impact climate, human health and ecosystem processes in terrestrial and aquatic systems. Most studies on the composition of microbial communities in clouds have been performed with orographic clouds that are typically in direct contact with the ground. We collected water samples from cumulus clouds above the upper U.S. Midwest. The cloud water was analyzed for the diversity of bacterial phylotypes by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons. DGGE analyses of bacterial communities detected 17–21 bands per sample. Sequencing confirmed the presence of a diverse bacterial community; sequences from seven bacterial phyla were retrieved. Cloud water bacterial communities appeared to be dominated by members of the cyanobacteria, proteobacteria, actinobacteria and firmicutes.

Interesting.

An unintended consequence

Pot drivers: Stoned drivers are uncharted territory - latimes.com

The LA Times reports that there is a concern that the medical marijuana movement in America is leading to an upswing in traffic accidents involving stoned drivers:

In California alone, nearly 1,000 deaths and injuries each year are blamed directly on drugged drivers, according to CHP data, and law enforcement puts much of the blame on the rapid growth of medical marijuana use in the last decade. Fatalities in crashes where drugs were the primary cause and alcohol was not involved jumped 55% over the 10 years ending in 2009.

"Marijuana is a significant and important contributing factor in a growing number of fatal accidents," said Gil Kerlikowske, director of National Drug Control Policy in the White House and former Seattle police chief. "There is no question, not only from the data but from what I have heard in my career as a law enforcement officer."

Given that the THC can take a long time to be fully excreted, simple testing for its presence doesn't correlate to clear impairment. (Hence, employers in industries where safety is a priority simply take the "safe" option and just want to find no trace at all in their employees.)

There was one odd comment in the report that I hadn't heard before:

Flores' tongue had a green coat typical of heavy marijuana users and a later test showed he had pot, as well as other drugs, in his blood.

Having a can of lime green soda in the car might be a good diversionary tactic for medical marijuana users, then...

Witness for the prosecution

Pigeons never forget a face

New research has shown that feral, untrained pigeons can recognise individual people and are not fooled by a change of clothes.

I'm waiting for a movie based on a pigeon witnessing a murder in the park, and needing to go on a witness protection program.

Above the eyes

Catalyst: Pet Subjects - Dog eyebrows - ABC TV Science

I found this segment on Catalyst this week pretty fascinating. The key to feeling that we can understand dogs, it suggests, is because they are one of the few animals with expressive eyebrows. This is in contrast to cats (and, I would think, horses.)

Now if you look at the equivalent muscle in the cat, it's not strong, and attaches all the way across the eye ridge. Which means the cat can't do much interesting with that muscle. Whereas the dog's levator anguli oculi medialis is perfectly placed to raise just one edge of its eyebrow. But the deeper why question is, why do dogs have this special eyebrow muscle, and most animals don't? Well the best theory concerns the evolution of social living. In general, the most social animals have the most expressive faces.

One study showed foxes who hunt alone had about half the facial expressions of wolves who work in packs. In fact, in wolves and dingoes, the eyebrows are often even a different colour, exaggerating the movement.

Sounds a plausible theory.

That'll help market share

Tiger planes grounded, pose 'serious risk' | News.com.au

Wow. I've travelled on Tiger with the family maybe 3 times, I think, and always noted that, provided you went with the expectation that you were merely catching a cheap bus line that happens to drive at 40,000 feet, the experience was fine.

But they've had services banned for a week for air safety issues!

With there be any customers left at all after this?

Complicated

Fatima conspiracy theories are damaging the Church

This blog entry at Catholic Herald doesn't fully explain the background, but it would appear that in certain Catholic circles, there is much controversy about whether Russia has, or has not, been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in accordance with the apparent wishes of Mary as expressed via Fatima.

This seems a tad arcane for a 21st century Catholic, who, if raised after the 1960's, probably knows very little about Fatima anyway. In fact, if Australian Catholic practice is anything to go by, attention paid to Mary in any respect by Catholics has taken a dramatic downturn since (I would say) the 1950's. (I grew up in the 1960's, but I think even then Marian devotion was starting to dwindle.) I don't think modern nun-ish feminism has been able to convincingly incorporate her story into anything compelling (maybe the "virginity" is the issue there), and priests simply spend as little time as possible talking about her.

It's a curious thing, to have seen emphasis in the Church change so much in a relatively short time of about 50 years.

Stupid men

Lightning strikes far more men than women, statistics show

Mind you, I have known women who have been completely careless of lightning too.

I have a good "standing outside in the middle of a storm" story, and might post it one day.

Some mildly encouraging news...

Nuclear power debate a 'live debate within the Labor Party', says Martin Ferguson | The Australian

Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said yesterday the topic remained a "live debate in Australia, despite the best efforts of the Greens and the non-government organisations to demonise the discussion".

Speaking in Sydney at a forum on nuclear power, he said Australia would "eventually have to decide on the issue of energy reliability, at the cheapest possible cost".

Modern media questions

David Duchovny and Tea Leoni separate | News.com.au

SEX-addicted actor David Duchovny has separated from his wife, fellow actor Tea Leoni, for at least the second time.

In 2008 the couple split briefly after Duchovny reportedly discovered explicit text messages on his wife's mobile phone sent by actor Billy Bob Thornton.

The pair spent several months apart while The X-Files and Californication star, now 50, entered rehab for sex addiction.

Don't the examples of Duchovny and Sheen indicate that, if you're a person with an addiction issue in your personal life, it's not exactly helpful to play a person who has the same habits on TV? Mind you, Sheen is mad enough to say he doesn't have a problem.

Extremes

Experts warn epic weather ravaging US could worsen

Towards the end of this report about the extremes of recent US weather, we get this comment:

However, the intensity of future droughts, heat waves, storms and floods is expected to rise drastically if greenhouse gas emissions don't stabilize soon, said Michael Mann, a scientist at Penn State University.

"Even a couple degree warming can make a 100-year event a three-year event," Mann, the head of the university's earth systems science center, told AFP.

"It has to do with the tail of the bell curve. When you move the bell curve, that area changes dramatically."

Is that right? Because if it is, it's a handy retort to climate skeptics who, failing all else, will come up with "but is a 2 degree increase really going to be all that bad?"

And it also suggests that, if indeed formerly 1 in a 100 events do start piling on top of each other at much more rapid intervals over the next decade, this may well be the proof that the public seems to need that serious reduction of CO2 is needed.

More work needed?

Acer's Iconia tablet rivals iPad in price, but not much else

I've been noticing the Android tablets that have been turning up at JB Hi Fi, including this one by Acer. I was wondering if they a good alternative to an iPad, being slightly cheaper and all. (One obvious and fairly big difference is an ability to run Flash.)

But according to the review above, the Acer model has its problems.

I did see a Toshiba one yesterday too, but I had a really bad Toshiba notebook once, so I'm cautious about the brand.

Anyway, we'll see.

Mouse trouble

BBC News - Mickey Mouse tweet by Egypt's Sawiris angers conservatives

One of Egypt's richest men has been accused of mocking Islam after tweeting cartoons of Mickey and Minnie Mouse wearing conservative Muslim attire.

Telecoms mogul and Coptic Christian Naguib Sawiris apologised for re-posting the images on Twitter a few days ago, saying he meant no offence.

But several Islamic lawyers have filed a formal complaint and there are calls for a boycott of his businesses.

Sensitive bunch.

No big surprise

Climate sceptic Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies, papers show

Electric Air

VoltAir shows off electricity powered plane concept at Paris Air Show that is slated for 2035

Hard to believe it could work, and I assume it is only a small aircraft, but I like the idea.

Whatd'ya know...

More on marathoning and heart disease : Science-Based Running

Interesting report on a recent study with some pretty convincing sounding evidence that too much marathon exercise is bad for the heart.

I am not at all surprised. I would have thought it hard to argue that from an evolutionary point of view, human bodies are made for such protracted and repeated bouts of exertion.

Man trouble

The idea is not new, I guess:

...a team of psychologists based in China and Hong Kong believe the ultimate cause of human war rests with the male libido. Historically, they argue that the lure of an attractive female primed the male brain for conflict with other males, an effect that persists in modern man even though its usefulness is largely outdated.

But the way this was tested does strike me as kind of funny:

Across four experiments Lei Chang and his team showed that pictures of attractive women or women's legs had a raft of war-relevant effects on heterosexual male participants, including: biasing their judgments to be more bellicose towards hostile countries; speeding their ability to locate an armed soldier on a computer screen; and speeding their ability to recognise and locate war-related words on a computer screen. Equivalent effects after looking at pictures of attractive men were not found for female participants.

The effects on the male participants of looking at attractive women were specific to war. For example, their ability to locate pictures of farmers, as opposed to soldiers, was not enhanced. Moreover, the war-priming effects of attractive women were greater than with other potentially provocative stimuli, such as the national flag. Finally, the men's faster performance after looking at women's legs versus flags was specific to war-related words, as opposed to merely aggressive words.

Given the huge disproportionate number of men in China, this is not encouraging research for them (or us, I guess), that's assuming you give any credence to this sort of research at all.

UPDATE: here's the link I forgot to insert.