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7. The Backstroker
Do not even attempt unless you have tiny, tiny, precious little legs.

Via: 7easylife.info

8. The Sleeping Baby
Find a baby. Imitate the baby.

Via: mfrost.typepad.com

via Leigh Sales on twitter – she’s just had a baby, felicitations.

Please share any bits and pieces you have come across recently that have surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you.

NB: the weekly whimsy thread is a stoush-free zone

The basic concern is that much of the energy we use ends up as heat, even as in heating the circuits of your computer or your fancy phone. Some turns into light or radio waves which are absorbed as heat by surfaces.

If we use nuclear power, for example, we are making heat out of uranium.

Currently humans use 16 terawatts (TW) of power at any moment, compared to 120,000 TW of solar power absorbed by the Earth at any given time. Energy consumption has been rising by about 2% pa for the last century. Chaisson’s original article based his calculations of (only) 9 billion people by 2100. Those in the OECD will increase their energy usage by 1% pa. The rest will increase theirs by 5% pa until parity is reached, and 1% pa from there. On this basis even if GHG emissions cease immediately the world will warm by 3C in 320 years, when he has us using 4800 TW. Given that we have already warmed by 0.8C since pre-industrial times and a further 0.5C or so is estimated to be in the pipeline, there’s little margin left even if you foolishly think we can warm by 2C with impunity.

There are other sources of power that won’t contribute to global warming. One is hydro power. A second, as John D pointed out on the previous thread, is tidal power, because the gravitational pull of the moon is there and is not going away. A third is bioenergy, which has other problems in some of its forms.

By the way, Chaisson calculates that the modern American uses 12.5 kilowatts of energy, whereas your average hunter gatherer used only 0.15.

There is other interesting material in the article about the effects of wind and solar on the climate. In California, for example, temperatures behind the wind towers were found to be higher at night and as much as 4C lower by day. We only produced 0.2TW from wind worldwide in 2011, so it is thought that we can go much further without affecting the weather generally but the ultimate limits of extractable energy from wind are much lower than solar. At most there is 68TW available, but one estimate indicates only 18TW may be extractable.

Huggy suggested a global grid of ultre-high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines. Perhaps we could do one along each of the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, with lateral connections through the America’s, Europe/Africa and Asia/Australia.

Grossmann et al have been working on the concept of large solar regions connected by HVDC, for example here and here.

Here are a few more matters to consider.

In November last year Giles Parkinson at Climate Spectator spoke to former Ausra chief David Mills about a study Mills had done with former Ausra R&D specialist Wei Li Cheng and US Department of Energy analyst Phil Larochelle looking at whether solar and wind could supply enough electricity to run the US economy, including transport, using hourly data from 2006 and existing technology. They found that they could. Their concept assumed a HVDC network that replaced flatlining baseload power with “a system of flexible and inflexible energy mechanisms based around wind and solar and other sources.”

China, we are told, is installing more HVDC lines than any other country in the world.

You will be aware that there has been a lot of discussion about the prospect of a grid parity cross-over with solar. Back in June last year we looked at whether solar had come of age.

Parkinson’s update after Mills’ talk at the Solar 2011 conference last year made this comment on cost:

“People say we need baseload plans, but we don’t,” he says. Instead, grids can work perfectly well with a mixture of inflexible supply (wind that blows whenever it wants), and flexible supply (solar thermal with storage). Mills has yet to release the financial modelling for his scenario, but notes that wind is already cheaper than new-built coal in the US, and solar thermal with storage, and used as a peaking plant, will be competitive with peaking gas.

Mills was calculating only on large scale concentrated solar, which was his business, rather than on PV, whether in local distributed energy situations or larger arrays, as in this image from Germany:

German PV solar array

Also from the article:

The UNSW study, based on simulations of Australia’s energy needs in 2010, found that the entire supply could be met by a mix of solar thermal with storage, wind, solar PV, existing hydro and peaking gas plants running on biofuels. Only six hours of the year fail to meet the NEM’s reliability standard, all in evening peaks in the winter months.

That study involved Mark Diesendorf, and I worry about him.

A few weeks later Parkinson was at it again, suggesting that solar could be essentially free. If you include the cost a solar array in your mortgage and use the savings in electricity costs to pay off the mortgage you can pay off the mortgage early.

The International Energy Association (IEA) pointed out last year that in 90 minutes, enough sunlight strikes the earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for a year. They tested the limit of what they thought could be achieved with solar after 2035 if for whatever reason the world decided to move away from nuclear and carbon sequestration and storage (CCS) technology. I’ve taken a brief look at their vision in a separate post along with the notion of distributed generation. The ultimate would be to combine local generation and sharing with a word-wide network.

Clearly there is much for policy makers to think about and questions can be asked about Chaisson’s scenario. The IEA, for example, sees the world in 2060 as one that is four times richer, but through energy efficiency measures using only 50% more power.

Meanwhile Australia’s outlook for solar was characterised yesterday as not so sunny as we stumble towards establishing large-scale solar projects. The Clean Energy Council said a number of other countries have solar markets that are more mature than ours.

One is India, which is now generating cheap solar (8.78 rupees per kilowatt-hour compared with 17 rupees for diesel) in pursuing its “Solar Mission” to install 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022.

Amount of solar shipped

The graph above showing the shipping rate of solar came from the International Energy association (IEA) which has recently issued a report Solar Energy Perspectives. You can download the Executive Summary and Table of Contents here, but it seems you have to buy the document itself. They have provided a small slide show including this:

IEA 2050 scenarios

Giles Parkinson’s has an article in Climate Spectator.

The IEA world energy outlook document looks at energy production out to 2035. Solar Energy Perspectives looks out to 2060, when a requirement of even lower emissions will be needed. They seek to test the limits of deploying renewables, in case carbon sequestration is not widely feasible and the growth of nuclear is constrained.

The IEA’s view of the world in 2060 is one that is four times richer, but through energy efficiency measures using only 50% more power. Hence the world should not feel compelled to use cheap power if it is damaging the planet. Solar may not be all that expensive.

The IEA notes that solar PV is already competitive with “bulk power” in many areas, particularly islands, off-grid locations, and where PV is competing with oil. Solar thermal is also likely to fall substantially – a recent tender for a 50MW solar thermal plant in Mongolia was bid at $140/MWh. It says that solar thermal will be competitive with intermediate and peaking plant by 2020, and by 2030, solar costs will range from $50/MWh in the best solar regions, to $150/MWh in the worst. Other technologies will be grouped north or south of $100/MWh. (Emphasis added)

They see a world of 9 billion people, where 7 billion are living in the sunnier areas. Parkinson says that solar could account for half of all electricity generation, the Executive Summary says a third. Parkinson notes the greater flexibility created through decentralised and off-grid generation and through thermal storage. The distinction between peak power and baseload would become less relevant and:

It notes that “contrary to common belief,” intermittent renewables do not need ME for MW backup. Indeed, it says while significant current capacity of flexible gas will remain online in the coming decades, notably in industrialised countries, their capacity factor will decrease, and there will be no, or little, need to build greenfield fossil-fuelled plants for backup.

Distributed generation

I’m not sure, though, that the IEA goes as far as Huggybunny’s vision of distributed energy generation and storage with 12 kWh of energy storage in every home which he says would totally transform the electricity supply network. Inter alia this would provide energy storage for the network equal to double the generation capacity. This would be used to “soak up” and load-shift intermittent renewables and act to stabilise the distribution network.

Space prevents me summarising the discussion on that thread. Some googling revealed that the phrase “distributed energy generation and storage” is commonly shortened to “distributed energy” (see this Wikipedia article) and the CSIRO does flagship research into it.

The concept covers a range of technologies. The CSIRO seem not to be working on solar.

Storage is an issue, especially cost. Huggy suggested googling PHEVs as dynamically configurable dispersed energy storage (PHEV = plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.

My main comment is that you wouldn’t want to have your car battery drained by people getting up in the morning, turning on heaters and making breakfast. We’ve heard a lot in recent times about new methods of energy storage. I suspect we are going to hear a lot more.

See also the related post Renewable energy for all.

Simon Crean’s intervention last week, and its perception by some as his own bid for the top job, accompanied by reports that the Independents had been canvassed about their intentions in the case of a Labor leadership change (confirmed by Rob Oakeshott), should demonstrate that, if the endless succession of quotes from “sources”, “MPs” and “Ministers” did not. Then there’s the Prime Minister’s own call for unity and for leaking and backgrounding to stop at a special caucus meeting on the weekend.

To my mind, Mungo MacCallum analyses all this noise best, when he remarks that politics has fallen captive to magical thinking:

At the moment the embattled members seem to be relying more on magic than politics: during Sunday’s marathon gathering, the name of Kevin Rudd was not mentioned. Apparently the idea was that if he was not invoked, perhaps he would disappear. Caucus tried exactly the same formula back in the 1950s, when the followers of the hapless and doomed Doc Evatt banned the name of the great enemy, Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria from the party room. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.

Federal politics is an absolute train wreck at the moment, with neither party focusing on the issues that actually concern voters. The Labor Party is incapable of sustaining any sort of narrative about the country, as it appears (accurately) to be obsessed about its own internal dilemmas and polls.

It’s the press-gallery-isation of Labor.

And on the other side of the House:

And of course, there is always the hope of a miracle. After all, Tony Abbott is campaigning for government on the promise that he can conjure $40 billion out of thin air, and provide pie in the sky thereafter. It’s not only Labor that believes in magic.

And as if to cap off this risibility, Speaker Peter Slipper plans to get his wig and frock on to lend dignity to these tawdry proceedings.

Please note – this thread’s just for the analysis of media manoeuvres and their intended effects – discussion of other aspects of issues of interest belongs elsewhere. e.g. browse the archives | roundtables | open thread

Since then, Barton has not divorced himself completely from controversy, but he has turned his life around to a remarkable extent, becoming in the process one of the most interesting and polarising sportspeople in Britain. He is a prolific tweeter (@Joey7Barton), racking up 4000 tweets and boasting over 1,000,000 followers, covering all manner of sports, religion, the media, politics and touching often on his appreciation for George Orwell and The Smiths. He has become an avid reader, started writing a regular column for The Big Issue, and has recently offered some explosively challenging but common sense commentary on the John Terry racial abuse trial to be heard in July this year.

It is difficult to think of a single figure in Australian sport who is both willing and able to combine his or her efforts on the sporting field with a public intellectual life as well. Our sportspeople seem to be either not trained at all to be public professionals, or trained so ruthlessly to focus on the physical aspects of their work and their “media image” that they end up coming across as bereft of personality and without a non-sporting opinion to their name. Polymath truly is a dirty word in Australian public life.

Surely it is time for some of our sporting superstars to stand up for the nation and play a larger role in the public discourse that extends beyond their muscles and physical attributes. As a sporting nation, are we all really so “white bread” – so single-minded in our individual physical pursuits? Perhaps its time to change the widely accepted definition of what it means to be a successful sportsperson in the 21st century. I’d much prefer to hear what Australian’s next big swimming star thinks about the republic or gay marriage than who their next lucrative sponsorship deal is with.

Pink Ribbons, Inc: Capitalizing on Hope

The film depicts an alarming disconnect between the overwhelming corporate and social success of the pink ribbon campaign and the fact that the filmmakers determined only 15 per cent of monies raised go to research prevention, and five per cent to research environmental causes of breast cancer.
[...]
Quebec director Lea Pool, an award-winning feature filmmaker, thinks the solidarity of women, forged through the women’s movement, is being exploited. “When I feel we are being hijacked in a way, co-opted by all the big business, this for me is unacceptable.

“I don’t say people should stop raising money,” she says in a phone interview from Toronto, shared with [producer Ravida] Din. “We have to be more careful how we do this.

The pinkification of cancer fundraising and pinkwashing globally diverts generous people’s donations away from the organisations doing most of the work towards organisations who are just better at marketing. Does this sound like the best use of donors’ money? Meanwhile the corporations get a huge PR boost for donating cents per sale when going pink generates megabuck boosts in their revenues.

And what about all the non-pinkified cancers? By dominating the cancer fundraising landscape, pink ribbons divert attention and thus donations (and the research/screening/treatment those donations provide) from other cancers which affect just as many people. Compassion fatigue sets in when potential donors feel that they’ve already “done their bit for cancer” with pink ribbon campaigns and hardly pay attention to other cancer fundraisers.

Those who donate their time and money for causes they believe in deserve better than having their generosity exploited by organisations and corporations who donate far less than their publicity would have you think. It’s not just Komen in the US who does this – they’ve been so successful that they’re copied all around the world.

The documentary, and much other work in this area, was inspired by Samantha King’s book, Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy.

In Pink Ribbons, Inc., Samantha King traces how breast cancer has been transformed from a stigmatized disease and individual tragedy to a market-driven industry of survivorship. In an unprecedented outpouring of philanthropy, corporations turn their formidable promotion machines on the curing of the disease while dwarfing public health prevention efforts and stifling the calls for investigation into why and how breast cancer affects such a vast number of people. Here, for the first time, King questions the effectiveness and legitimacy of privately funded efforts to stop the epidemic among American women. Pink Ribbons, Inc. grapples with issues of gender and race in breast cancer campaigns of businesses such as the National Football League; recounts the legislative history behind the breast cancer awareness postage stamp—the first stamp in American history to raise funds for use outside the U.S. Postal Service; and reveals the cultural impact of activity-based fund-raising, such as the Race for the Cure. Throughout, King probes the profound implications of consumer-oriented philanthropy on how patients experience breast cancer, the research of the biomedical community, and the political and medical institutions that the breast cancer movement seeks to change.

Hat tip to Bellesouth’s great post laying out Why you should have boycotted Komen before this week, which links to the even more informative Think Before You Pink campaign’s website.

from Think Before You Pink: Critical Questions to Ask Before You Buy Pink – I’ll just list the questions here with my own brief summary of why it matters, go there for a fuller background on the questions.
1. How much money from your purchase actually goes toward breast cancer? Is the amount clearly stated on the package?
(Is it what you consider a reasonable amount, or is it insultingly small?)
2. What is the maximum amount that will be donated?
(Has the corporation capped the donation, has that cap already been reached, thus will your purchase actually contribute to the cause?)
3. How are the funds being raised?
(Does the corporation send money on from your purchase directly? Or do you have to mail in proof of purchase? Is the corporation’s donation more than the cost of the stamps?)
4. To what breast cancer organization does the money go, and what types of programs does it support?
(Research? Screening? Treatment? Established and already well funded? New and innovative? Where exactly?)
5. What is the company doing to assure that its products are not actually contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?
(Many companies whose products have been linked to higher cancer rates invest heavily in the pink ribbon promotions. Should their cynicism be rewarded?)

(crossposted with minor title change)

(Prefer to join a more focussed discussion? Try our recent roundtables for recent lively discussions or browse our archives for topics of interest)