Let’s face it, cheap fans are annoying. Normally you get a new fan when you a desperate for one – either an old one broke, your air conditioning is on the fritz, or you have company coming and need to cover an additional room. You stop by your local drug store, hardware store, or big box monstrosity and pick up whatever they happen to have. No matter how cheap, it almost always does the job of making air move. But your cheap new fan is loud, rattly, and just all-around annoying. There are some better models out there, and if you have just a few days to plan ahead you can order one of them.
Tag Archives: energy
June 2017 in Review
Most frightening stories:
- The Onion shared this uncharacteristically unfunny observation: “MYTH: There is nothing mankind can do to prevent climate change. FACT: There is nothing mankind will do to prevent climate change”. It’s not funny because it’s probably true.
- Water-related hazards including flood, drought, and disease have significant effects on economic growth.
- There were 910 deaths from drug overdose in Philadelphia last year. Interestingly, I started writing a post thinking I might compare that to car accidents, and ended up concluding that the lack of a functioning health care system might be our #1 problem in the U.S.
Most hopeful stories:
- On the education front: Finland achieves some of the world’s best educational outcomes with a lot of playtime and not a lot of homework. Musical training early in life is good for your brain later in life, even if you don’t continue it. There are lots of free philosophy and ethics courses online.
- On the climate front: There are some new ideas for decoupling human wellbeing from energy use by focusing on the distinction between needs and wants, which mainstream economics does not do. Electric cars and self-driving cars may explode onto the scene at the same time. Al Gore released An Inconvenient Sequel. Will it start to turn the tide against willful ignorance of science and logic? Fingers crossed, although I doubt the people who are most impervious to science and logic will watch it. Maybe there are still some people on the fence who will.
- Ride sharing may be starting to reduce parking demand.
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- Tile is a sort of wireless keychain that can help you find your keys, wallet, and those other pesky things you are always misplacing (or your significant other is moving, but won’t admit it).
- “Fleur de lawn” is a mix of perennial rye, hard fescue, micro clover, yarrow, Achillea millefolium, sweet alyssum, Lobularia maritima, baby blue eyes, Nemophila menziesi, English daisy, Bellis perennis, and O’Connor’s strawberry clover, Trifolium fragiferum.
- Traditional car companies are actually leading the pack in self-driving car development, by some measures.
automation in the coal industry
The simplistic image of “coal jobs” meaning miners toiling underground is no longer accurate given the increasing automation of the coal industry, according to Bloomberg.
Coal miners no longer swing a pickax or wield a shovel. While coal companies are hiring again, executives are starting to search for workers who can crunch gigabytes of data or use a joystick to maneuver mining vehicles hundreds of miles away…
“Whether coal comes back or not is not necessarily directly related to jobs,” Heath Lovell, a spokesman for coal producer Alliance Resource Partners LP, said in an interview on NPR’s “On Point.” “We should be becoming more and more efficient, which would mean we could produce the same amount of coal with less employees…”
One irony for the industry now is that in some areas the coal companies say they can’t find the high-skilled workers they need. In West Virginia, companies are resorting to offering signing bonuses and fully paid healthcare to poach experienced shift foremen, mechanics and electricians from rivals. Many of those workers left the coal industry during the last decade’s collapse and found more stable employment in other sectors. They aren’t anxious to switch back.
HSBC on peak oil
The idea of peak oil is definitely not dead, according to HSBC. While low demand and high supply have pushed down prices over the past several years, the market is headed back for an equilibrium, demand is growing, output from traditional fields is declining while investment in new discoveries and new technologies has dropped sharply in recent years. A crunch could be coming.
- The oil market may be oversupplied at present, but we see it returning to balance in 2017
- By that stage, effective spare capacity could shrink to just 1% of global supply/demand of 96mbd, leaving the market far more susceptible to disruptions than has been the case in recent years
- Oil demand is still growing by ~1mbd every year, and no central scenarios that we recently assessed see oil demand peaking before 2040
- 81% of world liquids production is already in decline (excluding future redevelopments)
- In our view a sensible range for average decline rate on post-peak production is 5-7%, equivalent to around 3-4.5mbd of lost production every year
- By 2040, this means the world could need to replace over 4 times the current crude oil output of Saudi Arabia (>40mbd), just to keep output flat
- Small oilfields typically decline twice as fast as large fields, and the global supply mix relies increasingly on small fields: the typical new oilfield size has fallen from 500-1,000mb 40 years ago to only 75mb this decade
- New discoveries are limited: last year the exploration success rate hit a record low of 5%, and the average discovery size was 24mbbls
- US tight oil has been a growth area and we expect to see a strong recovery, but at 4.6mbd currently it represents only 5% of global supply
- Step-change improvements in production and drilling efficiency in response to the downturn have masked underlying decline rates at many companies, but the degree to which they can continue to do so is becoming much more limited
May 2017 in Review
Most frightening stories:
- The public today is more complacent about nuclear weapons than they were in the 1980s, even though the risk is arguably greater and leaders seem to be more ignorant and reckless.
- The NSA is trying “to identify laboratories and/or individuals who may be involved in nefarious use of genetic research”.
- We hit 410 ppm at Mauna Loa.
Most hopeful stories:
- Electric cars may be set for a boom in the next five years or so.
- The Dutch public insisted on safe streets, and got them. The Dutch are a type of human being, I think, which suggests there could be hope for the rest of us.
- Buzz Aldrin and NASA have plans for Mars colonization around the 2030s. Stephen Hawking thinks this is a good idea to hedge our bets against bad things that might happen here on Earth.
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- Some experts think the idea of national sovereignty itself is now in doubt.
- Taser wants to record everything the police do, everywhere, all the time, and use artificial intelligence to make sense of the data.
- The sex robots are here.
genetically engineered algae
USEPA has approved a strain of genetically engineered oil producing algae to be tested outdoors.
On August 1, 2013, EPA received TSCA Experimental Release Applications (TERAs) R-13-0003, -0004, -0005, -0006 and -0007 from Sapphire Energy, Inc. to test five different intergeneric strains of the photosynthetic green algae Scenedesmus dimorphus in open ponds. The purpose of the field test is to (1) evaluate the translatability of the genetically modified strains from the laboratory to an outdoor setting, and (2) to characterize the potential ecological impact (dispersion and invasion) of the genetically-modified microalgae. The introduced intergeneric DNA sequences include certain metabolism genes and an intergeneric marker gene that enables detection of the microorganism from environmental samples. Also, different regulatory elements controlling expression of the genes were used, resulting in the five intergeneric strains. The field trials are to be conducted at the University of California San Diego Biology Field Station (BFS) in La Jolla, CA.
stealing used fast food oil
According to Bloomberg, theft of used fast food oil has become more common as its economic value has increased recently. There are a few interesting reasons for this:
Finding value in old grease isn’t new. For more than a century, the waste product has been processed into ingredients for everything from makeup and paint to pet food and livestock feed, according to the Arlington, Virginia-based National Renderers Association, which represents 51 companies with 205 plants in the U.S. and Canada.
What’s different is more cooking oil is being made into fuel. It’s now the largest use for old grease, at around 30 percent of demand. A 2007 energy law calls for American cars, trucks and buses to use escalating amounts of biofuels. Most of that is corn-based ethanol used in gasoline, but refiners also are making more biodiesel. Soybean oil is the primary raw material, followed by used grease and corn oil…
The rally in biodiesel is boosting the value of grease. Since Feb. 17, the fuel is up 12 percent to $3 a gallon, as of April 28. Further gains may be likely because of a trade dispute with competitors in Argentina and Indonesia, which may limit imports of biodiesel
So the value of, and therefore the incentive to steal, grease is on the rise due to a complicated set of factors involving fuel demand, government regulation, and international trade policy. If some of the biodiesel we are using in the U.S. is coming from palm oil plantations in the tropics, that adds another element to consider in the environmental benefits or costs of the technology. I also suspected that the typical burger joint owner who is paying someone to pick this stuff up doesn’t care all that much if someone else picks it up. From that person’s perspective, either way it goes away. I suppose the environment could be hurt depending on where it goes, and the licensed grease hauling industry gets hurt (and yes there is an industry association for that, called the National Renderers Association, and they are very concerned about this issue.
410 ppm
Climate Central says we have hit 410 ppm:
On Tuesday, the Mauna Loa Observatory recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide reading in excess of 410 parts per million (it was 410.28 ppm in case you want the full deal). Carbon dioxide hasn’t reached that height in millions of years. It’s a new atmosphere that humanity will have to contend with, one that’s trapping more heat and causing the climate to change at a quickening rate…
“The rate of increase will go down when emissions decrease,” Pieter Tans, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said. “But carbon dioxide will still be going up, albeit more slowly. Only when emissions are cut in half will atmospheric carbon dioxide level off initially.”
Even when concentrations of carbon dioxide level off, the impacts of climate change will extend centuries into the future. The planet has already warmed 1.8°F (1°C), including a run of 627 months in a row of above-normal heat. Sea levels have risen about a foot and oceans have acidified. Extreme heat has become more common.
All of these impacts will last longer and intensify into the future even if we cut carbon emissions. But we face a choice of just how intense they become based on when we stop polluting the atmosphere.
So things are not only not getting better. They are not even getting worse at a slower rate. They are getting worse at a faster and faster rate, and our not-too-ambitious goal is to make them get worse at the same rate. High school calculus teachers are probably the only ones enjoying this.
electric cars about to boom
According to Bloomberg, electric cars are set for a big boom by 2020 and could lead to a peak and decline in oil demand sometime in the 2020s.
Electric cars are coming fast — and that’s not just the opinion of carmakers anymore. Total SA, one of the world’s biggest oil producers, is now saying EVs may constitute almost a third of new-car sales by the end of the next decade.
The surge in battery powered vehicles will cause demand for oil-based fuels to peak in the 2030s, Total Chief Energy Economist Joel Couse said at Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s conference in New York on Tuesday. EVs will make up 15 percent to 30 percent of new vehicles by 2030, after which fuel “demand will flatten out,” Couse said. “Maybe even decline…”
“By 2020 there will be over 120 different models of EV across the spectrum,” said Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “These are great cars. They will make the internal combustion equivalent look old fashioned.”
March 2017 in Review
Most frightening stories:
- La Paz, Bolivia, is in a serious crisis caused by loss of its glacier-fed water supply. At the same time we are losing glaciers and snowpack in important food-growing regions, the global groundwater situation is also looking bleak. And for those of us trying to do our little part for water conservation, investing in a residential graywater system can take around 15 years to break even at current costs and water rates.
- Trump admires Andrew Jackson, who I consider a genocidal lunatic and the worst President in U.S. history.
- Fluoridated drinking water could eventually be looked back on as a really stupid idea that damaged several generations of developing brains, like leaded gasoline. Or not…I’m not sure who to believe on the issue but caution is clearly warranted.
Most hopeful stories:
- A new political survey says there is a chance that a majority of Americans are not bat-shit crazy. Which suggests they might not be too serious about Steve Bannon, who believes in some bat-shit crazy stuff. There are a number of apps and guides out there to help sane people pester our elected representatives when they fail to represent our interests.
- South Korean women are projected to be the first to break the barrier of an average life expectancy of 90, with a 50% probability of this happening by 2030.
- Advanced power strips can reduce the so-called “vampire loads” of our modern electronic devices that are never really off.
Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:
- This long NASA article first gets you excited about the possibility of life on eight new planets it has just discovered, and then throws cold water (actually, make that lethal X-rays) all over your excitement.
- Bill Gates has proposed a “robot tax”. The basic idea is that if and when automation starts to increase productivity, you could tax the increase in profits and use the money to help any workers displaced by the automation. In related somewhat boring economic news, there are a variety of theories as to why a raise in the minimum wage does not appear to cause unemployment as classical economic theory would predict.
- CRISPR could be used to create new crops out of the wild ancestors of our current crops.