EclecticLip

Finally transferred some files over from the gmail this morning…

Here, here, and here.

The EPIA’s recent estimate that solar PV installations grew 129% from 2007 to 2008 is excellent news.

While growth is likely to be stunted in 2009 (due in part to the collapse of the Spanish economy, last year’s biggest market) this is the kind of trend that should warm greens’ hearts, and not the planet.  One factor which works to solar’s advantage is the recent collapse in polysilicon prices back to “normal” levels — which will improve silicon-photovoltaics’ cost-competitiveness, even as some companies’ profit margins will be squeezed.

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While wind energy is cost-competitive with fossil fuels, the rule of thumb is that it can’t be used for more than about 20% of the grid, due to its intermittent nature.  Basically, to accomodate large amounts of wind, you need to be able to turn other sources of power on or off instantaneously — to account for situations where the wind dies down or comes up suddenly.  That means hydro (which accounts for about 20% of worldwide power generation; quelle coincidence!).

While solar is also intermittent, a big advantage it carries over wind is that it only provides energy during peak usage hours (from morning to evening).  Which generally makes it easier to tie into the grid.  While wind energy production will continue to overshadow (heh) solar electricity for a few years — generation capacity is currently about 120 GW to 5 GW — solar’s ease of grid tie-in should help it surpass wind perhaps a decade from now.

For now, the next milestone for solar will be to outpace nuclear; in 2007 new nuclear generation capacity was about 2 GW.  Solar installations in 2008 were about 3 GW peak, which normalizes to about 1 GW (since solar doesn’t provide energy at night, and provides a lower-than-peak amount of power in the morning and evening).

The latest APEGBC (Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists) newsletter arrived in my e-mailbox the other day.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the first topic (see below the fold):

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The Wings dispatched the Pens, as I predicted.  Of course, I was far far far from alone.  The Pens did better than I thought they would, and I look forward to a rematch in ‘09.  Not that I’m predicting one mind you — but a rematch would make for an excellent “storyline” for the Finals, and an even better series.  As it was, even though the Pens displayed a North Stars-esque resilience*, they were heavily outplayed in almost every game.
I’m also happy to report I watched Game 5 all the way into triple overtime.  Not the longest game I’ve watched — I saw the Islanders-Capitals quadruple-overtime “Easter Epic” in ‘87 — but those marathons are always fun to watch.
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* a reference to the 1991 Minnesota North Stars, who had this uncanny ability to score right after their opponents did — a large reason they made it to the Finals.  I can’t find documentation of it, but I remember hearing that Penguins coach Bob Johnson once called a time out after a Penguins goal, to give his team a chance to gain some composure before Minnesota could come back at them.

I’ve had a chance to interact with newspaper reporters for my theatre play, and can vouch that they’re nice people. Unfortunately, given their deadlines, they don’t have the time to do much research of their own. And sadly, they’re prone to getting basic facts wrong.

These symptoms are rife in newspaper commentary, the “fast food” of journalism, in which Thomas Friedman is the Whopper.
Long-form journalism (where reporters might spend weeks or months on a story) — the type in magazines like the Walrus, the Atlantic, or Harper’s — appears to be more accurate, in that the writer has the time to do their own research and provide a more informed perspective.

But I’d put specialized blogs at the top of the quality-of-information food-chain. If a community is especially nerdy geeky interested in a given topic, enough that some members compile their own research, that community will probably have a lot better insight than any professional reporter could obtain.
A couple recent articles brought this to the fore of my mind. First, off www.theoildrum.com, bar none the premiere website for peak oil discussion, this takedown of a dolefully ignorant article in the Telegraph:
Next, an interview of Nassim Nichols Taleb — whose book “The Black Swan” is this year’s equivalent of “The Tipping Point”. Some excerpts which reflect a similar mistrust of newspapers’ value:

[Taleb] reads for 60 hours a week, but almost never a newspaper, and he never watches television...

[life tip 8:] Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants… or (again) parties.

Through LATOC, I found this Guardian story about one of Bayer’s pesticides being linked to honeybee die-offs.

Which I guess means that the bees are the “collateral damage” of pesticide use.

There might even be a “blowback” analogue too, if pesticide-linked honeybee die-offs ultimately reduce crop yields through reduced pollination.

Couldn’t help smiling on noticing that one of the books I’m decluttering, is called Inner Simplicity.

There probably isn’t much crossover between 9/11 conspiracy theorists and “intelligent design” proponents — they probably come from opposite ends of the traditional political/cultural spectrum (progressive + secular vs. conservative + religious).

But their central premise is similar: that events were too complicated to have occurred without “extra help”.

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