May 26, 2012
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) made history when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle in history to successfully attach to the International Space Station. Previously only four governments – the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency – had achieved this challenging technical feat.
- May 22/Launch Day: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon spacecraft into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
- May 23: Dragon orbited Earth as it traveled toward the International Space Station.
- May 24: Dragon’s sensors and flight systems were subjected to a series of complicated tests to determine if the vehicle was ready to berth with the space station; these tests included maneuvers and systems checks in which the vehicle came within 1.5 miles of the station.
- May 25: NASA gave Dragon the GO to attempt berthing with the station. Dragon approached. It was captured by station’s robotic arm and attached to the station
The next steps:
- May 25 – 31: Astronauts open Dragon’s hatch, unload supplies and fill Dragon with return cargo.
- May 31: Dragon is detached from the station and returns to Earth, landing in the Pacific, hundreds of miles west of Southern California.
Live coverage of the hatch opening, including some of the first video from inside Dragon, will begin Saturday at approximately 3:00 AM PT/ 6:00 AM ET on www.spacex.com .
Tags: Dragon, International Space Station, NASA, SpaceX
Posted in Business, Space | Comments Off on The Dragon docks
May 17, 2012
The Hockey Shtick reports on a recent paper by Aldert J. van Beelen and Aarnout J. van Delden of the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, The Netherlands which shows that the hours of sunshine decreased somewhat from 1958-1983 and then increased sharply between 1985 and 2010 at a number of places. The authors postulate that the reduction of cloud cover since 1985 was possibly due to the cleaner air with reduced aerosols during this period.
It was not so long ago that the CERN CLOUD experiments showed that cosmic rays could indeed influence cloud formation providing support for Svensmark’s hypothesis that it is solar effects via cloud formation which dominates climate.
If we assume that the reduction in sunshine hours between 1958 and 1983 was due to man-made pollution and that this was reversed in the period after 1985, it still needs Svensmark’s solar effects or some other mechanism to explain the very sharp reduction in cloud cover and increase in sunshine hours after 1985. It seems patently obvious from every day observations that cloud cover is far more important to weather and climate than any far-fetched notions of man-made carbon dioxide having any significant influence.
The Hockey Shtick: A paper recently published in the journal Weather finds that global summer average sunshine [solar short-wave radiation that reaches Earth’s surface] dimmed during the period 1958-1983 [prompting an ice age scare], but markedly increased from 1985-2010. The increase in summer average sunshine between those two periods is 6 Watts per square meter, which dwarfs the alleged effects of CO2 by more than 5 times. [Alleged CO2 effect from 1958-2010 was calculated using the IPCC formula 5.35*ln(389.78/315) = 1.14 Watts per square meter]. At one measurement site [De Bilt], summer sunshine increased from 1985-2010 by 15 Watts per square meter, more than 23 times the IPCC alleged forcing from CO2 during the same timeframe [5.35*ln(389.78/346.04) = 0.64 Watts per square meter].
The paper states the increase in sunshine reaching the Earth’s surface is due to a decrease in aerosols including clouds, which are influenced by both anthropogenic and natural factors, and possibly changes in solar activity.
from van Beelen and van Delden “Weather” Vol.67 No. 1, January 2012
Tags: carbon dioxide, CERN, clean air, clouds, cosmic rays, hours of sunshine, IPCC, solar effects, Svensmark
Posted in Climate, Clouds, Environment, Solar science | Comments Off on More evidence that cloud cover – and not carbon dioxide – dominates climate
May 16, 2012
Since this blog will now focus on energy, electricity, environment and climate, I shall now post my comments /views on archaeology, pre-history, anthropology, biology and matters related to the development and evolution of humans in 6,000 Generations instead:
Was dog domestication the critical advantage for Sapiens over Neanderthalensis
Though fossil evidence of domesticated dogs is very sparse and the earliest is from around 30,000 years ago, there is no certainty about when domestication actually occurred. For it to have been a critical advantage over Neanderthalensis it would have to have started with some form of regular human-canine co-operation – eventually leading to domestication – perhaps some 50,000 years ago.
Tags: 6000 generations, dog domestication, Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo Sapiens
Posted in Anthropology, Archeology, Evolution | 1 Comment »
May 15, 2012
UPDATE! Not just Sarajevo but even the UK is enjoying snow on the ides of May!
It’s weather of course and not climate. Or perhaps it should be called an extreme event caused by global warming.
The snow is expected to become heavy rain later this week.
AFP reports:
SARAJEVO — The Bosnian capital and its surroundings were covered by snow on Monday, the first time in half a century snow has settled in Sarajevo at this time of year, as temperatures plunged to just above freezing.
“The snow was nine centimetres (over three inches) high at 0500 GMT. It is the first time in the past 50 years that we have snow that remained in Sarajevo in May,” Dzenan Zulum of the national meteorological institute told AFP.
Zulum said snow had previously covered the capital in May in 1962 and 1953, adding that it also fell in Sarajevo in May 2005, but immediately melted.
Temperatures have plummeted in the past two days from 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday to 0.3 degrees Celsius on Monday. ….
image: thewatchers.adorraeli.com
Tags: Sarajevo, Snow, snow in May
Posted in Climate, Weather | Comments Off on Snow in Sarajevo in May
May 15, 2012
Eclipse Anular (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Fifteen days after the “supermoon” of May 5th when the moon was at perigee, the moon will be at apogee and will be too small to obscure the entire disc of the sun when their paths intersect (as viewed from earth). This will give an “annular” eclipse of the sun on May 20th which will be visible from China across the Pacific to North America.
This excellent map by Michael Zoeller of eclipse-maps.com gives a comprehensive picture of where the eclipse will be visible and the magnitude of the eclipse visible:
Tags: annular eclipse, partial eclipse, Solar eclipse, Solar eclipse of May 20 2012
Posted in Science, Trivia | 1 Comment »
May 14, 2012
Yet another paper indicating that climate and solar behaviour are related – at least over the Tibetan plateau and at least over the last 1000 years.
Tree ring based precipitation reconstruction in the south slope of the middle Qilian Mountains, northeastern Tibetan Plateau, over the last millennium
by Junyan Sun and Yu Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, China
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 117, D08108, 11 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2011JD017290
Reconstruction of precipitation amounts for the edge of the Tibet Plateau. The bars on the chart depict prominent weak phases of solar activity, which correspond to Om = Oort Minimum; Wm = Wolf Minimum; Sm = Spörer Minimum; Mm = Maunder Minimum; Dm = Dalton Minimum). Figure from: Sun & Liu (2012).
Geologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning and chemist Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt have written a summary of this paper (in German), and this translation is from P Gosselin at NoTricksZone
New Study of the Tibet Plateau: Whenever Solar Activity is Weak, the Rains Disappear
By Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt
The Tibet Plateau is at 3000 to 5000 meters elevation and is the highest and (most) expansive high plateau on Earth. Therefore it reacts sensitively to climate changes. Junyan Sun and Yu Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied tree rings in the northwest plateau edge from two living 1000 year old trees. Tree growth in the area of study is particularly sensitive to the amount of precipitation. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Dalton minimum, grand solar minima, Maunder Minimum, solar effects on climate, Solar variation, Spörer Minimum, Tibetan Plateau
Posted in Climate, Solar science | Comments Off on Droughts on the Tibetan plateau coincide with grand solar minima
May 14, 2012
As distorting subsidy regimes are reduced or withdrawn and even with the collapse of prices for solar pv modules, solar power shows that it is still a long way from being commercially viable. This report is on the unhealthy and distorted situation in New Jersey where even more “artificial” legislation is planned to keep this non-viable industry alive. It would be far healthier to allow solar power plants to find their natural – unsubsidised – commercial niches. And there are commercially viable niches in industry and in domestic use for solar power – albeit only as an auxiliary energy source (pv) or in support of domestic heating or of conventional thermal power plants (solar thermal).
Press of Atlantic City
The prices that power companies pay for solar power have all but collapsed, curtailing future development and leaving those who installed systems struggling to repay their loans. A glut of power has meant that prices have fallen by more than 80 percent in the span of a year.
In response, solar power advocates are pushing for state legislation that would limit the amount of solar power that can be produced by large companies, while mandating that power companies buy more solar power. …..
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: New Jersey, price collapse, Solar power, subsidies
Posted in Energy, Politics, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on “Boom and bust” for solar power in New Jersey
May 13, 2012
The Renewable Energy Law was introduced 12 years ago in Germany. It prioritises the use of “green energy”. What was thought to be a way of helping the introduction of new technology and fulfilling a political agenda has backfired and has led to a severe weakness of the electricity grid and the second-highest electricty price in Europe.
The Law leads to large conventional coal and gas plants leaving the grid far too early and these are the only plants which can guarantee a stable supply of power. This in turn has led to many of these plants being decommissioned prematurely since they were being forced to operate at uneconomic levels of loading. They are then no longer available to compensate when the wind does not blow or at night or on cloudy days as wind and solar power generation fluctuate wildly.
The hidden costs of renewable power are now being revealed and an entirely new market for “balancing power” has appeared. The “balancing power” – nearly always gas-fired – is just to compensate for the inherent unreliability of wind and solar. For every 100 MW of renewable capacity added around 70 MW of (mainly) gas-based balancing capacity has to be added to ensure a stable and steady supply of power. With subsidies and “balancing” costs added to the direct cost of building wind or solar plants, the actual costs of renewable power have been exorbitant and have contributed significantly to the increase of electricity prices to the consumer. Germany now has the second highest consumer electricity price in Europe (second only to Denmark with its profligate use of subsidised wind turbines)
The German Federal Network Agency has issued a report warning of the dangers during the coming winter. Daniel Wetzel of Die Welt writes (translation from GWPF – Philip Mueller):
Last winter, on several occasions, Germany escaped only just large-scale power outages. Next winter the risk of large blackouts is even greater. The culprit for the looming crisis is the single most important instrument of German energy policy: the “Renewable Energy Law.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: balancing power, Federal Network Agency, Germany, Renewable energy, Renewable Energy Law, Sustainable energy
Posted in Energy, Gas, Germany, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on Renewable Energy Law has weakened the German electricity grid
May 12, 2012
It has been just over two years since I started this blog – my first – and I now feel sufficiently comfortable to move away from the general and to try and focus just on the topics that interest me most. I have changed the sub-heading to reflect this.
My opinions on aspects of energy and power generation and climate and environment will now take centre stage on this blog. I shall have to try to address my interests in technology and materials and behaviour and management and anthropology and politics elsewhere. It has been the advent of accessible electric power which has been the single most liberating force for the human condition – ever. For the foreseeable future humanity will continue to use – and need to use – electric power. And virtually all our sources for electric power – except perhaps some nuclear fuels – derive from the Sun.
Sol Invictus.
The blog image is of sunrise on a very cold day in February last year.
Tags: climate, Electric Power, Energy, environment
Posted in Climate, Energy, Environment | Comments Off on A slight shift of focus
May 11, 2012
It would seem that the wind lobby is more influential with the US Government than the wildlife lobby. Of course there is a lot more money involved in extracting subsidies for wind and solar energy than there is in wildlife.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been investigating the increased incidence of wildlife deaths (large birds, foxes and tortoises among others) at solar and wind energy project sites. The USFWS now proposes – presumably because these deaths will continue for a long time at such projects – that they be given a licence to kill for 30 years! But this support for solar and wind projects is a tacit acknowledgement by the US Fish and Wildlife Service that renewable projects are rather more dangerous to large birds and other wildlife than the enthusiasts would like us to believe.
Euphemistically, the USFWS obscures these licences to kill under the innocuous sounding “programmatic permits to authorize eagle take“.
The Foundry has this :
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bald Eagle, Bird kills by wind turbines, licence to kill, Renewable energy, United States, United States Fish and Wildlife Service
Posted in Behaviour, Business, Energy, Politics, Renewable Energy, US, Wildlife | 4 Comments »
