By Jo Nova
Last days for the industrial giant of Germany?
Thanks to NetZeroWatch
BASF in 1887. They’re cutting jobs in Germany now, closing ammonia and plastics factories but growing in Ohio.
The Green dream is unravelling in the fourth largest economy in the world. The Vice Chancellor is bluntly saying that Germany industry may have to shut down in 18 months if the current gas flow deal from Russia through Ukraine isn’t extended and he doesn’t seem to believe it could be. Meanwhile 13,000 people protested in Bavaria against the “heating ideology” — whereby evil gas is theoretically going to be forcibly replaced with wildly expensive heat pumps powered by erratic green electrons. The people just don’t want them: last year Germans installed 600,000 gas systems and only 236,000 heat pumps. Politicians are starting to back away slowly from the plan to make all new heaters “65% renewable” by next year. It’s starting to look like the backdown on banning fossil fuel powered cars.
The German economy is possibly in a recession already and Greens are finally getting the blame. It’s so bad that journalists worry that the “Far Right Surge” could endanger some businesses. The right wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is now polling second across Germany. The AfD is particularly popular in East Germany, (where voters are experts on the failings of socialist experiments).
Today the Greens are being mocked for failing to install a heat pump in their own headquarters after a three and half year quest. The cost is set to reach €5 million because they opted for the geothermal plan and have to drill down “almost 100ft” (that far eh?). The project has been beset with delays.
These are strong words:
Germany warns of industry shutdown if energy crisis deepens
Bloomberg
Germany may be forced to wind down or even switch off industrial capacity if Ukraine’s gas transit agreement with Russia isn’t extended after it expires at the end of next year, according to Economy Minister Robert Habeck.
Habeck, who is also the vice chancellor, issued the stark warning Monday at an economic conference in eastern Germany, saying that policymakers should avoid “making the same mistake again” of assuming that the economy will be unaffected without precautions to secure energy supplies.
His message is aimed at Green and environmental groups
“There is no secure scenario for how things will turn out,” Habeck said at the forum in Bad Saarow. Additional capacity — including a planned LNG terminal on Germany’s north coast that has provoked opposition from locals and environmental groups — will therefore be essential to maintain supply to both Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe, he said.
Companies are already fleeing to the US:
Companies are moving to the US as they face administrative burdens and high energy costs in Europe, Stefano Mallia, the head of the Employers Group of the European Economic and Social Committee, told EURACTIV.cz in an interview.
The relocation of companies mainly concerns those sectors dependent on high energy use, according to Mallia. “I can call it a real and present danger,” he said, adding that the EU has to put the competitiveness agenda to the forefront of its policymaking.
Germany is the engine of the EU. This is economic madness.
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It ain’t mad if your objective is to destroy the engine of the EU. The Greens and their acolytes are communists working for the communist cause which is to destroy the West. If you think there are just mistakes you are wrong. This is deliberate and it is happening here as well. Adam Bandt is jubulant at the path taken by that idiot Chris Bowen. Australia is well and truly screwed. To that can be added Pliberseks decision to stop fertilizer plants and the aversion to dams by Labor plus importing millions of people we are in danger of running out of food production. Food will get dearer.
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Spot on! And right now it is difficult to see any prospect for improvement.
This Tanya Plibersek is a mystery. Her parents came from Slovenia to get away from the Communists, and here is she, among the leaders of our Communists. Her CV says she was dux of Janalli High, so surely you would think she has the intelligence to understand what she is doing.
She should go back to Slovenia, but Slovenia has tired of Communism, they wouldn’t want her now.
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“decision to stop fertilizer plants “
The left have to do something to slow the ever-increasing crop yields due to increased atmospheric CO2 ! 😉
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Don’t worry. The people will eventually wake up. When they get cold and hungry.
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Do worry. By the time the people woke up cold and hungry in the USSR they were in a gulag. We’re in a race to wake people up. Every week matters.
Lawrie, you give them far too much credit for forward planning. Only the ones at the top have any idea. The rest are just impressing their friends at dinner parties. Their vision goes only as far as Saturday night.
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I disagree Jo. The People will eventually wake up. And traditionally in History it means Revolution.
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People woke up but the dark ages lasted 500 years.
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Errrrrrr. The American Revolution. The French Revolution. Quite recent actually.
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Fall of Rome Johnny. How many years did it take to recover from that?
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But Jo it is the ones at the top who are causeing the damage. I agree the rest of the sheeple are just useful (useless) idiots but they vote and whilst ever voting is favourable it will continue. I bought and watched the Perth presentation. Excellent and thanks for letting us know. I remember going to the Newcastle Town Hall to hear Anthony Watts many years ago and there were only a hundred, maybe less in attendance. To see 2500 applauding speakers should give us some hope that the tide is turning. Cold and hunger will accelerate the revolution or is it the revulsion by the proles of government lies like power will get cheaper etc. I lump climate and covid in the same bin. What works to bring sanity to one will work to bring sanity to the other.
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Climate and Covid…Don’t forget the Hole in the Ozone Layer. It is in the same category. Having comprehensively won the first round and gone quiet 30+ years ago it is coming back onto the table for another round.
Lumber them all together in a campaign under the banner of a failed education system.
Carbon dioxide does more good than harm.
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“communists working for the communist cause” … uhuh, So Was Oma watzername one of them? Seemed very strange that someone of that pedigree should have been running the West so soon after Re-unification. Said that then, and am saying it again now!
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Germany and the eurozone went into a mild recession last month, that is to say two quarters of negative GDP
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It’s good to see this happening & hopefully it will speed up to disaster proportions!
The resulting revolution might, just maybe wake the rest of the western world from their comatose slumber before the whole lot sinks into the Marxist mire of poverty.
Wake up time is here in Australia as well. Certainly the likes of the ALP & 50% of the coalition simply have no idea of the disaster they are courting.
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Expect another pipeline explosion to make the transit agreement irrelevant. More hours of fun with people posting whodunnit theories.
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Can I be first? the Russians did it. Its well known they love nothing better than blowing up their own infrastructure.
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The Americans blew up Nordstream and Russia took out the dam.
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a quote from anti Russian Washinton post from 29/12/2022: that shows Ukraine thought about it and had practice at blowing up the dam
“The two bridges were targeted with U.S.-supplied M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems — or HIMARS launchers, which have a range of 50 miles — and were quickly rendered impassable.
“There were moments when we turned off their supply lines completely, and they still managed to build crossings,” Kovalchuk said. “They managed to replenish ammunition. … It was very difficult.”
Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/29/ukraine-offensive-kharkiv-kherson-donetsk/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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Here is the Ukrainian ministry of truth other wise known as the Ukrainian PR army.
https://www.pr.army/streams-and-departments
Partnerships.
Building reliable and profitable for both sides agreements
Go down to “These media trust us” and there is your Washington Post.
https://www.pr.army/journo
Russia are doing the same.
It is not how they tell us.
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You are absolutely correct. The Russians paid a fortune to build that pipeline, it was going to bring them huge amounts of income, and, if they decided to stop the gas, they had their hands on the gas tap to turn it off.
So of course they blew it up. Who else would have wanted to?
After the Ukrainians started making threats about blowing up the dam to cut off the Russians north of the river, the Russians withdrew across the river. But they still needed the dam to provide water for Crimea, to provide water for the nuclear power plant they controlled and kept shelling just for fun. Also, a flood from the dam would hit the south side of the river harder than the north side.
So the only reasonable thing for the Russians to do was to bow up the dam. No-one else could have done it.
You know it makes sense.
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As usual, President Trump was correct.
In the following 29 sec video the President, speaking at the UN, warns Germany about dependence on Russian energy and the German delegation just laugh.
Who’s laughing now?
https://youtu.be/FfJv9QYrlwg
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Heat pumps in Germany?
We’ve been forced to use them here in Australia for more than a decade. If you’ve built a new house in New South Wales you’ll know what I mean.
The little heat pump sitting on top of your hot water storage tank says it all and its allied control items of “essential green awnings and roofwater storage tanks” would make Saint Gretta proud.
Of course all of this junk only lasts for a little while: guess where it’s made, yep, right next door to the turbine and “solar panel” factories.
The efficiency of “heat pumps” is appalling compared to the alternatives but the idea of “free energy” from compressing the air is so green it was hard for China to resist, and the money’s not bad either.
Are heat pumps really just air conditioners in reverse. 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I now people who have heat pump clothes dryers. Very expensive and not as good as traditional ones.
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This link does not paint a rosy picture of Heat Pumps in cold weather, just when one needs them. They may need supplemental heating in the cold weather using other techniques.
(I have added the conversion to °C so you don’t have to!)
https://www.estesair.com/blog/at-what-temperature-does-a-heat-pump-quit-working-efficiently#:~:text=Heat%20pumps%20do%20not%20operate,energy%20to%20do%20their%20jobs.
One can always get out a “Ghillie kettle” when it gets too cold for the heat pump.
https://www.ghillie-kettle.co.uk/
Takes a variety of fuels and very quick to boil.
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They come with electrical resistance rods that kick in when those low temperatures are reached. Such units and their operation at low temps are more expensive. My winter lows have gone to -15°F [ -26°C ].
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I’ve only just woken up (in Melbourne) and already the day has been a success! Thanks NuThink for the Ghillies Kettle info !!! …….
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Heat Pump is a new term for me. I have imagined that it is a descriptive title, and what they are talking about is our reverse cycle air conditioners.
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Thanks for the F to C conversions, NuThink, but now let me teach you a little bit about significant digits 🙂
A measurement like “40 F” has only one significant digit, the 4. The rest of the measurement is just the number of orders of magnitude we’re dealing with. So when you run it through a conversion formula like “(temp – 32) * 5 / 9”, the result cannot have more than the number of significant digits you started with. In this case, you get “4 C” (not “4.44 C”, which is incorrectly displaying 3 significant digits, 2 of which are entirely fabricated and misleading).
Converting a phrase like “25 to 30 degrees [F]” is even worse. Now you are talking about plus or minus 5 degrees F, so you barely even have 1 significant digit. Thus, after conversion, you don’t get “-3.89 C to -1.2 C”, you get “around -5 C to 0 C” at best, and you could just as well say “a few degrees below freezing” without losing any precision that you didn’t have to begin with.
Now conversely, if your Fahrenheit measurement was somehow done accurately enough to give you a number like “43.28 degrees F”, you have 4 significant digits to work with. (Whether they are accurate or not is a separate question.) Therefore, after you convert it, you can write “6.267 degrees C” (but not “6.2666666667”).
There is another caveat if your measurement has decimal digits. Thus, “40 F” has one significant digit, but “40.0 F” has three. The decimal point implies that someone went to the trouble of measuring tenths, and both the ones and tenths came out to the value of “0” by happenstance.
All of this becomes more precise and less guesswork if your measurements come with error bars, such as “+/- 0.1 degree F”, but usually we don’t have that luxury, so we have to use heuristics derived from the information presented. The standard heuristic says “40 F” implies one significant digit, but you could make an argument that you actually have two, and that the zero is significant, but it’s not guaranteed without more context. It’s safest and most common to assume that all the trailing zeroes (in the absence of a decimal point) are insignificant.
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Oops made a slight mistake in my own lecture, I wrote “measurement was somehow done accurately enough” but instead I should have written “precisely enough”, since of course accuracy and precision are not the same thing at all. You can have a precise figure with lots of significant digits that is totally inaccurate, or conversely an accurate measurement with only one significant digit. Ideally we want measurements that are both accurate and precise!
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Maybe you should have retired at 10:50 pm.
I think what you are trying to say is that converting round figures into square figures creates confusion. This is true.
This started in the 1960s when we “went metric”, about 2,000 years after we should have. Journalists, later using quite marvellous little pocket calculators, could convert any round figure to maybe eight or even ten decimal places. At my place this did not inspire confidence in their profession.
Which leads to other current discussions. The Air Vent reported to us that in the American vote counting, a number of big batches of votes totalling about 340,000 went 100%, not 99%, to Biden. The number of votes for Trump was “Statistically zero.” So what does statistically zero mean?
The inferred metric is whole percentage points. So statistical zero will be either zero or any number that would be rounded to zero. In this case 0.0% to 0.5%
The other old statistical problem is with averaging. if you average ten whole number readings, it is legitimate to cite the average to one decimal place. &c.
00
When my solar collector type hot water system developed cracks I had a choice to replace it for $6400 or buy a common, garden variety HWS for $1600 installed. I said that I had solar and they sold me a a device that diverts surplus solar from the grid to the water heater. Since it was installed I have had “hot water free from the sun”. Far better than a heat pump.
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My mother in laws solar assisted HWS also developed cracks (Plumber reckons that its a common problem in frost areas with the flat panel type systems) In the end we just capped of and powered off the solar section and ran it as a standard HWS. Dont think it was doing a whole lot (poorly sited) as the billing didn’t alter significantly.
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Recently had an issue with the reverse cycle unit I had installed 2 years ago.
It ran out of gas, and had to be re-gassed.
The installer/repairman said that they were having a lot of issues because they got a batch of copper refrigerant gas pipe from China, and it has been tested as being porous to the gas… ie it leaks !!
Easy enough to replace with better quality pipe at the household level, but apparently there are also a lot of high rise and commercial air-cons installed using the same batch of pipe.
Interesting times for air-conditioner industry, as the pipe manufacturer apparently refuses to take any responsibility.
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We have had heat pumps for decades. In my house it’s called a refrigerator because it pumps heat from the inside to the outside. My air conditioner is simply a two way heat pump. A heat pump in a clothes dryer is nothing more than overuse of technology and the term ‘heat pump’ introduced to imply a new technology that is supposedly more efficient.
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We had to replace our very old dryer after it failed and parts not available. The heat pump ones were all that was available at short notice (blame pandemic induced supply chain issues – So they said) and the darn thing takes simply ages to dry anything as well as a big tank of captured water that we have to empty which we do in the garden. Oh well perhaps it means less humidity in the laundry or something. 🙁
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Here in Germany, we have the real estate concern Vonovia, they installed a lot of heat pumps in new houses.
But they have a problem, a bigger one 😀
Networks too weak: Vonovia cannot put heat pumps into operation
Heat pump madness and grid expansion: Vonovia, JinkoSolar, Grid Metals
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Wow, where can I buy one of these.
“generating three to five kW of thermal energy from one kW of electrical energy is possible,”
Sounds like a perpetual motion machine.
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Check the specification on a normal air conditioner. You can easily buy a unit rated to 5kW … at the thermal side. It only uses less than 2kW electrical.
You can get one tomorrow.
The fine print is that it only works like that when it pumps over a smallish thermal gradient … i.e. the difference between inside and outside is up to a limit of around 20C .
Good value for most houses in Australia, especially if your air conditioner has reverse cycle. Not great for more extreme climates where outside gets well below freezing.
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Hi Tel, those figures are also a bit hard to relate to.
It seems that energy is being created in some way that I’m not familiar with.
There aren’t any losses in converting the electricity into warm air?
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KK, energy isn’t being created, it’s being ‘moved’ from outside to inside, any temp above the temp of the expanding refrigerant is seen as heat.
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My image of heat pumps is that they extract the energy from surrounding air and move it to where it’s wanted.
The air from which the heat is extracted is then dissipated on the other side of the hot air destination.
There’s an energy “cost” to do that because of the compression applied to increase the heat of the air.
To be honest, the concept of heat pumps is something I haven’t bothered to explore because it’s an obvious dump on people in much the same way as solar and wind power are.
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And the basis of the rating is???
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Yes Tel. My reverse cycle is rated at 17kW and draws 6.3 kW. I tested it a week ago by turning off everything but the AC and ran it for an hour. The brochure said 6.2 so it was pretty close. What I could not checK was the amount of heat being pumped into the house via the heat exchanger.
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Whatever happened to Energy in = Energy out + losses?
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🙂 🙂 🙂
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Mr. K: Where can you get ONE? The more of them you get, the more energy you produce, you could sell that power and electrify all of AUS!! Just gotta do something with all that heat.
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A nice example of mandates with thinking or caring about consequences. The virtue signalers are long gone and everyone else has to pick up the pieces.
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Are heat pumps really just air conditioners in reverse
Yes KK – we have reverse cycle air conditioner in our bedroom, installed about 4 years ago when we were experiencing hot weather and bush fires in the Blue Mountains. Since then I think I can count on one hand the number of times it has been set on the cooling cycle! But if set on the heating cycle it complains very loudly if ambient is anywhere near zero. Then we go back to our trusty electric heater.
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Must be a brand thing I’d suggest. We dont experience anything like that at zero or slightly below, which is about as cold as it gets around here (seen a -5C but that was an oddity) ACs can make weird noises at times though depending what they are trying to do.
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One of the best heaters we ever had was an oil heater running on a mixture of 1/3 kerosene to 2/3 diesel so I was told by the distributor. We lived in the Upper Hunter at the time and duting the 70s winter frosts were frequent and severe. We used about 80 gallons per winter. Today that would cost about $700.
00
surprised more people arent installing diesel caravan heaters, they churn out good heat and run on tiny amounts of fuel.
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Heat pumps are fine in suitable places, ie. where they are economic, but only as a choice not a mandate. Our last house had under-floor heating using a heat-pump, drawing energy from five 30m-deep holes (that’s the full 100ft). It was very economic and effective. (Made in Canada, BTW).
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So you need five holes to start with? Where can you get those?
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Ebay, of course. When I search for holes for sale, the first item is “Find Hole Sale On eBay – Shop For Hole Sale Now”. (Actually, the cost of drilling the holes was just part of the quoted installation cost.).
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My installer was having a wholesale hole sale, so I bought four 🙂
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heat pumps will find it very hard to compete with my wood heater and the 5 hectares of bush (felled 50 years ago for building wood with the remnants left in place)
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It’s a concern that the Germans are trying to revert to the failed energy ideas of the National Socialists. Let’s hope they adopt no future National Socialist ideas.
Rupert Darwall wrote about the origins of “green” energy in his book “Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex“.
Also see interview with author at:
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David
To become subservient slaves to the elitists.
Forty years ago I was in the Maldives and met an Australian War Reporter, who said (paraphrased) that the difference between the right and the left boiled down to this.
The right say – these are our beliefs, and you are free to disagree with them, but we will live by them.
Where as the left say – these are our beliefs and YOU will live by them.
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That was the reason for the first “Volkswagen” (People’s Car)
Volkswagen Worth reading, even if Wiki…
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I think even before the National Socialists petroleum fuel was expensive in Germany due to high taxes. So it was a tax problem, not a supply problem. They had access to imports at the time.
But where did the National Socialists get their fuel?
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Of course, it will come as no surprise that the Rockefellers were big supporters of eugenics and also gave money to the National Socialists for eugenics “research” including the the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics.
All mostly written out of history now.
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IG Farben applied the Fischer-Tropsch process from 1920 in a gas to liquid hydrocarbon process. It is not very efficient, unless you need liquid hydrocarbons and only have access to coal or methane, then cost and efficiency are secondary concerns.
https://netl.doe.gov/research/carbon-management/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/ftsynthesis
The F-T process converts CO to longer chain hydrocarbons in a catalyzed reaction with H2. The water gas shift reaction (Felice Fontana, 1780) can be used to make H2 from CO2 and H20 in a companion process. All of these processes consume more energy than the products contain, so they don’t make sense to do them unless no petroleum is available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water%E2%80%93gas_shift_reaction
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DeBeers continued to sell Germany industrial diamonds during WWII
as for debate over heat Pumps or other heating / cooling alternatives it is all meaningless without a source of electricity.
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My sister had a 1969 “beetle” When she replaced it I bought it. A wonderful, unique car. My wife drove it to town. Coming over the bridge at 60 she thought “this seems fast.”
It was. The speedo was in miles, not km.
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60mph ! she had the little duga duga duga machine wound up! 🙂
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I had a little old grey Beetle in Germany. It looked rather dreary, so I stuck dancing Snoopys on the doors.
VW’s revival post war was thanks to a retired British Army REME officer.
We sold the old car to someone, emphasising that it was only good for local use. He took it over to England and it broke down in Trafalgar Square!
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There are two things they don’t tell you about heat pumps – when the air temperature gets down to 1 or 2 degrees C they stop producing any heat and if you are going to heat more than one room you need all new large pipe work and radiators and/or large size insulated duct work – very expensive to retro fit.
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They produce heat, its just that if you persist with hydronic heating and radiators then you need a lot of heat to overcome systems losses and do effective radiating. Difficult to discuss sometimes given the different systems that are common place in different countries but use similar terminology.
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It’s true that air-source heat-pumps are ineffective in cold weather, but underground-source heat pumps work well all year round.
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Ours sometimes freezes and stops working. The house is well insulated and we haven’t had to use it much in recent years.
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“The cost is set to reach €5 million because they opted for the geothermal plan and have to drill down “almost 100ft” (that far eh?).” [Jo N.]
Go to this site to learn about ground source heat pumps.
https://www.homebuilding.co.uk/advice/ground-source-heat-pumps
One would only drill if the property is not large enough to bury the coils (pipes) a few feet (1.5 m.) under the surface. Look at the photos – if you really want the specifics, read it all.
Below is a link to a picture of an air-source (outside unit) heat pump about like the one I’ve had for 15 years. What you see here is all there is outside. Heating and air conditioning pieces are inside. There is no connection with water heating or any other appliances. My house is 100% electric. A wood stove is available for emergency heat.
https://www.byhyu.com/home–podcast/what-is-exactly-is-a-heat-pump-byhyu-044
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The German economy is what keeps the Euro currency afloat by bailing out the Mediterraneans. And the Euro currency is the flagship project of the EU, even though some EU countries still have their own currencies.
We live in interesting times alright.
Perhaps we needn’t have bothered with Brexit here.
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Interesting times indeed.
It mystifies me how nations can trade with one hand while waging war with the other.
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It’s always been like that. In mediaeval times Venice continued to trade with the Turks even while at war with them. Traders are mostly small sanctions-busters whereas wars are licensed by big government which is liable to use mercantilism as a weapon.
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Because the politicians have their people fighting the wars, graft and corruption continues.
00
Gotterdammerung!
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It’s true that the EU is in a horrible mess and if Germany goes under their disaster will extend quickly across Europe.
But how long before Biden and the DEM’s loonies further wreck the US economy and accelerate the shutdown of their industries as well?
Meanwhile Russia and China just sit back and play the waiting game and laugh their heads off.
Meanwhile our Aussie test dummy on King island is relying on the Diesel generator again and W & S are generating ZIP.
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
But the clueless Albo + Bowen, the Greens etc tell us we must spend trillions $ on their UNRELIABLE, TOXIC W & S disasters for many decades into the future.
And all for a guaranteed ZERO return on their CRAZY investment.
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Used to think that I would like to visit King Island, but I then realised that we have a circus here in Sydney . .
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The DC3 day trip from Essendon Airport down to King Island is a good day out, especially if you like old aircraft.
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Neville,
That is a great link you have shown there on King Island Power showing the generators having to match the load. If you look at the continuing change of power input between wind and diesel note the change in cycles per second of the frequency which has to be adjusted all the time by the diesel generator. Wind can’t do this,especially with many turbines as it would be impossible to designate which one would be the governing generator to set the standard rate of voltage and frequency.
What’s not seen here is the thermal stress that would be caused on all the electrical components by continuing changes in frequency and voltage
NOTE HERE TO JO: Not one of these generators are creating ELECTRONS – they are creating voltage.
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If you look at the wind today on the BOM site and then for yesterday, the wind strength was only half as much and in the previous 48 hours had been so low there would have been litle wind for the turbines
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Being a bit literal there RK, Jo well knows the diff
50
The problem with talking about electrons like that is many people start taking it to being true. That silly former head of the AEMO, New York Lawyer Audrey Zibelman spoke at a conference here a couple of years ago about how wonderful renewables are in producing green electrons and in an article a few weeks ago at “Whats up with That” a guy spoke about when a battery is charged it is filled up with electrons. Not one person commented that it was incorrect.
It just shows how many people understand the science of electrical energy. I spoke some time ago with my local State member of Parliament and she had no idea that DC power can’t be transformed, at least not in normal power transmission.
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Maybe Jo’s use of that term was a bit of a kick at the likes of Audrey who really don’t know anything about what they’re managing.
30
Kalm Keith. Jo writes lots of good articles but there is no point in saying things like ” are powered by erratic green electrons “which isn’t true. What gets transmitted by any generator is voltage as an electromagnetic field moving along the wire. The electrons hardly move, only at about 8.33 centimetres per hour. Here is a paragraph from a great article by a physicist explaining electrons which many would not know.
“In fact the force involved between two electrons is elastic, not rigid, and on top of that the electrons in a wire are the equivalent of golf balls that are 15,000 miles apart. Are the electrons mobile and do they drift within the crystal lattice of the metal? Yes they do, absolutely. Are they all touching each other so that bumping one at one end of the wire bumps one at the far end? Not even remotely.
It is the electromagnetic field created by the photons that is moving at near light speed down the wire and pushing all that energy.”
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Yes, I and no doubt other regulars on the blog knew that electrons don’t “flow”.
The blog has a little bit of colour in the way things are expressed so that it’s not boring.
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As mainly a chemistry/biology type person with only some rudimentary physics knowledge, that basic info is just gold. Thanks for fleshing that out. You should learn something everyday, and today I have learnt that electricity is NOT the flow of electrons. Which is something I had understood in error for a very long time. Thanks.
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Ross,
Don’t feel too bad about that, for a long time I did not know what Voltage really was!!!. In asking most electricians they don’t know either but just think of it as a difference in electrical potential. It is only in studying quantum physics that I have started to understand it. What is actually happening is that virtual photons are continually being absorbed and emitted by the electrons and by their anti particle the positron whereby the outer valance of copper electrons are kicked to a higher orbit, thus causing heat. To give you an idea of the numbers, a 100 watt light bulb emits photons at the rate of 10 x 18 power per second or a billion, trillion photons per second.
That is what is getting used up from the power station, not electrons. If you read stuff about Richard Feynman you can learn more as he won the Nobel Prize for Quantum Electrodynamics the interaction between the photon and electron
61
What Germany needs is a long, cold winter and there is one coming . .
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We lived through horrible long cold winters in Germany. Instead of heat pumps we had large coke-fired boilers in the cellar and good hydronic heating. Thank goodness.
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Today’s Leak Cartoon. Says it all really.
https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/8bc0388297925898eede06cb51f9d55e?width=1024
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Netzes in disguise (with diamonds).
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The old ‘saved the planet’ by destroying the planet?!?
20
They are not even old. I am older than Tennis Elbow and Blackout Bowen but they have Net Zero as their IQ. My IQ is 127. Obviously too smart to be a “Pollie”…………….
21
The German Greens realise to have a problem and start learning:
They will accept that peolple being able to connect their houses to a district heating system don’t need a heatpump.
The requests for enough subsidies started, of course, minutes later 😀
50
District heating systems are complicated. Either they are steam or high temperature high pressure hot water.
There are enormous construction, maintenance, and energy loss issues with either system.
HTHW systems have enormous pumping, heat loss, corrosion, and maintenance costs. Steam systems are worse.
You’d be better off to circulate water in existing water mains to supply water source heat pumps, as that would only require a system temperature of about 25C in the main lines and the infrastructure is existing. But the pumping cost is staggering.
I’ve analyzed and designed lots of heat pump systems. They are fine if the source/sink is somewhere in the 20C – 25C range. In many cases, the heat extraction and rejection loads offset each other when things like data centers or core/skin office buildings dominate. The devil is in the water treatment, system pumping costs, energy metering, and control systems. If any of these fail, the system doesn’t work.
20
It looks like more Eco-Fascism on the way for Canada as the Greens etc are pushing hard for further regulation of the Banks and fossil fuels.
They are very upset about the fightback against their loony ESG dreams of further wrecking the Canadian economy.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/12/the-push-for-regulating-banks-an-alarm-bell-for-the-advent-of-eco-fascism/
100
ESG means – Economic Suicide Guaranteed…………………….
100
Meanwhile, in the Glorious People’s Socialist Republik of Vicdanistan:
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/new-victorian-homes-no-longer-required-to-have-gas-20220702-p5ayj9.html
New Victorian homes no longer required to have gas
By Ashleigh McMillan
Updated July 2, 2022
New homes built in Victoria will no longer have to be connected to gas, as the state government plans to halve carbon emissions by 2030 and drive down the cost of living.
110
You’ve gotta laugh at this idiotic statement.
180
up there with Lily D’Ambrosios “downward pressure on prices” as prices skyrocket. Very Baghdad Bob.
110
By making EVERYTHING more and more expensive !
How does that work ????
40
they were “required” to have gas? I never knew that. So does that mean you still can have gas but aren’t required? I thought they were banning connection to gas.
50
Does this mean the Victorian government will no longer be gaslighting?
20
On a holiday in Kangaroo Island, we switched the air con to reverse cycle. Lovely in the evening. Freezing in the morning. The outside unit of the air con was a block of ice. Heat pumps don’t work when you need them. They cool the outside unit below freezing and then stop working.
80
Air source Heat pumps in heating cycle must have the outside unit about 5C below the outdoor temp to extract heat. If they ice over, it means the Defrost cycle isn’t set up properly. Defrost is either Timed or differential temperature controlled. The cheapest is timed defrost for the Mfr. If the outdoor coil is below -4C for longer than the control board is set for, the unit goes into defrost mode and melts the frost/ice. Control board timing is set with a small jumper for 30 mins, 60 or 90 mins. Also, the outdoor unit has a thermostatic expansion valve that is supposed to set the hot gas discharge temp to about 50C when the outdoor air is at about 0 to 4 C. If it isn’t adjusted properly, the unit runs but doesn’t heat well. Most techies don’t check the setting, they assume it was set properly at the factory, and often it isn’t.
70
I haven’t heard heat pipes mentioned for years now. They must work because they use them to prevent hot oil in the Alaskan pipe line melting the permafrost.
Would a heat pump on a heat pipe work, or just be bloody expensive?
Found it:
ABSTRACT
Heat pipes (thermosyphons) were installed in the vertical support members (VSMs) of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System where the pipeline is elevated in warm non-thaw-stable permafrost areas. More than 124,000 heat pipes with pure anhydrous ammonia, NH3, as the working fluid were installed during pipeline construction in the mid-1970s to thermally stabilize the permafrost surrounding the VSMs.
30
It’s amusing to see headlines that refer to any opposition to the current left wing extremism as “far right”. Today, the definition of “far right” is anyone who simply wants to discuss open door immigration, drag queen child grooming, unregulated abortion, child gender changing medical procedures, treaties, reparations and other race based legislation including identity and race based quota systems for employment, women’s rights, crazy climate change policies, Christian religious discrimination and others…..
180
Even the Labor insiders, particularly retired MPs who are centre-left, refer to our Prime Minister and others in Cabinet as “the socialist left”.
50
The US has Germany over a barrel, and I suspect that this is what the Ukraine massacre is partly about. Those expensive LNG shipments are coming from the USA. Win-lose. Industry is shifting to the USA. Win-lose. Russian energy supply via Ukraine has been blocked by perpetual slaughter, I mean war. Win-lose. Russian energy supply via Nord Stream has been destroyed. Win-lose.
90
You didn’t explain how America convinced Russia that it was a good idea to start another European war, one that is lose/lose for them.
05
America threatened that Russia would lose Sevastopol which has been seen by Russians as fundamental to their national defence.
It was also provocative for Kyiv to keep bombing the Donbas after those regions containing ethnic Russian-speaking people declared independence. Putin patiently worked through the Minsk agreements (two of them) and afterwards got told that Western powers never really intended to negotiate in good faith. I think this was the turning point where Putin figured that further negotiation was pointless and might as well just roll troops in the Donbas. Partly loss of face for all Russia to be laughed at over their earlier attempts to negotiate, and partly coming to the belief that war was inevitable at that stage therefore might as well ensure they control the battleground.
Why Putin also initially sent out a disorganised and unsuccessful attack on Kyiv itself is hard to fathom … perhaps he thought they would surrender easily? Perhaps as a distraction to give time to secure Crimea and Donbas. Perhaps simply a blunder? At any rate the Russians are learning on the job and are now bedding down ready for a full scale NATO assault. They probably won’t capture a lot more territory at this rate, but they have an extremely strong hold over they bits they care about.
40
German companies moving to the USA? Why not Australia, we have loads of energy right under our feet? Oh that’s right, we chose to have the highest energy costs in the world despite our natural gifts. Missed out again Aussie!
180
Many European and German manufacturers are moving production to India.
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I’m hearing that Indian workers, although cheaper, are not as productive as the Chinese. And India does not have cheap, abundant power.
20
I have been involved in discussions with an Australian owned business that moved everything to India about fifteen years ago, production requires electricity for high temperature ovens, and directors were delighted to discover that a purpose-built factory was available at much lower rental than in Australia, reliable electricity supply and labour willing and able to be trained for factory employment, with the added bonus of lower taxes.
20
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65679616
00
No Philip, that energy belongs to Members of Parliament and is controlled by leaders and cabinet.
Common wealth?
sarc.
40
and distance, and high cost labour and high levels of sovereign risk with State and federal business policy settings based on mood swings, the latest PC fad and phase of the moon.
70
Because Australia spends all the tax they can raise on improving welfare, not productivity.
We COULD also be increasing specialty steel production, taking up some of the space vacated [unwillingly] by Russia.
51
Like the old plan for a railway line from East to West and steel mills on either side, coal and iron ore transported across as needed.
00
That was in Premier Joh’s time. But it would be cheaper to ship coal/iron around the world than domestically in Oz.
20
That boat sailed long ago, didn’t it Philip? Not only has Australia lost industries that were once here, we’ve also missed lost of opportunities to start or install industries here. The Japanese look at us in amazement and have evenly recently commented that they are concerned about our energy policies. It was a really simple argument that we ( Australia ) could have presented to the rest of the world probably 30 years ago, when all those original old agreements were signed – so, Kyoto etc. That argument being, Australia’s emissions (if you accept the crazy AGW theory) are completely meaningless to the world’s climate anyway. Therefore, we do not believe it’s in our long term economic interest to sign any of these emission reducing agreements. But no, like COVID vaccines, we had a massive dose of FOMO. That somehow adhering to those agreements was going to allow us to stay in some elite club. Our energy prices should be as cheap as dirt. Boy, do I hate politics, because there’s not been a shred of science in the whole climate debate since about the mid 1990’s.
70
I did a quick search for a link to the United Nations Lima Agreement signed by Whitlam Labor in 1975;
https://www.australianconservativecoalition.com/the-lima-declaration
Also worth reading the UN Agenda 21 – Sustainability.
Add the later signed Kyoto and Paris Agreements to lower emissions.
30
And the liberals signed us up fo Agenda 2030 and the Paris agreement, their all in this togeather.
00
Germany has a thriving chemical industry processing the cheap, bulk Russian gas. In the absence of that gas those industries will have to move and America is sorta stable with cheap gas.
Peter Zeihan talks of this.
40
All of the above arises from 50 years of promotion by the UN IPCC of mankind’s greatest fraud namely the claim that ‘greenhouse gases’, primarily CO2, cause global warming. However the fact is that like all of the molecules that make up the world around us, CO2 is an combination of atoms held together by atomic forces which cannot generate heat energy at all. Molecules transfer heat energy within the environment by conduction, convection and radiation from hotter to colder areas to achieve thermodynamic equilibrium. No additional heat energy is required for this basic natural process.
If the Earth is to be made hotter, it must receive heat from a source that is hotter than the Earth. The only such viable source is the Sun. It definitely is not CO2 or other greenhouse gases.
102
Not so simple. There are two ways to heat something. One by adding extra Kilojoules, the other by delaying kilojoules from leaving (just as any insulation does, like a blanket on your body at night does).
CO2 and all Greenhouse gases are operating like insulation. The sun or ball of lava provides the energy. The question is how much do the greenhouse gases delay it escaping to space, and that’s complicated because it not only depends on how much of each gas we have but what altitude they rise to, and how much their emission spectrums overlap. (Quite a lot).
Before anyone says the delay is only microseconds, remember most molecules in the atmosphere are not GHG, and the CO2 molecules will more likely smack into an N2 or O2 (99%) than a H20, O3 or CH4 (1%). So the delay occurs when the energy is transferred through kinetic collisions to the atmosphere — at whatever height that happens, heating up those local molecules for a while. The most important questions in the climate models (which they get wrong) are the emission heights of different greenhouse molecules. If we “thicken the insulation” by the time a heated molecule of H20 has reached a height where it can send energy to space (in the upper troposphere like 10km) it has become very cold, and so won’t emit as much as it would have. Of course, water doesn’t do what the modelers think and the hot spot is not there 10km up, humidity is not increasing at that height. That’s how we know the models are wrong.
74
Hi Jo.
I can’t see anything wrong with what Bevan has written?
From about 30 metres AGL right up to where the passenger jets cruise, the atmosphere is a coherent unit which follows the universal gas law.
P.V = n.R.T
CO2 and especially the human origin share of that is effectively quantitatively irrelevant even if there was some special property of CO2 that makes it dangerous.
The whole thing is a fabricated con job.
62
The whole thing is a fabricated con job, but opposing it for the wrong reasons doesn’t help skeptics, just leaves them wasting time and open to being mocked by believers.
To fight the billion dollar machine we don’t have time to waste on the wrong arguments.
Blankets don’t generate kilojoules and yet somehow they keep you warm at night. Yes or No?
Insulation works and it doesn’t break laws of physics. True or false?
Help me Keith. I’m struggling to understand why its hard to follow my answer. CO2 can in theory delay heat loss, so there is no value in claiming that it can’t heat something because it isn’t generating energy from nothing.
62
The atmosphere can delay heat loss.
22
And, CO2 is simply part of that atmosphere.
32
Thanks Keith. That’s a good start.
31
?
11
But CO2 plays No individual or special role in that.
31
Thank You Jo Nova, it looks as though you have been reading Wijngaarden & Happer 14/09/2022 – yes I have too.
However the fact is, the temperature of an item can only be raised by the item receiving heat from a source that is hotter than the item. Insulation will slow down the rate of cooling of an item but it cannot replace the heat lost through the insulation. Only if the “insulation” is hotter that the item will the later increase in temperature as the pair proceed towards thermal equilibrium with a common intermediate temperature. The standard household thermos flask effectively slows the rate of cooling of the thermos flask, it does not make the contents hotter.
44
No I haven’t been reading them. This is just high school physics.
The sun shines on half the Earth all the time. That’s the main energy source. The insulation doesn’t have to be hotter than the item at all. It just has to slow the heat loss.
If you put a cold blanket on you — one cooler than 37C — it will still prevent your body temperature from cooling . Your body will heat the blanket and then after that the blanket will keep warm air close to your skin, stopping the loss of energy. Unless you have an electric blanket, every single night you don’t preheat the blankets and every single night you know that a cold blanket will soon keep you warm.
Some people misinterpret the “second Law” to think that photons never move from colder to hotter things. But photons can’t steer. They just flow in every direction. The second law applies to net energy flow, not individual photons.
This is a very common misunderstanding. I confess I am weary of explaining it.
51
Thank You Jo Nova, it looks as though You have been reading Wijngaarden & Happer 14/09/2022 – I have too.
An item can only have its temperature increased by receiving heat from a source that is hotter. Insulation may slow the rate of cooling of an item but it cannot raise its temperature. The ordinary household thermos flask efficiently slows the cooling of its contents but never raises the contents temperature.
As far as I can determine, W&H appear to overlook the fact that the point on the Earth’s surface perpendicularly below the Sun is moving rapidly across the surface so it never reaches the temperature it would have in a static system. It may reach that same temperature 24 hours later after one rotation of the Earth and again some 12 months later assuming that the intensity of the Sun’s radiation remains unchanged, which is unlikely.
23
Bevan, sigh. A thousand sighs.
Does or does not the Earth heat up due to the sun during the day and cool down at night? Yes or No. (Please don’t dodge answering this).
Thus — if CO2 holds the daytime heat in better than nothing will the Earth stay a little tiny bit warmer. No one, except you, is suggesting the Earth needs to be heated above the temperature the sun heats it up to.
I confess I find this topic depressing actually. Is it that hard?
42
Jo Nova, please take a look at the Planck radiation spectrum, not all photons are equal. Compare that for a high temperature source with that for a lower temperature. The former contains the latter within it which is why the higher temperature source is no affected by the lower temperature source which only contains photons of lower frequency/wavelength.
Not high school physics but Statistical Thermodynamics from 3rd year university level in my day.
[Please answer my question. You didn’t here. – Jo]
34
I think what surprises me (and depresses me) the most is that you think I have not seen the Planck spectrum 1,000 times after 14 years of blogging?
Seriously? The planck curve supports my point. Molecules emit the same sort of photons at cooler temperatures, just less of them. The net total flow of photons is always from hotter to cooler, but individual photons can’t steer. They have no guidance system or mechanism that directs them to steer away from “warmer targets”. No future knowledge of their destination. They move randomly. Be wary of “special” photons. Just because the hotter line on the graph “contains” the lower line does not mean the lower line ceases to exist or those photons that it represents are vaporized. There is no law of bigger curves destroying smaller ones.
A higher temperature source will emit just as much no matter what surrounds it, but if it is surrounded by a blanket, say, which traps air that emits some photons back towards it, obviously the loss of photons *net* to space will be slowed (please read the word “net” — please repeat the word “net” — did I mention “net”?)
Bevan you are a good man, apologies for my bluntness. It’s not you, I am just weary to the core of repeating the same circles. I wrote about many aspects of this in 2011, and we spent 3,000 comments trawling through every aspect of it. Ultimately we achieved exactly no reconciliation or common ground on it at all. It became apparent to me that the topic was an endless trap, no matter what I said we ended up at “special” photons.
Please read these posts. 12 years later, they’re still good. So what is the Second Darn Law?
Why greenhouse gas warming doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics
I hope skeptics will focus on more useful lines of attack. Please can I request we stop posting off topic repeats of something we have discussed (fruitlessly) 100 times.
52
“if CO2 holds the daytime heat in better than nothing will the Earth stay a little tiny bit warmer.”
That’s the point that Bevan and I are looking at.
CO2 does not hold extra heat.
It holds only the amount of heat allocated to it by the system operating under the universal gas law
P.V = nRT.
Jo, the concept of the “blanket” was acceptable during the early development of the idea of Man Made Climate Change but is now obviously an irrelevance now that the claims of the “warmers” have been clarified.
Over a decade ago I saw claims of dangerous CO2 in the media. I immediately assumed that they had made a mistake and had really meant Carbon Monoxide CO.
But no, they were really intent on demonising CO2 and for anybody with an understanding of the relevant physics and thermodynamics it is preposterous to say that CO2 does anything that might cause “climate change”.
I appreciate Bevan’s outline of the system.
21
Bless you Keith, — this is a logical soup where words I used in one line of reasoning are being blurred into a totally different argument. Please try to stick to the lines of reasoning.
One point at a time.
1. On Blankets — I talked about blankets to show that logically it’s wrong to say XYZ can only warm something by “generating energy”. If blankets exist, and they keep you warm at night through insulation can you agree that they warm you without adding kilojoules, and work by limiting losses. Yes, or No? I need you to agree or disagree with this point. If you disagree you need to explain why.
So the argument that XYZ needs to be a heat-generating-item to make a different object hotter than it would have otherwise been is obviously false. You wear clothes. You use blankets. Obviously insulation is a real process that does not break laws of physics. OK? you do not need to mention CO2 at all (please don’t). This is a point of logic that applies to wool, fibreglass, paper, cotton. Can they keep your body warmer that it would have been?
We need discipline if we are to climb out of the fog. Cross-mixing-metaphors is the fog.
41
The dragons have lived among us for too long.
33
The point is that despite being demonstrably wrong and being basically banned for more than a decade, they are still here promoting their silly ideas.
[They are not banned. But I do discourage people repeating the same conversations. – Jo]
15
Gee
Cementa cans the concept of “back radiation”.
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/02/monday-open-thread-30/#comment-2635936
10
Hello Bevan,
This topic was the subject of a long thread earlier on
See here;
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/02/monday-open-thread-30/#comment-2634974
It’s a tribute to Jo that this blog permits such comment but still sad that the expertise of those with significant backgrounds in thermodynamics is unable to get a foothold.
[Equally sad is hijacking at clear topic thread with endless discussions of unrelated minutiae. Move it to an open thread. – LVA]
20
That is a bit unfair LVA.
Bevan is way down at #21. His comment would have gone unremarked and probably un-noticed if Jo had not decided to weigh in.
20
Are you allowed to say that?
00
If only the globull warming cultists hadn’t trashed our cheap and reliable power, those German companies might have fled here…
60
The history of the electricity grid in Australia – SA, TAS, VIC, NSW/ACT & QLD – is interesting, starting with the brown coal fired power stations in VIC recommended by General Monash, an engineer who had investigated the German power stations after WW1.
What made the creation of the grid possible, cheap and reliable electricity supply for homes, was attracting industry to a government friendly and competitive country, with cheap reliable electricity supply.
50
Not many people in Federal or State or Territory have any engineering or scientific understanding. What they learnt at Skool was how to bully and play Politicks. R Soles.
60
Dr. Dennis Jensen from WA didn’t get a science portfolio under Abbott. Pity.
40
Is this what they call war GAMES ? I lob missiles at you but you must still accept my £$€ to / AND supply me with Energy, etc and feed me while we keep on playing and feeding nonsense propaganda to the sheeple.
20
What are you talking about? Sounds like rubbish to me.
02
It’s not a war game when you tell the world you are vulnerable as Germany really is. Normally you’d hide your weaknesses from the enemy. But the real enemy of Germany is within. Habeck is so desperate, I suspect to get German Greens to recognise that they need the LNG and nuclear plants that he’s loudly advertising their vulnerabilities in the hope of getting them to wake up and stop opposing every reliable source of energy.
11
A sixth of German manufacturing companies are looking at closing down in Germany and relocating. They don’t have to go that far as energy is cheaper in Poland, Slovenia, Hungary etc, as are the labour costs. Ford chose to build its battery car plant in Spain – I know, might be closed in a decade hopefully – as opposed to at any of their current German plants. And emigration of the educated up to around those 40yrs old is the 3rd highest among 38 leading nations – 75% have been to university. Germany is a great example of how to destroy your economy in the shortest time.
20
Quite a bit of the thread involves heat pumps. If people fully understood refrigeration cycles then heat pumps would be pretty well understood also, but such is not the case. So I thought I might add a bit of engineering context. BTW Lance’s comment at 13.1 is pretty helpful.
The efficiency of a heat pump is known as its coefficient of performance (COP) and is the ratio of the heat made available to the place being warmed (inside of house) to the total work input; usually electrical work. This work is necessary because heat will not flow from a cold place to a warmer one without work input (that’s the second law).
When the working fluid (R32 for example is methane, R444 is CO2, R12 is freon…) is throttled out of the compressor to low pressure it cools to become a low temperature liquid, say -28C, or so and is now so much colder than its surroundings that it absorbs heat as long as it is colder than the surroundings. This gas is now compressed and the work done by the compressor raises the temperature of the gas which is probably in the neighborhood of 50C or so (think of the hot air coming off the coils of your refrigerator. This allows heat to be transferred into the place needing heat as long as the coils are warmer than these surroundings. This cycle of compression and throttling goes on and on.
Typical heat pump COP is around 3 to 3.5. So for every 3 units of heat made available the heat pump needed 1 unit of mechanical work into the compressor. However, note the following issues that cause the COP to decrease in use.
1. On the evaporator side the surroundings will transfer heat into the working fluid increasingly slowly as the environment becomes colder. Below about 0C the units begin to augment heat with resistance heating and the COP rapidly heads toward 1 and eventually below 1 a bit. A temperatures below about -10C they don’t really work as heat pump at all — just resistance heaters. This is the most important concept: the COP is a function of environmental temperature.
2. Air source heat pumps in even relatively dry climates develop frost on their evaporator coils and will expend some energy to remove the frost occasionally. Otherwise their COP drops over having to transfer heat through ice.
3. Ground source (geothermal) pumps do better because the underground environment is a more constant temperature year-round, but they require the 30m holes Mike Jonas spoke of above, raising their cost, and one is still cooling the environment which leads to less effective heat transfer as the heating season drags on. Soils are usually very poor conductors of heat. Figuring how geothermal sources can be retrofitted into urban areas is difficult in places. Even using water mains has drawbacks. Imagine everyone trying to use the water mains as their source of heat and interminably lowering the water temperature closer to 0C.
4. I have used a number of heat pumps in buildings and homes, and if they are used with forced air, they don’t feel as comfortable as a gas furnace simply because the plenum temperature is higher with a gas furnace.
5. In a cold climate heat pumps require so much work input from the network that most cities do not have the distribution equipment required and will have to replace most infrastructure including transformers, breakers, conductors and power factor correcting facilities.
I dread the day the fools in charge mandate heat pumps irrespective of climate or infrastructure. And then decide to run all vehicles on the electrical network as well. I think that the whole idea is infeasible but such doesn’t ever occur to a zealot.
30
Quite right! – That’s basically what we were told. and am fed up arguing with Know-alls and Hi-skool ‘bible swallowers’
00
Bevan, see above, is currently experiencing difficulty with photons.
I had a frightening experience with them while out walking.
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/02/monday-open-thread-30/#comment-2635101
10
Bevan
Certainly photons exist and my only wish is that they be understood.
Many scientists would be familiar with the ring of 2 8 8 18 etc and spdf.
Those terms are used to help describe the orbital paths taken by electrons around the nucleus of an atom.
When fully pumped up with energy the electrons can move up to specific orbitals and when they move to a colder location can achieve equilibrium with the surroundings by “losing” a very specific amount of energy by dropping down to a less energetic orbital below.
The energy lost by the atom is very specific and referred to as a photon. That photon, unlike a proton, neutron or electron is not a particle but a quantity of electromagnetic energy.
When the energy leaves an atom it moves according to the concepts of thermodynamics and atomic physics.
As Will Janoschka so eloquently described it, there is a potential which acts to draw “photons” out of the atom. I believe that the electron will only fall back to a lower orbital and release the energy when the lower potential, e.g. deep space, is greater than the difference in orbital energy.
CO2 can only lose this energy to space where the temperature difference gives enough “pull” .
The Earth is too hot to attract the photonic energy from CO2 at altitude.
Maybe Mr b.nice, MV, Cementa and a few others could add to this.
[This is going further and further away from the original topic. Photon emission by electron orbital shift to a lower energy shell has little to do with temperature and lots to do with the original energy stimulation being absent. This endless speculation within a topical thread is not helpful. That is why there are unthreaded forums. – LVA]
20
A photon is a specific quantum of energy and the details are in the post above which is currently under review.
10
Keith. Thanks for the link to prior discussions. I repeat my question though that never gets answered.
Photonic energy is a new hypothesis. For the fifth time: “Which *observations* does this new hypothesis explain that aren’t already explained? “
Which mystery does it solve? Which flaw in standard physics is fixed?
The point of photonic energy appears to be so that people who misinterpreted the Second Law of Thermodynamics ten years ago could find a way to justify post hoc why they were not wrong. No one has yet replied with a single observation of why the hypothesis of “photonic” energy is a useful one.
Can you at least see why I will stick to the 100 points of UN failure that fit with the standard laws of physics. I don’t need a new point based on speculation that has not one single real world observation to support it.
01