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Post by gillianren on Aug 30, 2010 21:38:36 GMT -4
Okay, denying it as a landing zone makes a certain amount of sense, though using it as a first landing base for an invasion kind of doesn't. I'm just saying, you know, the Soviet Union already had a pretty secure landing base for a European war.
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Post by abaddon on Aug 31, 2010 17:14:42 GMT -4
Okay, denying it as a landing zone makes a certain amount of sense, though using it as a first landing base for an invasion kind of doesn't. I'm just saying, you know, the Soviet Union already had a pretty secure landing base for a European war. Thats fine. As I said, I have no clue as to it's validity. The Idea was that if a sudden Soviet blitzkrieg ocurred, then the U.S. by the time it assembled a response would of necessity, be landing on the western fringes of Europe. It may well be another example of cold war lunacy. Everyone was paranoid then. Even us.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 31, 2010 18:36:41 GMT -4
Maybe that "we will bury you" comment that Khrushchev said had something to do with our being paranoid.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 31, 2010 21:22:03 GMT -4
Okay, denying it as a landing zone makes a certain amount of sense, though using it as a first landing base for an invasion kind of doesn't. I'm just saying, you know, the Soviet Union already had a pretty secure landing base for a European war. Thats fine. As I said, I have no clue as to it's validity. The Idea was that if a sudden Soviet blitzkrieg ocurred, then the U.S. by the time it assembled a response would of necessity, be landing on the western fringes of Europe. It may well be another example of cold war lunacy. Everyone was paranoid then. Even us. Of course what wasn't known then was that most of the Soviet Army wasn't capable of walking in a straight line most of the time, let alone fighting a war.
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Post by ka9q on Sept 1, 2010 3:52:06 GMT -4
Aside from the implicit reference in: I don't see any direct mention of the at least 2,083 nuclear detonations since 1945. All but two were tests to support the development and possible use of nuclear weapons. Over 500 detonations were in the atmosphere, under water or in outer space, releasing so much radioactive material into the environment that even the chief belligerents in the Cold War finally realized it was in their own best interests to stop. Or was all that fake too?
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Post by ka9q on Sept 1, 2010 4:36:01 GMT -4
if it wasn't for the cold war we wouldn't be so scared of nuclear power and we would be using it more for our power needs. That would mean fewer coal power plants etc. I think that's part of it. But many opponents of nuclear power seem to mix socio-political motives with their fears of radiation. They see the civilian nuclear power industry as an arm of the same military-industrial complex that builds both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons and, in general, profits mightily from military spending. (A lot of Apollo deniers also lump NASA into this same big basket.) And some go even farther to express opposition to all forms of centralized power generation, regardless of the technology, simply because it's big and centralized. We have a PV system on our house, so a lot of people ask me about "going off the grid". I can see them entertaining romantic notions of shouting obscenities at the local electric utility and becoming entirely self-sufficient. I have to explain that, no, my PV system is grid tied. Unlike most PV systems, I do have batteries but they're only for grid outages. Battery depreciation is far too expensive to use them in any other way. In normal operation the grid is a far cheaper and more efficient "battery" than any actual battery now available. An electric grid is even more essential with solar and wind energy than with fossil fuels because of their intermittent nature. Sure, you can "go off the grid" if you're willing to fill your garage with enough batteries to run your house for the entire winter season with the surplus you generate in the summer. Or you can put up a vastly larger PV array to ensure having enough in the winter, and then let most of its capacity go to waste in the summer. Personally, I don't think we can afford to forego any viable means of electricity generation that doesn't burn a fossil fuel. It's a luxury we can't afford. Our supply must be as diverse as we can possibly make it. That includes solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and nuclear and whatever else works, using whatever scale of production makes sense for a particular technology.
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Post by PeterB on Sept 1, 2010 8:39:52 GMT -4
...I have to explain that, no, my PV system is grid tied. Unlike most PV systems, I do have batteries but they're only for grid outages. Battery depreciation is far too expensive to use them in any other way. In normal operation the grid is a far cheaper and more efficient "battery" than any actual battery now available. An electric grid is even more essential with solar and wind energy than with fossil fuels because of their intermittent nature. Sure, you can "go off the grid" if you're willing to fill your garage with enough batteries to run your house for the entire winter season with the surplus you generate in the summer. Or you can put up a vastly larger PV array to ensure having enough in the winter, and then let most of its capacity go to waste in the summer. Personally, I don't think we can afford to forego any viable means of electricity generation that doesn't burn a fossil fuel. It's a luxury we can't afford. Our supply must be as diverse as we can possibly make it. That includes solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and nuclear and whatever else works, using whatever scale of production makes sense for a particular technology. Interesting (and I don't care about going off topic at the moment). There's a house here in Canberra which is apparently so energy efficient that they could go off the grid if they wanted. Instead, because the local electricity utility pays more than 4 times the going rate for electricity for electricity generated from PV cells, they feed their excess back into the grid in return for the cash. Meanwhile, the owners offer tours of their house once a month to show off what they've done. I'm hoping to go on a tour in a month or two. Not that I'm a starry-eyed green, but that I'm a pragmatist. They have a web-site at www.canberrassustainablehouse.com.au/
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Post by echnaton on Sept 1, 2010 9:22:12 GMT -4
A humorous look at "green" homebuilding by Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert comic. From the Wall Street Journal. Accessible without registration.
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Post by Ginnie on Sept 1, 2010 16:22:53 GMT -4
...I have to explain that, no, my PV system is grid tied. Unlike most PV systems, I do have batteries but they're only for grid outages. Battery depreciation is far too expensive to use them in any other way. In normal operation the grid is a far cheaper and more efficient "battery" than any actual battery now available. An electric grid is even more essential with solar and wind energy than with fossil fuels because of their intermittent nature. Sure, you can "go off the grid" if you're willing to fill your garage with enough batteries to run your house for the entire winter season with the surplus you generate in the summer. Or you can put up a vastly larger PV array to ensure having enough in the winter, and then let most of its capacity go to waste in the summer. Personally, I don't think we can afford to forego any viable means of electricity generation that doesn't burn a fossil fuel. It's a luxury we can't afford. Our supply must be as diverse as we can possibly make it. That includes solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and nuclear and whatever else works, using whatever scale of production makes sense for a particular technology. Interesting (and I don't care about going off topic at the moment). There's a house here in Canberra which is apparently so energy efficient that they could go off the grid if they wanted. Instead, because the local electricity utility pays more than 4 times the going rate for electricity for electricity generated from PV cells, they feed their excess back into the grid in return for the cash. Meanwhile, the owners offer tours of their house once a month to show off what they've done. I'm hoping to go on a tour in a month or two. Not that I'm a starry-eyed green, but that I'm a pragmatist. They have a web-site at www.canberrassustainablehouse.com.au/I don't think you guys have the cold winters we have "up here".
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Post by PhantomWolf on Sept 1, 2010 20:42:11 GMT -4
I have to admit that I'd be interested in investigating the viablity of using a water tower as a power storage system rather than batteries. Use the windmill to mechanically lift the water to the top of the tower when you have excess power and want to store it, then feed it back down through a generator when you need it.
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Post by echnaton on Sept 2, 2010 9:53:45 GMT -4
I have to admit that I'd be interested in investigating the viablity of using a water tower as a power storage system rather than batteries. Use the windmill to mechanically lift the water to the top of the tower when you have excess power and want to store it, then feed it back down through a generator when you need it. Interesting idea. Any idea how much of head or volume you need to run a generator efficiently?
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Post by randombloke on Sept 2, 2010 10:00:31 GMT -4
I have to admit that I'd be interested in investigating the viablity of using a water tower as a power storage system rather than batteries. Use the windmill to mechanically lift the water to the top of the tower when you have excess power and want to store it, then feed it back down through a generator when you need it. Pump storage hydro-electric is actually quite common, but mostly on an industrial scale. There's one in Wales hat I had the opportunity to visit that uses a classic dammed-up valley reservoir and cycles water between that and a secondary reservoir below, running the generators in reverse at night when electricity is cheaper to pump the water back up. As for a home-sized version, you need to figure out how much energy you need during the times when the windmills aren't providing power directly before you can figure out the size of the header tank.
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Post by captain swoop on Sept 2, 2010 17:57:52 GMT -4
Cool 3 pages and the purported OP hasn't posted anything. First time I have seen replies first.
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Post by tedward on Sept 3, 2010 2:27:02 GMT -4
Been nosing at the dif forum. Seems he is on holiday. Seems he is also aiming the blunderbuss of foot in the mouth at himself. When he gets here it should be interesting.
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Post by abaddon on Sept 3, 2010 16:31:52 GMT -4
Been nosing at the dif forum. Seems he is on holiday. Seems he is also aiming the blunderbuss of foot in the mouth at himself. When he gets here it should be interesting. Yeah, or maybe the "ebil joos" got him.
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