Official Off Topic Thread

[Burnout]

Weak, the Lakers lost in Mormon-ville to the traveling carnival freak show that is the Utah Jazz.

 

[Meedleyx10]

I wouldn't be proud of that if I were you.

+1

 

[Kenneth R.]

... I've been posting on the SX forums for way longer than you have

I'm not taking his side (or anyone's. most know that I eviscerate with equal opportunity) but you must realize that this statement is pretty laughable for establishing 'credit' in a discussion.

 

[Horus]

In un-Ken terms, "It doesn't matter."

 

[Kenneth R.]

So, I love environmentally conscious people. I really do. But some of their chicken little esque panicking has resulted in some bad lawmaking.

Who likes incandescent bulbs? Cause chances are, your government is going to ban the sale of them in the next 4 years.
In the name of efficiency of electricity.
They think that by switching to Compact Flourescent bulbs (CFL) they can help the environment and reduce your electrical consumption.
Some of my compatriots in environmental defense are cheering loudly.

But why would we forsake Edison's masterpiece for the CFL when the incandescent bulb, unlike CFLs, do not contain Mercury gas, do not emit UV rays, and do not flicker at or at double mains frequency (imagine 60,120 times per second). There are so many environmental and health concerns with flourescent lighting. And let's not forget that their color index is, on the scale of 0 to 100, never 100. Sunlight rates at 100 and so do most incandescent bulbs. LEDs are horrid at 70. And let's not even discuss that CFLs are much costlier than incandescent bulbs.

Clean Energy Act of 2007. Thank you for making the world a safer, more ecofriendly place. Oh wait, you didn't. You made it worse, and in the future, I'll have to buy my bulbs black market just to have that nice homely lighting.

ADDED: Oh, and CFLs hum too. And they interfere with radio frequency devices like TV remotes and stereos. Imagine how fucked American recording studios are going to be when this goes into effect.

 

[noble savage]

The ironic thing is, I just changed a light bulb a few seconds before clicking on this thread.

I can completely understand wanting to implement more energy efficient household items, but BANNING incandescent light bulbs!? What's next, toasters and TVs?

 

[Kenneth R.]

well actually, it's funny you mention that. Most countries are going to stop broadcasting analog TV. You'll have to buy a converter box or buy a digital television in a year or two. Not much in the way of environmental concern (well, sure there is... all the disposal of all those CRT monitors), but the cost...? Oh, and the unused bandwidth that analog TV used to take up will now be handed over to telephones. That means your cell phone will have better signal, faster mobile internet, increased clarity, but at the cost of more power usage, and higher electromagnetic radiation.

 

[Taliwakker]

I think they might ban the sale of plasma and some lcd tvs in Australia from 2011 if a proposed energy rating system is introduced....the toasters are safe for the moment.

 

[The Emptier]

yeah in america were going all digital

 

[noble savage]

Yeah, February 18th of next year right?

I don't know if any of you guys are familiar with Ray Kurzweil but he claims that solar energy could solve almost all of the energy problem in around 10 years. I'm not sure if I buy into a lot of futurist predictions though.

Something like 1 second of the Suns energy that reaches the surface could power the Earth for 100 years.

 

[Kenneth R.]

The problem with that theory (although it IS true that solar energy is potent) is that we'd still need an effective means of capture and conversion to electrical storage. For transportation, you'd also need an interesting delivery system.

 

[HackerX]

Yeah, the biggest problem with solar energy is the conversion rate.

Essentially, currently it's fair more efficient to get plants to do the conversion for us and then burn them.

 

[Horus]

What kind of plants?

 

[Kenneth R.]

If you smoke it, then the energy can't be converted.

 

[Horus]

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

 

[Eternal Dragon]

Well you could always smoke it, then use your own exhaust air to turn a mini turbine of some sort. Imagine that on a large scale, lol.

 

[Horus]

Or the turbine is inside the pipe part of a bong. The turbine turns as you inhale, and it stores power like a rechargable battery, and then you can plug stuff into it and get more power from it.

 

[Kenneth R.]

But the point you're missing is that it would be an incredibly inefficient engine. Most of the energy would be lost in conversion to smoke via combustion. You'd get virtually no energy out from the plant or whatever photosynthesis it achieved, all you would get is your own energy input. The problem of ideal engines is in conversion from one form of energy to another. So while the sun may provide ample energy, capturing all of it (which we can't currently do) would not solve the problem unless you could also convert the captured energy into electrical or mechanical useable energy. And we can't convert a sizeable amount with our current engine technology. I believe even an ideal engine can only convert 35% to useable energy, the rest typically is wasted in driving the engine and given off as heat and light.

 

[Swabs]

But surely the point is that even if the conversion rate is poor, it's still an entirely renewable source of energy?

 

[Burnout]

It doesn't really have anything to do with conversion rates but a professor at UCSB has developed a plastic/film that acts in a manner similar to solar cells and is currently looking at designing laptops/cell phones/roofing tiles with the material built into it. I believe the name of the company he started is called Konarka.