Good call Dave,

I just figured out the perfect use for the recently-identified party-noisemaker critical AWE component: a signal method announcing yesterday's "breakthrough", headed to the trash bin!
:)

Dave S.:
See, you were unable to address the most simple and basic actual issue I brought to the table: how long warm periods last and how old our warm period is. All you have done is cite a few buzzwords and called a name. Typical. I would expect no more from you.
:)

Dear all,

Here is the link for the new post where one may access the YouTube Video

http://www.kitegen.com/en/2012/05/07/the-manipulator/

Best regards,

Stefano Serra

Yeah Joe: Start a business where people are lifted above the hot desert for a cool interlude suspended by a kite? It would work here.
I'd love to be the first guinea pig but I'm probably chicken.
I wonder how many customers before something bad happened...
;)
Old-style refrigeration: lower your food deep into a lake on a rope.

Robert:
Regardless of all the details, I think it is important that someone stand up and search for arguments on the side of cooling. Any idiot can go along with the bandwagon, repeating platitudes and making vague references to a concensus of experts. To counter the fanaticism of making arguments on only one side, somebody has to see what good arguments might be made on the other side. To not look for such legitimate arguments makes the original argument that climate is always warming insincere.
Thanks Dan'l for pointing out the article showing Alaskan sea ice at record levels.

Doug,

You are quite correct that we need to look at all sides of the argument.
The problem is that the fossil fuel industry and the public who want to
believe that life need not change have biased the argument far too far
towards warming denial. I am well qualified to understand climate
modelling and have studied it sufficiently to maintain my web page about
it. I also have friends who study the subject professionally. We have a
responsibility to speak up and counter the ff industry lies.

Robert.

On Wed, 2012-05-09 at 10:50 +0000, roderickjosephread wrote:
maps.google.co.uk

Robert,

There is a glaring error in your web site that seriously damages the credibility of your argument...
"CO2 is a much stronger green house gas than water so it causes significant warming even though its concentration is much lower."

Water vapor and methane are the primary absorbers of infrared radiation.
As I understand the CO2 argument, the small heat gain of CO2 is supposed to allow the atmosphere to hold more water vapor thus increasing the greenhouse effect of water vapor. Atmospheric observations do not show increased opacity in the bands affected by water vapor. This indicates that this part of the CO2 argument is wrong.

I am willing to believe that recent warming is anthropomorphic, but my guess it is more related to land use (deforestation) and methane generation (largely from domestic animals - cattle) than CO2.
I have heard an argument that the increase in methane production is adequate to account for all the warming to date. Nobody wants to talk about this much because the solution would be to reduce the population of domestic animals (and probably of humans also).

I'm not saying that a 40% increase in CO2 is insignificant, I'm just saying it is not the whole story.

I'd be happy if you can point to evidence that my information is wrong.

Peter

I'll try a bit of arguing for Makani in their absence.

http://www.350.org/en/about/blogs/alarm-and-hope
My participation

LMFAO thanks Doug.

It may look like I headed to the trash bin before creating these monsters of AWE. http://research.kitepowercoop.org/project-updates/basiccomponents 

Nice, Alexander!

Rod Read's "Hill Saddle" set of turbines

The "hill" holding could possibly be replaced by lifter-kite system to
result in an AWES.

Peter,

Thanks for the feedback on my website - always appreciated.

The following quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
clarifies the situation.
"
Naturally occurring amounts of greenhouse gases have a mean warming
effect of about 33 °C (59 °F).[46][C] The major greenhouse gases are
water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect; carbon
dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; and
ozone (O3), which causes 3–7%.[47][48][49] Clouds also affect the
radiation balance through cloud forcings similar to greenhouse gases.
"

Water vapour (invisible to our eyes) absorbs infra red at certain
wavelengths and CO2 absorbs it at certain other wavelengths. Absorption
curves can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
Water also forms clouds which sometimes contribute to warming and
sometimes to cooling.

Also from the GHG page -
"
The Clausius-Clapeyron relation establishes that air can hold more water
vapor per unit volume when it warms. This and other basic principles
indicate that warming associated with increased concentrations of the
other greenhouse gases also will increase the concentration of water
vapor. Because water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this results in further
warming and so is a "positive feedback" that amplifies the original
warming. Eventually other earth processes offset these positive
feedbacks, stabilizing the global temperature at a new equilibrium and
preventing the loss of Earth's water through a Venus-like runaway
greenhouse effect.
"

You are therefore correct that methane should receive more attention
than it presently gets. The contribution from cattle could be reduced if
we fed them on grass rather than things like soya which their digestive
systems are not designed for. Another example of big industry chasing
profits at any cost to the environment.

Allowing agricultural waste to rot in the ground is another methane
source that could be fixed. I am trying to raise interest in biochar
because it cuts methane emissions and sequesters carbon. OT for this
group so I will leave it at that for now.

Robert.

Dave S.:
Since you (like me - pot calling the kettle black here...) profess to understand exactly what is required for a successful AWE machine, it baffles me that you could waste one second of your time fixating on what words some other team uses to describe their effort, especially since you seem convinced that their effort will ultimately fail anyway.

Why waste a second on someone else's impending failure? Why not stay focused on the performance of your oscillating kite arrays or whatever your certain breakthrough is this week?
Then again I should take my own advice - I am doing the same thing to you right now. (sigh).

I had better get back to work and make sure I don't waste valuable time on nothingness...
:)

Yeah see? I ask you to address the 11,000 year average duration of an interglacial, and you change the subject to "ocean acidification".
My last recollection of why ocean acidification was that it was going to wipe out coral reefs.

A few nights ago I saw a show on the deep oceans. One new discovery was that coral grows at all depths, even miles deep. It had been previously believed that coral only grew in shallow water. So the notion that burning fossil fuels will eliminate all coral because it only grows in shallow waters, and increased acidification of surface waters will wipe it all out, is suddenly gone.

Once again the "experts" were wrong on a simple, basic "fact" (coral only grows in shallow water) in a chain of reasoning that falls apart if any such "fact" is wrong, which at least half are.

Dave S., I have to apologize for not understanding your response to my request to explain if I have either of two facts wrong:
1) That the average duration of an interglacial is about 11,000 years
2) that the age of our present interglacial is about 11,000 years.
Could you please explain it again so even someone as dense as me can understand?
:)
Thanks
Doug S.
(people with a 4-letter first name that starts with D and a 6-letter last name that starts with an S are kewl!)

On Thu, 2012-05-10 at 16:42 +0000, Doug wrote:
The length of the previous interglacials varied by thousands of years.
Ice ages were caused by a combination of several features of the Earth's
orbit. My recollection is that the next time serious cooling effects
will be experienced because of orbital factors is 60 000 years away. By
that time the fossil fuel age will be a very distant blip.

It is now very clear that CO2 and methane levels are far too high for us
to slide into another ice age for the next several centuries. However,
the ff age is a blip and we could easily destroy the ability of humans
living in 60 000 years time to counteract the cooling they will
experience then.

For me this article speaks volumes.
<http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/07/478984/hug-the-monster-why-so-many-climate-scientists-have-stopped-downplaying-the-climate-threat/?mobile=nc
Robert.

Dan'l,

Earlier this year I met this student and her supervisor with the hope
that we could learn from each other about tethers. They have received
government funding as part of a program to see if sulphur dioxide (or
other chemicals with a similar effect) could be pumped into the high
atmosphere. SO2 released at 20km altitude would reflect some of the
Sun's heat. It would also cause acid rain. So geoengineering studies are
being funded.

http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hc360/

However, the video talks a load of nonsense which is a real shame
considering how much effort must have gone into making it. Aluminium is
the 3rd most common element on the planet. Every shovel full of dirt you
dig anywhere on earth is sure to contain large quantities. If it was
being dispersed as the metal then a microscope would reveal it on any
clean surface left outdoors. The video never reveal what analytical
tools they used to detect the Al and what form they found it in. The
body has excellent mechanisms for regulating Al. Most forms are not
toxic like they were claiming. Strontium is an essential mineral and
anyone with osteoporoses should be taking supplements of it. There is
also no way aircraft could carry the quantity of material they were
claiming to have found. I therefore dismiss the video as a complete
waste of time. Such a shame, but it does highlight one important issue.
We need to put huge pressure on all governments to be far more open and
to keep far fewer secrets.

Robert.

Is it already in the video base?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EO_b563AIjk

Thanks Joe! left is my daughter. Next day my kite had fold somewere in forest and hanged on 10 m high. I got just on third day.

I find out that back-fort motion of energy trancfer doesn't work because a torque from rope is too strong and turbine can not rotate.
http://www.awenergy.ru/media/kunena/attachments/62/2012-04-06220743.jpg

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, Robert Copcutt <r@... ******Robert: "your recollection"? does that settle the debate? Anyone can look this up. I provided a link to the charts. Each interglacial is a spike that does not last very long.*****

*****Very clear based on what exactly?*****

****** OK so like Roderick, once engaged in the actual conversation, you quickly admit the impending cooling trend and cite the solution of burning more fossil fuels to correct it. It's just the exact timeline you have a problem with now. I humbly submit that your thinking remains guided by others: there must be a million ways to cool the planet besides burning fossil fuels. The conversation remains guided by the principle that we can only include two factors: temperatures and burning fossil fuels. Many other factors come to bear but nine are discussed. And even the conversation that included thewe two factors is stunted. It has one timeline (now) and one problem and one action to argue about. That's not even a conversation, it's just a demand combined with a lot of name-calling.
******As long as I see only one side of this debate being promoted, I will continue to sarcastically provide a counterpoint, and maybe get a laugh or two out of it, just to keep it all even and keep feet-on-ground.
:)
-Doug S.************

Sorry but none of these links work.

You clearly could do more homework on quadcopters and robotic control systems. ;)
Why would you think that a aircraft that can take off vertically would have a problem with lulls? The PID loops and Kalman filters don't care about passing through zero. In layman's terms that means that if maintaining the circular flight path requires applying power during the climb portion it just happens. The electronics have to be designed to allow it but I believe that they already would be.

Also I have advocated for moving above the boundary layer because many issues like this sap efficiency and add complexity.

Brian

Yes. #342
at
http://www.energykitesystems.net/AWECommunityIntroVideos.html

Each AWES team is invited to use page search on that file and determine if we are missing any of your videos. Thank you for the teaming for the video-collection project.

JoeF

Morning, Doug. 

Awaking this morning

The Makani wing has exceptional power to weight. A level that is normally only seen in fighter aircraft. It has no fuel, no batteries, no pilot. Electric motors can go 2 to 3 times rated power output for short periods of time. This significantly delays the issue of settling with power as the craft scales up. The small versions of it would have no issue with this. The settling with power issue only happens in certain situations. The way that regular helicopter pilots are taught to deal with this is to avoid those situations. Robots are pretty good at remembering to not do certain things. Humans... not so much. Additionally a quadcopter still has most of it's control authority when in a settling with power situation, helping it get out of it. But it will tend to roll over like the Osprey but not as badly. Getting out of the situation can also be accomplished by moving sideways a few rotor widths. Quadcopters have smaller rotor widths so safety is closer. I always get into a debate as to whether higher or lower disc loading helps prevent settling with power. And as I think about it now I don't know if the Makani wing has a higher or lower than typical disc loading.

The wave issue would be a big problem for small scale aircraft that don't have a lot of surplus power. As the craft gets larger the waves effectively get smaller. So as the cubic scaling takes performance away the waves would shrink. If/When the wave(s) are big enough to cause a problem they can be detected coming.

Brian

I just went to this page:
http://www.makanipower.com/2011/12/faq-ask-damon/

And found the same answer that I just gave you for the question. It looks to have been answered a few months back.

Brian

We will treasure inputs; see new folder and its start page:

It might be better to arrange a kite to drop a weight repeatedly onto one anchor.  It would improve aim, and compensate for variable sub-soil conditions.   it would also be able to set a much larger anchor from a small one.  One kite might be used to lift the weight, and another one to pull it down to a pulley on the new anchor, to help guide the blow.  Of course, it would also work for the ancient art of general pile-driving.  A pair of kites with a natural tendency to pull and luff in stable cycles might drive a nice compact hammer arrangement.

You've mis quoted me too many times doug... right that's it gloves off,
slap.

I'm going to fly a massive parabolic foil mirror made of kites and fry
all of West America, just to be sure

I think the wave issue could also be negated by having a near constant
reeling tension from the reeling bouy /landing pad...
As the wave passes reel in faster, as the trough goes by slack a bit

As long as there is some proportional reeling tension control ... not a
bother

I have for a while wanted to design an emergency shelter drop.

Based on beehive and skin cell walls.. Walls made of Layers of carbon Kevlar woven sheets, stitched to allow presurised tubes between the layers.

Arrange the walls in hexagonal cell structures with domed roofs.

After dropping in the emergency zone, inflate with air pump for structure, or with water for ordinance protection.


Rod Read

15a Aiginis
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB

07899057227
01851 870878

Pirate Utopia 

Article by Paul Dvorak

Any curved ridge could be used in this way by employing only two
towers... one either end.
suspended drops from the catenary along the length of the ridge can
mount tube based kite sets... as per that hill saddle drawing and my
loft demo video.

I reckon this would be particularly effective on the pacific facing
coast of Chile , where they already have tonnes of wind towers along the
ridge...

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, dave santos <santos137@... wrote:
support of operations much higher. This "terrain" use may even be
coolIP, if the idea�turns out to�not be documented outside the
AWES�Forum.
more fickle and less enhanced wind velocity than a Ridge Saddle, which
can form a nice ~steady jet from small differences in
pressure�across the ridge divide.

Well in that case I propose they use an inverted party hooter solution.

or a variable height soft spire collapsing topped buoy.

or a mix of the two...

Now imagine you can set the buoyant dynamics of the tether... so as it
can stand as a thin flexible (maybe even inflated) beam, way above the
waves. As the quadracopter pulls against it's tether... it's going to
come in softly. Deflate the vertical boom a bit, reel in a bit keep
thrusting up a bit... repeat until guided to the bottom.

Once it does come down onto the buoy... that's when the big wave crashes
into the whole thing sinking it.


--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, dave santos <santos137@... wrote:
more wing lift as needed, but the problem is�at the extreme case.
of�an ungainly�jumbo version banging into the perch too fast.
Its an incredibly unsupported�claim that Makani's jumbo AWT will
always be able to dock with a buoy slowly enough not to crack up. There
are also disturbed short-line harmonic flight modes to worry about;
churn or lose control (Brian can tackle this falure-mode in the next
round).
can be; a limit�set by scaling law and�the probable worst-case
conditions. My guess is that anything bigger than Wing-7 will be sorely
stressed,
mind increased structural scaling weight ratios), don't forget these
AWTs have been publicly proposed to carry all sorts of extra crap; like
ballistic chutes, reserve batteries, and so on.

Progress on data sheets and other news at Minesto.  

Thanks Joe:
I clicked and the link worked this time. Turbines suspended from a cable. I've got a copy of an old patent that hung a similar rectangular array of turbines from a single cable - more levels below, resulting in more turbines per cable. I always wondered why nobody pursued it. Too lazy I surmise.

It is curious that this artist thought he should also correct the stupidity of all people who have been designing turbines that actually work, by showing them how many blades each turbine should really have.

One symptom inventors have is to change too many things. If you have an invention thaty uses turbines, just use turbines. Don;t reinvent them too, for no reason except ignorance. Experts know the choice is 2 blades or 3, per rotor. More blades hurt performance, so this is evidence that the designer knows nothing of wind energy and wants to reinvent the turbine itself before hanging any from a cable.
:)
Doug S.

There is much IP on catenary suspension of wind turbine between hills etc., both issued and pending, over many years, both mine and that of others.