Outside of the fact that I am a sucker for cleverness, this description of the workings of the movement of heat is one of the best I have read. It highlights one of our great misconceptions: that cold moves. Science tells us that heat moves, and it is that movement of heat that is at play this week.
Go home Arctic, you're drunk
"What is happening instead is the cold air mass that usually sits up on the Arctic during the northern Winter has moved, drooped, shifted, gone off center, to engulf part of the temperate region. Here in the Twin Cities, it is about 8 below zero F as I write this. If I go north towards the famous locality of International Falls (famous for its cold temperature readings often mentioned on the national news) it will in fact be colder. If I go even farther north, at some point it will start to get warm again, as we leave the giant blob of cold air that has engulfed us. In fact, it is relatively warm up on the North Pole right now. Alaska and Europe are relatively warm as well."
Advocates against renewable energy cite intermittency as one of the obstacles that the market will never overcome. It is interesting that, as we have seen in Texas this week, "conventional" sources have their own intermittency. Anything with moving parts requiring maintenance cannot run 100% of the time, and as anyone who has been inside a plant that produces steam can tell you, the systems have many sources of failure requiring attention. They also have economic intermittency associated with the availability of fuels that have to be purchased. When all is said and done, the reliability of conventional and renewable sources does not vary enough to make a difference in the marketplace. Grid operators have to be ready for any source to be unavailable, especially as our weather continues to vary from what we knew to be "normal".
Cold pushes Texas power to use winter record
"Monday's power emergency lasted less than three hours, but was reminiscent of February 2011 when ERCOT was forced to implement rolling outages for several hours after dozens of power plants were knocked offline or were unable to start due to frigid weather and strong winds across the state.
One of the state's largest power plants, Luminant's Comanche Peak 1 nuclear reactor, is operating at 72 percent of capacity for a second day."
I have read many knocks against this technology because some assume the lights get turned off. As the article mentions, the technology reduces the lighting level so that in-person viewing remains intact, but the level needed for security cameras only comes into play when motion is detected. In an era when we scrutinize every dollar spent in education and safety net programs, finding millions of dollars of savings in every city and state should be on the table. Especially when the level of service does not change.
Clever? Smart street lamps light up only when needed
"The reason why street lamps are so bright, he explains, is to accommodate security cameras, which require a certain amount of surrounding illumination to make out people's faces and other vital details. The Tvilight modified street lamps supposedly do not interfere with these recording systems since they are sufficiently bright whenever someone is within view. Additionally, the dimming levels can be adjusted depending on the known traffic pattern of particular locations. Offhand, for instance, he states that busy intersections can be safely dimmed down by 30 to 40 percent, while that number can drop as low as 70 percent for vacant parking spaces and industrial lots."
How much chemical are you willing to put into your body to have a place to sit that will not burn? Consider this against the reason for the practice in the first place was the frequency of people falling asleep while smoking? Does my couch have to poison my daughter because someone else smokes?
This win against toxic couches will make you love seats
"The problem with the flame retardant is that it didn’t stay put. It dispersed into the air. It bonded with dust. The closer you were to flame-retardant treated polyfill or foam, the more you became, over time, part flame retardant yourself. Researchers found that children in the U.S. had seven times the levels of flame retardant in their blood as children who had recently emigrated from Mexico. In the Arctic, very far away from most of the world’s furniture, levels of flame retardant began to increase exponentially in seals."
Keep an eye on this idea. It could mean the beginning of "The Matrix" and the end of our autonomy, or it could mean a much more efficient manner for us to live our lives. One thing it will lead to is the efficacy of driverless cars as devices begin to communicate with each other. One note: if you work in an office building, the systems that control temperature and ventilation already do this...so it's not new, just expanding.
Thousands of world's internet-connected things in one place
"A new website seeks to catalog all of the world's Internet-enabled devices. So far, they've got more than 2,000 listed, and they plan to add many more in the months ahead. There are fitness monitors, medical devices, sound-level meters, and all sorts of other gadgets ready for measuring and monitoring (thermometers, pedometers, and barometers, oh my)."
Happy Friday!
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