Energy and Environment

I decided this needed a new thread. And well dammit, here's the first entry.

Talking of the environment, its raining. it hasn't rained here for more than a month during what should be the rainiest months. There is a drought in the North. But thank goodness after a dry as a bone month of March its finally raining.

wow, that's a long time without rain! can you tell the effect it's had coming into spring?

yep, its quite dramatic really. Everything was yellow instead of green, the leaves were shrunken and curled instead of verdant. The trees were not producing leaves, just little stumps. It didn't feel like Spring because there's still too much dead stuff about, like dead leaves and grass.

Thankfully its going to rain all week.

Good. I'd be so depressed to see spring stunted. We haven't got leaves yet and I'm pining for them. Soon though.

Following along on the first post, there's a lot of hubbub about the laser induced nuclear fusion at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California. But it's actually a big nothingburger. I think one article made the distinction quite well but devising definitions called "scientific gain" and "engineering gain". In scientific gain you look at the ratio of energy put into the fuel versus energy released by the fuel. They achieved a scientific breakeven of 50% more energy released than put into the fuel. But this ignores the inefficiency of the lasers, and the absorption of the fuel. Turns out you have to pump a couple hundred times as much energy into the lasers than what actually gets absorbed. So we end up only getting out about 1% of what was put in.

In other words, ~ yawn ~. I so much want hear great news, but though we are making progress, we still are nowhere close.

{{ was quite excited about this, was main news on BBC, Fox and CNN so semed legit. Then I did some deeper reading went to some actual science sites, and yeah, important step forward but just that. This tech is still well outside my lifetime. }}