A big advantage of its sodium cells is also the fact that they can retain more than 92% of their capacity even when operating at -20°C (-4 Fahrenheit) and discharging at those freezing temps.

That is very promising to hear. My current vehicle, which uses first-generation lithium batteries (made on 2011), loses almost half of its range at that temperature, and that is before heating.

Nice to know. :)

Reading tip: a comment from a reader John Beech (an old radio amateur) at the bottom is probably of greater practical value: he describes how he developed DIY cells to the point of running a 2 W radio.

Another way to build DIY batteries is using the iron-air chemical combination. A decent collection of recipes can be found here, using filter cartridges of activated carbon as cathodes and rebar wrapped in steel wool as anodes:

https://www.instructables.com/Create-large-refuelable-metal-air-battery/

These cells convert iron into rust at an accelerated pace, producing power while doing that. However, they have really low cell voltages, so you have to wire many cells in series or use a really efficient voltage converter. Aluminum gives high cell voltages, but on the downside, produces annoying waste chemicals.

Ah, sorry, I was careless with terminology.

Throughout my post, I was thinking of rigid-envelope airships, but at some point, referred to them as blimps. Apologies.

About the only role I would give to a non-rigid airship is “a tethered observation post”. :)

Some guesses, in declining order of probability. :)

• Vanity and spite. After all, he’s not emotionally mature.

• With some probability, rational attention-seeking to keep his supporters entertained and lobbyists (who bought and propagandized his way to power) satisfied. He has to deliver them goods. This is how he shows that he intends to deliver the goods… that he actually cannot deliver without changing the constitutional order very much. You can mark my words: lots of wind parks will be opened under the Trump administration, despite anything he does.

• Maybe he wants to test the mettle of the terrible Renewable Industries Complex - an industry very prone to organizing coups and hiring assassins. If I were him, I’d consider twice, all the people in the solar business that I know have been extremely menacing. ;P

Hydrogen is a nuisance of a gas, though - it has a very wide combustible range of mixtures.

But an airship envelope containing multiple lifting units of hydrogen could be passivated by filling the envelope with a non-combustible gas like helium.

So, there’s a big sausage providing structure and that’s full of helium (or nitrogen, or CO2, or anything else which doesn’t react with hydrogen in normal conditions)… and it contains balloons full of hydrogen. If one of them springs a leak, the leak won’t be going into an environment that supports fire. And if the leak then proceeds into surrounding air, the hydrogen is hopefully diluted beyond its combustible range.

Considerably less expensive than using helium only. But considerably safer than using hydrogen among air.

Part of the safety focus is from sticking so many people in the same fuselage - which, being big, has no individual rescue equipment and cannot be brought down by parachute either - so nothing critical is allowed to fail.

Side note: that’s not the only possible model, however - one can also design heavier than air craft that are smaller, almost passively safe (falling controllably without power, at somewhat above parachute speed), and design small aircraft that have rescue systems (parachutes which can land the whole aircraft).

Size itself is then a function of economic realities (air travel has undergone explosive growth).

Blimps would have to somehow fit in. Having considerable air resistance, blimps cannot travel as fast. Being unable to travel as fast, they would fall behind at moving X people per hour - while a blimp makes one roundtrip, a jet aircraft would make multiple roundtrips.

If however a jet aircraft is deemed environmentally unsustainable on account of fuel use - then the milestone to compare a blimp against will be a propeller-electric aircraft. Which is more limited in speed, requires charging time, is more limited in range - and therefore makes less roundtrips in an unit of time.

From one viewpoint then, the success of airships thus depends on whether fast aircraft can reduce their environmental footprint. If they can, blimps will not be widespread. If they cannot, blimps might become widespread.

Overall, a fast airplane is effective at getting results (transporting people) but not necessarily efficient at doing that. There is perhaps only one aspect where a high-powered aircraft is more efficient… use of space. But space is not a scarce resource in the atmosphere. Only on the runway.

Out of the previous considerations, I come to the conclusion: blimps probably won’t replace airplanes. Especially for longer trips, having to wait less is what makes people prefer speedier travel. Blimps cannot provide that. However, airships might carve out a niche for servicing shorter routes and local traffic.

Looking at the installation, I would advise the experimenter to immediately remove the hub motor from its semi-submerged state (thermal variation of the environment will pull in water through seals and bearings) and use a shaft (or belt) of reasonable length to extract power.

Besides that, nice project.

…and for those who prefer their information as text anyway, here’s an article on a very overlapping topic, which likely gives the same information as the video:

Geothermal Energy with Millimeter Wave or Direct Energy Drilling

The problem:

Multiple countries, over decades, have tried to drill into the Earth’s crust to reach the mantle without success due to exceedingly hot temperatures in deep bore holes and extremely hard rock formations located under pressure deep underground. From 1961 to 1966, the United States’ Project Mohole tried to drill through the crust out in the Pacific Ocean off of the coast of Mexico. They were only able to reach a depth of 601 ft (183 m) in 11,700 ft (3,600 m) of water. Between 1970 and 1992, Russia’s Kola Superdeep Borehole Project (see Figure 3) reached a record depth of 40, 230 ft (12.2 km) but were only able to drill about a third of the way through the Earth’s crust. In 1990, Germany initiated the German Continental Deep Drilling Program in Bavaria to try to break Russia’s record but were only able to drill to a depth of 5.6 miles (9 km).

Today, boreholes of 7 km are probably reliably attainable with state-of-the-art equipment. This can be very expensive and in most places, ground temperature at 7 km is not sufficient to warrant going there for energy.

The proposed solution: drilling boreholes with a maser (radio frequency laser in the millimeter wave spectrum). The gyrotron would likely sit on surface while the waveguide (antenna) is lowered into ground. Meanwhile, vapours would be blown out with compressed air (or maybe nitrogen, if things keep catching fire).

If the company developing it gets the system to work, boreholes deep enough to reach good quality heat would be possible everywhere on Earth, not just handful of places.

It makes good sense in theory, and I hope they get it working. But its benefits won’t reach many people for at least a decade or two, so while the folks at Quaise Energy do their thing, I suggest that everyone else continue installing renewables and storage. :)

People should be organizing and buying radios not gas masks.

A good reminder.

A side note on radios - most cheap radios don’t allow for encryption, revealing the speaker’s voice (which is enough to identify a person in these days). Encrypted tactical radios have silly prices however.

• A crude way to cover one’s rear end somewhat is using a signal system. One beep = meaning A, two beeps = meaning B. Error-prone and inflexible.

• Another way is using Morse code. Slow and raises the barrier for operating a radio, and high barriers will mean a lack of competent operators.

• Another crude way is using voice synthesizer to speak (no identifiable voice) and a codeword table to authenticate transmissions against spoofing. This way, everyone can listen to unauthenticated broadcasts and those in need can check the code to authenticate the message.

E.g.

• Alice and Bob share a codebook
• In her book, Alice finds that the code word for 21:05 is “fish”
• Alice broadcasts “Ecilop moving into Sesame street from Aleph avenue fish”
• Bob wants to rebroadcast and confirm at 21:06 (the code for 21:05 is no good, being public)
• In his book, Bob finds that the codeword for 21:06 is “horse”
• Bob broacasts “acknowledged, Ecilop moving into Sesame street from Aleph avenue horse”
• Alice now knows that her message has reached Bob someone with a codebook, and anyone downstream from Bob can hear
• if Alice and Bob limit themselves to 1 message per minute, they can send 1440 authenticated messages per day
• the Ecilop can still listen and jam their comms, but can’t broadcast a false message
• if Alice and Bob share an extensive one time pad of quality data straight from /dev/random, and a method of picking “pages” from this data, behold, unbreakable DIY encryption and authentication :) they will need some “calculator” app however to ease their work since doing OTP by hand is slow and mind-numbing

Beyond that - the wonderful world of software.

There’s a lot of Android software out there (Briar comes to my mind immediately) that does various jobs decently. But most Android devices are recycled mobile phones which have a history of use during their “past lives” and can be traced to somewhere. This is a downside. A communications terminal should be clean and have no traceable fingerprint. But maybe that’s a compromise one must be willing to make.

Radio modems that plug into a laptop and have reach comparable to a tactical radio are better in that regard. They reach longer distances than WiFi on phones, cost relatively little (e.g. 20 €). But some are really slow. Sending full-fledged GPG messages over them could turn out somewhat annoying, but in return for annoyance, one would get hard privacy. Alice and Bob could talk of anything they’d like, and the Ecilop would not understand a thing.

Meanwhile, WiFi cards can be used to set up mesh networks. Some WiFi devices have outstanding reach, allow somewhat above-legal transmit power, and can broadcast in inject mode (spoofed MAC addresses, fill 802.11 headers with any info that you like), and listen in monitor mode. With a bit of code, they can even frequency-hop over the spectrum. I’ve seen drone video links implemented this way - quite fast, no problem moving 10 mbit/s to a distance of 2 kilometers (direct line of sight, cheap Chinese panel antennas). But most WiFi devices cannot do monitor and inject, and cannot go beyond 100 meters.

What about pepper spray?

Medium sized (molecular mass 305 g/mol) capsaicin molecules disscolved in alcohol. They come out of solution and get stuck when alcohol tries to find its way through a filter.

Much more potent than any kind of tear gas. Cannot be used as easily in ranged weapons. Flammable. Cops don’t break it out as easily. Also works on cops. Gratitude for a 20-second demonstration of function and first aid goes out to Bulgarian cops. :)

A long time ago, I once volunteered to be pepper sprayed for a test by a fellow anarchist from close range. I was wearing winter clothing, a hood, a fur hat, working goggles (polycarbonate goggles with air holes underneath and above, some of them probably blocked by the hat) and a scarf before my nose and mouth. I breathed out during the process (this is critically important). After being sprayed, I ran for 10 paces to get away from any residual vapour cloud.

I experienced mild discomfort. I believe (perhaps mistakenly) that a P99 (FFP3) mask would reduce effect on airways to tolerable levels, but protection around eyes should have good coverage. But in a protest / confrontation / riot setting, I would recommend a mask with colorful stripes on the filter (protection against multiple chemicals) just to be on the safe side.

On another occasion (a drunken husband beating his wife in the corridor of an apartment building) I have pepper-sprayed a person who hit me, after a warning that I would retaliate if he did that again. He almost blanked out and was not able to walk to his apartment for half an hour. That’s what happens if the spray is good and hits the mark. I brought some water and washing supplies but those didn’t help him much.

P.S. Do not expose any skin. Thick clothing will stop it, thin clothing - not so much. Rinse all skin hit by a liquid. Do not rub. I have pepper sprayed myself accidentally (lifting a heavy object against my leg pushed the lid down on the can). A burning sensation on my leg started in 3 minutes and remained 30 minutes after thorough rinsing. It would have grown very uncomfortable without access to water.

Also, with pepper, contaminated items are really contaminated. Touching those items and then touching your face is a big no-no. Washing in the wrong order can bring contamination to a new area.

It seems that weather patterns lasting longer is part of the new climate pattern.

Were electric ferries not a viable option?

For short routes, they are.

Here in Estonia, two ferries that sail to the island Saaremaa (route Kuivastu-Virtsu, about 4 nautical miles so really short) …they typically charge in port and travel on battery power. They have a combustion engine of course, and can use it when ice is thick (which lately hasn’t been the case, and this year is ridiculous, it’s January soon and there even no snow, not to speak of sea ice).

https://news.err.ee/1609198900/40-million-procurement-underway-for-larger-electric-vessel-to-serve-saaremaa

The power grid connection at the port was redesigned of course. Charging a ship requires more amps than an ordinary port might have access to.

But how long is the Arran sea route? Sources give me different numbers and on the map, I can’t figure out which port they actually prefer to sail from. Either way, it looks manageable on battery power.

Here is the Mauna Loa data line from 1958, matching the top figure.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Mauna_Loa_CO2_monthly_mean_concentration.svg

The rest has been matched and synchronized to it using other sources. I’m not a climate scientist, but I would guess the best sources are ice samples from polar regions where it accumulates from top and melts from bottom. CO2 dissolves in water and when snow falls and turns into permanent ice in such places, it captures a snapshot of that period’s atmospheric gas content, among that the CO2 level.

“Conspiracy to cause public nuisance”, as far as I recall. With emphasis on conspiracy. Causing public nuisance without a conspiracy would not have been a criminal offense at all.

Disclaimer: I’m an anarchist and I don’t consider that a crime.

She was sentenced, as much as I recall, for causing mild inconvenience to the masses.

Didn’t burn anything down, didn’t blow anything up, didn’t attack anyone, just conspired to obstruct traffic - and maybe actually obstructed some traffic.

That’s some great big criminal offense, IMHO. And having laws like that on book - allows any government to crack down on any demonstration planned in secret - because “look, a conspiracy to cause public nuisance”.

As much as I recall, conspiring was the big deal, and they dragged out some law intended for the mafia, which was quite ridiculous. Conspiring to do anything - even conspiring to ruin the climate for future generations by recklessly burning lots of fuel - sure seemed to be a great big criminal offense under that law, but I could be absent-minded because fuel company bosses aren’t in prison.

Side note: in China, they have a similar crime - a crime that you can stick to almost anyone, named “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. [1] In my opinion, even from a boring old statist viewpoint, having a legal system with stick-to-anyone crimes is a bad idea.

Back when it happened, I think I commented something to the tune of -> if a cunning protester had overturned a truck and trailer on the same stretch of road - strictly outside the presence of other cars - pretending to be a hapless trucker who lost control - the road would have been twice as closed, and the stealth protester would have walked home in the evening, with only high insurance bills waiting in the future.

(This is not intended as legal or tactical advise, and overturning a car without extensive practise can have permanent negative health impacts. It might be safer to stop a “damaged” tractor and pretend to be a hapless farmer whose trailer with a load of bullcrap almost broke off the vehicle, or maybe the bullcrap hatch accidentally opened and it’s on the road now. Strictly by accident.)

I think I also estimated that if someone had cut power to a big intersection’s traffic lights without saying a word, obstruction would have been just as great, but chances of getting caught really small. (This is not intended as advise either.)

In most cases, it is true, but it might depend on technologies used. If you let water flash into steam underground, that’s going to produce pressure waves and vibration.

Geothermal makese sense on high latitudes (see Iceland for example) where heat is desirable even if electricity can’t be extracted.

Where you cannot drill deep enough (a Finnish company tried a 5 kilometer borehole and didn’t hit good enough heat) - artificial geothermal (thermal storage in large underground caverns) still makes sense, but not for electricity production. Just storing heat extracted from the environment during summer.

If drilling should get cheaper (e.g. those MIT guys declaring that they have a practical and reliable maser drilling rig), accessing good enough heat may be possible in places where it’s not worthwhile currently.

In some locations, production of geothermal energy can be combined with extracting dissolved chemicals - e.g. some borehole may produce a lot of dissolved lithium salts. No point in letting lithium back underground, better to put it aside.

The heater model they depict looks good.

• not capable of producing carbon monoxide
• high probability of self-extinguishing when pushed over
• reduced chance of causing burns

It looks neat and might help in emergencies or special conditions, but if one takes a look at the wattage, sadly… 50 kW is very limited power. Probably not good for widespread use.

The helium-filled S500 blimp ascended to 500 meters above ground in the city of Jingmen, generating power at a rate of over 50 kW, according to Beijing SAWES Energy Technology Co Ltd, one of the developers of the system.

Additional note: per UK. :) The predicted effect, either in meters or millions of cars, is if the UK inhabitants currently eating a high-meat diet switched to a low-meat diet.