The truth is this: every source of energy has costs and benefits that have to be carefully weighed. Wind and solar are no different. Most people are familiar with the benefits of wind and solar: reduced air pollution, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. But not as many recognize the costs of wind and solar or understand how those costs hurt both the environment and people—especially people with lower incomes. //

Solar advocates often gloss over the solar-panel manufacturing process. They just say, “We turn sand, glass, and metal into solar panels.” This oversimplification masks the real environmental costs of the manufacturing process.

Solar panels are manufactured using minerals, toxic chemicals, and fossil fuels. In fact, solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant.[1]Quartz, copper, silver, zinc, aluminum, and other rare earth minerals are mined with heavy diesel-powered machinery. In fact, 38% of the world’s industrial energy and 11% of total energy currently go into mining operations.[2]

Once the materials are mined, the quartz and other materials get melted down in electric-arc furnaces at temperatures over 3,450°F (1,900°C) to make silicon—the key ingredient in solar cells. The furnaces take an enormous amount of energy to operate, and that energy typically comes from fossil fuels.[3] Nearly 80% of solar cells are manufactured in China, for instance, where weak environmental regulations prevail and lower production costs are fueled by coal. //

First, many buildings are not suitable for rooftop solar panels. Rooftop installations are typically exposed to less direct sunlight due to local weather patterns, shade from surrounding trees, the orientation of a building (which are often not angled toward the sun), or the pitch of the roof.

Second, the average cost to buy and install rooftop solar panels on a home as of July 2021 is $20,474.[7] This makes rooftop installations cost-prohibitive—especially for lower-income families.

Finally, even if we installed solar panels on all suitable buildings in the U.S. we could generate only 39% of the electricity the country needs according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.[8]

Solar panels also have a shorter lifespan[9] than other power sources (about half as long as natural gas[10] and nuclear plants[11]), and they’re difficult and expensive to recycle because they’re made with toxic chemicals. When solar panels reach the end of their usable life, their fate will most likely be the same as most of our toxic electronic waste: They will be dumped in poorer nations. It is estimated that global solar panel waste will reach around 78 million metric tons by 2050[12]–the equivalent of throwing away nearly 60 million Honda Civic cars.[13] //

Adding more renewable energy to the grid is not only expensive; it’s dangerous! The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a nonprofit organization that monitors the reliability, resilience, and security of the grid, says that the number-one risk to the electrical grid in America is adding more unreliable renewables.[16]

The reliability of a power source is measured by capacity factor. The capacity factor of a power plant tracks the time it’s producing maximum power throughout the year. When we compare the capacity factors of power plants, we see that solar is the least reliable energy source: natural gas is twice as reliable as solar, and nuclear energy is three times more reliable. //

A study conducted across 26 countries over two decades by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) concluded for every 1 megawatt of solar or wind power installed there need to be 1.12 megawatts of fossil fuels (usually natural gas) as backup capacity because solar and wind are unreliable.[21] Moreover, using backup diesel generators and ramping power plants up and down to meet energy shortfalls are two of the worst ways to use fossil fuels; they’re inefficient and cause unnecessary pollution.

A final point: solar and wind have low power densities. According to a facts guide on nuclear energy from the U.S. Department of Energy, a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear facility in the United States needs a little more than 1 square mile to operate. Solar farms, by contrast, need 75 times more land and wind farms need 360 times more land, to produce the same amount of electricity.[22]

Even if we could overcome all the practical constraints on storing, transmitting, and distributing solar power, supplying a country the size of the U.S. would require over 22,000 square miles of solar panels[23]—approximately the size of New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts combined.[24] And the unreliability of solar power means that even with that many solar panels, we would continue to need most of our existing power plants. //

Some people theorize that we will eventually be able to store surplus solar energy in batteries, but the reality is batteries cost about 200 times more than the cost of natural gas to solve energy storage at scale.[34] In addition, batteries don’t have enough storage capacity to meet our energy needs. Currently, America has 1 gigawatt of large-scale battery storage that can deliver power for up to four hours without a recharge. A gigawatt is enough energy to power 750,000 homes, which is a small fraction of the amount of energy storage we would need for a grid powered mostly by renewables. It is, for instance, less than 1% of the 120 gigawatts of energy storage that would be needed for a grid powered 80% by renewables.[35]

Manufacturing batteries also takes a serious toll on the environment, as they require lots of mining, hydrocarbons, and electricity. According to analysis completed by the Manhattan Institute, it requires the energy equivalent of about 100 barrels of oil to make batteries that can store a single barrel of oil-equivalent energy. And between 50 to 100 pounds of various materials are mined, moved, and processed for one pound of battery produced. Enormous quantities of lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earth elements, and cobalt would need to be mined in China, Russia, Congo, Chile, and Argentina where weak environmental regulations and poor labor conditions prevail.[36] //

Here are five steps we can begin to take towards making things better for both people and the planet:

• End subsidies and incentives for solar and wind power;
• Invest in research and development to advance new energy technologies;
• Build new efficient natural gas power plants (and hydro and geothermal where possible);
• Reform regulations and build nuclear power plants;
• Retire the worst coal power plants (5% of power plants create 73% of carbon emissions from electricity generation)[38].

Every day we spend chasing fantasies causes unnecessary harm and suffering. Let’s pursue energy solutions that benefit people and also save the environment.

Further Observations on ZFS Metadata Special Device

Last quarter we discussed metadata special devices.

By default, adding a special device to a zpool causes all (new) pool metadata to be written to the device. Presumably this device is substantially faster than spinning disk vdevs in the pool. //

Finally, the permissions and ownerships regime is re-enforced every five minutes just in case something ever gets chowned/chmodded incorrectly. Yes, we really are gratuitously chmodding and chowning ourselves every five minutes.

Foam Concrete (FC) is made by mixing foam into mortar. The mortar is a cement mix with sand and water. As a result you end up with a mix that is lighter than “normal” concrete. The mass, or density as we call it here, (weight per cubic meter) depends on how much foam is added to the mortar. The more foam we add the lighter it is, but also the weaker is becomes. The “Ideal” mix would have at least 20 MPa at a density of 1000 Kg/m3, however the best results I have found in studies was 18 MPa and a density of 1200Kg/ m3. A simple FC with no additives is usually around 5-8 MPa with a density of 1000 Kg /m3. There are FC “Brands” on the market that make the claim to be better than this.

The lighter the FC is, the better the thermal insulation becomes. The combination of the strength and the insulation value makes FC an ideal building material.  For the advantages and dis-advantages of FC go to:  Why Foam Concrete is an ideal building material

The absurdities of this historical moment, as embodied by President Zelensky, point us to the deeper truths of Ukraine’s messy identity, which is proving to be a more powerful construction than Putin’s authoritarian nostalgia. //

Ukrainians voted for a mixture of Benny Hill and Boris Johnson, and somehow wound up with Churchill. //

It is surely no accident, comrades, that the “neo-Nazi” Ukraine that Putin desires to subjugate and cleanse for the sin of resisting his embrace, is led in battle by a president, a minister of defense, chief of administration, and a mayor of Kyiv who all have Jewish blood and roots. All of which signals the ratification of a country that does not look back to any hoary, folk conception of Ukrainian political ethos, but rather to the internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and historicity of a particular Ukraine in reality. This modern vision of Ukraine has won, regardless of the destruction that the superior weaponry of a demoralized and disorganized Russian army inflicts on it. It is proving so with a heroism much more universal than the doomed and narrowly anti-imperialist heroism of a Khmelnytsky or a Petlura.

I feel shame that we came to this country. I don’t know why we were doing it. We knew very little. We brought sorrow to this land.

Curing is the maintenance of a satisfactory moisture content and temperature in concrete for a period of time immediately following placing and finishing so that the desired
properties may develop

AirCrete is inexpensive, easy to make, and easy to work with.  It requires only basic skills. 

It's easy to make.  And, like baking a cake, you have to get the recipe right. The quality and density of the foam is important. Use an accurate postal or kitchen scale to check the weight of your foam. It should be between 90 - 100 grams/liter (about 3 ounces/quart). 

You can use good quality dish detergent to make the foam with Little Dragon, our continuous foam generator. Look for a high foaming degreaser detergent. We tested Seventh Generation Natural Dish Liquid, Dawn Ultra and Safeway Home concentrate.  They all produced adequate foam diluted 40/1 with water. (5 gals water / 2 cups foaming agent).  Add the detergent to the water and mix thoroughly.

You need an air-compressor rated for at least 2.5cfm@90psi, which is a relatively small compressor. Of course you can use a bigger compressor if you have one.

Mix one 94lb bag of cement with 6 gallons (US) water. Put all the water in your container first and add the cement while you are mixing to avoid clumping. When the cement and water are well mixed, turn on the Little Dragon and add foam to the mixture. Add enough foam to make a total of 45 gallons of AirCrete. That's about 30" high in a standard 55 gallon drum. The foam is very light weight and so it wants to float on top of the cement mixture. Our foam injection mixer works great because it injects the foam directly into the mixing paddles at the bottom of the barrel where it is mixed into the cement before it can float to the top.

Russians are worried, she said, not only about external isolation, but that a new Iron Curtain is about to be imposed internally by the Putin regime. She thinks a lot about the ancient Jewish question: When is it time to go? New events that feel old: If you’re looking for a possible summary of Jewish life, that’s one.

A federal judge Friday blocked an effort to keep U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn off North Carolina ballot this year, saying the state’s election board can’t proceed with an inquiry that would have delved his role leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Chief District Court Judge Richard Myers said he couldn’t allow the challenge, filed by attorneys looking to label the first-term Republican as an insurrectionist who should be legally barred from the ballot, to move forward. The courts, Myers said, must protect the soapbox, the ballot box and the jury box.

“When those fail, that’s when people proceed to the ammunition box,” said Myers, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump.