Technology – Page 2 – OfficiallyScrewed.com

Smitherman, Master Of The Boondoggle, Strikes Again

October 19, 2009Mulder

The man who was the Ontario Health Minister when the eHealth boondoggle started was recently was in my neck of the woods to announce another boondoggle.

George Smitherman was in West Carleton to announce the opening of a massive solar farm this past week.

So where’s the boondoggle you ask? Just read this to find out where we are getting OfficiallyScrewed by Smitherman (and McGuinty).

The Arnprior project, which has been undertaken by EDF EN Canada, the Canadian arm of a French renewable-energy company, EDF-Energies-Nouvelles, has been the beneficiary of about $100 million in funding from Ontario taxpayers. It is supposed to be operational in December and feed into the provincial power grid. The site, which the company has leased for 20 years, is expected to generate about 20 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to provide for the peak electrical demands of about 7,000 households.

Critics have questioned whether Ontarians are getting their money’s worth. They point out the province is subsidizing solar companies like EDF EN to the tune of about 42 cents a kilowatt-hour for their power, when conventional electricity sources such as coal cost consumers about five to six cents per kilowatt hour..

$100 Million in funding to a French company for the solar farm set up…BOONDOGGLE.

Subsidizing them 42 cents per kilowatt-hour when coal power costs 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour…BOONDOGGLE.

But the insult to injury here is the fact that this solar farm is opening in December. Correct me if I am wrong but we have two things that make solar energy very tough to produce in December. 1) it’s Dark from 430pm through to 8am and 2) It snows in the Ottawa valley … ALOT. Hmmm….BOONDOGGLE.

Now let’s do some math. The farm is going to produce 20 Megawatt-hours of power which is 20,000 kilowatt-hours. And 46 cents x 20,000 is $9200 per hour. In Ottawa we get approximately 4000 hours of daylight a year which means the subsidy is going to be about $3.7 Million per year. Over 20 years, that’s another $74 Million dollars. Added to the $100 Million to build the farm, that’s enough money to produce 2.9 gigawatts of power.

For those who remember, that’s enough for Marty McFly to travel back in time twice.

Too bad Ontario voters can’t go back and time.

A LA CARTE!! A LA CARTE!! A LA CARTE!!

August 12, 2009Mulder

Across the nation our local TV networks have been waging a war against the cable carriers, and Rogers in particular. The battle has basically been over Rogers taking the free air signals of local TV stations and broadcasting them over cable without compensating the local stations.

Well it looks like Rogers is going to up their rates by 1.5% in an effort to compensate for additional costs of carrying these free stations and people are EM AY DEE … MAD!

I blogged about our lack of priorities a few weeks ago but the bottom line is that EVERYONE should be raising their dander up and demanding A La Carte station ordering. i.e. There should be a base cost (say $10 or $15 a month) for delivery of service and then we should be able to order whatever channels we want. Why should an anglophone Canadian pay for 3 or 4 French stations to be piped directly into his home? Why should a good God fearing Christian need to pay for stations that promote Muslim or Jewish religious beliefs? Why should a piano lesson taking uber geek be forced to pay for not one, not two, but three sports stations that he/she will never watch? It simply does not make sense.

The only thing that DOES make sense is A La Carte station ordering. If I had to pay $2 or so per station, I would likely have a $40 to $50 a month cable bill.

Demand A La Carte!

Blackberry Alert – Nobex Picks Up CFRA

July 20, 2009Mulder

For those conservative “Crackberry” addicts out there like me, I thought I should point out that Nobex Radio Companion has added Ottawa’s 580 CFRA to its’ list of stations a mere three months after I suggested they add the station.

For those who do not know, Nobex is a streaming radio player for your Blackberry and is available in the new “App World” or you can download it from the Nobex website. It is a fantastic way to get radio wherever you can take your cell phone.

CFRA is the radio station that many feel is the reason Eastern Ontario has elected so many Conservative MPs. With voices like Lowell Green, Steve Madely, Rob Snow, Nick Vandergragt, and John Counsell, I highly suggest people give it a listen either online at cfra.com or via Nobex on their Blackberry.

Tesla Comes To Canada

March 3, 2009Mulder

March 3rd, 2009 is a very special day to me as it was this day that Tesla Motors announced their plans to enter Canada.

As many of you who read my blog know…

a) In December 2006, I asked Santa for a Tesla Roadster. You can read about it by clicking Here.

b) In January 2007, I commented about a letter I wrote the Prime Minister and (then) Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier, about providing some funding to open a Tesla Auto Plant in Canada. I still wonder if the money earmarked for the “greening” of the auto industry were a response to the letter I wrote. You can read a bit about my letter by clicking here.

c) In February 2007, I offered my own version of the carbon offset program by allowing people to donate to my “Get Mulder A Tesla” fund. i.e. you can offset your carbon credits by donating to a program that would get me out of my big Honda pickup truck and into an “all electric” Tesla Roadster. You can still do this or read the story by clicking here.

Needless to say, I LOVE this car so when I received the email below, I immediately went and asked my wife for permission to drop $60,000 US on the downpayment. And now I am writing this blog post from a hotel after she booted me out of the house. Well okay, that last part isn’t true, but I have a feeling I won’t be getting my Tesla anytime soon. I guess I’ll just have to dream and drool over the photos on their website at www.teslamotors.com

Letter from Tesla Motors.

I’m excited to announce that Tesla Motors will begin taking orders today from customers in Canada, and we’ll begin delivering Canadian cars later this year. This is great news for Canada’s many car enthusiasts, including scores of Tesla fans who have written passionate e-mails over the years about why Tesla should go north. We listened to you – and we look forward to delivering your cars starting in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Canada is uniquely positioned to become a premier showcase for Tesla, still the only production automaker selling highway-capable electric vehicles in North America. Canada is one of two countries in the world (the other is Norway) where the majority of electricity comes from renewable resources, including run-of-river small hydro, wind, biomass, ocean, geothermal and solar energy.

An EV recharged from the current Canadian grid, on average, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 85 percent compared to an equivalent gasoline-powered vehicle. In hydro-dominant British Columbia, Quebec and Manitoba, the reduction would be an impressive 98 percent.

We are already busy considering retail opportunities in this vast country. In the short term, we are confident that we can serve a large percentage of our customers through retail stores in Seattle and New York, which we plan to open in the first half of this year. Eventually, we envision Tesla-owned retail and service centers in Ontario, British Columbia and possibly Quebec.

The base price for Roadsters in Canada will be set closer to the start of deliveries in the fourth quarter, and pricing will reflect exchange rates at that time. The CA$60,000 reservation fee is refundable, and the remainder of the balance is due upon the start of production, a few months prior to delivery. In the United States, the base price is $109,000.

These Roadsters will comply with all Canadian safety regulations for mass-produced, highway-capable vehicles. As they have for Americans and Europeans, we’re certain Roadsters will quickly become the automobile of choice for Canadians who refuse to compromise between performance and efficiency. You can order your Roadster today online, or call us directly at +1-650-413-6300. We look forward to hearing from you!

Doreen Allen
Director of Sales Operations

Salt Water To Replace Gas

January 16, 2008Mulder

A must see video.

If this technology is real and viable for running cars then we have something that means we can run our big SUVs and help keep Al Gore at bay on the whole “oceans are rising” crock.

Please share this with anyone you know.

Click the video above once to view. If it does not work, try clicking the link below once.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JiKa4nOkHLw

My Two Cents On Tasering

November 23, 2007Mulder

I’m not an expert on the conditions under which a Taser should be used. Nor am I a doctor to be able to tell you under what medical conditions Tasering could be dangerous.

But I am electronic engineering technologist. At least my BSc. EET degree telles me so.

And the past week I have heard numerous phone callers to Radio or TV talk shows talk about the voltage that kills people. I have probably heard a couple of TV/Radio Hosts repeat the phrase that it is not the amperage that kills you, but the voltage.

This is grossly inaccurate. It is the current that kills you. And actually the numbers that were given to me in school was that 500 milliAmps to 1 Amp is enough to fry you. Yet after investigating Taser.com I discovered that the current Tasers put out is in the neighbourhood of 2.1 milliAmps. You get more current from sticking your tongue between the two terminals of a 9V battery.

For clarification, Voltage does not kill directly at all. What it does is cause your muscles to contract. There are reports that Voltage can throw a man across a room. This is actually Voltage causing muscles to contract enough to have this man throw himself across the room.

The other lesson we learned is that you never let electricity cross your heart. i.e. you never touch something electronic with one hand while the other one is grounded. This is why electricians almost always have one hand in their pocket which means any jolt would travel down the side of their body to the ground through their legs and not cross the chest.

In light of all the recent Taser talk, I will wait for investigations/inquiries to take their course but my guess is that Tasers need to be fired away from the chest of a person to minimize the chances of the voltage contracting a heart muscle to the point it gives out.

On a similar vein, In this regard, I must point out that there was an episode of Mythbusters which they created a shocking statue and grabbed the two terminals with their hands. I was simply astounded that the show would let it’s hosts get shocked this way. Luckily no one was hurt or killed.

Australia Moves To Fluorescents

February 21, 2007Mulder

Little girls across Australia are crying because they will no longer be able to cook those tasty tiny cakes in their EZ Bake ovens.

In an effort to reduce GHGs the government has decided to phase out incandescent bulbs over the next three years.

Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull this morning announced standard incandescent light bulbs would be phased out within three years in a bid to reduce energy consumption.

“We are introducing new energy efficiency standards and these old lights simply won’t comply, they will be phased out and basically over a period of time they will no longer be for sale,” Mr Turnbull said.

Compact fluorescent or low-wattage bulbs cost about $5 more, but are more energy-efficient and save an average of $30 per year.

“They’ll be a bit dearer to start off with but over time they’ll be less expensive and they’ll last four to 10 times longer,” said Mr Howard.

This type of plan makes sense to me because the ban will be on selling the bulbs, as opposed to using them, as there will always be a few who want to use up their old bulbs even though the math works out that you are better off financially if you switch over right away.

But to me the big reason a move like this is good is because it drives volume way up on a product and when that happens, economies of scale kick in. This means that as more nations move towards a 100% fluorescent market, the cost of the bulbs will drop which will make it easier for households with tighter budgets to take part. When I went to switch most of my bulbs over three or four years ago, the cost of the fluorescents was not $5 more but 5 times more.

Technically, this move will produce a bit less heat in the winters which will put more strain on furnaces, but there is a doubly good benefit in the summers when the Air Conditioners will need to operate a bit less to cool off the added heat and the power savings of these bulbs will reduce the strain on power grids that tend to hit capacity on the hottest days due to Air Conditioner usage. It may seem paltry at a one home level, but when you look at 5 million homes or 10 million homes, this idea has it’s merits.

Suzuki Math Indicates 4 x 0.4 = 2 : No Wonder EnviroNazis Are Wrong

February 11, 2007Mulder

Today’s Ottawa Sun has a Q and A session with David Suzuki about his carbon spewing bus tour across Canada and this is one of the questions.

Q: What role should Canada play on the international scene?

A: Canada produces 2% of C02 emissions, but represents just 0.4% of the world’s population.

So we produce four times more pollution per capita than the global average, and because of that, we have an obligation.

My 10 year old does better math, Mr. Suzuki.

But this is besides the point when we really think about it. Yes, Canadians may create five times the man made emissions of CO2 compared to our percentage of the population. But let’s look at some comparative information to assess the “obligation” part of his comment.

Canada has 10% of the world’s forests (StatsCan numbers) and as we know the 402 million hectares of woodlands we have eat up a massive amount of the earth’s carbon dioxide to produce the wood that becomes the tree trunk.

Newly planted trees can eat up to 15 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year, so for my calculations I am going to say 10 tonnes to be conservative (which we all know I am).

This means that Canadian forests alone are pulling 4 GigaTonnes of CO2 out of the air each year. Yet our CO2 emissions are only about 60 MegaTonnes/year. Or let’s be less specific and say that Canadians are only producing 640 Megatonnes of GHGs/year (as per Greg Weston’s column that I blogged about here.)

This means that our nation is sinking approximately 66 times the CO2 that we produce and sinking about 6 times the GHG’s that we produce by CO2 equivalency.

I can hear the environmentalistas screaming now…..”But wait, you are only considering man made green house gases (and CO2)!!”

Ah yes. Man made. And this brings us back to the crux of the debate that keeps getting overlooked by these ecoterrorists. Where ARE all these other Green House Gases coming from??

And thus, we find ourselves back to water vapour. That elusive substance escaping from the earth’s oceans in massive amounts. That substance that makes up 95% to 97% of the GHGs on the planet.

If only we had enough Saran Wrap to cover the Pacific…

IPCC Debunked

February 7, 2007Mulder

Last night, on CFRA, John Counsel took it upon himself to invite paleo-climatologist Dr. Tim Patterson and Tom Harris from the National Resources Stewardship Project onto the show to discuss global warming. It was one of the most entertaining and informative assessments of Climate Change. It is not Al Gore spewing myths, it is true science at it’s best. I encourage everyone to listen to these audio files.

(Note, I managed to get my call in as the first caller (Steve) on part III discussing the increased plant life due to higher co2 concentration and temperature rise. Pardon me sounding like I am slurring speech, I called from my cell phone and was driving at the time.)

CFRA Call In Show On Climate Change Part I
CFRA Call In Show On Climate Change Part II
CFRA Call In Show On Climate Change Part III
CFRA Call In Show On Climate Change Part IV
CFRA Call In Show On Climate Change Part V
CFRA Call In Show On Climate Change Part VI
CFRA Call In Show On Climate Change Part VII
CFRA Call In Show On Climate Change Part VIII

Now for the real info. The IPCC report which claims to have input form hundreds, if not thousands, of experts and scientists was only written by 30 people and that this policy maker’s report has been written to coincide with the beliefs of the group and not necessarily directly due to scientific information. Then they come out and say they will release the full report in several months and that it will be changed to reflect the information that this preliminary policy maker’s report says.

This is called “Ass Backwards Science” or ABS for short. You can read a great commentary on it by David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen (H/T to Dudley DoRight, a commenter for this)

Listen to Dr. Patterson and Tom Harris. For those interested, Tom Harris is the one who took the ad hominem attacks galore on the John Duffy climateliberal website. Tom, as I have pointed out has a Masters of Engineering in Thermofluids. He also had a great article published on climate change.

I guarantee you will come out far smarter for having listened and read info by these two men.