Elucidations

By Seth Masia
SOLAR TODAY deputy editor

I wrote a snarky note last month tasking the folks at The New York Review of Books and St. Martin's Press with sins of energy illiteracy, and copied them. In response we got a blast of countersnark from Joe Rinaldi, veteran publicist at St. Martin's Press. Here's his note, in full:

You've recently criticized former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in relation to his new book, LIGHTS OUT! referencing some point about global warming.
You say "I have not read the book yet." What? What "journalist" admits they haven't read something before criticizing it or any aspect of the entity, in this case the former Secretary's book or press materials which apparently have you baffled, and likely you didn't "read" that either?
A rather ringing indictment of this blog site, sadly for you all...

I wrote back as follows, and it will serve as our review of Lights Out!:

Joe, if you'll reread the blog you'll see I critiqued you, not Spencer Abraham. Your publicity material used the term "carbon monoxide" in place of carbon dioxide.

The book arrived here this week (publication date was Tuesday) and I've now been through it. I see that the book itself doesn't make the same mistake your PR writer made. The corresponding sentence in the book has been corrected for syntax and actually makes sense.

It's not a bad book. The core argument isn't loopy. Abraham calls for an electric grid based on 30% nuclear, 30% renewables (including hydro) and efficiency, and 30% natural gas and coal with sequestration, with the government bearing half the expense of conversion. I agree with a lot of that. I have a serious argument with the sequestration part because oil geologists have shown that underground sequestration of CO2 is impossible (see http://twodoctors.org/manual/economides.pdf). And because Abraham doesn't adequately address the transportation sector, a big piece of the energy dependence picture is missing.

I'm still convinced that Abraham has a shaky grasp of climate science. Just one example: he claims that no one has proven a connection between CO2 concentration and atmospheric warming. But that connection was proven by controlled laboratory experiments 150 years ago, by the physicist John Tyndall. You could look it up.

Solar Impulse performance

On another subject entirely: Yesterday I wrote about Solar Impulse and its impressive 26-hour flight. Later I did some math to figure out the plane's lift-drag ratio (L/D to pilots). This amounts to the altitude lost for each unit of forward motion, with the engine off. A typical modern 15-meter competition sailplane has an L/D around 45 -- that is, it goes 45 feet forward for each foot of descent, in still air. One of the best sailplanes in the world, the Schleicher ASW27, claims an L/D of 48.

Solar Impulse is a motorglider. A very efficient production motorglider has an L/D of about 40. Without sun on its wings, Solar Impulse descended 23,500 feet over about nine hours of darkness. At 23 knots average speed, that calculates to an descent gradient of 52.8:1 at a low power setting. Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer, the jet-powered Burt Rutan-designed plane piloted by Steve Fossett to a couple of nonstop unrefueled round-the-world records in 2005 and 2006, had an L/D around 37. The Solar Impulse website doesn't list L/D, but I'll guess it's 42.

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