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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe
The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe

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The Skeptics Guide #921 - Mar 04 2023 (Ad Free)

Guest Rogue: F Perry Wilson; Quickie with Bob: Ancient Steel; News Items: Mining Hydrogen, ChatGPT Update, Erythritol and Heart Disease, Growing Brain Electrodes, Woodland Elves; Who's That Noisy; Science or Fiction

The Skeptics Guide #921 - Mar 04 2023 (Ad Free)

Comments

I think future AI and chatbots need to be evaluated in much the same way as a research study, where the methods of its development and learning are taken into consideration for how reliable or good-faith its output is

Lexy

The real value of hydrogen is large scale utility storage. Excess energy can be used to split hydrogen from water. (Supercapacitors and batteries can smooth out fluctuations.) store it in large containers near the point of use, then it can run hydrogen gas turbines, or mix with at least 25% methane and you can run natural gas turbines. You can always do this where pumped storage (PWS) is unavailable - which is a lot of places, Florida for example. Basically, it works like this. Supercapacitors handle the shortest fluctuations of supply and demand, after that you have batteries, after that you have your long term storage. PWS is the best for this, but you must have the right available terrain. Hydrogen gas turbines can go anywhere. Round trip efficiency of hydrogen gas turbines is only 60%, so you would need to produce more solar electricity than if you had PWS everywhere, but the low cost of production more than makes up for it, making the total cost still cheaper than what we have now. And, the same technology will easily accommodate "gold hydrogen", if we can get it.

Ted Apelt

I love the way medicine is explained by your guest as scientists hedging their bets.

Ted Apelt

I wondered what the relevance of fairy circles in the diagram was, then I got to the story about elves and it all clicked.

Richard Moore


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