Jacinda and Covid 19

 Up to now, I tried to be calm, diplomatic and reasoned when talking to anti-vaxer.  I have three such folks in my own extended family.  But now that some nut cases are insulting Jacinda and comparing her to Hitler, that is it.  I am over it.  Let's go back to the beginning of the spread of Covid.

 

At the same time that all over the world, Covid was spreading like a grass fire, the measures that Jacinda took, knocked Covid on the head every time it managed to get into our country.  Yes, tourist industries suffered.  Tourism suffered everywhere in the world.  To stop Covid we had to stop people with Covid entering the country.  As a result, the rest of us here in New Zealand lived a pretty well normal life with the occasional lock down.  Our situation was so so much better than it was in the rest of the world. 

 

And what about crediting Jacinda for this success.  You could argue that it was a combined effort of her and her government and some medical experts.   Very true.  What was different from almost every other government in the world is that the Kiwi government listened to the experts and acted accordingly.  

 

Bisides if it had gone badly, we would have blamed Jacinda for the failure.  So fair is fair.  Her government under her leadership stopped Covid in its tracks.  Without any reluctance what so ever, we can credit Jacinda for our amazing success. 

 

And look at our economy.  The governments of other countries favored business over people.  As a result the level of Covid increases and trashed their businesses anyway.  Here Jacinda looked after our people first and since Covid was so rare, our industry went from strength to strength.  Talk about other governments having the opposite effect to what was intended.

 

Business that suffered and their workers were given a very good level of financial support.

 

Jacinda was criticized for not getting vaccines into New Zealand early enough.  Let's have a look at this.  The mRNA technology was new. People had been doing research on this for many years but to bring it to a state where it could be used in medicine would have taken at least a decade under normal procedures.  The situation was desperate so they rushed the procedures through.  Jacinda delayed the uptake of the vaccine until other countries had given millions of doses and it was clear that it was safe.  Soon after that the vaccine was shown to be effective.  Only then did we started to get vaccinated in New Zealand.

 

Sorry world.  We used you as our guinea pigs and it worked.  You have to understand that Jacinda's first priority is the safety and well being of the people of Aotearoa.

 

As for this comparison of Jacinda with Hitler, what utter nonsense.  It shows the complete stupidity, hysteria, illogicality, ignorance and petty meanness, and jealousy of these idiots.  Jacinda  put in regulations to keep us safe and they have worked.  In fact we are in better shape that almost any other country in the world.  Hitler put in regulations to trap Jews, Gypsies and other populations he considered that didn't fit into the German ideal of racial purity and sent them to be gassed in industrialized gas chambers.  Get a life, you morons. 

 

Over time, the measures that the world finally took with shut downs, isolation, vaccination and contact tracing, has selected for viruses that spread faster but were less deadly.  The selfish anti-vaccers, who refused to join the common effort to keep our vulnerable people safe, will now benefit from the efforts of the rest of us.  Now, if an anti-vaccer catches Omicron, they are far less likely to die than if they had caught Delta or one of the other varieties of Covid.  

 

And one last thought.  I can understand how people could go down the rabbit hole and not wanted to get vaccinated.  The mis-information is extremely pervasive on the internet and some of it is very persuasive. Someone who is scientifically challenged would have very little appreciation of the scientific process and how effective it is.  But not to wear a mask???  

Surly the most scientifically challenged amongst us understand the concept.  Surly anyone that hasn't lived under a rock for all his life knows that some diseases are transmitted through the air.  Generally the virus or germ attaches itself to wee droplets that a person expels from his or her mouth when talking, coughing, sneezing, singing or yelling (in increasing order of aerosol production).  These droplets are inhaled by anyone in the vicinity.  For heaven sake, wearing a mask will reduce your chance of catching or spreading the common cold and any other air-born disease, never mind Covid.  Are you anti-maskers so angry that you are willing to catch Covid or are you just plain stupid.

 

If anti-vaxers haven't caught Covid yet, they may be OK now.  Omicron is less deadly than previous varieties.  Some of you will die but not as many as if you caught one of the previous varieties of Covid.  Mean time those of us who are double vacced and boosted will likely only have mild symptoms if we catch Covid.

 

Lastly, look at the Stats, people.  Let's say for the sake of the argument that the vaccine is ineffective.  Here in New Zealand we have about a 90% vaccination rate.  So, if the vaccine is not effective, people in the general hospital with Covid or in ICU with Covid should be in a ration of 9:1.  In other words for every unvaccinated person there should be 9 vaccinated people.  Say on some day, the ratio was 50:50.  You would probably say that the vaccine was ineffective since half are vaccinated and half are not.  I hope I don't have to explain further how wrong you would be.

New Zealand History

It is 2021 and there is a move in New Zealand to teach our history in our schools.  This move can only be applauded.  The teaching of the history of a country is at least as important as the hard sciences and in some ways, even more important.

 

However, the commentary I have heard so far suggests that this may become a pakeha* bashing exercise.  True the people of European origin have much to answer for in New Zealand, and for that matter all over the world and I will leave the exposure of European abuses to those that have been disadvantaged by European actions.  Here, for balance, I would like to present a few salient facts that should also be taught, so that this doesn't turn into a Pakeha - bad, Maori -good, exercise.  If you want to teach history then actually teach history.

*People of European ancestry or even people of non Pacific heritage. 

 

 Bear with me for a moment.

For the past 2.75million years, the world has been in an Ice Age.  Throughout this ice age, there have been many alterations between glacial periods and interglacial periods.  We are in the latest interglacial known as the Holocene and the previous interglacial around 125,000 years ago is known as the Eemian.  This sequence extends back for the whole 2.75 million years with between 30 and 50 separate cycles, depending on how you define this.  Why do I mention this.

 

The fauna of New Zealand, consisting mainly of birds, has survived, evolved and thrived through all of this climate variation right up until the arrival of the 'First People' from the Pacific.  Then much of this rich fauna disappeared in a geological instant.  All over the world this happened, not just in New Zealand and some scientists hypothesize that the extinctions were due to climate change.  Pretty hard to support this argument when the fauna of so many continents managed multiple, extreme climate changes quite nicely, thank you very much, until man arrived.

 

The fauna of the Americas for instance, disappeared around 12,000 years ago, the Fauna of Australia, 50,000 years ago and of New Zealand some 700 years ago.

 

The point is that despite what they maintain, the Maori are no different than all the other people of the world,  They may have come lately to some ecological knowledge, promoted by the disappearance of so many species.  And we Europeans, at least some of us, have come to the same realization - rather at the 11th hour also. However for the Maori to present themselves as the great guardians of nature is to put them on a pedicile that they don't deserve.  If some of them are ecologically aware now, and would never consider killing a native pigeon for food* - great - but  many many people of European origin are also now ecologically aware.

 

One part of honest teaching would deal with the extinction of the mega fauna of New Zealand and many lesser sized species by the first people.

*Recently a Maori chief killed some Kereru (native pigeon) to eat, claiming it was his traditional right.

Then we come to wars.  At the time that Europeans arrived in New Zealand, all of the North Island and a portion of South Island was taken up by Maori tribes with the boarders fluctuating according to which tribe won the latest battle.  It was a constant theme of the time to raid other tribes, take slaves and booty and eat some of the losers. 

 

There is no question that Europeans had superior armament and did displace Maori to gain land for farming.  In many cases they bought the land with muskets and other trade goods, (not always from the owners of the land).  In fact, at the time there were no individual owners of the land and the Maori concept of land ownership was that the tribe owned the land as long as they could hold on to it against other tribes. 

 

The different concepts of land ownership led to many conflicts, as it did in many other parts of the world, as the Maori saw the land that they considered theirs, alienated from them.  This is in no way to exonerate the Europeans and their actions but as I said, I will leave the Maori perspective to the Maoris to present.

 

A chief of the Ngapuhi tribe, Hongi Hika (Hone Heke sp?) was taken to the UK and much feted.  He was given many valuable presents and when he arrived back in Australia on the way to New Zealand, he sold the presents to get money to buy muskets.  Other tribes had been trading for muskets for some time but Honi's level of armament far exceeded what they had.  He used the muskets to range far and wide in New Zealand and conquer other tribes.  The balance had been completely upset and he caused huge destruction and even caused the elimination of some tribes.  This was the attitude of the time.  Might is right and the devil take the hinder-most*.

* As it was amongst the Europeans in Europe.  The were in constant war with each other. 

Incidentally, the Treaty of Waitangi, which is considered the founding document of New Zealand which was between many of the Maori tribes and the British crown, was considered the starting point.  Honi Hike trashed the other tribes of New Zealand before this date so the decimated tribes have no recourse.  Hardly just for a people that claim they are trying for justice. If the Maori and especially the Ngapuhi tribe are truly after justice, then they should compensate tribes that they decimated  before the Treaty of Waitangi and not use the legaeze excuse that everything starts from the Treaty.  In fact, the compensation they give to other tribes should come from their treaty settlement money and land they now consider their own should be given back to these tribes.

It should be mentioned here that, at the time, there were many in the UK that objected to New Zealand becoming a colony despite her huge natural resources.  They felt, quite rightly, that the native population would be exploited as had happened in other colonies of the UK.  The counter argument was that the sailors, whalers, sealers and others were corrupting the Maori and a government was necessary to control this abysmal situation.  The musket wars by Honi were one of the reasons that the British crown decided to sign a treaty with the Maori and make New Zealand a colony.

 

Then we come to the Moriori and what happened to them.

 

The Moriori lived on the Chatam Islands and unlike other Maori tribes, were a peaceful people.  Non violence was 'their thing'.  A group of Maori hitched a ride over to the Chatams on a European sailing ship and slaughtered them. 

This is just a taste.  If you are going to teach history, then teach history.  The European behavior has much to be regretted but so does the Maori behavior.

An open letter to Z energy

 

We were all so proud when you bought out Shell.  We had our own power company instead of being royally screwed by overseas companies.   Our delight was complete when you told us you were going to be an 'Energy' company.  We pictured you gradually shifting to charging the ever increasing electric cars with the roves of your stations covered with solar panels and a large battery at each station, storing excess and even stabilizing the voltage and frequency of the local grid. 

For heaven sake, you have some 250 stations country wide.  With a one mWh battery at each station, you would have had more capacity than even the upgraded Hornsdale.  You would have had a country-wide distributed energy storage capacity.  And it wouldn't have been a financial sacrifice on your part.  These batteries are ridiculously profitable in their own right. Hornsdale paid off the whole $66m investment in her 100mWh battery in three years. 

We pictured you taking a whole range of waste streams and turning them into petroleum products by pyrolysis or one of the other known processes.  All our plastic waste, used rubber tires, used engine oil, tallow, wood and paper, electronic equipment etc. etc. would have been diverted from land fills which are degrading New Zealand.

Now we are back where we started or worse.  You are selling off Z to an Australian company.  Do you realize that Ausi banks take about one billion Kiwi dollars our of this country every 6 months.  Now we will have our major fuel provider doing the same. 

To top it off, you and the other owners of Marsden point are going to shaft our strategic capacity to refine our own petroleum products and make us dependent on overseas suppliers for them.

 

Just another New Zealand success story.  So sad.

The costs of not Pyrolyzing

 Pyrolysis is a method for turning a whole range of waste streams into petroleum products such as cooking gas, gasoline, diesel fuel, airline fuel and all the way up to tars.  It is done by heating the material in question in an enclosed retort up to, typically, 5000C.  In a petroleum refinery, this would be called cracking.  If you heat heavy crude (long chain molecules) up to a high temperature it cracks the long chains and produced more of the more valuable short chain molecules.

It seems only right and logical that a pyrolysis unit/business should be credited with the costs it avoids.  In other words, we must take externalities into account.  Some of the worst abuses of people and the natural world occur because we don't take the true cost of our actions into account.

There are costs of not treating your waste streams by pyrolysis.  Some of them are general to all waste streams.  Some applying to specific wastes.  First the general ones.

General Costs of Not Pyrolyzing

Sending waste to land fill

First, a waste dump charges money per ton for waste that they store.  For specific wastes they often charge more.  Secondly, a waste dump typically fills up a formerly beautiful valley with garbage, removing it from public use and thirdly if not managed very carefully, water leaches out of the waste dump and pollutes the water down steam from the dump

Sending waste overseas

Hard to believe that this is actually a thing.  We used to send our waste plastic to China before they became a tad sensitive to being the garbage disposal country.  It hurt their pride.  Now, at least here in New Zealand, we send it to another country.  I won't say which one.  I don't want to hurt their feelings.  They don't dispose of this plastic in an acceptable way (pyrolysis for instance) and it blows into their streams, lakes and rivers and is carried to the ocean.  I don't think I have to detail the damage that plastic does in the ocean.  It has been covered again and again in article after article.

Costs for Specific Waste Streams

Used Tires

Leave a tire outside in any orientation you like.  After the first rain look inside.  No matter which way you oriented the tire, there is now a little pool of water inside.  As we all know, the weather is warming and various organisms are moving poleward.  One such class of organism are the mosquitoes.  A particularly noxious group are the Culex mosquitoes and A aegypti   They transmit a particularly noxious range of diseases.  Aegypti can breed in an upturned bottle cap. A massive  pile of tires is a huge mosquito breeding farm.

Of course then there is a fire danger with some really toxic smoke being produced and a leaching danger with some chemicals being leached by rain into the ground. 

Wood 

Starting at lumber mills, they produce great quantities of off cuts with no value and saw dust.  The saw dust has some value to horticulture and the off cuts can be sold as fire wood.  However, if you pyrolyze this waste, you produce completely green petroleum products and charcoal.  The charcoal can be incorporated into agricultural soils where it serves the same function as humus and last for a very long time, sequestering carbon in the process.  This lowers the financial obligation of a country under the Koyota protocol. 

 

If you build quality buildings from engineered wood, you, of course, sequester even more carbon for significant periods.

Treated wood is another problem all together.  Tannelized wood has been pressure treated with a mix of Chrome Copper and Arsenic salts.  There are many off cuts during the building process and over time, buildings will be demolished and this wood burnt.  The ash is toxic and you don't want it incorporated into your soils or sent to a land fill.  If pyrolyzed, the ash can be sent to a refinery and the metals recovered and kept out of the environment.  Otherwise, over time we are polluting our soils.

Electronic Equipment 

Electronic equipment is mostly plastic these days.  In addition it contains a wide variety of valuable metals.  All can be recovered by pyrolyzing the equipment and sending the ash to a refinery

Plastic  

When plastic is burnt in a normal 'bonfire', it releases dioxides.  The formula is C₆H₃O₂.  It is a liquid at room temperature and is used in transformers to suppress sparking.  Heated in a properly designed pyrolysis unit, dioxides are broken down into harmless compounds.  If left in nature, they accumulate in the fat and concentrate as they go up the food chain.  They are carcinogenic.  Eliminating dioxides from the environment reduced health costs. 

Heat Pipes

Heat pipes are amazing devices.  A physicist or a mathematician would call them elegant.  An elegant solution to a problem in physics or math is one that is simpler,  than the previous best solution usually because it needs less steps than any previous solution.  Heat pipes definitely are in this category.  In an engineering sense they are elegant.

Picture this.  You have a heat source  down low, say at ground level, and you want to transfer this heat to somewhere up high.  Heat pipes can transfer heat downward but are far better than transferring heat upward.  You may want to do this because you want the heat in the higher location, say in a water tank, or you may want to do it because you want to get rid of the heat in the lower location, say from an engine or bank of batteries.  Let's take the very simplest example.

Say you have a trough-form parabolic mirror that tracks the sun, at ground level.  The trough pivots around a simple galvanized black-painted pipe that is located at its focal line.  Above the mirror the pipe continues up into a water tank.  The pipe can twist and turn anyway you want it but it always slopes upward as you go toward the water tank.  

Once the pipe is formed, you seal off the bottom by screwing on the cap and soldering, brazing or epoxying it shut.  It must be air tight.  You put in the appropriate* amount of water, filling it from the top.  You then boil the water by heating the bottom of the pipe until the steam has driven out all the air from the pipe.  You seal the top of the pipe air tight.

*more about this below

Just a tad of physics here before we go on.  The boiling point of water depends on the pressure under which the water is held.  You are probably familiar with pressure cookers.  Typically they hold pressure up to one extra atmosphere (14.7psi) for a total of 29.4psi.  The pressure relief valve allows pressure above this level to escape so you don't end up with a bomb in your kitchen.  At this pressure, water boils at  124.5⁰C.  So your food is heated to above the usual 100⁰C that you achieve if you boil or steam it.  That is why it cooks faster.

Conversely, if you lower the pressure, water boils at a lower temperature.  In fact, if you put some water into a vacuum resistant glass flask and draw a vacuum on it, you will see the water boil and if your vacuum is sufficient, the drawing away of latent heat (540cal per gram evaporated), will cause the remaining water to freeze.

You probably see where this is going.  As you heat the bottom of the pipe, water will boil.  With no air to retard the molecules of water vapor, they flash up to the top of the pipe virtually instantly, (or to the sides of the pipe if you haven't lagged <insulated>) it.  At the top where the pipe is in contact with the water in your water cylinder, the water will condense, giving up its latent heat.  The water will then run down the pipe to be heated again and evaporated.  

Since there is no air in the pipe to provide pressure boiling will occur at very low temperatures and in fact will occur as long as the bottom of the pipe is hotter than the top.  The pressure in the pipe is controlled by the temperature of the top of the pipe.  In our case, the temperature of the water in the hot water cylinder.

If your water cylinder is already at 100⁰C, there will be one atmosphere of pressure in the pipe.  Here is where we get to safety.

If you completely filled, or nearly completely filled the pipe with your working fluid (it doesn't have to be water)*, by the time that you had turned all the fluid into vapor, the pressure would be tremendous and the pipe would likely burst.  The quantity of water you put in the pipe also controls the maximum pressure that you will have in the heat pipe.  It will be the pressure achieved when all the fluid is vapor.  

* Water is a useful working fluid because of it's very high latent heat of evaporation.

And in fact you don't want the whole pipe filled with fluid. You want the pipe above your heat source empty.  This will allow a virtual instantaneous transfer of the latent-heat-carrying-vapor to the heat sink where it will condense and trickle back down the heat pipe.

As I mentioned, heat pipes can be used either to take heat from a source to where you want it or to remove heat from somewhere you don't want it to a heat sink.