Using ocean currents to power the world, although somewhat attractive,
violates laws of physics. To capture energy from the ocean, a mechanism, which
introduces resistance to currents and therefore will slow them, must be placed
in the ocean. It's a temporary solution.
Using solar would be a better and longer-lasting solution. Homes have
roofs which are ready-made platforms for solar collectors which now can be
produced in cost-effective sheets of say 1 m x 5 m or larger. And therefore,
solar energy collection can be distributed.
Stan Doore
----- Original Message -----
From: Pat Naughtin
To: U.S. Metric Association
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; UKMA Metric Association ; USMA Metric Association
Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2008 10:43 PM
Subject: [USMA:42093] Problems with power
Dear Editor,
Many thanks for your article, 'Ocean currents can power the world, say
scientists' By Jasper Copping (Last Updated: 2:39PM GMT 29 Nov 2008). I really
enjoyed learning about this new concept in the extraction of energy from the
sea to provide electrical energy.
However, I did have problems reading your article at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html
because of your choice of words.
In your headline, 'Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists', I had
a problem with your intention, as I simply didn't know what you meant by the
word, power, in that context.
After a pause, I went on to read, 'A revolutionary device that can harness
energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power
for the entire world, scientists claim'.
This time your intention seemed clearer; they propose to 'harness energy' to
'provide … power'. This time my problem was that you were mistakenly using the
word, power, when you clearly intended to refer to energy.
Again I had to pause, but not for too long, as this is a common error for
many writers and sub-editors in many of the world's news sources. I then
reviewed your use of the word, power, on each of the 12 times that you used it
in this article (and that caused me to pause each time while I considered what
your meaning might be).
Specifically, taking the occurrences of power in your article — you seem to
mean:
1 'can power the world' — I have no idea what you mean, it could mean 'to
provide all the energy needed in the world' but I couldn't know this until I
got to the next paragraph.
2 'enough power for' — 'enough energy for'.
3 'use water power' — 'use water energy'.
4 'the amount of power produced' — 'the amount of energy produced'.
5 'enough power for' — 'enough energy for'.
6 'could power an anchored ship' — 'could provide enough energy for an
anchored ship'.
7 'generating power in this way' — 'converting energy in this way'.
8 'solar power' — 'solar energy'.
9 'wave power' — 'wave energy'.
10 'Their muscle power' — 'Chemical energy from their muscles alone'.
Your score so far — 0 out of 10.
As 11 and 12 are quotes from a scientist who should know how to use the
words, energy and power, correctly, the responsibility for their misuse cannot
be laid at the door of your reporter and your sub-editors. However, this does
not make his usage correct either. It is a sad thought but it may be that the
scientist, knowing that you usually misuse the words, energy and power, might
have been dumbing down his use of these words for your benefit.
11 'harness the powerful and destructive force' — 'harness the destructive
force'.
12 'so you produce a lot of power' — 'so you produce a lot of energy'.
I next searched for your use of the word, power, in other Telegraph articles.
It seems to me that there are two serious defects in your use of the word,
power. Power is regularly misused, and it is also overused. Both misuse and
overuse mean that the many different meanings of power often become hopelessly
muddled.
Misuse
Misuse of the word, power, is the more serious problem as it a major cause of
confusion. You sometimes use energy when you are writing about power but, far
more often, you use power when you mean energy.
Power is so often misused from both sides of debates about global warming,
the greenhouse effect, peak energy, and peak oil, that there is a danger of
making any discussion about these important issues almost meaningless. This
paragraph uses common newspaper and internet examples.
As Minister, he felt he had real control over power because he could supply
or deny power to the community by increasing power bills or ordering power
rationing in emergencies. He could also manage power stations from when they
start to produce power, to maintaining power supplies during their lives of
power production, until the end of their power producing life. This applied to
all forms of power such as: chemical power, electrical power, nuclear power,
solar power, and wind power.
Here, the word, power, is used as though it is synonymous with energy. It is
not. All technical people such as engineers have known since they were in
senior high school science classes that energy (measured in joules) is defined
as the ability to do work and that that power (measured in watts) is the rate
at which you do work or use energy; and that these are quite different
concepts. Using these definitions, the above paragraph should read:
As Minister, he felt he had real control over energy because he could supply
or deny energy to the community by increasing energy bills or ordering energy
rationing in emergencies. He could also manage energy conversion stations from
when they start to produce energy, to maintaining energy supplies during their
lives of energy production, until the end of their energy producing life. This
applied to all forms of energy such as: chemical energy, electrical energy,
nuclear energy, solar energy, and wind energy.
Overuse
Overuse means that I have to stop each time I see the word, power, long
enough to decipher your current meaning. This is necessary because the word,
power, in addition to its scientific definition, has about a dozen other
different dictionary descriptions, all with their associated connotations. For
example, I need to pause when you use the word, power, in the sense of (say)
'political power' that has nice alliteration but lacks a definite meaning, or
'electrical power' that has a quite specific scientific definition, which you
might not intend. Here is another paragraph that uses power in some of these
non-technical senses:
The Minister was a large powerful man, who exuded physical power doing his
power walk along the corridors of power. He got his power position when his
party came to power at the last election, and as the only engineer in the party
in power, the powerful leadership team appointed him Minister.
This time, you could purge power altogether to improve readability by writing:
The Minister was a large man, whose fitness was obvious as he vigorously
walked around Parliament House. He became Minister when, after his party won
the last election, he was appointed to his present position by the leadership
team.
On another issue, thank you for the explanation of the size of a knot in your
second paragraph. Unfortunately, the word, mile, is meaningless to me as we,
in Australia, have not used miles since the 1970s so I can have no sense of
what you mean. For me to visualise a knot it would have been better to convert
knots to metres per second as I can readily visualise water flowing past me at
about half a metre per second (as a rule of thumb, I halve knots to get metres
per second). If you chose metres per second (m/s) your sentence would then read:
The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less
than one knot - half a metre per second - meaning it could operate on most
waterways and sea beds around the globe.
Or you could have worked directly in metres per second, and not used the
word, knot, at all.
The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of half a
metre per second meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around
the globe.
Later references to knots would then become:
6 knots = 3 m/s; 3 knots = 1.5 m/s; 2 knots = 1 m/s
By the way, when you wrote 'acreage', I suppose that you meant 'area' and you
got the concept of the physical reality of area confused with an old English,
pre-metric unit for measuring land.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped
thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric
system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each
year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides
services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for
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in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA,
NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See
http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat
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