Worst of all are the bean-counting bureaucrats who don't provide enough buses with enough seats for the needs of the people.

The needs of the bureaucrats outweigh the needs of the many --Spock.

Good question, and I will answer. Terrorists are (fortunately) rare, but idiots are exceedingly common. That includes the bean-counters who ordered the buses to set the stage for the bully idiot and of course the bully idiot who drove me to drive. Idiots incluse rick idiots like Steve Fossett who with his money bought an "experimental" plane to joyride around the world AND purposely overshoot just to get in the world record book. I get one consolation: Steve Fossett while "driving" over India encountered heavy turbulence, so he had a chance to expierence what it's like to ride a PACE Bus. Just like me, as he shook in his "drivers seat" like I would in an ordinary seat.

Fun note. I occasionally do Flight Simulator and always had some interest in aviation, though for non-noble reasons. Due to this interest, I often mix aviation and automotive stuff together. (like a "load of fuel" and "tank of gas") I do see a terror danger in DISGRUNTLED PILOTS becuse they are well-trained (and expierenced) who could, in theory, pop a copilot then put the flaps back up as the plane rolls to barely take off to hit the airline headquarters building a la 9/11. This would take only seconds and be unstoppable and only take a patient pilot to fly out of the wrong airport on the wrong runway. (only obvious to a flight sim player)

Since idiots are way more common than terrorists, this is a bigger hazard all around. We can see idiots as we drive. The "disgruntled pilot" hazard has precedent with an EgyptAir pilot and of course the disgruntled postal workers, and suicide gunmen unconnected with any terrorist group. Idiots become "independant operatives".

Tom was a little optimistic, a 25% longer blade also will have to be thicker, the bearings stronger the tower wider and so on. But it is still a win so his argument is basically ok.

But there are three strong reasons both for giant wind turbines and giant nuclear powerplants.

Some functions are easier to run at a high efficiency in larger sizes, turbines and generators are good examples.

Some functions are needed regardless of size. The same sensors can control both a small and a large wind turbine but they cost less per kWh for a large one. Both a small and a large nuclear powerplant needs the same control room staff.

Manny components production cost are more depending on engineering hours and certification work then physical size. Material costs start to dominate when you mass produce.

This result is that nuclear powerplants, wind turbines, refineries and manny other machineries are built as large as they can be built. At some size you hit a limit when the parts are too big for the production machines, or too cumbersome to transport or require a bigger crane then you can find. Subdividing them adds complexity and sometimes it can not be done.

Exactly. Combined with the fact that the power (Watts pr unit area) of the wind increases with the 3rd power of the wind speed you get the total effect of upscaling as the power of 2 (from rotor area) + 3*1/7 (from mean wind) = 2.43.

I was talking about the energy used in the turbine construction which I take as proportional to the weight. The financial cost is something different and many components will scale differently: for example the control system cost will be independent of turbine size and the electric power components will probably scale slightly less than the power (i.e. less than the power of 2 of the diameter).

The bending moment in the tower will increase with the rotor thrust (proportional to the rotor area) times the tower height giving a total power of 3 of the linear scale factor. This reguires both tower diameter and wall thickness to be increased proportionally to maintain constant stress.

Aluminium is not used in wind turbine blades. The fatique strength is too low. The only aluminium used will probably be in the power cables going down the tower. You are corrrect about the carbon fibres used in large blades but it is replacing glass fibres. That's one of the tricks to "beat the 3rd power" of the weight (but at a price, financially).

Wind towers must be designed for bending moment from both a wind load from rotors housing at the top of the tower, and the wind load on the column itself.  The bending load from the rotors acting at the top of the tower is directly proportional to the height; the wind bending load on the column itself is proportional to the square of the height of the column.  Bending Moment at the Tower Base = P x H + 1/2 x W x H^2
Bending Moment at any cross-section = P x h + 1/2 x W x h^2
Where
Bending Moment  is in units of Ft x Lbs
P = wind drag force from rotors and housing (lbs)
W = wind drag force on the column per unit height (ft)

H = height of the tower above base plate (ft), and
Hs = height of a particular cross-section above base plate (ft)
h = H - Hs  

As total bending moment decreases with height, the tower cross-section can usually be reduced proportionally as height increases.

It cannot be reduced so the cross-section is insufficient to carry the shear loads (sum of all loads above the cross-section)

The horizontal movement of the tower at the rotor housing is proportional to the cube of the length.  If it is necessary to limit that movement within a certain value, the tower's height cubed might become the critical factor.

Fiberglass blades may have close to the same wind drag as the aluminum blades.  That drag is transmitted to the top of the tower as a horizontal load, which tends to bend the tower.    Prop, drive and generator weights can contribute to bending load on the tower if the horizontal deflection up there becomes significant and will thereby increase the bending load  by their weight x horiz deflection.    For a tall tower, the tower's weight itself may be 90% of the total weight.

Guess who's making a lot of the US military's speciality electronics.

This is all falafel to me

Read all of Heinlein, also all of the other great ones you mentioned.
BTW, Heinlein, "Blowups Happen" story deals with the problem of accidents in nuclear power plants. And when did he write it? 1939 if memory serves.
"The Roads Must Roll," deals with social issues of what to do if you have a strike against essential public transportation, in this case "rolling roads" that actually might work. I've never seen an engineer who claimed rolling roads were not feasible as a form of mass transportation.

What about issues of extreme longevity? Is it morally all right to marry your great great great granddaughter?

What about slavery? What about sustainable societies on space ships that take hundreds of years to reach their destination? How do you make a nuclear reactor to power a rocket to the moon? (answer, read "Rocket Ship Galileo" 1947, the basis for the later film, "Destination Moon"

Can you make space travel pay? Read "The Rolling Stones."

What do we do now that we have wrecked earth? Read "Farmer in the Sky"

Now I do not mean to denigrate Isaac Asimov, who wrote science fiction as good as ever has been written and who published about 500 books in his too-short lifetime, but for Grand Master awards, I think the title of Dean of Science Fiction goes to R.A.H.

I recall reading that Heinlein considered FF to be his worst published work.  I would not recommend it.

I am happy to meet another liberal engineer. Of (say) 100 engineers I know, 92 vote Republican, 2 vote Libertarian, and there are four Democrats. And you make five, assuming you are liberal and U.S. citizen and vote (which I realize is a lot of assumptions).

BTW Physicists I know are mostly democrats--much more idealistic than engineers, work from different premises.

Of the petroleum geologists I know, most of them refuse to discuss politics--sometimes on the grounds that it is bad for their blood pressure.

Economists seem to be about evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, which on the face of it is rather surprising because so many of them serve the establishment power structure as loyal apologists. I think it is an academic department thing, with some universities being overwhelmingly liberal, while others (e.g. U. of Chicago) overwhelmingly conservative.

I would be interested to see from the person who posted the comment where Heinlein stated that he considered "Farnham's Freehold" to be his worst work. Why? Because after massive brain damage late in life he wrote much worse novels . . . and then--amazingly--healed up and wrote a few good ones at the very end. He was severely ill most of his life and had to drop out of Annapolis due to, I think it was, TB.

+1

One of the interesting things about what is happening to unions and engineers is the emerging govermentalisation of both. As government grows and large companies shrink as a proportion of the job market, unions are increasingly becoming govermental in employment. IE, as the union jobs disappear from the economy, the union jobs left are more and more working for the government. Goverments are noncompetitive and so large for the area economy that it is difficult to replace all the workers at once and break the strike. The forces that are breaking unions in most industries are less important in government and so governments are still susceptible to union pressure.
The same thing is true of engineers. As we outsource manufacturing jobs we are outsourcing engineering jobs, especially for citizens. As a result, of the citizen engineers, more and more of them work for the government defence contractors. These contractors depend on the government for jobs. So citizen engineers become more and more Republican in voting outlook just as union members are becoming more Democratic.
It's civil service jobs vs contractor jobs.

Are you using the same scale?
I am definately right wing in Sweden.
It would not surprie me to be left wing in USA.
Not even being liberal means the same thing.

We should probably discuss practical political actions like taxation of fossil fuels, civil defence planning and so on. Deciding what political colour those actions have is not realy intresting.

On the other hand I am rambling alot about the local politics in my home country. I hope it adds some kind of usefull perspective since a purely political discussion easily can turn avry and disturb other discussions.

Though there is always a danger of over-generalizing, I will go out on a limb and make a blanket statement:  the vast majority of engineers in the US are politically highly conservative and have great deference and subservience to authority, whatever that might be at any given time. Right now, they tend to be Bush supporters. I am sure that most of them would have no problem whatsoever in designing  a gas chamber or concentration camp if that's what their boss told them to do. They tend to be value-neutral.

While engineers excell at critical analtyical thinking, practical design, and cost-benefit analysis, they tend to get lost when there isn't a clearly defined set of tasks being specified. They hate and can't handle ambiguity very well. They tend to have poor-to-mediocre verbal skills; and the ones that do have such skills usually go into 'management' and thus cease being real engineers.

Engineers will never save us because most of them just don't have the guts. And besides, most of them are wage slaves to large corporations and are scared shitless of loosing their jobs. Sadly, while engineers have the technical ability to make our energy situation much better, they are totally at the mercy of those (and usually far less intelligent) people who control resourses and call the shots.

No, engineers are just functionaries in the power struggles that most of them aren't even aware is going on around them.

I feel perfectly comfortable in severely criticizing engineers in this way, simply because I have been one, but no longer consider myself to be such.

Engineers have far more power than they think, but by their very nature they will never exercise it.