9 Sobey's stores in SW Ontario leave the franchise and form the Hometown Grocers Co-Op. This allows them to sell local meat and produce, the "100 mile diet" concept in action.
San Diego Gas and Electric has press release on the the first 2 years of their study on car plug in hybrids under actual use.
Using cattails to filter arsenic - cost 21 cents per 1000 gallons filtered. I read another story that he will be making no effort to patent the idea so that it can be instituted for free, worldwide. Who says the world is full of scumbags? Oh yeah, it was me.
India - solar power plan
So I don't clutter up the forums as much as I have been and until the collider comes online, if I see something of interest that I want to share I will just comment on this thread.
India's has a National Solar Mission - a draft plan was leaked, will install 20 GW of power available (equivalent to 1/8 of its power base) by 2020 with 1.5GW by 2012. $19 billion to be spent over 30 years, will reduce emissions by 42 million tons per year. Solar is to be mandatory for hospitals (good idea to keep them powered independently), govt buildings and hotels
Not a lot in a way...until you read the rest of the article that claims the world only generates 14 GW to date.
Also a note that Japan plans to have 28GW up and running by 2020.
It all sounds great....until you read where India also plans to add 79 GW of coal power by 2012.
Full draft available at Greenpeace
To put this in sickening
To put this in sickening perspective - $19 billion is such chicken shit money, that is about 30 days of the Iraq War
To actually emit 1 ton of carbon less
It is pretty easy to get sucked up in the new consumerism: buying "green" when we should be buying less. Or to try lots of little things to reduce emissions that may not have much impact on actual carbon reductions (hey, what happened to Mercer and the 1 ton challenge?).
A few tips, that are actually possible, from carbon focus (UK) to reduce emissions:
The One Tonne Carbon Actions
The only widely achievable actions we found that each save 1 tonne of carbon dioxide per year are:
Travel
Fly one less long haul trip (Intercontinental)
Fly three less short haul (Europe) trips
Get a better car: a 40mpg car instead of a 30mpg one; or a 60mpg car instead of a 40mpg one
Drive 3000 less miles per year
Food
Have 75% of your food be UK-grown AND Seasonal
Reduce Meat and Dairy consumption by 75%
Home
Give your house a Thermal Makeover using a combination of:
Use your thermostats and timers effectively (0.3t)
Install solar hot water panels (0.3t)
Insulate your roof to 30cm (0.3t)
Replace an old F rated boiler with an A rated one (0.6-1.2t)
Swap appliances older than 10 years with A rated ones (0.3t)
Wash clothes on cold setting and hang out to dry (0.35t)
Switch your thermostat 3 degrees lower
Share your house with an additional person like a friend, relative or lodger
Stuff
Shift £2000 of spending from high carbon goods to low carbon goods and services, for example spend on experiences rather than physical goods.
Conservation vs. Technology
Funny to think that, if accurate, and UK households actually were able to reduce even by 1 ton per household that would be about 1/2 of the emissions saved by India's solar project.
Also really messed up when I read there are enough empty houses in the US to house the population of the UK.
reduction
That's an important point that seems to be largely being ignored; we wouldn't need to scramble to implement new technologies if we just reduced power consumption. I can't figure out why energy demands are still increasing. We've improved the efficiency of all sorts of things (home appliances are what come to mind, but I'm sure it's true on industrial scales as well), and yet we use more power every year. For what? I'd really like to know.
more of us
We use more power on the whole because there are more of us each year, but our efficiency is going up quite a lot. I've been doing a lot of reading on this for part of a project at work, and in jurisdictions where population has not increased much, power demands have dropped noticeably in the past decade. And even in a few places where population rose fast, laws and regulation have reduced total power consumption.
in Canada?
Is Canada's population growing a lot? That's what I was thinking of, not places like India and China.
it is growing
In Canada, our population growth rate is slightly higher than China's but that only amounts to 200-250k people per year, entirely due to immigration since our birth rate is pretty much flat. India's growth rate is about two and a half times as high as China and Canada, and they will pass China as the most populous nation in the world before 2020.
Our power demands are growing by a little more than our population, however that number is skewed somewhat by increasing industrial and resource demands. (Mining and refining is incredibly energy intensive.) Residential and commercial demands have decreased compared to our population. Though we should remember too that presently ~73% of our electricity comes from sources that emit (or rather, indirectly cause the release of) extremely little CO2 (Hydro and Nuclear).
Canada growth
I was reading a disturbing article a while back (no link, sorry) where a Canadian economist/Uni Prof was calling for a massive increase in Canada's immigration numbers to provide more warm bodies to pay for the retirement, health and other social costs of our aging population. He was referencing our low birth rate and the high birth rate of immigrant families.
I am not an economist so feel free to correct my errors but I had the following thoughts on that:
1) You need to have jobs/work for all these workers to do - real work, industry, agriculture etc. not service jobs to service the service otherwise what is the point of adding more people? We don't seem to have enough employment for the population we have. Though I do recall the argument from one of my economics classes back in the last century (it is cool to say that, last century) that unemployment of a certain rate is a good thing in the capitalist economy.
1A) which shows why the capitalist system sucks
2)This seems like a common error when you take one isolated issue/problem (i.e. CPP/healthcare) and look for a solution that does not take into account all the economic and other costs. Adding population under our current ways of living adds emissions, pollution etc. A very narrow look at that issue.
3) It is disturbing to read a report from someone who has a doctorate in economics that is based on the flawed concept of sustained growth.
(Pux showed me some great youtube video lectures on this, can't remember if he posted them on this site, FB, or emailed them to me, if anyone hasn't seen them I can dig them up)
We need to always be growing, increasing the base of that pyramid of support - but we know we can't increase the population forever and for many reasons, especially environmental, we must not.
4) Is it just me or does this not all smack somewhat of ageism? That we need to look after the aging population to such an extent, that they are a burden to the tax base. Being "old" is not a disease. People live longer than in the past but many also age better and can be physically (let alone mentally) productive in many jobs for longer than ever before. And contribute in other ways.
People can choose to work longer, providing tax revenue - assuming we have jobs for them and let them do so. I think of my paternal grandparents, they hated being retired. Yeah they got to travel etc - but they were bored. And in the end unhappy so they did a lot of volunteer work to try and fill their time.
And my maternal grandfather was working continuously until his fairly recent death in a car accident. He still ran his sawmill in BC and other businesses - but if he wasn't the owner, he would not have had that opportunity. And that work was what made him happy.
quick thoughts
Just some quick thoughts after reading this on a moment's pause at work:
1) I would argue that at this point, there is enough work for most of us, but that people are not getting the training we need to get those jobs. There's also a lot of untapped industrial potential where I am sure hundreds of thousands of jobs can yet be created just with present technologies.
1a) Yeah... that argument on unemployment being necessary is basically because if there's no unemployment, then labour has the balance of power instead of the business owners. Wages rise dramatically in such scenarios, thus the cost of services and goods. And if it's sustained, you can get some pretty serious run-away inflation. So goes the thinking.
2/3) Yeah it's pretty narrow-minded. Even many economists are no agreeing that we need to study how to transition to a zero-growth economy. And right now we're still struggling to imagine what that might look like. But we know it needs to be done.
4) I think it's just you.
some research
gotta figure out how much we're saving now that we've moved into a green home 1/2 an hour closer to red's work.
1.1 annual gigaton GG reduction
McKinsey & Company Report outlines how the US spending $520 billion over 10 years in energy efficiency measures from weatherizing homes to better power systems will have an anergy savings $1.2 trillion by 2020 (I would consider that an absurdly low estimate as costs are going to rise enormously due to peak oil and gas) - this would be a return of $680 billion.
The reduction in energy use would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.1 gigatons annually, the equivalent of taking the entire U.S. fleet of passenger vehicles and light trucks off the roads. This is only use existing technology and practices.
That is so absurdly cheap - that is about what the Iraq war has cost (for no return)
that's a lot of...
That's a lot of Governor's Generals....
Plan B
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/80by2020notes.pdf
80 percent carbon emissions cut by 2012 using present-day tech.
Just a little "mistake"
Forged Letters Urging Opposition to Climate Bill Sent to Virginia Congressman by Lobbyists
Water and food waste
A brief was authored and delivered in Sweden in 2008 by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Water Management Institute.
It showed that as much as half the water used in food production is wasted and, in the US alone, as much as 30% of food is thrown away.
PDF Briefing paper
A little video on some Freegans - lots of good looking food in those dumpsters.
This thread
This thread is making me think of organization of the website and such. Threads like this are sort of halfway in between Collider items and regular conversation threads. But they can contain such a wealth of info and links, it would be kinda useful to have a few linked to right off the main menu, or maybe in that blank space in the header bar... and then when new items on that topic come in, we can keep posting them as comments in there.
Hmm...
:)
I just like to make your life difficult.
That sounds good though.
Accounting and costs
I was reading some of the latest articles on proposed high speed rail links between Edmonton and Calgary, and linking the populous areas of southern QB and ON - what I find extremely frustrating, at first glance is reading:
1) complaints from the airline industry about govt subsidies for rail and the lack of money they receive - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
OMG, I am dying!
There would be VERY little air travel without the MASSIVE money spent by the federal government on airports and air travel since WW2. Now that the industry has been "deregulated" it is true that there are no longer hand over fist direct subsidies but I don't want to hear any whining from the peanut gallery about new transportation links when many airlines pushed for deregulation and now (some of the honest ones that see the writing on the wall) are asking for new regulations to reduce competition! Plus they are complaining about lack of capacity at major airports.
And where would the money come from for increased capacity or new airports?? Why, from the traveller/taxpayer - either through new fees or through govt spending and new taxes.
2) Reading the rhetoric of "think tanks" whining about spending taxpayer dollars on rail and that it is too expensive. It only looks expensive when you don't have to account for the environmental damage caused by road and air travel. Also, let us note the massive public funding required to maintain highways! Rail travel may not be an option everywhere....but it would be a whole lot cheaper than air and motor vehicle (especially when they are running on gas/diesel) in many places if you took the real environmental costs into account.
Rail isn't expensive at all when you consider the alternative might end up being horse and buggy or by foot!
wth...
Wth... I replied to this already and it's not here.
Yeah the government subsidizes all forms of travel, certainly rail less than the others, I'd imagine. They're just scared of losing money. If they're so scared, then they should get into the train business.
I hate corporations who whine and complain instead of taking advantage of the opportunities they're busy whining and complaining that someone else is going to make a profit from. It's almost like they forgot why they like capitalism.
yup
If they're so scared, then they should get into the train business.
Damn right
Climate change
Some people may be aware that the US military has done extensive research on the effects of climate change - as they should! It is claimed (and still mostly ignored) as the largest future threat to US interests and national security (duh).
I have wondered at times if, in an effort to mobilize an uneducated and disinterested populace, it would be beneficial to try and get top military personnel, active and retired, to speak about the national security threat and aspect. Declare a "war on climate change" or something. Americans like to say they are all about the troops, maybe you could get the military actively involved in publicly "fighting" climate change.
Here is an example of that: operationfree.net
This is reminiscent of previous posts I made where I thought we should focus more on energy needs and pollution when trying to get support for renewable energy sources, that climate change is not real enough for people and that the idea is open to ridicle and easy dismissal by people pandering to the uneducated:
"Oh no, it will be 21 instead of 19 this summer, scary!" or people actually saying how nice it would be to have less winter. Statements like that.
My concern and argument for alternative tactics was that there is no time to try and educate people on the real risks and dangers, that it is more important to take immediate action, there is no time to delay.
Then I read an article like this, which talks about the new tar sands pipeline approval and I see the risks of favoring a national security strategy over education.
Any thoughts? Should people try and push the "I'm for the troops" (the most overused and pathetic statement of the last decade)an emotional response and/or something that focuses on energy security angle? Or is it too risky to focus on anything rather than an educated response? Is there time?
Gas tax chart
Gas tax chart
That is quite the spread. A lot easier for people in more dense urban European cities to have an alternative to cars...Turkey was a surprise.
backwards
That was a bit shocking. Canada and Australia are the only areas to lower our gas taxes in response to climate change. To be fair I suppose, we are both huge countries with very few people.
backwards indeed
yeah a bit whacked. All the more reason to look at rail and keep looking for better options.
Cool pics
I like these shots of the amount of size taken up by bikes vs. buses vs. cars
folding bikes
Those folding bikes are awesome! I wonder how much they are... I was thinking I may get a new bike next summer and that would be ideal for my planned road trip.
-
Ed: Seems Western Cycle is listed as the only dealer in Regina. I might have to stop in there later and have a look.
folding bikes
They are pretty cool. There are a few versions out there but unfortunately I haven't had a chance to try one out. The only complaints I have heard were price (they can be expensive, depending how much you like to spend on a bike) and weight.
Family planning costs for carbon emission
I have read a variety of studies that claim that carbon reduction goals can quite easily be attained merely through improved efficiency, giving us time to implement renewable energy sources.
What doesn't seem to get as much play when talking about carbon reductions, what seems to take the back seat to new tech, new cars, efficiency and all that juicy stuff is the role of population. I am not saying it is not understood, it just doesn't get much coverage in the media.
I found this study interesting, an effort to quanity the cost of family planning for those that do not have access vs. the potential carbon reductions.
The executive summary:
Perhaps this could be a selling feature for some southern US senators - sure keep your coal, just stop having babies.
Link to study in PDF
Cost
It's so terrible to see how many methods are out there to reduce emissions that are so absurdly cheap, many renewable energy sources are far cheaper, right now, than what they would replace - and see the fear mongering of how the "green economy" will destroy jobs and is some sort of UN/European/Commie plot to destroy America (and Canada too, we aren't immune to those fears)
Of course then you have Japan floating the idea of paying people paying people $3400/year to have children because of the low birth rate and aging population.
Further costs to the country
Countries, especially low population density countries like Canada strive to increase the birth rate because people are a valuable resource to a country. The failure of the abstract you posted to mention that factor seems a bit naive.
-Dan
The abstract?
Are you referring to the PDF link/executive summary or to the Japan proposal?
agreed
Yep... I agree. I completely agree that reducing population is an effective method of reducing carbon output, but it's also very slow if such a plan doesn't involve knocking off substantial numbers of humans.
It's not in the least bit practical. Over the past 60 years, we've spent billions on extending lives, increasing birthrates, and feeding more and more people. More people feeds an economic model that requires constant growth. Capitalism utterly fails in a negative-growth scenario. Trying to convince the developing world that, "Oops, we were wrong" is not going to be easy, nor is it going to be easy to fund any venture whose primary objective directly requires the catastrophic collapse of the global economy.
Directly killing off the populace probably a tough sell
There are also obvious other points for alternative energy sources - like we NEED them!
A narrow study, but certainly worth looking at. Not that there was much doubt (that I am aware) of the importance of, at the very least, providing birth control, for free, for those that want it as a starting point at least.
yeah
Yeah there's obvious benefits for dolling out cheap or free birth control, I just don't think we should be talking about this as one of them. The two issues are obviously related, but it's just not a productive way to address either issue.
Follow up to apparent disaster, low salmon numbers in BC
Grizzlies starving?
hungry bears
I heard about this a couple of months ago - or at least that it was expected to occur right around now. This year for some reason the salmon numbers have plummeted, nearly disappearing altogether in many runs. It was so abrupt and unexpected that it left fisheries people at a complete loss to explain it. There was speculation then that this would have a profound impact on bear populations that more or less survive only because of the salmon. Closer to human populations, I think it's fair to expect an increase in clashes between humans and bears too, as the stronger ones struggle to find food. Humans don't make a great snack, but we're better than nothing and we don't tend to fight back very effectively.
Scary
It is amazing the extent of the catastrophe, this was supposed to be a record year for salmon. I have yet to hear any real theories...
We most definitely will be on the menu. And blame the bears
Splitting up power generators - mini in every home
SchwarmStrom
wtf...
My first reaction is that this is shockingly stupid and short-sighted of these companies. They plan to take giant nuclear reactors off line and replace them with distributed gas-fired plants? That's going to dramatically increase carbon emissions, not decrease! What on earth are they smoking? Gas is not at all carbon-clean and still emits about half as much as coal does.
Second, we have less gas than oil or coal or nuclear resources. Gas is already a somewhat inconvenient source of electricity because of its intense price volatility. What exactly do they think is going to happen when they move to replace everything with gas? The price is going to skyrocket!
The only way this makes any kind of sense is if you're sourcing 100% of the gas from renewable resources - ie Biogas. But we have not figured out a way to make Biogas in any kind of significant volumes yet.
But wait, even then it's not smart. Our electrical grid isn't great. We lose around 7% of the power we produce just in the transmission alone. We know how we can improve that dramatically, it's just taking a while to get there. But distributing electricity is pretty easy and safe. Pumping volatile dangerous gas all over the country simply to burn it for electricity? Dumb! It takes a LOT of electricity to pump that gas, and there are always leaks cropping up - and raw methane is a hell of a lot worse than CO2 as a GHG.
No, there is a much easier solution. Capture the waste heat from large-scale power plants and pump that around the countryside instead. It's safe (just water) and you no longer need to burn gas for heating, resulting in a overall reduction in carbon emissions. Decommission coal in favour of truly clean technologies that are already available, and leave the nuclear plants running until they die a natural death.
Really... I can't think of anything good about this idea at all. Maybe I'm missing something. I hope I'm missing something since they're actually doing this.
I dunno
It really seemed more like a gimmick than anything
yes!
Yes that's exactly the word I was looking for. It looks like a gimmick to make people think they're taking part is a useful venture, when really it's just the power utilities offloading costs on to users.
small plants
This doesn't really seem to be about small vs. large to me.
Really the only good thing that I can see about distributing power in this fashion (I have heard other arguments under completely different circumstances) is that you don't have all your "eggs in one basket" with a large plant. If it suffers catastrophic failure, needs upgrading, is blown up etc. then you have a serious problem. Having a large well-distributed number of smaller plants can alleviate certain fears related to such issues.
It does seem really odd though. Is there a major fear or public/political stance against nuclear power in Germany?
Considering the past problems with Russia, the pipeline through Ukraine and the amount of supply available in the future it seems an odd choice to me. I also was hoping someone else saw something better in it. *
"The home power plants together form a huge, invisible power station that doesn't make the countryside ugly or require additional infrastructure."
Maybe the existing plants need to be replaced and they can't build nuclear? Getting rid of coal is pretty much always a good idea but could this perhaps be more about the space and countryside than an environmental issue?
A common complaint about wind and solar, it's ugly and takes prime land...or blocks the view.
I wonder what happens in the event of a house fire?
*I had forgotten that Gazprom is planning on a new pipeline that will bypass the Ukraine....and that Germany has been enjoying a much cozier relationship with Russia.
Natural Gas Powers Russian-German Ties
gas, nuclear, wind, and Russia
When I was digging up some info on Germany's nuclear industry I ran across a number of pages that seem to suggest that there is fairly strong opposition to it there. Again, same kind of crap as we've already seen... a bunch of so-called environmentalists whining about nuclear, so instead Germany was forced to build a shit load of coal plants instead.
Now there's other options available. I don't know that wind is a good option in most of Germany, but they do have a decent sized coastline so they could be building large off-shore wind farms like they are to great success elsewhere in Europe and in Texas.
That's a good point about the coziness between Russia and Germany in light of natural gas reserves. Germany has proven gas reserves of about 254 billion m^3 but every year they consume nearly 100 billion m^3 (CIA World Factbook). Not exactly a sustainable pattern for a country that wants to triple it's natural gas usage to replace nuclear and coal. They're going to need that gas from somewhere, and Russia is the only one nearby that has anywhere near the kind of numbers Germany is looking at.
No those numbers don't look
No those numbers don't look too good.
There are certainly reasons to avoid nuclear power and eliminate the existing types in the long term but....wth?
Rooftop solar outperforming mega projects
Since they aren't getting built!
utilities resist solar power
not getting built
Yes, they're not getting built, but it's for good reasons. Solar power generation is not mature enough yet to be generated en masse in anything approaching an economic way. As the technology stands right now, it's only really economically feasible for very small-scale distributed generation. And even then the pay-off is so slow you might as well not even bother. Around the corner, a new generation of solar technologies look to dramatically improve on some of the current limitations and make generating electricity this way at least marginally useful.
This article does raise an interesting point though, and although they did not say it explicitly, they make a helluva case for forcing utility companies out of the profit-driven domain and into the public government-owned domain. Increasingly we're seeing situations like this around the world, where the profit motive is stifling innovation and severely reducing the adoption rate of modern technology. It's a peculiar Revenge Effect.
Mega-solar farms
Well they aren't getting built in the US - but China has a massive plan in the works (2 GW to start, last I heard) and India is coming along fairly well too.
And yes, it should have been said explicitly that this is a serious argument for public utilities.
I have solved the problem
They are supposed to be in space!
Mitsubishi, IHI to Join $21 Bln Space Solar Project
California's new power source a solar farm
INTERVIEW WITH SOLAREN CEO GARY SPIRNAK
some curious numbers
There's some interesting disparities in the numbers between the articles. The first claims 1GW will power 294,000 homes and the second claims 200MW will power 150,000 homes. Either Japanese homes use on average 2.5x as much electricity as California homes (seems mighty doubtful) or somebody is speaking a little optimistically.
These are pretty neat and stuff, but really, I have serious questions about the concept. Right now we use chemical rockets to propel things into space. It's inefficient, extremely expensive, and spews a lot of crap into the atmosphere in the process. A gigantic array will require many extra visits to space, and imagine the cost of repair! - there's a lot of debris out there and a tiny garbage fragment or stellar pebble could shatter an entire panel. All that expense and risk for 1GW of power?
Seems like we're getting a little ahead of ourselves considering we have plenty of cheaper and more efficient ways to make power right here on earth. We're better off taking those billions and throwing them at fusion. Or in California's case, Enhanced Geothermal. Seems to me we should be leaving space solar until the 22nd century.
Cool
It is neat....but it makes putting sky turbines in the jetstream look practical!
(I posted something about those before, somewhere!)
wikipeda, airborne wind turbines
Scientists look high in the sky for power
Quirks
Quirks and Quarks had a big discussion on this that was really excellent. They really covered the angles on both sides.
China could meet future energy needs by wind alone
Environmental scientists say China could meet future energy needs by wind alone
yeah saw that
Yeah I saw that too. It's amazing really... and considering they already have so much coal and hydro for baseload, they could probably completely stop building any more coal immediately and begin pumping all that cash into wind farms instead.
Wind farms
They have problems with their grid and a lot of issues but, as is mentioned, all sorts of the money that needs to be spent has to be spent no matter what they do. You might as well spend it on something effective and long-term then.
Ford
I hope this is a promising sign of the future and not just a one-off:
FORD WIXOM VEHICLE ASSEMBLY PLANT GAINS NEW LEASE ON LIFE AS RENEWABLE ENERGY PARK
woah
Holy crap... that's a huge project! Industry doesn't throw that kind of money around unless they've got real potential. Will be interesting to follow this one.
This is just a mess
Italy finds wreck of toxic waste ship sunk by mafia
Potential battery replacement
A Salt and Paper Battery
Stories about the climate summit
Some good stuff on the Yes Men:
CNN video on Yes Men getting arrested
Model X7 SurvivaBall
YES MEN HONCHO SPRUNG FROM CLINK
Unrelated to the climate summit but, on the Yes Men, you HAVE to look at this one:
Impostors posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council (NPC) representatives delivered an outrageous keynote speech...oil industry could "keep fuel flowing" by transforming the billions of people who die into oil.
Stephen Harper is a douchebag:
Harper’s United Nations no-show shames Canada
Video, Harper Chooses Donuts Over Planet
FB Group, Harper Chooses Donuts Over Planet - Tell Him What You Think
"I love my double-double as much as the next guy," said Liberal Energy and Environment Critic David McGuinty. "But examining the latest in doughnut technology while the rest of the world's leaders gather to confront the challenge of climate change is like Nero's fiddling while Rome burns."
Other related:
Deutsche Bank: Absence of US Clean Energy Policy Will Send Global Capital Elsewhere
Tidal power for the maritimes
Pux I thought you might find this especially interesting:
Nova Scotia looks to tap powerful Bay of Fundy tides for clean energy
cleancurrent.com
following
Yeah i've been following the development of this project for a couple of years now.
Clean current has some weird numbers on their website too:
67GW is HUGE! - but not unrealistic. The potential for tidal power really is huge.
US$2000 to $3000 per kw for construction also sounds quite reasonable. That's a good deal cheaper than nuclear which comes in usually around the 3500 mark, and is in the range of coal.
But then it gets weird. Like a Hydro dam, the maintenance and ongoing cost of a turbine is very low - there's no fuel afterall. The construction cost is on the order of coal, so even if there's enough maintenance cost to make up for the lack of fuel needed, we shouldn't really be paying more than coal.
But coal is only about 5-8c per kWh, and here they are quoting an electricity price of 20c/kWh! So... wtf? I can't help but wonder if they jacked up the cost estimate on electricity just to make the total market potential (USD27.6B) sound a lot bigger? That would be a mistake though... we want cheap energy, not expensive energy! They should have gone with a far more reasonable-sounding estimate for the electricity price (maybe 8-10c) and emphasized this by comparing to nuclear.
Huh
That is strange. Maybe you should jot them off a WTH email?
HEB Generator
Hydro-Electric-Barrel (HEB) Generator
If this thing is cheap enough, might be a simple and easy alternative for an off the grid cabin.
cool!
That is a really good idea for small cabins and things on rivers and even some creeks. A simple and deployable version of the run-of-river hydro electric used in some areas. Good find!
You know, that would be really great in the foothills. Combine it with a wind turbine and a hydrogen storage system, and you've got a pretty secure source of power.
I hope it becomes available.
I hope it becomes available.
Population: Overconsumption is the real problem
Population: Overconsumption is the real problem
Well the guy raises some interesting points but he rather glosses over the effect of our staggering world population in regards to food and water consumption. The article seemed rather simplistic to me.
thread
This could probably be it's own thread again.
Here's the first paragraph:
I used to think exactly that too. As we all become wealthier and more career-dedicated, the resulting fall in fertility would stabilize the planet's population at maybe 9-10 billion.
It sounds pretty straightforward, but it completely ignores the fact that we barely have enough food as it is. Sure, some years go by with a bumper crop and we have mountains of surplus, but that surplus doesn't last forever and on the shy years, like the one in 2007, we deplete our surplus completely and still can't feed ourselves.
Sure there's the argument that many places around the world still haven't adopted modern agriculture, but that argument ignores the fact that modern agriculture is completely dependent on natural gas for fertilizer and oil for large machinery and transportation. And on top of that, over-production on vast mono-cultures is resulting in a decrease to crop yields across the entire planet. And further on top of that, we really have no damn clue what a hotter climate is going to do to global agriculture. It might open up Siberia to massive grain production, but it also might wipe out rice production in the tropics. It also ignores the fact that the acidification of our oceans appears to be killing most of the world's fish stocks.
More population puts greater strain on every already-maxed-out system we have at our disposal.
Modern agriculture
I listened to an interesting discussion on Norman Borlaug on CBC north one night, caught it on the drive home.
Some interesting thoughts and a little debate over his work - was it really effective, the long term costs - mostly though it was a "Borlaug the saviour" show.
Borlaug himself seemed to be concerned over population growth and aware of the damage caused by deforestation - yet sure doesn't seem concerned enough over the havoc that monoculture, chemical-intensive farming causes.
A few quotes:
I believe he was referring to continuing genetic modification of crops.
10 billions. That's a horrible number. And even if we could feed that many, what the hell would we do with 10 billion people? That seems insane. Is he even considering climate change? Water needs? Anything other than mathematical models of wheat fields?
Realistically at that kind of population level, if it is even possible, you would need to look at a World Government that could relocate people whenever and wherever around the globe.
Borlaug
Is he even considering climate change? Water needs? Anything other than mathematical models of wheat fields?
Probably not, at least not in a meaningful quantitative way. Climate change was barely on the public radar and there's a chance he hadn't even heard the term except in passing. We knew very little back then except a few basic principles.
And even if we could feed that many, what the hell would we do with 10 billion people?
This, I find, the more interesting question. Especially because we can ask right now, what the hell do we do with 6.7 billion people?
Yes
The population level we have now is unbelievable - then to say, I think we could handle even more if people will stop "holding us back" is just nuts.
He actually made that statement in 2000 (last quote box) - I could understand it more if he made it in the 70s, but to me it shows that his calculations seem...odd...if he thinks 10 billion is a sustainable pop level.
competition
Yeah, some of these people promoting new technologies to feed the masses are motivated by economics - since capitalism demands unlimited growth - but others appear to be behaving almost as if this is some sort of game. But these are real people with real lives trying to find real meaning. There's no point pushing the envelope if it means everyone has to live with less and less and less... that's just asking for a human disaster, even if we somehow solve food and environmental issues.
If the planet is only capable of supporting 1.5 billion people living at the same standard of living as North Americans presently have, then we should be aiming for that or less. Anything else is to necessarily condemn people to live underneath their potential.
absolutely
absolutely
growth
Growth is interesting. The middle quote block there... made me think of a trading/betting strategy I thought up once. Start with a bet of X. Whenever you lose, double your last bet. Whenever you win, return to X. So in a sequence of: start lose lose lose win, bets would be: X 2X 4X 8X X. Now matter what level you win at, you are ahead of where you were at the start of the losing sequence by X. If your odds of losing aren't too high, then this is a good way to limit your losses - in the short term. But when you hit a barrier, like you can no longer put up the money required to make the bet at the multiple your at, you lose nearly double what you are likely to have gained up until that point. This is an exponential "betting bomb".
Population is exponential too, so like the betting bomb, the population bomb only gets worse and worse and worse the longer you're able to sustain the growth.
Yep
And he seemed a big part of the world effectively putting off the problem until later, until even more problems surrounded it.
Not that I can blame him for wanting to feed the poor. It's just that it was another patchwork, short-term solution "phew, problem solved, let's move on"
not even that
It's not even a patchwork cure, it's just delaying the inevitable and making it worse. It's like continually trying to avoid sleeping by drinking more and more caffeine. Nothing is solved, the eventual result is only worsened.
Algae fuel
An article on the dubious claims of the algae energy concept.
Scum artists: The false promise of algae-fuel companies.
No, what's dubious is...
The article is rather dubious itself.
First thing that set me off was that this is a political mag known mainly for its muckraking. Not exactly a valuable source for scientific commentary.
The second thing that marked the whole article as dubious was the entire first paragraph, which is largely an account of one Adam Freeman. And it only got worse. The entire article is basically a series of idiotic ramblings and remarkably obvious revelations.
No one seemed to be producing oil.
No shit. Had they done their homework, they would have learned that the technology behind this is extremely immature. There's a ton of testing to still be done. Nobody in their right minds tests things at an industrial level, they test things in very small samples. Oil wasn't turned into plastic in a year, and the transistor took about three decades to even begin to make a dent on modern living.
Most companies were simply growing scum without analyzing it.
And this was determined... how? By a guy who apparently never got a job with any of these companies? (more on that shortly) That just doesn't smell right at all.
Some [companies] were bizarrely secretive.
No fucking shit! If you were a small company with 3 or 4 people working their asses off in a lab on a patentable product and process that's a potentially MASSIVE gold mine the likes of which humanity has never known, you really think they're NOT going to be secretive? Whoever wrote this article just proved they don't know a single god damn thing about business. I mean seriously, that is one helluva monstrously stupid statement. That's the stupidest thing I've heard all week.
I mean really... this is an incredibly cut-throat area. Tech startups often live and die in a matter of months for a hundred different reasons, almost all having to do with money. This is a very well known occurrence. You don't expect every new business in a brand new field of technology to survive. Out of a hundred, two or three might survive five years.
"I thought there'd be established companies where I could get a job, but there weren't," he says.
Did he really say/think that?? Really?!? Because driving all over the damn continent sleeping on people's couches is not a very good way to go job hunting in an industry you claim to know little about. A small startup lab is not going to hire some unspecialized bloke (more on this shortly too) who could easily be bought off by a competing lab - especially when investment money is bloody hard to come by.
Some companies have promised impossible amounts of oil based on speculation
*GASP* They didn't! (/sarcasm). Imagine that, tech startups speculating on how much they might be able to produce of a goldmine product in order to secure some scraps of venture capital. And for the record, none of the claims in the article are impossible. That's an incredibly bold (and ignorant) statement for a technology that was only just born a couple years ago.
Okay... so more on Adam. Now... reading the article, you get the feeling he's a Biochemist, probably an MSc or PhD to be expecting a job in a natal technology like algal fuels, and given the date of the article (Sep/Oct '09) he must be unemployed since he supposed couldn't find a job.
So I Googled the guy.
He has a Biochem undergrad degree from a university that doesn't offer a M.Sc program in biochem. And he has a job. He's currently working in the algal fuel industry! What does that say about the article if the guy they're quoting as implying all sorts of negative things about how useless the tech is, is right there working in it and has been for 7 months! Even more, he shows on his web pages that he has a great deal of confidence in the industry.
Is this even the same guy? Did the article's author talk to some other Adam Freeman with a biochem degree from KSU? Seems rather unlikely... but these are pretty divergent viewpoints we're being given. I'll take the words of Adam himself over the words of some hack journalist any day. I suspect this may be a case of some gross misquotation.
So in conclusion... The author is an uneducated twit. Don't trust a word of this article.
:)
I knew you'd enjoy this one.
I don't know much about algae to oil - or garbage, or seaweed, or some of the other interesting articles I read. A lot of them seem extremely unlikely or impractical, but worth further research.
The only thing I really don't like is how some occasionally a few people seize on these as "the answer*" to our energy problems. We already have several answers, they just aren't sexy.
*like the fucking ethanol insanity of the Bush years. Not trying to equate this with corn ethanol, just as an example.
Job hunting
I had this mental image of the guy cruising North America in a VW van, panhandling while trying to secure a science research position.
As funny as that may be, I am amazed at how many pilots actually do this. Even pilots from other countries that I have met here. They drive (or fly in a small plane) across Canada, stopping at all sorts of airports, then just stroll into the hangars looking for work.
The one guy (from Sweden) was complaining to me that no one would talk to him here. I tried to (politely) explain to him that the companies here are not based here. They are rather large and their head offices do the hiring - in Calgary, Edmonton, etc. Plus they generally hire people with experience and ratings, not people fresh from school. He was crushed, started complaining about all the money he spent to get here, his dream of being a bush pilot, etc.
So then he asked if we were hiring.
Wow.
I forgot
*applause*
That was awesome! I just about fell out of my chair while reading that, you should forward it to the author!!!!
good idea
There, I just did. Tweaked a little, but the message is unchanged.
let me know if you get an
let me know if you get an answer, that should be pretty funny!
posted
Well, it appeared on the website right away, along with the... 18 (i think) or so other messages. I don't really expect the author responds to them each, but hopefully they at least read them.
Peak WATER
OK, this is INSANE - Saudi Arabia was using essentially non-renewable (aquifer) water sources for agriculture to the point that they were exporting wheat!!!???!!
This makes las vegas look well planned!
Peak water in Saudi Arabia
Water supply and sanitation in Saudi Arabia
General info on peak water:
Peak Water
peak
Just the other week I was remarking on this to my Sociology class. We hear about Peak Oil a lot, but people don't realize Peak-X can happen to any natural resource. Water is a bit different since it is renewable, but on a more local level, there is certainly a Hubbert Peak that can be applied to it.
PW
It is interesting, I had heard it discussed based on availability vs. population but I didn't realise (which is silly) that some countries were so dependent on this fossil water. I had another article at home (I think) that spoke of Saudi's plan to ramp up oil production to pay for water shipments, and of course the increase in desalinization plants.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia Warns on Rapid Shift to Renewable Energy:
Of course, the "current production rates" is a lovely little piece thrown in as though it was nothing - but 80 years? I would love to see the real numbers backing up that claim.
frightening
Holy crap... what a frightening thing to hear. Actually, it's way off base even in a hopeful scenario.
As of 2006, we're consuming about 90-95 million barrels a day. So even if consumption doesn't change at all and magically flat-lines (yeah right), then we're consuming 92*365 = ~34 billion barrels a year. Our optimistic guesses for accessible oil reserves are about 900 billion (ignoring the known fact that many countries are massively inflating their reserve numbers). Now bearing in mind that some 55% of that is either oil sands or extra heavy oil, then only 45% is actually cheaper than say... ~nuclear power. 45% of 900 billion gives us enough oil for about 13 years at present rates of consumption, at a price anyone would consider reasonable to pay.
Meanwhile as we speak, oil is again approaching $100/barrel. A quick glance at recent oil prices shows us that that is just about back to where it should be. Barring a second economic collapse, I would bank on stable $100+ oil by the end of 2009.
Yep
Not a huge surprise to hear a country so desperately tied to oil inflating their reserves and trying to downplay the need for other energy sources. It is also what people want to hear.
And people will read this on Bloomberg and be comforted, as no one even attempts (it is a govt secret in Saudi) to verify this bullshit.
Did anyone see Jon Stewart ripping CNN on their fact check of SNL? Was pretty hilarious.
completely random
I was surprised to find out that Mayor Bloomberg of New York was such an uber-billionaire.
yep
Yeah, he's a fat cat. Kind of an oddball too. Traders never fit into tidy political packages, I suspect. He's a pretty brilliant dude though, no doubt about that.
Also a dumbass
If I was an uber-billionaire, I would pick a region and try and develop it along a post-carbon, sustainable future idea.
What the hell else are you going to do with all that money? It's more than you can really spend and it is potentially worthless in a few years anyways.
Also, I can then have everyone worship me. I could be bigger than jesus! i could BE Jesus!
Canada gets ripped on climate
Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling
Some interesting logic indeed
Why cheap oil is here to stay:
The world will never run out of oil," Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a recent research note, echoing the old logic that the Stone Age didn't end because the world ran out of stone. "If the oil age does end, it likely will be because we become more efficient and simply use less petroleum."
bizarre
That whole article is truly bizarre...
I think they might be in LaLaLand if they think they're presenting something novel. Oil isn't a floating commodity like grains or oilseed, it's heavily controlled by OPEC. Only in the case of an extreme situation does OPEC not have medium-term control over the approximate price of oil. If they want to keep it below $100 to ensure continued use of oil (and "prove" their own experts right) they can and will.
So yes, these experts are right to say that... but it's not a reflection of anything except pretty standard issue (and by that I mean perfectly legal and expected) market manipulation.