Archive for the 'climate change' Category

Sustainable Energy: Without the hot air

David Mackay’s new book is a great resource for preparing for life after petroleum. Read Mapawatt’s review of the book. You can buy it on Amazon or download it for free.
Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air

The Methanol Alternative

In a clear and concise review and essay, Robert Zubrin lays out the case for Methanol becoming the energy carrier for the 21st century and beyond.
Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and president of Pioneer Astronautics, comments on the book,  Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy written by Nobel laureate chemist, George Olah.  His commentary takes [...]

Obama Says: Days of Building Sprawl Are Over

Responding to a question from a city councilwoman about transportation and infrastructure in the stimulus bill during a town hall forum in Ft. Myers, Florida, President Obama said that the days of just building sprawl are over.
From a transcript provided by Transportation for America:
Not only do we need to rebuild our roads, our bridges, our [...]

Clean Energy Economy Will Cost Billions Annually

OAKLAND, Calif. — It will cost $515 billion annually through 2030 to wean the world off fossil fuels in favor of clean energy sources, according to a report released last week by the World Economic Forum.
Onshore and offshore wind, solar thermal and photovoltaics, waste-to-energy, geothermal and next-generation and sugar-based biofuels were identified as large-scale clean [...]

OPT Installs PowerBuoy Off Hawaii Coast

Ocean Power Technologies, Inc. has installed one of its PowerBuoy wave power generation units (earlier post) near Kaneohe Bay on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. This is the third PowerBuoy to be deployed by OPT over the past two months at sites in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The Oahu PowerBuoy was launched under the [...]

Is Global Warming Really Global Cooling?

In a November special issue of the journal Ecology, a group of scientists report that if current patterns of change in the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans continue, alterations of ocean circulation could occur on a global scale, with potentially dramatic implications for the world’s climate and biosphere.
Charles Greene of Cornell University and colleagues reconstructed [...]

Neil Young’s 1959 Lincoln EV – LincVolt

One of my passions is the idea of taking vintage vehicles and converting them to EVs.  The idea of recycling 2,000 lbs of steel and rubber into a roadworthy vehicle that is more efficient than when it was new is very cool.  It looks like Neil Young has the same passion.  He has teamed up [...]

Scientist Discovers Fungus That Could Fuel A Car

A researcher at Montana State University has found a micro-organism in a plant in South America that could fuel vehicles one day. The unusual fungus contains the essence of diesel, which one could use to run a bus, for example, without processing it at all.  Listen…

Life After Petroleum: Aviation

You can search and find many blogs or pick up most magazines and read articles on the future of ground transportation and how its use of petroleum adversely affects the environment.  The cost of petroleum is near the top of the list of conversation starters as consumers around the globe deal with the doubling and [...]

Are the Polar Ice Caps Melting Now? Oops, maybe they were right!

I am often a skeptic of theories until I can read enough information to support a logical conclusion that the theory is true or false.  Climate change was one of those theories that I wondered if it was really true.  I watched a Youtube video of a young scientist who used standard logic to determine [...]