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

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 a very technical tome and provides a concise summary of the case in language that the average reader can understand.

Read the entire essay, The Methanol Alternative, at New Atlantis.

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 ports, our levies, our dams, but we also have to plan for the future. This is the same example of turning crisis into opportunity…Now, look, this is America. We always had the best infrastructure. We were always willing to invest in the future. Governor Crist mentioned Abraham Lincoln. In the middle of the Civil War, in the midst of all this danger and peril, what did he do? He helped move the intercontinental railroad.  He helped start land grant colleges. He understood that even when you’re in the middle of crisis, you’ve got to keep your eye on the future. So transportation is not just fixing our old transportation systems but its also imaging new transportation systems.

That’s why I’d like to see high speed rail where it can be constructed. That’s why I would like to invest in mass transit because potentially that’s energy efficient and I think people are alot more open now to thinking regionally in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure. The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that’s not a smart way to build communities. So we should be using this money to help spur this kind of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation. That will make a big difference.

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 energy sectors that governments throughout the world should pursue to address energy security and climate change, the report (PDF) said.

The report, released at the annual meeting in Davos, suggests the transition to clean energy should be included in government stimulus plans, which is similar to U.S. President Barack Obama’s efforts to include billions in renewable energy and energy efficiency measures in the massive stimulus bill making its way though Congress.

The report’s release comes within days of Texas awarding $5 billion in projects aimed at propping up capacity of the state’s transmission lines, which currently cannot handle incredible growth in wind energy generation.

When the projects are completed, there could be up to 2,900 miles of new power lines. Texas leads the country in wind generation, and current power lines are near capacity.

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.

OPT PowerBuoy

The Oahu PowerBuoy was launched under the Company’s ongoing program with the US Navy for installation of PowerBuoys off Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay and will be connected to the Oahu power grid. Further, the US Navy has added $300,000 in funding for this program to provide for extended operation of the PowerBuoy system.

More…

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 the patterns of climate change in the Arctic from the Paleocene epoch to the present. Over these 65 million years, the Earth has undergone several major warming and cooling episodes, which were largely mitigated by the expansion and contraction of sea ice in the Arctic.

When the Arctic cools and ice expands, the increase ice cover increases albedo. The resulting increased reflection of the sun leads to global cooling. Likewise, when ice sheets and sea ice contract and expose the darker-colored land or ocean underneath, heat is absorbed, accelerating climate warming. Currently, the Earth is in the midst of an interglacial period, characterized by retracted ice sheets and warmer temperatures.

As large portions of the polar ice cap break off and fall into the Arctic Ocean, large quantities of fresh water abruptly reduces the salinity. Continued exposure to such freshwater forcing, however, could disrupt global ocean circulation during the next century and lead to very abrupt changes in climate, similar to those that occurred at the onset of the last ice age.

“If the Earth’s deep ocean circulation were to be shut down, many of the atmospheric, glacial and oceanic processes that have been stable in recent times would change, and the change would likely be abrupt,” says Greene.

“While the ecosystem consequences of gradual changes in the ocean are somewhat predictable, all bets are off after such abrupt changes occur.”

These abrupt disruptions on a large scale could halt the Earth’s ocean currents and lead us into the next Ice Age.

More…

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…

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 tripling of fuel prices.  However, you don’t often read about how to improve the efficiency of the airline industry and to transition away from petroleum-based fuels.

Bradford Plumer, in his article in The New Republic, “The End of Aviation,” writes of the coming downsizing in the commercial airline industry due to rising fuel costs.  He makes a case for why the current air travel industry’s business model doesn’t work with $135/barrel oil.Read how the spiraling costs of oil, as supplies are depleted, will affect the cost and availability of air travel.

Learn more…

 - Veggie Ranger

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 that the best option was to assume that climate change was real and to do something about it.  Here’s the video to watch and help you make up your own mind on climate change:

Polar Ice Caps Melting by September

It appears that the ice at the North Pole has decided to melt and should be completely melted by this September.  I guess you can look on the bright side; now you can take a cruise to the North Pole and experience what many an explorer froze to death trying to accomplish!

It’s also a well-known fact that there is oil under the Arctic Ocean.  I guess it will also be easier to drill for it now…

- Veggie Ranger