General Electric and Google on Wednesday announced a collaboration to lobby for renewable energy policies and to jointly develop clean technologies. The emphasis will be on pressuring the Federal Government to assist in the building of a "smarter" electrical transmission grid. This is exactly what needs to happen. Right now electricity generators such as wind farms are not able to produce at full capacity because the electrical grid is not able to accept what they are able to produce. The state utilities won't improve the grid by themselves simply because there currently is no advantage to Nevada to improve the transmission of electricity that is going to end up in California, for example. The Federal Government is going to have to take the lead on this. Hopefully this collaboration between Google and GE will help move this forward.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Google and GE team on clean energy policy, tech
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Three time frames for climate change
In understanding and dealing with global warming, the world has distinct but limited periods in which to act. For our leaders, the next 18 months will be the key. Saleemul Huq explains.
Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity. The world's leaders and citizens can and must face up to this fact and deal with it, and they have three distinct time frames in which to act.
The first period, spanning the next five to 10 decades, is the longest and is the time frame of our children and grandchildren.The second period – the time frame of this generation – is the next two decades, during which a global temperature increase of at least one degree Centigrade is already inevitable. Even if all global emissions were to miraculously stop tomorrow, enough greenhouse gases have already accumulated in the atmosphere to mean that some climate change is unavoidable.
Finally, the time frame of global leaders is the next 18 months. This is the time left until the 192 nations that are party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meet in Copenhagen to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
Between now and the meeting in December 2009, the presidents, prime ministers and government ministers must agree on the elements of a fair and equitable global pact that will address climate change over the two time frames mentioned above. This means both mitigating climate change by rapidly reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and adapting to the impacts ahead.
To succeed, our leaders must lose their current mindset of striving for the best deal for their own country and its citizens. They are not just representing their own countries, but all of humanity. They are negotiating the state of the world their generation will leave behind for their children and grandchildren.
Saleemul Huq is head of the climate change group at the International Institute for Environment and Development. He is a coordinating lead author of the latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Monday, July 14, 2008
New Dam in China Possible Cause of Devastating Earthquake
Officials deny the reservoir caused the earthquake that killed tens of thousands on May 12.
The dam was built to withstand an intensity VII (very strong) earthquake on the Mercalli scale. The Wenchuan quake measured XI (very disastrous), and the epicentre was less than 20 kilometres away. It is a miracle that the 156-metre dam withstood the earthquake and did not release the waters behind the dam. The reservoir was only 1/3 of capacity when the earthquake hit.
Workers and engineers are trying to assess and fix the damage to the dam and the reservoir, but discussions need to be held about what to do going forward. Chinese politicians need to listen to their engineers. If the decision is made to repair the dam, the reservoir should probably not be filled to capacity. The better course of action would probably be to dismantle the dam. This will not be the last earthquake in this region, and the next one may be stronger, especially if, as these scientists argue, the reservoir itself causes the earthquakes.
Go here to read the original story: http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/2210
Sunday, June 22, 2008
World-Wide Energy Use
This graph shows how the various energy sources are being used world-wide. The first graph shows total energy consumption, no matter what the end purpose is. The bottom graph shows what fuels are being used to generate electricity.
U.S. Sources of Energy Over Time
This graph illustrates where the United States has gotten its energy from over the past 150 years. Obviously, we need to start getting a larger portion of our energy from renewable sources.
QUOTE: Competitive Advantage
"We don't want to save the World and we don't claim that Marburg will revolutionize climate action. But we must chart new territory in order to ensure a future supply of energy independent of oil and gas.... No south-facing roof will be left unused." Fritz Kahl, the Mayor of Mahberg, Germany (80,000 people) on the change in the city's building code that requires solar collection (thermal or PV) whenever a roof is renovated, a heating system replaced, or an addition made.
How will a home or a community be valued by the marketplace in the future? By the amount of solar energy it captures (via heating, PV, or photosynthesis). Changing building codes is gradual way to make your community more competitive, reduce exposure to risks, and improve property values.
This is a good example of one of the things that needs to be done to solve the energy problem -- distributed energy production on individual buildings. The example of this city in Germany needs to be adopted around the world.
British Environment Minister ready to study GM crops
India's growth outstrips crops
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Awesome Infographic: Where Is the Blue Planet's Water?
This graphic really explains how little water is available for living organisms on this water planet.
So much water, and almost none of it available to the non-fish among us.
Even though I learned how little fresh water there is on Earth sometime in elementary school, graphics like the one on the right still amaze me. It shows the distribution of water from all sources on Earth. All those mighty rivers? They needed a mere 0.04 percent of the water on Earth to cradle civilizations.
The realization that fresh water is a finite resource has led some people to call it the "new oil". A few months ago, the New York Times Magazine ran an influential article about climate change's impact on the current water regime entitled, "The Future is Drying Up." In it, he argued that the West would basically have to decide between farms, cities, or drastic water usage changes. Paraphrasing an Arizona water manager, Jon Gertner wrote:
There was a decent amount of water out there, he went on to explain, but it was a false presumption that it could sustain all the farms, all the cities, all the rivers. Something will have to give. It was also wrong to assume, he said, that cities could continue to grow without experiencing something akin to a religious awakening about the scarcity of water. Soon, he predicted, we would talk about our “water footprint” just as we now talk about our carbon footprint.
One tech-heavy solution is desalination, but it's an energy-gobbling process, using in the range of five to ten megawatt hours for each acre foot (about 325,000 gallons) of water produced. In an energy-constrained world worried about greenhouse gas emissions, desalination doesn't look that attractive. One new option is to use heavily-treated recycled water a la Orange County's new $480 million facility.
Another possible solution I've seen is to pair solar thermal power plants, which we've written about many times, with desalination facilities. Not surprisingly, Acquasol's new double-duty plant is being demoed in Australia, where they are in desperate need of water, and have really started to move to tackle climate change. It's hard to tell if the idea will work at a reasonable cost before it's built, but in the oil AND water constrained future, it's exciting to see a company try to bring an idea to market that would solve both problems.
Via > Scot Hacker's Foobar Blog, Mindserve Clipper
Image: UN Environment Programme
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
MIT Class Calculates the Carbon Footprint of "The Man"
The Man is not only keeping us down, he's got an annual 8.5 ton carbon footprint, more than double that of the average global citizen, according to a new paper released by an MIT professor and his class.
The Man, of course, is not actually a real person, rather it's the way that countercultural Americans have referred to "the system," particularly the established infrastructure of the country like the military-industrial complex, the civil government, and sundry other institutions that were viewed with disdain.The MIT class, in a paper (pdf) to be presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, estimated that no American, even the homeless and itinerant Buddhist monks, could get their total "share" of energy usage below 130 gigajoules, which is more than twice the global average, and directly correlated with carbon footprint.
That's because the basic infrastructure of the United States including police, roads, libraries, courts, and the military were allocated equally to all citizens of the country. Thus, even if one's personal consumption in terms of purchased products and lifestyle were minimal, he or she would still bear their share of the systemic carbon load, according to the methodology of this study. In common terms, each and every US resident is carbon-heavier other countries' citizens.
This is at least not unexpectedly bad news. Most in the green movement already knew Americans weren't going to shop their way to a better environment. Changes had to come to the system, and be designed in at all levels.
"There's a certain amount you can do as an individual," said Timothy Gutowski, the MIT professor of mechanical engineering who lead authored the paper, "but if you recognize this is a system-wide problem, you need system-wide attention to the problem."
That's going to mean cleaner power, say, solar concentrating power plants plus wind. Better transportation options need to speed to market, probably smaller electric vehicles and smarter mass transit options.
Materials like cement and plastics need to be made with far less energy. Cities will have to be redesigned to reduce the need for commuting. More efficient ways of transmitting, storing, and using energy at the grid and home levels need to be mainstreamed. What we eat will have to change; the challenge will be making the future food taste as good as the corn-based delicacies that populate our menus now.
It's a big challenge, but Gutowski and his students have shed light on a major issue: if we want to lighten our impact on the environment, we have no choice but to get The Man to take action on the problems He's creating.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Is it time to talk about 'peak water'?
Water is the new oil--a resource where demand continues to rise but supply is limited. Experts at the Ceres Conference here on Tuesday focused on the risks to businesses and communities that the "global water crisis" poses, one with economic, environmental, and human health impacts. Desalination might be a solution. This is the water planet, after all. However, desalination takes energy. Where is this energy going to come from?
Monday, April 28, 2008
Emptying the Breadbasket in the United States
Nature's carbon balance confirmed
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Can renewable energy make a dent in fossil fuels?
4.2 billion. - That's how many rooftops you'd have to cover with solar panels to displace a cubic mile of oil (CMO), a measure of energy consumption, according to Ripudaman Malhotra, who oversees research on fossil fuels at SRI International. The electricity captured in those hypothetical solar panels ...
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Carbon Dioxide, Methane Rise Sharply in 2007
There has been lots of talk about what we need to do to bring the emissions of carbon dioxide down, but we are not seeing any results yet. The methane increase is really scary if this indeed is a portent of future increases in emissions as the result of warming in the Arctic.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
World Facing Huge New Challenge on Food Front
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72.htm
Friday, April 18, 2008
Thousands protest food costs in Mongolia
Thursday, April 17, 2008
How to ease the squeeze on food access
S Africans march over food prices
Thousands of South African trade union members march to protest against the rising cost of food.
Monday, April 14, 2008
US gives $200m in response to food crisis
The White House gives $200m in emergency aid to alleviate food shortages around the world amid spiraling prices.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Mapping the U.S. carbon footprint
Researchers have mapped the country's carbon footprint. The data is mostly from 2002. Next they plan to pinpoint CO2 down to each rooftop.
In the video it is very easy to pick out Carbon County, Wyoming, in one of the maps which shows the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is the county where much of the nation's coal is being mined.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Haitians riot over prices, attack U.N. peacekeepers (Reuters)
Reuters - Protesters angry over rising living costs
rioted in the southwestern Haitian town of Les Cayes, burning
shops, shooting at peacekeepers and looting containers in a
U.N. compound, the United Nations said in a statement on
Friday.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Rice pinch
Asia hit by rising prices and supply shortfalls
Global temperatures 'to decrease'
If that is the case, then the question becomes, would the cooling caused by this process be enough to counterbalance the warming effects of the extra CO2 humans are pumping into the atmosphere.