August 11, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: One Comment
The state of Texas has approved a major new project to build transmission lines for wind power, with funding in the amount of $4.93 billion. Already the national leader with 5,300 megawatts of installed wind-power generating capacity, Texas will, when the infrastructure development is completed in 2013, have more wind-energy capacity than Germany presently does.The project is a major step toward freeing the American economy from high-contaminant power generation.
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August 7, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 5 Comments
As gasoline prices were escalating seemingly without hope of stalling or coming down, due to all-time record oil prices, and in the context of a severely weakened consumer economy, we found ourselves confronted with a major challenge to the basic assumptions of the dynamics of our economy. We have seen, in just one year, our […]
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July 19, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The former vice president of the United States, Al Gore, yesterday announced an ambitious goal, which he says the nation can meet, of transitioning its entire domestic energy production to clean resources by 2018. The speech marks a major moment in the process of transition to the green technology boom, which will be the next step in the ongoing economic development of the United States and the world. Gore, however, warned that failing to meet the challenge to date means “the United States of America as we know it is at risk”.
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July 18, 2008 :: admin :: 2 Comments
Ladies and gentlemen: There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment.
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July 17, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 2 Comments
Former US vice-president Al Gore is calling on the nation to marshal its resources and divorce itself from the combustible fuels economy. Gore says the US can produce all its energy requirements from renewable resources within 10 years, if concerted action is taken. The bold initiative is designed to drive debate on the topic and move discussions about how to deal with high fuel prices toward the new opportunity they provide for funding renewable infrastructure development.
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July 12, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 3 Comments
The chairman of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Stephen Johnson, says the Clean Air Act is “ill-suited” to fighting the greenhouse effect, and that Congress should pass laws mandating the regulation of carbon emissions, with global warming in mind. The move may lead to a more comprehensive regulatory regime, but as the Guardian newspaper notes: “Last year’s Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court ruling had found that greenhouse gases can be regulated under the U.S. Clean Air Act. The decision pressured the EPA to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and trucks.”
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July 11, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 11 Comments
Special transparent dyes coating glass or plastic panes concentrate the Sun’s rays, guiding them to solar-voltaic cells lining the edges, allowing a window to act as a solar panel with 10 times the electricity generation capacity of solar cells, by current standards. The ‘organic solar concentrator’ (OSC) system also reduces cost, by reducing the surface area that needs to be coated by solar-voltaic cells and by eliminating the need for large concentrating mirrors and sun-tracking mechanisms.
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July 10, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 3 Comments
T. Boone Pickens has started what USA Today reports will be “the biggest public policy ad campaign ever” to promote a national economic shift from oil to renewable fuels, primarily wind. The campaign is centered on the PickensPlan website, which shows the oil tycoon explaining how and why the US can and must break its dependence on foreign oil —for which American consumers pay $700 billion per year— by transitioning to an energy economy founded on exploiting the massive wind resources of the Great Plains.
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July 10, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In 1991, a national wind resource inventory taken by the U.S. Department of Energy startled the world when it reported that the three most wind-rich states —North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas— had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. Now a new study by a team of engineers at Stanford reports that the wind energy potential is actually substantially greater than that estimated in 1991.
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July 10, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: No Comment Yet
When Austin Energy, the publicly owned utility in Austin, Texas, launched its GreenChoice program in 2000, customers opting for green electricity paid a premium. During the fall of 2005, climbing natural gas prices pulled conventional electricity costs above those of wind-generated electricity, the source of most green power. This crossing of the cost lines in Austin and several other communities is a milestone in the U.S. shift to a renewable energy economy.
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July 9, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Petroleum is the most pervasive base resource other than water in the global economy of the 21st century, and as demand is exploding, production is nearing its geological peak, and untenable price increases are hitting a strained economy hard. Oil prices could be in a stagflation lock, unable to readjust to consumers’ means, unable to compete as emerging energy sources repeatedly slash development and commercial prices. Whatever factors are at play, crude oil prices have jumped over 900% since 1998, and it looks like production cannot meet global demand.
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July 8, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 2 Comments
As we search for a new way to fuel the global economy, in the midst of a rapidly spreading climate crisis, skyrocketing petroleum-based fuel prices and the likely imminent moment of peak oil production, it is instructive to look at the possibility that energy we already know how to access might be derived in (not cleaner, but) entirely clean ways. If we can find new sources of hydrocarbon fuels, can we access their energy content without burning them or emitting carbon?
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July 7, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 3 Comments
The green technology transition is gaining momentum. Japanese auto manufacturer Toyota has announced it will add solar panels to some of its fleet of hybrid vehicles. The “high-end” third-generation Prius models will sport Kyocera-produced solar panels on the roof, aimed at assisting with powering the air-conditioning and other peripheral operations, freeing up battery energy to give the hybrid engines more non-combustion mileage.
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June 24, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: One Comment
The New Scientist magazine this week heralds a ‘plan B for biofuel’, making the case that starch-based ethanol fuels, like corn ethanol in the US, may drive up food prices, but a new generation of biofuels will sidestep the problem and help ethanol live up to its promise. “The corn required to fill an SUV tank with bioethanol just once could feed someone in Africa for a year” reports the UK-based magazine, but most biomass is not the starch currently being used to create bioethanol.
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June 18, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 2 Comments
The International Energy Agency has called for a major increase in the price at which carbon emissions are traded in carbon-offsetting schemes designed to reduce emissions. The IEA, as reported by the Financial Times, has called for carbon offsets to be priced closer to $200 per ton, in order to bring carbon-trading schemes in line with the costs of reducing emissions. EU carbon offsets are currently priced at roughly $43 per ton.
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May 21, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: One Comment
Albert Einstein has earned over the course of the last 103 years the reputation as the most revolutionary and visionary scientist in modern history, perhaps of all time. His discoveries fundamentally changed what science could claim as knowledge about the physical laws of the universe, and the revelations that stem from his work have affected —in some way or another— virtually every aspect of life in the human world. In the spirit of his ability to go beyond the known scientific tradition, we offer his complete original treatise on Special Relativity…
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May 10, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Food riots from Haiti to west Africa, Egypt and the Philippines, in recent weeks, have sparked concern among policy-makers, diplomats and economists, that the current state of the global food supply is so precarious that such violence will spread and political and economic instability could follow. Concerns about the American economy, home to most productive grain-producing region in the world, and a shift to biofuels there, could mean added difficulty in bringing food prices down.
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April 21, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
The Tigray Project in northern Ethiopia sounds too good to be true. It is said to demonstrate how sustainable agriculture can lead to increased crop yields, raised water tables, improved soil fertility, increased incomes and empowering of women. The government has now adopted the project’s approach for combating land degradation and poverty in the whole country. SDU went there to check out if the project is as good as rumour has it.
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April 9, 2008 :: admin :: One Comment
In a period of roughly 18 months, the price of corn across central American markets has doubled, making staple foodstuffs too expensive for many in the region. Today, what is described as an “angry mob” of protesters suffering food scarcity attacked the government palace in Port-au-Prince; UN peacekeepers responded by firing teargas, while food markets remained closed throughout.
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April 5, 2008 :: jr3o :: No Comment Yet
As governments, businesses and scientists work toward creating cost-effective solutions for zero-emissions propulsion technologies, the possibility of a zero-combustion energy production and industrial fabrication model is emerging. Preservation of the natural environment and containment of emissions-induced global climate change both require new technologies that will allow full economic output, including industry and transport, that eliminate the need for combustible fuels.
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February 8, 2008 :: jr3o :: No Comment Yet
A new study has shown that raindrops can be used to produce electricity. The key is the mechanical energy of the raindrops, meaning the energy contained in their motion and in the way that force is diffused when striking a given type of surface.In this case the surface is PVDF (polyvinylidene diflouride) plastic, which is able to release a charge when temporarily “deformed” by mechanical activity, such as being struck by a moving object. A sheet of PVDF just 25 micrometers thick (1,000 = 1 milimeter) receives the impact of raindrops, and the effect is the release of energy, which can be harvested and turned into electricity.
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February 7, 2008 :: jr3o :: No Comment Yet
A new breakthrough in propulsion technology may enable a fuel-free engine with no moving parts to use microwaves to push satellites through space and automobiles on earth. The science is complicated and controversial, but appears to be sound and takes advantage of Einstein’s landmark theory of relativity to turn contained microwaves into a propulsion system, in the form of a non-mechanical engine.
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December 3, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Between the years 2008 and 2020, we are likely to see a still unimaginably sweeping shift away from fossil fuels and high-contamination modes of powering our economy. The transition will have a political component, but will be driven mostly by cost concerns, resource scarcity, and public demand for cleaner air and responsible climate policy, a demand which is not ideological in nature.
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November 18, 2007 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Due to the science we already have, the laws we have to govern our own activity and to force government to act for the public health, we face the real possibility of being forced, in American courts, in the future, to pay for damage done to the most affected populations in other parts of the world, as a result of inaction by our government. And if not in court, then as a matter of the de facto urgencies of international political stability.
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September 23, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
The race to tap large quantities of underground, geothermal energy is heating up. In a recent bid to solve their country’s demand for clean energy, the Swiss are digging deep, and the Earth is responding. A scientist at MIT, in the US, says 40% of US geothermal sources could power the entire country’s energy needs in excess of 56,000 times.
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September 10, 2007 :: jr3o :: No Comment Yet
HotSpring is a new debate and discussion forum, aimed at providing users with the flexibility to pool their resources, spout outlandish ideas, and test the ability of readers to suspend their disbelief long enough to contemplate new directions in science, technology and communications.
The project is aimed at anyone with a mind for getting beyond the obvious and embracing the subtleties of truly innovative thought, and our ultimate goal will be to create a deep-running current of talent and criticism that will lead to opportunities for the implementation of complex technological solutions and genuine conditional compensation for those who contribute materially to their development.
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