Could give us pollution free energy! And you thought I was going to use that on jam band Friday well nooooo.

But then what does the phrase mean? Some take it in its Christian or religious context. The idea is that people try to buy their way into heaven. Some people take it to mean that the lady was on the way to buy drugs and the stairway is the high feeling. A young friend of mine reports that Jimmy Paige wrote the song under the influence of a scottish demon..in a castle they had just bought…I do not know myself but for a lively discussion please add a comment to:

http://www.captaincynic.com/thread/40522/what-does-buying-the-stairway-to-heaven-mean.htm

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Maybe it’s true that heaven can wait, but this development is pretty cool:

http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=383

Release date: July 15, 2009

Contact: Geoffrey Harvey, (509) 372-6083

New geothermal heat extraction process to deliver clean power generation

PNNL’s advanced heat recovery method makes most of low-temp ‘hot rock’ resources

PNNL’s introduction of a metal-organic heat carrier, or MOHC, in the biphasic fluid may help improve thermodynamic efficiency of the heat recovery process. This image represents the molecular makeup of one of several MOHCs.
(Original high-resolution image.)

RICHLAND, Wash. – A new method for capturing significantly more heat from low-temperature geothermal resources holds promise for generating virtually pollution-free electrical energy. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will determine if their innovative approach can safely and economically extract and convert heat from vast untapped geothermal resources.

The goal is to enable power generation from low-temperature geothermal resources at an economical cost. In addition to being a clean energy source without any greenhouse gas emissions, geothermal is also a steady and dependable source of power.

“By the end of the calendar year, we plan to have a functioning bench-top prototype generating electricity,” predicts PNNL Laboratory Fellow Pete McGrail. “If successful, enhanced geothermal systems like this could become an important energy source.” A technical and economic analysis conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that enhanced geothermal systems could provide 10 percent of the nation’s overall electrical generating capacity by 2050.

Click to watch PNNL’s Pete McGrail describe the process.

PNNL’s conversion system will take advantage of the rapid expansion and contraction capabilities of a new liquid developed by PNNL researchers called biphasic fluid. When exposed to heat brought to the surface from water circulating in moderately hot, underground rock, the thermal-cycling of the biphasic fluid will power a turbine to generate electricity.

To aid in efficiency, scientists have added nanostructured metal-organic heat carriers, or MOHCs, which boost the power generation capacity to near that of a conventional steam cycle. McGrail cited PNNL’s nanotechnology and molecular engineering expertise as an important factor in the development, noting that the advancement was an outgrowth of research already underway at the lab.

EMSL, The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Follow PNNL on Facebook, Linked In and Twitter.

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For another take on it:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/buying-a-stairway-to-heaven/

29 May 2006

Buying a stairway to heaven?

Filed under:

• Climate Science
• Greenhouse gases

— david @ 8:33 am

Just in the last year or so, a new type of scheme for reducing personal carbon emissions has appeared, the remarkably painless purchasing of “carbon offsets”. Carbonfund.org claims to neutralize a person’s CO₂ footprint on the Earth for the low, low price of $99 per year, plus if you act now they will throw in an extra 5 tons for free! And you get a pen! Prices listed here range from $5-30 per ton of CO₂ from a variety of similar organizations around the world. The average U.S. citizen is responsible for about 20 tons of CO₂ release per year.

Compliance with Kyoto, a mere 5% reduction in carbon emissions, was forecast by Nordhaus [2001] to cost a few percent of GDP globally. The cost to stop emission completely and immediately may not even be calculable. Carbonfund.org promises zero net emissions, for a fraction of 1% of the average U.S. income. Can this possibly be real, or are we talking indulgences and snake oil?

The idea behind carbon offsets is built upon the foundation of carbon emissions trading established by the Kyoto Protocol, a scheme called cap and trade. Carbon emissions for industries are capped at some level by regulatory permits to emit CO₂. If a company is able to cut its emissions below that level, it can sell its emission permits to another company. The cuts in emissions are thereby steered, by the invisible hand of the market, to the cheapest and most efficient means. Cap-and-trade has worked well for reduction of sulfur emissions in the U.S., that are responsible for acid rain. CO₂ emission is intrinsically even better suited for cap-and-trade, because it is a truly global pollutant, so it matters not where the CO₂ is emitted.

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You know I couldn’t resist it:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjXN3OLgoqs

or this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p3Ue3ncH3g&feature=related

be a rock and let it roll

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