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Top 50 Environmental Blogs – Going where no man has gone before

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Let me start with a little house keeping. By my count and it is the only one the matters I have posted 24 Environmental Blogs that I think are the best on the planet and a little chunk of each blog. This includes 4 lists of Blogs many of whom I did not think were all that great or at least belong say in the last 25 of the best. I also included one Blog that has not been updated for nearly a year. However its content is still one of the best on topic – in this case Biomass. I do not even know if that person died, got bored or got a real job and I do not really care.

Today we tackle the issue of disposable diapers or more importantly Mothers and Babies. There is nothing more dangerous then to comment on women pumped on hormones or little cute tikes. Also HUGE disclaimer, I have no kids. I must say however that Disposable Diapers are just wrong. Before elaborating, first I must say:

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Community Energy Systems is a nonprofit 501c3 organization chartered in Illinois in Sangamon County. As such we are dependent on public donations for our continued existence. We also use Adsense as a fundraiser. Please click on the ads that you see on this page, on our main page and on our Bulletin Board (Refrigerator Magnets) and you will be raising money for CES. We say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all who do.

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To continue this rant, first using oil for anything should be carefully regulated. IT IS A FINITE RESOURCE. We need it for things like Moon Rocket Parts, and medicines. Not plastic shopping bags and disposable diapers. Second the garbage dump is the last place for feces and urine (pay attention pet owners). We have elaborate water treatment plants set up to handle that stuff and that is where it should go. This is no “carbon” argument. Washing and drying diapers takes a lot of energy. Even if you use a clothesline to dry them it is still a huge energy bite. I am not unmindful of the labor that this requires for already harried mothers BUT making them out of biodegradable materials doesn’t solve the problem. 14 cloth diapers should get a kid to other forms of underwear and they probably should last through 2 kids, so there! I have said my piece. Plus if we were using all the pee and poo that exists on this planet to fertilize the Earth we would be off of oil based fertilizers all together but we would have to create a system for that with careful monitoring…People really do learn to “throw stuff away” and “burn stuff up” at an early age.

OK so back to what I call Mommy sites BUT many people call Parenting Sites:

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Here is a list:

http://www.reducereuserecycle.co.uk/greendirectory/kids_green_sites.php

Here is another list:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/organic-parenting/7701

I by the way like the Green Daily people a lot but they are awfully pure. Here is another:

http://www.wellsphere.com/wellpage/green-infant

I will give you 4 sites that I like and you can go from there

http://www.gogreenbabyshop.com/

Welcome to Our New Website!!

If you’re new to Go Green Baby Co. (GGBC) – please take a moment to learn more ‘about us‘. We are a family owned retail store in Salisbury, MD. We compiled all of our favorite natural & organic baby products and put them all in one place for you.

We’re so excited to bring you so many new products. We have the BRAND NEW Thirsties Duo Diaper…this is a fabulous new diaper! The Flip & Econobum diapers are IN STOCK! Smartipants?! They’re in stock too! Kate Quinn Fall/Winter collection is here and so is Under the Nile’s fabulous Fall line along with brand new plush toys. Looking for holiday gifts? We just re-stocked all Plan Toys!!

Don’t forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter!

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Why do I like them? They sell cloth diapers right up front. Next up

http://www.greatgreenbaby.com/

Bamboo-Baby-Cap-2

This isn’t a cap for bamboo babies as the title might suggest, but a baby cap manufactured from 95% bamboo.

The big advantages of bamboo are it’s antimicrobial properties as well as giving protection to 98% of harmful UV rays.

Apart from that, they stay in place on the head and they look great.

Available from Babybambu

Price $5

http://www.babybambu.com/Bamboo-Baby-Hat-p/bamboo-baby-cap.htm

This isn’t a cap for bamboo babies as the title might suggest, but a baby cap manufactured from 95% bamboo.

The big advantages of bamboo are it’s antimicrobial properties as well as giving protection to 98% of harmful UV rays.

Apart from that, they stay in place on the head and they look great.

Available from Babybambu

Price $5

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Why do I like them besides the Bamboo cuddly apparel. they suck on ever nuck before they recommend them. Next up:

http://mindfulmomma.typepad.com/

Fair Trade Gift Ideas + $165 Worth of Giveaways!!

As you rack your brain trying to come up with the ‘perfect’ gift for Grandma or that little something for your favorite babysitter, it’s important to remember that there is more to gift giving than the gift itself. There are people behind the gift.  People who work in the fields, operate machines, package it up and send it on its merry way.

So when you make a purchase, you’re really making 2 decisions.  One for the gift itself and the other for the manner in which it was made.  When you buy Fair Trade you can be assured that the people who made the product were treated fairly and the process was an equitable one.  Some of the benefits for buying Fair Trade include:

  • Fair wages for workers
  • Safe and healthy working conditions
  • Equitable partnerships between producers and marketers
  • Long-term working relationships
  • Environmentally sustainable practices followed

To create a little excitement about buying Fair Trade, I contacted some of my favorite Fair Trade vendors about doing a giveaway.  And WOW did they ever come through with some wonderful prizes!!  Read on to learn out about these terrific companies and some of the really great Fair Trade products they have to offer.

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Fair Trade and Babies? WOW Finally:

http://eco-chick.com/ Eco-Chick · The modern girl’s guide to living green & fabulous.

Smoky Eyes How To with Christopher Drummond Natural Makeup

^ More

Into the Hermitage: Low-Impact Gypsy Life on the Road

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by Stephanie Rogers · 12/07/09

hermitage-1

Few of us can even begin to imagine whittling our possessions down to just a few boxes full of items and living in a room that measures barely eight feet wide. But what if that room was a recycled gypsy home on wheels, with an ever-changing view of the Scottish countryside out of reclaimed leaded glass church windows?

Welcome to the utterly enchanting reality of artist Rima Staines and her partner Tui, a musician. The talented pair live a nomadic existence in their wooden horse box turned charming miniature home, complete with a double bed, rows of bookshelves and a wood stove – all documented on their blog, Into the Hermitage.

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OK everyone is going to holler, the Eco-Chick has nothing to do with babies, or being a mother or educational programs for kids. To them I say, Exactly. There is more to being a woman then being a mother. Eco-Chick is slick, entertaining, sophisticated and FUN. Every Mother (excuse me) Parent should have one.

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Can Humans Live Off The Land – And by this I do not mean a return to a hunter gather society

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I mean can humans live with out a growth model of economics like corporate capitalism?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091013105631.htm

Sustainable Architecture: Setting Sail In An Ecological ‘Earthship’

ScienceDaily (Oct. 16, 2009) — Could sustainable architecture address pollution, climate change and resource depletion by helping us build self-sufficient, off-grid, housing from “waste”, including vehicle tires and metal drinks containers? That’s the question researchers at the University of South Australia address in a new paper appearing in the International Journal of Sustainable DesignMartin Freney of the department of Art, Architecture and Design has taken a critical look at the work of architect, Michael Reynolds of Taos, New Mexico, USA, who has experimented with radical house designs, and construction techniques over the past three and half decades. Reynolds designs incorporate passive heating and cooling, water catchment and sewage treatment, renewable energy, and even food production. These houses, which Reynolds calls “Earthships” are essentially independent of external utilities and waste disposal. On the face of it, they offer, an environmentally benign approach to housing.

A common method of responding to unsustainable housing is to design an energy-efficient home using “natural building” methods, Freney points out. He adds that Reynolds has already demonstrated that essentially free building materials resulted in greater financial independence for the owner-occupiers of his houses and when he added off-the-grid power and water systems he found that it was possible to reduce his utilities bills to practically zero.

Freney, while enthusiastic about the potential of Reynolds’ approach is also more realistic about the actual sustainability of Earthships that are off the utility grids. After all, he says, to a certain degree, Earthships are still locked into potentially unsustainable systems because they rely on a technological society for the production of the vehicle tires and aluminum can bricks from which they are constructed and the high-tech components such as solar panels, electronics, pumps, tanks, glass and cement that allow them to go off-grid.

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These people are soooooo cooool

http://www.earthship.net/

1. Ekofilm ends, Main Prize goes to Garbage Warrior

Education/videos, movies, tv

On Saturday 10 October, the gala evening with awarding of prizes for the 35th annual film festival MFF Ekofilm was held in the Municipal Theatre in ?eský Krumlov. Prizes were awarded in 13 categories. The Main Prize of Ekofilm and also the..

2.  The earthship is here, in in the hinterlands of Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu, India

Global Network/India

Kodaikanal: A novel idea is taking shape in the hinterlands of Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu, even as you are reading this. Alex Leeor, 35, from Brighton, UK, has arranged about 800 tyres and a few truckloads of mud(as seen in pic above) on a remote,…

3. EVE gets plastered

Buildings/Communities

Earthship Village Ecologies (E.V.E.) gets an initial coat on the second level roof. We have also observed (in the developed countries) a barrier  between the peoples of the world  and  an affordable carbon zero/sustainable living…

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Tomorrow:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33357744/ns/us_news-environment/

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A Volkswagen In Every Basement? What are you offloading

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This was an eye catching headline and hundreds of bloggers posted it. But what are they really accomplishing here. If the people have electric water heaters maybe they are accomplishing something. If the people have gas water heaters then the impact is much less. You have off loaded an inefficient gas heater for an efficient one. But if you installed a solar water heater well…then you would be doing something. This is just a publicity stunt…AND apparently it worked:

http://www.afp.com/afpcom/en/

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/284909,volkswagen-plan-would-rev-up-power-for-apartments.html

Volkswagen plan would rev up power for apartments

by Aurelia End Aurelia End – Wed Sep 9, 11:06 am ET

Salzgitter,Germany – Automotive giant Volkswagen and a small German power company unveiled Wednesday a plan to build up to 100,000 mini power stations in apartment house basements. The generators would run off more or less the same natural-gas- powered engines as those that currently drive some

Volkswagen Golf cars. Exhaust heat from the engines would warm up water for showers and central heating.“It’s a true revolution in the electricity business,” said Christian Friege, chief executive of Lichtblick, a small “green energy” supplier to homes and offices which teamed up with
Volkswagen for the project. The plan, sealed with an agreement at Volkswagen’s Salzgitter factory in northern Germany, is a challenge to big utilities that generate power with huge steam turbines driven by nuclear or coal heat. Germany’s infrastructure could help make the plan a reality, with gas, mostly drilled in Siberia, already being piped to most city streets in Germany. Volkswagen said the “green” internal-combustion engines it has developed for cars were quiet enough to operate in building basements and emitted 60 per cent less carbon dioxide than comparable thermal power plants. Lichtblick, based in Hamburg, is a company with 550,000 customers and a focus on supplying non-nuclear electricity. Engineers said the key to the system’s success would be a home power station’s efficiency, with up to 94 per cent of the energy in the gas used for heating or to make electricity, whereas gas-fired power plants only use 40 to 60 per cent..

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This was YAHOO’s take on it:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090909/ts_afp/germanyclimatewarmingtechnologycompanylichtblickvw_20090909151116

Home power plants project unveiled in Germany

 

Home power plants project unveiled in Germany

AFP/DDP – A technician of German automaker Volkswagen’s adjusts a mini gas-fired power plant at the VW plant …

by Aurelia End Aurelia End – Wed Sep 9, 11:06 am ET

BERLIN (AFP) – An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people’s basements and produce as much electricity as two nuclear reactors within a year.

The Hamburg-based renewable energy group Lichtblick and its automaker partner Volkswagen say the plants would produce not only heating and hot water but also electricity, with any excess power fed into the local grid.

The two firms said the concept of “SchwarmStrom” (literally, “swarm power”) would allow Germany to abandon nuclear and coal power stations sooner and help compensate for the volatility of renewables like wind and solar power.

The plants also reduce harmful carbon dioxide emissions by up to 60 percent compared to conventional heat and electricity generation, they added in a joint statement.

In the coming year the programme will install 100,000 of the mini plants, producing between them 2,000 megawatts of electricity, the same as two nuclear plants, Lichtblick and VW said.

“SchwarmStrom is revolutionising power production in Germany. It clears the way for more renewable energy and an exit from power from nuclear and coal,” the statement added.

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These people ran it too:

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/09/10/0246238

http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20090909-21821.htmlhttp://www.france24.com/en/20090909-home-power-plants-project-unveiled-germany

http://www.german-info.com/press_shownews.php?pos=Economy&pid=1600

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Barack Obama And Stupid – The situation just got out of hand

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The public DEMANDS that the police investigate just about everything. The police DEMAND respect. College Professors always DEMAND respect. There was an awful lot of DEMANDING going on in the situation. The thing is I can sympathize with everyone involved. See before there was driving while BLACK, there was driving while HIPPIE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPd4FmlpVxI

Anytime the police saw long hair, they presumed that there was drugs involved. My girlfriend had a nickname for me. She called me PC and it did not stand for politically correct. It stood for Probable Cause.

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

At that time I had a brother who rode around with me a lot. He did not like the police – he called them PIGS. So when I got pulled over and he was along he would start making PIG noises.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU8LBnOJNxk

So I wanted to “kill” them both because the situation was so stupid. I believe that is what Obama meant but did not say, that the situation was STUPID not the people involved because see when you call people stupid they go getting all there back up and stuff. So in that spirit the next several posts will look at things in the environment and energy world that I think are stupid. A list follows:

The phrase Global Warming

Burning things

Cars

Windows

Apples in Illinois in the Winter

Illegal drugs

My mother

Eating meat

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Since I owe Dan Piraro for letting me post his cartoons and I share his concerns, Let us start with the last one first. If we are going to admit that Burning Things is Stupid (more on that later) then we have to admit that there are only several sources of legitimate power. These are geothermal, tidal, wind and solar. Just to keep things simple while this is a lot of power it is still finite. ALL food is solar power. No Sun no food. So when we become rational and we may be in the process of doing that, would we eat meat? The answer is probably not. Here is Dan and the Washington Post’s take on it:

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Prius vs. Prime Rib

If you are a person concerned with what you can do to help mitigate climate change, read this short article from the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/28/AR2009072800390.html:}

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The Washington Post opines:

Gut Check

The Meat of the Problem

By Ezra Klein

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The debate over climate change has reached a rarefied level of policy abstraction in recent months. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade? Upstream or downstream? Should we auction permits? Head-scratching is, at this point, permitted. But at base, these policies aim to do a simple thing, in a simple way: persuade us to undertake fewer activities that are bad for the atmosphere by making those activities more expensive. Driving an SUV would become pricier. So would heating a giant house with coal and buying electricity from an inefficient power plant. But there’s one activity that’s not on the list and should be: eating a hamburger.

If it’s any consolation, I didn’t like writing that sentence any more than you liked reading it. But the evidence is strong. It’s not simply that meat is a contributor to global warming; it’s that it is a huge contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global transportation sector.

According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Some of meat’s contribution to climate change is intuitive. It’s more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of the contribution is gross. “Manure lagoons,” for instance, is the oddly evocative name for the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. And some of it would make Bart Simpson chuckle. Cow gas — interestingly, it’s mainly burps, not farts — is a real player.

But the result isn’t funny at all: Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. “How convenient for him,” was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. “He’s a vegetarian.”

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Did you get the half hearted humor – gut check?

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Farming In The Sky – Or turning our skyscrappers into farms

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SkyScrapers are energy dogs from a lot of perspectives most notably the energy needed to hoist people into the sky…so this concept probably won’t work. But from a local food perspective and from a built environment perspective It has some attraction.

On a personal note, I normally have little conscience about posting stuff here from other sources but this is from a blog, the person clearly put a lot of work into it and the pictures are really beautiful. So I am going to post a little of it here…for the rest goto:

http://www.land-force.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/17/vertical-farms/

20 Vertical Farming Pics, Designs & Concepts

One couldn’t say that the concept of vertical farming isn’t controversial, but they could say that it has serious merits that need to be considered on both sides of the issues.

 

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What is a vertical farm?  The basic premise, as you see in this image, is to be able to grow food in urban areas by creating tall buildings where, instead of each floor having offices, each floor is in essence its own super greenhouse, where different crops can be grown to feed people within its own community.  The idea is to not only be able to feed the community, but to protect the land that’s being damaged by over-farming and making sure that there will still be enough food for an ever growing population.

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Of course, not all designs would be the same, but this model of a design for the city of Seattle helps us to see how it would work.  It’s integrated into a city plan so that it fits in, and has areas where people can go inside to not only tend to the plants, but could actually buy their produce at the same time.

 

 

 

 


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Thinking of vertical farm in terms of super stores fits a model like this one, where the ground floor has everything a traditional supermarket would have,

 

 

 

 


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While upper levels would contain areas for growing produce.  This particular example tries to highlight how power might be created for all the energy needed to grow crops in urban areas, as the designs for vertical farming wouldn’t be able to provide natural light for all of the crops, so they’d need enhancement from artificial lighting.  It’s one of the major criticisms of trying to have vertical farms.

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There Is Enough Wind Power Alone In The US – Knock knock knocking on Heaven’s door

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(it’s jam band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

m2feoIM9baI&feature=fvst )

There appears to be 2 schools of thought here. Or maybe three. The first is the literal image itself, that of asking to get into heaven. Instead of an automatic sorting mechanism  for heaven and hell maybe everyone has to ask to get in. A second though closely related meaning is that someone is lucky enough to escape hell but then are left knocking at a closed gate because they do not deserve to get in. But most are struck by its symbolic “nearness” to the act of Luther nailing his list of “short comings” on the Catholic Church’s door and the Protestant Reformation that followed:

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=KgNBqNswpVL9y

RwgzcHr0l9JqLd74yGQN4hyhPbX4QF3JtNy1bQT!-69977801!-16421419?docId=5007265930

Indeed the comparison to the ever opening of the 5 dominate religions (Chinese tao/numerology/spirits, Jewish, Hindu, Christian and Muslim, in no particular order) to include and love more “unlike” individual is the knocking I hear.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhCM88LhoW0

So,.. it is change you hear blowing. The general public has been treated to the coal/oil/natural gas chorus for years, “Alternatives will never do it all! We will need all forms of energy to supply all the needs!” This is nothing more than a complicated hiding behind your mother’s skirt form of argument. Or a slightly loopy form of the ugly stepchild argument – “he maybe ugly but he is related by marriage”. But now we all know that wind ALONE can supply all the power we need…DUH

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/study-suggests-wind-power-potential-is-much-higher-than-current-estimates/

July 16, 2009, 12:50 pm

Study Suggests Wind Power Potential Is Much Higher Than Current Estimate

By John Lorinc

Study  In the lower 48 states, the potential from wind power is 16 times more than total electricity demand in the United States, the researchers suggest.

Global wind energy potential is considerably higher than previous estimates by both wind industry groups and government agencies, according to a Harvard University study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

The new research surfaced just weeks after T. Boone Pickens, citing rising financing costs, scaled back his plans for the world’s largest wind farm in west Texas.

Using data from thousands of meteorological stations, the Harvard team estimated the world wind power potential to be 40 times greater than total current power consumption. A previous study cited in the paper put that multiple at about 7 times.

In the lower 48 states, the potential from wind power is 16 times more than total electricity demand in the United States, the researchers suggested – significantly greater than a 2008 Department of Energy study that projected wind could supply a fifth of all electricity in the country by 2030.

While remote regions of Russia and Canada have the greatest theoretical potential, the Harvard study pointed out that there are real gains to be made in high-emission nations, especially China, which has been rapidly constructing coal plants. “Large-scale development of wind power in China could allow for an 18-fold increase in electricity supply relative to consumption reported for 2005,” the Harvard study said.

The findings are “further validation of what we’ve been saying – that the United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind,” said Michael Goggin, an electricity industry analyst for the American Wind Energy Association.

The authors based their calculations on the deployment of 2.5- to 3-megawatt wind turbines situated either in accessible rural areas that are neither frozen nor forested, or relatively shallow offshore locations. They also used a conservative 20 percent estimate for capacity factor, a measure of how much energy a given turbine actually produces.

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

So maybe everyone should buy one of these:

 http://www.windenergy.com/index_wind.htm

Southwest Windpower is the world’s leading producer of small wind turbines. Since 1987, we’ve pioneered new technologies to make renewable energy simple. Whether you’re looking to reduce your home electric bills or power a home, boat or business off the grid, we offer a range of wind power systems to help you.

LATEST NEWS

or one of these:

http://www.windsolarusa.com/

WindSolarUSA

Michelle Marley

PO Box 168

Owaneco, IL 6255

michelle@windsolarusa.com

217.825.4206

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV6ETVQgob0

Next week….I shot the sheriff (just kidding)

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I Am Buying A Stairway To Heaven – Low Heat Geothermal Extraction

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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(Offsite link), Linked In(Offsite link) and Twitter(Offsite link).

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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:

— 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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Flying Wind Turbines – Energy for Heaven on Earth

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What exactly is Heaven on Earth?

http://blogcritics.org/books/article/heaven-on-earth-the-rise-and/

The phrase “Heaven on Earth” in the context of the book is lifted from a phrase by Moses Hess who, in his Communist Confession of Faith, noted that while Christians imagine a heavenly joy “We, on the other hand, will have this heaven on earth.” It’s exactly this kind of religious fervor for the concepts of socialism (and communism – the terms are used interchangeably) that gave socialist regimes the license to do whatever it took to cram Paradise down people’s throats. And when people rejected the “freedom” offered to them, the results were horrific: Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Soviet Republic, and Mao’s China. In total, Muravchik estimates that more than 100 million people were murdered in the name of socialism since 1917.

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Some people mistake it for State Run Fascism.

http://lis.net.au/marijonas/

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Unfolding History

The Heaven On Earth phrase well illustrates the aspirations of most humanity. It is the point at which all our individual and collective efforts from across the ages of humanity are fulfilled. It is the point at which we are freed by the truth.

As we proceed on our living journey, the words of Meister Johann Eckhart, a 14th century mystic, might help to re-focus our individual tasks: “Earth should become like heaven, so God can find a home here”. Herein are our individual and mutual tasks – to transform the things of ourselves which we sense in our heart are incompatible with heaven. When we make the change, we create a difference, which in turn becomes challenged. When we hold our ground, the world around us changes in consequence. By changing ourselves, we change the world.

The world is in extreme crisis and needs our individually unique care. The topics presented on this site are those which the author emphasizes for humanity’s healing.

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Some confuse it with theocracy.

 http://books.google.com/books?id=isWUqKBcb1QC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=heaven+on+earth+phrase&source=bl&ots=i7j2kItMfh&sig=gtBxdCX01G3Co8I4Ar6dewqc8qc&hl=en&ei=TqRcSrGNJ4fkNb6K_b8C&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8

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While others are simply obscure…

But Flying Turbines are much more practical:

http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2009/06/16/turbines-in-the-sky/

Turbines in the sky

June 16, 2009 11:44am

by Kate Mackenzie

 

Magenn’s MARS prototype

Wired takes a look at several companies working on high altitude wind turbines: ranging from floating, kite-like devices tethered to long power cables to quaint-looking power-generating flying machines.

The devices are very diverse. Magenn’s helium-filled devices resemble floating kites; Sky Windpower has a ‘controlled helicopter’ with four rotary blades keeping it suspended. Kite Gen’s devices describe a figure eight in the air.

There’s no doubt the wind is stronger at high altitudes, and the devices would take up less ground space, perhaps avoiding one key objection to wind turbines. The attractions are many:

Wind’s power — energy which can be used to do work like spinning magnets to generate electricity — varies with the cube of its speed. So, a small increase in wind speed can lead to a big increase in the amount of mechanical energy you can harvest. High-altitude wind blows fast, is spread nicely across the globe, and is easier to predict than terrestrial wind.

Companies also claim the devices would pose less of a threat to avian life, and emit lower noise pollution than regular wind turbines.

But they’re not without drawbacks.

High-altitude winds, although they are far stronger than terrestrial winds, don’t offer any solution to the ‘baseload’ problem, the inconsistency of supply affecting many renewables. In a article in Energies journal:

Because jet streams vary locally and seasonally, however, the high-altitude wind power resource is less steady than needed for baseload power without large amounts of storage or continental-scale transmission grids, due to the meandering and unsteady nature of the jet streams.

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Please see the rest of the article for more info

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmxB2BwVufA&feature=fvst

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Solar Power From Space To Heaven – We concentrated on hell last week

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while this may sound like pie in the sky:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/282700.html

Did you know that that phrase was coined by famous labor organizer Joe Hill?

OH sorry

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/07/will-the-stars-align-for-space-based-solar-power.ars

Will the stars align for space-based solar power?

The high cost of putting hardware into orbit would seem to rule out space-based solar power on financial grounds, but several companies are betting that technology has changed the equation. Here’s how such systems would work.

By John Timmer | Last updated July 9, 2009 12:30 PM C

 

Will the stars align for space-based solar power?

Although the US has plenty of terrain that’s well placed for producing solar power, the intermittent nature of that power and the distances of these sites from major population centers on the east coast puts severe constraints on what we can do with it. Space-based solar power, which can gather energy around the clock and transmit it to most of the populated areas of the planet, provides a way around these limits, one that was already being contemplated before the energy shocks of the 1970s.

Unfortunately, the prohibitive launch costs and challenges of sending the energy back to earth have left matters at the contemplation stage, but with the current focus on renewable energy, several companies are now betting that we’ll see hardware in space well before the next decade is over.

Going commercial

To understand what’s changed, we talked with William Maness and Philip Owen of PowerSat, one of a handful of companies planning to commercialize space-based power. Maness emphasized that the systems won’t require any new technologies, saying, “We aren’t doing science fiction, although it sounds like it; we’re looking for a steep decline in the cost curve, but no breakthroughs are required.”

PowerSat hopes to combine several recent developments, most of which serve to cut down on the weight of what’s put into orbit. At least one of these has found applications on earth: thin-film solar cells (PowerSat is looking at CIGS-based cells—Copper, Indium, Gallium, and Selenium—on a titanium or aluminum substrate). These can reach high efficiencies despite being only microns thick.

To deploy these in space without heavy equipment, PowerSat is looking to leverage some of the testing NASA has done on the use of inflatable structures in space. All of that means that far more energy-producing hardware can be put in space as a single unit. Maness says that the company’s models predict that it can get about 17MW out of a single 10-ton unit.

Most proposals for space-based solar have involved a constellation of satellites, each transferring those 17MW to a central unit for transmission back to earth. This adds to the complexity of the system and means at least one satellite has to integrate a very large amount of power. PowerSat hopes to avoid all that. The satellites will receive a pilot signal from the ground and use that to coordinate their energy-carrying return signal to the ground-based receiver. “The satellites act as a radio frequency cloud to create a phase array of phased arrays,” Maness says.

When the microwave signal hits the ground, the transmission from each satellite should be additive—all of which dramatically cuts down the weight and complexity of the hardware that has to be put into orbit.

The other place that PowerSat plans to save weight is in propulsion. “Traditionally, powersets are in geosynchronoous orbit and relied on a chemical tug to pull them out to geo,” Maness said. But NASA’s work with ion engines, which are lightweight but require an electric power source, have provided an alternate method—clearly, once the solar arrays unfurl, there will be no shortage of power.

When asked about the risk of opening up something that large amidst the junk in low earth orbit, Maness said that “a collision would have very little impact outside some small, critical areas.” In most cases, space junk would rip straight through the thin film material.

This setup will allow PowerSat to “start in all sorts of initial orbits” and take six to eight months to transfer to a geosynchronous orbit. “We can focus on the lowest cost ride,” Maness said. All told, these differences should mean that launch weight is cut by two-thirds compared to more traditional schemes—the 17MW satellite will come in at about 10 tons. And, since launch weight means dollars, this represents a huge cost savings.

Grounding the power

On the ground, the microwave power sent by the satellites is received by a structure that’s about a mile wide and between one and two miles long, depending on how far north of the equator it’s based. Maness says that there are chunks of unallocated microwave frequency that can easily handle the 230 watts per square meter that’s allowed by the EPA. Despite the size, the cost of the ground stations are only a small fraction of the total expense; PowerSat estimates it at $100 million or so. That’s largely because the hardware is very diffuse. Rain and sun can pass right through it, and Maness suggested the ideal location might be over an orchard or corn field, where the added heat could be advantageous.

And there is some added heat; models suggest about two degrees Fahrenheit for every 10 minutes in the core of the signal—about a quarter of what you’d get on a sunny day at the beach, Maness said. He indicated that the EPA had done extensive testing, and birds and other animals that might be bothered by the microwaves simply leave the area. It’s not completely without effect, though: “Your cell phone will definitely stop working,” Maness said.

http://arstechnica.com/

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okey dokey then

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL0x5wgN2Xg

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There Is Enough Wind Power To Generate The Electricity To Power The Entire World

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A very hairy paper from three Harvard Grad students purports to show that especially the USA, Canada and China have all the wind power that we need to generate all the electricity we currently need. The rest of the world does too but not within it’s own confines. In other words some areas like say the Tibetan Uplands have way more than they need and maybe landlocked Germany does not. So they would have to trade but the net wind power to generate the electricity exists according to:

Xi Lu, Michael McElroy, and Juha Kiviluoma in:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/19/0904101106.full.pdf+html?sid=12c8f234-313a-48e6-8e65-a59a1ead2b29 

IN the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America – I tend to believe these guys-

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/19/0904101106.abstract?sid=12c8f234-313a-48e6-8e65-a59a1ead2b29

But all I can show you here is the abstrat because the 6 page paper is in PDF:

 

Global potential for wind-generated electricity

 

  1. Xi Lua,
  2. Michael B. McElroya,b,1 and
  3. Juha Kiviluomac

+Author Affiliations


  1. aSchool of Engineering and Applied Science, Cruft Lab 211, and

  2. bDepartment of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, 100E Peirce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; and

  3. cVTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, P. O. Box 1000, 02044 VTT, Finland

  1. Communicated by James G. Anderson, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, April 29, 2009 (received for review November 6, 2008)

 

Abstract

The potential of wind power as a global source of electricity is assessed by using winds derived through assimilation of data from a variety of meteorological sources. The analysis indicates that a network of land-based 2.5-megawatt (MW) turbines restricted to nonforested, ice-free, nonurban areas operating at as little as 20% of their rated capacity could supply >40 times current worldwide consumption of electricity, >5 times total global use of energy in all forms. Resources in the contiguous United States, specifically in the central plain states, could accommodate as much as 16 times total current demand for electricity in the United States. Estimates are given also for quantities of electricity that could be obtained by using a network of 3.6-MW turbines deployed in ocean waters with depths <200 m within 50 nautical miles (92.6 km) of closest coastlines.

 

Footnotes

  • 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mbm@seas.harvard.edu

  • Author contributions: X.L. and M.B.M. designed research; X.L. and M.B.M. performed research; X.L., M.B.M., and J.K. analyzed data; and X.L., M.B.M., and J.K. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

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http://www.pnas.org/

They have pretty pictures too.

For a not so bad summary:

Wind could power the entire world
Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
June 22, 2009

Wind power may be the key to a clean energy revolution: a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science finds that wind power could provide for the entire world’s current and future energy needs.

To estimate the earth’s capacity for wind power, the researchers first sectioned the globe into areas of approximately 3,300 square kilometers (1,274 square miles) and surveyed local wind speeds every six hours. They imagined 2.5 megawatt turbines crisscrossing the terrestrial globe, excluding “areas classified as forested, areas occupied by permanent snow or ice, areas covered by water, and areas identified as either developed or urban,” according to the paper. They also included the possibility of 3.6 megawatt offshore wind turbines, but restricted them to 50 nautical miles off the coast and to oceans depths less than 200 meters.

Using this criteria the researchers found that wind energy could not only supply all of the world’s energy requirements, but it could provide over forty times the world’s current electrical consumption and over five times the global use of total energy needs.

Turning to the world’s two largest carbon emitters, China and the United States, the researchers found that wind power has the potential to easily supply both nations.


Windmill for pumping water in Kenya
Wind turbines for power generation in Maui.

“Large-scale development of wind power in China could allow for close to an 18-fold increase in electricity supply relative to consumption reported for 2005,” the researchers write. “The bulk of this wind power, 89%, could be derived from onshore installations. The potential for wind power in the U.S. is even greater, 23 times larger than current electricity consumption, the bulk of which, 84%, could be supplied onshore.”

Expanding their view to the top ten carbon emitters, the researchers found that Russia, Canada, and the United States (in this order) had the greatest capacity for wind power. However, they note that much of the area available for wind power in Russia and Canada is far from any cities, making their construction costly. In addition, the authors note that the public may oppose wind turbines in particular areas, especially remote, ecologically sensitive regions. Still, they conclude that “despite these limitations, it is clear that wind power could make a significant contribution to the demand for electricity” in most high carbon emitting countries. 

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http://sustainablog.org/2009/02/03/wind-energy-jobs-surpass-coal-mining-jobs/

Todd Woody reported last week that the wind energy industry now employs more people than coal mining. That is 85,000 jobs in wind – a 70% increase from 2007 – to coal mining’s 81,000 jobs.

http://greenwombat.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/01/28/wind-jobs-outstrip-the-coal-industry/

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