Category Archives: environmentalism

Wind Turbine For 40$$ – Who says the kids of today can’t save the world?

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I did not double check to see what the exact exchange rate is. I just guessed. It’s 20 English Pounds so I just doubled it to be safe:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1046778/Student-inventor-creates-20-wind-turbine-scrap-developing-world.html

Student inventor creates £20 wind turbine out of scrap for developing world

A student has built a wind turbine from scrap to help people in the developing world.

Max Robson, 22, constructed a prototype using rubbish collected from skips, tips and bins including an old bike frame and wheel bearings, the magneto from a Vespa, a battery from a Ford Fiesta and bits of wood.

It is so simple, he says, it can be built by unskilled workers in less than a day anywhere in the world.  

Max Robson designed a wind turbine made from 100 percent recycled materials

His turbine works by converting the energy in wind into electrical energy stored in a battery. It produces an output of 11.3 watts, which is enough electricity to run lighting for 63 hours or a radio for 30 hours.

The product design student from Greenwich has just received a first class honours degree from the University of Portsmouth. He said he had always been interested in gadgets and machines and was inspired by his father Ashley’s enthusiasm

The wind turbine can be built by unskilled workers in less than a day anywhere in the world

‘My dad wanted to do something like this but I beat him to it,’ said Mr Robson.

‘He had the idea of designing a scrap wind turbine but it was my idea to use it in the developing world. I wanted to build something worthwhile and I am interested in design being environmentally friendly.’

‘This isn’t going to change lives in the developing world dramatically but a device like this could make their lives a lot easier,’ he said.

‘It cost me £20 to build the prototype and in the developing world it would be a lot less. The nearest alternative wind turbine on the market costs £2,000.’

Ashley Robson, 51, who studied mechanical engineering at the University of Portsmouth, said he was delighted his son was following in his footsteps.

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WHAT AN AMAZING YOUNG MAN!

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Clean Energy Summit – This thing has been so widely publicized that no one knows it’s going on

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I have to admit that if not for Peak Oil and Rueters, I would not have known that this was even going on.

 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/20/business/NA-US-Energy-Summit.php

Business leaders: Make renewable energy cheaper

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MY TAKE ON THIS IS MAKE TRADITIONAL ENERGY MORE EXPENSIVE BY TAXING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THEM TO PAY FOR ALL THE DAMAGE THEY DO TO THE ENVIRONMENT – oh never mind.

LAS VEGAS: Representatives from Google Inc. and General Electric Co. said Tuesday that widespread use of renewable energy in United States would be possible — if it were cheaper.

Renewable energy options will remain “boutique” industries unless their costs are cut to make them competitive with coal and other widely used power sources, said Dan Reicher, director for climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm.

Reicher spoke to a group of politicians and energy experts at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas. The meeting’s attendees said they hope to develop a national energy agenda to take to the Democratic and Republican parties at their upcoming conventions.

“There’s a whole set of factors that go into the ultimate cost of energy,” Reicher said after announcing a plan for Google to invest more than $10 million to develop “enhanced geothermal systems” technology to generate energy from rocks deep below the earth’s surface.

Google’s project replicates traditional geothermal systems deep below the Earth’s surface by circulating water through hot rock and running the steam through a turbine that generates electricity.

Google said its goal was to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity — enough to power a major city.

“These are all high-capital-costs projects,” Reicher said.

One by one, speakers at the meeting touted the benefits of various energy-related initiatives, including how large-scale solar power could generate thousands of jobs and why wind power could lessen America’s dependence on foreign oil. Extending tax credits, establishing caps on carbon emissions and modernizing the nation’s electricity grid were also ideas that speakers said would be crucial to building a “green” economy.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the energy discussion was timely, and he criticized presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain for not having a real debate about energy.

Texas oil baron T. Boone Pickens also presented his plan to develop wind energy to generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, then use natural gas to power cars until hydrogen or plug-in electric cars become widely available.

“I don’t see many people from my party,” said Pickens, a Republican. “I’m making new friends, and that’s good.”

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Here is what they have to say for theirselves. It’s a whole day!

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http://www.cleanenergysummit.org/

National Clean Energy Summit

WHEN: August 18-19, 2008
8/18/08 -Doors open at 4:00 p.m. for general registration and 3:30 for press.
8/19/08- Doors open at 7:45.

WHERE: University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV

Thank you for your interest in the Clean Energy Summit. Web registration for the summit is now closed. We will be able to accommodate walk-up registration at Cox Pavilion as capacity allows.

Industry leaders, scientists, policy experts, citizens, and the media will gather in Nevada at the national summit hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), and University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to chart a course for our nation’s clean energy future. This is a pivotal opportunity to focus on defining a policy agenda that accelerates the development of renewable energy, energy-efficiency technologies, and robust clean energy markets in Nevada, the nation, and the world.
Developing a Clean Energy Future for Nevada, the Nation, and the World

Nevada is at the epicenter in the debate of how America should generate and use energy in the future. Nevada has abundant clean energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and efficiency technologies that could be developed to meet its future energy needs. The question is whether Nevadans—and all Americans—will shift to a clean energy economy that creates less expensive and more efficient energy, cleaner air, clean energy markets, and the creation of good new jobs that strengthen and grow our economy in Nevada, the nation, and the world.

We owe it to our children and grandchildren to protect the air they breathe and our nation’s great outdoors. Nevada has the opportunity to do that and lead the nation in a clean energy revolution by developing clean, renewable energy and efficiency technologies that will meet the state’s current and future energy demands.
Once again, America can lead the way. Developing new technologies will result in a robust clean energy economy our country can be proud of while creating good-paying jobs and diversifying our economy while not polluting our air.
This is our vision for America’s future. And the National Clean Energy Summit is a pivotal opportunity to help get us there.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas is committed to increasing energy efficiency and to significantly reducing energy consumption through its energy management systems, recycling programs, and turf reduction efforts.  Our goal is to make the National Clean Energy Summit carbon neutral.

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People New To Environmentalism And The Energy Field Must State The Obvious

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Environmentalism really IS about saving the Earth. Not the rocks, the water and the oxygen some of its primary components, but the lifeforms that inhabit it. When we try to preserve the humpback whale it’s because it they are beautiful and important to us. It is also because to some extent they are sentient. We are in the midst of one of the largest die offs in terms of the number of species that were here a 1000 years ago. When we preserve a section of the planet as in a park we preserve those species but we also preserve their habitat for future generations to see.

Obviously we are one of those species. So saving the Earth means saving us too. But we are a special case because we have over populated the planet and we are one of the leading causes of the die off, so saving ourselves and the planet requires a population reduction and a change in behavior. Two huge issues that I do not see our species solving. No other top of the food chain species has solved it. I have written before about Science Fiction’s contribution to the myth of a disposable planet so it’s not a wonder that these guys come off as slightly clueless.

Still they have pretty pictures:

http://howyoucansavetheworld.com/2008/08/the-earth-will-be-just-fine-th.php

 the-earth-will-be-just-fine-thank-you.jpg

The grand myth of environmentalism is that it’s all about saving the Earth.

It’s not. The Earth will be just fine. Environmentalism is all about saving ourselves.

That may seem a bit counter-intuitive; after all, the Earth is certainly central to the rhetoric, the memetic of environmentalism. Most environmental discussions focus on ecological dynamics, with references to human beings typically limited to enumerations of the various insults we’ve visited upon the planet. Given the degree of culpability we bear for the current state of the planet, this is entirely appropriate.

But the rhetorical focus of environmentalism on the planet obscures the fact that what human beings have done to the Earth pales in comparison to past disasters hitting our world, from massive asteroid strikes to super-volcano eruptions killing off 90+% of the Earth’s species. And in every case, the Earth has recovered, and life has once again flourished.

We sometimes make the conceptual mistake of thinking that the way the Earth’s ecosystem is today is the way it will forever be, that we’ve somehow reached an ecological end-state. But even in an eco-conscious world, or one devoid of humans entirely, natural processes from evolution to geophysical and solar cycles would continue. The Earth’s been at this for a long time, literally billions of years; from a planetary perspective, a quadrupling of atmospheric carbon lasting 10,000 years (for example) is little more than a passing blip.

The fact of the matter is that, no matter how much greenhouse gas we pump into the atmosphere or how many toxins we dump into the soil and oceans, given enough time the Earth — and its ecological systems — will recover.

But human civilization is far more fragile.

Human civilization could not withstand and recover from the same kinds of assaults the planet itself has shrugged off in eons past. We remain entirely dependent upon myriad Earth services and systems, from topsoil and clean water to carbon cycles and biodiversity. Activities that undermine those critical services and systems quite literally threaten the survival of human civilization. The fundamental resilience of the Earth’s geophysical systems simply means that, when we ignore our effects on the planet, we’re simply making ourselves disposable, just another passing blip in the planet’s long history.

In trying to minimize the harmful impacts of human activities upon the global ecosystem, environmentalism supports the continued healthy existence of humankind.

To me, this too is entirely appropriate. Despite its many flaws, I’m a big fan of human civilization. I marvel at our capacity to organize matter and information, at our ability to learn from mistakes and pass that learning down to subsequent generations. Civilization — writing, cities, trade, the whole lot of it — makes us unique on this planet and, as far as we can tell so far, in our part of the universe. Destroying that through malice or negligence is the worst form of crime, and the height of tragedy.

Part of a focus upon civilization, however, is the recognition that we do not exist in isolation, that we are dependent upon an enormous variety of complex systems. As a result, our continued existence requires the continued success of those systems. In order to save ourselves, we have to minimize actions which damage and disrupt the environment.

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They spent their whole history telling us we could leave this planet so nothing here matters. Now they want to turn around and Say WOW everything here matters. We ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. HMMMM 

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