Scientists explore how the humble leaf could power the planet

Scientists explore how the humble leaf could power the planet

• Artificial photosynthesis, eh? I guess I’d want to see how it’s going to be more cost effective with no more environmental impact than, say, you know, growing plants.
• Funny. I submitted a project to the SpaceLab student outreach program back in 1973 when I was still in high school. The idea was to determine the feasibility of using hydroponic green algae as an energy and food source in space. My project was not selected to fly on the satellite.

Gas Is Everywhere

Gas Disruption

• Okay, this is what we’ve been waiting for.
• Now watch how fast a vast European network of distributed biogas plants can emerge.
• (Hint: A lot faster than they can switch electricity production over to nuclear, even if they wanted to.)

Alaska has huge amount of ice-trapped gas

Alaska has huge amount of ice-trapped gas

• Uh huh.
• Tell me, what would it take to sequester the carbon from all that gas?

Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

• So, how much nuclear waste is going to be produced by those 4,000 plants, and where do they propose to put it?
• Let me guess: waste disposal is “somebody else’s problem”.
• If outlawing nuclear power is the only way to protect the commons, then that’s what needs to happen. It would have to be an international treaty, since waste emissions don’t respect national boundaries.

Utilities putting new energy into geothermal sources

Utilities putting new energy into geothermal sources

• Yet another sudden “innovation” that we could have been doing 50 years ago.

Australia plans electric vehicle network

Australia plans electric vehicle network

• Aren’t we all glad that the very difficult technology underlying this effort has *finally* been created? It’s not like we could have been driving nothing but electric cars for the last 40 years or anything.

San Antonio is going green with sewage

San Antonio is going green with sewage

• What a concept. We’ve had the wherewithal for this since the early 1970’s or so. But it wasn’t “feasible” even during the original OPEC crunch back then.
• So what makes it feasible now? Public opinion.
• You’re no longer considered a pinko commie anti-American bastard if you vote for city officials who are willing to look at sustainability issues.
• The meme mill grinds slowly in this land.

Google.org invests $10m to develop enhanced geothermal systems

Google.org invests $10m to develop enhanced geothermal systems

• Well, it’s nice that the foundation is dropping some money on alternative energy research, any alternative energy research.
• It’s important not to lose sight of the big picture, though. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to drill a hole 10km deep. It takes energy to run water into the hole and back out again. It takes water to run water into the hole and back out again. So scalability and capital cost are a couple of issues to track here.
• There needs to be a balance between high-tech energy systems and lower-tech systems. There also needs to be a balance along the efficiency spectrum: there’s a niche for systems that have to consume a significant proportion of their output for their own creation and operation, but let’s try to keep them in that niche.

Coastal Dead Zones: Global Spread, Alarming Pace

Will Dunham reports on the spreading of coastal dead zones.
The phrase “alarming pace” means something. This is a global problem that can be traced right back to nitrogen compounds, including those generated from burning fossil fuels.

Abiotic Oil and the Hollow Earth Theory

What exactly, is abiotic oil? Why is this concept so favored by the simple angry white hollow earther? Possibly because they both come from the center of the earth?