Living in New York, I sometimes notice that I'm walking on what appears to be a leopard-spotted sidewalk, littered with months' -- years'? -- worth of discarded chewing gum and other tasty treats, melted and turned black by the sun to become near-permanent fixtures, not to mention landmines in hot months.
Should we have maybe taken a hint from this earlier? Greengeek.ca writes that U. of Manchester wiseguys stared at data long enough to tell us this: a small increase in green spaces in cities could go a long way toward making said cities suck less in the summer.
More scientifically, "a mere 10% increase in the amount of green space in cities would reduce average urban surface temperatures by as much as 4°C," or 7° or 8° Fahrenheit.
It's kind of like those fancy jackets with the airholes in the armpits: Green spaces collect water and release it, like so many magicians' doves, back into the air via the, er, magic of evaporation. Then lovely assistants come out and spread the cool air around the audience -- OK, it's not like a jacket, it's like a magic show!
We sure have gotten ourselves into a pickle. Damming a body of water as large as the Red Sea would certainly provide massive amounts of power (50 gigawatts, if a recent study is to be believed), but it would also displace tens of thousands of people. And, as a hydro-electric project of this scale has never been attempted, the ecological effects are literally impossible to determine.
A 50 gigawatt power plant would be, by far, the largest source of electricity in the world. The largest nuclear plant in the US produces just over 3. The project would provide enough power to switch off oil-burning power plants throughout the Middle East. Political scientists are already estimating the stability such a project would bring to the region.
And, of course, the power would be generated renewably, with no greenhouse gases. But the ecological destruction would, nonetheless, be massive. Fisheries, wetlands, communities, entire ecosystems would be destroyed. Unfortunately, it's unclear if this will be a decision made with the utmost attention paid to the environmental and ethical effects of such a project. The researchers who are studying the possibility of the project say, "If the countries around the Red Sea decide in favor of the macro-project, it is their responsibility to limit the negative consequences as much as possible."
A lot of less-than-kind things were recently said about the design of Amazon's Kindle e-Book reader. Frankly, I couldn't care less...it's designed to be functional...and I dig function.
But I admit it could be prettier, and the people at the design blog Core77 were pretty unsatisfied. So they've asked their readers to design the perfect eBook reader...before Tuesday...
OK, well, they announced the competition a week ago, and now as it's wrapping up, I'm getting excited to see the results. We'll have a report on the winners (and honorable mentions) on Wednesday. But for now, Sony's newest PRS Reader still wins for "device that actually exists."
They didn't actually take first place, but finishing in second place overall in the "longest race in the world" is pretty damn good.
A new racing team called Green Alternative Motorsports took part in the 25 Hours of Thunderhill at Willows, California. The team was interested in proving that cellulosic ethanol could compete in a performance event. They certainly made their mark on the event. Of particular interest were two Norma M20F racers entered by Team Green Alternative/Alliance Financial that were powered by eco-friendly E-85 fuel for the race.
They do point out that any benefit from running with E-85 in this race was more than completely offset (in the bad sense) by having to ship the fuel from Ottawa, Canada, to California for the race. But the second place finish shows that cellulosic E-85 ethanol can be a performance fuel, and that it is more than just a curiosity for hobbyists and researchers. And more to the point, it demonstrated that cellulosic ethanol has the potential to be a mainstream fuel if it can meet the rigors of an endurance auto racing event.
In the final part of our coverage of Bob Lutz's talk at the blogger's dinner in LA, GM's Vice Chair discusses the logic behind making really big trucks and SUVs into hybrid vehicles.
GM underwrote my trip to LA...their only requirement was that I let people know that they did so whenever I wrote about it...which is what I am doing now.
The Gulf Ethanol Corporation is claiming a "breakthrough" in cellulosic ethanol production. They call it the vortex implosion disintegrator and it sounds extremely impressive. I'm not going to attempt to tell you how it works, because their press release is pretty vague. But it basically takes anything that contains cellulose and, using a "high pressure, high velocity process" with "sudden polarity shifts" and "molecular repulsion," turns anything that contains cellulose into cellulose powder.
Creating cellulose powder is just the first step in producing cellulosic ethanol, but it's an important first step. For example, many people hope to use trees, and agricultural waste, to produce cellulosic ethanol. But though all plants contain lots of cellulose, they contain lots of other stuff as well, and separating the cellulose from the other stuff has become an expensive problem.
Depending on the viability (cost) of the technology, this could dramatically lower the price of cellulosic ethanol, and that would be fantastic.
If you're not sure of the difference between cellulosic ethanol and regular ethanol, the great thing about cellulosic is that it comes from non-food (often waste) plants. So instead of using corn to create fuel, we can use the corn stalks...which no one wants anyway.
We'll have to wait and see how this pans out, but it seems like the future is getting brighter for cellulosic ethanol every day.
Bob Lutz also gave us all an update on the Chevrolet Volt. He talks about Toyota's (negative) opinions of the "range extended electric vehicle / series hybrid." He talks about the look of the Volt, the delivery of the first battery (which is up to specifications) and the first 'mules' that will contain the Volt technology.
Lutz says that GM is now completely committed to producing the car, which will have an all-electric range of 40 miles and then, after the battery gets low, a gasoline generator will turn on and ensure that the car doesn't run out of batteries. Lutz likes to call it an "emergency generator" to give people the peace of mind they need to own an electric vehicle without always worrying about when they'll be able to get their next charge.
I hope you enjoy, it seemed obvious to me, and has every time I've spoken with him, that he really believes in this project and is happy that GM is leading the way with this new kind of electric vehicle. The final installment in Bob's talk, in which he talks about GM's logic behind producing gigantic hybrids, will be available later today.
GM underwrote my trip to LA...their only requirement was that I let people know that they did so whenever I wrote about it...which is what I am doing now.
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a fairly ecogeeky energy bill. Though the bill still has to get through the Senate and somehow dodge an already threatened veto from W, it's worth taking a look at why this bill matters and why (so far) it looks fantastic.
$13 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas companies will be repealed
Renewable energy projects (including wind, solar, hydro, landfill gas, biomass and waste-to-energy) will get $21 billion in funding
The average fuel efficiency of American automobiles will be increased from 27 to 35 by 2020
36 billion gallons of the fuel America consumes in 2022 will be required to be biofuel, and 21 billion gallons of that has to come from non-food sources
Power utilities will be required to get 15% of their power from renewable sources
So there you have it. All at once we have significant legislation promoting wind and solar thermal, funding renewable energy, increasing vehicle efficiency and spurring research and interest in cellulosic ethanol.
It's very likely that the bill will be watered down in the Senate, and the president has threatened to veto anything that requires a 35 mpg fleet efficiency. But this is a good starting point.
Every hit this bill takes will hurt our country, but maybe what comes through in the end will be enough to put America back in a leadership position for the coming clean-tech. economy.
While I was in LA, I took some footage at a "blogger's dinner" with a bunch of GM mucky-mucks. The star of the evening was GM's vice chair, Bob Lutz, who answered a bunch of questions after we finished our rather posh dinner (and while we did our best to ignore the huge slab of cheesecake in front of us).
Yes, I am aware that it looks very much like I'm being bribed with cheesecake and wine, and I'll tell you, that's kinda what it felt like, too. Which is why I'm sharing with you the words exactly as they came out of Bob's mouth (with some subtitles and editing.)
In this first of three videos, Lutz talks about the problems and possibilities (from GM's perspective) for diesel cars in America. In the next two videos (which will be online later today) he'll be talking about the Chevy Volt "range extended electric vehicle" and GM's commitment to big-ass hybrids.
GM underwrote my trip to LA...their only requirement was that I let people know that they did so whenever I wrote about it...which is what I am doing now.
Reaching a blazing-fast top speed of nearly 40 mph, the Dutch Nuon Solar Team just won the yearly Panasonic World Solar Challenge (car race) in Australia. Every once in a while, I'll get a comment asking why there aren't solar-powered cars on the road. And though it's extremely impressive to carry the body of man 3000 km using only the power of the sun, it's also obvious why we haven't seen solar powered cars yet.
One seat, long, low, slow, and expensive, solar cars aren't what most people are looking for. Though the solar cars do have to deal with traffic, bad weather, kangaroos on the road, etc. we're quite a ways away from solar cars that use more energy than a vacuum cleaner (the Nuna 4 does not.)
But don't let that get you down. Advances in solar technology are moving quickly. This year, the square footage of the solar panels allowed actually had to be lowered by a third because, last year, the vehicles were limited in speed not by power, but by the speed limit!
More than just the solar power, advancements in light-weight materials, aerodynamics, and "genetic algorithms" (which measure efficiency while varying engine performance to find the most efficient speed given road and weather conditions) all add to the abilities of this vehicle, and in the future, we'll see them in all vehicles.
Offshore wind is a relatively underexploited resource, with obstacles ranging from Cape Wind-like NIMBYism to the high infrastructure costs (and thus total costs) for installing systems out at sea. The idea of going toward floating wind turbines has been around awhile and Blue H Group looks to be one step closer to making that idea a reality.
Blue H offshore wind farms are planned to be far out at sea, virtually invisible to the naked eye from shore. At such locations, the winds are stronger and are more constant, ideal for generating large quantities of clean and inexhaustible electricity.
Rather than installing the wind turbine foundations to literally be built into the seabed, however deep it might be, Blue H is "adapting the concept of submerged tension-legged platforms developed by the oil industry ... and designed a platform large and stable enough to support a tower and a wind turbine."
Reduces the overall weight of the structure (claiming a 60+% total reduction for a 5 mw system, from 2100 to 800 tons)
Can be built onshore / in a port and towed into place, 10 miles or more offshore in deep waters (more than 50 meters in depth), reducing the specialty requirements for heavy equipment like crane ships.
Enables placing the wind turbines/farms far enough offshore to minimize NIMBYism and to be able to getting even better wind
Can be dismantled/moved with little environmental impact
I like that I live in a world where this is possible. It's a pen, which has a camera in it, and which is powered by a low wattage solar panel. When photos are taken, it wirelessly transmits the photos to a nearby base station (a digital medial player (also shown.))
It's hard to get much cooler than that. Oh! Wait never mind...it would be cooler if it were actually, uhh...useful.
But as far as pure "are you serious they can do that?" awesome goes...this comes in pretty near the top. It'll cost you, though: $332 for a camera that, in the end, probably won't take very high quality pictures.
If only every power company was (forced to be) as progressive as PG&E. The billboard really is capped with solar panels, producing 3.4 kilowatts of electricity during the day. This is more than the billboard uses on a day-to-day basis, so it actually does feed power into the grid.
Though, of course, it's negligible. But we can't help but love it anyway.
Science, technology gadgets and...baby seals. We're in a bit of an eco-mess, but we've got the brains to lick any problem. And that's why EcoGeek.org publishes up to ten stories daily about innovations that are saving the planet.
And if that sounds interesting to you, then congratulations, you're an EcoGeek.
Living in New York, I sometimes notice that I'm walking on what appears to be a leopard-spotted sidewalk, littered with months' -- years'? -- worth of discarded chewing gum and other tasty treats, melted and turned black by the sun to become near-permanent fixtures, not to mention landmines in hot months.
They didn't actually take first place, but finishing in second place overall in the "longest race in the world" is pretty damn good.
The 
Reaching a blazing-fast top speed of nearly 40 mph, the Dutch Nuon Solar Team just won the yearly Panasonic World Solar Challenge (car race) in Australia. Every once in a while, I'll get a comment asking why there aren't solar-powered cars on the road. And though it's extremely impressive to carry the body of man 3000 km using only the power of the sun, it's also obvious why we haven't seen solar powered cars yet.
Offshore wind is a relatively underexploited resource, with obstacles ranging from Cape Wind-like 
I like that I live in a world where this is possible. It's a pen, which has a camera in it, and which is powered by a low wattage solar panel. When photos are taken, it wirelessly transmits the photos to a nearby base station (a digital medial player (also shown.))
If only every power company was (forced to be) as progressive as PG&E. The billboard really is capped with solar panels, producing 3.4 kilowatts of electricity during the day. This is more than the billboard uses on a day-to-day basis, so it actually does feed power into the grid.