A
Saudi Prince tells America to give up futile dreams of energy independence.
Op-Ed in the NYT says Peak Oil is a waste of energy and an illusion. Meanwhile, the OECD's energy advisors, the IEA are saying cheap oil will
run out in ten years, a decade sooner than estimates made as recently as 2007.
posted by bystander
on Aug 26, 2009 -
88 comments
Recently,
John Michael Greer has been exploring a little known idea of the deceased economist
E.F. Schumacher (a student of the oft-discussed
Keynes).
"Schumacher drew a hard distinction between primary goods and secondary goods. The latter of these includes everything dealt with by conventional economics: the goods and services produced by human labor and exchanged among human beings. The former includes all those things necessary for human life and economic activity that are produced not by human beings, but by nature. Schumacher pointed out that primary goods, as the phrase implies, need to come first in any economic analysis because they supply the preconditions for the production of secondary goods. Renewable resources, he proposed, form the equivalent of income in the primary economy, while nonrenewable resources are the equivalent of capital; to insist that an economic system is sound when it is burning through nonrenewable resources at a rate that will lead to rapid depletion is thus as silly as claiming that a business is breaking even if it’s covering up huge losses by drawing down its bank accounts." [more inside]
posted by symbollocks
on Jul 10, 2009 -
14 comments
"
The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage," said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Yet "more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the U.S. population and
one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the
Milky Way." In these areas, people are effectively living in
perennial moonlight. They rarely realize it because they still experience the sky to be brighter under a full moon than under new moon conditions. "
Reducing the number of lights on at night could help conserve energy, protect wildlife and benefit human health," astronomer Malcolm Smith of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. One study found an increased risk of breast cancer for women living in areas with the most light pollution (
abstract). Some communities are
embracing their dark skies, such as
the New Zealand community of Tekapo, possibly home to first "
Starlight Reserve," waiting on UNESCO's official approval. Not sure where to look
in the vast night sky?
Follow some guidelines, or
check the view in Chile,
Queensland, Australia, or
Texas.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 13, 2009 -
74 comments
Those who judge hurricane risk merely by their Saffir-Simpson category number (1-5) are not getting the entire picture. Another (coincidentally-named)
IKE (
Intergrated
Kinetic
Energy) proposes an improved method of classifying hurricanes, one that takes into account their size and separates the danger components of sea surge (which kills 9 out of 10 hurricane victims) and wind.
By that measure, Hurricane Ike is the most dangerous storm in 40 years. Ike's path reminds many of the greatest natural disaster in U.S. History, the Great Hurricane of 1900 (
91 minute History Channel video on Google) which killed thousands due mainly to the great
sea surge. After that the 17' Galveston sea wall was built and it has never been topped since by hurricane waves.
Hurricane Ike may change that as current wave heights (WVHT) being reported by
buoy data in the vicinity of Ike are well over 20 feet. A computer-simulated "Hurricane Carly" shows the results of various sea surges for the Galveston area (with
grap
hic grap
hics): Play with real-time data and forecasts for the western gulf with the experimental
nowCoast.
posted by spock
on Sep 12, 2008 -
84 comments
Have you ever thought about putting solar panels on your roof? Would you like to know how much power you can generate and what it would cost.
RoofRay is a fun site that will calculate it for you and then let you know how much it would cost and how many years you'd need to recoup your investment. You enter an address into a version of Google Maps, and then draw where you want to put the array on your preferably southern facing roof.
posted by willnot
on Aug 14, 2008 -
47 comments
Pickens Plan -- oilman T. Boone Pickens has a plan to reduce America's oil dependency problem: exploit the country's massive windpower potential for domestic energy, replacing natural gas, and then use natural gas to power cars instead of foreign oil. Some
problems with the plan.
posted by Laugh_track
on Jul 10, 2008 -
41 comments
Pond scum saves the planet? In the beginning, there were algae, but there was no oil. Then, from algae came oil. Now, the algae are still there, but oil is fast depleting. In future, there will be no oil, but there will still be algae. ^ Power your ride with pond scum. In some
iterations you don't even need l
ight. (we have talked about this
before and the fact that CO2 powers the algae production is not insignificant) More
details here.
posted by caddis
on Apr 17, 2008 -
28 comments
On Saturday, March 29, 2008, at 8 pm in each time zone cities around the world will go dark: Sydney will follow Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra; In the Philippines, in Manila the lights will go out; Bangkok in Thailand; Tel Aviv in Israel; Suva in Fiji; Copenhagen in Denmark; In North America, Atlanta followed by Chicago, Toronto, Phoenix and San Francisco will be black. It’s
Earth Hour. [more inside]
posted by HVAC Guerilla
on Feb 18, 2008 -
36 comments
Perepiteia.
Thane Heins, who named his invention after a Greek word meaning an action that "has the opposite effect to that intended," has perhaps created a...perpetual motion machine. His
20-year obsession has broken up his marriage and lost him custody of his two young daughters. Contraption stumps
MIT professor. Is it a
hysteresis brake? Or a scam. YOU decide.
posted by wallstreet1929
on Feb 9, 2008 -
76 comments
