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Saving the World…One Spoof at a Time!
This was a good one…The merry pranksters behind the CoalCares.org site not only had the moxy to add a ™ symbol to their site name, they even had the bravado to use the (genuinely) registered trademark of Peabody Energy as well. Not only were they content to spoof the coal industry’s attempts at better Community Relations, they even linked directly back to Peabody Energy for maximum effect and traceability!
In its shameless contempt for the world’s largest private-sector coal company, this spoof site represents itself as a branding initiative intended to reach out to American youngsters with asthma and to help them “keep their heads high in the face of those who would treat them with less than full dignity”. For kids who have no choice but to use an inhaler, Coal Cares™ lets them inhale with pride!
Read more…
Recycling Power From Old Industries
As a world supplier of primary resources like lumber and oil, Canadians were once stereotyped a “hewers of wood” working in a pristine green wilderness of fresh water and never-ending forests. Nowadays, thanks to the Eco-PR efforts of organizations like Greenpeace, Canada has gained more notoriety for oilsands that are widely regarded as a filthy and enormously wasteful source of fossil-fuel energy. A source of fuel who’s extraction is made economically feasible only by high price of crude oil yet without factoring in the environmental impact and future cleanup costs down the line. So much for “Green” stereotypes.
Forestry and Agriculture, on the other hand, are still a clearly green and renewable resources that are poised to turn into major sources of power production via the alluring prospects of widespread BioMass generation methods. No longer will we simply see crops and trees as a source of food for cities, construction materials and wooden poles for transmitting power along roadways, but rather as sources of feedstock for secondary green industries that can use otherwise wasted bio-mass to actually generate power for those very same hydro lines.
The question is, what stands in the way of displacing coal and natural gas from our current power supply, and how will bio-mass be different than burning any other fuel for electricity?
Titanium: A Star is Born
In an age where hydrocarbons still reign supreme, Titanium is finally starting its ascent to a higher orbit around the Technological Sphere, where it will certainly offer us much better views of what the world could actually be, as opposed to what it is at present.
Even though Titanium is the 7th most common element on earth, and is found in everything from reflective paint to orbital satellites, it’s still a long way from being a common household name though. Fortunately, a steady succession of exciting new developments in key areas such as Metallurgy, NanoTech, BioTech, and Environmental & Health Sciences, and even Hydrogen production means that Titanium isn’t going to be dutifully playing the humble part of the unsung hero for very much longer now…
In fact, Titanium (either it’s Oxides or ductile metallic forms) are now poised to far surpass their already enormous roles in countless current technologies and applications (which we’ve already looked at if you’re curious), and start rocketing Humanity into some truly exciting new areas via emerging technologies and revolutionary industrial applications that promise exciting new sources of clean energy, as well as pollution controlling methods for the old ones.
The only remaining question isn’t ‘how’ or ‘when’ we’re going to see genuine signs of Titanium-based progress gaining mainstream visibility, but rather, just how far will Titanium take us into a clearly visible Future which is imminently ready to become our new current Reality!
A Diesel Powered Future?
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Diesel Power was a revolution that still inspires new innovations even today.
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Upon operating his first successful engine design back in 1897 Rudolph Diesel changed the world in ways that most people still don’t fully appreciate today. Especially now, as we begin the long process of moving out of the petroleum-powered era, we should pause to take lessons from visionaries like Tesla and Diesel, and consider how they harnessed natural forces and physical phenomena to revolutionize existing technologies, and enabled enormous leaps into the Future by allowing others to build upon the solid foundations that they laid. The venerable diesel engine was an innovation of the internal combustion engine that continues to be improved upon even today, with the new methods and materials that are offered by modern science.
Many of us associate diesel power with loud smelly trucks and buses, so it might come as a great surprise that Diesel technology is actually still being improved upon after all this time. In fact, in just the past few years we’re seeing a level of improvement to efficiency and emissions that are actually positioning diesel as a sustainable interim solution for our transportation needs…While other options continue to be researched for that quantum leap in technology that will slingshot both Industry and Society towards the next century. So If you’re ready to see how diesel power still holds a few tricks up it’s sleeve, then let’s start exploring, by looking at railway locomotives as our prime motivator!
BTW: If you’re curious about Rudolf Diesel’s sense of environmental and social responsibility, as it was well over a century ago…Just pop-open another window by clicking HERE for further insights.
Diesel’s Vision
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At one time, Diesel power was poised as an alternative to big Coal and Oil…
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At the World’s Fair of 1900 in Paris France, Rudolph Diesel demonstrated the virtues of his new pressure-ignited “rational heat motor” which came to bear his name to the world then, and has done so to the present day. We’ve come to also know Rudolf Diesel as an eminent mechanical and thermal engineer, a multi-lingual and knowledgeable patron of the Arts, and not least of all a highly progressive Social Theorist. Although his legacy is inestimable, his rise to fame was as quick as it was brief…and leaves us with some unanswered questions about how Diesel’s vision may have offered us a different world than the one ruled by Oil and Big Banks.
Hemp Diesel
A century ago, Diesel Power and Hemp Products
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In 1893, German inventor Rudolf Diesel published a paper entitled “The Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine” which described a motor in which air is compressed by a piston to a very high pressure, causing a temperature spike where injected fuel is auto-ignited and efficiently burned in the expanding compression during the down-stroke. This basic concept results in a simple, safe, cool, highly efficient engine that could run on locally produced vegetable oils – and therefore level the playing field for those who otherwise couldn’t compete with the large steam-powered Industries and Shippers of the day.
Unfortunately, in the early 20th century big-banks and financiers were already exerting their powerful will, in support of their oil and forestry interests, and thus assuring the dominance of emerging petro-chemical industries. So instead of seeing how Diesel’s vision would have played out, we’ve had to wait until the combined and destructive effects of a Financial, Energy, and Environmental crisis, here the 21st century, could obviate the ideals and benefits that Rudolf Diesel had envisioned for Society, well over a century ago; when he built his first engines to be run on the same types of bio-fuels that we now have available today, and which could have cut coal and oil out of the picture from the very start.
The True Nature of Contrails
If you’d like a clear view of what creates Jet Contrails just:Click for Facts… |
If you don’t think that jet travel could be playing a major role in either climate change, or modified atmospheric chemistry, then you probably don’t need to dive into this deeper exploration. If however you see Climate Change as an enormous combination of factors, you might find some points of interests below. There is far more at play here than even the most outrageous “Chemetrail Conspiracy” has ever even touched upon.
In our explorations of jet exhaust and ‘vapour contrails‘ and the impact of air travel on our Future Environment, we’ve made previous attempts to speculate upon why certain channels in the Mainstream Media have taken interest in a rather weak Conspiracy Theory like “Chemtrails”, rather than digging into the underlying science of Contrails (and environmental impact of jet exhaust) for a bonefide piece of investigative journalism on a possibly much deeper conspiracy.
If there’s such a thing as covering up an actual conspiracy with weaker, more easily discredited, conspiracy theories, then it’s quite possible that the airline industry knows full well that its altering the stratosphere, and affecting the environment. That the prevalence of “Chemtrail” theories might simply be serving to throw people off the trail by simply associating any negative environmental news about airliners with more easily dismissed “conspiracy theories”. It certainly not as simple as a supposedly well-intentioned geo-engineering initiative.
Autonomously Automated Automobile
The Future of highway transport could be driven on current roads, |
It was Jean-Paul Sartre who said; L’enfers c’est les Autres, or “Hell is Others”.
So it seems more than just a little bit ironic to use the name “Sartre” for an automobile-guidance system that requires you to join others in a convoy, or “train”. So leaving aside the existential quandaries of grouping cars together, let’s just look at the practical implications.
Sartre is a guidance system that creates “trains” of cars. Once cars join this train, drivers cede control of their cars to a lead driver through a combination radio telemetry, remote controls, and GPS (called ‘telemetrics’) to enable this automated form of road travel. Perhaps the philosophical tie-in offered by the “Sartre” system is that by willingly choosing to give up some of our cherished egotism and autonomy, we can become more socially aware (safer?) on the road in the process.
At the very least, it might encourage nervous or downright bad drivers to just group themselves together, and free up some time/space for those who can more effectively navigate the mildly ordered chaos of our shared roadways.
Highway 401 in Ontario: Flickr / David Vincent Johnson
Carbon Capture: A Solution in Stasis?
– EVENT REPORT –
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Worldwide adoption of Carbon Capture and Storage solutions have been delayed by an announcement at the Copenhagen ConferenceThe link to this News Event is no longer available at COP15.dk but it has been cached at Google! |
The primary thrust of the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change was to implement an accord of limiting CO2 emissions worldwide, and thus necessitate various regulatory solutions which would have required industry to either reduce their emissions, or face stiff financial consequences. This is where Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS) would have liked to step in with some immediate industrial-grade solutions, presumably while the rest of us continued to consider the enormous challenges of actually reducing and eliminating our reliance on carbon emitting fossil fuels as a Society. As mentioned previously however (COP15.dk is History), the committee under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) had discussed the issue of CCS during the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, but delayed any decisions on the subject until future summits. The committee contended that some countries had concerns over the long-term viability for the storage site, including liability for any seepage. Thus the larger challenges of capturing CO2 have seemingly become stuck behind a roadblocking question of legal liability in the ‘storage’ component of this much larger process.
Deja Vu
Proponents of Nuclear Energy will no doubt see a parallel in the bitter irony of yet another Green industry being hindered by the wasted energy and by-products of bureaucratic finagling and legal wrangling over questions of waste storage…Rather than getting on with the business of refining the existing (and already adequate) processes, while continuing to develop new and improved waste management solutions, and effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions IMMEDIATELY, rather delaying movement until later, once the technical details and legal liabilities of any unforeseen accidents have been ironed out to the Nth degree. Carbon Capture Left Out in the Cold
What did Copenhagen teach us about CCS
In it’s search for an accord, Copenhagen seemed like a direct precursor to establishing and implementing Carbon Cap/Trade/Tax solutions, that would place financial burdens on all CO2 emitters, and incent the development and application of CO2 capture technologies to reduce such burden. Although the COP15.dk site is now dead in the water, there are still “selected” pages made available by the Danish Government, which may cast light on what the Conference organizers wished to present as their lasting legacy from this historic conference, or at least demonstrate where the organizers left things on the rather important subject of CCS. A search for “Carbon Capture” yields only four (yes, 4!) results on this rather critical next step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Click Here, if you’d like to consider what these meagre results say about the Future of CCS from the POV of those who selectively transplanted the entire the COP15.dk site less that a month after the Copenhagen Conference closed.
CCS…Does green Energy hurt the Carbon Market?
In a short blogpost at Envirogy (derived almost entirely from Spiegel Online), we can clearly see how Green (or low emisions Renewable) Energy sources have actually hurt the price of carbon at the European Climate Exchange (and thus the cost incentives for implementing CCS), and in fact the entire system can be proven to have not reduced European carbon emmisions by a single gram!
Sitting on the Border Fences
Meanwhile, in North America, the open markets for carbon at the Chicago Climate Exchange is still awaiting the kinds of regulatory and political pressures that will kick things into a higher gear, and properly comodify Carbon in the U.S. and thus at least make select financiers, investors, and other assorted Middlemen rich in the process, if not at least repeating the lessons already being learned in Europe.
Meanwhile in the Oilpatch
Even though Copenhagen squashed any immediate hopes for Carbon Cap/Trade pricing, and delayed it’s pronouncements on teh future of CCS, searching the transplanted COP15.dk site yields a link to shipping giant Maersk’s role in bringing CO2 to oilfields in the North Atlantic, and there are examples all over the world where CO2 is pumped down into older oilwells to force out remaining oil, and maximize yield. In fact contrary to popular belief, CO2 has already been getting stored in large quantities within used up gasfields, with the only concerns so far being in small amounts of CO2 re-escaping via carbonated water in the formations, and the possible formation of carbonic acid within any porous water areas. The fixation in carbonate minerals is playing only a minor role, so the search to chemically ‘fix’ CO2 into a more neutral and stable state will continue.
TBC…This is a work in progress
Please feel free to add to this Report Stub via the Comments Section below
Worldwide adoption of Carbon Capture and Storage solutions have been delayed by an announcement at the Copenhagen Conferenc
IR: EPA Kicks Tires on Airliners and Automobiles?
– IMPACT REPORT –
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The following potential points of Impact have been derived from :Where’s the EPA Going with Airliners and Automobiles?See: below for RELAYABLE remarks and info |
So what will the immediate effects of this event be upon air and ground transport as we know it?
What does this mean for the Automobile, Aereonautic, and Airline industries?
Is this the kickstart they they need to start participating in building the Future? Or will the EPA simply try to entrench itself in a political imbroglio, that some right-wingers are already threatening to tie up in endless litigation?
The jury is still out on just how ecologically friendly electric cars really are, once you factor everything in like the increased production of rare and heavy metals for batteries, and the added GHG’s produced to generate that electricity needed to recharge. Surely there is no ‘electric alternative’ out there for the airline industry, which presumably has nothing but the purchase of dubious carbon credits to fall back on in order to stabilize itself in whatever turbulence will be generated from this event in a very rapidly changing climate for business and travel.
EnviroNauts.com 