Fri 9 Oct 2009
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/green-supercars-fight-to-be-fastest/
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/4078/Italdesign-Namir-Concept.html
187 mph, zero to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds & 90 mpg.
Fuel efficient and powerful. Enough said.
Fri 4 Sep 2009
From The New York Times:
The human-driven buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere appears to have ended a slide, many millenniums in the making, toward cooler summer temperatures in the Arctic, the authors of a new study report.
Scientists familiar with the work, to be published Friday in the journal Science, said it provided fresh evidence that human activity is not only warming the globe, particularly the Arctic, but could also even fend off what had been presumed to be an inevitable descent into a new ice age over the next few dozen millenniums.
The reversal of the slow cooling trend in the Arctic, recorded in samples of layered lakebed mud, glacial ice and tree rings from Alaska to Siberia, has been swift and pronounced, the team writes.
Earlier studies have also shown that the Arctic, more than the planet as a whole, has seen unusual warming in recent decades. But the new analysis provides decade-by-decade detail on temperature trends going back 2,000 years — five times further than previous work at that detailed a scale…
Tue 11 Aug 2009
A novel way to combat global warming is gaining ground. From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6742023.ece
One relatively cheap solution, however, is gaining favour among many different groups and is endorsed today by an independent study that compares the costs and benefits of all the main ideas. A wind-powered fleet of 1,900 ships would criss-cross the oceans, sucking up sea water and spraying it from the top of tall funnels to create vast white clouds.
These clouds would reflect a tiny proportion, between 1 and 2 per cent, of the sunlight that would otherwise warm the ocean. This would be enough to cancel out the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions. The ships would be unmanned and directed by satellite to locations with the best conditions for increasing cloud cover. They would mainly operate in the Pacific, far enough from land to avoid interfering with rainfall.
The idea has been circulating for a decade but until now has merely been one of many climate engineering pipedreams. A study commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, a think-tank that advises governments on how to spend aid money, found that the fleet would cost $9 billion (£5.3 billion) to test and launch within 25 years. This is a fraction of the $250 billion that the world’s leading nations are considering spending each year to cut CO2 emissions.
The Royal Society is expected to announce next month that cloud-forming ships are one of the most promising ideas.
The Copenhagen study also looked at a scheme to mimic the effect of major volcanic eruptions, which have a global cooling effect lasting a year or more. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 sent billions of tonnes of sulphur dioxide and other particles into the atmosphere. These formed a haze that shielded the sun’s rays and reduced global average temperature by about 0.5C.
The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 had an even more dramatic effect: 1816 became known as the year without summer.
Many scientists have proposed different methods of injecting particles, or aerosols, into the atmosphere, including using squadrons of air tankers, possibly based in the Arctic to focus on protecting the ice cap.
The study concluded that the scheme would cost $230 billion and would be much harder to control than cloud-producing ships, which could be switched off if shown to have adverse effects. The study dismissed the space sunshade idea after calculating that the costs of launching the mirrors would be $395 trillion.
“The space sunshade is really just science fiction but cloud whitening ships deserve serious scrutiny,” said Bjorn Lomborg, director of the think-tank. He argues that, although global warming is a huge problem, there might be better ways of addressing it then simply cutting CO2 emissions. “We need to have a debate about all of the options, not just the politically correct one of reducing CO2,” he said.
He is hosting a conference in Washington DC next month at which a panel of Nobel laureates will vote on the most cost-effective solution.
Rival teams of British and American scientists are seeking funding for sea trials of prototype cloud-forming ships. The Carnegie Institute has donated several hundred thousand dollars to the US team. The British team, led by John Latham, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Manchester, and Stephen Salter, an engineer at the University of Edinburgh, is working with a Finnish shipping company, Meriaura.
I think the idea is absolutely brillant and the cost is a fraction of other schemes and easily bareable by the world’s largest economies. Of course, not everyone agrees. From http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/crank-week-september-1-2008-john-latham
The 300-ton unmanned ships would be powered by the wind, but would not use conventional sails. Instead they would be fitted with a number of 100 ft high, 8 ft in diameter cylinders known as Flettner rotors. The continuous rotation of these cylinders would generate a force perpendicular to the wind direction, propelling the ship forward if it is oriented at right angles to the wind.
Illustration by John MacNeill
The scheme relies on the “Twomey effect”, which says that increasing the concentration of water droplets within a cloud raises the overall surface area of the droplets and thereby enhances the cloud’s albedo. Albedo is the measurement of how reflective an object, like a planet, is. The more reflective Earth is the more solar radiation is reflected back into space, reducing the Sun’s heating effect. By spraying fine droplets of sea water into the air, the small particles of salt within each droplet act as new centers of condensation: the more condensation the more low cloud cover, the more low cloud cover the higher Earth’s albedo, the higher Earth’s albedo the lower Earth’s surface temperature—global warming solved.
Mon 3 Aug 2009
Big car companies originally built all electric cars. There were tried in California in 1999 (see the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?“). But battery technology wasn’t yet ready. Lead acid batteries are too heavy. Lithium ion batteries were and are still too expensive. So big car companies have moved to hybrid cars (electric + batteries + gas powered engine). The disadvantage of hybrids is the high cost, high complexity and high number of parts.
Now we have some small car companies again producing all electric cars. Notable companies include Tesla Motors and the ZENN Motor Company.
Tesla sells their flashy and expensive Roadster for $100,000. The 2009 ZENN from Canada sells their 2009 model for between $16,000 and $20,000. Electric cars have almost arrived. They are only missing one thing… a better battery.
ZENN Motor company invested in and Lockheed Martin signed a marketing deal with a little known and secretive company from Texas, EEStor Inc. This company makes capacitive storage devices that have the potential to replace batteries. According to the claims, they would be lighter than Lithium ion, cost the same as lead acid, recharge in minutes, and last forever. EEStor has a patent for their invention. And the first devices from a production line are scheduled to be delievered by the end of 2009. We will see if the claims pan out.
For the physcists and electrical engineers out there, here is a link to an in depth interview: Transcript of Weir June 2009 Conference Call.
Best blog for the latest info & gossip: http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/
Mon 6 Jul 2009
From Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge.
SANTA ROSA, Calif. — When Congress passed a new energy law two years ago, obituaries were written for the incandescent light bulb. The law set tough efficiency standards, due to take effect in 2012, that no traditional incandescent bulb on the market could meet, and a century-old technology that helped create the modern world seemed to be doomed.
But as it turns out, the obituaries were premature.
Researchers across the country have been racing to breathe new life into Thomas Edison’s light bulb, a pursuit that accelerated with the new legislation. Amid that footrace, one company is already marketing limited quantities of incandescent bulbs that meet the 2012 standard, and researchers are promising a wave of innovative products in the next few years.
Indeed, the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation. (emphasis added)
“There’s a massive misperception that incandescents are going away quickly,” said Chris Calwell, a researcher with Ecos Consulting who studies the bulb market. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”
Tue 22 Jul 2008
Sometimes new ideas are old ideas.
From Janine Benyus and Ideas from nature:
Opening her talk, Janine introduced Biomimicry, a term she coined. It begins with learning about Nature, but then takes the second step of learning FROM nature. This knowledge of natural processes then inspires a completely different approach to technology, materials and production processes.
A set of principles underpin Biomimicry that explain how life, which has been evolving for 3.8 billion years, creates conditions that are conducive to life. Natural processes use as little energy as possible; they produce no waste – all by-products are consumed by a nearby natural process and are never hazardous to the source organism; Nature conducts its chemistry in water; and Nature uses a small subset of the elements that can be obtained nearby. This contrasts to the human developed industrial manufacturing processes which typical use “heat, beat, and treat” methods of high temperature, high pressure and a cocktail of additive chemicals of varying toxicity, extracted from all corners of the earth.
Janine gave a wealth of examples of modern technology inspired by natural designs that evolved to perfection over hundreds of thousand of years. She showed revolutionary technologies already in practice including gecko-inspired adhesives and leaf-inspired solar cells, and showcased research and development in progress in many, many other fields.
Her talk covered the importance for both students of design, engineering and business, as well as those in industry, to learn about nature’s solutions to functions such as pumping, filtering, collecting and purifying water, generating energy, minimising waste, preventing decay and disease, etc. She is working on a database of these functions for designers, and this will be prepared together with Google. A large collection of Janine’s work is available on the web at her two sites –
I post things like this that I find on the web because I want to share with you the things that catch my eye. I think that may help you understand the way I think. I have learned from have observing my teacher and trying to emulate the way he thinks.
Humanity is not “a disease” on the planet, the way some think. But the large and growing population we have is straining the resources of the planet. This is a good think because it will force humanity to adopt better, cleaner technologies. And it will evenutally force humanity to fufill our manifest destiny and leave this planet and populate the solar system.
Tue 22 Jul 2008
From Clock Running Out II.
The reality is that the financial markets never fix recurrent failures. The market did not fix apartheid, fascism or World War II. Politics did. Governance did. The yield of good politics is another kind of ROI, the Return on Insight. We own the necessary insight into the acute and massive ecosystems crises but not yet the responsible politics needed. Let’s invent them.
The world we live in is not static. The only constant is change. Either humanity will evolve forward or fall backward. But adopting conservative political views can not work. We can’t change the world back to an earlier paradigm. The world that conservatives long for no longer exists. Conservatives are death. We must find models that work in the world that exist as it is today. We can’t undo the internet. We can’t undo globalization. We can’t undo demand for natural resources.
Ideas are the seeds of change. One of the problems is that there are only a few of us that recognize the problems and are actively seeking to find and implement solutions. First we have to work on ourselves so we can be the most potent agents for change possible. Secondly we must be very strategic and find the solutions that require the least amount of energy to implement.
Sun 20 Jul 2008
“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.”
An John F. Kennedy,
“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream of things that never were and say why not.”
Quotes from people we admire can provide motivation to carry out the work we know we need to do. To steal a title from book, I believe in living a “purpoose driven life.” I do and I can attest to the fact that it provides me much satisfaction, especially when the low points in life happen.
Mon 4 Feb 2008
When big corporations use money, political influence and the patent system to stifle innovation, new business models are required to move society into a more positive direction. I recommend watching the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car” (2006). You can read a summary on Wikipedia.
Malcolm Bricklin has one such idea. See “Detroit 2008: AutoblogGreen Q&A: Malcolm Bricklin talks about building a PHEV supply base”.
Malcolm Bricklin: Actually, we are using the vehicle only as a way to sign up the dealers. But to truth of the matter is what we are really doing is trying to set up the infrastructure for electric vehicles and electric hybrid plug-ins. What we are doing is we are designing a vehicle as you can see right over there, which is going to be the size of a Mercedes S about the width of a Lamborghini that will get 100 miles to the gallon and sell for 40 grand. That, we think, will dispel everybody’s thoughts that you can’t build a big car and use electricity and get great gas miles and still sell at a decent price.
…
So that was our purpose, but the real purpose is to be able go to the dealers and say look; Here is what we have to sell to begin with and we are going to give a new product every year on that platform. But more important than that, we are going to do two things that we believe the industry needs or there is not going to be an industry. That is outside of the Big Three, if you are going to build electric or electric hybrid, you have got to find a way to distribute it and you have got to find a way to bring the component prices down. In order to bring the component prices down, if you are the Big Three you subsidize it. But if you are a little guy you can’t subsidize it, which means that a lot of cars are going to come in to market for $100,000 and although they may be a nice value at $100,000 there is not a big market for $100,000 cars. We think the market is under $50,000, under $40,000 and of course if we get down to $30,000 then we really think that the market is going to open up.
Read the full article for more information on Mr. Bricklin’s idea. Then watch the videos at his Visionary Vehicles website.
