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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

I had lunch today with David Raney, one of the most accomplished professionals in the automotive industry. About a month ago, I had introduced 2GreenEnergy transportation guru Dan Sturges to him, and I thought it would be a good idea to meet again with David to get his sense for what he was thinking about the future of the industry.

Though I’m not sure David would agree with me, here’s my belief: car ownership was the paradigm for the 20th Century, and it was wonderfully effective in bringing wealth, jobs, convenience, and countless different types of improvement to our lifestyles. However, the ecologic consequences were significant. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I serve on the board of advisors for the Clean Business Investment Summit, an annual opportunity for a carefully vetted set of cleantech entrepreneurs to present to potential investors. One of the roles I play is mentoring the presenters; I meet with each of them in advance, and critique their PowerPoint and their presentation style. Having looked at 1100+ business plans in the past three years has put me in a good position to know what works here and what doesn’t in this arena — not to mention the 30 years before that, during which I made presentations based on PowerPoint (earlier, view-graphs) to audiences all over the world.   (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I urge readers to join in the discussion in response to my piece on Sylvia Earle: “Humankind’s Plight at a Macro Level.” In particular, frequent commenter Cameron Atwood discusses the role that the ultra-libertarian philosophy of Ayn Rand has in our current government here in the US.

It’s funny you bring up Ronald Reagan’s mention of Ayn Rand in 1966, Cameron. It was only a few years after that (the early 1970s) that I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged (the former is the better of the two, IMO). The whole libertarian thing made a great deal of sense to me for a couple of decades — until I realized the truth of essentially what you’ve written in your comment, i.e., that private interests in a deregulated environment, generally, will exploit the resources around it to an unacceptable level. Any doubt Americans had about this should have vanished in 2008 with the collapse of our financial system, not to mention our society’s coming face to face with the ruination of the fragile ecosystem on which it and all other life forms depend.

The fact that many of us simply refuse to see this doesn’t speak too highly of us.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

A friend of mine sent me a bunch of material on the dangers of fracking, which I offer here to readers. But first, our brief conversation:

Friend: Wow. Check this out.

Craig: Thanks.  As you know, I’m a big proponent of renewables. But I’m an even bigger proponent of fairness. Do you think this piece is completely fair to all sides? (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

At the rate of about a dozen a week, I’m approached with ideas in clean energy/transportation. Here’s a rough breakdown of my perception of  the concepts I’ve received over the last three years:

2%: Crackpots. An attempt to raise money to build a prototype of something that is theoretically impossible, where the principal (I think) actually believes it to be possible. I speak (briefly) with people fairly frequently who are trying to convince me that their idea is the very one that has successfully violated the First or Second Law of Thermodynamics.

3%: Fraud. Same as above, except that the “inventor” doesn’t believe his own story.  It’s a not-too-cleverly disguised attempt to bilk investors out of money to build a prototype of some that the principal knows very well to be theoretically impossible. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I have a mixed bag of things that don’t go under any category or could have gone under several recent blogs.

My second AC and more panels to run it.  I guess this could have gone under “Heat Wave in the U.S. Has an Effect”.  Things have been so hot that for the first time since I moved into this house 9 years ago I was forced to assemble a window AC unit I had received from my father that was short cycling which I found the problem with it last summer but didn’t install last year. I used it the year before which is how I found out it was faulty. I bought one last year, which I put in the bedroom, but I needed another to help make the house livable. So, two window AC units seems to be enough for a total of 10,000BTU. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

The newfound abundance of natural gas carries with it a few main issues, some good, some bad, which I abbreviate as follows:

1) Good news: It holds the potential to lessen the cost and environmental impact of our energy consumption for at least the short term.

2) Bad news: That lowering of costs will make the R&D of renewables less attractive. The consumption of natural gas, a fossil fuel, increases the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere, contributing to climate change. To the degree that natural gas reduces our exploration of clean energy sources, it’s actually causing more harm than good overall.

3) Bad news: Fracking, which makes the whole enterprise of natural gas so appealing, is highly controversial. I hope you’ll take a few minutes and check out this video.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

In a comment on my recent piece on Bernie Sanders and the attack on our democracy represented by the U.S. Supreme Court decision Citizens United, one reader attacked Sanders as a communist.  In response, another notes: 

There are some words you just can’t use in the U.S. “Communism” is (one). “Socialism” is right behind it.

Better words are “Prioritarianism,” or its better-known cousin, “Utilitarianism.” Utilitarianism argues that human beings and their governments should make decisions based on the greatest benefit (increase in pleasure/decrease in pain) for the greatest number of people. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

Frequent commenter Brian McGowan writes:

While I don’t have flush-free urinals in my house, I do collect the water from the water softener regeneration and the rinse cycles of my washing machine and use that to flush my toilet.

Brian, you are truly an inspiration to us all — to me, at least — with your incredibly creative and diverse use of energy efficiency devices. But trust me, you don’t want a waterless urinal in your house. It’s a great tool to reduce water use if you have dozens of flushes per hour, but I think (at least I hope) that’s not the situation at your house. Having said that, what you may want is suggested in the next paragraph.

I’m reminded of a visit I made years ago to a fine friend at least 40 years my senior, Kelly Kreyling, a somber gentleman, a philosopher of amazing proportion — a kind of modern-day H. D. Thoreau, I suppose. He lived in Southern Virginia (Fincastle, to be exact), and, essentially regardless of the weather, would walk outside to urinate. He once told me, “We live on top of the most effective filtration system one could possibly imagine – and we pee in our drinking water. That alone shows our depravity.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I just returned from a ~7-mile hike I took by myself in preparation for next weekend’s far more strenuous Point Sal hike with a friend. Check out these images!

At the risk of appearing to be a weirdo, when I hike by myself I often contemplate the world’s situation at a macro level and what, if anything, I can do about it. This afternoon, I traversed a few of those miles thinking about the words of the eminent oceanographer Sylvia Earle, whose viewpoints I summarize as follows:

If you have a colony of bacteria in a petri dish, they multiply and eat, multiply and eat, multiply and eat, until they run out of food and room, and soon thereafter they’re all dead. They have no capacity for any other behavior; in particular, they have no sense that there could be consequences to unsustainable growth and runaway consumption of resources. People, on the other hand, most certainly have a sense of future, and recognize that there are consequences to right vs. wrong, to prudent vs. foolish actions.

But, I ask, given the outrageous rate at which we’re destroying our natural environment and chewing through our resources, will this capacity manifest itself in time to prevent us from the same fate as the bacteria?  There certainly are a few factors that provide cause for alarm: (more…)

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