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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

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Earlier today, a friend sent me a link to this discussion of electric vehicles on Techcrunch, one of the great blogsite successes of the past few years.

The article features the way-cool work of Plug-In America in its ongoing advocacy position for EVs.  The discussion beneath, however, was rather alarming.  Either the site is full of shills from the oil companies, or there actually are well-educated young people who believe that EVs offer little or no ecological advantage over internal combustion engines.

It seems they needed me – a guy old enough to be most of these commentors’ father – to point out:

A point worth mentioning here is that we could 90 million EVs on the road this afternoon, charge them with off-peak (overnight) power, and not put ANY additional load on the grid; most of that power is thrown away, as it’s too expensive to store. More on this at: http://2greenenergy.com/category/electric-vehicles/.
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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

I’m always amazed at how the auto industry continues to spin out new ideas – even at the expense of integrating concepts that, I would think, would have little chance of being seen together. Check out this video of Porsche’s new plug-in hybrid, the 918 Spyder, a car that marries a 500-HP V8 with a 218-HP electric motor. The result is a considerable rocket (0 – 62.5 MPH in 3.2 seconds). But still the messaging is rife with ecological sensitivity: “lower fuel consumption,” “lower CO2/mile,” and “one of our [Porsche’s] answers to urgent environmental concerns.”

To me, blending the concepts of high performance sportscars and eco-friendly driving is like serving chocolate sauce over tunafish, or a dill pickle spear on a bowl of strawberry ice cream.  Either one by itself is wonderful, but together they’re a bit discordant.  Most people with real concerns about the environment aren’t impressed with 700 HP.  My recommendation: don’t mince words; just go for it.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

A friend and I were discussing a mutual acquaintance who believes that the Earth is hollow – a radical theory to say the least. My friend writes:

Of course, I’m more than dubious about this hollow Earth stuff, but here’s an interesting conundrum to contemplate. Given Earth’s current gravity, is it really possible that dinosaurs were able to get as large as they did? Why aren’t land creatures today no larger than an elephant, which weighs a fraction of a T-Rex or other gigantic dinosaur? Did Earth have less gravity at one time? If so, how?

To which I reply:

I can’t speak to that one — it really IS interesting. I just think the accepted theory of the formation of the planets is so overwhelmingly compelling that a hollow Earth — or any other phenomenon that would result in a significant change in the force of gravity at the Earth’s surface — would be extremely hard to buy. Remember also that the dinosaurs were here only 65 million years ago, which is fairly recent in geologic time; almost 99% of the four-billion-year life of the Earth was before that time.

Anyway, I hate to sound like I have no intellectual curiosity, but my focus at this point in my life is more on the present. Check out this piece on the politics of global warming.  I’m very worried that power politics is in the process of winning out over science, and that we really are running headlong to the ruination of this planet. I’m afraid this stuff is getting completely out of hand.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Rice University in Houston, Texas announced the creating of a clean energy think tank. It will study and strategize environmentally sound policies for current and for new energy sources. James Tour is heading up the collaboration. He is a Rice University professor in Chemistry who wrote a paper about Nature Materials which discusses rapid expansion of solar and wind energy and the long-term need for carbon-based energy.  Carter Kittrell, a Rice research scientist, and Vicki Colvin, Rice’s Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor of Chemistry join the collaboration.

Rice already has made a number of initiatives in the world of green, including having guidelines for professor and students in the conservation of energy. Several of its buildings have been rated LEED-certified.  One of its publications from the Ecology department covers stories on a sustainable, clean energy future.   (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

A few readers have objected to my post suggesting that Chevron’s sponsoring the PBS NewsHour could warp the objectivity of the coverage of the energy industry. Most of these responses point out that I have no proof that Chevron’s presence actually has created a slant, which is true. Others say that energy does not have to be an “us versus them” story.

I’m not a combative or suspicious person by nature, but there is no way that anyone can analyze the energy industry and not conclude that it is essentially “us vs. them.” The oil companies employ 700 lobbyists whose job it is to influence our government in its favor. If they didn’t see the need to purchase that favor, they wouldn’t employ the biggest lobby on Earth. And they’ve been fantastically successful; (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

One of my son’s courses at college this semester is the History of the 1960s. Helping him prepare for a test just now reminded me of those days of political and social awareness – how a generation of young people alerted themselves to things they couldn’t tolerate, and courageously dedicated themselves to making a change. (OK, I know this is something of an idealization; they also smoked a mountain of pot.)

As I learn more about what lies at the core of our energy policy (or lack thereof), I’m beginning to realize that we need the same spirit today – a willingness to call out the bad guys – even at some level of personal risk.  It’s very clear to me that the energy “establishment” is betting quite heavily that we’ve become a population of uninformed and timid sheep.  (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

We’re starting to hear more about geoengineering, i.e., manipulating the planet’s climate as to undo the effects of greenhouse gases. No major actions have been taken to date, and the subject is so intensely debated that it is extremely unlikely that anything will happen soon; there are profound questions that need to be resolved in many different disciplines in politics, science, and ethics, for instance:

What agencies would be responsible? Who should control the Earth’s thermostat?
What exactly are the goals?
What is the best combination of methods to accomplish the goals?
Who will pay the costs?
How can we ensure that the cure’s not worse than the disease, i.e., that the risk of unintended consequences is justified? (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

A funny thing happened when we launched Renewable Energy Facts and Fantasies last week. Of course, I was hoping it would do well in the categories to which Amazon.com had assigned it: energy, engineering, and physics. And while it went to number one for a few days in both energy and engineering, it got massacred in physics.

It seems that Steven Hawking, by far the most famous physicist on Earth, had just launched his new book. And was there any controversy that may have spurred his book sales even higher than they otherwise would have been? (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Education construction jobs represent about 27 percent of all construction in the U.S. Despite a lagging economy, hundreds of millions of dollars are making their way into green school upgrades and new construction. Some $14 billion will be spent in 2010 building new schools (about 750 new schools are built in the U.S. per year), says School Planning & Management Magazine. Here is another interesting statistic – about one-fourth of the U.S. population spends a good part of each day inside a school building.

Greening of schools is a thriving enterprise. Leaders from all sectors of green schools will gather to share strategies, technologies and best practices at the Green California Schools Summit 2010 in Pasadena, California. The event, which will also feature an exposition of more than 100 companies with innovative products and services, will take place at the Pasadena Convention Center on December 8 to 10, 2010.  Eric Corey Freed, principal of organicARCHITECT and author of four books on green building, will be a keynote speaker.

Each week in the news, we find stories not only of green building initiatives but also green energy powering part or all of the school. Often there is an educational component that goes along with the installation and use of green energy (most often wind or solar.) Just a few examples from across the U.S. follows:

The San Diego Unified School District Board of Education approved a partnerships with AMSOLAR Corp, and 5.2 MW of (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I don’t think of myself as overly suspicious of the motives of others. But I have to say that I recoil at the end of every PBS NewsHour when Jim Lehrer signs off and we’re told that the broadcast was sponsored by Chevron. The idea that the information I just received met the approval of an oil company, with its obvious interests vis-à-vis clean energy, is deeply offensive. It certainly makes me call into question the validity of everthing I just heard.

Why does Chevron target PBS? I think the answer it pretty obvious: (more…)

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