Today is the 181st birthday of the celebrated Croatian electrical engineer Nicola Tesla, best know for two things: 1) Tesla was the genius behind alternating current, the form of electricity that powers most of our world today.
Author: craigshields
Carbon Fee and Dividend: Another Take
The video below is billed as a “Republican, conservative, business-oriented” solution to the carbon emissions problem. In fact, however, it contains few if any differences from the “Carbon Fee and Dividend” plan that the Climate Citizens’ Lobby is offering, as …
Optimism and Climate Change Mitigation
I attended a meeting of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby in Santa Barbara this morning, where our small group joined 189 others around the country on a videoconference. This virtual gathering featured two fabulous speakers who both made compelling and uplifting …
Welcome to the Exponential Age
Below is a cool thing I got from a friend. Note the remarks on electric transportation, renewable energy, and the desalination of water. The basic thrust of all this is exactly what we’ve been saying at 2GE since its inception:
Consumer Values Are Formed by External Pressures
A commenter remarked recently that consumers can’t be forced to adopt eco-sensitive values. He goes on to say that his neighbor recently offered him a ride in his new Rolls-Royce Phantom, and says, “This huge automobile with its 12 cylinder, …
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Habitable Land Mass of Planet Earth Is Shrinking
Lots of folks wonder what our civilization will look like as the effects of climate change become more pronounced. What happens when the amount of arable farm land falls, potable water gets scarce, and hundreds of millions of people’s ancestral …
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Living in the USA: We’re Human Beings First, Americans Second
As you consider the meme here, realize that Americans generally have had the concept of UBUNTU programmed out of us by our consumer/capitalist society that is as fundamental to our being and as invisible a part of our lives as …
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Gravity Is Not Illuminating Sub-Saharan Africa
The concept discussed in this video is funny, IMO, as it combines a good idea (highly efficient lighting powered by a renewable resource) and a gross misunderstanding of basic science. There is no energy in gravity; the energy lighting the lamp …
Recipe for Clean Coal Success: Lose the Coal
Here’s an article in “Think Progress” called “Mississippi realizes how to make a clean coal plant work: Run it on natural gas” in which the organization’s founder and editor, Joe Romm, writes, “After wasting $7.5 billion, the state realizes its coal-to-gas plant …
A Bit of Renewable Energy Rancor
An angry gentleman from Australia posted this story, explaining how “solar and wind don’t work.” Insofar as this claim is so outrageous, I succumbed to temptation and got a tad sarcastic:
