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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Ocean Thermal

Chris Barry, OTEC, and Carbon SequestrationChris Barry is definitely on my “visit list” for my next trip back to the East Coast.

Chris is a Senior Naval Architect at the United States Coast Guard Surface Forces Logistics Center, and says that after “forty years of experience in many areas of naval architecture and marine engineering, he’s still interested in ‘hanging steel and getting it wet.'” He goes on to note, “The oceans also provide some opportunities to solve other problems, especially alternative energy and carbon sequestration, and I am working on some of these as well.”

“Working on it” is putting it mildly. Check out his presentation on carbon sequestration. You’ll travel a long way to find someone more knowledgeable in the subject than Chris.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the part I find most fascinating in all this is that OTEC may play an important role in bringing nutrients up from the cold waters beneath the surface that will accelerate the growth of animals whose life processes absorb CO2 and ultimately dispose of it at the bottom of the oceans.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels, Uncategorized

Removing Oil as a Cause for WarIt’s the 150th anniversary of the signing of the First Geneva Convention, which, according to the Writer’s Almanac, “marked the beginning of the international humanitarian law movement.”

I’m going to resist the temptation to go off on a rant about the fact that my country, which likes to represent itself as a bastion of human rights, a century and half later, still tortures its prisoners, and take this post in another direction: war itself, and its relation to energy—in particular, to oil. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Wind Energy

ABB Takes on Tough Challenges Posed by Offshore WindOffshore wind presents many thorny challenges, the solutions of which, if they are to exist at all, require our very best engineering minds.

Some of these are related to securing the turbines. Fortunately, there are oceans, like the Atlantic off the East Coast of the U.S., whose waters are shallow enough to permit us to anchor turbines into the sea bed. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

We're Interested in Fuel Cell Vehicles -- But Exactly Why?Are you bemused by our new-found interest in fuel cell vehicles? I certainly am. What they offer both to the consumer and to the environment has no appeal. They cost a huge premium to buy — and to fuel. The prospect of generating cost-effective eco-friendly hydrogen is a fantasy. And the concept of creating an infrastructure for the delivery of hydrogen is even more remote.

Linked above is an article on the subject from Joe Romm, one of the great students of the subject, who covers both its history as well as its present.  He explains why FCVs might have made sense 15 years ago, and why they don’t now.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Climate Change and Our Discount RateThose of us who think about climate change often imagine ourselves in this scenario: we live long enough to experience some extremely severe effects of global warming, perhaps a rise in sea levels that has forced whole populations to abandon their native lands, or acute food shortages due to desertification. At that point, a young person with her whole miserable life in front of her confronts us: “You knew this was happening, and you could have prevented it. Why didn’t you?”

The answer, if there is one, seems to reside in what economists call the discount rate, i.e., the degree to which we are willing to experience a small pain now in order to avoid a bigger one later. Complicating this is that, generally, the people who experience that big pain later will not be ourselves, but rather, our descendants. In other words, all people, at a certain level, are selfish creatures; we may know that we’re causing suffering, but largely for someone else to bear.

This whole subject is explored in this fabulous article on climate change and our discount rate.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

U.S. Military Looks at Climate ChangeHere’s a 68-page report from 2007 on the impact of climate change on American national security, created by a team of 11 retired generals and admirals. Though I didn’t read every word, I found no real surprises here, other than perhaps the unanimity of voice which they write about the urgency of the issue. The report lays out the imperative for the U.S to take action domestically and internationally to stem an enormous tangle of inter-related effects that jeopardize the nation and its ability to protect itself.

When someone who looks like one of the beat poets of the 1950s says we need to take action to mitigate climate change because of national security issues, that’s one thing. When a four-star general says it, that’s another.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Busting Myths on Climate ChangeHere’s one of those “myth-buster” pieces on climate change published a couple of weeks ago in the New York Times.

Note that it echoes a bunch of the argumentation you’ll find here at 2GreenEnergy. For instance, while it’s true that there are unknowns surrounding the exact details of the effects of climate change, i.e., what precisely will happen where and when, this hardly justifies inaction. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Examining Climate Change’s Long-Term Effects

When we think about the ultimate consequences of climate change, we think immediately about the loss of farm land to desertification, but we also think of sea-level rise. As the major ice sheets melt, e.g., in Greenland, and the coastlines retreat accordingly, what will life be like?

The short answer is that no one knows, but part of the long answer is that there are some strange complexities, like the one here that suggests that “Warming May Not Swamp Islands,” due to the counter-intuitive notion that certain atolls will rise at the same rate as the sea-level rise.  Sadly, the same doesn’t apply to the low-lying cities on our continents.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

Advanced Nuclear: Let's Keep Our Minds OpenThe other day, I was lucky enough to have connected with a group of a few dozen extremely senior scientists whose main beliefs I would summarize as follows:

• The damage being wreaked upon Earth from fossil fuels, principally in the form of anthropogenic climate change and ocean acidification, are realities that will completely overwhelm this planet in the coming few decades if humankind can’t or won’t do something to mitigate it. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

Three Interesting and Worthwhile Breakthroughs in Solar Photovoltaic Panels

The solar energy adoption in relation to energy needs is a crucial theme. Indeed it’s not a big secret that the explotation of non-renewable resources, like burning fossil fuels as oil or gas, has huge consequences like climate changing, pollution, resource deplation.

On the other hand, solar energy, is an infinite source of energy, and it is clean, green and environment-friendly.

With the help of a photovoltaic panel system, it is possible to convert solar energy into electricity, and consequentially to produce it directly by the sun. (more…)

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