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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability, Uncategorized

California Is an Incubator for Concepts in Environmentalism, SustainabilityWe in California bear a particular responsibility, as, for some reason, many social phenomena start here, and, if they’re successful, they’re picked up by the rest of the country and ultimately by the rest of the world. This, btw, is one of several good responses to the oft-asked question: does it really matter what happens in California environmentally, considering that China is building a new coal-fired power plant at the rate of one per week? Of course it matters. What starts here doesn’t stay here.

And even if that we’re the case, here’s another response, one that would apply even if California were an island with no communication to the rest of the world at all:  Decent people do what’s right regardless of how other people are acting.  You don’t litter, do you?  Now ask yourself why you refrain from littering.  Is it because no one litters?  No, plenty of people litter; they’re called “slobs.”  You’re not a slob.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Video Calls for Sustainable Approach To EnergyHere’s an eight-minute video called “Carbon” which summarizes nicely where our civilization finds itself vis-à-vis a sustainable use of energy, climate change, the oil companies, political corruption, etc. Very well done, IMO.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

Renewable Energy Has Unseen BenefitsIn the process of helping me on my new book project, “Bullish on Renewable Energy – Eleven Reasons Why Clean Energy Investors Can’t Lose,” my UK-based colleague Gary Tulie sent me a video to underscore the point that renewable energy has benefits most of us don’t see every day. Here’s a school with 400 students in Kenya’s Nyeri county in the Aberdere mountains, around 60 miles to the North of Nairobi, where the kids were performing poorly for two reasons:

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Possible Explanation for Slowdown in Global WarmingAccording to a report published yesterday, scientists may have found the answer to the unpredicted slowing in the warming of global air temperatures. They had suspected that the heat was somehow winding up in the oceans, and it appears they are correct. But what does all this mean? I hope you’ll check out the report.

 

 

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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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