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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Question: How is it possible for the concentration of certain toxins to increase in our groundwater for several decades after those chemicals have been banned? For example, the concentration of soil disinfectant DCP (used heavily in the 1970s and finally banned in 1990) will peak about 2020, and will remain in significant quantities until about 2050.

Answer: Can be found at http://2greenenergy.com/cool-guess-answers/8732.

Relevance:  Most of the effects of the actions we take today – good or bad — have repercussions for extremely long periods of time. This reminds us of what Thomas Jefferson famously said, “It is incumbent upon every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.”  Not to moralize, but I think he nailed something there.  

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Frequent commenter MarcoPolo writes:

Craig, EREVs (extended range electric vehicles), are not simply ‘Plug-in hybrids’. The GM Volt is an astonishing example of US engineering, and advanced technology.  All Americans should feel proud of the GM Volt.

I have to admit that it’s a cool idea, and I’m glad that GM appears to be onboard with a migration, albeit a slow one, away from oil.  But I do believe that the EREV (as they call it) will be a short-lived concept that will have little bearing on the future of transportation.

Btw, the difference between the terms “extended range electric vehicle” (EREV) and “plug-in hybrid” is semantics. In fact, I recall thinking when I saw that GM had coined the phrase EREV in an attempt to differentiate the Volt from the other plug-in hybrids, “Now that’s marketing at its finest.” All such vehicles have batteries that provide a given range, and internal combustion engines (ICEs) that extend that range. Yes, there are variations on the theme as to what precisely the ICE does (charge the battery? power the car? both?) But we’re really talking about a single concept.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

In a recent post about the wonderful book Beyond the Limits by Donella Meadows et. al., I lamented that there is no governing body with the power to do anything about the world energy policy and the overall sustainability of the planet.

If there were such a governing body, it seems obvious that the one action that should sit at the absolute top of the list of priorities is education – especially of females.  Educated women don’t have 12 children.  In fact, spending on women is generally a good idea.  As a friend of mine says, “When you spend on men, you wind up with more Vespas and beer; when you spend on women, you get tighter, better educated, and smaller families.  It’s something of a no-brainer.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I’m reading Beyond the Limits by Donella Meadows et. al. and learning all about the computer models these folks have used to predict the consequences of things like exponential population growth on a planet with finite resources.  This is brilliant work, and wonderfully thought provoking, but I wonder about its practical application.  After all, the world doesn’t have a governing body that will take a certain set of actions according to the output of the model.

Our scientists tell us in no uncertain terms the consequences of what we’re doing with greenhouse gasses, but we come home from our climate change meetings with no agreements to lift a finger to do anything about this.  China is building a new coal-fired power plant at the rate of one a week.  The best computer model in the world is no match for a large powerful government with an army of 200 million soldiers that is determined to build 50 new electrical plants next year.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s another in our continuing series of free reports based on the reader surveys we do here at 2GreenEnergy. Those of us who are wondering what life on Earth will be like in 10 or 20 years will want to grab this 17-pager on our planet’s overall sustainability: http://2greenenergy.com/jan-survey-report/

Will the global economy recover after the resolution of the U.S. recession, the European debt crisis, and other immediate woes?

Will technological innovation outpace population growth, the depletion of resources, and man’s impact on the natural environment?

Will mankind gain a better understanding of the impact it’s made on the natural environment, raising awareness of our need to reduce, re-use, and recycle, and driving innovation in clean tech?

Will we enter a sustained period of negative economic growth, created by our civilization’s having “hit the wall” with respect to scarcities in energy, water, and food?

Again, here’s the report: http://2greenenergy.com/jan-survey-report/.  I hope you enjoy it.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Here’s a wonderful video that explains the multiple drivetrains at work in the Chevy Volt. A couple of immediate impressions:

1) No wonder the price on this sucker is $41K, with all that going on. The bill of materials (costs of the individual components) must be enough to choke a horse. And the non-recurring engineering costs must have been staggering.

2) This further amplifies my belief that plug-in hybrids really are not the answer to transportation. It’s like using an elephant gun to kill mice. Electric transportation will succeed when we get the price, energy density, and power density of batteries into an acceptable range – and, of course, when we can get enough renewable energy on the grid that we’re not charging them with coal.

So when will this happen? The question is political will. If we rely 100% on market forces, especially while we continue to subsidize fossil fuels, it could be A Long Way to Tipperary.

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

I hope everyone gets the opportunity to catch this episode of Frontline on PBS: Nuclear Aftershocks — one that essentially claims that nuclear energy is both unacceptably dangerous but completely necessary. I’m reminded of the way Amory Lovins begins his current-day presentations: “Which would you rather die from? Nuclear holocaust, drowning from rising sea levels, respiratory disease, or terrorist attacks and social chaos from the demand for increasingly scarce oil?” I have to admit; it’s a great way to capture an audience’s attention.

“Aftershocks” did a great deal to explore the dangers of nuclear energy (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

It’s hard to know what will come of Warren Buffett’s plea for a more just approach to taxation here in the U.S. He certainly did grab the world’s attention a few years ago in his now-famous “Tax Me!” op-ed, in which he pointed out that his own effective federal tax rate was about 17 percent, as contrasted to that of his secretary, which was about 30 percent. To his credit, he made many millions of us aware of the fact tax breaks allow the richest Americans to avoid paying their fair share of personal income tax.

While we’re watching the action in Washington, D.C., here’s a report on corporate tax-payers and tax-dodgers that you may find interesting.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

True to form, Glenn Doty writes a thorough and quite helpful comment on my piece about measuring the increase in the use of renewable energy.  He closes with two ideas on which I would like to comment in return:

1) Of course, natural gas is far better than coal, and slightly worse than nuclear.

Personally, I think it’s impossible to put nuclear on a scale of “goodness” or “badness,” because we are incapable of knowing its implications to our health and safety.  I’ll go out on a limb here and guess you haven’t polled the people living around Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island. And what might the future bring? More operational disasters? Catastrophes with handling nuclear waste? Rogue states with small dirty nuclear weapons? It’s impossible to predict, but it can’t be good.

2) At least coal power is plummeting. That’s good any way you wish to calculate anything.

Amen, my friend.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

A friend asks:

Out of curiosity, did you ever hear of Mike Strizky and his purely hydrogen powered house in Hopewell, NJ?

No, that’s cool.  Actually, of course, the power is coming from the solar PV; it’s stored in the hydrogen.  Personally, I’m not too great a fan of hydrogen.  I think that batteries will soon prove affordable, especially as the scale at which they’ll be used in electric transportation and utility-scale storage will drive further cost reductions.  I hasten to add that not everyone agrees with me on this.

Hydrogen fuel cells have significant efficiency limits that (I believe) are impossible to cross, since the migration of the ion through the electrolyte produces heat.