I ran into a guy at my last college reunion whose career involves selling enormous sculptures made from solar PV to corporate campuses. I seem to recall a life-size brontosaurus out in front of some IT company.
Obviously, the levelized cost of energy is going to be extremely unappealing, but if the thing’s cool enough, who cares?
Here’s a discussion on re-opening the economy that readers may find interesting:Peter: I’m with this guy, Dr. Dan Erickson of Bakersfield, CA who just dropped multiple bombshells (in this video) that disagree with the official government narrative. There is not enough benefit from a stay-at-home policy to warrant destruction of the economy, and other harmful social effects. In this video, he just touches on the data, but in subsequent videos, he covers a lot of ground. I’m sold.
It’s common to hear about the horrific effects of climate change: super-storms, wildfires, sea-level rise, droughts, food shortages and the like, and feel great concern for our children’s future.
Indeed, life on this planet will change in a great number of ways, though some will be more off-putting than outright hellish. Here’s a paper from The Economist on the end of winters as we know them. If you live in the northern parts of Minnesota or Finland, that’s a change you’ll probably enjoy, but for most people, the cold snap of winter is rather appealing; it’s certainly salubrious for parts of the world that tend to have infectious diseases that are spread by mosquitoes.
Apparently, Madison, the capital of Wisconsin has installed its first solar EV charger to provide power for part of the city’s fleet of vehicles. The fellow in this video says that it can even charge two EVs at once.
But wait a second. The charger has three standard commercial solar panels, 77″ X 39″. That’s 3*(77*39)/(39.36^2), converting to meters, gives us 5.8 m^2. The insolation of Madison is ~3 KWhrs/day, giving you 17.4 KWhrs/day. At 25% efficiency, that’s 4.35 KWhrs/day.
A Chevy Volt has a 66 KWhr battery-pack, so charging one such EV would take 15.2 days. (Charging two: 30.4 days.) Not sure how workable this is.
Not everybody feels sorry for Dr. Birx, but I do.
Fox News interviewed her yesterday and asked her to comment on President Trump’s statements on disinfectants. She put it like this: “He gets new information, he likes to talk that through out loud and really have that dialogue.” (more…)
The New York Times reports, “A cascade of ominous public and private polling have Republicans increasingly nervous they are at risk of losing the presidency and the Senate if Mr. Trump does not put the nation on a radically improved course.” (more…)
From this article, sent to my by 2GreenEnergy super-supporter Gay Tulie
Lithium batteries will soon power electric vehicles traveling 2,000 km (1,242 miles) on a single charge, say the team at (Australia’s) Brighsun New Energy. The company is preparing for industrial trials later in the year for a range of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries that can power a cell phone for over a week and can theoretically travel close to 2,000 km on a single charge. (more…)
It’s not news that there are life-long Republicans who refuse to vote for Trump. In June of 2016, ultra-conservative columnist George Will exited the Republican party, and he’s been joined by many other public intellectuals on the right-wing since then. (more…)
I’m trying to lead a healthier life, getting more exercise, eliminating dairy, and cutting back on drinking. I put a shot of Lysol in my coffee just now as a replacement for milk, and this evening it will be a martini with a new recipe I found online: (more…)
Walking the dog with my wife this morning, I confessed to her that I’m a bit sad–“just sad for the world, I guess.”
Indian author Suzanna Arundhati Roy sure doesn’t see it that way, and what a bold voice of inspiration she is. (more…)
