Those of us who watch an occasional “Nova” broadcast on PBS understand that beavers have a salubrious effect on any environment they inhabit. One of the many reasons this is true is that the activities of beavers, i.e., building dams, …
Category: Renewables – Science
Fuel Cells that Operate at Lower Temperatures
2GreenEnergy supporter Gary Tulie of Buckinghamshire, England (pictured) writes: Ceres Power is a UK company developing mains gas fuel cells using ceramic coated steel. The fuel cells use readily available low cost materials and processes and operate at lower temperatures than …
Future Earth
Here’s an article that points to exactly where we’re going as a civilization, or at least, where we need to go. The author’s “Future Earth” program is one that considers Earth science from a holistic perspective. From the article:
Geoengineering with Calcium Oxide
Here’s a discussion about a senior scientist’s attempt to deal with rising CO2 levels as they pertain to ocean acidification. He favors seeding the seas with lime (calcium oxide, from limestone, pictured left), and explains why basalt (which is super-abundant) isn’t …
Periodic Table Provides Interesting, Though Grim Reminders
It’s the birthday of the man who created the Periodic Table of Elements – Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. A couple of things bear mentioning here. • There is nothing in the visible universe that isn’t some combination of items on that chart …
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The World Since Newton, and What It Means To Us, Today and Tomorrow
It’s the birthday of Isaac Newton, perhaps the best-known person in the history of science. Though there was other genius to his credit, Newton’s celebrity derived mainly from his insight into universal gravitation and thus the Laws of Motion that …
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Saluting Edison on His Big Day (Or At Least One of Them)
Thomas Edison demonstrated his first incandescent light bulb on this date in 1879, a feat noteworthy for several reasons: This success came at the end of an enormous number of experiments whose results were disappointing. When someone suggested that Edison was …
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Our Energy Policy and the Malthusian Trap
With respect to my recent post on Malthus (pictured), a college professor in Arizona writes: Craig, is there a Malthusian Trap for energy? Do we run out of energy or a habitable environment first? I’m confident that our civilization will turn …
Openness To New Energy Ideas
In the comments to my post on new energy paradigms, a reader takes me to task: I find your comments disingenuous, Craig, as I have mostly seen you play the comfortable role of the skeptic when it comes to out-of-the-box …
New Energy Paradigm–It Could Happen
It is true that humankind may be the beneficiary of a radical new approach to energy that will come along and save us from the vast environmental damage that our use of fossil fuels is wreaking upon our planet.
