5 Cool Clean & Green Ideas You Don’t Hear Much About
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 22, 2013 by admin in Clean & Green
Friday, February 22nd, 2013Maybe the infamous “they” aren’t suppressing the technology, maybe we’re just plain lazy and apathetic.
I was surprised a couple of years ago when the idea to transform America’s highways into a huge solar grid (we touched on it here) didn’t get a lot more buzz. Regardless of the short-term costs and technical obstacles, repaving America with solar collectors is the stuff of forward-thinking infrastructure rebuilding dreams that could re-shape the global economy. Maybe that’s part of the problem. If you were someone who had hundreds of billions invested in the allegedly limitless oil reserves around the globe, why would you want to change the revenue model? But there’s probably no huge conspiracy to suppress technology, we’re probably just not paying attention. Which is why you may not have heard in the last year about cool ideas like the project at Ohio State where they figured out a way to harness the energy of coal without burning it, capturing 99 percent of the carbon dioxide produced in the reaction. Or how MIT created a light source that cools its surrounding environment rather than heating it. Or the technology that may soon make spray on solar panels commercially viable. Or kinetic sidewalks that capture the energy from our footsteps and convert it to electricity. I guess it’s no surprise that we don’t hear more about all this cool stuff; we are indeed pretty addicted to our fossil fuels. Even though it was Norway that came up with the clever idea of the poop-powered buses we talked about a couple of years ago, they’re still pretty passionate about the more old-fashioned sort of logs. In fact they’ll watch 12-hour shows about them.
Things Are Gettin’ Greener On The Server Farm
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 26, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011Did you know that two Google searches generate as much CO2 as boiling water on your stovetop? Big tech companies are finally taking bigger steps toward addressing their data center’s environmental impact, which often rivals that of entire cities.
A couple of years ago, we talked about your Facebook Footprint, pointing out that two Google searches produce the same amount of CO2 as boiling water on your stovetop, and that Facebook has a carbon footprint equal to half of New York City. So have things changed much? You’d like to think that the brightest minds at innovative companies like Google would have a solid forward vision as they build the massive data centers that power the things that you do every day on the web, but do they? Well, it’s hard to tell. In spite of the fact that large tech companies like Google and Facebook don’t think YOU deserve much privacy, they treat information about their data centers like state secrets. None of the major tech firms in a Greenpeace roundup fared especially well, primarily because of a lack of transparency on the part of the companies in question. But it appears big tech firms are finally making SOME kind of effort. AMD and HP are partnering to explore the potential of solar-only distributed data centers. After considerable pressure, Facebook installed solar panels at their Oregon operation earlier this year, and suggesting maybe there’s some kind of financial sense to the idea (although this is a common argument against green energy) even Standard & Poors is getting in on the action. And Apple – in spite of being such an innovative company when it comes to devices and the revenue streams attached to them, is one of the late joiners in the game. For more comprehensive roundups if you’re interested, check out this special report from DataCenterKnowledge.com or this one from EcoFriend .
P-Harmony Pairs Lonely Politicians & Lovelorn Lobbyists
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 27, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Sunday, March 27th, 2011Finally, politicians who are bored with casually screwing their constituents can find deeper, more rewarding relationships through online dating.
Are you a love-starved DC lobbyist, looking for some hot freshman action? Or maybe a stimulation junky politician, who already has a hot trophy wife and portrait-perfect kids, but would love to get in bed and talk dirt with a well-oiled energy lobbyist who wants to “drill baby drill”? Well, thanks to the internet and sophisticated tools refined through decades of computerized dating, you no longer need spend all that extra time wining and dining the politician who will take any position you like, or the lobbyist to lubricate your dreams of power. Because now there’s P-Harmony. To be honest, I’m not sure I always care for Greenpeace’s methods or agendas, and I’ve seen so many virals that I think I’ve contracted a permanent infection, but I still enjoyed the recent Greenpeace parody dating service campaign “Polluter Harmony”. Especially when they took a particularly witty swipe at a congressman from my home state. When the lobbyist in the video below asks P-Harmony’s Chief Harmonologist if he has an in with the “Kŏchs”, he says “It’s Kōch, and yes, I swing with them all the time”. See more P-Harmony member profiles here . Video below.
Is It Hot In Here? Or Is It Just 97% Of Scientists?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 9, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011I’ve finally given up on being even slightly tolerant of climate change denial. Bring it. I will shred you. And toss you from the shores of Tuvalu.
Recently, I made a big mistake in how I framed some thoughts on the politics and terminology of “global warming”. I suggested there was some wiggle room regarding what the exact cause of ALL climate change over the last century might be. It seemed reasonable to accept the idea that we can’t know with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY how important the impact of industry has been on climate change, and perhaps more importantly, that maybe we needed to stop calling it “global warming”, simply as a political strategy. There are, after all, a bunch of scientists who question man’s influence on climate change. But after a lot of dialogue (mostly with some otherwise intelligent friends who work in energy) and a little more light research, I now realize that there’s some truth to the old adage “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile”, and in this case, it’s more like “give them 3% and they’ll destroy all organic life on Earth”. There’s just no being reasonable with climate change deniers any more; virtually all of them need a good bitchslappin’ with the facts, and some duct tape applied to the mouths of those who won’t just shut up about it and face the unavoidable facts. And here’s where you can find them. The facts, I mean. Not the deniers. How about NASA? They don’t call them “rocket scientists” for nothing, you know. If you want to deny global warming, I’ll be glad to listen to you. As soon as you send a man to the Moon and back. Until then, please shut the fuck up. And how about the Union of Concerned Scientists? Their board is comprised of top scientists from academia, government, AND the private sector, many of them educated at schools like Harvard, Cornell, and Columbia University. So after you send that man to the moon and back, I wanna see at least three PhD’s too. Oh, and for those of you who are tired of listening to these weathertards, and need some simple retorts to their ignorant claims, try How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic or Skeptic Arguments and What the Science Says, which between them list over 200 arguments, in language simple enough for even the most persistently ignorant to understand. And if that’s not enough, even Prince Charles is calling shenanigans, and he’s next in line for the bloody throne of England, for cryin’ out loud. Hardly what you’d call liberal treehugger material. We need to keep this idiotic tide at bay. I’d like to visit Tuvalu some day.
Unlimited Oil Supply From A Bacterium?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 19, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011A biotech firm has patented a bacterium that essentially consumes carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight, and excretes fossil fuels. But is an unlimited supply of fossil fuels the way to a cleaner, more efficient future?
A friend once told me that he used to work in a warehouse, and one day all the guys he worked with were sitting around talking about what they would do if they won the lotto. They started making jabs at each other, joking about really expensive things they would do to mess up each others’ work day. Eventually, with no sense of irony or humor whatsoever, one of the guys said “Yeah? Well I’d buy my OWN damn hi-lo so I wouldn’t have to share it with you jerks anymore”. This story sprang to mind the other day when I read that a biotech firm called Joule Unlimited received a patent last fall for genetically modified E. coli bacteria that needs only sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to enable it to excrete ethanol or hydrocarbon fuel. You read that right. A germ that lives on CO2, water and sunlight, and craps gasoline. Of course, it’s not that simple; there’s still a need to refine the compounds it excretes into usable fuels, but the company claims that once production is established, it will be able to produce 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year, at a price that is competitive with conventional fossil fuels. To frame this in way that one can more easily visualize, they claim that they would be able to provide for all of the United States’ fuel needs annually in an area the size of the Texas panhandle. Okay. Who knows if this is actually true; we hear about some kind of miracle solution to the world’s energy problems about every year or so. But assuming it is true, WHY ON EARTH would you focus this kind of engineering genius and the resources required to create AN ENDLESS SUPPLY OF FOSSIL FUEL? To me it sounds a lot like that guy at the warehouse. The idea that using just sunlight, CO2 and water, we can create usable energy is kind of miraculous, isn’t it? I mean, except for the part where that energy eventually comes from petroleum again, which could create the pollution that blocks the sun that….oh, never mind. I’m no engineer, but it seems to me that the road to a cleaner, more efficient future wouldn’t be paved with a limitless supply of oil. Feel free to enlighten me if I’m spewing a geyser of ignorance here.