Global Warming And Ebola Economics
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 2, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011I don’t mind all this global warming stuff as long as the air doesn’t stink. I just don’t understand why Democrats hate science and Republicans love filthy air so much
Some of my views on environmental issues tend to vex my liberal treehugger friends, and cause my more conservative friends to chuckle, thinking that I’m somehow “on their side”. At the heart of this occasional confusion between me and my friends is the issue of the nearly-useless term “global warming”. I say “nearly-useless” because the term has become so politicized as to be rendered devoid of any clear meaning. This little rift became apparent recently when a liberal friend shared the startling image at left, which shows the arctic sea ice at the north pole over nearly thirty years, from September 1979 to September 2007. As you can see, there’s been a rather shocking loss of arctic sea ice! Things like this are the most obvious irrefutable evidence that the Earth is getting warmer, and one can only conclude that someone who claims otherwise has either not done their research, or is an utter moron. Or of course, a liar with vested interests. What got my friends going recently was the fact that I said I wouldn’t mind some global warming if it ended winters in Michigan, because then I would not only not have to move, but Michigan’s sputtering economy could enjoy explosive revenue growth from its hundreds of miles of suddenly-warm-enough beaches. Adding that the Earth is going to warm up someday anyway, so it might as well be now. This little bit of semi-serious humor started a debate that went on for some time, mostly because someone used the term “global warming”. Someone whom I must hasten to remind you was not me. You see, I’m not convinced that the industrial revolution and the last century’s air pollution are the only cause of the Earth warming up. We had an ice age without man-made pollution, and the planet has gone through plenty of other dramatic changes without the help of the combustion engine and coal-generated electricity. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think that the energy or motor industries shouldn’t be heavily regulated to control emissions. In my opinion the big mistake on this topic was a political one, when Democrats made this a key issue, and branded it as “global warming”. Which then gave industry a handy language mechanism to fight being regulated. As in this New American piece that references a lot of honest science but then crumbles through logical fallacy to conclude with the bizarre statement that the “intent of global-warming alarmists is to set up an energy-regulating global government and an international carbon-trading market worth billions”. Absolute facts on the broader topic of what’s causing the recent rise in temperature are not likely to be obtainable; even many scientists will admit this. In spite of the Union of Concerned Scientists solid stance that man is directly responsible for current global climate trends, the fact is that when you ask a larger group of scientists, their answers – although in agreement that man has some influence – will depend on whether they’re meteorologists, climatologists, or geologists, and so on. But when you say “greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming so we should regulate them”, you’re sunk. Because then the argument is no longer about whether industry should stop dumping pollutants into our air because it’s just plain stupid, and bad for our air, it becomes about whether or not it causes “global warming”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the “survival of the fittest” underpinnings of capitalism, until “the fittest” becomes an absolute monopoly, as in the case of energy companies and oil cartels. Because organisms as large as BP – or even Microsoft, Google, or NewsCorp – become less like a healthy part of an economic ecosystem and more like an Ebola virus that doesn’t care if it kills its host. And in this case, the host is you and me, and the air we breathe. Maybe we should stop trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions because they cause global warming and start regulating them simply because cleaner industry simply makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »
Celling Your Soul – The Staggering Global Impact Of Cell Phones
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on December 4, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Saturday, December 4th, 2010Forget your CARBON footprint, what about your KARMIC footprint? We have barely begun to assess the devastating environmental, social, and ethical effects of the life cycle of mobile phones and other electronic devices that rely on rare earth minerals.
The other day a friend was rather pridefully showing off the Prius they had just bought. I thought it was pretty cool that this person (who travels quite a bit) was actually excited about getting greener. We started joking about their carbon footprint, because they fly regularly, and obviously it’s hard to offset that by simply buying a car, which we acknowledged with a little humor. But then I said “what about your karmic footprint?”, which drew a perplexed look. I explained that as cool as a Prius is regarding energy consumption, it’s loaded with electronics and rare earth metals, and its parts must be made in at least a half-dozen countries. What about the labor conditions? The fuel used for transport? The environmental impact where the rare-earth metals were mined in China? My friend is a shamelessly ruthless capitalist, and although the biggest part of my carbon footprint is probably my cigarette smoking, I’m more of a hopeful realist than a teary-eyed treehugger, so the conversation got pretty interesting after that. We shifted the focus to other products, especially electronics, and agreed at the end that there was one product that packed more evil per pound than anything else in the world of consumerism: The Cell Phone. From the beginning to the end (and perhaps especially in the middle) of its life cycle (which is far too short) the cell phone does more human harm than any product ever imagined, with the exception, of course, of those produced for the military, which are intentionally designed to cause death, destruction, and suffering. This all sounds like hyperbole, but although the hard facts about environmental impacts aren’t in – and may never be unless China stops selling us rare earth minerals and we start making the things here – some basic numbers about volume of production and consumption are available, and they’re staggering. Just look at the figures below. If there’s someone you want to kill but you find the thought of ending a human life abhorrent, get over it. The impact of your lifetime cell-phone usage will probably accomplish the same thing, but at the expense of a total stranger. Read the rest of this entry »
The Nissan iV Replaces Production Lines With Production Vines
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 19, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Friday, November 19th, 2010You may grow tired of looking at the swooping contours of concept cars, but with the Nissan iV the only thing you’ll grow is the car itself. It’s green because it’s made of ivy.
I think I’ve found the perfect car to drive on that solar highway that I reference whenever I can because I can’t believe it doesn’t get more press. Even if you’re into auto design, your eyes eventually grow immune to the dazzling swoopy contours of the concept cars like the ones presented at this year’s LA Auto Show . Although one assumes the designs are driven by aerodynamics, you eventually begin to feel that they’re just seeing how many swoops they can include in a design and still have it look like a car. At first glance, the Nissan iV gives the same impression, but if you look into the reasons behind the iV’s design, you find a mind-blowing futuristic functionality. Even the most sophisticated cars in production right now are still based on the basic idea of wheels on rods, with a box sitting on top. One of the most unusual design elements of the iV – the ribbon of material weaving through the wheels – is in fact brilliant functionality. You see, there’s no “hood” on this car, because there’s no engine compartment. The motors are in the wheels, freeing the design of all the additional structures necessary to hold an engine in a box and link it with a transmission, driveshaft, and gearing. But that’s just the beginning. The “biopolymer” chassis material is synthetically grown and formed from fast-growing ivy, and re-enforced with spider silk composite. Because of the lightweight yet rugged material used in the chassis, the interior (which seats four) provides a panoramic passenger experience, because it’s constructed from photovoltaic material that weighs 99% less than traditional glass. The car’s incredible range is because most of the body is a solar collector, and regenerative “super-capacitor” technology recoups 60% of the kinetic energy spent while the car is in motion. If this is the future, I’m sticking around. More images below. Read the rest of this entry »
The Glass Just Might Be Greener On The Other Side
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 13, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Saturday, November 13th, 2010Thanks to recent work at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory, someday soon even your windows may be solar collectors.
We recently touched on a brilliant idea involving turning the world’s highways into solar collectors, but what if you could turn virtually anything into a solar collector, just by covering it with a thin transparent film? That’s just one crazy idea that may soon be possible because of recent research at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Working with a semiconducting polymer spiked with Fullerenes, the scientists were able to create a thin film that is effectively transparent, could efficiently generate charge and charge separation, and is scalable to industrial production levels. Existing transparent photovoltaic materials are either slightly tinted like PVGlaze architectural glass, or only partially transparent like Taiyo See-through Solar. In the latter case because the material is created with laser etching that alternates the photovoltaic material with a truly transparent material. The real innovation with the Los Alamos project lies in the fact that the material is fabricated by creating a micron-sized flow of water droplets across a thin layer of the polymer-fullerene solution, which then evaporates, leaving a nano-scale honeycomb pattern that could efficiently absorb light and facilitate electrical conductivity. A material like this could greatly enhance ideas like this Italian greenhouse project that both grows food and collects solar power. Or imagine if the material evolved to a point where it could be applied to existing buildings without significantly changing their appearance. Although there are already a lot of strategies out there for building-integrated photovoltaics , including the possibility of photovoltaic “paint”, this new technology may make even more crazy ideas possible. Imagine if you could solarize your house just buy spraying it with a transparent film…
The Impending Global Shortage Surplus
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 17, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Sunday, October 17th, 2010Don’t worry, there are plenty of shortages for everyone!
 America even seems to be experiencing a “fitness shortage” |
There are times in big business when the marketing and product people should talk more with the engineers and scientists. I think this was true recently when companies like Apple and Research In Motion started pumping their mobile devices. As you may know, as a result of the explosive growth of this market, we’re now rapidly running out of the materials used in their manufacture, with China kind of cornering the market on them. The shortage of these materials should come as no surprise though; they are after all called (ahem) rare earth minerals. But since we also seem to have a shortage of common sense in America, this allows crafty neo-cons to point out that we’re now plagued with what could be called a “shortage deficit”. Meaning if those dirty liberals hadn’t put so many restrictions on mining these materials, WE could be running out of them instead of the Chinese. What these incessantly politicizing wingnuts fail to mention is that China is running out of water too. This will make it hard for the Chinese to capitalize on this shortage deficit for very long; it is after all harder to put the squeeze on anybody if you’re DYING OF THIRST. Besides, if you take a larger view, it quickly becomes apparent we’re running out of just about everything. We’re running out of oil, gold and silver, we’re running out of farm laborers (which is weird, because we’re not running out of people looking for jobs), we’re running out of drugs (at least the legal ones, the illegal ones are thriving), we’re running out of food…why, we’re even running out of internet addresses. Speaking of running out of food, the fact that we’re running out of tuna and red snapper (bet you didn’t know oil rigs were such a crucial part of the ecosystem, did you!) is probably a blessing since – as we mentioned – we’re running out of water to keep them in. Given the continued bailing out of the failed banking industry and the floundering global economy, I imagine that after years of being on the road to recovery, we’ll be running out of trees again to print all the cash needed to keep the party going. Ultimately though, I think what we’re shortest on is common sense, compassion, and patience.