A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

An unforgettable and shocking wake-up call, A CRUDE AWAKENING offers the rock-solid argument that the era of cheap oil is in the past. Relentless and clear-eyed, this intensively-researched film drills deep into the uncomfortable realities of a world that is both addicted to fossil fuels and blissfully unaware of the looming "peak oil" crisis. Drawing on an international cast of maverick energy experts and thinkers, directors Basel Gelpke and Ray McCormack debunk the conventional wisdom that oil production will continue to climb, and instead stare bleakly at a planet facing economic meltdown and conflict over its most valuable resource. Featuring a haunting score by Phillip Glass and a fascinating array of rare archival footage, the film explores oil’s rocky relationship with human progress in locales ranging from ancient Baku, Azerbaijan to dusty oilpatch town McCamey, Texas. Amidst a dark and disturbing vision of our future, A CRUDE AWAKENING hints at a humbler way of life built around sustainability and alternative energy, providing a visually stunning, boldly prophetic testament which provokes not just thought but action.

A Crude Awakening

AASIN: 

A Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash

Solar Cooker @ Wikipedia

Solar_cooker

The Solar Oven Society

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The Solar Oven Society

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exists to promote solar cooking to the American public and to provide a way to partner with the over 2 billion people worldwide who lack adequate fuel for cooking their food.

Persons Helping People (PHP) (the sponsor of the Solar Oven Society) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation established in 1991 and based in Minnesota. Following the wishes of its first donor, Virginia Persons, PHP is dedicated to helping alleviate hunger in developing countries by helping people help themselves.

Cook with the Sun

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Cook with the Sun

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A small web site discussing solar cooking and solar cookers.

Solar Household Energy

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Solar Household Energy

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A not-for profit corporation, seeks to harness free enterprise to introduce solar cooking where it can improve quality of life and relieve stress on the environment. Working with private entities and NGOs, SHE designs and oversees training and distribution projects in Mexico, Central America and Africa.

Currently, more than half of the world’s population relies on biomass (wood, animal dung and crop residue) for cooking, according to the U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO). LINK This practice causes disease, economic hardship, and environmental degradation. Modern solar cooking ovens like SHE’s “HotPot” offer practical, affordable, long-term relief.

Manufacturers and vendors of solar cookers

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Manufacturers and vendors

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Known manufacturers or vendors of solar cookers and solar ovens.

The "Villager" Sun Oven

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The "Villager" Sun Oven

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A large scale solar oven large enough to create temperatures of 500 degrees F, and cook enough food at "large" scale. It mounts on a trailer, it's so large.

Solar Cooking Documents

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Solar Cooking Documents

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An extensive set of document references on solar cooking, the benefits of solar cooking, the design of solar cookers, using solar cookers, and more.

The "Heavens Flame" solar cooker

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Making and using a solar cooker

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An article describing a simple solar cooker design, and some of the history of solar cooking.

The "Easy Lid" Solar Cooker

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The "Easy Lid" Solar Cooker

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A very simple solar cooker design made from cardboard boxes and a lid.

The history of solar cooking

Many scientists of the era, and laypersons as well, knew about the use of glass to trap heat, but Horace de Saussure, a French-Swiss scientist, wondered why that commonly understood phenomenon had not led to additional applied use.... De Saussure continued his experimentation, using other materials, adding insulation, cooking at different altitudes, etc. This European scientist, exploring solar energy nearly 250 years ago, is widely considered to be the father of today's solar cooking movement. Others followed his lead, including the Briton, Sir John Herschel, and American Samuel Pierpont Langley, later head of the Smithsonian, both of whom conducted experiments with the hot box, the forerunner of today's box cooker, probably still the most common design in use.

...His second project was more successful; he combined the heat trap idea with that of the burning mirror, creating an efficient solar oven from an insulated box, which when further modified by adding reflecting mirrors, even became a solar still.

...Late in the 19th century, other pioneers in the development of solar thermal (heat generating) technologies include Aubrey Eneas, an American who followed up on the work of Mouchot and formed the first solar power company, building a giant parabolic reflector in the southwest USA.

...After that period, the years of the latter half of the 20th century show a number of individuals and groups experimenting with, demonstrating the potential, and conducting small and large projects using solar cooking devices.

...Obviously, the organization has been required to up its goals routinely, as the world's population has continued to burgeon, to well over six billion in 2004, meaning that today the target group is over two billion.

...This thumbnail sketch is only a small part of the history, much unknown even to solar cooking supporters, of the many men and women who have caught a glimpse of the potential of the sun to cook food and have attempted over the centuries to spread that knowledge to others who can benefit.

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The history of solar cooking

Minimum Solar Box Cooker

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Minimum Solar Box Cooker

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A minimal solar cooker design based on a box with a glass lid.

How to Build a Solar Cooker

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How to Build a Solar Cooker

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An index of plans to build solar cookers.

Developing an intuitive feel for the dynamics of solar cooking

When you look into a solar cooker, the visible light inside doesn't seem to be that much brighter or more concentrated than the sunlight striking us as we stand and look in. Our bodies are certainly not getting hot enough to burn, much less cook, so intuition tells us that food in the oven wouldn't cook either.

...You can use your eyes to see the visible light, your skin to feel the infrared light, and your imagination to see the way the light is transformed and then trapped inside the oven.

Article Reference: 

Developing an intuitive feel for the dynamics of solar cooking

Solar Cooking

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Solar Cooking

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An extensive index of resources related to solar cookers and solar cooking. Solar cooking involves capturing sunlight, either behind glass panes or using reflectors, focusing it on a cooking pot, thereby using the sun's light to cook ones food.

Daily Tip: Water Your Lawn Smarter

Water use and availability is a big problem society must face. There are intelligent ways to use water where we can achieve the same results while using less. If we focus just on the lawns surrounding our houses, here's a few bits of advice:

Watch the weather. Mother nature having just rained, you don't need to water the lawn.

Water in the early morning or evening. If you water in the middle of the day, much of the water evaporates before soaking into the ground. By watering in the evening it has a chance to soak deeply.

Don't mow as often. Longer grass provides shade that makes it less necessary to water the lawn.

Don't forget about the sprinkler. Apparently it's possible to water too much at one time.

Go native. Green lawns came from southern England where it rains all the time. They aren't the best choice of plants for every climate. It is probably better to have plants which match your local climate. But doing so goes against the cultural norms we grew up with.

Learn to love brown. Grass goes brown when it's dry, and it goes green when it's wet. It's very simple and natural for grass to be brown. So don't worry about the brown grass during dry periods, it's natural.

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Daily Tip: Water Your Lawn Smarter

New Flexible Plastic Solar Panels Are Inexpensive And Easy To Make

Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. "The process is simple," said lead researcher and author Somenath Mitra, PhD, professor and acting chair of NJIT's Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences.

Harvesting energy directly from abundant solar radiation using solar cells is increasingly emerging as a major component of future global energy strategy, said Mitra.

...Mitra and his research team took the carbon nanotubes and combined them with tiny carbon Buckyballs (known as fullerenes) to form snake-like structures.

..."Using this unique combination in an organic solar cell recipe can enhance the efficiency of future painted-on solar cells," said Mitra.

..."Fullerene single wall carbon nanotube complex for polymer bulk heterojunction photovoltaic cells," published June 21, 2007 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry by the Royal Society of Chemistry, details the process.

Article Reference: 

New Flexible Plastic Solar Panels Are Inexpensive And Easy To Make

UDelaware-led team sets solar cell record

Using a novel technology that adds multiple innovations to a very high-performance crystalline silicon solar cell platform, a consortium led by the University of Delaware has achieved a record-breaking combined solar cell efficiency of 42.8 percent from sunlight at standard terrestrial conditions.

...The research was led by Allen Barnett, principal investigator and UD professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Christiana Honsberg, co-principal investigator and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. The two direct the University's High Performance Solar Power Program and will continue working to achieve 50 percent efficiency, a benchmark that when reached would mean a doubling of the efficiency of terrestrial solar cells based around a silicon platform within a 50-month span.

...The highly efficient VHESC solar cell uses a novel lateral optical concentrating system that splits solar light into three different energy bins of high, medium and low, and directs them onto cells of various light sensitive materials to cover the solar spectrum.

Article Reference: 

UDelaware-led team sets solar cell record

Daily Tip: Make Solar Powered Tea

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Daily Tip: Make Solar Powered Tea

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Sun Tea is easily made - just get a large jar, fill with water, put in tea bags, place in the sun. It's an example of solar cooking, and is a way to make teas that don't require being cooked.

Air conditioned comfort cuts you off from the world

Air Head is an interesting article contrasting different responses to air conditioning, and one persons struggles with moral issues on energy use and modern comfort. The writer lives in New York, and received an offer from his in-laws (who live in Texas) for the money to buy an air conditioner. His response? He doesn't want it, even if it's free.

There's the moral type issue, namely air conditioners are a large energy cost which directly contributes to global warming. But, he says, that wasn't the real reason he's turning it down, the real reason is much more personal.

As he puts it: I grew up on the shores of Connecticut. To me, summer has always been a time of heat, the sun baking the paint on the bottom of old wood dinghies, small waves breaking, blackberry ice cream dripping down your forearm, and some lucky kid five years your senior fooling around with a kit-built remote control car.

In other words, living with heat is part of living. It's part of the cycle of life, it's one of the seasons of the year, and our bodies evolved over kerjillions of years to be able to handle this climactic condition.

And then, extrapolating on the idea, he goes on to say: Shutting out summer with an air conditioner is like ripping the second hand off life's mortal clock. .... hmm ...

I think this is a widespread part of modern society, this separation from nature. Modern cities have very little naturalness to them, and the mainstream media presents the gleaming metropolis as if it were the absolutest of sheer beauty, and marvelous beyond dreams. But, I ask you, where are the trees, the birds, snakes, field mice, and more? The typical city has none of these things, but aren't they part of natural life?

Air conditioning is an insidious comfort. You turn it on, and suddenly you don't want to leave it, and you begin to believe life is impossible without it. That idea traps you within the bubbles of air conditioning, keeping you from enjoying the natural world. And, yes, I'm speaking from personal experience of spending lots of time in air conditioned buildings.

There's one idea in this guys article I strongly disagree with. Living in Texas without air conditioning is probably impossible. Anyone who grew up there grew up with air conditioning, as sure as they grew up with refrigerators and other modern conveniences. In Texas, you grow up with AC the way you grow up with religion.

While I don't doubt that Texas has zillions of air conditioners, and that modern Texans probably feel that way about these gizmos, this is hardly the traditional way of life in Texas with hundreds of years behind it. Air conditioning is probably less than 100 years old, meaning this particular gizmo is barely an infant in terms of human history. Humans have been dealing with the heat for millenia, and we modern humans are ignoring the wisdom of those millenia of our ancestors, wisdom we could be using to avoid the global warming crisis.

In Texas I'm sure the ancestors used adobe or similar building techniques. While a modern person might not want to live in a plaster house, the main attribute of adobe is extreme insulation. There are many ways to achieve extreme insulation, and modern materials techniques have made it so we can get glass windows with any insulation factor you desire. It's possible to build a house, using modern techniques, with the same insulating capability of an adobe house, and with as many windows as you want.

Adobe buildings stay cool inside, even during the heat of the day. Without air conditioning.

Why aren't we doing that? Why are we ignoring the wisdom our ancestors brought us?

Evaporative Coolers, and making your own cool air

Last year there was a popular posting about making your own air conditioner. The idea was to run pipes through a bowl of cold water (perhaps with ice), and weave the pipes inside a normal house fan. Turn on the fan and it blows across the pipes exchanging heat and cold, cooling the air, and voila your house is cool. I started to try the idea myself, wasn't able to get it to work, and I even tried a different version with hanging a cloth in a bowl of water.

A similar idea is the swamp cooler, or evaporative cooler. This is something which does work, in certain climates, and is quite popular in desert areas. It's the same idea, evaporation of water cools air and you can harness that to cool a house.

I live in Silicon Valley, and have bought a low end evaporative cooler, and found that it works fairly well.

I want to go over the principles and resources available on the Internet.

Evaporative cooler (Wikipedia): Gives a good overview of the several types of evaporative coolers. They clearly say the system works best in dry climates, and only so-so in moderately dry climates.

Evaporative Coolers: Whole-house cooling in arid regions at a low first cost Has another in-depth survey of this cooling technique. An advantage they mention is the ability to cool without using refrigerants such as chlorofluorcarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), that can harm the ozone layer. They have another page on two stage evaporative coolers. In the first stage of a two-stage cooler, warm air is pre-cooled indirectly without adding humidity ... In the direct stage, the precooled air passes through a water-soaked pad and picks up humidity as it cools. Because the air supply to the second stage evaporator is pre-cooled, less humidity is added to the air

The Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Consumers Guide has another good overview of evaporative cooling. As does the Phoenix city government.

Home Energy Magazine has a more technical article, that includes a U.S. map showing the likely areas where evaporative cooling would be best. And there's another at lbl.gov.