Solar Impulse Airplane Prepares for Cross-Country Sun-Powered Flight

The Solar Impulse HB-SIA flying over the Golden Gate Bridge this week.

What do you get when you build an airplane with a battery pack the size of the Tesla Model S, and a solar panel array 10 times bigger than ones found on most homes? Answer: The Solar Impulse, a prototype solar-powered airplane designed to to make an around-the-world flight in 2015. This month, the Solar Impulse is at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley, getting prepped for a flight across the U.S. beginning on May 1.

The Solar Impulse is the brainchild of Bertrand Picard, the psychiatrist and adventurer who flew a balloon, the Breitling Orbiter, around the world in 1999. After that flight, he developed the idea of using renewable energy to power an airplane for a flight around the world, and rolled up his sleeves to make it happen. He formed a brave team that when told by aircraft manufacturers that the idea was impossible, went ahead anyway.

read more

http://www.plugincars.com/solar-impulse-ready-cross-country-solar-powe

How Electricity, Water And Food Could Be Produced In Desert Areas With Minimal Ecological Footprint

1) Concentrated Solar Power 2) Saltwater greenhouses 3) Outside vegetation and evaporative hedges 4) Photovoltaic Solar Power 5) Salt production 6) Halophytes 7) Algae production

The first pilot plant in a program of installations that can sustainably produce crops, electricity, biofuels, and even plants for re-vegetation efforts in a desert environment is now up and running in the Middle Eastern nation of Qatar.

The Sahara Forest Project, which brings outfits from both Qatar and Norway together, uses desert air, sunlight, and saltwater as inputs for a system that aims to be environmentally sustainable, beneficial for local human development, and financially viable over the long term. As the project's CEO, Joakim Hauge, puts it: "The Sahara Forest Project is all about taking what we have enough of, like saltwater, CO2, sunlight, and deserts, to produce what we need more of: sustainably produced food, water, and energy." The hope is that the pilot project can be scaled up to installations in drier and desert climates around the world.

Essentially, the plant takes multiple sustainable technologies and integrates their inputs and outputs into a single multistage system, thus minimizing both waste and ecological footprint:

• Standard solar power and concentrated solar power: Arrays of mirrors create concentrated solar power by aiming sunlight to superheat seawater into steam. That steam can then drive turbines to create electricity, and the heated seawater is then used throughout the greenhouse system. Additional sustainable electricity is generated from arrays of standard solar photovoltaic panels.
• Saltwater for fresh water and cool air for greenhouses: Hot desert air is pulled through a flow of seawater as it enters the greenhouses. This both cools and humidifies the air, creating optimal growing conditions for the agricultural crops within. At the far end of the greenhouse, the air is heated by flows of sun-heated seawater and then encounters pipes of cooled seawater, which causes the humidity to condense into fresh water that is then used for crop irrigation.
• Outdoor vegetation: Outside the greenhouses, the seawater passes through further evaporators to create humidity for vegetation sheltered outdoors. These include trees for desert reforestation, local vegetation, various forms of crops and livestock feed, and specific forms of plants naturally adapted to salt water which serve as feedstocks for bioenergy production and other uses. At the end, remaining seawater is collected into evaporation pools for the production of salt.
• Algae biofuel production: Lab-grown algae, which have been shown to generate up to 30 times more biofuel per acre than other plants, are grown in saltwater pools to create biofuels without taking up agricultural land or crops that double as food for humans.

The basic advantage of the Sahara Forest Project is that it doesn't use any fundamentally new or experimental technology - it merely recombines established technologies in creative ways.

At the same time, at least one of its goals - growing plants for reforestation - may be overly ambitious. "Trying to grow trees in the Sahara desert is not the most appropriate approach," Patrick Gonzalez, a forest ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, told National Geographic back in 2010. "I can imagine that this scheme and type of technology in limited cases might work in certain areas like Dubai, where they're used to making palm-shaped islands and 160-story-tall buildings."

But for the more modest goal of returning a desert to its natural former ecosystem, "it would be more effective, but less flashy, to work with local people on community-based natural-resource management."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/30/1515871/sahara-forest-proj

Ethanol is used widely in Brazil

In the State of the Union speech, GW Bush mentioned Ethanol as a resource "we" should develop. There's been a big scramble towards Ethanol since. Ethanol has some interesting characteristics, in that it's a liquid fuel that's very compatible with gasoline. Unlike biodiesel, ethanol can be readily burned in a gasoline engine and, in fact, ethanol is widely used today in the U.S. Just watch for a sticker on the pump saying "This gasoline may contain ethanol".

Brazil leading effort to boost ethanol use discusses ethanol production and use in Brazil. During the 1970's the "military dictators" then ruling the country pushed for ethanol production and mandated its use in vehicles. That has turned into a golden spot in the Brazillian economy, and they use ethanol rather than gasoline in nearly half of domestic passenger fuel demand.

Brazil has an interesting advantage with all those sugar canes, in that it's sugar which produces alcohol.

This means the U.S. can't directly replicate what they're doing, we don't have domestic sugar cane production to any great degree. Further, when you mention Ethanol, the corn farmers in Iowa get dollar signs in their eyes, and the corn producer lobbiests have been controlling debate around ethanol.

But I want to gather up some details from the article, so here goes.

The article focuses on one plant that works "around the clock" that is distilling 92,500 gallons of ethanol daily that is trucked away for immediate sale at the pumps. But it can only do this during the sugar cane season, apparently (March to November). This means to cover the period outside that season they'll need fuel storage facilities.

This at the end seems to be a critical point:

In Sao Tome, the cooperative that owns the ethanol distillery is betting on its best profits since it bought the operation in 1993. Cocamar's production cost is $1.10 per gallon, and wholesalers are buying the fuel for $2.68 - up from $1.44 last year.

About the only thing that could hurt Brazil's ethanol industry now would be an almost unimaginable plunge in international crude oil prices, currently trading above $60 per barrel, said Almir Hawthorne, the distillery's industrial manager.

"Oil could drop to $35 or $40 per barrel, and ethanol producers would still make money."

They're making $1.24 per gallon more profit than last year, due entirely it would seem to the high price for oil. If oil prices did drop again it's clear their threshold for gaining a profit is around $40 per barrel. But I wonder if, at that price, they'll make enough profit to get the excitement that's circling around them.

That's been the sticker for most of the alternative fuels, whether their price per unit is less than the price for fossil fuel.

It seems every time the price for oil goes high, the makers of alternatives are in the limelight. Today that's ethanol (of several kinds), fuel cells, biodiesel, wind turbines, etc. Unfortunately when the price of oil drops again, the alternatives become less attractive.

This is simple economics, with the market (in its short sighted decision making) going to the source with the least cost. Another factoid in the article is that Brazil invested years of subsidies in its ethanol production industry. It's paying off now, and in the future Brazil will remain fueled even when the peak oil phenomena hits and oil is no longer available.

The point to that is in the energy industry it takes a very long time to develop alternatives. Brazil is an example, where it took years before their ethanol industry was self sustaining.

If the U.S. decisioning is based largely on the short sighted approach of "oh, the market will take care of it", well, I think the market moves too quickly for the development of new energy resources.

When they say "the market will take care of it" the scenario is that oil supply becomes tight, and the oil price rises, and then people start scrambling for alternatives that are cheaper. And, we're seeing this effect going on today. But when the real oil peak hits the supply is supposed to drop off very rapidly from the peak. That should cause a rapid rise in prices which would trigger the market to search for alternatives. But if it's going to take years to develop the alternatives, and in the meantime oil supply drops precipitously, "we" won't have those years.

I believe the current high oil prices are not the true oil peak, but instead based on the war(s) brewing in the Persian Gulf. Especially with the war we are threatening against Iran.

The current high oil price is making for an interesting training ground, inspiring the people go through the steps of finding an alternative to burning fossil fuels. Last year people were dumping their SUV's and motorcycles were becoming popular. This year they may be looking for ethanol.

I suppose if the oil prices stay high long enough, like they are now, the makers of the alternatives will have a long enough window to establish themselves. Here's hoping.

Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and oil reserves (HoweStreet.com)

Yikes! Things Just Got Worse ... what just got worse? It has to do with the claimed oil reserves in Kuwait. The article discusses a report published by Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW) titled Oil Reserves Accounting: The Case Of Kuwait. Unfortunately the subscription price puts me off so I can't read the report myself.

Supposedly the report discusses details of Kuwait's claimed oil reserves. Kuwait's reported oil reserves are 99 billion barrels. Kuwait has been an oil exporter since 1946, and has a massive oil field. However it's clear the reserves have been overstated.

The PIW report is based upon data circulating within the top echelons of the Kuwait Oil Co. (KOC). KOC is the upstream arm of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. KOC has primary responsibility for conducting exploration, drilling and production from Kuwait's oil fields. The PIW report claims that Kuwait's remaining proven and nonproven oil reserves total about 48 billion barrels, or 51 billion fewer barrels than previously advertised.

That 51 billion fewer barrels of reserves represent 5% of stated world reserves. Especially troubling is I've read several articles claiming that many oil producing countries have been overstating their reserves as well. What isn't overstated is the world consumption, especially the growing consumption levels in India and China resulting from their economic expansion.

How did this come about? Well, it's not a simple matter of bravado (e.g. the stereotypical men boasting about the size of X or Y or oil fields). In this case it is about distinguishing between "proven," "probable" and "possible" reserves.

Kuwait (and others?) have stated their reserves as the sum of all three. Well, I don't know about you, but "possible" reserves doesn't sound very promising. Especially when you consider most oil wells turn up dry, even on a good day.

As I said, the oil consumption rate is known (and growing). What isn't so clear are the actual reserves. One thing that's clear is the Hubbert model which predicts the peak oil phenomenon. It's not that an oil field produces fine until one day it just fizzles to a stop. Instead it produces fine until the peak occurs, after which it's a constant struggle to get oil out.

This means the world oil situation will appear fine, but with more and more oil fields tilting to the "struggle" phase as each individual oil field peaks.

That, in a nutshell, is the peak oil phenomenon. The last several years of oil use will be characterised by a struggle to retrieve oil, and therefore the actual oil "production" will inexorably decline.

In the face of America stupidly continuing the glut of oil use and gas guzzling way of life, along with India and China rapidly expanding their oil use, this will not be pretty to watch.

I should warn you the author of the article I've linked to -- well -- he works for a financial investment company. They purport to having some investment ideas related to the scenario they describe. While I agree with the scenario, there may be some tilting of the rhetoric on their part.

Green Car Congress: Joint Venture for Animalwaste Sludge to Biodiesel

Joint Venture for Animalwaste Sludge to Biodiesel: Concerns a project to take animal "waste" and turn it into fuel.

Here's the context: "The USDA requires facilities that process the 100 million pigs, 35 million cattle, 1.6 billion turkeys, and 8 billion chickens slaughtered each year to use large volumes of clean water to continuously rinse the meats as they are cut and packaged." The formerly clean water is separated from the "protein" and other animal material, that leaves a "concentrated sludge, which is called Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) sludge. The poultry industry alone generates in excess of 2.5 billion pounds—more than 63,000 tanker loads—per year of DAF sludge."

The technosanity question would be what to do with that sludge? It's interesting to wonder what was formerly done with it. Was it just dumped into the wastewater system? Was it turned into any other product such as fertilizer or animal food?

The article discusses a proposed use for this sludge, being developed by Veridium Corporation and Mean Green BioFuels.

James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years

James Lovelock is an independant scientist who has been nurturing the Gaia model of understanding the earth. He's published a string of books claiming the planet we call Earth is a living being he names Gaia. e.g. Gaia : A New Look at Life on Earth He began this work as a space scientist advising NASA on how would they determine whether there was "life" on other planets, such as Mars. That is, given the sparse set of instruments we can send to Mars, which ones should be sent to make the measurements required to determine whether "life" exists there. The question sent him to pondering life on this planet, leading him to recognize the planet as a whole being a living organism.

I say this to help give context to an article he has written fortelling a disastrous change in Gaia. The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years He's saying that the global warming phenemona is Gaia developing a "fever", that the historical record of this planet shows several fevers which occurred, and that in the past those fevers took 100,000 years to heal.

When earth has a "fever" it undergoes a climate change with an expansion of desert lands, the heat around the equator becoming unbearable for most life (including humans) and that as a result he expects billions of humans to die.

This may very well be what will occur. We are beginning to see alarming signs such as the melting of the permafrost in the arctic.

However in the recent few days I've heard a couple spiritual teachers talking about the apocalypse period described in the Book of Revelations. That book is a set of visions an early prophet received about the future of humanity. It's a rather disturbing part of the Bible since it describes a horrible war, disease, famine, environmental problems, and more. But the book also ends with a great deal of hope, with a "New Heaven and New Earth". The book is also hard to interpret and understand.

These two teachers, Ron Roth and Gregg Braden, have both studied the ancient writings of a wide range of traditions. They both said a similar thing about the Revelations. First, that many of the predictions in it have already come to pass. e.g. The Ukranian name for Chernobyl means "Wormwood" which, in Revelations, was a star that burned on the earth, which is essentially what happened at Chernobyl.

They both teach about the power of prayer, in an authentic form of prayer practiced by ancient mystics. Both, especially Gregg Braden, talk about the cycles of history recorded in the ancient texts and how the ancient teachings talk about a cataclysmic time which will happen about now. It's not just the book of Revelations, but other ancient traditions predicted apocalypse. But they all suggested prayer as the way humanity could avoid the fate.

It's not too late.

Resource Insights: Energy: Fairy Dust for Techno-optimists

Kurt Cobb raises an interesting question in Energy: Fairy Dust for Techno-optimists. He begins by alluding to Peter Pan and the pixie dust used to cause the children in the story to levitate allowing them to fly to neverland.

For decades there have been wondrous visions of what technology can do for us. He names a few ideas so we can remember them. The common thing that technological marvels require is energy.

Let me ask you -- what turned our society from a rural agrarian mode into a modern industrial wonder? Was it the development of technology?

You betcha it was the development of technology. Beginning with automobiles, trucks, trains, etc we had the transportation power to move products and materials around much more quickly and efficiently than ever before. A couple weeks ago I was in India for my second trip, and while Bangalore is in many ways a very modern city there are many ox or horse or hand drawn carts on the streets and it really strikes me how innefficient they are. At least compared to modern trucks and cars.

And it's technology that made the difference. Just as communications technology makes a difference in another way. If you want to distribute a newspaper nationwide (e.g. USA Today) there are two choices. One is to print the newspaper in a central place, and then ship it by overnight air express to the nationwide destinations. The second is to transmit the data nationwide, and have it printed and distributed locally. The second is more efficient and a society that isn't technologically advanced is incapable of doing either.

But, what allowed for the development of technology?

Let me suggest that it's energy resources, in the form of coal and oil.

Leonardo DaVinci is proof positive that intelligent and creative minds existed in other era's. What would have happened if DaVinci had available to him the energy resources we take for granted today? If he were reincarnated to todays era, just which of the tech wonder companies would have have founded?

Without the energy resources we will not be able to sustain the technological marvels we take for granted.

Remember if you will Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The hero, Max, finds a group of children in the desert and they have a few doodads of technology hanging around. One of them is a vinyl record they have attached to a medicine man style staff. At some point they find a record player and Max takes the vinyl record, puts it on the record player, and shows them what it's really for. Those children didn't have the energy resource to drive a record player, hence had no ability to play the record they had.

Kurt Cobb, however, suggests that providing energy to the level to which we've become accustomed is insolvable. We have facing us the Peak Oil problem, namely, that the worlds oil production system has maxed out and there's not more oil to find. It's oil which is the prime source of the energy we use, and when the oil supply really peaks we're going to be heading towards the Mad Max scenario. He runs through the alternatives being bandied about and points out none of them are terribly sustainable.

Let's home he's just being defeatist.

New U.S. nuclear strategy brings nukes to the table in preemptive war

Our dear president has been pushing a general strategy of preemption. That was the justification for invading Iraq, that there was a perceived threat, a possibility that Iraq was a danger, and hence they were a worthy target. But we know what happened there, it has become a total boondoggle, the perceived danger was nothing but lies spun by Iraqi dissidents who hadn't set foot in the country in decades, the U.N. Secretary General has declared this an illegal war, and the President deserves impeachment.

In the movie Minority Report we saw a demonstration of the fallacy of preemptive enforcement based on a prediction of aggression. In the movie they had psychics predicting when murders would happen, and sure enough the murder rate went to zero. But the movie presented us with a conundrum, if you can't accurately predict the future then how can you enforce the law based on a fallable prediction? Do you lock someone up just because they're thinking about murder? Or do you wait for the murder to happen?

But this is just what the Bush Administration has been pursuing. The doctrine of preemptive war based on the prediction on whether some country or another will become an agressor. Uh, excuse me but by crossing that line then haven't we become the agressor? So by that logic shouldn't we then attack ourselves in order to stop our agression?

In any case let's get to the current story.

Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan; Strategy Includes Preemptive Use Against Banned Weapons (By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer,Sunday, September 11, 2005)

Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations

Nuclear Doctrine

Nuclear Weapons Policy

Draft US Defense Paper Outlines Preventive Nuclear Strikes

New U.S. doctrine proposes nuclear strikes

What's happened is that the DoD has been studying its navel and redesigning the nuclear strategy. "A previous version, completed in 1995 during the Clinton administration, contains no mention of using nuclear weapons preemptively or specifically against threats from weapons of mass destruction." (washington post)

The new strategy outlines several instances under which commanders can request the use of nuclear weapons. The instances include preemtive strikes against countries or organizations that are possible threats.

The code phrase "all options" is used, and we've seen how "all options" really means they're planning to do it.

The plan is being distributed in draft form and published on a Defense Department website (see here for links). I've attached a copy of the plan to this page.

Early in the document the strategy is described as having four key goals. These are "steadfastness of purpose", "dissuading adversaries", "deterring agression and coercion" and "decisively defeating enemies". Essentially the strategy is the best defense is a good offense. The deterrence part is simply to deter agression by threatening everybody with a big stick, namely the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

And, of course, for the U.S. nuclear arsenal to have value, the number of nuclear armed nations must be kept to a minimum. Hence the current threats being made against Iran and North Korea. But it's puzzling why Pakistan isn't also being threatened, because Pakistan was actively proliferating nuclear technology. But then we know that Pakistan is a critical player in bring Central Asian oil to the world market.

Read it and weep my friends.

Attachment	Size
jp3_12fc2.pdf	1.76 MB