SMART car coming to the U.S. ... again

The SMART Car is coming to the U.S. ... of course, it's already been imported (legally) to the U.S. That effort was run by ZAP a company more famous for electric vehicles of all sizes (ZAP meaning Zero Air Pollution) who imported cars they commercially bought in Germany and had an American company revamp the cars to meet DOT compliance. The new plan is for Daimler Chrysler to import the cars themselves.

The author of the article spends the hole time in reaction to the small size. As usual the "different" gizmo meets with initial "eeew, that's so strange" reactions. Yes, it's a small car but so what? Why do we need huge vehicles to haul us around? If most of our driving is one person alone in a car, then why do they need a car designed for four people? Especially when the car designed for one or two people can get tremendously better gas mileage!!!

Then there's this little bit of eeeew that's so strange: the fact that it doesn't go very fast, capping out at 84 miles per hour ... I dunno about you, but 84 miles per hour is pretty darn speedy. That is unless you're in Montana or Idaho or Nevada. But very few people live in those states, and for most people, especially the city dwellers for whom this car is meant would find that speed very comfortable.

Article Reference: 

SMART USA home page

So small, even a caveman could parallel-park it

An inconvenient comparison of two homes

Al Gore, the big time promotor of environmental awareness and alarming people of global warming... you'd think he'd be living in a super green house and driving a super green car, right? One would hope he'd put his money where his mouth is.

Al Gore's home is a typical mansion of the rich elite in all its energy wasting glory.

George W. Bush's home in Crawford Texas is the epitome of off-the-grid living with every sort of sustainable energy gizmo you could think of.

If only GW would do for the country what he does for himself in his own home.

UPDATE (April 14, 2007) In Ecotality Gets Drudged When Gore Goes Green it's noted that Al Gore has applied for zoning permission to install solar panels on his house.

Article Reference: 

An Inconvenient Truth

Ecotality Gets Drudged When Gore Goes Green

Palm oil deemed biofuel failure

Marcel Silvius, a climate expert at Wetlands International in the Netherlands, led a team that compared the benefits of palm oil to the ecological harm from destroying virgin Asian rain forests to develop lucrative new plantations.

...Scientists and policymakers from more than 100 countries are meeting in Brussels, Belgium, starting Monday to report on the impact of global warming, including storms, flooding and the extinction of plants and animals.

...The report issued late last year by Wetlands International, Delft Hydraulics and the Alterra Research Center of Wageningen University in Holland studied the carbon released from peat swamps in Indonesia and Malaysia that had been drained and burned to plant palm oil trees.

About 85 percent of the world's palm oil comes from the two countries, and about one-quarter of Indonesia's plantations are on drained peat bogs, the report said.

Article Reference: 

Palm oil deemed biofuel failure

Death of the cell phone charger...?

Eep, what a story this is. The story? That for decades researchers have dreamed of the ability to transmit power over long distances. It would remove the need for power lines etc. The dream goes back to the earliest days of the development of Electricity, as Nikolai Tesla himself worked on this idea. I first read of it in Heinlein's novel Farmer in the Sky.

According to the article the bugaboo was accuracy of the power transmission. The power would bounce off everything in sight making the power received at the device come at varying frequencies and power levels. This made it hard to build a reception circuit. Some researchers have focused themselves for a few years on this problem and come up with a small and very inexpensive solution.

The power levels are appropriate for charging a cell phone or similarly low power demand. It offers a way to keep portable electrical gadgets charged with few worries. No more worrying about charging your shaver, wireless keyboard or mouse, etc, because the power will be transmitted to them.

It doesn't say whether the device requires a power transmitter, or whether it will receive power from the ambient electrical noise that's already bombarding us. Modern society has seen fit to create a zillion different electrical transmissions going on all around us, so in a sense we're constantly in a soup of electromagnetic energy already. Perhaps the gadget will just draw its power from that soup?

Article Reference: 

Death of the cell phone charger

Ethanol fuels huge corn planting

U.S. farmers plan to cash in on the fuel ethanol boom by planting the largest area of corn in 63 years, potentially yielding a record crop and calming fears that renewable fuels will steal grain needed for food and feed, the federal government said Friday.

...USDA forecasts corn usage of 12.3 billion bushels in 2007-2008, including 3.2 billion bushels for making ethanol, up 1 billion bushels from the 2006 crop.

...Growers told USDA they will cut back on soybeans in the Midwest and on cotton and rice in the South to sow more corn.

...USDA forecasts only a modest rise in food prices this year, but said, "With high corn prices increasing feed costs, beef and poultry price increases should begin to accelerate in 2007."

Article Reference: 

Ethanol fuels huge corn planting

Cummins announces approval of B20 biodiesel blends

Cummins, a big truck maker in the U.S.A., has announced their trucks produced since 2002 are compatible with burning biodiesel B20 fuel. This is good news for improving adoption of this fuel alternative. Good news because truck owners can adopt the fuel with less concern. The article says Cummins was able to take this stance due to standardization improvements by the biodiesel makers, so I suppose that means Cummins feels there is less risk from getting bad fuel.

Article Reference: 

Cummins announces approval of B20 biodiesel blends

Mercury in energy-saving bulbs worries scientists

There's a growing awareness of the compact fluorescent lights. That's a good thing because they're generally a good thing, they last longer than incandescent bulbs and use less electricity to produce the same amount of light. BUT, if you're observant you'll see a notice on the package saying they contain Mercury.

Mercury poisoning has played a role in many environmental toxin disasters. There was a fishing village in Japan where mercury was dumped into the ocean near their fishing grounds and the villagers became desperately sick. And mercury poisoning is also known as Mad Hatters Syndrome, because in old England hatmakers used mercury for something or other and ended up injesting lots of mercury and going mad as a result.

With over 150 million CFL bulbs sold every year it's an interesting problem. Yes the lights last longer than incandescent bulbs, but eventually they'll break or wear out and be tossed. So what happens to the mercury afterward? And I think we shouldn't stop at the mercury, because the CFL bulbs I've examined all have a printed circuit board on them with various electrical components, and its well known that other toxic chemicals like PCB's generally are used in the components in electrical circuits.

This is another case of solving one problem and creating several others.

Article Reference: 

Mercury in energy-saving bulbs worries scientists