Tag: Environment

The Dirty Solar Panel Fight Over Clean Energy

Chinese technocrats set out to create an industry that would dominate the world, and they succeeded. They aided solar cell manufacturers with easy credit from state banks—perhaps as much as $18 billion of cheap loans—and, some say, subsidies. As a result of central and local government support, Chinese manufacturers began to expand rapidly. Chinese competitors now own 70% of the world’s wafer-producing capacity.

Make that overcapacity. “Massive subsidies and state intervention have stimulated overcapacity more than 20 times total Chinese consumption and close to double total global demand,” said Milan Nitzschke, president of EU ProSun, in a statement released late last month. The company alleges that 90% of Chinese production had to be exported and that Beijing used subsidies to keep its manufacturers in business.

The powerful Chinese National Development and Reform Commission wants to see two-thirds of panel makers go out of business.  Only the largest producers, which are presently nonviable, will survive.

In short, central government technocrats, to salvage their industrial policy, will now have to destroy what they worked so hard to create.

via Sun Sets on China’s Solar Industry – Forbes.

Civilization’s Tools, Just Add People – Open Source Ecology

If you escaped to a Utopia and wanted to bring the discoveries that feed, build and power our civilizations along, these are the machines you would want to bring with you. The only thing that I see missing is the means to defend your colony from others who may want your technology, rather than build it themselves. Some of these have come to fruition, such as an inexpensive machine that can create 16 earth rammed bricks a minute. This creation should have great 3rd world applications today –  in the best Stewart Brand “Whole Earth Catalog” tradition from the 60’s.

The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comfortset these.

 via Open Source Ecology – GVCS.

Motorcycle Powered By Poop

Imagine speeding on a bike in the middle of nowhere, when the urge hits and you just have to go! Well, there’s a solution for that!

Japanese toilet maker TOTO rolled out a “Toilet Bike Neo” to raise awareness about bathroom emissions and water savings. The eco-friendly three-wheel 250cc motorcycle with a specially customized toilet-shaped seat runs on bio-fuel from the discharge of livestock or waste water.

TOTO has taken the bike on the road in Japan to promote its message. But wait, there’s more to it than meets the eye — this toilet on wheels talks to the rider, keeping him up to date on the latest stock prices or weather reports

via ‘Toilet Bike Neo’ goes where no john has gone before | Photos | National Post.

Return of the disparaged “Limits to Growth” Prediction

Carlton Palmer shares this gem with these comments:

Thoughtful, analysis and personal take from a Financial realist .  Civilized not a Rant! Long, Worth the effort. Ex Pat Brit.Jeremy Granthams take on the ongoing food crisis  plus the Game changer implications for the Human condition. Of note “the ethanol/gas” idiocy.

Click on the link to download the .pdf file and take the time to read this 22 page analysis

Ex Pat Brit. Jeremy Granthams take on the ongoing food crisis

The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic

$150K, which was the largest funding source for this research came from the Koch foundation. The Koch brothers are billionaire conservative benefactors and probably hadn’t expected or wanted these results.

Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years.  Why it is man-made is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.

It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.

The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity.

via The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic – NYTimes.com.

Fix for Bird-Tower Collisions

Prompted by a coalition of conservation and business groups, federal aviation officials determined that it is safe to turn off steady tower lights. Flashing safety lights, which are standard equipment on antennas, are just as visible to pilots and don’t endanger birds, FAA technical experts reported last month.

In a test of the new lighting in Michigan, bird deaths dropped by more than half during 20 days of peak songbird migration, researchers at Central Michigan University and the federal wildlife service reported in 2009 in the journal Ecological Applications.”The beautiful thing about this is you turn off these steadily burning red lights and within minutes the birds leave,” said avian ecologist Joelle Gehring at Michigan State University. “It is an immediate effect.”

Up to 15 billion birds are estimated to be in North America in the spring and up to 30 billion in the fall.

via Fix for Bird-Tower Collisions – WSJ.com.

USA has Plenty More Fish in the Sea

On May 14th the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that a record six federal fisheries returned to health last year. After a decade of similar progress, 86% of America’s roughly 250 federally monitored commercial fish stocks were not subject to overfishing; 79% were considered healthy.

The recent recovery of species, including New England scallops, mid-Atlantic bluefish and summer flounder and Pacific lingcod, is the result. This signals another truth: given a break, the marine environment can often replenish itself spectacularly. America’s fisheries are probably now managed almost as well as the world’s best, in Norway, Iceland, New Zealand and Australia

via Fish stocks: Plenty more fish in the sea | The Economist.

Some corals like it hot: Heat stress may help coral reefs survive climate change

“Until recently, it was widely assumed that coral would bleach and die off worldwide as the oceans warm due to climate change,” says lead author Jessica Carilli, a post-doctoral fellow in Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s (ANSTO) Institute for Environmental Research. “This would have very serious consequences, as loss of live coral — already observed in parts of the world — directly reduces fish habitats and the shoreline protection reefs provide from storms.”

“Even through the warming of our oceans is already occurring, these findings give hope that coral that has previously withstood anomalously warm water events may do so again,” says Carilli. “While more research is needed, this appears to be good news for the future of coral reefs in a warming climate.”

via Some corals like it hot: Heat stress may help coral reefs survive climate change.

Moonbow over Iceland

moonbow_vetter_1200.jpg JPEG Image, 1200×800 pixels – Scaled 93%.

 

Thanks to Bob Bopp, who explains ” This is from NASA’s photo of the day site. It shows the Skogarfoss waterfall in Iceland. The colorful arc of light on the left is due to drops that have drifted off from the waterfall and are now illuminated by the nearly full Moon. High above are the faint green streaks of aurora. In the background is a beautiful starscape that includes the Big Dipper.”