energy

Or something. A while ago, in "Michele Bachmann, Light Bulb Vigilantes, and the Dim Bulbs of the Tea Party", I described the fear that the psychiatric wing of the Republican Party (and its dominant wing) has towards more energy efficient light bulbs. This is what appears to drive that fear: On her way out, Dee Hogan of Nashua told me she would gladly vote for Bachmann. "I don't appreciate that your next-door neighbor is going to start yelling at me, telling me to shut my lights off when they have that shut-your-lights-off thingee. I don't want people in my face, telling me what to do." I…

Before I get into the meat of the post, if, after reading this, you end up obsessing over trade deficits too, then I've failed (just wanted to make that clear). But imagining what the possible consequences of placing the trade deficit über alles would be demonstrates why the current budget deficit fetish is absurd. Because, currently, even erstwhile progressives like Ezra Klein, have turned the budget deficit into a shibboleth (I might have more to say about that silly numerically illiterate post, but the tone and tenor are what matters for now). If you're not familiar with the trade…

Brookhaven will soon be home to the largest solar farm in the eastern United States. The Long Island Solar Farm, being constructed by BP Solar and the Long Island Power Authority on Brookhaven Lab's campus, will produce 32 megawatts of power when complete - enough to power about 4,500 homes. The Long Island Solar Farm Just about six months after site preparation work began in November, the farm is now more than halfway complete. To date, workers have mounted nearly 90,000 of the 164,000 solar panels that will make up the array and have installed 4,600 of the 6,800 racks that hold the…

It would be nice if educational 'reformers' took a break from busting teachers unions to deal with the infiltration of pseudo-scientific falsehoods into the science curriculum: ...the most brazen example is buried in the middle of the story: a coal-industry produced propaganda film for kids selling the lie that the atmosphere needs more greenhouse gas: ...the Coal Education Development and Resources foundation, known as CEDAR, offers small grants to teachers whose lessons dovetail with its industry-driven mission... ...CEDAR also offers a video to teachers called "The Greening of Planet Earth…

While Kenneth Ford's 101 Quantum Questions was generally good, there was one really regrettable bit, in Question 23: What is a "state of motion?" When giving examples of states, Ford defines the ground state as the lowest-energy state of a nucleus, then notes that its energy is not zero. He then writes: An object brought to an absolute zero of temperature would have zero-point energy and nothing else. Because of zero-point energy, there is indeed such a thing as perpetual motion. This is really the only objectionable content in the book, but he certainly made up in quality what it lacks in…

Whenever I talk about going to lower energy usage, a percentage of people shout out something like "But that would mean going back tothe stone age, to lepers walking the streets and people throwing their feces out the window on our heads!!!" I think it is fair to say that variations on the "without power, life would be intolerable" is a common assumption. Part of the thing that bothers me about it is that I don't think it is true. I've spent a lot of time studying history, and I don't think the lives of all of those in human history who preceeded us were intolerable. I am extraordinarily…

A while ago, I raised the problem--an inconvenient truth, if you will--that moving to a renewable energy future is going to be difficult: My impression reading a lot of commentary about renewable energy is that there's this fantasy that we just have to build a bunch of windmills, install some solar panels, buy a Prius, and replace our windows and all will be well. But the brutal reality is that we need to urbanize our suburbs. We need to discourage detached housing. We need to massively fund local mass transit--not just SUPERTRAINS. We can't have people firing up their own personal combustion…

Kevin Drum re-posts a chart on wind power made by Stuart Staniford showing that the number of new wind power plants installed in 2010 was way lower than in 2009 or 2008: This is meant as a starting point for discussion about the big economic issues that might've caused this. One of the many, many reasons I'll never make it as a political pundit, though, is that when I see a graph like this, I'm inexorably drawn to speculating about aspects of it that really have nothing to do with the intended point. In this particular case, I look at this graphic and ask myself "Why are there so many wind…

By way of Digby, we come across this proposal of how to reach 95% percent renewable energy by 2050. Before I get to some of the issue I have with the study (which is actually pretty good), I want to lay out my general views on energy use. First, I'm not a 'fan' of nuclear power. While thorium-powered reactors would be a vast improvement over traditional reactors (and newer designs regardless of energy source would fail much more safely compared to older ones), even thorium isn't perfect. But what's really stupid are all of the calls for immediately stopping the use of nuclear power. (…

In light of the nuclear power plant partial meltdowns in Japan, there are calls for not expanding the U.S. nuclear power plant capacity, and even shutting down existing plants. What bothers me about this is that there is no discussion of how we make up the energy production shortfall--I'll get to energy conservation in a bit. As the U.S. begins the 21st century, we still are generating most of our power by lighting things on fire: oil, gas, and coal. While renewable energy (which despite its name still has some CO2 footprint) could pick up some slack, given our dysfunctional political…

Today is the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day, founded to celebrate the achievements of women. Founded in Europe to advocate for greater participation of women in the public sphere, International Women's Day focuses heavily on those public sphere accomplishments of women - as political leaders, in education, in activism. Those are important and powerful things, the more important because most of us still have visceral memory of women's past. Consider this Guardian interview with women talking about what has changed in their lifetimes. At the same time that we speak about the…

Changing our energy infrastructure from one that contributes to climate change to one that is renewable and sustainable poses enormous challenges technically, politically, socially, and economically. There isn't going to be a single solution, but a combination of technological changes, policy changes, efficiency gains, and adaptations to local environments will likely go a long way to making our current system better. But there is a big difference between better and good. In Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, architect Bill McDonough and environmental chemist Michael…

Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic blogs: On Labor ("My son is the joy of my life. But the work of ushering him into the world nearly killed his mother.") Scicurious at Neurotic Physiology: Dieting, Stress, and the Changing Brain. Robert Reich's Blog at the Christian Science Monitor: US Chamber of Commerce: Obama makes a bargain Jon R. Luoma at Yale Environment 360: Why Does Energy Efficiency's Promise Remain Unfulfilled? Alice Bell at The Guardian's Notes & Theories blog: Sexual discrimination against women in science may be institutional -- and also one of the pieces she links to, Kathy…

With The Symbiotic Household, Elliott P. Montgomery seeks to find answers to problems caused by climate change. Low-cost, low energy solutions are proposed through complex genetic engineering of domesticated insects--"What better way to deal with a future need than with a future technology?" The project is deliberatively provocative; "By offering a problematic answer, I want to encourage viewers to question the entire scenario and thereby take part in the discussion." What do you think? via we make money not art

If you haven't seen this video by Richard Heinberg and the Post Carbon Institute, you should. In a lot of ways it is an excellent summary of the history of fossil fuels, entertainingly and creatively done. In some ways, it is extremely valuable as a basic educational piece. I'm very impressed with the clarity of this video, but it does have an odd gap in it - all of the human history of 300 years of fossil fuels doesn't have a single female person in it - not one. Women are addressed by implication when population is mentioned - but all the little hand-drawn people are men. There is a…

I'm spending the day trying to get some work done on the book-in-progress, so I'm avoiding both work- and blog-related stuff. I don't want to leave the site completely quiet, though, so here's a question to ponder, relating to SteelyKid's continuing fascination with Goodnight Moon: How does a cow jump over the moon? The father of one of SteelyKid's classmates, who is not originally from the US, asked why there's a cow jumping over the moon in that (or, as SteelyKid puts it: "Cow jumping MOON!!"), and I don't have a good answer. I'm aware of the nursery rhyme and the Tolkien joke, but why…

There are two quick and fairly easy approaches to reducing US emissions of CO2 by several percent. These reduction would be at the household level, possibly decreasing the household cost of energy by between 20 and 30 percent (or more, depending on the household) and decreasing national total CO2 emissions by around 10% or so. But these approaches are nearly impossible to implement. Why? Because people are ignorant and selfish. The two methods are: 1) Replace existing technologies with more efficient ones and 2) Use energy less. I'm not talking about replacing technologies at a…

I've written about the need and potential of thorium-based nuclear power: It's always seemed to me that nuclear power would have to be part of the solution of the global warming problem: even if the planet's population were to remain constant, and even if planet-wide energy use were to remain steady, we would still have to dramatically cut CO2 per capita emissions. The problem with nuclear power--or more accurately, uranium-based nuclear power--is the waste product. Not only is radioactive waste produced, but the byproducts of the reaction can be used to build nuclear weapons. At The…

Might as well jump. Jump. Go ahead, jump. - Van Halen Suppose everyone in the world got together and jumped. Would the Earth move? Yes. Would it be noticeable? Time for a calculation. Note: I am almost certain that I have done this before, but I can't find where. Starting assumptions. 7 billion people. Average weight: 50 kg (you know, kids and stuff) Average vertical jump (center of mass): 0.3 meters - and I think that is generous. Mass of the Earth: 6 x 1024 kg Gravitational field near the surface of the Earth is constant with a magnitude of 9.8 N/kg Ignore the interaction with the Sun and…

There's a terrific new article in New Scientist about some of the ways scientists are working on turning pee into energy. There's a lot of pee in the world all going to waste, often at huge cost to the environment in terms of energy used to collect and purify waste water. Methods that can produce even small amounts of power from urine could be useful to help power office buildings or farms where there are a lot of people or animals all peeing in the same place, and smaller fuel cells could even also be used to power portable electronics, with no need to carry any fuel or batteries, just a…