Greenhouse Mending

                                      That Fracking Gas In the science fantasy TV adventure, Battlestar Galactic , angry moments led to passionate comments about some “fracking” whatever. Frack was never defined, but it was obviously bad. A nonfiction term of “fracking” may be truly bad for alternative energy. Fracking refers to fracturing of rock strata to increase flow of natural gas (methane) and often smaller amounts of other hydrocarbons. The process is particularly useful in loosening gas from shale deposits. Advances in horizontal drilling and three-dimensional (3-D) seismometry allow drilling a spider web of bore holes into a layer of shale. Then, high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals are pumped into the bore holes, causing them to swell and cause cracks in the rock. These fractures allow mor...

Green Roofs are Great! … But Not Cheap Green roofs are rightly in the technical news. A plant-covered layer of soil on a roof can provide insulation and cooling in summer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_roof). Green roofs can provide insulation in winter (http:www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/11/0051126141309.htm). The plants in a green roof can help decompose pollution. Green roofs even have their own web page at http://www.greenroofs.com/ . Green roofs are defined as plant-covered roofs (not just a roof painted green). They function in two ways. First, the layer of soil and plant material is a significant addition to the typical roof insulation. Second, plants transpire moisture to the atmosphere and prevent heating of the roofing surface. (This is analogous to the way people sweat to prevent overheating.) As additional benefits, green roofs can produce crops, they can be exotic small parks for office buildings or condominiums. ...

Race Cars to the Rescue One does not usually associate energy efficiency with Formula One racecars, but they do go together. Many of the standard features in today’s cars were tested on race tracks (and before that by bootleggers doing their best to outrun the local gendarme. Likewise, Formula One cars are helping in the development of two major innovations for increasing vehicle efficiency, the zeroshift gearbox and regenerative braking. In “F1 Soups up the Family Car,” Science Illustrated (September/October 2009, pages 50–53) describes how these two innovations are important in the high-performance arena and how the investments there may yield dividends for ordinary road vehicles. For racers, the biggest advantage of the zeroshift transmission is that it gives quicker surer gear changes. For ordinary cars, reducing those freewheeling seconds between gears can reduce energy losses to the level of ...

Getting the Juice: How About Silicon-Nanotube Electrodes? It’s just another research initiative … a fond hope, … but it might work yet. Researchers at Stanford University in California, USA and Hanyang University in Ansan, Korea are working to develop silicon nanotube electrodes that might hold more mobile lithium ions in a lithium battery. The result might be a tenfold increase in battery capability per unit of mass. That could upgrade electric cars from 40-mile range to 400-mile range. The reason Henry Ford politely declined to work for Thomas Alva Edison on the electric car would disappear The development program was described in the journal Nano Letters, and Technology Review summarized it at http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23516/ and it has great possibilities. However, there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. Theoretical possibilities cannot be produced in mas...

Geothermal—Drilling Hot But Ground Shaking Geothermal energy, tapping into the fission heat of the Earth’s core, has the potential to supply a major part of humanity’s energy needs without major outputs of carbon dioxide. Those possibilities got both good news and bad news in mid September 2009. The good news was provided by ETH Zurich (Switzerland) who have done the basic research for a thermal drill to penetrate rock with potential for providing geothermal energy. Drilling is typically one of the greatest costs for geothermal energy, and indeed, any place on Earth could provide geothermal energy if drilling costs were low enough. In fact, drilling costs for geothermal tend to be high for two reasons. First, except for a rare geologic sites, deep drilling is required. Second, heat (by definition) tends to be in igneous (that is volcanic-type) rocks, or at least metamorphic (sedimentary rocks that have been cooked by nearby magma). Such rocks t...

Conserve To Greatness---Energy Resource Efficiency and The Future (5 of 5) ECOLOGY--THE CLOSING CIRCLE Ecology and efficiency are merely two sides of the same coin. Efficient energy systems require less fuel and emit fewer combustion products. Substituting data flow for that of people and their vehicles reduces fuel and material use. Recycling materials reduces mining requirements and fuel needs while decreasing waste streams. Better materials reduce energy use, mining needs, and dangerous waste products. Better food production systems could feed many times more people at less energy cost and less pain to the environment. Still, the greatest danger to humanity is probably fouling the nest with wasted resources before realizing their value. Poor farming practices and overgrazing devastated much of the land where classical civilizations thrived (Lowdermilk). Ruined highlands silted and ruined lowlands. One initiative of China's so-called Great Leap Forward in the early years of the c...

Conserve To Greatness---Energy Resource Efficiency and The Future (4 of 5) FOOD Shortly after the Second World War, thousands of Japanese prisoners were hungry nearly to starvation. It was not that their American captors had deliberately deprived them, only that they had received wheat instead of rice. This illustrates an important facet of human behavior. Unless constrained in a prison camp, people resist new eating habits. Thus, it is seems difficult to use the many efficient options available. Yet, progress eventually comes. In Europe, potatoes were only fed to livestock for some decades before an eccentric booster (who had been fed potatoes as a prisoner of war) gave the French queen a bouquet of potato flowers. In America, tomatoes were thought to be poisonous until in the early 1800s a maniacal gardener posted notices and then astonished a crowd by publicly eating a tomato. Conversely, people eat too much of some things. Ali...