Greenhouse Mending

I am more than a little amazed at the glaring omission in the press and pundits arguments about the Shirley Sherrod embroglio. First, it seemed to be black-on-white racism by a U.S. Department of Agriculture employee. Sherrod, the employee involved, was summarily fired (that is, resigned—jumped, fell, or was pushed as they say in Central Europe). Then, a more complete transcript revealed a story of inner doubts and hostilities that were transcended when a conflicted black woman rose to the task of helping a white family keep their farm (and which the family involved confirmed). Furthermore, the story was from a quarter century earlier. Then, Andrew Breitbart, the blogger who had released the story, was attacked as one of many right-wing commentators attacking the left … perhaps as part of a racist campaign. It didn’t help Breitbart’s “case” that he angrily brushed aside questions about his motives and competence. The counter battle lines were imediately drawn. The right lingered o...

Lithium and Nanotubes—Another Aspect of the Battery Revolution Electric cars need better batteries. That was the stumbling block that stopped Thomas Alva Edison. He invented the sulfuric acid and lead car batter that has been used for more than a century, but it wasn’t enough to compete with the Auto cycle internal combustion engine. Now, potential shortages of fossil fuels are giving latter-day Edisons another shot at moving the world with electric cars. One example is that Science Daily carried a story about another research initiative that could make a significant boost to the power of lithium batteries. The article (“Using Carbon Nanotubes in Lithium Batteries Can Dramatically Improve Energy Capacity,” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100620200808.htm) described plating alternate plus and minus layers of carbon nanotubes. (It’s so ironic that this hoped-for revolution might be built on techniques that would be familiar to electroplating technicians for two centuri...

Gliders versus Economy Electrical Cars The comment below is from Erin Shipp, who has worked for large car companies. His comments about electrifying the bodies of small conventional cars is a concept that has also been referred to as gliders. Such gliders are probably the real competition for a small neighborhood electrical car. If a glider were sold only slightly more expensively than the small electric, customers would likely opt for the beefier and higher performance vehicles. I agree that a more minimalist approach is justified. So far the electric cars shown have either been microcars that have never been accepted, higher end like Tesla and Fisker, or 3 wheelers to avoid safety requirments. The greatest impact would be to sell to the lower end of the market where older, more polluting, lower fuel economy vehicles would be replaced. My concept was to convert existing vehicles to electric or extended range electric. This could be done with a retail price of $25k to $35k. But no o...

                                   The Model T Paradigm: The Case for a Minimalist Electric Car The case for a “minimalist” design on this electric car rather than a head-turning elegant design is based on three things: function; cost; and positioning. The functional argument is that a vehicle traveling less than 40 miles per hour gets little benefit from an efficient aerodynamic design. Thus, the extra design, tooling, materials, and labor to produce a styled aerodynamic body would not pay for themselves in increased performance. Meanwhile, the marketing high end position of styled elegance and high performance is being fiercely contested by the likes of Tesla and even General Motors with the Chevy Volt. Moreover, those two named companies are apparently hard-wired politically to the U.S. federal government to the ...

To be accurate, it’s really all about the pinnipeds: seals, walruses, and sea lions. They are the key to profitable offshore wind energy … in California anyway. To understand why, consider the recent evolution of wind energy. Wind turbines have been moving down a learning curve toward larger sizes, greater dependability, and greater efficiency. Those advances bring them closer to profitability even without government subsidies. Yet the subsidies are probably assured because wind is noncarbon energy source. (Actually, there is some fossil fuel combustion in manufacture and installation, but we won’t quibble.) At the same time, those Eiffel Tower sizes only compound the objections of neighbors. NIMBY, or not in my backyard takes on a whole new meaning for objects visible from several miles away Siting wind turbines offshore gets some distance from the nearest neighbors. Even better, winds are significantly stronger and more consistent offshore. For those reasons, there have been...

Unhappy New Year: Biofuels in the Tank—Financially       Markets are often unkind to new ideas. Biofuels are a case in point. Several years ago, the price of oil per barrel shot upward, but the price of agricultural produce was still low. That offered possible profits for converting crops to synthetic fuels.      Meanwhile, there were rising environmental concerns about the carbon footprint of burning fossil hydrocarbons for transportation. Plants pull their carbon in from the air as they grow, so burning plant-derived fuel is carbon neutral. (We won’t get into those spoiled sports who grumble about carbon emissions associated with fertilizer, herbicides, tractor fuel, processing heat, etc.)      Finally, there has been a lingering hostility about large transfer payments to foreign oil-producing countries since the Oil Crises began in the 1970s. Thus, governments in Europe and the Americas subsidized production of s...

                                      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...