Tuesday, August 18th, 2015
Stephan: Remember the Dutch road experiment where the road actually generates electric power. Here is the latest, this from the U.K. We are going to see more and more of this as we exit the carbon era. This, I think, is one of the most interesting areas of applied technology at the social level.
Electric charging lanes could be a reality on English roads within a few years.
Credit: Highways England
LONDON — A trial in England is hoping to significantly boost the range of electric cars by introducing roads that can charge the vehicles as they drive along them.
Unless you happen to own a Tesla and live near a supercharging station, the current battery life of electric cars doesn’t go incredibly far. While electric cars may get 260 miles to a full charge, gas-guzzling cars can get 300 miles or more.
Highways England announced last week that it is embarking on an 18-month scheme to trial charging lanes after completing an early feasibility study. (The testing won’t be on public roads just yet, though.)
During the trials, vehicles will be fitted with wireless technology and special equipment will be installed beneath […]
No Comments
Monday, August 17th, 2015
Sarah Breitenbach, Staff Writer - USA Today
Stephan: I haven't done anything on the Bee Trend in a while, and thought it was time for an update. Here it is. The power of the agricultural chemical industry is still clearly evident. Unless there is far more massive public pushback against these poison merchants than is presently happening I'd say it was about 60-40 that we won't over come their influence in time and the great bee pollination cycle upon which all agriculture and much else is based collapses
Credit: Jeremy T. Kerr
The orange groves in Fort Myers, Fla., have turned to poison for David Mendes’ honeybees. The onetime winter havens for bees have been treated with a popular pesticide that he says kills his livelihood.
States and the federal government are searching for ways to protect managed bees like Mendes’ and their wild counterparts. The White House issued a strategy in May to promote the health of honeybees and at least 24 states have enacted laws to protect bees and other pollinators such as bats, birds and butterflies.
Of the 100 crops that supply about 90% of the food for most of the world, 71 are pollinated by bees. Pollination has a direct effect on the quality of food and the diversity of crops. Declines in bee populations mean fruit and vegetables are less available and more expensive.
Though the number of honeybee colonies managed by beekeepers appears to be on the rise for the first time since “colony collapse disorder” was identified in 2006, U.S. bee populations have not returned […]
No Comments
Monday, August 17th, 2015
Stephan: In all the discussion about solar it almost entirely centers on the photovoltaic. But there is another and quite different world of solar, that involved with heating water or making steam. This report offers a good briefing on the subject.
Credit: Abengoa’s IST Thermal Trough
About half the energy burned in the U.S. is used to make hot water and heat (most of which is below the boiling point), yet PV solar and wind energy do little to provide it aside from electric water tanks and inefficient baseboard heaters.
Does that mean natural gas is here to stay? Solar thermal, as the term is generally used, is a bit of a misnomer, since the thermal output is used to make electricity. It becomes part of the same process as a conventional steam or gas turbine plant, but instead of burning natural gas, or coal, the steam comes from a liquid heated by concentrated sunlight.
In the case of troughs, the so-called concentration ratio is about 60 to 1. Three to five ‘suns’ from a magnifying glass will start a fire. Sixty suns will produce enough high quality steam to run a power plant. (PV power comes from one-sun, i.e. what you see is what you get). Concentrated sunlight is no trifling matter. […]
2 Comments
Monday, August 17th, 2015
Stephan: While we are mired in the Middle East, engaged in our endless wars whose only outcome seems to be to generate social breakdown and hate for America, the Chinese have become the dominant foreign influence throughout Africa. This report gives some sense of what is happening, beginning with the fact that the entire developing world is now developing at a rate previously unseen, much of it with Chinese funding and help.
This trend has long term implications that we will live to regret. You can see in these developments how poorly the neocons, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, understood the great forces in play geopolitically. Almost everything they did has been shown to be a miscalculation, but we don't seem to be able to talk about that yet. You would never hear this in the current campaign, but 50 years from now if honest history is still taught people will be writing doctoral dissertations by the dozen on this period of historically bad judgment.
Kilamba New City, developed by Chinese company CITIC, is designed to accommodate 500,000 people and includes 750 eight-story apartment blocks.
Credit: Michiel Hulshof and Daan Roggeveen
It’s easy to see China’s footprint in Africa. On the outskirts of Nairobi, a new highway built by a Chinese firm is crowded with bumper-to-bumper traffic, many of the cars set on tires imported from China. The landscape is dotted with construction sites and, every so often, the logo of another Chinese construction firm. Across the continent, Chinese companies are building highways, railways, sports stadiums, mass housing complexes, and sometimes entire cities.
But China isn’t just providing the manpower to fuel quickly urbanizing African cities. It is exporting its own version of urbanization, creating cities and economic zones that look remarkably similar to Chinese ones. Journalist Michiel Hulsof, based in Amsterdam, and architect Daan Roggeven in Shanghai, began visiting the […]
No Comments
Monday, August 17th, 2015
Stephan: I think this may be the next large planetary event.
Sakura-jima Volcano
Credit: geol105naturalhazards.voices.wooster.edu
Officials in Japan are preparing for what could be a large explosive eruption from Sakurajima. The Japan Meteorological Agency has raised the alert status to Level 4 after new earthquakes and rapid inflation of the volcano suggest that Sakurajima could be preparing for a repeat of the 1914 explosive eruption that produced numerous fatalities. Level 4 alert means that people living near the volcano need to prepare for evacuation if conditions continue to worsen. Right now that is limited to ~4,000 people on the same island as Sakurajima, but ash from any eruption (depending on the winds) could impact Kagoshima (population ~600,000), located only 10 kilometers from Sakurajima. There is also concern that a large eruption could cause workers at the restarted Sendai nuclear power plant, 50 kilometers from Sakurajima, to need to leave the plant.
Sakurajima is one of the most consistently active volcanoes in Japan, typically producing hundreds of small explosions each year. Over the […]
1 Comment
