Archive for sustainability
Survival Panic, European Protests, Wires, Dirtbags, and Sustainability
Here are the things that caught my eye this morning:
Economic Crash Freaks People Out
Besides an increase in shoplifting, psychologists said retailers need to be prepared for more instances of violent behavior like that seen at a Wal-Mart store in Long Island, New York the day after Thanksgiving.
Protestors at Acropolis urge Europe Wide Protests
Greece’s worst protests in decades, sparked by the shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, have fed on simmering anger at high youth unemployment and the world economic crisis.
The Dirtbag Diaries
The Evolution of Live Action Painting
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Unsustainable Energy Trends
Pretty interesting article.
Unsustainable Energy Trends
By Byron King
I’ve been getting a lot of calls and e-mails from people asking about the falling prices for oil in recent weeks. The immediate explanation is that world economic activity is decelerating. Demand is falling. OPEC announced cuts in output. But the markets still believe that economic decline will trump the ability of OPEC to prop up the price of oil. Enjoy it while it lasts.Just over the horizon, things are about to become dicey. This week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) will release a new report on the future of world energy. In its World Energy Outlook, the IEA will state categorically that “Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable.”
There’s not much wiggle room in that statement. According to the IEA, despite the recent fall in oil prices, the medium- and long-term outlooks for energy supply are grim. Conventional oil output is destined to decline. Demand will still grow, however, especially in the developing world. And the twain shall only meet by prices rising to clear the market. “It is,” as our Arab friends like to say, “written.”
»» Unsustainable Energy Trends
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An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief
Michael Pollan on why the next President needs to pay attention to food….
It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops corn, soybeans, wheat and rice from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.
The Food Issue – An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief – Michael Pollan – NYTimes.com
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Renewable trees and rational thought.
Can Electricity From Trees Power Gadgets?
A new sensor system is under development that runs on electricity generated by ordinary trees! Apparently trees are capable of self-sustaining a reliable source of electricity. While a tree may not seem like much of a powerhouse, the “trickle charge” can add up, “just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time,” said Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers on the project and the associate director of MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering (CBE).
MIT researchers now believe they can power a network of sensors connected directly to trees to perform a variety of tasks.Trees could serve as “silent sentinels” along the nation’s borders to detect potential threats such as smuggled radioactive materials—with the sensors powered by the trees themselves. They could also prevent forest fires, among other applications, by sending early reports to the authorities.
Right now, the U.S. Forest Service says that manually recharging or replacing batteries in remote automated weather stations, which usually have to be located in hard-to-reach places, makes things impractical and costly. The new sensor system would bypass this problem by tapping into trees as it’s very own self-sustaining power supply. Each sensor is equipped with an off-the-shelf battery that can be slowly recharged using electricity generated by the tree itself.
The system produces enough electricity to allow the temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a day, or immediately if there’s a fire. Each signal hops from one sensor to another, until it reaches an existing weather station that beams the data by satellite to a forestry command center in Boise, Idaho.
Scientists have long known that trees can produce extremely small amounts of electricity. Yet no one knew exactly how the energy was produced or how to take advantage of their capacity to generate power. So, how does it work?
MIT colleagues recently reported the answer in the Public Library of Science ONE. “It’s really a fairly simple phenomenon: An imbalance in pH between a tree and the soil it grows in,” said Andreas Mershin, a postdoctoral associate at the CBE.
To solve the puzzle of where the voltage comes from, the team had to test a number of exotic theories using a slew of experiments that proved, among other things, that the electricity was not due to a simple electrochemical redox reaction (the type that powers the ‘potato batteries’ common in high school science labs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_battery). The team also ruled out the source as due to coupling to underground power lines, radio waves or other electromagnetic interference.
Testing of the wireless sensor network, which is being developed by Voltree Power (http://voltreepower.com), is slated to begin in the spring on a 10-acre plot of land provided by the Forest Service.
According to first author of the paper, Christopher J. Love, the bioenergy harvester battery charger module and sensors are ready. “We expect that we’ll need to instrument four trees per acre,” he said, noting that the system is designed for easy installation by unskilled workers.
“Right now we’re finalizing exactly how the wireless sensor network will be configured to use the minimum amount of power,” he concluded.
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Hawaii finally catching on to the recycling game
This is embarrassing, but the state of Hawaii is only now expanding their “pilot” recycling project at two locations to include more neighborhoods (like mine). The blue cans rolled out today on moving trucks, with a staging area taking up an entire side street. It is about time, given that our state consists of a few tiny islands with very limited space to pile up garbage.
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