Peter Goodchild - The Psychology Of Systemic Collapse

The impracticality of "alternative energy" has been spelled out in the past. It's just basic mathematics, in fact just simple arithmetic. It's a matter of determining the capability of solar power, for example, and then comparing that to the needs of the population. But even if it was possible to stave off famine by fastening solar panels onto all our roofs, there would still be the question of what to do next. Solar-panel construction for a thousand years? Perhaps the impasse is more psychological than technological.

Solar power has many problems, none of which can be solved. The biggest problem is scale. Solar arrays for 7 to 12 billion people could be found only in a Hollywood movie. The raw materials would be largely inaccessible: not only would vast quantities of fossil fuels and metals, including rare ones, be needed to build and maintain these arrays, but one would need to explain how a solar-energy collector is going to enable people to dig mines half a mile into the ground and extract the ore. And one would then have to explain, once all of the world's 500+ exajoules of annual energy production have been switched to solely electric, how it would be possible to use electric-only as a means of providing airplanes, fertilizer, plastics, and so on.

Read More:

http://countercurrents.org/goodchild060212.htm

Will Allen and Ronnie Cummins - What About the State of Our Planet, Mr. President?

In his state of the union address this week, President Obama talked about the American promise - the promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.

“The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive,” he said. “No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important.”

Climate scientists might beg to differ.

Most of the President’s speech focused on economic reforms. He proposed energy reforms almost exclusively in the context of adding jobs and growing the economy.

But what good is a healthy economy on a planet too sick to sustain human life?

Read More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/27/what-about-the-state-of-our-planet-mr-president/

Bill McKibben - The Great Carbon Bubble

If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet -- as we shall see -- it’s unfortunately largely invisible to us.

In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology.  Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on January 4th, a good day for snapping photos because there weren’t many clouds.

It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web’s most widely readmeteorologist, explains, “The U.S. and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western U.S. is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s.”

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175499/

NASA study solves case of Earth's 'missing energy'

Two years ago, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., released a study claiming that inconsistencies between satellite observations of Earth’s heat and measurements of ocean heating amounted to evidence of “missing energy” in the planet’s system.

Where was it going? Or, they wondered, was something wrong with the way researchers tracked energy as it was absorbed from the sun and emitted back into space?

An international team of atmospheric scientists and oceanographers, led by Norman Loeb of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and including Graeme Stephens of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., set out to investigate the mystery.

They used 10 years of data — spanning 2001 to 2010 — from NASA Langley’s orbiting Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System Experiment (CERES) instruments to measure changes in the net radiation balance at the top of Earth’s atmosphere. The CERES data were then combined with estimates of the heat content of Earth’s ocean from three independent ocean-sensor sources.

Their analysis, summarized in a NASA-led study published Jan. 22 in the journal Nature Geosciences, found that the satellite and ocean measurements are, in fact, in broad agreement once observational uncertainties are factored in.

Read More:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-nasa-case-earth-energy.html

Amitabh Pal - Renewables Now Surpass Nuclear Power in the US

This is a good way to get 2012 rolling: A recent report reveals that for the first time renewable sources have outdone nuclear power in the United States.

“Renewable energy sources—wind, water, solar and others—passed nuclear generation as a share of U.S. power in September, according to the Energy Information Administration,” reports the San Francisco Business Times. “The EIA report showed 6.944 quadrillion Btus, or ‘quads,’ of energy generated from renewable sources in the first nine months of 2011, compared with 6.173 quads from nuclear power.”

Now, the “renewable” category here is a bit of a catch-all, since it includes sources that are somewhat dubious from a clean energy standpoint, such as biofuels. But, still, the fact that nuclear power is now contributing a smaller amount to the national grid than renewables is of major significance. We are on our way to a green energy future faster than many of us had imagined

Read More:

http://www.progressive.org/renewables.html

Richard Heinberg - Geopolitical Implications Of “Peak Everything”

From competition among hunter-gatherers for wild game to imperialist wars over precious minerals, resource wars have been fought throughout history; today, however, the competition appears set to enter a new—and perhaps unprecedented—phase. As natural resources deplete, and as the Earth’s climate becomes less stable, the world’s nations will likely compete ever more desperately for access to fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water.

Nations need increasing amounts of energy and raw materials to produce economic growth, but the costs of supplying new increments of energy and materials are burgeoning. In many cases, lower-quality resources with high extraction costs are all that remain. Securing access to these resources often requires military expenditures as well. Meanwhile the struggle for the control of resources is re-aligning political power balances throughout the world.

This game of resource “musical chairs” could well bring about conflict and privation on a scale never seen before in world history. Only a decisive policy shift toward resource conservation, climate change mitigation, and economic cooperation seems likely to produce a different outcome.

Read More:

http://www.postcarbon.org/article/660520-geopolitical-implications-of-peak-everything

John C.K. Daly - Revolution in Solar Energy Technology? Cheap Quantum Dot Solar Paint

By John C.K. Daly

 

Global Research, December 28, 2011

Oilprice.com

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28383

Researchers have reduced the preparation time of quantum dot solar cells to less than an hour by changing the form to a one-coat quantum dot solar paint.

How?

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles are coated with cadmium sulfide (CdS) or cadmium selenide (CdSe.) The composite nanoparticles, when mixed with a solvent, form a paste that can be applied as one-step paint to a transparent conducting material, which creates electricity when exposed to light.

Although the paint form is currently about five times less efficient than the highest recorded efficiency for the multifilm form, the researchers predict that its efficiency can be improved, which could lead to a simple and economically viable way to prepare solar cells.

The scientists responsible for the research breakthrough, Mathew P. Genovese of the University of Waterloo in Canada, with Ian V. Lightcap and Prashant V. Kamat of the Radiation Laboratory and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, will be publishing their study in an upcoming issue of the American Chemical Society's publication Nano.

During an interview with PhysOrg.com Professor Kamat, John A. Zahm Professor of Science in Chemistry and Biochemistry and an investigator in Notre Dame's Center for Nano Science and Technology (NDnano) and who led the research, explained, "Quantum dots are semiconductor nanocrystals which exhibit size-dependent optical and electronic properties. In a quantum dot sensitized solar cell, the excitation of semiconductor quantum dot or semiconductor nanocrystal is followed by electron injection into TiO2 nanoparticles. These electrons are then transferred to the collecting electrode surface to generate photocurrent.

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ScienceDaily - Paint-On Solar Cells Developed

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111221211324.htm

 

ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2011) — Imagine if the next coat of paint you put on the outside of your home generates electricity from light -- electricity that can be used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside.

A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive "solar paint" that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy.

"We want to do something transformative, to move beyond current silicon-based solar technology," says Prashant Kamat, John A. Zahm Professor of Science in Chemistry and Biochemistry and an investigator in Notre Dame's Center for Nano Science and Technology (NDnano), who leads the research.

"By incorporating power-producing nanoparticles, called quantum dots, into a spreadable compound, we've made a one-coat solar paint that can be applied to any conductive surface without special equipment."

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Leo Hickman - Could the desert sun power the world?

Green electricity generated by Sahara solar panels is being hailed as a solution to the climate change crisis

Leo Hickman

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 December 2011 15.30 EST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/11/sahara-solar-panels-green-electricity?intcmp=122

During the summer of 1913, in a field just south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile, an American engineer called Frank Shuman stood before a gathering of Egypt's colonial elite, including the British consul-general Lord Kitchener, and switched on his new invention. Gallons of water soon spilled from a pump, saturating the soil by his feet. Behind him stood row upon row of curved mirrors held aloft on metal cradles, each directed towards the fierce sun overhead. As the sun's rays hit the mirrors, they were reflected towards a thin glass pipe containing water. The now super-heated water turned to steam, resulting in enough pressure to drive the pumps used to irrigate the surrounding fields where Egypt's lucrative cotton crop was grown. It was an invention, claimed Shuman, which could help Egypt become far less reliant on the coal being imported at great expense from Britain's mines.

"The human race must finally utilise direct sun power or revert to barbarism," wrote Shuman in a letter to Scientific American magazine the following year. But the outbreak of the first world war just a few months later abruptly ended his dream and his solar troughs were soon broken up for scrap, with the metal being used for the war effort. Barbarism, it seemed, had prevailed.

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Jon Herskovitz - Drinking the Radioactive Kool-Aid: Countries Switching From Coal to Nuclear

Published on Thursday, December 1, 2011 by Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/

by Jon Herskovitz

DURBAN - South Africa, the host of U.N. global climate talks, is faced with a conundrum -- it wants to wean itself off of coal-powered plants seen as primate culprits of greenhouse gas emissions and find a cleaner energy source.

It is turning to nuclear power, despite the catastrophic environmental degradation the world witnessed after Japan's Fukushima plant disaster this year.

The global climate talks that opened earlier this week in Durban are seeing a widening division on nuclear power, with many advanced economies moving away from it after Fukushima and emerging states heavily reliant on fossil fuels embracing it as a cleaner way to power their development.

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Robert Kennedy Jr - Big Carbon's Sock Puppets Declare War on America and the Planet

Huffington Post,  11/25/11

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/cleantech-_b_1112793.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=112511&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

It's now become de rigueur among the radical right wing rhetoricians to characterize any government support of America's green energy sector as wasteful, fruitless, and scandalous. They greeted with glee the collapse of the government supported solar company, Solyndra, America's first major casualty in our race with China to dominate the "new energy" economy. With Solyndra dying on the battlefield -- its marketplace choking on inexpensive Chinese solar panels -- the right wing's response was to hoist the white flag and declare defeat in the war for global cleantech leadership. That brand of "Can't Do" cowardice is a boon to the carbon and nuclear power incumbents who fund so much of the right wing's activities -- but it's bad for America.

Leveraging the aberrant Solyndra bankruptcy, these groups have launched an orchestrated series of attacks against the renewables sector by trying to discredit other companies, even those that are driving America forward with innovative solutions that actually do compete on a global basis. For example, last month, Fox News ran a story insinuating that SunPower received a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch project because of its political connections Congressman George Miller. The story also suggested that SunPower was struggling financially and posed another risk to taxpayers -- a la Solyndra. The truth is that SunPower is one of America's strongest solar manufacturing companies and Mr. Miller had nothing to do with the company receiving a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch Project. To Fox News and other right wing media sources, the facts meant very little. Their intent is only to suggest wrong-doing in an attempt to undermine the Obama Administration and its clean energy goals.

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Gareth Porter - Ex-Inspector Rejects IAEA Iran Bomb Test Chamber Claim

By Gareth Porter

Global Research, November 20, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27770

A former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repudiated its major new claim that Iran built an explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion. The IAEA claim that a foreign scientist - identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko - had been involved in building the alleged containment chamber has now been denied firmly by Danilenko himself in an interview with Radio Free Europe published Friday.  The latest report by the IAEA cited "information provided by Member States" that Iran had constructed "a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments" - meaning simulated explosions of nuclear weapons - in its Parchin military complex in 2000.  The report said it had "confirmed" that a "large cylindrical object" housed at the same complex had been "designed to contain the detonation of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives". That amount of explosives, it said, would be "appropriate" for testing a detonation system to trigger a nuclear weapon.  But former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley has denounced the agency's claims about such a containment chamber as "highly misleading".  Kelley, a nuclear engineer who was the IAEA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq and is now a senior research fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, pointed out in an interview with the Real News Network that a cylindrical chamber designed to contain 70 kg of explosives, as claimed by the IAEA, could not possibly have been used for hydrodynamic testing of a nuclear weapon design, contrary to the IAEA claim.

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Jennifer Carpenter - Fukushima Fallout Fears Over Japan Farms

Published on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 by BBC News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15691571

by Jennifer Carpenter

New research has found that radioactive material in parts of north-eastern Japan exceeds levels considered safe for farming.

The findings provide the first comprehensive estimates of contamination across Japan following the nuclear accident in 2011.

Food production is likely to be affected, the researchers suggest.

The results are reported in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.

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Tom Murphy - The Biofuel Grind – Do the Math

By Tom Murphy

14 November, 2011

http://www.countercurrents.org/murphy141111.htm

When we enter the decline phase of conventional oil—likely before 2020—we will scramble to fill the gap with alternative liquid fuels. The Hirsch Report of 2005, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, took a hard look at alternatives that could respond to the scale of the problem in time to have an impact. Not one of the approaches deemed to be currently viable in the report departs from fossil fuels. But what about biofuels? To what extent can they solve our problem? We’ll dip our toes into the math and see where a first-cut analysis leaves us.

Photosynthetic Scale

If you add up all the photosynthetic activity on the planet—accounting for virtually all life except for oddball extremophiles—you get a number like 80 TW (80 trillion watts; I see credible estimates ranging from 40–140 TW). About half is from all the plankton in the ocean (and its derivative food chain), and the other half happens on land, capturing every microbe, plant, and dependents. Compare this to human power consumption around 13 TW, and to human metabolic activity of about 500 GW (7 billion people operating on a little less than 100 W, or 2000 kcal/day).

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F. William Engdahl - Russia's High Stakes Energy Geopolitics

Nord Stream, the huge Russian-German pipeline project, began delivering gas to the EU 

By F. William Engdahl 

Global Research, November 14, 2011

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27653

On November 7 the first of two pipelines for Nord Stream, the huge Russian-German gas pipeline project, began delivery of gas. The event was no minor affair. German Chancellor Merkel and Russian President Medvedev along with the prime ministers of France and the Netherlands and the EU Energy Commissioner formally opened the first of two 1224-kilometre pipelines at Lubmin in northern Germany, beginning delivery of the first gas direct from Russia’s Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field in Siberia to Germany.

Nord Stream was not cheap. It cost a total of more than $12 billion for the complex 760 mile long undersea pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Vyborg near Russia's St Petersburg to north eastern Germany. It was laid in remarkable time and with extraordinary environmental precautions to insure protection of sea life, a precondition set by several EU Baltic countries. When the second pipeline is finished in late 2012, Nord Stream will be able to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas a year, almost ten percent the entire EU annual gas consumption, or roughly one third the entire current gas consumption of China.

Nord Stream estimates it will provide enough energy to fuel 56 million West European households. With current EU political decisions over reducing CO² “carbon footprint” emissions, the Russian gas giant argues its natural gas gives 50% less CO² than rival coal plants at as much as 50% greater energy efficiency.

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