Glad I gave up beer drinking.

On the other hand this is just the kind of tidbit that will get a number of people acting.

some good news:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080409170347.htm

Reports on what is apparently a highly efficient means of storing and producing hydrogen for power.

We are still a few years away from commercial applications but the idea has a lot of potential. Keep an eye on it.

Hey spock, I am also glad, (for you), that you gave up beer drinking!


Chess Fan

Now I wish I'd taken up beer drinking so I could feel like I was doing the right thing when I gave it up.

Good article, Spock. Also this one from April 8, on Breakthrough in Biofuel Production Process. Is five to ten years away before we see it at the pumps, but if it delivers as promised it'll be the start of weaning North America off foreign oil and it won't drive food prices up. If this doesn't work out there are another half dozen or so alternatives that are also being worked on (probably many many more...that half dozen are just the ones I'm aware of).

Here's an article on Icelandic energy. I hope knight_tour can comment:

http://www.slate.com/id/2188626/pagenum/all/#page_start

Ed Yetman, III
YetmanBrothers.com

Well, well, now THIS just might be AN INTERESTING MOVIE TO WATCH!!


Chess Fan

What happened to the science vs religion thread, where this belongs?

Based on the trailer this is clearly an effort to exploit the scientific illiteracy of the masses in order to further a religious agenda.

Absolutely disgusting.

Interesting article. Two things jumped out at me:

1. A relatively small economical homogeneous population. To my mind that makes pushing initiatives like the geothermal much easier than it would be in a larger more heterogeneous population.

This is ideal for the development of new ideas and technologies. Even in the U.S. we see a lot of the forward movement coming from smallish communities where people are of highly similar minds.

2. The virtually free energy has lead to a population of energy hogs. I'm not surprised since a lot of the waste in the U.S. is associated with resources that are underpriced/undervalued. As supportive as I am of wind power I really don't want my community building 20 towers if 12 will do just because we become hogs when the energy is "free."

I am really fond of initiatives that look to save energy through more efficient use of the energy. I very much want to continue efforts to find ways to use energy more efficiently. But if the energy becomes virtually free then there is no economic drive in the near term to create efficient products.

Saw a short bit on the TV (CBS)this morning. A guy is using green houses to grow algae in "plastic bags." Apparently the bio-fuel potential per acre are several times that of corn.

The video doesn't seem to be up yet but I'll keep looking for it and post a link if it shows up.

Did a bit more looking around...still couldn't find the video I saw on the morning news, but did find this article
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04/01/algae.oil/index.html?eref=rss_tech

About the same guy.

In other articles I saw claims of 5000 to 20000 gallons of fuel per acre for algae, compared to about 30 gallons/acre of ethanol from corn.

This guy claims that his system will grow up to 100,000 gallons/acre of raw product resulting in about 50,000 gallons of biodiesel/acre.

I didn't have time to read in depth, but the skimming I did makes it sound like there is a lot of potential for algae as a fuel source.

I also saw some articles that I want to follow up on because it sounds like folks are developing ways of turning CO2 emissions into algae food. If that is true then you can grow fuel and reduce emissions at the same time. Very cool.