Bob Morris @ Dec 31st 2006 16:26 - Category: Renewable energy, Solar power ;
This type of parking meter prints out a ticket you put on the dashboard. They are solar-powered and work on ambient light. Thus, no expensive underground cabling needs to be run to power them.
A primary reason for pay and display meters, is that another car can’t use your time if you leave with time remaining on the meter. Also, one machine can service hundreds of parking spaces.
Bob Morris @ Dec 31st 2006 00:23 - Category: Climate change ;
China already has 2,000 coal plants spweing pollution and greenhouse gases, and are planning 500 more. The toxic clouds these plants produce are so massive they can be seen from space and in some cities it’s so bad cars need their headlights on at noon. Renewable energy doesn’t exist.
Under socialism, it’s important the government makes the right choices. In China now, in regard to the environment, that’s not happening, even though the government just released a report warning of major problems to come, like severe water shortages, from climate change. Citizens are starting to rebel against such rampant environmental degradation and despoliation. You would too if you live in a city choking in coal haze and pollution.
All of which is just another example of how environmental issues and climate change are creating political stress and probable rebellion.
In China, many of the private companies are controlled by the government, and the system is still at least nominally socialist. So, the government could mandate clean energy if they wanted to, and under socialism such changes could happen much faster than under capitalism. But the government lacks the will. But you can’t create your energy from coal, dump pollutants into rivers, ignore the environment, then wonder why the climate-change-induced water shortages are happening. But that’s just what they’re doing. The blowback will be environmental, political, and massive.
Bob Morris @ Dec 31st 2006 00:15 - Category: Unfiled ;
Ford US cars to get bluetooth, Microsoft operating system
I’m guessing the Thai politician who was trapped inside in his car because its Windows-based operating system failed will not be looking to buy a Ford.
Gives “Found On Road Dead” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
Bob Morris @ Dec 31st 2006 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
The always amazing Subtopia has a long, fascinating post about the labyrinth of tunnels between the US and Mexico at the border, used by those who cross over to the States as well as by the tunnel police who are trying to stop them.
Bob Morris @ Dec 30th 2006 00:23 - Category: Climate change ;
Huge ice shelf breaks loose in Arctic
A 41-square-mile shelf of floating ice that jutted into the Arctic Ocean for 3,000 years from Canada’s northernmost shore broke away abruptly in the summer of 2005, apparently freed by sharply warming temperatures and jostling wind and waves
This enormous piece of floating ice could presents a risk to offshore oil platforms as it drifts south.
Whether or not this, and other such events, are due entirely to human-induced global warming is irrelevant. Does it matter if the cause is human-induced, a product of long-term natural cycles, or a combination of both? The climate IS changing. Planet-wide solutions are needed.
Governments and countries that cope with this will succeed, those that ignore it or can’t cope will experience serious problems like unhappy citizens, political unrest, water and crop shortages, and migration of the populace out of the stricken areas into other areas where they may not be wanted.
Climate change affects all of us. It’s not just a green issue.
One obvious change is that electricity production based on petroleum and coal has to go. It’s way too wasteful of resources and also contributes mightily to greenhouse gases. For example, in a bizarre and wasteful system, the City of L.A. gets 50% of its power from coal produced in other states.
To ensure a reliable supply of power at consistently low rates, the Department maintains a diversified energy generation mix – including coal (50 percent), natural gas (25 percent), large hydroelectric (11 percent), nuclear (12 percent), and renewable power, such as wind, biomass, solar and cogeneration (2 percent). The Department draws its energy supply from in-basin power plants and several out-of-state facilities in Nevada, Utah and the Pacific Northwest.
Some of the power is lost during transmission on the hundreds of miles of power lines plus the coal is shipped by railroad from Appalachia. This is clearly not a sustainable or intelligent. To their credit, L.A. is moving away from this lunatic method and towards renewables. But they only plan for 20% renewables, and much more than that is needed.
For renewables to be used in a big way, it will have to be a mix - solar, wind, hydro, tidal, geothermal, etc. This means the power will become much more distributed. There will be far fewer huge plants, and lots of smaller ones. (There could also be more nuclear plants. France, for example, gets much of their power from nukes.)
Distributed power grids with lots of small generating plants may reflect the political structures that will be created as climate change continues. Political power may become more distributed and less centralized too, something which could have huge ramifications across the planet.
Bob Morris @ Dec 30th 2006 00:15 - Category: Renewable energy, Solar power ;
EnviroMission is planning “world’s first large-scale solar thermal power station” which will generate a whopping 200MW. Their website has a useful animation about this type of tower works. It’s quite simple, low maintenance, and totally passive. All that’s needed is sun, a large tower with a turbine in it, and acres of transparent sheeting.
Another type of much more complicated solar towers, have been tested in Barstow. They use mirrors to reflect the sun to heat water, sometimes using “used molten salt, a combination of 60% NaNO3 and 40% KNO3, as an energy storage medium.”
Bob Morris @ Dec 30th 2006 00:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
Eli Stephens’s Left I on the News ascends from best Media Blog of the Year in 2005 to the grander Website of the Year award for 2006. Left I provided insightful analysis and media criticism of events in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and even the Tour de France bicycle race.
Congratulations, Eli!
Bob Morris @ Dec 29th 2006 23:47 - Category: Unfiled ;
3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That’s the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he’s wanted to marry for the last six years? I don’t think so.
Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn’t make them more significant, does it?
Bob Morris @ Dec 29th 2006 09:17 - Category: Unfiled ;
Bob Morris @ Dec 29th 2006 08:26 - Category: Unfiled ;
The former Somali PM returned to Mogadishu in a heavily armed convoy and was greeted by hundreds of supporters, says CBS News. Um, if there were only “hundreds” showing support wthen maybe the populace is totally on board? Or maybe they’re rejoining the various warlord factions, who are currently reestablishing their dominance.
Sounds like Baghdad all over again. An illusory victory to be be followed by guerrilla warfare and a descent into chaos, backed by the US (and other countries as well.)
Bob Morris @ Dec 29th 2006 00:23 - Category: Climate change ;
Temperatures in China will rise significantly in coming decades and water shortages will worsen, state media has reported, citing the government’s first national assessment of global climate change.
Australia recently had a similar report, and such reports have become commonplace. Climate change is occurring and what’s coming could be ugly.
What there hasn’t been much of, and what I plan to explore here in the coming months, is the political implications of climate change.
The predicted coming water shortages in China also mean there will be crop shortages since there won’t be enough water to grow the crops. People will get thirsty and hungry, something which virtually guarantees unrest and political turmoil. It won’t just be rural areas that are short on food, it’ll be the cities too.
Simultaneous with this is China industrializing rapidly with millions of Chinese getting their first car, etc., all of which will dump more greenhouse gases into the air, accelerating the climate change.
Creating energy from renewable resources not lessens dependence on petroleum, it also cuts way down on greenhouse gas emissions. Hey, wind, tidal, and solar power don’t create any greenhouse gases. So, not only are renewables an ethical treehugger way to go, they are also an important way to start to slow the coming climate change.
Ponder the prospect of food and water shortages in China, then speculate as to what that means to their existing political structures. Extrapolate that worldwide. Because that’s what climate change will bring.
Bob Morris @ Dec 29th 2006 00:15 - Category: Renewable energy ;
Hawaii, I think, is leading the country in using renewable energy.
The Big Island has a working power plant that uses ocean thermal energy conversion to generate power using the difference in temperature between cold ocean water on the bottom and the warmer water on the top. Two new such plants are in the works, as the rising price of oil now makes it economical.
The process requires two sources of water with a fairly large difference in temperature. At the Natural Energy Lab, warm water is piped from the surface of the ocean where it can be used to vaporize a liquid such as ammonia, which then drives a turbine to produce electricity.
At that point the ammonia has to be cooled and condensed to continue the cycle.
A byproduct of the OTEC process is production of fresh water from ocean water. OTECNews blogs about the latest in the field. I wonder, is there an environmental impact on ocean life from constant recirculation of the warm/cold water?
In other renewable news, Hawaiian Electric is prosing a 110MW power plant on Oahu that will run entirely on biofuel made from processing leftovers from agricultural products “such as corn, soybeans, sugar and their byproducts.”
[tags]OTEC,biofuel,ocean thermal energy conversion[/tags]
Bob Morris @ Dec 29th 2006 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2006 15:15 - Category: Unfiled ;
Rainbow in Kihei today.
We return today to the traffic-clogged dystopia that is Los Angeles, and will put the house on the market next month, then move to Connecticut.
Maui, as always, was amazing. We will be back.
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2006 09:35 - Category: Unfiled ;
People forget that both sides are bad in the Somali war, and the other side (supported by US/Saudi Arabia (and I am sure Israel is not far behind) is a bunch of criminal warlords. My feelings toward the Somali civil war is similar to the feelings of Henry Kissinger toward the Iran-Iraq war: I want both sides to lose.
Now that Ethiopia has taken Mogadishu, they will have to run it, won’t they? Just because the Islamists have disappeared doesn’t mean they won’t be back. That’s the mistake the US made in Baghdad at the start of the war. The US rolled in, there was no opposition, so they thought the war was over and they’d won, but that’s hardly how things worked out… “When the enemy attacks, retreat” is a basic tenet of guerrilla warfare.
Why did this invasion have to happen?
Experts had feared the conflict could engulf the already volatile Horn of Africa. A recent U.N. report said 10 countries have been illegally supplying arms and equipment to both sides of the conflict and using Somalia as a proxy battlefield.
What’s this war a proxy for? Meanwhile, innocent civilians lose their homes and get killed in the crossfire.
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2006 00:15 - Category: Uncategorized Tags: Maui;
The Hana Highway is 52 miles of twisty road, often with many one lane bridges. The scenery is spectacular.
Keanae. A sign warns not to get near breaking waves because you could get swept away.
Hamoa Alua island. Trees on top.
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2006 00:08 - Category: Uncategorized Tags: Maui;
A little roadside stand in Kipahulu sells fruit and smoothies. There’s no electricity here, so the refrigerator runs by propane and the coffee maker by solar. The blender for smoothies is bicycle-powered. The woman working behind the counter recently escaped from Los Angeles with no regrets.
When the earthquake hit recently, Kipahulu was completely cut off because a bridge was damaged. FEMA helicoptered in copious amounts of canned food, but locals here didn’t really need it. They do just fine from hunting, fishing, and gathering fruit, and can teach us all something about self-reliance.
Here’s the new temporary bridge.
The damaged bridge is in back of this new temporary bridge and crosses a steep, deep chasm.
Bob Morris @ Dec 27th 2006 01:04 - Category: Uncategorized Tags: Maui;
The Kipahulu Ohana is a community-based group in Kipahulu (near Hana) in Maui engaged in a number of projects such as raising taro, having cultural walks, reclaiming land from invasive species and animals, and important, bringing awareness of traditional Hawaiian ways and culture to all.
In 1995, a small group of Native Hawaiian residents came together to revive, restore, and share the practices of traditional Native Hawaiian culture with others in Kipahulu. We, the Kipahulu ‘Ohana, are a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating residents and visitors of the “ways of old” through cultural demonstrations and hands-on activities. Using the wisdom and spiritual guidance of our kupuna (elders, learned teachers), we seek to re-establish a Hawaiian lifestyle in Kipahulu. By initiating sustainable projects, dividing the labor, and sharing the results we will preserve our culture.
Sue and I spent a great day yesterday with Scott Crawford. He’s active in the group, and showed us Kapahu Living Farm, a taro field they’ve reclaimed and have been adding to. The field is in Haleakala National Park, and the Ohana has a partnership with the park that allows this, and also permits them to be in areas not generally open to visitors. Their planned cultural walks will also be in the park. For a local group to be allowed such access in a national park shows the respect others have for what they’re doing.
Bob Morris (me) and Scott Crawford, Kapahu Living Farm. Taro growing in background.
Scott Crawford next to taro.
Another project is the Kipahulu Kitchen, a community area where they’ve recently gotten the ok to have a restaurant, do food processing, and sell jellies, jams, etc. This part of Kipahulu has about 200 people and is completely off the grid. There is no electricity or public water. Propane fuels the stoves, solar power is widely used, and water comes from streams off Haleakala. Yet they now have an operating commercial kitchen (which uses trucked-in water due to country regulations.) After our hike we had fresh-caught fish, rice, and real poi. It was delicious.
Poi, among other things, is hypo-allergenic. Babies that can not take other foods and are in danger can often be fed poi and then do quite well.
Scott was a wealth of information on Hawaiian culture and the local plants and trees. Many of the most important plants here were brought thousands of miles across the ocean by Polynesians, a fact confirmed by Hawaiian oral tradition as well as by scientific research. You can read more about these plants at Canoe Plants, “Today’s guide to yesterday’s life-sustaining plants.”
He also blogs, quite even-handedly, at Hawaiian Independence Blog about the growing sovereignty movement, which is national, not racial. The Kingdom of Hawaii allowed anyone to become a citizen, and any citizen could vote. Back then, as now, the people were a mix of multiple cultures. This is the crucial point. It’s not racial. Once outsiders understand this, and learn how the land was stolen from Hawaiians, they often become sympathetic to the movement.
In Sept. 2001, dengue fever hit Hana. Scott got it before they knew what it was. He recovered, and then everyone, people, landowners, government worked quickly and effectively to knock it out. Landowners opened floodgates to clear out stagnant pools of water thus destroying where the mosquitoes breed. Everyone worked together, and they did it so well that the U.N. recognized it as a model for how others can stop dengue also.
The hope of the Kipahulu Ohana is that the sustainable practices they are bringing back and refining will be used by others too. What they are doing in Maui is important. Their cultural walks will be open to the public soon. Email Scott for more info on any of this.
[tags]Kipahulu Ohana, Kapahu Living Farm [/tags]
Bob Morris @ Dec 26th 2006 00:23 - Category: Climate change, Renewable energy ;
Global warming claims first inhabited tropical island
Lohachara island, off India, was home to 10,000. It is now underwater. Much of a nearby populated island is too.
As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.
I’ve been blogging more lately about global warming and renewable energy. As these vanishing islands clearly show, climate change is happening. This can not help but become a major worldwide political issue. In fact, it’s already becoming one.
For example, Australia made a major shift recently, based on the “apocalytic” governmental Stern Report that warns of impeding global warming disaster, and now has accepted climate change is occurring and that switching to renewable energy will help remediate it.
“I think it’s an important shift [to support renewables] and a welcome shift. I think we are seeing from the federal Government for the first time, a recognition that there is such a thing as global warming.”
– Victorian premier Steve Bracks
Ditto for piggish consumption based on using petroleum products. It can’t last. It won’t last. Maui now has 10% of their power coming from wind power. Maybe that could be 50% or even 100% one day, rather than the current insanely wasteful and unsustainable system of bringing in petroleum products by ship to be used as fuel to create electricity.
As companies and countries (maybe even someday the deeply backwards United States) continue to get on board here, vast dislocations will also occur. Dinosaur industries and countries will fail, new ones will be born. Formerly prosperous areas may become arid or underwater while currently poorer ones could flourish. Given changes like these, the political instabilities and opportunities this will create will also be massive.
Bob Morris @ Dec 26th 2006 00:15 - Category: Renewable energy, Wind turbines ;
We hiked up close to the turbines. It was a 1.5 mile hike that took almost 90 minutes up a steep trail.
Here’s what the turbines look like from a distance.
Conservationists worked with the builders, and removed endangered species of vegetation before construction began, then re-planted them when it was completed.
The site is managed by Kaheawa Wind Power, and was co-developed by UPC Wind Management and Makani Nui Associates.
Meanwhile, in southern California, SoCal Edison has contracted for the biggest-yet US wind farm
It’ll be in the windy Tehachapi area, spread over 50 square miles, generating a massive 1500 MW.
“This project alone will be almost as much wind power as the entire country had at the beginning of this century,”
Bob Morris @ Dec 26th 2006 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
Yet they’ve not been invaded themselves. Here’s a surprise, the US is remaining silent about this “preemptive” invasion and bombing. Seems like yet another proxy war launched by the US.
Bob Morris @ Dec 25th 2006 00:01 - Category: Unfiled ;
Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say
On a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day
That’s the island greeting that we send to you
From the land where palm trees sway
Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright
The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night
Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii’s way
To say “Merry Christmas to you.”There is a saying here, that if Hawai`i wants you to stay it will hold on to you. Though you scatter to the four winds, it will always call you back.
For all of you who are hearing the call, this site is for you.
Just a few more days here in Maui, then we return to L.A. and plan the move to Connecticut. But Hawaii, we’ve heard your call, and will return. Probably to the Big Island next time.
Merry Christmas, all!
Bob Morris @ Dec 24th 2006 17:34 - Category: Unfiled ;
Bob Morris @ Dec 24th 2006 00:15 - Category: Unfiled ;
Nether-World tagged me with “What are the seven best things you did this past year?”, so here goes…
1) Had a wonderful second year of marriage with Sue. This is the first marriage for both of us, I was 56, she 50, when we tied the knot.
2) Helped organize antiwar marches and rallies in Los Angeles with ANSWER LA. It’s huge amounts of work, great people, gives things focus.
3) Made solid plans to escape from Los Angeles and move to Connecticut where planning your day around projected freeway congestion is not part of the lifestyle.
4) Spent two weeks in Maui. We shall return. (Actually, as I blog this, we’re still there!)
5) Went to Gnomedex and geeked out totally.
6) Started using Ubuntu, and will probably get a MacBook, all part of the plan to become Microsoft-free.
7) Continued with Polizeros, met lots of great bloggers, and currently get 4,000+ visits a day, which is more than I ever expected this hard left blog to get. Thank you!
Tag, you’re next. John Heron Project, Asymptotic Life, Life of Riley, Lefti on the News, quarsan at BlairWatch, Hawaiian Independence Blog, and American Leftist.
Bob Morris @ Dec 24th 2006 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
John Kerry, clueless as always, wheezes on about “the case for flip-flopping.” Yawn.
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