Bob Morris @ Jan 24th 2008 14:55 - Category: Renewable energy, Wind turbines Tags: wave power;
Vast amounts of wind and wave power from some of Scotland’s most remote areas could be exported to southern England and Europe, providing a secure source of power and significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
And it can be done so in an economically viable manner. Wow.
Bob Morris @ Jan 24th 2008 11:54 - Category: Unfiled ;
Last year I delivered a talk on Central Asia at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. As I sat preparing my lecture, I had the television on low in my hotel room because I don’t like complete silence. Gradually I found myself listening intently to an evangelical preacher, telling his TV congregation that they should not worry about casualties in Iraq because the Bible showed us that there had to be a great and bloody conflict in the Middle East before the Second Coming of Christ. So the more people who died in these wars, the closer we are to Jesus.Now that message would be acceptable to very few people in the UK - just Tony Blair and his immediate friends, really. I related this astonishing thing I had heard to some American lecturers over lunch. They told me that at least a third of their students would believe this stuff. And this was Ann Arbor, not the Deep South. It is essential that we all wake up now to the fact that the US is a deeply disturbed and psychotic society, and by far the biggest danger to world peace.
Bob Morris @ Jan 24th 2008 10:31 - Category: Credit crisis, Renewable energy Tags: Bill Gates, Davos;
Bill Gates calls for kinder capitalism
In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, [Bill Gates] plans to call for a “creative capitalism” that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored.
“We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well,” Mr. Gates will tell world leaders at the forum.
Some lefties may mock this, but many in the business world will listen to and act upon it. And maybe some lives will get better because of it. This is also the best way to work on global warming. Raise the living standards of the desperately poor so they have the time and energy to think about the environment rather than just surviving.
The Google Foundation initiative on global warming
The key difference between this and the Gore-Bono panel prior to it is that Gore concentrated on the things we must stop doing - as the climate change movement does - while the Google team concentrates on what we can start doing, thanks to technology.
Yes. We’ve had enough doom-mongering. Let’s find solutions instead.
Heard on NPR this morning that 60% of the movers and the shakers at Davos believe that central bankers can’t control/manage the global economy anymore. Implication: it’s too big, complex, and fast for these organizations to manage. This is a big shift in thinking that puts them in line with the global guerrilla thinking re: the decline of the nation-state, more frequent black swans, etc.
Don’t forget, black swans can be good too! But the nation-state is in permanent decline. Think networks. Think swarms. Forget centralization, get decentralized instead.
Bob Morris @ Jan 24th 2008 07:08 - Category: Renewable energy Tags: Geothermal heat pump;
Geothermal energy can be used to heat homes in the winter and cool them in the summer.
[The] ground temperature is warmer than the air above it during the winter and cooler than the air in the summer. The GHP takes advantage of this by exchanging heat with the earth through a ground heat exchanger.
As with any heat pump, geothermal and water-source heat pumps are able to heat, cool, and, if so equipped, supply the house with hot water.
They do cost considerably more to install, but can pay for themselves in 5-10 years and you then then have no heating and cooling energy expenses except for maintenance on the system.
Bob Morris @ Jan 24th 2008 00:15 - Category: Unfiled ;
People who haven’t been to deserts sometimes think they’re devoid of life. Not hardly. Click the above photo to view full-size. And to see the abundance of plant life.
The following full-sized photos were also taken at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum near Tucson AZ in the Sonora Desert. Animals were in their outdoor areas, safe from humans, and all are native to the area.
Coyote
Snoozing ocelot
Mountain lion
Extremely well-fed prairie dogs!
Subscribe
