Collapsing Upwards

Hi everyone. Yep, it's been a long time since I wrote anything for Future Hi or anywhere else for that matter. I've been so busy with more practical matters that finding the time to express my thoughts publicly has not been possible.

Indictments and Political Scandal

As you may have heard, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff was indicted on five felony counts. In those moments where I take politics seriously, this could be a big deal and make me happy, but it doesn't. It's quite possible these indictments are only the beginning of seeing this criminal adminstration fall from power as much as it deserves to. Regardless of the probability of that, it all doesn't matter. The damage has already been done. America's reputation has been shattered, the deficts are soaring, dramatic increases in police state powers have been essentially cemented into law , etc., yada, yada, ad nauseum. Basically, the entire political game is a dead end for you, me and humanity. I can't possibly think how any reform, no matter how sweeping will make much of a difference. Politics is dead, lets move on.

Post-Politics:

If we hope to have a future, we need to start thinking post-politically. Some people, might have a problem with that whole concept. They think that has long as individual interact with each other, there will be politics. This is not true. As Timothy Leary made a strong case for, politics is rooted in power struggles within the contraints of a planetary 2-dimensional surface. Iain Banks makes the most compelling case I've ever read. As long as we remain on a planet, there is limited space in which we can travel. Any direction we decide to go in, we will inevitable end up back where we started. All corners of the globe have in some way been explored, colonized, utilized, cordoned off, walled, fenced, enclosed, patented, owned, copyrighted, raped and plundered. There is no wild and free frontier left, no place left to explore or to escape to. Sure, there are some places more free than others, but the differences are often trivial. For most people on the planet, life is hard, brutish and short. For those of us lucky enough to be in the developed world, the walls are closing in, fast. But,

End of Hierarchies and Traditional Power Structures:

Don't loose hope folks, because things are a accelerat'n! The current system with all its corruption, greed and shear stupidity and incompetence can't last much longer. Not only from an environmental and sustainable point of view, but because there is rapid, but still deep current change underway. It's all around us, and it's happening without anyone noticing much. It's not some big monolithic light from the sky change that we are archetypically expecting, but a much more subtle and profound change happening that we won't notice until its already happened. These changes are all around us. Humanity is waking up. People are becoming more aware, we are taking all of these tools and technologies for granted. The network is growing, and will continue to grow. Meanwhile, what we actually see with our traditional conditioning is more laws, copyrights, restrictions and so on. It's all an illusion folks. They only exist if you believe they exist. Most, if not all of these new laws are almost entirely uneforceable. The genie is out of the bottle when it comes to network intelligence, peer to peer technologies, free internet, sustainable energy systems, etc.

Power of the Network:

Here is an example of some of the stuff that the power of the network is producing by motivated programmers:

Netsukuku the Anarchical Parallel Internet (Internet)

Developed by the Freaknet, Netsukuku is a new p2p routing system, which will be utilised to build a worldwide distributed, anonymous and anarchical network, separated from the Internet, without the support of any servers, ISPs or authority controls. In a p2p network every node acts as a router, therefore in order to solve the problem of computing and storing the routes for 2^128 nodes, Netsukuku makes use of a new meta-algorithm, which exploits the chaos to avoid cpu consumption and fractals to keep the map of the whole net constantly under the size of 2Kb. Netsukuku includes also the Abnormal Netsukuku Domain Name Anarchy, a non hierarchical and decentralised system of hostnames management which replaces the DNS. It runs on GNU/Linux.

On the alternative energy front:

don't even know where to begin. Breakthroughs in this area are happening almost daily. If you've been reading blogs like World Changing, you'll see that there is so much going on with alternative energy now, that it is now impossible to keep up with the overwhelming rapid pace of global conversion to post-peak-oil alternatives.

Canda Proposing 30 GW wind farm in far north

On the space migration front:

Spaceship One and Two, and then Space Ship Three hold so much promise. There are only the beginning, but they are the first genuine steps of humanity getting off of the planet. With the advent of mass produced nanotubes, we could soon see the commercial construction of several space elevators. Space elevators mean price to space in the hundreds of dollars. Hundreds to change your life forever. What does this mean for the space game? It means that almost everyone who wants to go will go. When you have millions, billions of people who can now afford to go to space, there will be the infrastructure to support it. Every enterprising, capitalizing individual or group will make sure of that. Because the profit potential of this will be enormous beyond all comprehension. To give you an idea, imagine what the total World Gross Product is today. It will triple within the first 5 years of a sub-$1000 price to orbit, and after that it will continue to grow at a conservative 20% a year. Imagine the total economy of humanity growing by 20% a year. You are not rich now? You will be, and so will everyone else. Nothing will ever be the same after this.

I can already hear people, saying, "But what about molecular nanotechnology?". Yes! What's amazing about the above figures is all of that is possible without molecular nanotech. It only requires some master of nanomaterial construction. Once nanotech assemblers hit the scence, things will really take off.

On the longevity front:

If you make it the next 20 years, you're going to live damn near forever. So you might as well accept it. :)

So, what's in store in the next 20 years and beyond

Have fun! Now for me, back to the work at hand. :)

Post Oil Megacity

Future Hi pal Alex Steffan of World Changing (my favorite blog) has written an excellent piece about how cities can thrive in a post-oil world. He has given me permission to re-post it here. [link to original post]
~~~

The kind of city we're building is a pivot point upon which prospects of a
bright green future turn. As we come to the end of cheap oil and run up against evidence that carbon is changing our planet more suddenly than most would have thought, we're realizing that the pattern of suburban sprawl which for the last forty years has dominated North American cities (and influenced cities around the world) was a really dumb idea. Whatsmore, those suburbs themselves face real challenges, and may in their current incarnations be doomed.

On an urban planet, these sorts of dangers raise disturbing questions. Much
hinges on the pace of innovation and the speed with which we embrace needed reforms. Can we replace an economy whose every fiber vibrates with the logic of cheap oil and careless pollution with one which runs on renewable energy, heals our surrounding ecosystems and creates no waste?

I think we can. James Howard Kunstler strongly disagrees. In a recent
speech, Kunstler savagely (and in a strange way, somewhat joyfully)
announces that we're screwed:

"The world - and of course the US - now faces an epochal predicament: the global oil production peak and the arc of depletion that follows. We are unprepared for this crisis of industrial civilization. We are sleepwalking into the future. ...

Right here I am compelled to inform you that the prospects for alternative fuels are poor. We suffer from a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome in this country. We believe that if you wish for something, it will come true. Right now a lot of people - including people who ought to know better - are wishing for some miracle technology to save our collective ass. ...

The future is therefore telling us very loudly that we will have to change the way we live in this country. The implications are clear: we will have to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do. The downscaling of America is a tremendous and inescapable project. It is the master ecological project of our time. We will have to do it whether we like it or not. We are not prepared.

I think Kunstler's wrong, dead wrong, but I encourage you to read his remarks anyway, because some bits Kunstler's terriblisma are probably a fair representation of some of the disasters the developed world will face if cheap oil ends and we've done nothing to prepare ourselves. (Other bits are factually wrong, and others still are just plain silly, part of the weird anti-modern apocalypse dance that environmentalists find
themselves so prone to these days.)

But I don't think we will, in fact , meet this crisis with inaction. I think
we will meet it -- many are already rushing to meet it -- with guts, vision,
intelligence and innovation. And one of our central tasks is the creation of the
post-oil megacity.

(more...)

Given that we live on an urban planet, and given that the predominent urban form is (or is soon to be) the megacity, we need to figure out how to create the systems, technologies and practices which will make a bright green future work.

People like Kunstler don't believe that's possible. Or they believe it is possible, but think we aren't up to the job. Nonsense. We haven't created them all yet, true, but upgrading one's civilization isn't a job you finish overnight. I would argue, however, that we're developing some of the key pieces already:

smart growth and smart places, calming traffic and creating livably
compact cities, like Vancouver;

Large-scale renewable energy projects combined with smart grids and distributed power;

Green buildings, especially homes and workplaces which are greatly more efficient, filled with bright green products and appliances;

Sustainable transportation systems;

New methods of industrial production, leading to a second industrial revolution where waste is food and lifecycle thinking is common;

Innovations in urban form, including the greening of the city by reweaving the natural and built.

The list could go on and on. The point being: this is all stuff we know how to do now. We can rebuild it. We have the technology... or at least the ability to create the technologies. There are hundreds of examples on this site alone. And what we can do today is only the beginning. Yes, the situation is serious and the consequences of failure grave, but we're also growing more and more able to deal with that situation.

What we lack is the vision and the will. The vision we're starting to get -- every day a new plan for rebuilding some key sector of the global economy on new, radically more sustainable lines crosses my desk (take, for instance, Lester Brown's vision of a gas-electric hybrid/ wind power economy). The will is taking a little longer. But I don't think we'll get that will by promoting apocalyptic scenarios.

I think we'll get it by imagining a future worth fighting for, and cities worth building.

Alternative Energy Galor

Iceland geothermal vents

In the wake of the very interesting discussion on Peak Oil last week I spent a couple of hours seeing what's happening on the frontiers of alternative energy. I found so much it overwhelmed me. Here's a sampling:

Solar Cell and Battery all-in-one:

Scientists from Toin University of Yokohama in Japan have designed a single, compact device that can both convert solar energy to electricity and store the electricity. "We succeeded in incorporating both photovoltaic and storage functions in a single cell with a thin, sandwich-type structure," said Tsutomu Miyasaka, a researcher at the University.

The researchers' photocapacitor is also efficient at capturing energy from weak light sources like sunlight on cloudy or rainy days and indoor lighting.

Many countries around the world are moving aggressively to move their energy production over to alternatives. Here are a few countries - including Iceland, Great Britain and Spain.

Iceland is movng forward to be the first country to have a complete self-sustaining Hydrogen Economy:

The Icelandic government is now backing an ambitious programme to remove all fossil-fuel requirements from Icelandic society within a generation. The key is to use hydrogen or hydrogen-rich compounds in vehicles powered by fuel cells. The first hydrogen buses will hit the streets of Reykjavík early next year, filling up with hydrogen-rich methanol at a new filling station built by Shell, one of the major corporate backers of the project along with Norsk Hydro and DaimlerChrysler.

UK: Solar power for all new homes :

John Prescott has demanded that all new homes built in Britain be designed so that they can receive solar power. Draft building regulations from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, due to come into effect in January 2006, stipulate the change. The move is significant since the government is on the cusp of a major housebuilding drive. It will infuriate housebuilders, adding millions to the cost of constructing homes. But it will delight environmentalists as concerns mount over the effects of climate change. The government's own agency, the Energy Saving Trust, is trying to ensure that all new homes will be powered in part by solar power before the end of 2010.

Spanish government has mandated that solar power be incorporated into all new buildings.

UPDATE: Germany Shines a Beam on the Future of Energy - Nation Gambles on Amped-Up Push for Renewable Power.

Germany is showing how to get alternative energy done. Wind and solar, combined with higher taxes on carbon fuels, all while creating jobs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The biggest solar energy power plant in the world just went online in Bavaria, and is expected to quickly turn a profit. 16,000 windmills generate 39 percent of the world’s wind energy; wind and solar now provide more than 10 percent of the country’s electricity, a number expected to double by 2020. 60,000 people are employed in the design and manufacturing of wind and solar equipment. (Germany’s population is 83 million.)

Taiwan moving to Wind Power for at least 10% of total energy needs.

Maldives: Solar Power for Water Purification.

A solar energy powered, off-grid, water purification project will begin in the Maldives in January 2005. The units use solar power to draw the water up and pass it through a system of reverse osmosis units to remove all pathogens, metals and dissolved solids, using just 20% of the power of a standard reverse osmosis unit. Each unit can produce 500 litres of water per day from a single 100 Watt (1 square metre) solar panel. Most systems using reverse osmosis are usually powered by diesel. Using solar power can be both cheaper (based on per litre cost) and avoid air pollution.

Two obstacles to renewable energy powered infrastructures in remote areas have been high up-front capital costs and the difficulties ensuring maintenance of the system. Using a new business model where the water itself is sold rather than the purification equipment have helped avoid these. This is also applicable in other off-grid island communities such as Indonesia and the Philippines. Solco expect to be able to six litres of clean water for less than 10 cents (U.S.) per person per day.

Alternative Energy Cambodia: 100% rural electrification by 2020

Green Power can cost the same as non-green (via Worldchanging):

As the Houston Chronicle reports, Green Mountain Energy now offers Houston-area customers electricity from all-renewable sources for the same price as the non-green power sold by the area's major producer, Reliant Energy. Though there are other local providers that have lower rates, Reliant's was the "price-to-beat", and it's a trend that will only continue as oil prices rise. Over the next few years, green power will get more and more competitive, even without advances in renewable-generation technology.

Want to use Hydrogen Now? Hydrogen without the Hiccups.

High Altitude Wind Power

The picture above is of a Laddermill kite assembly for wind power generation (story courtesy of Alt-Energy Blog).

High-altitude kites could be used to generate clean energy at a cost comparable with that of fossil fuel generation , researchers claim.

The "Laddermill" is a chain of controllable wing-like kites attached to a looped cable stretching more than five miles into the sky. Strong high altitude winds acting on the "kitewings" produce as upward force on one side of the loop and a downward force on the other, causing it to rotate. The slowly turning cable drives a power generator in the Laddermill base station.

Although the concept sounds far fetched, its developers at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands hope to build a working model in the next four years. They claim one Laddermill could generate 100 megawatts of electricity, compared with only a few megawatts from a conventional wind turbine.

Winds at 30,000ft are 20 times more powerful than at sea level.

Professor Ockels, an ex-astronaut and head of the European Space Agency's education office, told The Engineer magazine: "Above a certain altitude there is a massive amount of wind power. "Kites that can tap into that wind can generate a great deal of energy."

Molecular Manufacturing vs. Peak Oil - great article that points out how nanotechnology will empower us to create alternative energy technologies before we run out of oil. Read the comments section for some excellent follow-up discussion.

The potential of nanotechnology has long held promise of delivering very very cheap solar power. Here are three companies working on using nanotechnology to create cheaper and more efficient solar cells.

At least three startups -- Nanosolar, Nanosys and Konarka Technologies -- are using nanotech to try to make solar energy more viable. In time, such work could become "world changing," said Josh Wolfe, a managing partner of nanotech-focused investment firm Lux Capital in New York. Lux has invested in Nanosys.

"All three of these firms have a different approach, but all of them are trying to create solar energy anywhere, any time," Wolfe said.

Needs To Hit 7-Cent Mark.

Nanotech solar cells could come down to fossil-fuel prices within a few years, says Steven Milunovich, an analyst with Merrill Lynch. Electricity now costs 7 cents per kilowatt-hour in the U.S. and 19 cents in Japan. Solar cells run about 43 cents. "There could be significant adoption" if nanotech solar drops below 7 cents, said Milunovich in a recent research note. Nanotech could have "a significant impact" on the $3 billion-plus solar power market.

"Cheaper manufacturing plants and processes could make solar competitive with fossil fuels," he wrote.

Nanosolar, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is building nanotech panels that are 100 times thinner than current solar panels.

If it's a 100 times thinner then that means 100 times less material to achieve the same or greater energy about. This equates to a lot less cost for making solar cells.

The Future of the Car: Plug-In Hybrids?

The next step may be the "plug-in" hybrid... unlike the electric cars of the 1990s, none of today's hybrids needs to be plugged in - but if plugging were an option it would be a good idea. Andrew Frank and his team at the University of California Davis' Hybrid Electric Vehicle Centre are working exclusively on plug-in hybrids, which can operate as pure-electric vehicles over short distances (up to 60 miles, with a large enough battery pack) but can switch to a hybrid system when needed. Since the average American driver travels about 30 miles a day, plug-in hybrids could be recharged overnight, when electricity is cheaper to produce, and need never use petrol at all, except on longer trips.

Related Hybrid Links:

Plug-In Hybrids: The Cars We Can Have Now and for the Next Ten+ Years.

Green Car Congress Article on hacking the Toyota Prius to make it a plug-in hybrid

ItalDesign's Toyota Volta Hybrid Supercar

Peak Oil: Open Forum

Is this our future?

or this?

or something else altogether different?

Peak Oil is getting more and more attention these days. Most people either think that Peak Oil is decades away so we have nothing to worry about, or it is now upon us, or soon will be, and that society as we know it will collapse. Most of the latter think progress will not continue and we will not be able to transition to an alternative energy economy. They say most people, at least in the developed world, will die and those that are left will be living like the Amish; making do with what scraps they can find (Think The Postman). Do you agree, disagree? Why?

Some people say that we must transition to a hydrogen economy. Our pals over at World Changing, just posted an overview of the hydrogen economy, with some good links. I have become more skeptical of the hydrogen economy, in light of some of its proponents saying we may have to depend on centralized nuclear power to make it feasible. For me, that is two strikes against it - nuclear (with all of its waste), and centralized (controlled by elites). My opinion is that the more decentralized and ecologically sustainable our energy infrastructure is, the more democratic, and politically and environmentally stable our world would be. I'm hoping we can transition to an alternative energy infrastructure before it's too late.

Is it too late for a Design Science Revolution?

Do you think that we will transition past Peak Oil into a transhumanist future? How? Or is the future going to look like the Amish in rural Pennsylvania? Do you think that this whole question is the wrong question? Is Peak Oil a myth?

My main reason for starting this open forum is to hear from people who can provide a third point of view - one that acknowledges the peak oil problem, while providing a way out that does not consist of going back 200 years and living like the Amish.

Let the conversation begin.

Positive News Cornucopia

Since so many of us are in a funk, I thought I'd share some news over the past few weeks of positive things happening in the world, or just some fun and weird inspirational tidbits:

Putin Signs Kyoto - It's official. President Putin signed Russia into the Kyoto treaty today. It was the last country needed in order for the treaty to go into effect; ninety days after Russia submits the paperwork to the UN, the treaty goes into effect for the 126 nations that signed it. See the NY Times article for details. - What's so ironic about this now, is that the US in it's refusal to sign it, will now have devastating results on America's economy and its ability to do business with those countries who did sign it. Stupid.

Kiwi Power - New Zealand Wind Farm Delivers 90 Mega Watts - Meridian Energy's Te Apiti wind farm in the Tararua ranges is now capable of delivering its full 90 MW capacity to New Zealand's national grid, enough to power some 45,000 average homes. The project's 55th and last wind turbine has now been fully commissioned almost exactly a year after construction began on the country's -- and the Southern Hemisphere's -- largest wind farm.

Kiwi Zorbs - This looks like a blast. Here is a video from National Geographic.

Hermit Tunes In, Turns on and Drops Out on Los Alamos Land - Roy Michael Moore, a 56-year-old who grew up in Amarillo, said he came to Los Alamos about four years ago for a "very distinct reason": to get the attention of scientists working on the most complex cosmological problems of the universe and introduce them to his unifying theory. Mike, as he calls himself, has come to be known as either the "caveman" or the "hermit," depending on to whom you talk, since he was discovered on Oct. 13 living in a well-appointed cave in a deep, wooded canyon on Los Alamos National Laboratory property. "I think it is just heaven on earth," he said about his former home. What the intruders found was a bit startling. Moore had made himself a home in a south-facing cave— "the most beautiful views in town, no irritating neighbors"— complete with photovoltaic solar panels, batteries to store the solar energy, satellite radio, wood-burning stove, a bed and a glass door sealed across the cave's entrance. Here's Mike personal website which is very extensive and goes over all of his theories, philosophy, and autobiography.

Hydrogen Car Powered By Sunlight - A teacher called Cory Waxman and his students have built the only self-sustaining hydrogen vehicle that uses a conventional internal-combustion engine. The truck is hydrogen-powered and creates its own fuel from solar energy and water, a technical feat that rivals the advanced technology being researched by major auto companies and universities. The four-cylinder engine is tuned to run on hydrogen, which is produced by a hand-built electrolysis system mounted in the bed.

Solar Energy UK: Solar Power for All New Homes - Here's a link to the Gaurdian Article.

Car That Runs on Compressed Air

Self Sufficient Desert Home - Last summer, eight students at the University of Utah's College of Architecture and Planning designed a three-bedroom desert home that generates its own electricity and water and is situated in Bluff, Utah, 22 miles from the nearest town. The house is built of an energy-efficient material known as rammed earth. Solar panels generate enough electricity to light the house and power small appliances, while the stove and fridge are fueled by propane. But the most striking element is the 2,500-square-foot "butterfly" roof floating over the house to collect rainwater. One inch of rainfall fills the house's cistern, which supplies water to the kitchen and bathroom. Construction of the house, done with volunteer student labor and recycled materials, took 16 weeks and cost $21,219.58.

High Tech Buildings Use Sunlight, Sea Water to Save Energy

Open-Source Currency - Future Hi pal Douglas Rushkoff has a new piece in The Feature. Handheld wireless technology stands ready to enable what's known as the "complementary currency" movement in ways so powerful that the dominance of national currencies such as the dollar and the euro may soon be called into question. This is not as preposterous a scenario as it sounds. After all, it's only been since the Renaissance that nation-states have been powerful enough to corner the money market. Before then, most municipalities developed their own currencies, often basing them on very different principles than the ones we use to justify our currencies today.

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity - I especially found this one particularly relevant - A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. As one of the major themes of this site, I think human stupidity is the world's biggest problem over all other problems combined. If intelligence and the critical thinking skills that go along with could be increased across the board, all of other problems could be solved.

Smart Drugs are Back - At least 40 potential cognitive enhancers are currently in clinical development, says Harry Tracy, publisher of NeuroInvestment, an industry newsletter based in Rye, New Hampshire. Some could reach the market within a few years. For millions, these breakthroughs could turn out to be lifesavers or, at the very least, postpone the development of a devastating disease. In America alone, there are currently about 4.5m people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and their ranks are expected to grow to 6m by 2020. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), defined as memory loss without any significant functional impairment, is estimated to afflict at least another 4.5m people. Because the majority of MCI patients will eventually develop Alzheimer's, many doctors believe that intervening in the early stages of the disease could significantly delay its onset.
(Link via Technoccult, via R.U. Sirius)

Electric Currents Boost Brain Power - New research has found that running a mild electric current through your brain can significantly boost your verbal skills, with no side-effects, as far as anyone knows so far. Very interesting. It appears to decrease the firing threshold of neurons in the path of the current. This research was applied mainly to the frontal lobe of the brain. I wonder what it might do to other brain regions? Fascinating discovery.
(Link via Nova Spivack)

One of the most recent and striking crop circles yet.

My theory is that these are human made and that when all the evidence is examined, the stalks are getting microwaved on only one side, which would cause them to create tension an therefore bend downward. This would allow them to continue growing because their stalks are not broken. The patterns are generated using a complex pre-designed template that tells the microwave been precisely where to paint the image. Who knows where this beam comes from. I suspect it comes from some kind of very high altitude dirigible. This would be an ideal platform since it is both stable and undetectable from the ground. There is some compelling evidence that such very large, very high altitude dirigibles exist. A few years ago some striking daytime footage (video link) from Northern Arizona showing what appears to be a very large cigar shaped object slowly moving across the ski at very high altitudes. Jim Dilettoso of Village Labs, who specializes in advance digital image analysis concluding the object is probably in excess of a mile long and flying at an altitude of at least 80-100,000 feet! Who knows what these guys with black budgets do with all their money. Did you know that the SR-71 project cost more than the Apollo Moon project and nobody knew of its existence for 25 years?

High Oil Prices Might Be A Blessing In Disguise - An increase in the price of oil will cause great short-term hardship to all the industrialized economies. It will also throw the emerging economies into recession or depression. However, the increase in prices also undoes the second half of Saudi planning. Alternative energy and technology become affordable at the higher price point. Instead of solar prices falling to the "magic number". Oil prices have risen to create a new "magic number". Doubling oil prices has almost the same same effect as halving solar prices. Increases in oil prices make solar power more competitive. The same applies to other alternative energy sources such as wind, hydrogen, hydro, geothermal, biomass, tidal, and biodiesel. Each increase in prices increases the viability of other energy sources. It may not be necessary for the other source to be cheaper, just cheap enough.

The Longevity Gene - Technology Review reports that MIT Professor Leonard Guarente may have found the genetic factor that allows mice undergoing 'caloric restriction' to live up to 30% longer. It's long been known that cutting down food intake by about 1/3 can extend the lifespan of mammals by up to 50%. Professor Guarente has found that manipulating a single gene -- the SIRT1 gene -- can produce longer mice lives without caloric restriction. What's more, all mammals -- including humans -- have a similar gene.

Drugs and the Nation - The election results show there is still substantial support for liberalizing the nation's drug laws – just not too far or too fast.

Winning the Oil Endgame

From our pals over at World Changing:

As oil hit the $50/barrel milestone this week, I thought to myself, "Could Amory Lovins ask for better PR?" Lovins' Rocky Mountain Institute recently unveiled a new report on ending oil dependence through efficiency and new technologies, entitled Winning the Oil Endgame. Vinay mentioned it earlier, but it's an important publication and worth highlighting.

With a stellar cast of RMI co-authors, not to mention Pentagon co-sponsorship, this could end up being a very influential report for Lovins & Co. It's already being reviewed in several major news outlets: Fortune, Time, and the Wall Street Journal, for starters. The entire publication is available for free on the website -- so go download and digest:

Saving half the oil America uses, and substituting cheaper alternatives for the other half, requires four integrated steps:

• Double the efficiency of using oil
• Apply creative business models and public policies to speed the profitable adoption of superefficent light vehicles, heavy trucks, and airplanes
• Provide another one-fourth of U.S. oil needs by a major domestic biofuels industry
• Use well established, highly profitable efficiency techniques to save half the projected 2025 use of natural gas

...By following this roadmap, the U.S. would set the stage by 2025 for the checkmate move in the Oil Endgame—the optional but advantageous transition to a hydrogen economy and the complete and permanent displacement of oil as a direct fuel.

Promise of Artificial Photosynthesis

A new article in this months Prospect Magazine by Philip Hunter discusses some recent breakthroughs in making artificial photosynthesis a practical reality.

It is still unclear where most of our energy will come from in the longer-term future. Solar power cannot produce industrial quantities of electricity, while the tide is turning against wind turbines because they spoil the landscape and too many would be needed to replace conventional generators. Nuclear energy remains in the doldrums. Fossil fuels continue to threaten global warming.

But a promising new contender is emerging: the harnessing of photosynthesis, the mechanism by which plants derive their energy. The idea is to create artificial systems that exploit the basic chemistry of photosynthesis in order to produce hydrogen or other fuels both for engines and electricity. Hydrogen burns cleanly, yielding just water and energy. There is also the additional benefit that artificial photosynthesis could mop up any excess carbon dioxide left over from our present era of profligate fossil fuel consumption.

As we learned in school, photosynthesis is the process by which plants extract energy from sunlight to produce carbohydrates and ultimately proteins and fats from carbon dioxide and water, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere as a by-product. The evolution of photosynthesis in its current form made animal life possible by producing the oxygen we breathe and the carbon-based foods we eat. Photosynthesis does this on a massive scale, converting about 1,000bn metric tons of carbon dioxide into organic matter each year, yielding about 700bn metric tons of oxygen.

The first problem evolution faced was that the chemical reactions involved in carbohydrate formation are “uphill,” meaning they require energy to drive them forward. Only one source of energy was available on earth—from the sun—but the trouble is that “uphill” chemical reactions need energy in the form of electrons moving at high speeds to power them, in other words an electrical potential or voltage. Plants are in effect solar cells converting light into electrical energy. But for this to be sustainable, plants need a constant source of electrons, and this has to be an element or compound already present in the plant. Evolution tried a variety of chemicals such as hydrogen sulphide early on, and some of these are still used in certain bacteria. But there was a more promising candidate because of its ubiquitous presence — water.

It takes about 2.5 volts to break a single water molecule down into oxygen along with negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons. It is the extraction and separation of these oppositely charged electrons and protons from water molecules that provides the electric power. In plants, chlorophylls evolved to harvest light, and a complex labyrinth of proteins to conduct the photons (units of light energy) to a suitable centre where this crucial water-splitting takes place. In plants, oxygen is the only by-product of this process, but researchers realised some years ago that the reaction could be tweaked to produce hydrogen as well.

Still, tweaking photosynthesis to produce hydrogen rather than electrical energy is the easy bit, and researchers such as Stenbjörn Styring at Lund University in Sweden believe it will be possible to do so in artificial systems within one or two years. The hard part is to replicate the process of splitting water to obtain the electrons and protons in the first place, and this is where a recent breakthrough made by a British team at Imperial College comes in. Through a combination of rigorous analysis and innovative experiment, the team led by professors Jim Barber and So Iwata identified the precise location of just a few critical molecules of manganese, oxygen and calcium within the core of the plant’s photosynthesis engine where the water-splitting is performed.

What is striking about this chemical reaction, to which we owe our existence, is that the critical chemistry is co-ordinated by just a single atom of manganese within the photosynthesis core. The precise geometry of this core is vital to the process, as water molecules are shaped a bit like Mickey Mouse heads, with one oxygen atom bearing a pair of smaller hydrogen atoms forming the ears.

The achievement of Barber and colleagues has been to determine the precise events taking place within water-splitting at the molecular level as each photon of light arrives in the core. This is a level of detail far beyond that known for most chemical reactions in biology.

Following publication of this work in Science in March, leading specialists in artificial photosynthesis such as Styring are eager to start working on mimicking the water-splitting process in the laboratory. Attempts to do so have failed so far because the process is so finely balanced that the geometry has to be just right. Only now do researchers have sufficient detail of the geometry to start building workable systems.

Although such artificial systems will mimic the water-splitting chemistry of natural photosynthesis, they will not look like plants. Artificial systems will use metals such as ruthenium and iron to capture light and provide a scaffold for the water-splitting core. But the core itself would be based on manganese.

These are early days, but the recent breakthrough gives some grounds for optimism. The alternative method of producing hydrogen through water electrolysis powered by solar cells could also work, but photosynthesis promises a more efficient, elegant and economical source of power.

I still think the Solar Power Satellite idea is long overdue. Such a massive project would accomplish several things. It would solve ALL the worlds energy problems. It would cut world wide pollution down to a trickle. And best of all, it would bring launch costs and the space frontier to EVERYONE who wants to go!

Earth Day Links

Powered by the sun and hydrogen - pictured here, the Solar-Hydrogen Eco-house, is the first in the world that is fully self-sustainable and runs entirely on hydrogen.

The hydrogen tank is located some distance from the house, and a small diameter pipe connects it to the utility gas line in the house. The gas is used as a domestic heater to provide hot water to a stove or burner, and operate a fuel cell to produce electricity for other appliances.

Besides the obvious eco-friendly solar hydrogen system, the eco-house’s design also incorporates low energy architectural features such as shading, natural ventilation and day-lighting. It also has a rainwater recycling system that is powered by solar energy. This combination makes for a sustainable and environmentally-friendly residential dwelling, helping to reduce air pollution, global warming and acid rain, besides aiding in conserving the world’s depleting fossil fuel.

So the next trick is coming up with a sustainable eco-friendly way of producing hydrogen. A 50% efficient solar-cell would go a long way towards making a solar-hydrogen economy practical. Below is promising research in that direction.

Through the Solar Looking Glass - is about research that resulted in making a cell with efficiencies of way more than 50%. The total cost of this project was only $700,000. Compare that to the current cost of America's occupation of Iraq,

Cost of the U.S. occupation of Iraq per month: $4,000,000,000 (source)
Cost of the U.S. occupation of Iraq per week: $1,000,000,000
Cost of the U.S. occupation of Iraq per day: $142,857,142
Cost of the U.S. occupation of Iraq per hour: $5,952,380
Cost of the U.S. occupation of Iraq per minute: $99,206

So think about that for 7 minutes, the same amount of time it took to spend that $700,000. At a cost of just 7 minutes of combat operations, solar cell efficiency was increased to 50%! Just imagine how much more progress could be made if just a day's worth of war expenditures were spent on alternative energy research, rather than fighting to secure more supply of an unsustainable addiction to fossil fuels.

Meanwhile Governor Swarzeneggar has just endorsed some investment towards kick-starting the move to hydrogen fuel transportation infrastructure in, California Rolls Toward Hydrogen.

Full Spectrum Solar Cells

Eric Drexler in his book Nanosystems: molecular machinery, manufacturing, and computation, said that we could use moleculary nanotechnology to cheaply create solar cells that would convert as much as 90% of incoming solar energy into useable electricity. Such a development would permanently solve our energy problems on earth, and a go a long way towards closing the materials loop and returning the earth into a greener place.

In the meantime, there continue to be tantalizing leads towards moving in this direction without nanotechnology.

From the article, An unexpected discovery could yield a full spectrum solar cell.

The serendipitous discovery means that a single system of alloys incorporating indium, gallium, and nitrogen can convert virtually the full spectrum of sunlight -- from the near infrared to the far ultraviolet -- to electrical current.

"If it works, the cost should be on the same order of magnitude as traffic lights," Walukiewicz says. "Maybe less." Solar cells so efficient and so relatively cheap could revolutionize the use of solar power not just in space but on Earth.

DOE Warms To Cold Fusion

From Physics Today.

Whether outraged or supportive about DOE's planned reevaluation of cold fusion, most scientists remain deeply skeptical that it's real.

The cold fusion claims made in 1989 by B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann didn't hold up. But they did spawn a small and devoted coterie of researchers who continue to investigate the alleged effect. Cold fusion die-hards say their data from the intervening 15 years merit a reevaluation-- and a place at the table with mainstream science. Now they have the ear of the US Department of Energy.

For the record, I don't not believe Fleischmann and Pons were frauds. I believe they actually did achieve some kind of extra energy in their experiments. But I also believe they did some sloppy science by not clearly documenting their research for easy repetition. Since then hundreds of scientists around the world have been able to duplicate the result of excess energy. The most recent and dramatic example was using ultrasonic vibrations to squeeze tiny gas bubbles in the liquid so quickly and violently that temperatures reached millions of degrees and some of the hydrogen atoms in the solvent molecules fused, producing a flash of light and energy.

I also find it interesting that for years, Arthur C. Clarke, one of the most level-headed SF authors who ever lived, and who has a couple of science degrees, believes Cold Fusion is real and will one day be practical.

Desktop Fusion Gaining Credibility

The picture above is of course from the movie Back to The Future, in which fusion becomes as common place as your coffee machine.

The New York Times is reporting that work on sonoluminescence fusion is gaining greater credibility. From the article:

Scientists are again claiming they have made a Sun in a jar, offering perhaps a revolutionary energy source, and this time even some skeptics find the evidence intriguing enough to call for a closer look.

The experiment could conceivably shrink the science of fusion — slamming hydrogen atoms together, producing heat and light — from giant, expensive reactors to the tabletop.

If this turns out to work on smaller scales it would be very disruptive to the current Energy cartel power structure. So it will be interesting to see how long this research continues, or if they will at some point "stumble onto an unexpected constraint".

Pardon the cynicism, but the negative response to Fleischman and Pons was so rapid in concluding their experiments were faulty, that it become clear to me immediately that those in power do not want to see a cheap and powerful energy source be released. A respectable scientist would have said that until these cold fusion experiments were repeated in other labs there is no way to conclude their work was bogus. With oil reserves already at peak capacity, it's only a matter of time before we have to switch to alternatives. Hopefully, this new desktop fusion process can be scaled to cheap desktop use.