Fremont, CA, based Solyndra announces a new photovoltaic system that can be mounted less expensively, resists winds, and is efficient collecting solar radiation from 360° without sun tracking systems. The Solyndra system claims one-half the installation cost of solar panels. This is significant since half the cost of a residential solar panel system is for installation.

See article in The Economist, Oct 9th, 2008.

Technorati Tags: photovoltaic, rooftop, solar, Solyndra

Today marked the second time I have seen a raptor snatch a dove from my back yard. The first time it was a Cooper’s hawk. Today it was a prairie falcon. It’s a stunning site to witness. The doves (both white-winged and mourning) tend to overpopulate each season. By late summer, they have become a nuisance. I don’t think it right to kill them just for being in my yard, but I welcome raptors to visit the buffet.

We’ve also had a couple of desert cottontails end up on the raptor menu. Again, when their populations expand, the raptors are not far behind.

Any American who has watched a few minutes of TV programming in the past couple of weeks has seen one of T. Boone Pickens’ time-for-big-change commercials. There are three TV spots out at this time. You can watch Pickens’ whiteboard presentation on his web site. I admit it. His direct speech and logic are appealing. So why the nasty subject line for this post? Can’t people change in fundamental ways? Sure. But how often do you see a man who has spent his life trampling anything that comes between himself and another dollar suddenly embrace the public good? A good rule of thumb is that if you want to see where someone is heading, look at where he’s been. I hope that I am wrong about Pickens. Before you make up your mind, look into the kinds of decisions he has made all his life and ask yourself whether what motivated him then could, in some way he is trying to obscure, be driving him now. A starting point is Scott Thill’s article on AlterNet. Give Pickens a hearing, but don’t swallow the bones with the fish.

An interesting article explains why oil exporting nations will reduce their exports to zero long before oil runs out. One more reason to be building alternative sources while simultaneously improving efficiency by magnitudes. Thanks to The Arlington Institute for publicizing this. (By the way, I don’t buy the conclusion that massive expansion of nuclear power generation is the obvious solution, but I do think the analysis of the growing problem has merit.)
Technorati Tags: energy, energy production, exports, nuclear, oil, peak oil

Scientific American (www.SciAm.com) reports on a technology that can create cement from the carbon dioxide exhaust from power plants. It’s an intriguing idea. Each ton of cement created in this manner would sequester a half ton of CO₂.

My wife had me listen to this incredible electric guitar performance of Pachelbel’s Canon. Reminds me of the electric guitar version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor that was a rage a few years ago. (Now there are many interesting rock interpretations — just check out the selection on YouTube.)

Project Better Place aims to see to it that the electric car operators’ network is put in place globally, one country at a time. Due to its size and technological readiness, Israel has agreed to be one of the first countries to establish an infrastructure to support plug-in electric vehicles.

Technorati Tags: sustainable transportation, sustainability, transportation, infrastructure, charging station, plug-in electric, car, automobile, operator network, Israel, Project Better Place

Albuquerque has been on a good run the past few years, making top places list in the categories of family life, outdoor recreation, and jobs. Now Salary.com has included The Duke City in its top 5 cities for wealth building. Technorati Tags: Albuquerque, jobs, work, economy

Many of the people with whom I speak on a daily basis are the sorts who tend to believe only information that reinforces their values, beliefs, and preferences. Such a position frequently includes a general disdain for scientific findings (unless they support held positions, of course). This is not at all surprising, because scientifically obtained knowledge often runs counter to biases and intuitions.

It has been said by detractors of science that it is a secular religion, and that accepting a scientific finding requires belief equivalent to the faith required to accept a religious claim. I admit that I have known professing scientists who related to their science-inspired positions in such zealous, even dogmatic ways, but that is not the nature of true science. Human nature ensures that tensions between orthodoxy and openness exist in every human domain. Such struggles have to do with the ways people in social networks tend to form and seek to maintain hierarchies of power and influence. It is not a feature of Science, per se, but of human networks. And while networks of people engaged in science are not immune to biases, the scientific enterprise — more so than any other human approach to learning what is and how things work — has many proven checks against bias and inappropriate manipulation of information and knowledge.

After that philosophical detour, I return to my science-doubting friends. A favorite object of ridicule is any claim that the climate is changing significantly due to human activity. Within that general area of denial, climate models are especially favored targets. Aside from the general litany of fabricated or otherwise false statements that always accompany propaganda, a recurring argument is that climate models are wildly inaccurate. It is vital that detractors of climate change persuade people to believe this, because climate models are a key tool for discovering not only where the global climate is most likely heading, but also for revealing contributing factors in climate change.

An article in Science Daily highlights how today’s climate models excel at prediction. There is no doubt that climate modeling will continue to improve, due to the well established exponential increase of computing power and the constant improvement of modeling techniques. It is even very likely that better models will change some details of our current understanding. It is not the case, however, that current climate models are wrong about global warming or other climate change trends. There is a great wealth of peer-reviewed information validating climate modeling methods and findings. Tapping that wealth requires only a little interest, effort, and willingness to learn. Oh, and discovery of real explanations has to be more valued by the learner than are the cheap thrills of self-validation or pats on the back by those who share the same biases.

Technorati Tags: climate, environment, computing, models, belief, bias

An article on Alter.Net provides a useful overview of how shifts in precipitation and other climate patterns will continue to have major disruptive effects on the availability of fresh water in the United States. The short version is that the gradual movement of the jet stream farther north will make the southern states — both eastern and western — drier in future years. If, like me, you’re thinking, “Hmmm. Time to buy that vacation spot up north,” that may not be an easy solution either. For one, there are likely to be more violent storms, including frequent major flooding, in the northern tier states. Also, an article in Wired’s pseudo-anti-environmental June 2008 issue points out two actions that could contribute to mitigating environmental catastrophe are

• live in a hot climate and use air conditioning, rather than live in a cold place and use heating (A/C is more efficient and otherwise cleaner than heating)
• live in a city, because cities are inherently more efficient than more dispersed settlements

What to do? (By the way, be sure to actually read Wired’s articles rather than accept its hyperbolic cover and titles at face value. And read the counterpoint article.) Perhaps these trends together point toward living in hot places (best get used to it) and piping in lots of water from up north. I suspect that major water redistribution projects, far exceeding the number and scale of those the American Southwest has known for years, are going to become the next generation’s equivalent of the Interstate Highway projects of the 1960s and 1970s (not to mention the need to also replace the interstate highways and other crumbling national infrastructures, or — should we suffer an infectious case of rationality — we could actually invest in real interstate rapid transit systems).