Articles by Biodiversivist

Small is beautiful.

Here is a fun article from The Green Wombat retelling the "solar-to-hydrogen" car story for the millionth time. I read stories like this in Popular Mechanics decades ago. The article talks about using solar panels to store sunlight as hydrogen to burn in internal-combustion-powered cars. Australia has a lot of sunlight and summers can be hot. It would be far more efficient to use that sunlight to power swamp coolers to air-condition homes than to throw 90% of that solar energy away converting it to hydrogen and then burning it in a 30% efficient internal combustion engine. Passing hydrogen through a fuel cell to power an electric car or light a home would also be a lot more efficient.

Observations on human nature

The sun pouring in my windows shut the furnace down hours ago. My daughter had two friends over for the night and we all walked to the local breakfast place this morning. There was a waiting list, so the girls skipped off to the park while I hung out sipping coffee. I would call them when our number came up (they all three have cell phones of course).

As is my habit, I observed. Attempts to strike up conversations with other guys proved fruitless of course. There was a shiny, navy blue Jetta TDI parked out front (with two biodiesel stickers on it, of course). As a status symbol, it is a step in the right direction, but not quite environmentally benign enough (in my rigorously defended opinion), unless it was made from recycled oil instead of soy.

Let’s put bison back on the praries

Every once in a while, a pearl tossed to the swine (we Gristmill commenters) by a fellow Sus scrofa domestica (that's for you, Canis) sticks in my ear. Blame this one on amazingdrx. He mentioned that a concerted effort to restore our prairies could sequester underground much of our carbon without any new technology or the warming effect of temperate tree plantings.

Harvesting a mix of prairie grasses to displace coal in a power plant is many times more efficient and ecologically benign than converting it to liquid fuel, and would tie in nicely with the URGE2 concept. I'm not licking boots here. URGE2 is a powerful idea.

Borneo is disappearing for biofuels

Rhett Butler (of Mongabay) has returned from his recent travels. This photo of a poison dart frog is from that trip. Go here to see a slide show of Panama (highly recommended). One of his first posts tells us:

China has agreed to invest in a $5.5 billion biofuels project on the islands of New Guinea and Borneo ... According to The Wall Street Journal, one million hectares [3,861 square miles, which would take 4 hours to drive around at 60 MPH] have been reserved for the eight-year plan, which would convert tropical forest for oil palm, sugar, and cassava plantations.

The article goes on to say that these governments have promised to spare 84,000 square miles of mountainous rainforest in the center of Borneo (to get the environmentalists off their back). Go to this WWF site for a graphic demonstration of how fast Borneo is being consumed.