Articles by JMG
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
All Articles
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Hard to say, but Zonbu has clearly done its homework
A lot of the deepest environmental thinking is that we have to move away from the idea of purchasing consumer products and instead keep "ownership" with the maker, who is responsible for minimizing the environmental footprint of the product and for dealing with it when the user is ready to move to another one.
In other words, we should pay for the services we want (computing, hot water, power, cool air, comfortable office floors, etc.) rather than the devices used to provide those services (PCs, tankless heaters, electricity, air conditioners, office carpets); that way, we're not invested in less-efficient devices. As soon as the old ones wear out, we shift to new ones, and the service provider has to deal with the decisions about upgrading or handling and reusing the material wastes.
There's an outfit that seems to get the concept, selling a small(tiny)-footprint PC with all the bells and whistles, radically reduced power consumption (assuming you don't use a power-hog monitor), and extended producer responsibility for the device.
Given how fast people go through PCs, this is a great idea -- much more affordable, and upgradeable, and with far less environmental consequence.
I especially like the flash memory feature rather than the hard drive, the source of most computer problems.
If I had a student going into high school or college, this is definitely the PC I would be looking at closely.
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Using molten salt to store solar energy
We've gone round and round on various ways to store energy from intermittent suppliers like solar and wind before ...
The always excellent Robert Rapier has this interesting squib on using molten salt to store thermal energy from solar in his R-Squared Energy Blog.*
(While you're there you should check out his terrific posts on ethanol and biodiesel. He is in the interesting position of being a real advocate who can't ignore how oversold they are.)
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While planet burns, Boeing scores a PR victory
At the gym, in between hearing an EMT talk about the heat stroke issues he expects tomorrow, I marveled at how awful news programs were today, devoting huge chunks of time to talking up Boeing's new "Dreamliner" jet, which the blow-drieds say will consume 20 percent less fuel per mile. I even heard one blow say "eventually reducing the cost of air travel."
Man, talk about delusional.
(Oh, and I know I'm not supposed to connect things like our craze for jet travel and high temperatures, as if to suggest a connection between another spate of record breaking temperatures in what's shaping up to be a record breaking year ... bad me. I'll report to reprogramming.)
