Category: Treehugging

Superconducting Maglev Train Models

IFW-Dresden Superconducting Maglev Train Models

IFW-Dresden Superconducting Magnetic Levitation (Maglev) Train Models

This is way cool. Can you imagine DART trains riding through Dallas powered only by liquid nitrogen and floating above the track?

Does our waste say something about our view of God?

December 31st 2007: Canterbury: In his annual televised New Year Message the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams reflects on how a ‘disposable’ attitude to living can affect other areas of life and that ‘God does not do waste’. Filmed in Canterbury Cathedral and at a nearby recycling centre.

Alternative fueled cars not a new idea

While electric fueled and bio-diesel vehicles sound like a new technology, it’s really nothing new.
From NPR:

The desire to build vehicles that run on alternative power is nothing new. An exhibit on early hybrid, solar, and even atomic vehicles sheds light on the challenges of innovation.

Listen to the full story, including information on the alternative fuel museum.
The story suggests that the next great alternative fuel source to come down the pike may come from a 17 year old in his garage rather than one of Detroit’s big 3.

energy independence

From the Mike Huckabee camp:

  • The first thing I will do as President is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence. We will achieve energy independence by the end of my second term.
  • Achieving energy independence is vital to achieving success both in the war on terror and in globalization. Energy independence will help guarantee both our safety and our prosperity.
  • We have to explore, we have to conserve, and we have to pursue all avenues of alternative energy: nuclear, wind, solar, hydrogen, clean coal, biodiesel, and biomass.

Continue reading energy independence

Silly corn subsidies

I can’t help but think about The West Wing’s King Corn. “Did you take the ethanol pledge?”

Treehugger reports on Jeff Goodell‘s article in Rolling Stone:

He starts strongly: “The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn’t that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after “solutions” that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn.” and explains the political pressures that lead so many politicians like Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Edwards, who should know better, to support it.
Before the “corn is just the first step” people jump in, Jeff covers that, quoting Vinod Kholsa, but explaining how cellulosic ethanol, if it can be scaled up to production, is still no answer. “replacing fifty percent of our current gasoline consumption with cellulosic ethanol would consume thirteen percent of the land in the United States – about seven times the land currently utilized for corn production. ”
The facts are straightforward: Filling the tank of 1 SUV with pure ethanol consumes more than 450 pounds of corn, enough calories to feed a person for a year. “if we rely on ethanol to save the day, we could soon find ourselves forced to make a choice between feeding our SUVs and feeding children in the Third World. And we all know how that decision will go.”