The enormous obstacles facing nuclear power are the same as they were in 1996, when the nation’s last new nuclear plant opened near the Watts Bar reservoir in Tennessee after 22 years of construction and $7 billion in costs.
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China building more power plants
There has been talk of the big bad Chinese and what they’ll do to the environment. There is concern about the fastest rising and maybe bigest economy and the effects that will be felt around the world, many use that as an excuse to not worry about CO2, they say “if the Chinese don’t worry we can’t to compete” I think this quote for the article can shut them up:
“Let us not forget that the average Chinese emits just 3.5 tonnes of CO2 per year, whereas Britons emit nearly 10 tonnes and Americans 20 tonnes.
If they complain about the Kyoto protocol, just wait out bush and let’s all fix the damage he’s caused.
I’ve gone from living in NJ, a densely populated U.S. state, to Tokyo, the most densely populated city in the world. Am I a masochist? I think it’s a lower resource dependant living. I found an idea that both NJ and Tokyo could take advantage of:
To summarize
The process Ze-gen is testing is cleaner than incinerating trash and avoids the production of methane–a potent greenhouse gas–from landfills, said Jim Matheson, a general partner at Flagship Ventures.
“In all the hubbub about energy, clean tech and sustainability more broadly, we think waste has been overlooked both from the dimension of the energy value of the waste and the environmental impact,” Matheson said.
You may have noticed (if this isn’t your first visit) I’ve gone eco with the warning signs in the air. I still hold that this is a natural phenomenon but I’m under the opinion that as the waters rise it’s better if those waters weren’t poison. This s an article that puts into words that I can’t find. Take a read through Mark and check if you agree if you don’t the lose of Jerry Falwell musta been devastating to you.
Wave technology could be ‘holy grail’ of renewable energy. 17/05/2007. ABC News Online
I think there a real answer to our worlds woes with this simple answer (not simple to me) in that there is not simple single answer to our woes but a series of smaller fixes that lessen or footprint. We need answers like this for coastal regions and solar for those regions that make sense and wind for those regions ad nuclear and … Of course we won”t see any change as long as there is no profit for someone.
Wired Magazine: Pop-Up Cities: China Builds a Bright Green Metropolis
A really interesting idea. Instead of trying to rebuild a city to fit better in our modern worn why not start from scratch? china has started and considering the environment damage there rapid rise has caused it seems thy are setting the example of what we should be doing everywhere.
I was watching the TV special “Planet Earth” that describes the state of the planet without mentioning climate change. It’s a good series and well photographed (they are sure to mention that fact every 10 minutes). This post isn’t about the show but about an idea that occurred to me.
Wired News: Smells Like Green Spirit
I wrote about the need to conserve energy, not because of global warming, which I flip-flopped on, but to clean up and take the massive funds available in the middle-east. The old cliche that power corrupts is true and more linked to money. Clean up everything and these 20-somethings are the hope as the been for every generation in history
To summarize:
“Energy is unquestionably the challenge of this era,” said Susan Hockfield, MIT’s president Susan Hockfield. “And there is absolutely no question in my mind that the most productive source of new ideas and approaches is today’s young people.” She speculated that no matter how the energy problems of tomorrow are solved, some of the key people to unravel them were probably attending the conference.
“Quick show of hands: How many people here in the audience have a solar system on their roof?” Resch asked. “OK, a dozen maybe. Now how many people want to have a solar system on their roof?”
Promoting Solar Nation, a new activist website, Resch said German subsidization of solar energy has made Germany the world’s largest solar market, seven times bigger than the United States. “Yet the amount of sunlight that falls on Germany is equivalent to Anchorage, Alaska,” he said. “It proves that if it works in Germany, it’ll work great in the United States.”
I saw an interesting TV show recently and it’s making me rethink about at my personal views on global warming. The views expressed on the BBC show “The Great Global Warming Swindle” has much theatrical TV in the mix but if you can see past that and look at the empirical evidence expressed it makes sense. It does have some “Don’t worry, be Happy”ness to it and it still forecasts a coming era of global warming coming. So it basically tells us it’s not our fault, it’s the fault of cosmic rays and our sun and it says to burn plenty of carbon based fuel sources. I just convinced myself that they were pulling a sales con on me but so have the greens. There are no voices of measure out there, they all want something. I side on the green side but I’m not as strict about it as last week. Poor developing countries need energy and power so the poor families in Africa don’t poison themselves cooking and heating their homes but carbon based fuel are NOT the solution! I say give them or teach biofuels to them that can run in unmodified generators. Make it cheap for them and that will come back to us by providing cheap biofuel for us.
My view it that we must stop meddling in the middle-east ’cause they have oil. They are passionate about life and with that their beliefs, don’t give that passion a reason to boil over into violence.
Back to my original point, let’s all go green and make life the most precious resource, let’s preserve it.
UPDATE: Added link to get more information
