Cobbers

Mates on a mission

  • Home
  • Contact
  • About

Liquid electricity for cars of the future

January 15, 2008 by fred

refill batteryThe reason why electric cars aren’t everywhere is simple — at the end of their range, they have to be stationary for hours while the batteries are recharged.

This is a pity, because even cars recharged from ‘dirty’ power stations are three times more environmentally friendly than conventional vehicles. That’s because only 20 per cent of the energy from gasoline or diesel actually reaches the wheels; in an electric car, it’s 60 per cent.

What recharging does is to change the state of the electrolyte fluid in the batteries. Now a Dutch government research organisation, the Innovation Network in Utrecht, has come up with a solution by standing the problem on its head.

Just pump the spent electrolyte out and pump in freshly charged electrolyte — literally, liquid electricity. This would take little more time than filling up with fossil fuel and the spent electrolyte can be recharged and re-sold: you would pay for the difference in electric charge.

It gets better. The Innovation Network foresees a new generation of ‘photon farmers’ using wind, solar or waste biomass to make clean electricity to recharge electrolyte and sell it at filling stations.

Nearly all farmers have enough space on their properties to build wind turbines, solar collectors or biomass plants. And it would end the craziness of using food plants such as corn and sugar cane to produce ethanol, a practice that is already driving the price of food almost beyond the reach of the world’s poorest populations.

More information from the Radio Netherlands Earthbeat program.

Filed Under: Alternative energy, Energy savers, Solar power Tagged With: innovation, power, Transport

The global warming paradox

October 13, 2006 by fred

If the biosphere is wrecked, it will not be done by those who couldn’t give a damn about it, as they now belong to a diminishing minority.

It will be destroyed by nice, well-meaning, cosmopolitan people who accept the case for cutting emissions, but who won’t change by one iota the way they live, says George Monbiot in The Guardian

I know people who profess to care deeply about global warming, but who would sooner drink Toilet Duck than get rid of their Agas, patio heaters and plasma TVs, all of which are staggeringly wasteful. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Global warming, Resources

Green concrete

October 7, 2006 by fred

polluted sky

Making cement is one of the most energy-intensive industries, producing vast quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuels.

The relentless flood of concrete drowns more and more C02-absorbing vegetation all over the world, giving yet another boost to the cycle of global warming.

Eco-Cement, developed by Tec-Eco of Tasmania, Australia, is designed to save fossil fuels – and to absorb CO2. Based on reactive magnesium oxide, it needs CO2 to harden and set.

Better still, it can be combined with wastes such as fly ash from power stations and many types of slag which are too chemically reactive to be used with conventional cement to make concrete.

Filed Under: Global warming, Pollution, Recycling

Follow the sun

October 7, 2006 by fred

revolving house

Orienting a house to take advantage of the weather is always a challenge to architects, especially in an age when architects are driven by clients to include active and passive solar electricity, heating and cooling in the design.

After hearing a neighbour lamenting a wrong decision about the placement of his house, Australian engineer Luke Everingham was inspired by his wife’s remark: ‘How about a house that moves?’ [Read more…]

Filed Under: Architecture, Only in Australia, Resources

Unplug Pedder

September 28, 2006 by fred

dancing melaleucas

Campaigns to reverse the damage done by indiscriminate damming of rivers are springing up everywhere, especially in the western USA, where many a project promoted as the wave of the future has led to silting and the ruin of of many a river ecosystem.

But possibly the first such campaign started as long ago as 1973 in Tasmania after an unsuccessful effort to stop the drowning of one of the world’s most beautiful lakes. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Only in Australia, Politics, Wilderness

Warming warning on the mountain

September 24, 2006 by fred

Mt Wellington blooms

Even the cool, temperate island of Tasmania off the southern coast of Australia can’t escape the effects of global warming.

Hobart, already the second driest of Australia’s seven state capitals, faces severe drought with the onset of another El Nino event this southern summer.

Evidence is emerging in small but significant ways. Mount Wellington, which dominates Hobart’s skyline, is home to many rare plants, including nine of the ten known species of Richea, a tall shrub with spectacular foot-long flowers.

This year Richea Dracophylla (curiously, for such an attractive plant, it doesn’t have a common name) is flowering four weeks earlier than expected.

Cobber Elizabeth Perey took these photographs earlier this week.

Filed Under: Global warming

Time is running out: Al Gore’s Speech at New York University

September 19, 2006 by fred

For weeks, the world has been aware of a damning speech about global warming to be given by Al Gore at New York University’s law faculty today.

It has prompted the spin doctors to leak stories that George W Bush is about to announce sweeping green initiatives as a pre-emptive strike. They might have to go back to the drawing board:

Over to Al Gore:

A few days ago, scientists announced alarming new evidence of the rapid melting of the perennial ice of the north polar cap, continuing a trend of the past several years that now confronts us with the prospect that human activities, if unchecked in the next decade, could destroy one of the earth’s principle mechanisms for cooling itself.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Global warming, Politics, Resources

Doomsday vault

September 17, 2006 by fred

Seed banks to preserve vital crops have been set up all over the world — and 40 of them have failed.

The BBC’s One Planet program looks at a new maximum-security vault in the far north of Norway which may have a better chance of survival. Streaming audio and links to the BBC’s radio documentary archive. [RealAudio alert]

Filed Under: Audio, Only in Australia

Whale Teriyake flops

September 17, 2006 by fred

Whale teriyaki? Even the Japanese don’t like it — The Japanese government says whale meat is a traditional part of its food culture.

Japanese journalist Harumi Hayakawa doesn’t agree.

Hear her debunk the dishonesty about Japan’s appetites and ‘scientific’ whaling in Perspective, a five-minute thinkpiece on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National network, the home of opinions often contrary to conventional wisdom. Streaming audio, downloadable audio, podcast or RSS.

Filed Under: Politics, Threatened species

News from Nowhere

September 11, 2006 by fred

vision.jpg

News media are all about now. Journalists parachute into trouble spots when a crisis erupts and almost before the dust has settled they’re off to the next outbreak.

Rarely do they have the airtime or the knowledge to tell you any more than what happened today. What started the horrible civil war in Sri Lanka more than two decades ago? Why is Kosovo? Who is the United Nations? Who blames who for firing the first shot or lobbing the first bomb? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Rants & raves, Resources

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »


Roaring 40s kayaks

Ruth Waterhouse, jeweller

Pages

  • 404
  • About
  • Contact

Categories

  • Alternative energy
  • Architecture
  • Audio
  • Blogs
  • Bush — say no more
  • Bushed
  • Cartoons
  • Climate change
  • Energy savers
  • Food wars
  • Global warming
  • In their own words
  • Medicine—bad
  • Medicine—good
  • Meltdown
  • Newspapers
  • Noted
  • Nutrition
  • Only in America
  • Only in Australia
  • Organics
  • Politics
  • Pollution
  • Quick Reads
  • Quotes
  • Rants & raves
  • Recycling
  • Resources
  • Solar power
  • The Good Life
  • Threatened species
  • Transport
  • Video
  • Water wars
  • whaling
  • Wilderness

Tags

bali bush China Clinton economics economy Edwards election food freedom garrett giant squid Global warming heatwave hillary human rights humpbacks idiot in innovation iraq liar mccain Obama oil Only overfishing power price increases primaries rudd shark Solar power strandings swan technology Transport war watts whales whaling wong

Worth visiting

  • Better Living with Herbs
  • Burningbird
  • Knocklofty Publishing
  • Life on the Edge
  • Listics
  • The Ghostgum Chronicles
  • thisTasmania

Copyright © 2022 · Genesis Sample Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in