Boing Boing » Energy

More earthquakes in Oklahoma

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:34:09 +0000

A 4.3 earthquake rattled Oklahoma City at around 1:00 am central today. You may recall that scientists have evidence connecting Oklahoma's sudden onset of small quakes to the disposal of liquid left over from gas and oil fracking operations.

Documentary on activist who taught people to make solar cottage industries in 16 countries

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:35:53 +0000

Gmoke sez, "Richard Komp has taught people how to make solar as a cottage industry in at least 16 different countries over the last few years. There's a documentary called "Burning in the Sun" about his work in Mali and he's even got an Introduction to Photovoltaics series on YouTube. Reports from his 25 international trips available here"

Solar as a Cottage Industry

Thorium, fusion, and other energy miracles

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:48:03 +0000

There are existing solutions to our the energy crises facing us today, but they all suffer from being frustratingly imperfect, complicated, and not particularly easy to implement (at least not quickly). Some even require us to change our behaviors. And, most likely, we'd have have to use lots of these solutions all at once, further adding to the complication involved. It's no wonder then that, in our heart of hearts, most of us are holding out for a miracle — some new technology that could provide all the power we want, with few drawbacks, and few changes to our current infrastructure or social status-quo. But is that a good idea, or a waste of time and resources? In the first edition of a new monthly column for The New York Times, Justin Gillis writes about the allure of energy miracles, what they actually look like in reality, and whether there's really a dichotomy between using what we have and developing something better.

Bedouin "solar mamas" can't get backing for solarizing their village in Jordan

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:15:03 +0000

Gmoke sez, "Two years ago, two Bedouin women, Rafea Al Raja and her aunt Seiha Al Raja (Um Bader), returned from a six-month solar engineering training at the Barefoot College in India as 'solar engineers' to start a training center for other women. Although they solarized 80 houses in their village, the government of Jordan, NGOs and international organizations have shown little or no interest in their work. Even with a documentary on their training and projects at home, 'Solar Mamas', there hasn't been enough funding to sustain their work and their dreams.

“We are still not working and the training has not started either,” Rafea told The Jordan Times in an interview on Saturday.
They came with hope, she said, but this hope is fading away. The government, NGOs and international organisations are showing little or no interest, according to FES officials, leaving the project stranded in the desert.
“Now even our fellow villagers have started to make fun of us because they see nothing is happening on the ground,” said Rafea, who with her aunt were received with festive firing and an “official” ceremony upon their arrival from India.
The situation took a dramatic turn for both Rafea and Um Bader. Although they provided solar energy to 80 houses in the village, they are now facing the darkness of personal problems that have plighted them since they completed their training in India.

Hopes fade for two bedouin ‘solar engineers’ [Gaelle Sundelin/Jordan Times]

(Thanks, Gmoke)

Gimme Some Truth: short doc on fracking, with Artists Against Fracking, and Yoko Ono

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:21:23 +0000

Above: Artists Against Fracking have released a short documentary by filmmaker Josh Fox on the group’s recent tour of fracking sites in Pennsylvania. The group will air a winning TV ad from its #DontFrackNY video contest next week. Below, Yoko Ono’s new television spot in response to NY Gov. Cuomo’s silence and his upcoming Feb. 27 deadline for a decision on fracking. The ad features Ono directly addressing the Governor, a response to her unmet requests for meetings.

“Gov. Cuomo, since you haven’t met with me about the dangers of fracking, I will show you. PS: Nice to meet you, Governor,” Ono says in the ad.

"After visiting with families in Pennsylvania whose water, homes and lives have been hurt by the gas industry, I wanted to show Gov. Cuomo and the public what I saw," she says. "He must know what could happen to New Yorkers -- our air, our water, our climate -- if he allows fracking."

This is why your office feels too cold

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:11:15 +0000

There is no single definition of comfort. My newest column for The New York Times Magazine explores the different cultural definitions of pleasant living, how those traditions affect energy use in different countries, and how globalization changes both the culture and the fossil fuel consumption. Fun fact: Engineers have a unit of measurement that helps them account for clothing when they're trying to figure out what temperature an office building should be. It's called the Clo, and 1 Clo is equivalent to one full business suit. As I discovered, that fact has a big impact on women, business people in the tropics, and basically anybody who doesn't wear a suit to work.

New Hiroshima bombing photo shows split mushroom cloud

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:21:54 +0000

A photograph that shows the Hiroshima atomic bomb cloud split into two sections, one over the other, has been released by the curator of a peace museum in Japan. It was discovered on Monday among a collection of some 1,000 archival items related to the bombing, all of which are now in the possession of Honkawa Elementary School in Hiroshima city.

"Studies by the Imperial navy and others have already discovered that the cloud separated, but the photo confirms it and is thus valuable," a museum official told the Japan Times.

The photo had appeared in history books about Hiroshima, but the whereabouts of any copy of the photo or the negative was unknown until now, according to the museum. (...) The materials were contributed by a late survivor, Yosaburo Yamasaki, in or after 1953. It is not known who took the photo. It will be displayed at a museum located next to the school from this spring.

Along with Japan Times, AFP reports that the black-and-white photo was likely taken some 30 minutes after the bombing on August 6, 1945, roughly 10km (6 mi) east of the impact center. That site is located in what is now the town of Kaita, Hiroshima Prefecture (Google Maps link).

"The existence of this shot was always known in history books, but this is the first time that the actual print has been discovered," a curator at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum told AFP. "A shot showing the mushroom cloud split into two like this is very rare." More at Discovery News.

(Image: HONKAWA ELEMENTARY SCHOOL / AFP)

Is increased biofuel demand in the US causing more poor in Central America to starve?

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:25:27 +0000

Richard Perry/The New York Times

A worthy and overlooked story in the NYT by Elizabeth Rosenthal about a new economic riptide hitting Central America, a result of America's changing corn policy. The US is now using 40% of our own corn crop to produce biofuel, and tortilla prices have doubled in Guatemala, which now imports about half of its corn.

"Recent laws in the United States and Europe that mandate the increasing use of biofuel in cars have had far-flung ripple effects, economists say, as land once devoted to growing food for humans is now sometimes more profitably used for churning out vehicle fuel."

Read the rest, and check out Richard Perry's photo slideshow.

Kinetic energy, as illustrated by Disney

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:45:17 +0000

This is the difference between low kinetic energy (top) and high kinetic energy (bottom), as illustrated in the 1956 Disney book Our Friend the Atom. It may be useful in visualizing some of the ideas presented in my recent feature on space radiation.

From Fresh Photons, a fantastic blog chock full of science pictures.

Via David Ng

Why (some) manufacturing is returning to the USA

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 17:00:46 +0000

General Electric has moved some of its key appliance-manufacturing work back to the USA, re-opening "Appliance Park," a megafactory in Louisville, KY. The company is finding it cheaper to do some manufacturing in the US relative to China, thanks to spiking oil costs, plummeting natural gas prices in the US, rising Chinese wages, falling US wages, and, most of all, the efficiencies that arise from locating workers next to managers and designers.

The GeoSpring suffered from an advanced-technology version of “IKEA Syndrome.” It was so hard to assemble that no one in the big room wanted to make it. Instead they redesigned it. The team eliminated 1 out of every 5 parts. It cut the cost of the materials by 25 percent. It eliminated the tangle of tubing that couldn’t be easily welded. By considering the workers who would have to put the water heater together—in fact, by having those workers right at the table, looking at the design as it was drawn—the team cut the work hours necessary to assemble the water heater from 10 hours in China to two hours in Louisville.
In the end, says Nolan, not one part was the same.
So a funny thing happened to the GeoSpring on the way from the cheap Chinese factory to the expensive Kentucky factory: The material cost went down. The labor required to make it went down. The quality went up. Even the energy efficiency went up.
GE wasn’t just able to hold the retail sticker to the “China price.” It beat that price by nearly 20 percent. The China-made GeoSpring retailed for $1,599. The Louisville-made GeoSpring retails for $1,299.

The Insourcing Boom [The Atlantic/Charles Fishman]

The future of fuel has gone to sh*%.

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:08:59 +0000

Everybody poops, including panda bears. (See about 0:35 in the above video for evidence.) But panda poop could turn out to be quite a bit more important than your average animal excrement. That's because scientists are "mining" it for bacteria that could help make better biofuel.

The key problem with biofuel today is that the stuff that's actually economical to produce — i.e., corn ethanol — isn't really that great for the environment. Corn farming uses a lot of fertilizer, water, and herbicide. Using corn that was previously grown for food to make fuel, instead, can lead to deforestation as people clear land to make up for the lost food farming. Some models of carbon dioxide emissions suggest that, by the time you factor in things like fossil-fuel derived fertilizers and the deforestation, a gallon of corn ethanol might not be any better for climate change than a gallon of gasoline. Not all the models agree on that. But even if corn ethanol produces fewer carbon emissions than gas, you still have to deal with the fact that growing nutrient-hungry corn on the same patch of ground over and over and over is really bad for local soil and water quality.

Cellulosic ethanol could be a much better alternative — particularly cellulosic ethanol made from native, perennial plants that don't require heavy inputs to thrive and actually improve the health of the land they're grown on. The problem: Converting those plants into fuel is, so far, a lot more expensive. Cellulose — the plant fiber that makes up things like stalks of bamboo and tall prairie grasses — is tough stuff and hard to break down.

That's where panda poop comes in. Pandas process tons of cellulose every day, right in their guts. Maybe the bacteria that work for them could work for us, too.

Maggie speaking in St. Paul with superhero physicist, Jim Kakalios

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:13:30 +0000

Tomorrow night, I'll be joining University of Minnesota physics professor Jim Kakalios for Beaker & Brush — a series of discussions between scientists and artists/writers sponsored by The Science Museum of Minnesota. Kakalios is the author of The Physics of Superheroes and The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics. Together, we'll be talking about the way both physics and society have shaped American energy use and electric infrastructure. Energy is a socio-technical system. To understand where it came from and where it's going, you have to look at both science and culture. The event starts at 6:30 pm at Amsterdam Bar and Hall in downtown St. Paul.

Ono to Cuomo: "Imagine there’s no fracking"

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:44:16 +0000

CBS Outdoor via Rolling Stone

Yoko Ono and Sean Ono Lennon launched "Artists Against Fracking" earlier this year, and have received no response from NY gov. Andrew Cuomo to their request to meet and talk about the idea of a ban of fracking in New York. Now, Ono and Lennon have launched a billboard campaign on a route where the governor often passes. “Governor Cuomo: Imagine there’s no fracking,” the sign reads.

“Our message is simple: We want Governor Cuomo to imagine and guarantee a New York free of the fracking threat to our water, air, beautiful landscapes and climate,” said Ms. Ono recently in Rolling Stone.

The timing of the campaign is pegged with a Nov. 29 deadline for the governor’s health study on the effects of fracking.

“Fracking for gas is inherently dirty and dangerous,” says Sean Lennon. “No amount of regulation can make fracking safe.”

Energy emergency: Sandy profiteers sell gas, generators at predatory prices on post-apocalypse Craigslist

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 13:33:02 +0000

Gas supplies remain extremely limited in New York and New Jersey, nearly a week after hurricane Sandy, and the power's still out for many in those states and others, such as nearby Connecticut.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie signed an executive order announcing a state of energy emergency and instituting gas rationing for the purchase of fuel by motorists in 12 counties, starting today at noon.

Make way for price-gouging entrepreneurs!

Try this, to get a taste of how bad it is: search for "gasoline," "gas," or "generator" on NY Craigslist right now. Gas sales I've found on Craigslist range from $5 to $20 a gallon, but there are probably ads at higher prices. My favorite was the 55-gallon drum of gas for a thousand bucks. Unleaded! Cash only, folks.

Not only is this exploitative, it's explosive. A black market of gasoline reselling, without appropriate safety measures, seems to me like a recipe for tragedy.

(via @NYCaviation)

Radio documentary on elections and America's energy future: The Power of One, with Alex Chadwick

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 12:28:37 +0000

BURN: An Energy Journal, the radio documentary series hosted by former NPR journalist Alex Chadwick, has a 2-hour election special out. It's the most powerful piece of radio journalism I've listened to since—well, since the last episode they put out. You really must do yourself a favor and set aside some time this weekend to listen to “The Power of One.”

Energy policy, defining how we use energy to power our economy and our lives, is among the most pressing issues for the next four years. In this special two-hour edition of BURN, stories about the power of one: how, in this election season, a single person, place, policy or idea can — with a boost from science — affect the nation’s search for greater energy independence.

The documentary examines how "individuals, new scientific ideas, grassroots initiatives and potentially game-changing inventions are informing the energy debate in this Presidential Election year, and redefining America’s quest for greater energy independence." It was completed and hit the air before Hurricane Sandy, but the energy issues illuminated by that disaster (blackouts, gas shortage, grid failure, backup power failure at hospitals) further underscore the urgency.

Chadwick and a team of reporters do this through a series of "intimate, human-scale stories," traveling to the energy frontier of the Arctic Ocean, to Pennsylvania’s natural gas-rich “Marcellus Shale” region where the national “fracking” controversy runs deep, and a university lab in Colorado where a female scientist is building a battery that aspires to be the “Holy Grail of green technology.”

“Energy and climate are such big stories – there is a reason that both campaigns often talk about the economy, jobs and energy all tied together,” says Alex. “It’s easy to get overwhelmed by how big these topics are. What BURN tries to do is tell smaller stories that provide insight into how people’s lives are changed by the energy choices they and others around them make. ‘The Power of One’ is about how individuals can make a difference, even in something so globally immense as energy.”

The website for the series is here, and includes all sorts of compelling side stories, like this photo-essay about a mobile home community torn apart by a shale gas project: the Riverdale mobile home park, which once sat on the banks of the Susquehanna River in north-central Pennsylvania.

"Earlier this year, all the Riverdale trailer families were evicted to make room for a pump station and pipeline that would move Susquehanna water to fracking sites elsewhere in the state."

Alex visited Riverdale with freelance photographer and Pennsylvania resident Lynn Johnson, who works on assignment for National Geographic. Two of Lynn's images, below.

Deb Eck, with her twin daughters, works long hours managing a retail store. She became a reluctant movement leader. (Lynn Johnson)

The new owners erected chain link fencing around what was becoming adisputed construction zone. The fence separated residents who remained from those who had become their advocates. (Lynn Johnson)

Images at top of post, L-R: Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Getty Images; A burn-off from a fracking site illuminates the Pennsylvania sky, photo by Les Stone; part of a wind farm in Gratiot County, Michigan, photo by Scott Carrier.

Must-listen radio: "Nuclear Power After Fukushima," documentary ...

Gasoline shortage makes Sandy recovery harder for NYC

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 19:26:29 +0000

Snip from a New York Times update on the Sandy recovery in New York and New Jersey, and the impact of limited gas supplies on rescue and emergency services:

The effort to secure enough gas for the region moved to the forefront of recovery work. [NY Gov. Andrew] Cuomo said that as ports were reopened, the gas shortages should start to ease.
In New Jersey, drivers waited in lines that ran hundreds of vehicles deep, requiring state troopers and local police officers to protect against exploding tempers. Some ran out of gas waiting.
At stations that were open, nerves frayed. Fights broke out Thursday at the blocklong Hess station on 10th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, forcing the Police Department to send three officers to keep the peace, a police official said. By evening, the police had to close two lanes of the broad thoroughfare to accommodate a line of customers stretching eight blocks, to 37th Street.

And above, a related video report from Mother Jones' Climate Desk:

Limited bus and subway service returned to New York City Thursday morning, but cars remained one of the only options for moving between boroughs. As a result, the streets of Brooklyn—which normally depends heavily on public transit—were overwhelmed with drivers, and they were all looking for one thing: gas. But the city's main artery for this staple, the Port of New York, was closed during Hurricane Sandy and only just re-opened, leading to massive shortages, closed stations, and excruciating—and tense—lines for the pump.

Sandy slows US nuclear plants, oldest in US declares alert: morning-after update

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:39:54 +0000

Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey was placed on "alert" status last night, after a storm surge from Sandy caused water levels at the plant to rise over 6.5 more than normal, threatening the "water intake structure" that pumps cooling water throughout the nuclear plant.

Snip from Reuters update:

Those pumps are not essential since the reactor has been shut for planned refuelling since Oct. 22. However, a further rise to 7 feet could submerge the service water pump motor that is used to cool the water in the spent fuel pool, potentially forcing it to use emergency water supplies from the in-house fire suppression system to keep the rods from overheating.
On Tuesday, an NRC spokesman said the levels reached a peak of 7.4 feet -- apparently above the threshold. As of 6:10 a.m. EDT waters were at 6.5 feet, with the next high tide at 11:45 a.m. He said the company had moved a portable pump to the water intake structure as a precaution, but has not needed to use it.

The plant's operator, Exelon, says there is no threat to public safety, or the structural integrity of the plant.

RIP Stanford Ovshinsky — inventor with an eye on energy and communication

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:40:54 +0000

America lost a great Maker last week. Stanford R. Ovshinsky was a self-taught engineer and inventor who held more than 400 patents when he died on October 17th at the age of 90. The name may not be familiar to you, but his work is. Ovshinsky is credited with inventing key technologies behind flat-panel liquid crystal displays that we use to watch TV, work on the Internet, or play with our phones.

He was also the inventor of the nickel-metal hydride battery — a rechargeable battery that now powers everything from laptops to the Prius. Ovshinsky (along with his wife, Iris, who held a Ph.D. in biochemistry and was his research partner for much of his life), began working on improved versions of batteries, solar cells, and other energy technologies beginning in the early 1960s. More than a decade before climate change became a well-established fact, Ovshinsky was concerned about the pollution and political instability that went along with fossil fuels. He spent the rest of his life developing better alternatives.

For a good introduction to how truly groundbreaking Ovshinsky's ideas were, check out a 1978 article from Popular Science, all about his invention of amorphous silicon semiconductors — a technology that today forms the basis behind both thin-film solar panels and smart phone displays. At the time though, it made Ovshinky a controversial figure.

• Michigan Public Radio's obituary
• A good explanation of the inner workings of nickel-metal hydride batteries
• Popular Science's obit (with a link to the 1978 story)

Thanks to Art Myatt for the heads up on this!

Tool to calculate benefit of rooftop solar in Cambridge, Mass

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 01:44:29 +0000

Gmoke sez, "The city of Cambridge, Mass has teamed up with MIT to produce a Solar Tool that allows people to type an address into a website and get a detailed account of that roof's solar electric potential. This is probably the most detailed service now existing and every building in Cambridge is covered. You can learn how much of your roof sees enough sun for a PV installation, how large that PV installation can be, how much it will cost, how high your Federal and state tax rebate will be, how much electricity it will produce in a year, and how much carbon it will displace."

Solar Tool v.2 (Thanks, Gmoke!)

Science of L.A.'s 'Carmageddon' proves (shock!) that cars cause much of LA's air pollution

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:43:30 +0000

Suzanne Paulson, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, saw "Carmageddon" as an opportunity to make use of a "natural experiment." She and a colleague "measured pollutants in the air during the LA freeway shutdown last year, and have now released their findings.

Air quality near the normally busy highway improved by 83 percent that day last July, relative to comparable weekends. Elsewhere in West Los Angeles, the improvement was equally dramatic. Air quality improved by 75 percent on that side of the city and in Santa Monica, and by 25 percent throughout the entire region, as a measure of the drop in ultrafine particulate matter associated with tailpipe emissions.
"We saw what we expected: you take motor vehicles away, the air gets really, really clean," Paulson says, "which tells us that most of the pollution is from motor vehicles from one type or another in this area."

More: L.A.'s 'Carmageddon' Produced Dramatic, Instantaneous Air Quality Improvements (The Atlantic).

Another "Carmaggedon" just took place in LA. Wonder if there will be more science to come from this edition.

(Image: Dallas Traffic 10/19/11 1227pm, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from nffcnnr's photostream)

A discussion about the history of technology and the future of energy

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:18:17 +0000

On Wednesday, I spoke with MIT professor of science writing Tom Levenson, as he interviewed me for the Virtually Speaking Science podcast. We had a really interesting discussion, centered on the history of technology and the question of how we end up choosing one type of tool over another. You can listen to the full thing online.

What's climate change ruining today?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:37:48 +0000

Barring a seriously crazy shift that plunges us quickly into an especially cold winter, 2012 will likely go down as the hottest year on record in the United States. More importantly, this broken record is part of a larger pattern that affects the whole world—record-breaking high temperatures are becoming, themselves, a bit of a broken record. On a global scale, counting average land and water temperatures, 2012 is (so far) the 11th warmest year on record—almost a full degree hotter than the 20th century average. Of the 12 warmest years on record, all of them have happened since 1998 (and the top 20 is made up of years since 1987).

Over time, that kind of long-term trend takes a toll. But for those of us who are lucky enough to live with relatively high levels of wealth, air conditioning, supermarkets, and all the luxuries of modern life, that toll is not always obvious. Sometimes, you have to look a little deeper to see how climate change is already affecting the American way of life.

So, what's climate change ruining today? How about electricity generation? Juliet Eilperin at The Washington Post has a story about how a consistent trend of high temperatures and drought has affected water reserves, and how those diminished reserves affect our ability to produce electricity.

Electric generation accounts for 40 percent of water use in this country, and that's not just talking about hydroelectric power plants.

... low water levels affect coal-fired and nuclear power plants’ operations and impede the passage of coal barges along the Mississippi River.

Warmer and drier summers mean less water is available to cool nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants. The Millstone nuclear plant in Waterford, Conn., had to shut down one of its reactors in mid-August because the water it drew from the Long Island Sound was too warm to cool critical equipment outside the core. A twin-unit nuclear plant in Braidwood, Ill., needed to get special permission to continue operating this summer because the temperature in its cooling-water pond rose to 102 degrees, four degrees above its normal limit; another Midwestern plant stopped operating temporarily because its water-intake pipes ended up on dry ground from the prolonged drought.

Read the rest of Juliet Eilperin's story at The Washington Post

Read More About Warming Trends
• 2012 set to be the hottest year on record in the United States
NOAA's State of the Climate report, updated monthly.
The global warmest years on record.

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Image: Coal power plant, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 48722974@N07's photostream

Mitt Romney: I believe in basic science, and by "basic science" I mean "cold fusion"

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:08:43 +0000

I'm not entirely sure what to say about this excerpt from a Washington Examiner interview other than, "*headdesk*".

Mitt Romney: I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with -- with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it.

I'm putting the entire quote after the jump, so you can get the full context of where this came from. It is worth noting that Romney seems to be referring to the 1989 experiments done by Stanley Pons (who worked for the University of Utah) and Martin Fleischmann. If you've ever dug into that particular bit of history, you'll find it sounds a lot like the arsenic life story from 2010—scientists announce huge news by press conference (in the case of Fleischmann and Pons the press conference happened before the research had even been through peer review); media goes apeshit; other scientists try to replicate the results and the vast majority fail miserably; finally, it eventually becomes clear that the researchers made some big errors in their data analysis and the original conclusions turn out to be incorrect.

Wikipedia has a pretty good breakdown of this history. Another good place to read about Fleischmann and Pons is in Charles Seife's book Sun in a Bottle, which details the history behind why fusion, in general, has long been more hype than happening. There is some good science going on the world of "hot" fusion, and there's some spotty evidence of weird anomalies that might or might not be cold fusion, but Fleischmann's and Pons' work is almost certainly not going to pan out. And, as energy technologies go, cold fusion is not the one most likely to give us the best bang for our buck.

CARNEY: What role should government have in promoting certain industries or economic activities such as homeownership, or manufacturing, renewable energy or fossil fuel energy, exports, or just advanced technology? What sort of subsidies and incentives do you favor? You had some of these in Massachusetts, I know.

ROMNEY: Very limited -- my answer to your first question. I’m not an advocate of industrial policy being formed by a government. I do believe in the power of free markets, and when the government removes the extraordinary burdens that it puts on markets, why I think markets are more effective at guiding a prosperous economy than is the government.

So for instance, I would not be investing massive dollars in electric car companies in California. I think Tesla and Fisker are delightful-looking vehicles, but I somehow imagine that Toyota, Nissan, and even General Motors will produce a more cost-effective electric car than either Tesla or Fisker. I think it is bad policy for us to be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in specific companies and specific technologies, and developing those technologies.

I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with -- with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it.

Wind farms aren't a major cause of bird deaths

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:15:57 +0000

It's hard to say how many birds are killed by collisions with wind turbines. The high end of the estimates top out around 450,000 birds each year in the United States. But even that doesn't come close to making wind turbines a major killer of American birds. Among the things that kill far, far, far more birds than wind power: Buildings, cars, and house cats. (Thanks, Uncle Bruce!)

Insane, true energy fact of the day

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:28:43 +0000

Exit signs are so ubiquitous that they're almost invisible. Every public building has them. In fact, they are so common that, taken together, these little signs consume a surprisingly large amount of energy.

Each one uses relatively little electricity, but they are on all the time. And we have a lot of them in our schools, factories, and office buildings. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 100 million exit signs in use today in the U.S., consuming 30–35 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity annually.

That’s the output of five or six 1,000 MW power plants, and it costs us $2-3 billion per year. Individual buildings may have thousands of exit signs in operation.

To put this into a bigger context: This is just one small part of what makes buildings, in general, incredibly energy intense. In the United States, we use more energy powering our buildings—from the lights, to the heating, to the stuff we plug into the walls—than we use to do anything else. Because of that (and because of the fact that electricity is mostly made by burning coal or natural gas) buildings produce more greenhouse gas emissions than cars.

Read more about the energy consumption of exit signs and how we can use less energy, while still getting the same services, at Green Building Advisor

Take a look at some stats on energy use in buildings at the Architecture 2030 website

Via Jess McCabe

Image: Exit Sign, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from mtellin's photostream

Destroying Precious Land to Drill for Gas: Sean Lennon, anti-fracking activist

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:01:23 +0000

In the New York Times, an eloquent op-ed by Sean Lennon that serves as a manifesto of sorts for Artists Against Fracking, an organization started with his mother, Yoko Ono. Snip:

Natural gas has been sold as clean energy. But when the gas comes from fracturing bedrock with about five million gallons of toxic water per well, the word “clean” takes on a disturbingly Orwellian tone. Don’t be fooled. Fracking for shale gas is in truth dirty energy. It inevitably leaks toxic chemicals into the air and water. Industry studies show that 5 percent of wells can leak immediately, and 60 percent over 30 years. There is no such thing as pipes and concrete that won’t eventually break down. It releases a cocktail of chemicals from a menu of more than 600 toxic substances, climate-changing methane, radium and, of course, uranium.

Video: THE SKY IS PINK by Josh Fox and the GASLAND Team.

Japan: record high radiation levels found in Fukushima fish, more than a year after nuclear accident

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:29:51 +0000

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) in Japan said Tuesday its monitoring efforts have recorded record high radiation levels in local seafood: 25,800 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in fish sampled within a 20-kilometer range of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The photo shows fish caught Aug. 1, 2012 within 20 kilometers of the crippled nuclear power plant. The findings indicate that radioactive contamination remains at unsafe levels in the area's food supply more than a year after the nuclear crisis.

From Kyodo News:

The level of cesium found in greenling is 258 times that deemed safe for consumption by the Japanese government, suggesting that radioactive contamination remains serious more than a year after the nuclear crisis.
Fishing in the sea off Fukushima Prefecture is voluntarily restricted except for trial fishing of certain octopuses.

CNN has more.

India's in the dark, are we next?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 14:52:37 +0000

670 million people—roughly half of India's population—has been without electricity for two days, following a massive blackout. The United States has a much more modern grid, but only nine years ago a blackout in the Northeast of this country cut power to 45 million. How does a huge blackout like that happen? What are we doing to prevent another one? I'll be on Southern California Public Radio's Madeline Brand Show this morning to talk about how America's electric grid works ... and doesn't work. The show starts at 9:00 Pacific time and I'll be on around the top of the hour.

Maggie speaking in Richland, Washington today

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:11:45 +0000

I'm speaking this evening at the Public Library in Richland, Washington, talking about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. The talk starts at 7:00 pm. You can learn more by checking out the website for my book, Before the Lights Go Out. Hope to see you there!

Important news from the wind energy industry

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:56:32 +0000

DONG to buy big Siemens wind turbines for the UK. Just so you know.