Dr. Richard Lawson, M.D. Thursday, 27 November 2008. Prepared for Claverton Conference, 24th October 2008, Bath. See also: http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/how-to-rapidly-convert-the-central-deserts-of-china-to-agricultural-regions-producing-huge-amounts-of-renewable-energy-for-europe.html http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/pipe-headloss-power-calculator-calculate-how-much-energy-to-pump-seawater-to-the-middle-of-the-sahara-or-gobi-desert-for-desalination-in-the-seawater-greenhouse-answer-not-a-lot.html http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/desert-rose-fresh-water-forest-cover.html http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/the-sahara-forest-project-%e2%80%93-a-new-source-of-fresh-water-food-and-energy.html Contents Problems to be addressed Overview Ethical standards for the strategy Partnerships Technology Community Finance Personnel Timeline Arboricultural Rationale The Aim Desert Rose intends to reforest desert areas by using solar desalination of […]
Read MoreNew Titanic Disaster Discovery Points Way To Solving Global Warming And Fossil Fuel Shortages
Jodrell Bank radio telescope discovers faint radio echoes of last broadcasts from doomed ocean liner Titanic. World learns of hitherto unknown triumph of economic thinking with striking lessons for how to deal with global warming and predicted energy shortages! (Also see http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/professor-lowed-notes-similarity-between-birkenhead-disaster-and-complex-systems-such-as-politics-globalisasion-and-economics-the-banking-crisis-perhaps.html) By: Brendan “Lunchtime” O’Toady * Images courtesy Wikipedia. It is well […]
Read MoreNew fusion approach at Lawrence Livermore – "artificial star"
“Scientists plan to ignite tiny man-made star. It is science’s star experiment: an attempt to create an artificial sun on earth — and provide an answer to the world’s impending energy shortage”……..
….drools the headline of Telegraph Science Correspondent, Richard Gray’s article article – 27 Dec 2008
A cynic would say this is part of the ongoing “distraction robbery” being carried out by the energy and motor industry – “don’t worry – we’ll sort out the energy problem (we’ve got various wheezes up our sleeves – fusion, fuel cells, hydrogen just around the corner) meantime keep shelling out on far more of the stuff than you would need if the governments and / or us, the energy utilities funded the already existing and far more cost effective energy conservation schemes, or invested in already available and proven renewable energy schemes such as wind energy along with further grid interconnections, and more high efficiency local CHP/DH schemes.
Read MoreProfessor Roger Falconer FREng will talk about the Severn Barrage, Cardiff 12th Jan.
Professor Roger Falconer FREng, Halcrow Professor of Water Management, Cardiff University, Monday, 12th January 2009, 19:00 (Refreshments at 18:30)
University of Bristol, Merchant Venturers’ Building, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UB
The presentation will review the current main Severn Barrage proposals, as originally promoted by the Severn Tidal Power Group, together with giving a brief overview of alternative options such as the Shoots Barrage and Offshore Tidal Impoundments.
Read MoreBlackouts could hit Britain by 2015, says National Grid chief
Reported in The Daily Telegraph by Jon Swaine 22 Dec 2008, Steve Holliday, National Grid chief executive, said that Britain faces a severe shortage in power generation due to crumbling coal and nuclear plants being taken out of service and that the Government needs to cause the investment of Pounds 100 billion in new power plant.
This is the legacy of the deluded economic “thinking” of the Thatcher era which instituted the not widely admired market for electricity which was supposed to use market signals of supply and demand to cause an optimal delivery of the cheapest sources of power.
Read MorePotential demand management savings worth $3 billion/yr in USA
+ According to new reference in the Wikipedia article on Demand Response ” study carried out in 2007 by The Brattle Group for the United States showed that even a 5 percent drop in peak demand would yield substantial savings in generation, transmission, and distribution costs – enough to eliminate the need for installing and running […]
Read More100% carbon reduction possible with wind power, vehicle to grid and interconnection.
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security
Mark Z. Jacobson is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University. and has amongst his qualifications a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a B.A. in Economics.
With Jacobson’s credentials, and the fact that this is a peer reviewed journal, the paper has to be taken seriously. He indicates that wind powered battery electric vehicles not only offer the most reduction in CO2 compared to other options, but is also better than the other options when other environmental impacts are considered. CCS is a poor option, and corn to ethanol or cellulosic ethanol are very bad indeed.
He notes, that as does Claverton, that the intermittency effects can be dealt with using a combination of geographic dispersal, demand management, storage, use of vehicle to grid, and weather forecasting.
"CO2 (equivalent) saving from short-rotation willow coppice (SRC) is ZERO" – official
DEFRA and ADAS (the UK agricultural agency) are now circulating a study comparing net GHG impacts of different bio-feedstocks which concludes that the net CO2 (equivalent) saving from short-rotation willow coppice (SRC) is ZERO because of the direct and indirect GHG emission from the fertilisers used, whereas there is near 100% CO2 (equiv) saving from Miscanthus (“elephant grass”) because it doesn’t need fertilisers. Some of the wood wastes show up to 600% CO2-equivalent net saving because of the methane emissions in the “base case” where they are put to landfill (I presume this applies to most natural forest-floor debris and dead trees). …….Chris Hodrien
Read More"US government should fund massive public works projects" – Dennis Kucinich – Congress
On the Today programme this morning (Wednesday 18th Dec) there was an interview with Dennis Kucinich, chair of a US congressional committee (who stood for the Democrats presidential candidate in 2004), and he proposed that the US government should take over creating money from the banks, to fund massive public works projects, rather than borrow […]
Read MoreParsons Brinckerhoff "has made huge miscalculations on Severn Estuary tidal lagoons’ costs"
December 14, 2008
The famous (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_(Boston,_Massachusetts))) American engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff (“PB”) has submitted cost numbers on power from tidal lagoons (25p) that are roughly 800% higher than all the previous studies of Tidal Electric Limited’s tidal lagoon power conducted by UK engineering giant WS Atkins (3.1p) and corroborated by AEA Technology, OFGEM, Rothschild Bank, Montgomery Watson Harza, and several private energy companies. PB has arrived at their extraordinarily high numbers by ignoring the technology developer’s design parameters and introducing their own design and therein making four costly design errors:
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