Category: Earth Intelligence

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Michel Bauwens: Bill S. Arnaud on Why We Must Bypass Electrical Utilities If We Are to Build a Low Carbon Society

05 Energy, Advanced Cyber/IO, Earth Intelligence
Michel Bauwens

Why we need to bypass electrical utilities if we want to build a low carbon society

Excerpted from Bill St. Arnaud:

“I have long argued that we need to bypass electrical utilities if we want to build a low carbon society.

Utilities, even if they are publicly owned, have an inherent economic incentive to use cheap and dirty coal or gas, as they then earn the generating revenue. With distributed solar panels at homes and business the customer earns the revenue and the utility becomes a dumb pipe. Heard that argument before? Just as we had to bypass the telephone company to build the global Internet we will need to bypass the utilities to build the future Energy Internet.

Currently the entire electrical grid is built around an architecture of large centralized generating stations. A low carbon electrical grid will need an entire different architecture – and it already exists. It is called our roadway system. With electric vehicles we can use them as a store and forward packet technology to deliver renewable energy from roadside solar panels or windmills. Not only does this enable delivery of renewable energy to homes and businesses bypassing the utilities and existing electrical grid, it also provides a clean and efficient transportation system that complements our western lifestyle.”

For more details on the Energy Internet please see green-broadband.blogspot.ca/2012/02/stanford-university-research-on-dynamic.html

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Robert Steele: Earthquakes From Oil and Gas Drilling

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency
Robert David STEELE Vivas

One can only look on in anguish as the US Government continues to betray the public trust for lack of intelligence and integrity.

The headlines about earthquakes being related to oil and gas drilling have been common for some time now.  Despite the fact that the federal government has noticed the connection at very low bureaucratic levels, the fact is that the politicized government persists in ignoring the precautionary principle and continues to betray the public trust by not stopping all activities associated with increasing earthquakes.

Earthquakes are now coming to the East Coast just as they are about to become much more frequent, intense, and consequential on the East Coast.

One can only pray that at some point the public will demand an honest government capable of making informed decisions with integrity.

Shale Shocked: “Remarkable Increase” In U.S. Earthquakes “Almost Certainly Manmade”

Federal Study Ties Oil and Gas Industry to Earthquakes

Survey says increase in quakes may have man-made cause

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

2012 PREPRINT FOR COMMENT: The Craft of Intelligence

THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

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Patrick Meier: Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?

Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, Government, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Threats
Patrick Meier

Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?

I recently had the distinct honor of being on the opening plenary of the 2012 Skoll World Forum in Oxford. The panel, “Innovation in Times of Flux: Opportunities on the Heels of Crisis” was moderated by Judith Rodin, CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation. I've spent the past six years creating linkages between the humanitarian space and technology community, so the conversations we began during the panel prompted me to think more deeply about innovation in the humanitarian space. Clearly, humanitarian crises have catalyzed a number of important innovations in recent years. At the same time, however, these crises extend the cracks that ultimately reveal the inadequacies of existing humanita-rian organizations, particularly those resistant to change; and “any organization that is not changing is a battle-field monument” (While 1992).

These cracks, or gaps, are increasingly filled by disaster-affected communities themselves thanks in part to the rapid commercialization of communication technology. Question is: will the multi-billion dollar humanitarian industry change rapidly enough to avoid being left in the dustbin of history?

Crises often reveal that “existing routines are inadequate or even counter-productive [since] response will necessarily operate beyond the boundary of planned and resourced capabilities” (Leonard and Howitt 2007). More formally, “the ‘symmetry-breaking' effects of disasters undermine linearly designed and centralized administrative activities” (Corbacioglu 2006). This may explain why “increasing attention is now paid to the capacity of disaster-affected communities to ‘bounce back' or to recover with little or no external assistance following a disaster” (Manyena 2006).

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?”

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Sepp Hasslberger: Scientists, Citizens, & Real-Time Pervasive Science

Earth Intelligence
Sepp Hasslberger

Scientists and citizens

Sam Geall

February 24, 2012

Could a new wave of networked, amateur scientific endeavour speed the discovery of solutions to pressing environmental problems? Sam Geall reports.

What connects a group of Bayaka pygmy hunters in the Congo Basin, opposed to illegal loggers encroaching on their land; residents of Deptford, in south London, concerned about a noisy scrapyard across the road from a school; and members of the website oldweather.org, transcribing century-old ship log books to gather information about historical weather conditions?

The answer is they all have become citizen scientists, on the frontiers of a field that harnesses the wisdom of crowds, a do-it-yourself approach to technology and a radical approach to knowledge that blurs the traditional boundaries between local understanding and scientific expertise. In the words of Francois Grey, physicist at Tsinghua University in Beijing and coordinator of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, they all embody the spirit that: “Science is too important to be left to scientists alone”.

Continue reading “Sepp Hasslberger: Scientists, Citizens, & Real-Time Pervasive Science”

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Sepp Hasslberger: Mark Boyer on Scientist Develops Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor That Produces Clean Hydrogen Fuel

05 Energy, Earth Intelligence
Sepp Hasslberger

Mark Boyer

Scientist Develops Self-Sustaining Solar Reactor That Produces Clean Hydrogen Fuel

Hydrogen is a fuel that has seemingly limitless potential, but scientists have only been able to produce it from fossil fuels, like natural gas. That is, until now. A doctoral student in mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware has designed a new type of reactorthat produces hydrogen using nothing more than concentrated sunlight, zinc oxide, and water. And best of all, the zinc oxide used by the reactor can be reused, meaning that once the reactor is up and running, it would be self-sustaining.

Doctoral candidate Erik Koepf designed a large cylindrical reactor that is made of heat-insulating ceramic materials. With some help from gravity, zinc oxide powder is fed into the system from 15 hoppers, and concentrated sunlight enters through a quartz window and the aperture ring.

Click on Image to Enlarge

This week, Koepf will bring his reactor to Switzerland, where it will be tested for the first time at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. In the testing phase, concentrated light equal to the energy of 10,000 suns will be focused on the reactor, bringing the temperature up to about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the zinc oxide will be added, creating a reaction that will convert the powder into zinc vapor. Finally, the zinc will be reacted with water, producing hydrogen.

“The idea is to create a small, well-insulated cavity and subject it to highly concentrated sunlight from above,” Koepf explained in a release. If successful, the reactor could represent a major breakthrough, providing a new source of emission-free, completely sustainable fuel. Koepf’s advisor professor Ajay Prasad says he can imagine huge arrays of these devices in the desert producing hydrogen on an industrial scale.

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Mini-Me: Provocative Comparison – Imperial Conquest & Catholic Conquistadores

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

The doctrine of intervention

Manuela Picq has just completed her time as a visiting professor and research fellow at Amherst College.

Today's political ethics are surprisingly similar to the doctrine of discovery set by the Vatican back in 1452.

Al Jazeera, 04 Apr 2012

New York, NY – One does not think of archaic papal bulls when witnessing democratic states like Brazil or the United States building dams on Amazon rivers or drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean. Yet today's political ethics are surprisingly similar to the doctrine of discovery set by the Vatican back in 1452.

Fifteenth-century papal bulls that declared war against all non-Christian peoples also encouraged the conquest and exploitation of enemy territories throughout the world. European explorers like Columbus took possession of newly “discovered” non-Christian lands with the express authorisation of the Catholic Church.

This internationally recognised doctrine allowed claims to be made on “empty” invaded lands outlasted European absolute monarchies and has become enshrined in secular nation-states. In the US, for instance, Chief Justice John Marshall used the right of discovery in 1823 to invalidate native claims over their land and to assert the authority of the US government over land titles.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) recently disowned the doctrine of discovery, perhaps in light of its centrality at the 11th session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues this coming May in New York. Better late than never.

The discourse that rationalised the colonisation of the Americas in the sake of Christianity is the same that justifies protecting human rights in Iraq or privatising water supplies for the sake of development.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Provocative Comparison – Imperial Conquest & Catholic Conquistadores”

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Dophin: Intelligent Life at Washington Post (Blog) — True Costs Snapshot

Earth Intelligence
YARC YARC

Every once in a while, there is a flash of intelligence at The Washington Post. This short blog illuminates both the true costs of various options around carbon emissions, and the importance of considering “360 degree” trade-offs.

Sucking carbon dioxide out of the air: Neat idea, but impractical

Posted by at 03:01 PM ET, 04/05/2012

Washington Post (Blog)

Humanity is making dismal progress on curbing its greenhouse gas emissions. That’s led some scientists to dream up zany geoengineering schemes to avert drastic climate change. One promising idea involved sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. Alas, new research suggests, this isn’t very practical:

You can strip CO2 from the air with chemical filters or by boosting reactions occurring as rocks weather. Colin Axon of Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK, and Alex Lubansky at the University of Oxford estimated what it would take to remove the 30 gigatonnes of CO2 we emit every year.

That would mean processing 75,000 Gt of dry air. Scaling up proposals to filter air would use 180 Gt of clean water per year, depriving 53 million people of water, on top of the 66 per cent of the world’s population who will face water shortages by 2025.

To make matters worse, mopping up carbon dioxide with chemical filters would use an enormous amount of energy and be prohibitively expensive. A study last year in Nature pegged the cost of carbon dioxide removal at about $600 per ton, which is about seven times more pricey than even the high-end estimates of carbon taxes deemed necessary to curtail the world’s emissions.

Continue reading “Dophin: Intelligent Life at Washington Post (Blog) — True Costs Snapshot”