Here’s a little bit of a twist on some conventional analysis.
Let’s start with a trend. The baby boomers are getting older. Their kids have departed (most of them). It’s time to downshift towards prepare for 20-30 years of “active retirement.”
How? They need to get their ravaged finances in order, by cashing out of their biggest investment, their home. And since this trend will be both huge and will occur very quickly, it’s going to have profound effects on the US housing market. Specifically, three things:
The market for bigger homes will decline sharply. It’s important to not be the last one out before the prices soften or crump.
The market for smaller homes for couples will improve markedly (there aren’t nearly enough homes in the current housing stock to support this shift). Most of these will be in suburbs (boomers aren’t going back to the city).
Many of these new purchases will be to nearby communities that are less expensive (reversing the trend that drove up prices in towns with great school systems — putting even more pressure on #1 above).
Interview with Moray B. King. Moray has been working as an electrical and systems engineer for over 30 years. During that time, in parallel, he has done extensive independent research into the standard physics literature concerning both zero point physics and self-organizing systems. He has also conducted extensive research into the patents and experiments of inventors who have reported anomalous energy gains over the decades. He is considered one of the leading authorities on the subject of Zero Point Energy, and has written two books on the topic titled: Tapping the Zero Point Energy, and Quest for Zero Point Energy. Most recently Moray gave a presentation titled “Water, Plasmoids, and Zero Point Energy” at this year's Breakthrough Energy Movement Conference.
How do you grow vegetables in arid areas? Reverse the trend of desertification, the Sahara Forest Project proposes.
The project combines existing technologies — such as the evaporation of saltwater to create fresh water along with solar thermal energy tech — to utilize what we have (saltwater, CO2) to produce what we need (food, fresh water and energy).
This week, the project, which is supported by fertilizer companies, reached a milestone. Its Qatar pilot plant produced 75 kilograms of crops (like cucumbers) per square meter annually while consuming only sunlight and seawater, Science reports. That’s comparable to commercial farms in Europe.
At the center of the project is a saltwater-cooled greenhouse, Science explains:
At one end, salt water is trickled over a gridlike curtain so that the prevailing wind blows the resulting cool, moist air over the plants inside. This cooling effect allowed the Qatar facility to grow three crops per year, even in the scorching summer. At the other end of the greenhouse is a network of pipes with cold seawater running through them. Some of the moisture in the air condenses on the pipes and is collected, providing a source of fresh water.
One surprising side effect is how the cool, moist air that was leaking out encouraged plants to grow spontaneously outside. By reducing exterior air temperatures with “evaporator hedges” (pictured), the plant was able to grow crops like barley and salad rocket (arugula), along with useful desert plants around the seawater greenhouse.
Another key element of the facility is the concentrated solar power plant:
This uses mirrors in the shape of a parabolic trough to heat a fluid flowing through a pipe at its focus. The heated fluid then boils water, and the steam drives a turbine to generate power. Hence, the plant has electricity to run its control systems and pumps and can use any excess to desalinate water for irrigating the plants.
The project has also experimented with culturing heat-tolerant algae, growing salt-tolerant grasses for fodder or biofuel, and evaporating the concentrated saline the plant emits to produce salt, Science reports.
The Qatar plant is 1 hectare with 600 square meters of growing area inside. Next up: a 20-hectare test facility near Aqaba, Jordan.
After last weeks story on the Raphial Morgado and MYT™ Engine I Thought I would do a series on other innovative engine technologies. The Cyclone engine may only have average fuel efficiency, but does have many advantages over conventional engine technology. These include reducing emissions, and the ability to run on any type of fuel without any modifications, It can be converted to a heat engine harvesting waste heat.
To date, Cyclone has over 1,000 hours of running (on fuel!) and testing of the engines, They have achieved verified thermal efficiencies above 30%, and is very close to putting the first of these engine models into small-scale commercial production.
Popular Science magazine named the clean, green Cyclone Engine as the 2008 Invention of the Year. the engine’s inventor and company CEO, Harry Schoell has followed a path that would be a good example for many investors and researchers. “In less than a few years he has systematically undertaken the development and building of a company in a very professional way. i am not endorsing the technology but the processes of how to take something from the drawing board to market. There is still a ways to go, but progress is being made as will be illustrated in the following press release.
Nobel physicist: Thorium trumps all fuels as energy source
GENEVA – It’s high time for the nuclear industry to overhaul its conventional technology and shift to radically different reactor designs based on thorium fuel, a Nobel Prize winning physicist said.
Carlo Rubbia
Carlo Rubbia, a former director of the CERN laboratory who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics, described thorium as having “absolute pre-eminence” over all other fuels including fossil fuels and uranium, the metallic element that has driven reactors since nuclear first started powering public grids in 1956.
“In order to be vigorously continued, nuclear power must be profoundly modified,” Rubbia said at the Thorium Energy Conference 2013, held on the CERN campus here last week.
Rubbia pointed out that thorium leaves less long-lived waste than uranium, is far more plentiful and is resistant to weapons proliferation, as I reported on my Weinberg blog. He also noted that thorium is effective at safely breeding more fuel, and that it has a much higher energy content than uranium or fossil fuels (see chart below), a characteristic that he said gives it “absolute pre-eminence…as a source of energy.”
Proponents of thorium disagree over the reactor technology that is best suited to optimize its characteristics. Unlike uranium, thorium is not “fissile,” so it needs to be coaxed into a reaction.
Could Iceland finally transmit clean electricity to Europe?
The North Atlantic island has 100 percent “clean” electricity. Financing could soon emerge for a decades-old vision of the world's longest subsea high voltage cable.
