The Hope Initiative | Deeper Than A Mud Puddle | Plugin, Fuel, Said, Tests, Toyota

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Deeper Than A Mud Puddle

| Sunday, 26 August 2007

A wonderful work of "fiction" from Brandon Marshall that does a great job of "chronicling" a day in the life of a Post-Peak communitarian. Do Not Pass Go, surf directly to this article and read it now. You'll be glad you did. Here's an excerpt.

The community has been busy this week with visitors. Someone brought word of gas shortages in this place or that - same old, same old. There isn’t much time to dwell as gardens are in full swing and the village has several projects going on. Our visitor flow is usually high this time of year but every year it seems to decrease a little as it gets harder for people to get here, both from the shortages and the ever deteriorating roads. Most are anxious to get hands-on experience and we have no problem finding a place for them to help out. One of the folks visiting is an old friend and has quite a bit of experience driving horses. With her help we are getting a lot done. I haven't seen her in a long time and I pull the team along side to let the horses rest and do some catching up.

“How was the ride up?” I ask facetiously. I haven’t traveled in a while but have heard stories about the state of things.

She looks at me with a grin and replies, “It was… deeper than a mud puddle.”

Bloom Energy creating Fuel Cells for the Home

| Saturday, 25 August 2007

from Business 2.0

Bloom Energy

CEO: K.R. Sridhar
Disruption: Energy generators in homes and businesses
Disrupted: Electric utilities

The company's vision is to use solid-oxide fuel cells to allow homes to generate their own electricity. The fuel cells would use (but not burn) hydrocarbon fuel, and produce just half the carbon dioxide that today's power plants do. One fuel cell should be enough to serve a home; homes could sell excess power back to the grid. Bloom Energy's biggest hurdle is cost. It needs to get the price of its machines below $10,000 apiece.

AARP Embraces Global Meltdown

| Tuesday, 07 August 2007

from AARPMagazine.org

It’s becoming a legacy issue for older Americans: what type of planet are we leaving our children? One of the nation’s top reporters on the environment reveals the latest science behind climate change

KANGERLUSSUAQ, GREENLAND

I’m staring up at the crumbling edge of the frozen white cap cloaking most of this vast Arctic island. The ice is thousands of years old, yet melting relentlessly in the bright May sunshine, sending a torrent of gray water to the sea. With me is Joe McConnell, a snow scientist who just spent three weeks drilling samples from the ice sheet, which extends over an area four times the size of California and is almost two miles high at its peak.

McConnell, 49, an expert on the world’s frozen places, is from—of all places—the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. That incongruity isn’t so jarring when he explains that many of the world’s driest communities, from the Andes to the American Southwest, are home to the billion-plus people who get much of their water from mountain snow and glaciers.

Toyota Reverses Position, Embraces Plug In Hybrids

| Friday, 03 August 2007

From WashingtonPost.com

Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it has developed a plug-in hybrid vehicle for public road tests in Japan and plans tests for the United States and Europe.

Other major automakers, including General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., are developing plug-in hybrids, a key technology that reduces the gases causing global warming.

Plug-in hybrids, including Toyota's, generally have batteries that power an electric motor, with an internal combustion engine for use when the batteries run low. The batteries can be recharged by plugging them into a standard wall outlet.

The plug-ins run longer on electricity, especially for shorter distances, than the more common hybrids on the roads such as Toyota's Prius.

Toyota is the first manufacturer to receive government approval to conduct tests for a plug-in hybrid on Japanese public roads, it said, and will collect information about the tests from eight plug-in vehicles for the government about emissions and fuel efficiency.

The Toyota executive in charge of technology, Masatami Takimoto, said the approval came Wednesday morning.

Takimoto declined to say when Toyota will bring a plug-in hybrid to market. Innovation in battery technology is needed, he said.