Australia is looking to algae as an alternative to other biofuels. Plans are underway to create algae growing plants in Western Australia. The article states that WA is an ideal location because of its sunny climate and access to saltwater.
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While the world focuses on Iran and tries to block it from gaining nuclear capabilities, many other countries are looking into gaining nuclear power. At least nine central and southeastern European countries either have nuclear reactors or are planning on getting them soon. The reasons states for going nuclear range from reliability to energy independence. You can see the complete list with each county named here.
Here’s a great article that points the increasing evidence against global warming and the mounting evidence in favor of a cooling world.
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The potential for algae based fuel is incredible. Take a look at this:
…replacing all the petroleum fuel in that country with algae fuel would require 40,000 sq/km of land… or roughly the size of Maryland.
“That country” refers to the US in case you were wondering. Once again, I can’t stress enough how impressive the potential for algae based fuel is.
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It seems like the wet and brutal weather that New England has recently experienced can’t be linked to global warming. Shame, I guess the alarmists will just have to stick with blaming stuff like kidney stones on AGW.
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I found these graphs in an article on the Wall Street Journal talking about how “Energy is Top Economic Issue for Voters“. The top two graphs aren’t all that surprising but the bottom two I did find interesting. Pay attention to the 1980 mark in both of them and compare it to the 2008 mark. In the bottom left graph, you can easily see that the price change in the late 70s had a much larger impact to the consumption than anything after it.Now look at the bottom right graph. Consumers were paying a larger percent of the income for gasoline in the late 70s and early 80s than they are currently.
What does this mean? Well it would suggest, at least to me, that over the past twenty-some years Americans as a whole have increased their wealth (as your wealth increases, gasoline payments will take an increasingly smaller portion of your income). This has happened even with inflation. This is good news because with increased wealth, people are better able to cope with changes and unforeseen circumstances might occur.
However, the trend is going up so obviously there will come a point when we are paying the same percentage of our income on gasoline as was being paid a little over 25 years ago. Another thing that must be kept in mind is that these graphs don’t take into account what rising fuel costs do to all other commodities (like food for instance). Even with this in mind, I do feel that it is promising to look and these graphs and see that the increase in the price of gasoline hasn’t affected our consumption all that much or dug into our wallets any more than previous times. This is a positive since the implications mean that as a whole, our society has become more well off.
Now what are some negative implications of these graphs? Well they will probably make the environmentalist and pro-AGW (Anthropological Global Warming) crowd fairly angry, especially the bottom left graph. You see, these high prices we are experiencing are supposed to, in part, curb our consumption of gasoline. They have to some extent but not nearly as much as seen at previous times. This will only fuel (no pun intended) the Green’s desire to see higher prices in order to influence our consumption habits.
New taxes and restrictions on drilling are two ways the Greens may try to influence our consumption to make a dip like that seen in 1979 happen today. Watch out.
It looks like demand for biofuels could lead to an increased demand in cropland by as much as 44 percent. I’m fairly certain the greens wouldn’t like that at all.
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Yep, it seems like something from the book I, Robot but scientists are actually saying that it might be feasible to collect solar energy in space and beam it down to earth.
Picture this: a 6-mile-wide solar-power satellite orbiting 22,000 miles in space. Photo-sensitive panels on the satellite collect light from the sun and turn it into microwave radiation that an antenna beams down to a ground station, where it’s converted into enough electricity to power a large city.
Sound like science fiction? Last year, a government study group issued a report that said space-based solar power not only was technically feasible but also offered a potentially clean, renewable source of energy that could significantly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
Sounds pretty good, right? Well I still have my doubts. With a $1 trillion price tag, it seems a little steep. Plus, the thing about space is that if something breaks down, its really hard to maintenance it. Personally, I don’t think that we have exhausted our options here on earth so elaborate solar collection satellites in space seems a little extreme.
Did I not tell you that the media is looking for anything to blame on Global Warming? This time people are blaming a booming feral cat population on Global Warming.
Global warming and kittens. While it may seem hard to see the connection between the two — a climate phenomenon that melts glaciers and acidifies oceans, and cuddly, 4-ounce balls of fur — experts say there could be one.
Each spring, the onset of warm weather and longer days drives female cats into heat, resulting in a few months of booming kitten populations known as “kitten season.”
“The brain receives instructions to produce a hormone that basically initiates the heat cycle in a cat,” said Nancy Peterson, feral cat program manager of the Humane Society of the United States, “and those instructions are affected by the length of day and usually the rising temperatures of spring.”
Peterson said kitten season generally starts in March or April, as the days get warmer and longer, and the flood of kittens continues throughout the spring and early summer.
You really can’t make this stuff up. As can see from my previous post linked to above, I tried to think of some stuff but reality always seems to be 10x better.
Sometimes I am at a loss on where to begin debunking some of the claims from Global Warming alarmists. Therefore, please post some of your favorite claims or questions in the comment section and I will hopefully start addressing them one by one as the weeks go on.
These claims/questions can deal with any aspect global warming. Keep in mind that I am just a college student so most of my answers will be based on other people’s research. However, I hope to present these sometimes stale facts in a new/interesting fashion.
Depending on how many comments I get will determine how soon I answer the individual questions. And if I don’t get any comments, well, I guess I will just cross that bridge when I come to it.
You may start your commenting now.
