So true

Q: Could the Volt (and increasing transportation costs from Asia) help bring back Detroit and the North American manufacturing sector?

A: There will have to be a painful period of readjustment for the trade unions. You cannot have a society where everybody has job security, wonderful benefits, high salaries, and then you go to Wal-Mart and buy $19.99 DVD players.

This came out of an interview with GM's Bob Lutz at the unveiling of the new Chevy Volt.

Now, I do think its a silly debate between Chevy and Ford people. But if I really had to boil it down, I am definitely a Chevy guy. I cant wait to buy one in 3-4 years from now.

-Mark

Water into Hydrogen

Click To Play

Dr. Dan Nocera has recently published his findings which show a new method of electric hydrolysis that is said to be quite efficient. Electrolysis is a method of splitting water's chemical bonds into hydrogen and oxygen by using electricity (hopefully from solar panels). This hydrogen and oxygen can then be fed into a fuel cell which puts out electricity and water to be used when the sun isnt shining.

The new method is very promising because it uses regular table water at standard temperature and pressure. Normal electrolysis uses expensive DI water and caustic basic solutions to operate. The catalysts are also useful because they are made of abundant earth metals. So this method will not have to deal with the same type of supply problems like those with solar cells made of Indium, which only has enough worldwide supply to create 1GW of energy.

It will take many more years until the solar option is viable enough to support the American lifestyle, but it is a great step in the right direction.

-Mark

Better safe than sorry

“We should act on climate mitigation and adaptation not because we are able to predict the future, but because we cannot.”
-Dr. Roger A. Pielke Jr.

Better safe than sorry....sounds right to me.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/quote-of-the-day/

Re: Previous Post

I was just reading the Star Ledger today after I made the last post and found an article about the oil bubble. It looks like I'm not the only one thinking about this. Hopefully I dont get sued over this one day.

Gas Bubble

I have been reading into the new petroleum craze. It reminds me of the recent other market bubbles that have occurred in the past. And like the ways of the internet bubble and housing bubble, the gas bubble will inevitably burst. Market trading and general greed have led to our current prices over over $4/gal, but these prices are not competitively sustainable. The other markets in the energy sector, namely alternative energies are becoming more viable which allows for more funding into those projects. In the past the bubble has burst, think 80's oil embargo, which crushed the alternative energy industry. So, hopefully in the near future there will be enough of a market shift in the AE field to allow it to survive another gas bubble burst.

Carbon Tax

There needs to be a price on carbon. If any market will be willing to consider carbon an issue, there needs to be a real cost associated with it. America has yet to help lead this planet like it has for many generations with other scientific and cultural revolutions.
All of the presidential candidates use the carbon issue as a talking point, but I doubt any of them will actually do anything about it. Bush Jr. used the same talking points during his election and that has gone nowhere. I can only imagine where this country would be if Al Gore took the presidency. I guess the global warming issue will need to be solved by as Amory Lovins calls "profit maximizing capitalists" just like they also saved the whales over one hundred years ago.

Dr Dan Nocera speaking

Here is a video of the man I was referring to in my last post. Enjoy.






-Mark