December 16, 2014 RELEASE 14-333 NASA Analysis: 11 Trillion Gallons to Replenish California Drought Losses It will take about 11 trillion gallons of water (42 cubic kilometers) — around 1.5 times the maximum volume of the largest U.S. reservoir — to recover from California’s continuing drought, according to a new … Continue reading
Category Archives: Environment
Climate Change, Differentiation and Money
December 14, 2014 The United Nations climate change conference in Lima ended with a less than comprehensive accord. There’s an anecdote from the age before radar that illustrates where the world stands today with respect to climate change: A brand new dreadnought-class battleship is steaming at 15 knots in thick … Continue reading
Sao Paulo’s Water Crisis
December 9, 2014 Sao Paulo, a city of 20 million people, has water for 60 days. Whether the cause is global warming, deforestation in the Amazon, or something else is irrelevant. The point is that the city depends on rainfall to replenish its reservoirs. Well, it’s not raining, and there’s … Continue reading
Swiss Water Splitter – 2014
December 8, 2014 The ongoing worldwide effort to improve the efficiency of using solar energy to split water to produce hydrogen -electrolysis- has added a new milestone. Scientists from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have achieved a solar energy to hydrogen conversion efficiency of 12.3 percent using … Continue reading
Compromise at the Convention on Climate Change, Lima 2014
December 7, 2014 As at previous similar conventions, there is agreement on the overall goal, not on who should do what, when, and pay how much. Rather than repeating the entire list of disagreements, the following might become the basis for a possible compromise. The overall goal is to reduce … Continue reading
Australian Solar Panels 40% Efficient
December 7, 2014 Researchers at the University of New South Wales announced that they were able to convert more than 40% of sunlight hitting panels into electricity. The tests were replicated at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the United States. A similar breakthrough (44.7%) at the Fraunhofer Institute for … Continue reading
Climate Change & Lima, Peru 2014
December 2, 2014 The ongoing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (December 1 through 12, 2014) in Lima must not fail to slow, and eventually halt, the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy to generate electricity. That would greatly reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the … Continue reading
The Truth Marches On
The November 1, 2014 Synthesis Report for Policymakers of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) leaves no doubt that climate change is real, caused by human action, and that time is running out for our illustrious leaders to take action commensurate with the scope and gravity of the monstrous … Continue reading
Better Than Grid Parity
Electricity in Hawaii costs $0.38 per kilowatt hour, almost treble the national average of around $0.13, which incidentally does not factor in the damage to the environment caused by using fossil fuels to generate electricity. Solar power, which can cost $0.30 per KWH, is now actually cheaper than grid electricity. … Continue reading
Solar Power Economics
October 24, 2014 Here’s an example –albeit of limited scope- of how solar power could be used to reduce unemployment. An Arizona-based private company will build a 60-megawatt solar power plant on 600 acres of dry, vacant land near Mendota, California, a drought-stricken community with near 30% unemployment about 25 … Continue reading