February 12, 2016 A comprehensive research article published in Science Advances found that water scarcity is actually worse than first thought. The authors found that fully two-thirds of the global population suffer severe water scarcity at least 1 month per year, and nearly half of them live in India and … Continue reading
Category Archives: Energy
1st Prototype: Electricity From Solar, Sewater and Gravity -No fossil fuels or Fission
February 10, 2016 We are pleased to note that the first large-scale project to generate electricity around the clock using solar energy, seawater and gravity is now under construction in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. While it bears some similarities to the design we have long recommended, it does … Continue reading
Biodegradable Hydrogen Catalyst 150 Times More Efficient
January 6, 2016 Scientists at Indiana University Bloomington have created a biodegradable, easy to mass-produce catalyst called P22-Hyd consisting of a modified enzyme (hydrogenase) protected within the protein shell of a bacterial virus. The material forms a nano-reactor that catalyzes hydrogen formation 150 times more efficiently than the enzyme would … Continue reading
Global Electricity Output May Drop Due To Climate Change
January 4, 2016 Climate change impacts on rivers and streams may substantially reduce electricity production capacity around the world. Particularly vulnerable are the United States, southern South America, southern Africa, central and southern Europe, Southeast Asia and southern Australia. A new study by the International Institute For Applied Systems Analysis in … Continue reading
COP21 And The Distribution Of Wealth
January 1, 2016 Background COP21 is a pragmatic face-saving agreement for politicians, nothing more. Essentially, signatory nations have agreed only to commit individually and severally to maximum annual carbon emissions. Reporting the results is mandatory, but unlike global lending institutions that routinely force helpless quasi-bankrupt governments into painful austerity programs … Continue reading
Making COP21 Work
December 15, 2015 President Obama and Secretary Kerry have made the case that developing nations account for 65% of carbon emissions, and that consequently even if industrialized countries were to stop using fossil fuels instantly, now, that would not bring global warming under control. Statistically they are correct, but that’s … Continue reading
Paris FCCC 2015 Final Agreement
December 12, 2015 The Paris conference is over, and member nations have unanimously adopted a resolution to keep global mean temperature within 1.5°C of that which existed before the industrial era and to help needy nations cope with the effects of global warming. Pundits are already criticizing it due to … Continue reading
Greek Debt
July 7, 2015 It is in no one’s interest, including the United States, to let Greece collapse. Greece’s creditors might lose most -if not all- of what they’re owed and the Greek people would suffer immensely for an indefinite period of time. The potential social, political, economic and even military … 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