..so I’m taking it off my list. I will however do as much as I can to reduce my dependancy on fuel (driving is NOT a daily activity for me – I walk or cycle as much as possible). 6 years ago

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/10/7/13/1 6 years ago

Everything up to this point is just speculation. I admit there might not be a lot of action out of this one, but nevertheless: My first thoughts were geared toward the ultimate car that gets 100 mpg, but i soon realized that it really comes down to our dependence on oil. I figure most of us can save a ton of energy if we took a hint from Europe and used trains to go everywhere (it occured to me on a packed interstate) if everyone is going in the same direction, why not all ride the same train. It’d work well for commercial trucks too. High Speed Trains. I’m stickin with that. 7 years ago

Hmm…
[ponders on how on Earth she is supposed to acheive this goal]
Maybe the name should be changes to “HELP Stop the Oil Peak”... 7 years ago

The solar tower has a home, and hopefully, so will sky windmills.

Both Australian achievements! That’s exciting stuff. 7 years ago

BBC News has an article about the standby button and the cost of electricity in running such devices. 7 years ago

A paper about precooling buildings to save energy caught my eye recently.

The gist of it is you crank up the airconditioner in the morning, cooling the material of the building, then all you have to do is keep it minimally cool, letting it warm through the day. 7 years ago

Shea Gunther has a post about Whole Foods switching to 100% wind power.

Equivalent to taking about 60,000 cars off the road in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, I wonder how much oil they are saving us all. 7 years ago

New York pushes Biofuel.

Look at all of the resistance out there – it’s disheartening to say the least. 7 years ago

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so here’s a lot of nagging. 7 years ago

We cannot “stop the oil peak” but we can prepare.

http://flyingtalkingdonkey.blogspot.com 7 years ago

I’m keen for it. 7 years ago

Lowering energy costs is a new marketing ploy. 7 years ago

... of a house. For sale. $250,000, in Canada. 7 years ago

With this guy.

“Craven likes the way they think, but he believes there are simpler, cheaper, and more immediate applications of cold-water technology. He favors building systems in ideal locations, such as islands adjacent to deep water with no continental shelf. Sink a big pipe, crank a pump, and – voilà! – you’ve entered a world powered by ocean water. Once primed, the pipe acts like a giant siphon, requiring relatively little energy to keep an inexhaustible supply of cold at hand. Already, 39-degree-Fahrenheit water courses through the Natural Energy Lab’s newest pipe – a 55-inch-diameter, 9,000-foot-long polyethylene behemoth – at the rate of 27,000 gallons a minute, 24 hours a day.

Running the frigid pipes through heat exchangers produces unlimited air-conditioning that costs almost nothing. Draining their sweat yields an endless supply of freshwater for drinking and irrigation. The cold water also creates a temperature difference between root and fruit that Craven believes speeds growth. And by turning the flow on and off, Craven has found he can further accelerate the plants’ growth cycle by forcing them in and out of dormancy – he can get three crops of grapes a year and pineapples in eight months instead of the usual 18. Feeding some of the water through a contraption Craven calls a hurricane tower generates clean electricity. “What the world doesn’t understand,” says Craven, still zigzagging through the parking lot, “is that what we don’t have enough of is cold, not heat.” “

HURRAH. 8 years ago

Freight trams. 8 years ago

Portugal just got cool toys.

Not bad… 8 years ago

William McDonough is doing his bit. Cool. 8 years ago

...and it scares the living crap out of me.

I mean honestly, it looks so obvious at what is going to happen. I’d liken it to the insanity of the dot.com boom. Most people just seem to be deluding themselves if they think it isn’t going to have a catastrophic effect on our society. (If only we weren’t so completely unprepared!)

It’s not a matter of if it’s going to happen, but when, and how quickly. 8 years ago

This is nifty approach, which goes back to the old fashioned computer design of terminals / server. 8 years ago

Not a total solution, but one small component. I like the possibilities for this in water refinement. 8 years ago

First, my mum talked about this.

Next, someone on IRC brought it up. I shut the hell up and read about it.

Now I’m legitimately frightened of the economic ramifications of this all.

Never one to not love a new problem: how can we create a bicycle powered economy? 8 years ago