A good discussion on Grist about how climate change is affecting wine. Vinters are looking for ways to adapt by going to green energy and ground source heating/cooling. As far as the wine business. With the glut of grapes, quality has got to be the only way to survive in this industry. How do you get quality? Perfect soil obtained through perfect watering and organic fertilization. The organic fertilizer could be made specially to enhance the flavor, the natural constituents chosen for the soil contribution to the taste of the grapes. The watering designed to emulate the years with rainfall paterns that produced the finest vintages. This is a sophisticated type of farming when it's devoted to quality, vintners would be a good target market for biodigestion organic fertilizer and energy production systems and robotic ag equipment, specialized robots that sample soil and add just the right amount of water, fertilizer, soil ammendment, and mulch.   more »

How is it possible to lift all 7 billion boats without using the whole biosphere up? Economic activity brings the possibility of survival to the poorest and financial security to the middle class,but will it further devestate nature? I would say that an emphasis on quality of life, with the wealthier citizens of spaceship earth sacrififcing meaningless consumption and quantitiy of possesions, could be a way to lift everyone together on a different wave. Would financial security and reproductive (and all other) rights for women tend to reduce population? I think so. Quality over quantity, a whole new cultural ethic, could counter the old philosophy of eternal growth. If karma, heaven, or the magical effect of mirror neuron empathy are real, this kind of total commitment to spaceship earth and our fellow travelors should come as close as possible in this dimension. Hehey.   more »

The Tres Amiga superconducting interconnection link is a big step towards a supergrid that could smooth the intermittance of renewable energy. It might even hold the promise of superconduction and storage coast to coast. The question that comes to mind is why are they not using the superconducting bridge circuit for storage? And will the insistence on superconduction slow down the rollout of a national HVDC grid?   more »

Adam Sacks has another excellent piece on Grist, wondering once again why nearly the whole world, even experts are in denial about the severity of climate disaster. Maybe a thought experiment would be useful.. Could we imagine the mindset of people in Europe as the nazi invasion proceeded? Now how about contrasting that with the attitude of americans at the start of WW II? In Europe the blitz rolled, but that was far away for most americans. Experts must have realized that catching up to nazi war technology and production seemed nearly impossible at that point. The only course was to ignore the threat and hope the war would be confined to the continent. Back to our future: As seawater levels rise and glacial water supplies melt, the famine, disease, and war due to forced migration will produce hell-scape many orders of magnitude worse than Katrina, the recent US experience with disaster.   more »

The present centralized grid needs "baseload" power. It is based on baseload. Hehey. But a distributed generation and storage renewable smart grid with a national electron super highway would not. A gradual transition over the next 20 years will still use baseload power plants though. The fly in the ointment? Nuclear waste. It's there. everywhere a nuclear power plant exists. Here in the US in used nuclear fuel rod "swimming pools".   more »

Check this out, 0.2 liters per flush. The winner, at least in outside composting toilets that "flush" the waste. Actually a regular gravity feed composting toilet can be outside the home, but must be joined to the stool with a gravity transport pipe. Another low-flow toilet question on Grist inspired this, I'm hoping Umbra will video "test drive" the Envirolet? Hehey.   more »

Axion battery in play? It looks like it. This is a maker of high tech lead acid batteries in which carbon takes the place of some of the lead. Of course any company anywhere that finally breaks through to use carbon nanotubes to house the lead in the lead acid battery technology will make these other company's products obsolete overnight. I'm looking for that company. The OTC scammers have grabbed onto most of these ideas to tout companies that might only be hollow shells though. A booming market in green energy should emerge eventually that will make the internet technology bull look tame. Be careful, but not too careful and only bet your "gambling money".   more »

Big hoopla over more (in)famous climate change denier/delayer nonsense reviewed on Grist, these superfreaks want geoengineering via water spraying ships? The ocean water spraying "ships" better be wind/wave/ocean current powered energy platforms. Burning diesel fuel to spray the water isn't going to be a good idea. And of course this analysis leaves out the concept of increasing snow in winter over cold arctic regions, protecting ice caps and tundra from melting during the 24 hr sunlight of summer. Dark ocean water and tundra absorb solar energy, snow and ice reflect it. This scenario is more likely, let's say we decide we want geo-engineering? Throwing up particles into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight and produce cooling on the order of what happened in 1816 ("the year without a summer"). No need to employ a magical "garden hose" spraying sulfur into the atmosphere as the superfreaks tout. Volcanoes did that job in 1816 and are getting set to do it again. Land is rising due to magma pressure under Alaska. It was in check, pushed back by the gravity of glacial ice. As the ice melts the magma gets ready for a big blowout. Under Yellowstone the aquifer is drying up, drought and water wasting ag and cities are the culprits in this case.   more »

isaacschumann says: "...i profoundly disagree with your assertion that we have only a brief window to act before things spin out of control, there is absolutely no scientific basis for tipping points and the like." Since we know there actually is a scientific basis for human caused GHG climate disaster, and we realize individuals with your point of view can't be convinced by scientific evidence, we choose to stop trying to convince you. We will stick to convincing swing voters instead, people in the middle of the political spectrum. Extremists are being marginalized daily as their spokespersons rant. Feel free to further this cause. It helps get the majority to vote for a climate curing, job creating green energy and ag revolution. We will continue to emphasize economic stability and financial security by advocating independence from imported energy and chemical fertilizer (yes, that's right, ammonia fertilizer is now brought in on ocean going tankers from Russia).   more »