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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(7)
Plague/Virus:(2)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
efficiency increase  ~ alternative energy  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ overfishing  ~ smart policy  ~ corporate malfeasance  ~ technological innovation  ~ unintended consequences  ~ contamination  ~ faster than expected  ~ ocean warming  



ApocaDocuments (6) matching "efficiency increase" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "efficiency increase"]
Sat, Jul 25, 2009
from TED talk, 2009:
Seth Godin: The Tribes We Lead, and Leading Tribes
We almost didn't view this TED video -- 'Doc Michael was talking about online "tribes" back in 1996 (http://www.nap.edu/staff/mjensen/tech6.htm), but we clicked anyway. As a consequence, we were illuminated: he is talking about operationalizing the tribe for a purpose. We were inspired. Because that is what, ideally, we ApocaDocs can do.

Internally, we are setting our goals for 2012. Either society will have woken up and begun radically shifting gears, or it's Road Warrior time, ahead. 2009 through 2010 need to be the holyshit period -- the time when we as a society grapple with what we've been doing to ourselves. 2011 needs to be the "why the hell aren't we fixing it faster era. And finally, 2012 needs to be the breakthrough year. We don't know what that breakthrough will be, but we need to do all we can to build to breakthrough.

The ApocaDocs, in three days, will have reached 3,000 stories identified, considered, recorded, and be-quipped, from the last 18 months. We have the data to help scare the hell out of people, in the next 18 months, if we have your help.

We are beginning to Twitter our stories (twitter.com/apocadocs), and have had fits and starts with Facebook. The problem is, we both have more-than-fulltime jobs. We want to get the ideas out into the world as fast as we can, to catalyze the change that is required to have a livable world for our grandchildren.

Over the next six months, we'll apply more tools for community, for outreach, for participation. But for now, if you're as panicked as we are, please follow us on Twitter and ReTweet or Facebook as much as you can, to your own networks. Add your own stories, and lead your tribe, so others can ReTweet and expand the tribe who understands what's going on.

As you probably know, most everything is happening faster than expected. We need to react just as fast. ...


Tribe? That sounds so primative.
Oh, it's actually fundamental?

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Jul 25, 2009
from TED talk, 2009:
Ray Kurzweil: Exponential solar
Our favorite part of this TED talk (which is worth watching in its entirety), is the exponential photovoltaic efficiency increase (starting around 5:43), "eight doublings away from providing 100 percent of our energy needs." Currently PV is doubling in efficiency:price every two years; now that nanotechnology is being applied, doubling could increase dramatically, he implies. Would it not be fabulous if this is true? We could then have the energy to de-carbonize and de-methanize our atmosphere and possibly de-acidify the ocean with floating solar-powered smartboats. Eight to sixteen years? If, as Kurzweil posits, the other developments in computing, nanotechnology, information interpretation, and general progress grows exponentially..., then in eight years, a radically different world awaits. And how will we make it? ...


And what will be left?

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Jul 23, 2009
from New Scientist:
US vehicle efficiency hardly changed since Model T
The average fuel efficiency of the US vehicle fleet has risen by just 3 miles per gallon since the days of the Ford Model T, and has barely shifted at all since 1991. Those are the conclusions reached by Michael Sivak and Omer Tsimhoni at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor. They analysed the fuel efficiency of the entire US vehicle fleet of cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses from 1923 to 2006.... Progress has stalled since then, though, despite growing environmental concerns. From 1991 to 2006 the average efficiency improved by only 1.8 per cent to 17.2 mpg (7.31 km/l). "We were in a period of complacency [during the 1990s]. There were no external prods to improve fuel economy," says DeCicco. ...


Where's that ol' American ingenuity been?

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Jul 23, 2009
from Fast Company:
Why the Microgrid Could Be the Answer to Our Energy Crisis
...if many of us see this moment as a defining one, a key opportunity to reassess how we create and use energy across the country, the federal government seems content to leave the owners of the old energy world in charge of designing the new one. Big utilities are pushing hard to do what they do best -- getting the government to subsidize construction of multi-billion-dollar, far-flung, supersize solar and wind farms covering millions of acres, all connected via outsize transmission lines.... The evidence is growing that privately owned, consumer-driven, small-scale, geographically distributed renewables could deliver a 100 percent green-energy future faster and cheaper than big power projects alone. Companies like GE and IBM are talking in terms of up to half of American homes generating their own electricity, renewably, within a decade. But distributed power -- call it the "microgrid" -- poses an existential threat to the business model the utilities have happily depended on for more than a century. No wonder so many of them are fighting the microgrid every step of the way. ...


Microgrids give them nausea.

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Jul 22, 2009
from EnergyBoom.com, via HuffPost:
New Technology Produces Hydrogen from Urine
Until now, producing, storing and transporting hydrogen has been a costly process. Urea, a major component of urine, contains four hydrogen atoms per molecule, which are bonded to two atoms of nitrogen. The new technology uses electrolysis to break down the molecule using 0.37 volts which is applied across the cell. In comparison, extracting hydrogen from water uses large amounts of electricity; specifically, 1.23V is needed to split H20 molecules. Botte's method uses less energy than it takes to extract hydrogen from water. Simply put: by placing the inexpensive electrode into urine and applying current, hydrogen is released. Tests were performed using both synthetic urine, made from dissolved urea, and human urine. The device is also small enough to be used in vehicles. Botte estimates a fuel cell urine-powered vehicle could potentially travel up to 90 miles per gallon. The current prototype, which measures about 3 x 3 x 1 inches, can produce up to 500 milliwatts of power. The team is working on creating larger scale versions of the electrolyzer. The report was published in the Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Communications. ...


I'd love to pee-power my Prius!

ApocaDoc
permalink

Mon, Jul 20, 2009
from London Financial Times:
How to end America's deadly coal addiction
Converting rapidly from coal-generated energy to gas is President Barack Obama's most obvious first step towards saving our planet and jump-starting our economy. A revolution in natural gas production over the past two years has left America awash with natural gas and has made it possible to eliminate most of our dependence on deadly, destructive coal practically overnight -- and without the expense of building new power plants... By changing the dispatch rule nationally to require that whenever coal and gas plants are competing head-to-head, gas generation must be utilised first, we could quickly reduce coal generation and achieve massive emissions reductions. In an instant, this simple change could eliminate three-quarters of America's coal-burning generators and save a fortune in energy costs. Around 920 US coal plants -- 78 per cent of the total -- are small (generating less than half a gigawatt), antiquated and horrendously inefficient. Their average age is 45 years, with many over 75. They tend to be located amidst dense populations and in poor neighbourhoods to lethal effect. ...


Something tells me this idea is gonna get the coal industry steaming.

ApocaDoc
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