Comments geosynchronous has made

  • Where's the proof?

    Zonbu says that their service is highly energy efficient, and they have a comparison of their device to a typical desktop PC here but their comparison only includes the device itself!  This is hardly a fair comparison when Zonbu requires you to keep most/all of your data and programs on their servers.  They also don't say whether the "standard PC" counts the monitor or not.  

    Your living room may be using less energy, but they have a room full of servers somewhere to keep up.  I wouldn't believe their claims until they have evidence that your OVERALL energy use is significantly lessened.  It may be true, but they may also be overstating their case significantly.On Hard to say, but Zonbu has clearly done its homework posted 2 years, 4 months ago 20 Responses

  • Eventually 7%?

    I'd say that's not a very clear reading of what the articles say.  That 7% of US electric supply number comes from the US Department of Energy projections.  These are notoriously ill-equipped to show the effects of policy changes... they are more of a straight-line extrapolation of what we do today.  I.e. instead of actually looking at what we think might happen (likely policy changes and their effect), they are much more likely to simply use (barely-modified) historic trends to guess at the future.  This does NOT accurately represent the change we will almost certainly see as states and the federal government move further and further toward renewable power requirements and climate change regulations.  Are you willing to assume that there is zero chance that the US will move in the next 15 years to aggressively reduce the risk of dangerous climate change?  

    These projections do just that, which is why I do not consider them credible.

    Furthermore, the argument that wind cannot provide more than 20% of the power on the electric grid is a weak one, similarly based on a "we haven't seen it yet, so it can't be done" mentality.  Grid operators are in fact smart people who are devising innovations of their own to deal with increasing portions of intermittent renewables connected to their systems.  Look to Europe for guidance here.

    The key here is not the findings coming out of the study, but the assumptions going into it.  If those assumptions allowed leeway for a little more realistic range of possible futures, they would be more trustworthy... and more inspiring.On Current Events posted 2 years, 6 months ago 1 Response

  • Does sound like NIMBY

    It's not clear to me that anybody has identified anything threatening about this plant.  In general, this kind of waste disposal is quite positive, yielding a useful compost, and using a process that is significantly better than other options in terms of its climate change impact.  As to why it's proposed out in the middle of nowhere... probably because the land is cheap enough to build a sprawling industrial facility on.  It sounds to me like somebody's trying to make a story here where there isn't one.On Don't Make Her Bust Out That Bustier posted 2 years, 9 months ago 4 Responses

  • Push back!

    Where's Moveon getting a zillion people to tell Obama that this is a dumb idea?  Or our friends in the big green organizations?  This is an important time to make sure that Obama's walk is as good as his talk.  Everybody likes him, but if we want to keep liking him when he's running for president, then we'd better make sure that he doesn't think our votes are automatic.

    In other words, I think that putting the pressure on right now is at least as important as it is later as the spotlight on him gets even brighter.  It gives him (A) and idea that "dirty hippies" don't automatically think he's god (even if most things he says do make us swoon) and (B) it does this while he still has the chance to change his position without be a flip-flopper.

    Don't wait until this idea gets a lot of airtime to point out that it's a problem.  Let's nip it in the bud.On With new energy-focused bills, Stevens delights enviros and Obama disappoints posted 2 years, 10 months ago 14 Responses

  • Energy balance = red herring

    Thank you to Julia Olmstead for the introduction to the concept of energy balance in biofuels.  I suggest not focusing too strongly on this, though.  Whether or not a biofuel uses slightly more or slightly less fossil energy to grow, process and distribute than just burning the fossil fuel in the first place is certainly interesting.  

    However as an energy engineer, the larger question for me is: if we're not even sure if its impact is positive or negative, then how much of our time and money is it worth?  If going to all the trouble of making corn-based ethanol yields only a 10% reduction in fossil fuel use (and concommitant environmental, political, and economic risks) then why not throw our weight behind something else? We could be spending our scarce dollars on supply options that payback the fossil energy used to make them many times over, rather than only coming out ahead by a few percent.

    Or with the same amount of investment (especially counting the vast subsidies to corn farming) we could be getting (for instance) much more efficient vehicles, reducing carbon emissions, oil imports, etc without using up sizeable portions of our land, water, soil, and other valuable resources.

    The most recent studies (e.g. Dan Kammen's work at UC Berkeley) have suggested that yes, using corn-based ethanol in your car emits a wee bit less global warming pollution than just burning gasoline.  Kammen's group then goes on to point out that ethanol can be much more beneficial if made from cellulosic sources.  Again, this points out that with the limited funds we have to spend on improving our energy outlook, we should spend them carefully on the things that get us the most benefit for our buck.  Compared to the other options out there, corn-based ethanol does not fit that description.On Find out which cars can run on ethanol and biodiesel posted 2 years, 12 months ago 13 Responses

  • Energy balance = red herring

    Thank you to Julia Olmstead for the introduction to the concept of energy balance in biofuels.  I suggest not focusing too strongly on this, though.  Whether or not a biofuel uses slightly more or slightly less fossil energy to grow, process and distribute than just burning the fossil fuel in the first place is certainly interesting.  

    However as an energy engineer, the larger question for me is: if we're not even sure if its impact is positive or negative, then how much of our time and money is it worth?  If going to all the trouble of making corn-based ethanol yields only a 10% reduction in fossil fuel use (and concommitant environmental, political, and economic risks) then why not throw our weight behind something else? We could be spending our scarce dollars on supply options that payback the fossil energy used to make them many times over, rather than only coming out ahead by a few percent.

    Or with the same amount of investment (especially counting the vast subsidies to corn farming) we could be getting (for instance) much more efficient vehicles, reducing carbon emissions, oil imports, etc without using up sizeable portions of our land, water, soil, and other valuable resources.

    The most recent studies (e.g. Dan Kammen's work at UC Berkeley) have suggested that yes, using corn-based ethanol in your car emits a wee bit less global warming pollution than just burning gasoline.  Kammen's group then goes on to point out that ethanol can be much more beneficial if made from cellulosic sources.  Again, this points out that with the limited funds we have to spend on improving our energy outlook, we should spend them carefully on the things that get us the most benefit for our buck.  Compared to the other options out there, corn-based ethanol does not fit that description.On A look at the impacts of biofuels production, in the U.S. and the world posted 2 years, 12 months ago 13 Responses

  • Driverless?

    I could swear that every BART train I've ever been on has a driver calling out the stops, waiting until everyone has boarded to close the doors and move forward, etc.

    As other posters have said, driverless trains are viable in contain areas (e.g. airports) and otherwise in urban areas they need to be grade-separated.  The idea of ANY grade-separated system being infrastructure-cost-competitive with bus lines is hard for me to believe.On Public transit that would work in Houston posted 3 years ago 29 Responses

  • But the point stands...

    Madden is right though: forestry-related offsets are considered relatively risky because someone may decide to come along and burn them down, because they are subject to wildfire, disease, and effects of climate change, and because they can often turn into monocrop plantation nightmares that offer marginal carbon benefits, but without much to benefit local people or habitat.

    Paying someone not to burn trees is possible, but a difficult way to market improvements, and sounds a lots like extortion ("give me all your money or I'll set this forest on fire!").  Not too popular.  A government could potentially make this kind of payment to its own people to maintain forest stocks counted in its national GHG inventory, but it's unlikey that there would be much in the way of fungible offsets generated by paying someone not to burn down a forest.On Peter Madden ponders the upsides and downsides of CO2 offsetting posted 3 years, 1 month ago 6 Responses

  • CA Business has a leading edge too

    Sunflower, Kif, you're both right.  The most of the media reporting on this over recent weeks has focused on 'environmentalist support' and 'business opposition', there are plenty of CA businesses who have been lobbying IN FAVOR of this law passing.  There was seldom mention of them, probably because it's not part of the expected dialectic.  For an example, look at the Bay Area Council, a group of large (and huge) businesses that came out in support of the GHG regulation.  

    And more generally of course, there are always businesses who are in a leadership position on climate (or labor, or human rights, or pollution, etc.) and who are often eager to see legislation of this sort that forces their competitors to play catchup.  Once businesses who are out ahead have established a soldid lead in an area like this, they become advocates for legal/regulatory changes to get the sticks-in-the-mud to join them in progress.

    This suggests that an effective changemaking route is:

    1. Find companies in a field exhibiting or claiming leadership

    2. Push on them to go further and make real progress

    3. Ally with them to lobby for laws that catch the stragglers.

    A long process, of course...On New bill should spark lots of discussion posted 3 years, 3 months ago 4 Responses

  • Even the CA Chamber of Commerce?

    What is the Chamber of Commerce if not a business group?  Aren't the often the first to oppose many types of regulation?On AB 32 and Arnie's ABC 32 (C is for "caps optional") posted 3 years, 3 months ago 2 Responses

  • What exactly are they trying to say?

    Are Renstrom and Perkowitz just using this column to defend Adam Werbach?  Hardly seems necessary, and besides - their derisive language and strawman retort to Sellers and Dudley is embarassingly weak.  Robertson? Great.  Luntz? Great.  They're both talkers, who've gotten themselves some new talk that I approve of.  But Wal-Mart?  Talk is nice, but I need more than talk before I get excited.

    In the same way that Werbach's original DoE piece was focused on critiquing the kind of environmentalism that is only practiced in the last bastions of the old guard (like the Sierra Club) and ignored the rest of the greens out there actually movement-building and accomplishing things, Renstrom and Perkowitz' implication that everyone who's not celebrating in the streets about Wal-Mart's claimed revelation is an "ineffective, effete purist" fails to show awareness of avenues of progress outside those of "the big compromise".

    I'd like to see the head of the Sierra Club show a bit more respect for her accomplices here in the vast environmental conspiracy.  We're out here getting things done, and to have an extremely poorly-argued (I'm sorry, it's not nice but I don't know how else to put it) piece lash out against other enviros for having a different [more exacting] vision of avenues to progress is souring at best.  I'd like the Sierra Club to join the rest of us on the ground, rather than shooing us away.  Previous posters have astutely noted the difference between "progress" and "pledging progress", and until I see something serious in the former category from Wal-Mart, I refuse to let the country's oldest hiking club goad me into excitement.On Why won't America's environmentalists accept positive developments? posted 3 years, 3 months ago 22 Responses