Category: Uncategorized

Dave Talbot, for MIT Technology Review, reports that GE is one step closer to cheap hydrogen fuel:

Now researchers at GE say they’ve come up with a prototype version of an easy-to-manufacture apparatus that they believe could lead to a commercial machine able to produce hydrogen via electrolysis for about $3 per kilogram — a quantity roughly comparable to a gallon of gasoline — down from today’s $8 per kilogram. That could make it economically practical for future fuel-cell vehicles that run on hydrogen.

Tip of the hat to John Laumer at Treehugger.

Cheryl Rofer on peak oil: I’d like to give an overview here of why I think peak oil is overhyped.

The CBC reports on some troubling news out of Alberta troubling news out of Alberta:

A medical examiner in Alberta wants to know why there are reports of serious illnesses, including a rare cancer, in a small First Nations community near the province’s oilsands.

From the how-the-tables-have-turned files, the CBC is reporting that the opposition questions Harper’s ethics:

Opposition MPs blasted Stephen Harper on Thursday for his refusal to co-operate with the federal ethics commissioner, with one MP threatening to hold the prime minister in contempt.

Jack Layton sums up the situation nicely:

On an election that was supposed to be about ethical behaviour, the first thing we have is an effort to try and fire somebody who is looking into the ethical behaviour of the prime minister

I’m always amazed that voters are so eager to fall for promises of accountability from politicians on the campaign trail. It’s a promise that they just can’t keep; not because politicians are in any way more evil than the rest of us, but merely because they are under far more scrutiny than most of us.

Of course, Harper should be smarter than to get into the hole that he’s now dug himself into. Not co-operating with an ethics commisioners investigation is just plain stupid.

Kevin Kelly has a nice round up of consensus web filters:

Like a lot of people, I find that the web is becoming my main source of news. Some of the sites I read are published by individuals, but I find the most informative sites are those published by groups of writers/editors/correspondents, including those put out by Main Steam Media (MSM). However for the past three months my main source of “what’s new” has been a new breed of website that collaboratively votes on the best links.

According to an article by Bob Holmes for New Scientist, a new study by Terry Hunt finds that humans decimated Easter Island on arrival:

Archaeologists had thought that humans first arrived at the island around 800 AD, based on radiocarbon dating of kitchen scraps and cooking fires. Since the first signs of severe deforestation do not appear until the 13th century, this suggests the Easter Islanders lived several centuries without serious impact on their environment.

Not so, says Terry Hunt, an archaeologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Hunt and Carl Lipo of California State University at Long Beach, US, radiocarbon-dated charcoal from the earliest human traces in a new excavation on the island. The site, Anakena, is Easter Island’s only sandy beach and has long been regarded as the likeliest spot for first colonists to settle. To their surprise, the wood dated no earlier than 1200 AD – several hundred years more recent than they had expected.

David L Chandler reports for New Scientist that there is no future for fusion power:

Nuclear fusion will never be a practical source of electrical power, argues a prominent scientist in the journal Science.

Even nuclear fusion’s staunchest advocates admit a power-producing fusion plant is still decades away at best, despite forty years of hard work and well over $20 billion spent on the research. But the new paper, personally backed by the journal’s editor, issues a strong challenge to the entire fusion programme, arguing that the whole massive endeavour is never likely to lead to anything practical or useful.

Now that that’s settled, we can get all those nuclear physicists working on some of the really important problems, like creating a variety of broccoli that tastes like chocolate.

Benji Smith explains why he hate frameworks in a wonderfully entertaining rant:

I’m currently in the planning stages of building a hosted Java web application (yes, it has to be Java, for a variety of reasons that I don’t feel like going into right now). In the process, I’m evaluating a bunch of J2EE portlet-enabled JSR-compliant MVC role-based CMS web service application container frameworks.

And after spending dozens of hours reading through feature lists and documentation, I’m ready to gouge out my eyes.

Physics Today reports that nuclear energy is making a comeback:

Some two dozen power plants are scheduled to be built or refurbished during the next five years in Canada, China, several European Union countries, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa. In the US and the UK, governmental preparations are under way that may lead to 15 new reactor orders by 2007.

Megan Quinn writes of how Cuba survived peak oil:

At the Organipónico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project, a workers’ collective runs a large urban farm, a produce market and a restaurant. Hand tools and human labor replace oil-driven machinery. Worm cultivation and composting create productive soil. Drip irrigation conserves water, and the diverse, multi-hued produce provides the community with a rainbow of healthy foods.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s oil supply was cut in half, but contrary to the predictions of many peak oil theorists, Cubans have been able to cope.

It hasn’t been easy for them — the average Cuban, for example, has lost 30 pounds since the sudden decline in their oil supply — but it has been survivable, with all the nation’s social and political structures remaining intact.