Shipping is a mega pollutor. Even though shipping companies like Maersk are investing in cleaner engines and even in synthetic fuels, sadly the whole point of international shipping is that it monetizes fossil fuels. Long distance logistics creates the economy, it requires money to flow through the banks, it consumes fossil fuels. It makes banks and oil companies rich and important. Whatever you get from china, banks and oil companies get a cut of the produce.
Shipping companies are an essential part of ‘global economy’ trap
But there is an opportunity here. Shipping in the current form will not stay, it is simply too dumb. Europe is going to tax imported solar panels from China, but how will it respond the import of a solar panel plant from China? Way more efficient because there is no real link between Euro’s and Chinese coal imports from Australia anyway.
"Commercial vessels emitted 3 percent of the world’s carbon in 2007, and that may increase to 18 percent by 2050 as global trade increases and fleets expand, said the UN’s International Maritime Organization." (source)
Shipping can clean up, by starting to use wind power directly (using kites) or to make fuels, by starting to farm algae for biofuels at sea, by converting to Ammonia (NH3) altogether, but of course that would overturn the link with the fossil industry and the banking sector, which now makes the whole enterprise possible (ships get cheap almost unrefined fuel). For the shippers there’s only the desire to keep doing what they are doing though, so there is hope.
Above video should be part of the media campaing where Maersk announces it’s first clean energy driven service. Slowsteaming is a speed that dolphins can keep up with, so they where seen playing in front of the bow. Pitty that bow bellows out poison a few hundred meters further back. Opportunity knocks.
Billions of gallons of fuel for the taking
Richard Branson is on this as well, as he owns Virgin Atlantic. He tries to make ethanol fuel from flared CO using mircobes, so maybe ships can even do this at sea or in port, doubling the utility of the fuel!
P.S.
Ampex Power, a startup of Shell and Nuon, does exactly the same thing as Skysails, but with a rigid wing instead of an inflatable kite. The system uses 1/20th of the materials for an equivalent turbine. This may work better, it will at least be cheaper. It seems the kite is actually a better solution because it does not require a runway. Why Ampex had to try and succeeded in getting 100.000 crowdfunding is a mystery, oh, no, because banks don’t like renewables, and Shell and Nuon don’t have cash!!
Secretly both Ampex and Skysails are VAWT, vertical wind turbines, that have always been cheaper and easier to build.
This extrinction will have no name, at least not for those that will study it in about 4 million years or so, the time it usually takes for some sentient lifeform to recover from scourge of toxic gasses produced by oceans, dead because of global warming. It may take a lot longer.
"Climate change is expected to have significant influences on terrestrial biodiversity at all system levels, including species-level reductions in range size and abundance, especially amongst endemic species" (source)
But it is happening, and the numbers are not mild, even without assuming this H2S toxic onslaught. The higher temperatures and changing weather conditions are enough for a pretty serious cull. This then of course is not the end of it, just the beginning.
57±6% of plants and 34±7% of animals are likely to lose ≥50% of their present climatic range by the 2080s.(source)
On the other hand, if we take action the results will be different. We can’t read the full article but of course once we are focussed on mitigation and reversal of the damage (using abundant renewables and perhaps liquid energy produced using the sun in f.i. the North African desert), then the outcome will be much better:
With mitigation, however, losses are reduced by 60% if emissions peak in 2016 or 40% if emissions peak in 2030. (source)
We still don’t know if that will be the end or just a slowdown. We can confirm that with a will to expand renewables and store carbon we will see a pickup at the point renewable energy is starting to drive the expansion, theoretically enabling us to catch more CO2 then was ever released since the start of using fossil fuels.
Check out Greenseaupwelling about how to use the deep ocean water to increase fish stocks and capture CO2 and cool the atmosphere
Cooling our planet is a big factor in retaining plant life as long as we don’t have a way to make a concerted effort to exit carbon. Models of growing algae in our oceans show that method would work to catch significant amounts, but it’s main effect would lie in the cooling of the air, bennefitting plants on land..
Good video on the ins and outs of passive houses, houses that get most of their energy from passive sources. Maybe it should be called ‘comfort houses’, because their comfort is more intrinsic than in conventional houses.
Morocco already has a parabolic trough solar thermal plant, and it has been courted by Desertec to do more, to become a power producer for Europe. But it turns out it will work with Saudi developer ACWA Power to build the biggest solar plant on the planet, and rightly so!
It is the first of a two-phase project, due for completion in 2020, that is expected to cover 3,000 hectares and have a generation capacity of 500 megawatts, enough to met the electricity needs of Ouarzazate’s 1.5 million residents.
The project to generate electricity is slated to cost 420,- Euro per power consumer. That either means it is intrinsically extremely profitable or that it makes electricity progressively cheaper. We see the latter in Germany where electricity prices drop when the sun is out or the wind blows (see how well they balance each other here). The third way, which is our roboeconomic way, is to create money based on the market value of the energy so that it can be traded, sold, and used, without disturbing the larger money supply system (which is carbon based, we call it the carboncredit system).
Solar Trough Thermal Power Plant – Aïn Beni Mathar
">Soon Morocco will realize its lands hold limitless bounty, and the dryness and unihabitable nature of it may become a thing of the past. Let’s hope by then there’s no ban on increasing rainfall or clouds, to maximize the output of the solar plants.
Rick Sawyer is telling about his experience in shale drilling rigs. The money makes it easy to bribe people into silence. Shale gas is an environmental diseaster. Lots of radioactive brine, many people with health issues..listen to the story.
Seventeen year old kids cleanig trucks, breathing the fumes. Half if Ricks friends are sick.
"The association between shale-oils and skin cancers, particularly of the scrotum, was demonstrated by analyses of 65 cases of skin cancer, including 31 of the scrotum, from the Scottish shale-oil industry." (source)
De hoeveelheid zuurstof in de atmosfeer neemt gestaag af
De 400 ppm CO2 zijn bereikt, maar omdat het een stijgende grootheid is werkt dit geruststellend, "we zijn op de goede weg", een ‘nieuw record’ heeft zelden een negatieve lading, en mensen zien en horen dus geen alarmerende taal, en reageren niet.
Wow, historisch hoog! Bravo. De positieve parameter werkt niet als afschrikmiddel, en is iets waar de domste barbequer misschien zelfs trots op zal zijn "Ik eet bacon, zoveel als ik kan!".
Onze achterkleinkinden moeten ook kunnen ademen
Zuurstof als negatieve indicator werkt ook niet, want de angst die dit zal oproepen werkt verlammend. Mensen raken erdoor gedemotiveerd, hoewel het ook spanning kan oproepen, dwz de klok in de James Bond film zet de zinnen op scherp. Het zal echter in menselijke termen nog lang duren voor zuurstof een probleem wordt, geologisch in een nanoseconde, nl. over zo’n 4000 jaar. Maar dat is gerekend met functionerende oceanen die voor 50% van de zuurstof productie zorgen. Die oceanen ondervinden echter significante stress door het stijdgende CO2 gehalte.
Laten we de modiale totale hernieuwbare capaciteit als te maximeren maat nemen, per gebied als precentage van de behoefte
De positieve indicator kan maar het beste de hoeveelheid hernieuwbare energie capaciteit die beschikbaar is zijn, zonder biomassa mee te tellen. Dus wind, zon, golf en geothermische energie. Deste meer daar van is, deste sterker is de lobby die onze aarde en het huidige leven erop wil behouden. Mensen die voor fossiel, nucleair en veel biomassa (vooral stukken natuur waar je niet op hoeft te wachten en die je niet hoeft te kweken) zijn, of die hier geen kwaad in zien zijn met de beste bedoelingen niet oordeelkundig.
Earlier we wrote about what we call ‘Hypertransparency’ as the new standard for business around the world. Not secrecy or corporate privacy protection but on the contrary, an open protocol for all business transactions, payments activities. Why? Because our planet is being razed by companies that like secrecy because what they do is against the will of a majority of the stakeholders, those that live on or in the land where they do business.
At the same time it’s clear no online transmission or phone call remains untracked. The existence of giant datacenters storing each and every detectable move of any individual has been reported. It has been demonstrated no CCTV footage of smartphone is safe, and that is probably only the tip of the surveillance iceberg. Surveilance that creates two sides : The one observing en the one being observed. That split can be the engine of a societal division and power structure on it’s own, no need for banks or armies.
Neutrino detectors try to see tiny flashes of light in a large water tank, caused by the collision of a neutrino with the water. It’s a thousand hyperallert eyes staring at whatever happens.
Citizens are not incouraged to be observers. An 75 year prison sentence for a man recording video of police action proves this point. The power difference not only lies in the action that can be taken, but also in the (shared) perception of reality and evidence gathering that is allowed. Police are growing more brutal everywhere, the author witnessed a young man carried by 4 policemen over 100 meter without any reason right in the middle of Rotterdam, without any emergency or threat as an excuse. This type of behavior is intimidating, demoralizing and unwanted in a free society. People are not puppets and things should not get worse. There is no reason for things to get more dire, just that we change course regarding the nature of our economy.
We need more free thought, not more conformity. Conformity can be a sign of brainwashing (J van Meerloo)
With all this in mind the solutions are several, and because it’s an existential battle between those that try to consolidate and protect the ruling system and those that see its flaws, who are wrongly identified as a threat. All systems need an ‘out’ a way to change it. If that way is not build in as with democracy (replace the brains with new better ones by public vote), a system will consolidate and petrify (this is happening with China atm). An entire country can become a blind force ready to crash into anything if its government becomes reliant on propaganda and terrorizes its citizens into mindless conformity.
The solution is free speech, and per extention, in Hypertransparency.
An idea, or more an image got stuck in my head a few days after writing the first hypertransparency article, it was that of a lightbulb in an big space, surrounded by glass fiber endings, as the core of some giant server. It was a materialization of the concept, it was a way to make an incorruptible broadcasting device. The single source of information (transmitted by the light) would channel all transactions and make them available to all listeners exactly at the same instant. That way nobody would have to doubt the veracity of the data. Neutrino detectors would be a good example of the device, hence the picture above. They are built to detect tiny flashes resulting from the collision of water and neutrinos.
A single source transmits all commercial data to all
It seems irony that to get all people on the same page one would have to build the inverse of a sun, an internal sun that treats all participating in the global organization equally. But it is not irony, it is logical, that the same process that treats plants and animals equally, the same type of process that makes us treat people equally, would have to develop to make our automated mechanical reality work in synchrony and fairness.
Hypertransparency is a better fix than laws that need to be agreed an applied globally, because that system is so easy to corrupt. The problem is identity : As soon as people stop identifying with each other they stop treating each other equally. Human rights can be ignored, so a solution has to be found that bypasses differences of identity by creating a globally shared experience.
Of course we have a system like this at the moment, it is called Twitter.
Right now the thing closest to the device described is Twitter, which allows any world citizen to share his/her thoughts with in theory all others instantly. Its system of timestamping the thought, distributing it (and monitoring it) and leaving it accessible over time is totally unique.
The above device is a lightsource that would be able to transmit the datastream to listeners, like an internal sun in the neutrino detector, but of course we would not need a detector that sensitive, just a way to detect the data transmitted in a way that ensures all obeservers share the same ‘reality’. But we have in fact a device that can do what would be needed for global hypertransparency, in operation at Los Alamos laboratories for 2 years now : Quantum encryption. What is it? A device that transmits data from a central hub to ‘ends of the spokes’ with no possibility of tampering with it. The only place one can tamper with the data is before it is send. Full throtle irony : It’s developed with secrecy in
“Quantum cryptography is the Eldorado of security, promising the potential for perfect communications secrecy. The concept is easy to understand. The laws of quantum mechanics state at the photon level, a particle cannot be measured without altering it. A message encoded in photons could not be read without altering it – which means the recipient will always know if it has been intercepted.”(source)
Quantum encryption is not encryption at all. It is just a way to send signals so that natures laws don’t allow you to detect them without leaving a trace. So you write your letter on super vulnerable paper, put it in a tube, tie it to a pigeon and whomever reads it before it reaches it’s destination will damage it so much it is obvious it was compromised.
Why does equal access to information symbolize democracy and justice? Because it makes it impossible to escape responsibility in the face of the shared reality.
Quantum encryption is kind of hard to pull off, but it does guarantee all recievers get the same message, just like they looked at exactly the same data, although not at the same time. The idea is to develop quantum routers, that somehow can interact with the data and route it. This is not possible by definition without destoying the original message, leaving room for tampering or secrecy. Hypertransparency would argue encryption is to be avoided in all cases, so there is no loss. But to implement a quantum data system why not use space. Why not create a network of satellites that form a mesh of transmitters and recievers, able to compare data from multiple sources (visible satellites) to resolve the right data to transmit, a bit like GPS. Again we see that tampering with reality becomes harder when more eyes are on it. If we want to respond adequately though it is paramount we start sharing it hypertransparently.
Smart use of our planet and suns resouces would mean abundance for all. The struggle is caused by those that want to leverage scarce fossil fuels in an artificial financial and media reality
A more practical incarnation of the concept would be a simple webservice accesible to all to report transactions, messages and contracts. Like an open administration now already demanded by the tax office and accountancy firms. www.transparency.org/shell
Er werd geschreven over heffingen tot 68% op uit China geimporteerde zonnepanelen. Dat zou een prijsverhoging van ongeveer 27% betekenen voor complete systemen. Deze heffing zou 1 juni ingaan. Deze maand lijkt dus voorlopig de beste maand om zonnepanelen te kopen, met een subsidie, belasting voordeel voor installatie en de lage prijzen.
The EU duties, which will come into effect once the Commission publishes the decision in its Official Journal, will be set at an average of 47 percent, officials said.
Natuurlijk zijn wij tegen deze heffingen omdat ze slechts als doel hebben ons in de handen van de VS export de duwen, aangezien Europa niet veel fabrieken heeft. Vervolgens kan men in de VS moeilijk gaan doen over productie en kunnen wij nog decennia worstelen om ons land op het niveau van Duitsland te krijgen. De WTO zit hier achter, net als achter veel andere destructieve handels constructies.
De heffing van ~47% zal resulteren in een kosten toename van ~20%
The US is going big on Geothermal. It will spend $7 Billion on geothermal energy sources to power it’s military installations. The Pentagon has been pushing renewables for some time, with Paterus explaing everywhere climate change is no joke.
Geothermal energy taps the heat caused by nuclear degradation of our earths crust
The US Navy already developed technology to make fuels uit of ocean water and electricity, so it seems after 40 years of studying the problem some choices have been made. Wars will remain possible even if there’s no reason anymore because we all live of abundant renewables.
Using water, electricity and CO2 one can make almost any hydrocarbon. Similar to Powe to Gas
Strategically Geothermal is a better option than Wind because the powerplants are more difficult to destroy in a conflict. Also there’s a need to cool the crust a bit as Earthquakes have been more frequent, due to removing massive amounts of ice from the Poles (equivalent to several cubic kilometers of water), also causing more vulcanic eruptions.
Our planet goes to shit but Noooo! don’t touch the Koch Brothers, BP, Exxon, Shell or the other culprits!
As the free market rages on like a brushfire, wasting valuable energy needed for a smooth transition on ever more climate destroying pollution, the armies can’t afford such foolishness. Once geothermal energy can be converted to diesel or ethanol fuel for new geothermal drilling sites, the cap will come of this resource. Better start now.
