Ed Ring

The recent launch of Tata's "Nano," along with the high interest in the Smart "Fortwo" micro-hybrid car, indicate rapid steps towards a scenario where hundreds of millions of affordable, gas-sipping vehicles are sold over the next 10-20 years - a most welcome development. After all, the independently owned automobile is probably one of the most liberating innovations in the history of the world. So how will the world adapt to 1.0 billion more automobiles on the roads? Per acre, almighty Redwoods are among the greatest carbon sinks. In our latest interactive online spreadsheet, "Can Forests Offset Automotive CO2" we evaluate the impact of 1.0 billion new cars on the road in terms of the ability of...

Nine European partners (including BMW) representing the industrial and research sectors have done something clever. Working with the University of Bath, the collaboration has given birth to a new kind of vehicle for crowded, polluted, urban driving environments. At one-meter wide, incorporating the maneuverability of a toyota or a motorcycle - including the ability to tilt - and featuring the high safety rating of a Smart car, the three-wheeled prototype they developed is indeed "CLEVER," i.e., "Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport." The vehicle runs on compressed natural gas putting out about a third of the carbon dioxide emissions of the good old family sedan. The project cost £1.5...

It's been a long time since land development in California was governed solely by market forces. For decades, and especially in the last 10-15 years, myriad regulations and agencies have had a hand in land use decisions. To some extent, of course, this is appropriate. There are legitimate reasons why we empower our government to limit land development that could constitute a genuine threat to endangered species or watershed health, for example. And the goals of farmland preservation and protection of open space are well-intentioned and worthy values. As we discuss in "California's Land Use Choices," however, we think these regulations have gotten out of hand. Every development in California seems to be a threat to farmland, open space, watersheds, wildlife; in our opinion, balance is gone. And as a result, homes cost $500,000 and sit in yards so small you have to decide between the trampoline and the wading pool...

It has never been easy to get figures for actual rainforest area - and our estimates based on what we could find had settled as follows:  There were about 8.0 million square miles of tropical rainforest in the world 150 years ago, and we're now down to around 3.0 million square miles. Absolutely devastated former forest, hopefully on track to regenerate. (Photo: WildMadagascar.org) Climate change consists of three very distinct, only somewhat interrelated phenomena:  global warming, extreme weather, and droughts.  To reiterate:  Our position is that all three of these phenomena are worsened when tropical rainforests are lost - and that the climate consequences of tropical...

It is fascinating to see how top blogs get top traffic. They are prolific - 3x+ per day per author; short pieces; on point. Naturally it is harder to maintain such output if one is simultaneously constructing backup spreadsheets - time is required to create the numerical model that validates the verbage. But are all types of quantitative reasoning so subject to slow-downs in output? OUR RAINFOREST FOR YOUR SUV? (Ref. Reforesting vs. Biofuel, or Orangutans vs. CO2 Offsets) The answer is no, unfortunately. Anecdotal and rote recitations of selective, randomly representative bits of quantitative data are appended to emotional appeals and lend unwarranted credibility to these appeals. When numbers are nothing but...

For 2008, California's state government needs something like $14 billion more than they think they're going to collect.  It is absurd to cut services.  It is absurd to lay off workers.  And it is especially absurd to raise taxes.  All we have to do is end the injustice of "two Californias," where public employees have retirement benefits far in excess of what private sector taxpayers - whose taxes fund those pensions - can ever hope to receive. As we believe we demonstrate in the online interactive spreadsheet "Pension Calculations," if all public employees were given social security and medicare in their 60s, instead of pension benefits far more generous that begin in their 50s, California would have NO budget deficit.  This reform would also encourage more crossover between the public and private sector, since public sector employees would no longer be slaves to their pensions.  And by...

Today the BBC ran a story entitled "Grass Biofuels cut CO2 by 94%."  This 94% is meant to be in comparison to fossil fuel, based on the fact that a recently grown biofuel, when burned, can only release as much CO2 as it absorbed when it was growing.  Thus biofuels are considered "carbon neutral."  The BBC story referenced a study just released by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences entitled "Net Energy of Cellulosic Ethanol from Switchgrass." Switchgrass - an environmentally attractive potential source for cellulosic ethanol. (Photo: USDA) One of the reasons many people are enthusiastic about switchgrass and other cellulosic crops is because they are believed to cause less collateral environmental damage.  Switchgrass is presumably...

For years the conventional wisdom among environmentalists and policymakers has been the following:  Desalination is too expensive, too energy intensive, too environmentally dangerous, and not scaleable.  We disagree emphatically with all of these notions. A small desal system on the California coast. (Photo: NOAA) The environmental impact of desalination is negligible if the brine is released into a major ocean current.  Certainly on North America's west coast, where the California current moves some 20-30 sverdrups per year past any outfall point, the impact of brine is a non-issue (ref. Sverdrups & Brine).  As for the impact of pipelines on the seabed to move brine 10-20 kilometers...

Geothermal power doesn't get the attention that wind and solar power alternatives get, but it should.  Right now the installed base of geothermal energy worldwide totals about 9.5 gigawatts of output, somewhat less than wind generating capacity worldwide, and somewhat more than photovoltaic capacity worldwide.  But unlike the wind and solar installations, geothermal energy runs at capacity pretty much 24 hours a day, making the actual power yielded from geothermal sources still substantially greater than wind or solar energy. A remote drilling rig probes the earth's crust. Today we caught up with Susan Petty, President of the start-up Altarock, a company formed to...

In previous posts, "Fisker's Photovoltaic Cars," and "Photovoltaic Powered Cars," we have reported on the potential for commuters to power their vehicles with energy collected from rooftop photovoltaics.  But until now we haven't been able to share some of our spreadsheet analysis with our readers.  While it's still not possible to include these online interactive spreadsheets in WordPress, here are two on plain .html pages that hopefully can make more clear the costs and challenges. Cross-section of series hybrid Chevy Volt, possibly in showrooms by 2010. (Photo: GM Volt) In the online interactive spreadsheet "Gigawatts per E-Commuters" there are only a few assumptions - the quantity of commuters using electric cars, the average round-trip...