Ed Ring

With the advent of the Tesla Roadster, a new generation of 100% battery powered car is upon us. It's about time. But hybrids with extra battery packs, known as "strong hybrids," and their counterparts, hybrids that you can plug in to recharge, appropriately known as "plug-in hybrids," are moving out of the hands of tinkerers and into the mainstream. An interesting study from CalCars.org, entitled "100+ MPG Hybrids" makes the case that cars powered by electricity from the power grid can get over 100 miles to the gallon. This is somewhat misleading - because cars powered from the grid, to the extent they're using grid electricity stored on-board, are not getting miles per gallon, they're getting miles per...

Biofuel production is limited by the quantity of biomass on the planet. As we've demonstrated in our report Biofuel vs. Photovoltaics, there isn't enough arable farmland on the planet for biofuel to even begin to replace crude oil. But what if farmland is not the only source for biofuel feedstock? There are two primary categories of biofuel; bioethanol which is distilled from fermented plant sugars, and biodiesel which is refined from plant oils. Sugar cane is a good example of a bioethanol feedstock, and the African oil palm is a good example of a biodiesel feedstock. In most of these cases biofuel must come from an actual crop, usually from a crop that is also part of the human food chain. What if biofuel could be extracted from crop waste after the food is harvested, or from grasses or from wood? An interesting report entitled "The World's Most Productive Ethanol Plant" from The BioPact, a website that promotes economic cooperation between European...

It finally happened. The future is here. The future is now. Tesla Motors in San Carlos, California, a company we scooped about a month ago in Silicon Valley- The New Detroit?, has released specifications on its revolutionary battery powered car. Several years ago we published The Car of the Future, which described the ambitious plans of a start-up company to build a fuel cell powered car they would deliver to a grateful world. Then last year we published The Battery Powered Car, which, among other things, demonstrated that batteries are twice as efficient an energy storage mechanism as fuel cells, and considerably cheaper to obtain - and that grid electricity can power a car for a fraction of what gasoline cars cost to operate. And now the next generation, 100%...

To say "create carbon sinks" is another way to say "reforest the planet." Ever since EcoWorld posted its first page back in May 1995, our original and enduring mission is to promote reforesting. Our goal is to record a doubling of the timber mass of planet earth during the 50 year period from 1995 to 2045. But only trees? Why don't environmentalists reforest their dogma? Why are environmentalists usually perceived to be a leftist? More specifically, why are environmentalists usually perceived to be anti-development, anti-capitalism, anti-nuclear, anti-genetic-modification, pro-recycling no matter what, and pro-carbon-reduction by any means? Of course we need to quickly reforest the earth. Until we know for certain that forests cannot absorb anthropogenic CO2, we must put at least as much efforts into reforestation as we put into further regulating and cutting human industrial carbon emissions. If only 5% of the CO2...

About a year ago, we published a story entitled "The Radical Center," which reported on a group in New Mexico called the Quivira Coalition who are drawing together ranchers and environmentalists to work together. They are promoting the fact that underdrawing on a regenerating resource - such as forage on rangeland - will cause the sustainable output of that resource to increase each year. That is, by letting ecosystems recover, the amount of sustainable grazing that can eventually be permitted will become greater than the land previously endured when being overgrazed. This isn't the only example of a win-win that occurs when rationality prevails. "The Radical Center" is a perfect way to describe this approach, because it takes courage to move away from entrenched extremes and find common ground. Agreement is usually possible, when emotions are removed and competing positions are distilled to their most logical...

It may not be environmentally correct to say so, but with oil prices at $75 per barrel, it is profitable to bring heavy oil into production. Doing this buys the world - at current rates of consumption - nearly another century of supply based on known reserves of heavy oil. A study by the London based World Energy Council, entitled "The Future for Heavy Oil and Bitumen" includes a chart showing world reserves of conventional oil, as well as world reserves of heavy oil. Their assessment of conventional oil agrees with most other reports, i.e., the world once had about 1.8 trillion barrels of recoverable light crude oil, and about 800 billion of those barrels have already been consumed. At current rates of consumption...

We've been trying and trying to see if there really is compelling evidence that humans are the cause of global warming, and we can't. With most contrarian positions we've published, whether they regarded DDT, GMO's, Chemicals, Recycling, Nuclear Power, The Hydrogen Hoax, Transportation, or Suburban Sprawl, it's been pretty easy to allow differing points of view to be expressed - and remain a passionate environmentalist. But are global warming theories, like these other issues, really still open to debate? In our search for answers we've encountered countless informed individuals who didn't have the slightest understanding of the science, and the scientists we've questioned have quickly either given up trying to explain, saying the issues were too complex for a lay person to understand, or they abandoned their initial position and acknowleged that we aren't really sure whether or not global warming is a product of human industrial activity. This is too bad...

It's about time someone took Northern California's high-technology prowess and applied it to building the green car. In San Carlos, California, in the heart of the high-tech capitol of the world, a new company called "Tesla Motors" is taking up the challenge to build an electric car. As we demonstrate in "The 100% Electric Car," there is technology available now to build a car that will run on batteries, with a range sufficient for nearly all normal commutes. Also in the article is a table that shows that at $.10 per kilowatt-hour (and electricity is often cheaper than that), it can cost under $.03 per mile to drive a car charged with electricity from the grid. People who criticize battery-powered cars ignore the facts. The legendary General Motors EV-1 had a 1,600 pound battery pack and a range of about 100 miles. This was a great car; it had a range sufficient for most commute cycles, and it had a top speed of 185 MPH! The...

In parts of the world where there are heavy rains for a few months per year, then an extended dry season, managing water is a challenge. This is particularly true if there is a large urban population in such a region. Typically this challenge is met through construction of large storage dams and reservoirs. But there is another way. For thousands of years urban dwellers have constructed cisterns to harvest runoff. But for the last fifty years or so, the conventional wisdom has been to ignore the potential of cisterns, and focus on dam building. Whether or not dams are a valid solution to water management, the ancient practice of building water storage capacity in the form of decentralized cisterns is making a comeback. In a newly launched superblog "network of networks," GoingOn.com, an ABC News Network reporter Dinesh Rawat has just posted news from India, where in Rajasthan, government policy is...

In spite of the fact that California is a state with ample open space for building, California is one of the worst places in the world to try to buy a house. There's plenty of room for new homes, but far too few ever get built. At a staggering 163,707 square miles in size, California is so huge that its 35 million inhabitants only average 213 people per square mile. Germany, by contrast, has 598 people per square mile. The United Kingdom has 641 people per square mile. In spite of having all this empty land, Californians have deluded themselves into thinking their open space is in jeopardy. Over the last 30 years, a powerful anti-growth lobby has developed that has stymied virtually all attempts to build roads and houses. Very few developers are able to weather this storm, and the homes they build are crammed onto lots so small you can barely fit a swingset in the back...