Ed Ring

If you live in the midwestern United States, it's getting pretty easy to find gasoline-ethanol blends. "E85" is a gasoline-ethanol blend that is 85% ethanol, with the ethanol typically refined from corn. This fuel can run in most automobiles with only minor alterations. Some new vehicles are designed now to run interchangeably on either an 85% ethanol-gasoline blend, or 100% gasoline. Want to find out more? Visit this collection of online...

The attempts to save the California Condor have been derided by critics who claim the money could have been better spent. They call the California Condor a "welfare species," unable to survive without ongoing - and very expensive - assistance from humans. Well what has actually happened is one of the greatest success stories in the history of protecting endangered species. If you review the population history of the condor, you will see that in 1982 when wildlife biologists first began capturing Condors to breed them in captivity, there were only 25 birds left in the wild. From this low point of 25 birds, for over 20 years wildlife biologists have patiently worked to breed Condors and reintroduce them...

Guest Blog by Robert Ovetz of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project: It's common knowledge that we are running out of cheap oil. What's not so well known is that we are also running out of big fish. The harsh reality is that catches of big fish - marlin, sharks, swordfish and tuna - are all declining rapidly. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations considers about 75 percent of all fish fully exploited, over-exploited or depleted. The crisis can be seen most in the Pacific, the world's largest source of tuna, where catches are shrinking along with the average size of the fish. Today a 70 pound swordfish - which is too young to have even reproduced - is considered "a good sized fish" and can be legally landed in the US. Just a few short decades ago the same fish averaged 300-400 pounds and could be caught close to shore with a harpoon. In the past two years, the Pacific has seen quotas, restrictions and freezes on...

Increasing prices for gasoline are having the welcome side effect of increasing the supply of alternative fuels. Unfortunately, alternative vehicle fuels are kind of like alternative energy in general - rapid percentage growth sounds impressive until you remember what a small base exists. While there are 685 filling stations in the U.S. offering "E85" bioethanol, for example, this is a minute fraction of America's 165,000 gas stations. If you want to know where to buy bioethanol, or any alternative fuel, a good source for information is the U.S. Dept. of Energy, which has a table showing "alternative fueling station counts by state and by type." Eventually E85, which is a mixture of 85% gasoline and 15% ethanol - usually grown from corn - will be widely available. Right now, however, unless you live in certain locales in Illinois, Iowa, or Minnesota, you will only find this fuel in very select places. Often E85 is cheaper than...

We've been skeptical about ultracapacitors. They are devices that could, theoretically, store electricity (expressed as kilowatts per kilogram) at ten or even twenty times the density that even the best batteries currently achieve. Today, however, a blogger by the name of Michael Urlocker, of Northern Technology & Telecom Research, published on the superblog website AlwaysOn a post where he notes evidence that a startup funded by Kleiner Perkins could be on the verge of a breakthrough. Here is his evidence, based on an obscure regulatory filing dated Jan 19 by Feel Good Cars Corp., which has an exclusive on the technology for small cars: Regulatory filings (search for Feel Good Cars Filing statement of jan 19, 2006): http://www.sedar.com/search/search_form_pc_en.htm Or an easier place is to go here, where Urlocker has compiled summary charts and downloads of the regulatory filings and other resources: www.ondisruption.typepad.com Urlocker's findings indicate a car...

Our latest story on EcoWorld concerns global warming. It's only with some trepidation we post stories questioning the conventional wisdom about global warming - regarding either the cause or the eventual severity. EcoWorld has posted numerous feature stories with contrarian perspectives; Recycling, DDT, Nuclear Power, and GMO's, to name some. In those articles points were raised that we stand behind. These issues are not beyond debate. Global warming, however, is an issue so complex, so cataclysmic, and so interrelated with other political battles, that it almost seems best to leave it alone - go with the conventional wisdom. The author we commissioned to write this story claims to have done his research with no bias, and his best guess as to the cause of global warming is probably that the sun - which fluctuates in output - is simply entering a hotter phase. What blasphemy! In every attempt we made to learn more about this...

Today is Earth Day, and right here in Sacramento U.S. President Bush is going to make an appearance at the California Fuel Cell Partnership - a depot of experimental fuel cell cars sponsored by a consortium of automakers, located just west of Sacramento's downtown. It will be interesting to see what quotes come out of this visit from the President. The astonishing thing about fuel cells and hydrogen is even environmental activists, for the most part, don't have the slightest idea what a fuel cell is, or that hydrogen is not a primary fuel. The truth about fuel cells is this - they aren't ready for vehicles and they may never be. We've written extensively about this in our blog "Fuel Cell Cars Aren't Ready" as well as in articles on our main website "The 100% Electric Car." To make a long story short, fuel cells cost way too much, use extremely expensive materials, break easily, and degrade quickly. Breakthroughs in fuel cell technology have been just around...

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who even detractors generally believe is a man with integrity, released a book in 2005 entitled "Our Endangered Values." In this book he has a chapter titled "The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism." He includes in this short but powerful chapter a definition of what he characterizes as a "more intense fundamentalism" that, according to Carter, is on the rise in America. Here then are some of Carter's definitions of a fundamentalist: Usually lead by authoritarian males. Believe they are right and anyone who disagrees is evil. Militant in fighting against any challenge to their beliefs. Demogogic with emotional issues. This seems to be a pretty good definition of intense fundamentalism not just in America, but all over the world. When Carter was President, he once gave a speech in the middle east where he pleaded that "the people of...

In our feature "Photovoltaics - The Ultimate Renewable" we demonstrate why photovoltaics are a compelling long-term investment even at 2006 prices. In short, the reason you would pay a lifetime cost of $.20 per kilowatt-hour to install a photovoltaic system is because once you'd absorbed that initial installation cost, your annual cost to replace photovoltaics at the rate they degrade is well below the market price of conventional electricity, under $.02 per kilowatt-hour. For this reason, even at today's high prices, photovoltaic manufacturers are selling them as fast as they can make them. So why isn't there more photovoltaic manufacturing capacity? Why is the installed base of photovoltaics in the world barely over 10 gigawatts? Most photovoltaics are manufactured using polysilicon, the same semi-conductor substrate used for integrated circuits. For years, the photovoltaic manufacturers have bought their...

If you are looking for examples of how concerned people have mobilized to help a species, the worldwide efforts to save the Great Sea Turtles is a good place to start. If it weren't for individuals getting involved on every continent, these ancient species, with lifespans that exceed humans, who travel thousands of miles through open ocean, might well be completely extinct by now.The list of organizations helping to protect the seven species of Great Sea Turtles is partially represented at the end of EcoWorld's current top story on the home page "Saving the Great Sea Turtle" but there are far more than we could compile there. A good place to find the names of hundreds of individuals and organizations helping the Great Sea Turtles is to access the directory at www.SeaTurtle.org. In the personal account by EcoWorld correspondant Daniela Muhawi, the struggle of the Hawksbill Sea Turtle to nest on Kamehame beach in Hawaii is described in...