Ed Ring

If you want to grow biofuel in the desert, then you have to import water from somewhere. If the canals to transport the water are too big, then build a hundred small ones, with underground pipes moving some cubic meters per minute. Water irrigates earth which takes sunlight and using the water and minerals in the earth, sustains and creates new life, which is harvested to use as biofuel. How many gigawatt-years, or thermal units, how much potential energy can the land yield in any year? This pure quantitative measurement defines whether or not any biofuel, or any land, can yield the return you need to grow. Not every land easily can grow a healthy crop of oil palms, but with water nearly all biofuel crops and land grow more. Irrigation ain't what it used to be, and green, nurturing and efficient irrigation is more a reality, more affordable than ever. Bring water to the crops...

Tonight, January 31st, 2006, U.S. President Bush delivered his 6th "State of the Union" address. In this speech he touched on the energy challenges facing the U.S. and the world, as we search for the eventual replacement to oil. What will be next? It's too bad President Bush didn't talk more about the potential of photovoltaic electricity - something that could be the ultimate renewable. There are advances in nano-technology that in a few years may bring humanity photovoltaic panels that produce electricity for under $2.00 US per watt (installed), and last for half a century. But this is not something that can be taken for granted. In the meantime, Bush recommended research into clean coal, safe nuclear power, and biofuels. These are realistic choices, and in aggregate will do much to move the USA, and the world, away from dependence on oil. In addressing energy challenges, there were two more things Bush talked...

There is a lot of discussion these days about biofuel, and there should be. Biofuel is an excellent fuel - it burns cleaner than gasoline and it also is easier on the internal combustion engine. Moreover, we can grow biofuel, which means it is totally renewable. But can biofuel really replace crude oil? The answer, at least for now, is absolutely not. Not even close. Even if a fairly high-yielding biofuel crop were planted all over the world, yielding 2,000 barrels of either biodiesel oil or ethanol per year per square mile, and even if this biofuel were grown on every available scrap of farmland on earth, we would only replace 40% of the energy we're currently getting from crude oil. The algebra is immutable - about 10% of the world's land area consists of arable farmland, about 5.7 million square miles. If 100% of that land was planted with biofuel crops yielding 2,000 barrels of...

This blogging page didn't start on January 6th, 2006. That's just when the blogging started. But we started pointing www.ecoworld.net to these new .php pages back in September 2005, so we could have a forum for people to talk about reforesting. If you take a look at our Reforesting Forum you'll see what we're referring to. We had to establish one of our domain extensions on a totally different host because our main website, EcoWorld, which has been on the internet since May 1995, doesn't support .php, which in turn is necessary to support a forum - or a blog. Someday we'll move all of EcoWorld to .php, but in the meantime, go to www.ecoworld.net to find the blog, the forums, and the million dollar billboard, and go to either www.ecoworld.com OR www.ecoworld.org to find our main website. Profitable Reforesting is something we've been interested in for a long, long time. The idea, in a nutshell, is that by planting trees not just sustainably (which would...

How Much Electricity Would the Pumps Require? Why Save the Aral Sea? To spend somewhere between 25-50 billion dollars to refill the Aral Sea and turn the Aral Basin into a cornucopia of fishing, agriculture, forestry - a new example to the world of the old adage "water, wealth, contentment, health" - does seem like a bargain. And that's about all it would cost to build two canals to drain water from the Volga and Ob rivers and move enough south to refill the Aral Sea in about 25-50 years. But maybe this international effort could yield additional benefits - saving the banks of the Caspian Sea from rising waters, and removing fresh water from the Arctic Ocean to...

BATTERY POWERED CARS & THE CASE FOR THE SERIES HYBRID Hybrid cars, which combine the power of an electric motor with a gasoline engine, are often presented as a transitional technology that will eventually be supplanted by fuel cell cars. This argument rests on an assumption which may or may not be valid - that on-board hydrogen, used to create electricity using fuel cells - is a better electricity storage medium than batteries. Examining this assumption reveals some strong challenges to the idea that batteries are going to go away, or that hydrogen fuel cells are the ultimate vehicle technology. The first thing to understand is that hydrogen - at least...

HOW TO RESTORE & MAINTAIN AN ECOSYSTEM WHILE EARNING A PERMANENT PROFIT In recent years demand for tropical hardwoods has increased exponentially. This is due to rising populations as well as increasing standards of living. But tropical hardwoods have always been in strong demand. As building materials they are resilient, renewable, and aesthetically pleasing. India, a nation with a population of 1.1 billion, prizes tropical hardwoods such as teak but must import the wood, since they have lost over 90% of their forests. China, another rapidly industrializing nation with a population of 1.3 billion, also must import most of their tropical hardwoods. Throughout...

RELEASE THE RIVERS: Let the Volga & Ob Refill the Aral Sea The Aral Sea used to be an endless expanse of bountiful waters. Now only burning sands remain, and graveyards of ghost ships. On the salt-saturated seabed where the sea once ran deep, lie dessicated hulks of what only 50 years ago were great fishing fleets. This vast sea was an oasis of continental proportions, moderating the temperature, humidifying the air and the land, providing livelihoods for nearly a hundred thousand fishermen. To the east lay the vastness of asia, to the south the great ramparts of the Himalaya. Since the dawn of civilization the Aral sea, 66,000 square kilometers in size...

EarthWorks Continues Crusade to take their Revolutionary Soil Treatment Worldwide Wouldn't it be better to clean and reuse contaminated soil? What if toxins could be inexpensively removed from soil, on-site, instead of being hauled to a landfill? This is the vision that inspired Jonathan Brewer to found EarthWorks Environmental in 1998, and in barely four years his small company has treated over 50 million pounds of contaminated soil. Based in Sacramento, California, Brewer's company offers a unique and patented innovation, whereby mining equipment used to crush ore is adapted to grind up soil so that chemical or biological reagents can be sprayed onto the fine...

Capitalism makes everything possible. Capitalism leads to wealth, wealth leads to investment, investment spawns innovation, and through glorious creative destruction, today's innovations surpass and replace yesterday's, creating more wealth. Through capitalist initiative, civilization has advanced beyond the wildest imaginings of our forbears. Today we cure diseases that were incurable. We cultivate miracle crops to feed the world. There is no problem in that cannot eventually be solved if we just give capitalist entrepreneurs free rein. Yet in spite of compelling evidence, the capitalist system remains challenged. Globalization, privatization, the growth of intellectual property...