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Illustrations provide insight on sustaining humanity and alternative energy spending
April 16, 2009 | 17
Preserving the planet includes improving the human condition. Here is who needs help the most and who can most afford to give it.
People living on $2 or less a day.
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Preserving the planet includes improving the human condition. Here is who needs help the most and who can most afford to give it.
People living on $200 a day or more.
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City dwellers produce, on average, less CO2 from fossil fuels than suburban or rural residents, who use vehicles and outdoor equipment more.
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Sooner rather than later. Gilbert N. Plass, senior scientist, Aeronutronic Systems, Inc., in Scientific American, July 1959 & 50 years ago!
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Despite the recession, venture capitalists boost clean technology funding.
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One billion sludgelike gallons of toxic ash waste from a coal-fired power plant burst last December from the giant surface pond storing it, swamping 300 acres of land west of Knoxville, Tenn....[More]
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17 Comments
Add CommentThis seems oversimplified and biased.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love how they mention the 1950 thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWanna see how amusing the History of "Man-Made Global Warming and The Coming Ice Age" is?
View the trends, what scientists said, and what the media reported. :)
http://www.digital-almanac.com/digitalalmanac/2009/?folio=68
Of course that's not saying we're not causing some of this on going up and down trend. But its amusing to see the trends.
Sorry this is a better link to view.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.almanac.com/timeline/
Dear Sir,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing the approach outlined ( Presentation at http://picasaweb.google.co.in/r.bojji/AGPTransportjpegs25jan09# )transportation is possible at speeds of 210 mph from city to city. Retooled cars/trucks on gravity-powered roads allow for transportation without fossil fuels and transport cargo from any point to any point at 60-mph. Existing metro rail can be powered by gravity doing away the electrical traction.
Detailed specification in US Patent application number: 12184151 dated 07/31/2008 provides more information regarding the "Gravity Powered Rail, Road and Runways transportation systems".
(www.atrilab.com)
The existing roads and rail infrastructure can be primarily powered by gravity attaining speeds of 60 mph.
The implications are gravitational force can provide in case of USA:
1. 360 KMPH rail based intercity transportation saving 70 to 87% of electrical energy depending on stoppages
2. Urban metros, even existing ones can save 90 to 97% of electrical energy with short halts
3. Cargo can be moved from any point to any point in USA/any country with gravity power, saving 90 to 97% of energy from fossil fuels
4. USA can stop importing 8m barrels of oil daily and stop 3.5b tons of carbon emissions per annum and India & others too can do the same.
Comparison of energy requirements In Kwh/1000 seat.km (Practical estimates)
Current Systems Gravity Power Systems
Inter-city trains 61.11 6
High Speed Trains 147.22 55
The projects for USA would need investment of $450 billion, but no subsidy from the government, because they generate 30 to 40% cash surpluses. They generate also close to one million jobs. Eternal free gravity force can kick start projects in all the states for transportation infrastructure to be futuristic, totally powered by gravitational force. Within four years, we can complete the commercial implementation and get benefits, without any need for waiting for research to be completed.
India can have Rs 50,000 cr projects in private sector linking cities for cargo movement and intra-city travel too-- all financially viable , to save more than 60% of oil imports, using the Gravity Powered transportation systems.
In Africa the continent can have very economic transportation systems and deserts of mid-east countries can have all weather protected from sand dunes transportation systems.
Gravitational force in transportation can save 40% of fossil fuels currently consumed on the planet and is ready for implementation. Compared to solar/wind energy development, which cannot provide more than 2% saving in fossil fuels, Gravitational force based systems save 40% within next 5 years!!!
We need a paradigm shift in transportation scene with "green" energy from Newton's gravity and the game changer solution is ready for implementation.
What we need is courage and vision of a few enabled individuals for a country to benefit economically.
B. Rajaram M.Tech., FIE.,FNAE.,AMASCE
Former MD Konkan Railway/Govt of India
Member ITER-India Empowered Board, Dept. of Atomic Energy
834 Spring Knoll Drive, HERNDON VA 20170 USA +1 703 835 9025
The truth is very well hidden or just being ignored.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmerica per capita income over $200 per day. Just where in the hell is my share? that is 20 times more then what I live on.
In California, Modoc ,( 1 person per sq mile) and Los Angles (250,000 persons per sq mile) Counties have the same per capita CO2 foot print. How does this support the argument that city people have a smaller CO2 foot print?
Is this all lies? or just the ones that I can personally speak for?
What are these hidden truths? All this is pretty old and widely known stuff
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYawn. America is rich and should subsidize the failures of he world. Typical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfrgough said it best. Thanks for the laugh. I'll elaborate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmericans are the most generous people on earth in terms of total giving and per capita giving. We have arguably the highest standard of living in the world. The way to improve the lives of the impoverished and oppressed is to help them achieve the kind of peaceful, safe, stable and free society and relatively unfettered economy we enjoy so they can help themselves...and in turn become lavish givers. That's the "spread the wealth" scheme that actually works.
Restricting CO2 output is not the solution, and it's based on an as-yet unproven premise. No one has demonstrated that a.) in a dynamic real world system teeming with CO2-loving organisms, increasing CO2 warms the planet and b.) increasing CO2 levels are bad. No one knows what the optimal CO2 levels are. More CO2 is certainly good for food production.
Even without arbitrary government restrictions, chances are awfully good that eventually we will transition from a fossil-fuel burning energy economy to one that is "sustainable." And it's just as likely that CO2 levels will subside. Despite James Hansen's certainty that we are fast approaching a CO2 point of no return, the historical evidence shows otherwise.
Humans are eminently capable of fixing their own problems with innovation and technology and without the need for ridiculously expensive government mandates. The reason so many are beginning to invest in alternate fuel technologies is because they are finally beginning to become viable, though many have a long way to go.
This work like a load of rubbish to me. Are we really meant to believe that Scotland has two or three times as many people earning $200 a day as Japan - a country of 140 million people, and the world's second largest economy? No way. Makes you wonder what else is wrong in the slides.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm glad I'm not the only one who looks at this and sees blatant, in your face, typical Al Gore'esque propaganda.....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh and I forgot to say that I think it's a little insulting that the Scientific American website would think their viewership is gullable and naive enough to not see through this garbage. Disappointing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be nice to have color key s to those economic area maps.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFactoid alert:
How much of that 'per capita' rural CO2 is involved in food
production and therefore best attributible more to urban
areas where it's product is consumed.
It would have been nice to give the color keys to those economic area maps.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFactiod alert: That rural per capita CO2 is involved in
food production and is attributable in large part to
the urban area where modst of the product is consumed.
The U.S. well over 35% of all the world's medical and drug research, we also respond to help more than other country on earth. We treat females, as we should, as equals. We do sell or trade them. We have no cast system. We use lime scrubbers or ammonia scrubbers for our coal fired power plants.Sure, the spill wasn't nice But in time it will clean up well, did you see the mess Mt. St. Hellins.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese six snipps are; a little bit of truth mixed with a ton of lies. Looks like Prava to me. The fifth column is dead.
"The way to improve the lives of the impoverished and oppressed is to help them achieve the kind of peaceful, safe, stable and free society and relatively unfettered economy we enjoy so they can help themselves...and in turn become lavish givers. That's the "spread the wealth" scheme that actually works."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHah! All; the wealth-spreading that has gone in in your 'relatively unfettered economy' of late has been from the poor to the rich, bailing out greedy people who were obscenely wealthy in the first place...and I don't see any of them in much of a hurry to give.
laurenra7: please elaborate your very general statement how an increase of atmospheric CO2 is good for food production? As far as I know, nowwhere in the world is CO2 a limiting factor for crop growth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, what "historic evidence" shows that we are not approaching dangerously high CO2 levels? If you look at the natural history of the world, CO2 increases and decreases were never smooth but always followed by drastic, though gradual, environmental changes, i.e. warming of the earth and subsequent ice ages.
This (unrealistic) work of pullies and cables was suitable in Newton's time. Today we are basically doing the same thing with electric motors and generators.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn an electric metro system, a train that is using generative breaking uses its inertia to push back power to the electric grid when slowing down, power that is used by other trains that are accelerating or cruising. This is also what is happening on electric cars that turn their electric motor into generators during braking in order to recharge their batteries.
An electric motor/generator is surely far more efficient then your gravity-assisted yo-yo transportation system.
Have you considered getting updated in technology?