WC Archive

IDFuel has a nice write-up of some of the various currently-available hydrogen fuel cell systems. While you may not be able to go buy a hydrogen fuel cell car right now, you can buy home fuel cells to function as backup generators, and will soon be able to install a fuel cell system in your boat. Interesting stuff -- small changes, to be sure, but little bits of the future. The conclusion to the piece is worth reiterating: There is no need to feel like as one small designer you can't help in the transition to a sustainably fueled economy. There is no reason to believe that this future will arrive all at once, or in one giant chain of mammoth endeavors.

Further evidence that action taken by state-level governments and global corporations can make up for federal intransigence about acting against global warming-induced climate disruption comes from the UN conference on the climate, ending today in Buenos Aires. According to Reuters, greenhouse gas reduction efforts in California and New England states were cited by attendees as models for the rest of the world. "When designing our energy policy, Germany will always look to California because it's the best example," said Barbel Hohn, environment minister in Germany's largest state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition, multinational giants such as DuPont, Alcoa and IBM have set their own greenhouse gas reduction targets, sometimes to levels greatly exceeding the standards set by the Kyoto treaty. DuPont's emissions, for example, were 68% lower in 2003 than in 1990.

Leapfrogging is not just a developmental issue, it's also an environmental issue. As long as developing nations rely on greenhouse-gas-heavy power and industrial technologies, the worse off they'll be as they develop. We're already seeing this happen. Of the top six greenhouse gas producing countries, three are considered "developing" nations: China, at #2; India, at #5; and Brazil, at #6. Furthermore:

...between 1990 and 2000, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions grew by 69 percent in India, 57 percent in Brazil and 33 percent in China.

Argentina and the EU are crafting an agreement involving cash incentives and technology transfers to push the developing world towards sustainable energy and industrial technologies. Let's hope this assisted leapfrog plan works.

Alex listed some green/sustainable/enviro-friendly holiday presents ideas yesterday; here's more. Wired News takes on the greenish gift theme, coming up with some interesting options along with the unsurprising hemp granola stuff. My pick for the WorldChanging favorite on the Wired list? The same ones mentioned by our own Dawn Danby a year ago: the Thames & Kosmos science kits covering alternative energy and fuel cells. Now to hook them up to my Mindstorms and DNA Explorer to create a sustainably-powered gene sequencing robot...

Honda's FCX, its experimental fuel cell based car, is now legal to drive on the streets of Japan. This is the second-generation fuel cell model, as the earlier version had a hard time with cold weather. The work to get the fuel cells working in freezing conditions had the useful side effect of increasing their overall efficiency by 20%.

Interestingly, second generation Honda FCX cars could already be found on the road -- but in the US. Last month, Green Car Congress reported that the state of New York took delivery of two cold weather FCX for testing, joining several cities in California and the Los Angeles region's South Coast Air Quality Management District. That brought the number of FCX on the road in the US to a dozen; let's see how many now show up in Japan.

In the "this could be big, but not just yet" department is Metal Rubber.

Metal Rubber, a filmy brown material that can extend to three times its original length and conduct electricity as well as a bar of steel...

Yet, there are huge potential ramifications for everything from jet liners to medical devices. Think flexible circuits and displays that take your laptop and cell phone to the next level of shock resistance. Or artificial limbs that can bend like their real counterparts.

Of course, what immediately came to mind for me was the application of a flexible conductive material to wearable fabric computers. The furoshiki future gets closer every day.

It must be the "write articles in pairs" season. Dominic Muren, at the always-interesting design size IDFuel, has a terrific pair of articles on how "rebellious" (e.g., anti-capitalist) trends can lead to greater consumption, which in turn pushes towards less-sustainable design -- and what designers can do about it. Rebels Without The Cause We Think (Part One and Part Two) may make you feel a bit guilty, but should also give you a bit of hope about the future course of product design.

The US Geological Survey has a link to an animation of the course of yesterday's Indian Ocean tsunami created by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (650K download). Each frame is a ten-minute interval; the whole thing covers the first 180 minutes of the tsunami. It's a vivid demonstration of how long it takes for a tsunami to travel -- and why early warning systems can be so valuable.

The International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific has crafted FAQ and Tsunami Safety Rules pages in reaction to the Indian Ocean event. Since tsunamis can happen at any time -- an earthquake is all that's needed -- anyone living close to the water should keep these guidelines in mind.

DigitalGlobe has made available high-resolution satellite images of Sri Lanka beaches taken both before and during the tsunami flooding. While the individual stories and videos of the disaster bring home the personal tragedies, sometimes the big picture is necessary to grasp the scale of the devastation. The images are natural color photos at 2-foot resolution (that is, each pixel shows about 2 feet); the details are simultaneously impressive and heartbreaking. DigitalGlobe has also decided to make the images available for free use, as long as conspicuous credit is given.

Aftershocks in the South Asia region continue, and while seismologists don't anticipate another 9.0-scale earthquake there in the immediate future, some of the quakes which have happened over the last couple of days have been pretty strong.

If you're interested in keeping track of what's happening under the ground, the best resource is the US Geological Survey earthquake website. They have maps of all quakes around the world as well as frequently-updated lists of earthquake activity. There's a lot going on right now. Today's earthquakes measuring greater than 5.0 (so far):

5.9 2004/12/30 17:58:09 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION

5.5 2004/12/30 17:34:44 NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA REGION

5.1 2004/12/30 13:29:45 NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

5.5 2004/12/30 04:27:37 NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA

5.6 2004/12/30 01:04:51 OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA

Turnabout is fair play, I suppose, so tomorrow Dr. James Hughes will interview me -- on his radio show, Changesurfer Radio. We'll be talking about WorldChanging, emerging technologies, and how to embrace the new ethically. The show starts at 5:30 pm EST; for those of you not in Connecticut but still interested in listening in fascinated horror, it will apparently be available in streaming radio on WHUS. Audio archives will also be available afterwards; I'll link to them if I don't embarrass myself.

When something as wide-ranging and devastating as the South Asia tsunami happens, it's easy to get lost in the abundance of stories, rumors and details. WikiPedia has done a masterful job of bringing together and keeping current the facts of the event, and SEA-EAT, of course, continues to collect massive amounts of information on the recovery and relief process. But one of the best overviews I've found so far is at the New York Times website -- it's not as granular as Wikipedia nor as encyclopedic as SEA-EAT, but it's richly illustrated with dozens of powerful photographs, helpful maps, and occasional informative animations (requires Flash). If you're looking for a clear capsule depiction of what happened, the NYT page is a good place to start.

Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a new kind of material which should enable the creation of transparent electronic devices. Unlike many other recent breakthroughs, these do not use carbon nanotubes or the like; they are, in fact, entirely inorganic, and are most closely related to zinc oxide transistors. This means that the technology for production is already fairly advanced, lowering the ultimate cost of making devices using this new technology. In addition, much to the surprise of researchers, high quality transistors can be made at just above room temperature -- today's components are often made at 700-1,100 degrees centigrade.

Transparent electronics could have a wide array of applications, from vehicle windshields able to display warnings and directional information to improvements in copy machines and solar cells. And the applications to participatory panopticon-related technologies are pretty obvious...

We don't often talk about advertising here, but this banner ad -- I won't tell you who it's for, as it will spoil the ending, but WorldChanging readers will appreciate the cause -- is simple, powerful, and an excellent use of interactive media. It's a "hangman" game in Flash: click on the letters to try to spell the phrase, and when you guess wrong, gallows are gradually built and a man is hanged (a rather morbid game, admittedly). Check it out.

Discover magazine has listed its top 100 stories for 2004. The list of titles (with links to lead paragraphs) is available online; only subscribers get the nitty-gritty. WorldChanging readers, however, already have the low-down on quite a few of them, from spinach as a fuel cell power source (WC post) to the discovery of Sedna, an almost-planet in an orbit beyond Pluto (WC post) to Discover's number one story, the overwhelming evidence for global warming-induced climate change, and the shift in focus from "is it happening?" to "what can we do?" (WC posts here and here and here and here and here and...).

One year ago on January 3, the Mars Exploration Rover 1 -- more popularly known as "Spirit" -- landed successfully on Mars. MER 2 -- or "Opportunity" -- has its landing anniversary on January 24. MER 1 & 2 are easily the most successful Mars missions ever, and quite possibly the most successful (in terms of new discoveries made, new technologies tried, and ongoing results) space missions ever. The rovers were only supposed to last three months, and while most of the engineers expected to go well beyond that, few anticipated that both would be this healthy a year out. They've lasted through the worst of the Martian northern hemisphere winter, and spring should give them more sunlight (=more power) to work with. Of course, the year's just half-over on Mars; the Martian year lasts 687 days (Earth days, that is --Mars spins 669 times in the same period). NASA's MER mission site has the scientists' top 10 images from the two rovers, 25 favorite raw images, videos, maps, daily updates and much more information.

An interesting tidbit popped up this week in the San Jose Mercury News "Silicon Beat" page, which focuses on the doings of the Silicon Valley celebrities, venture capitalists. John Doerr, of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, is particularly well-regarded, and in a Q&A session with reporters, he revealed his big venture play for the future -- infrastructure for cities:

Lately, the firm has started prowling for energy deals, a departure from its traditional focus on information services and healthcare. “That’s a left turn, a new initiative for Kleiner,” he told the audience, made up mostly of other venture capitalists and investors. Most of Kleiner's investments in energy so far are still in stealth. Urbanization will be one of the biggest global trends between now and 2030, Doerr explained, citing several studies including one by the National Academy of Sciences. Asia, in particular, will be creating scores of huge cities, he said. They’ll need clean water, power and transportation.

The site seems to be down at the moment, but the above is the key quote. If anyone was wondering if a renewed focus on urban issues was just a fantasy of environmentalists and design geeks, attention from VCs should disabuse you of that notion.

We mentioned Digital Globe's before and after satellite images of the December 26 tsunami. While the images themselves are stark and powerful, the presentation on the Digital Globe site wasn't terribly illuminating. Now a .Mac user has set up a Before and After toggle for 14 of the shots with the geography lined up exactly -- a single click can show exactly what happened.

The pair of pictures of Kalutara Beach, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in particular, is borderline surreal in its horror.

Wired News and Reuters have details on research done at Cornell analyzing the genome of Dehalococcoides ethenogenes Strain 195, a bacteria able to digest chlorinated solvents. It's currently being used at 17 different locations for toxic waste cleanup. Other strains of the bacteria can process the PCBs and the chemicals underlying DDT. Most interesting is the fact that these bacteria apparently evolved in response to toxic wastes dumped by humans:

In 1997, Cornell University researchers described D. ethenogenes and its ability to clean up chlorinated solvents. Around that same time, DuPont researchers discovered that D. ethenogenes was present at many of their toxic sites. It turns out the bacteria likes to hang out where it can find food, that is, PCE and TCE.

That seems natural until you consider that D. ethenogenes specifically eats PCE and TCE, and the harmful compounds were introduced to the environment only about 60 years ago. The genome sequence suggests that the bacterium has evolved in response to humans dumping the chemicals, Seshadri said.

Sequencing D. ethenogenes DNA should help us (a) better understand how bioremediating bacteria work, (b) figure out ways for them to work more efficiently, and (c) evaluate the possibility of introducing bioremediation capabilities to other organisms.

Reinforcing the theme of yesterday's essay by Gil Friend, the World Business Council on Sustainable Development has reprinted an editorial from the Duluth News-Tribune arguing that lagging adoption of high-efficiency, conservation-focused and renewable energy technologies and policies will have an adverse effect on American businesses. It's conventional wisdom among the carbon hacks that an aggressive shift away from fossil fuels would lead to a massive, long-lasting economic downturn (ironic that opposition to doing anything about climate disruption is so closely tied to the one academic discipline that does worse at predicting the future than weather forecasters). Arguably, it's more likely that not moving to renewable energy technologies and efficiency-focused policies will have the negative economic result, as Kyoto adherence is clearly where global markets are heading. The News-Tribune editorial spells out that position nicely.

Although astronomers have discovered over 130 planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, we've never actually seen any of them. We know about them because of the changes they cause in a star's brightness, or wobbles in a star's orbit, or a number of other inferential methods. But the Hubble space telescope may have captured the first image of a planet outside of our own system -- a gas giant, roughly five times the size of Jupiter, in a distant orbit around a so-called "brown dwarf" star about 225 light years from Earth. The astronomer leading the research, Glenn Schneider of the University of Arizona, says he is "99.1 percent sure" it's a planet; further observations will make it "99.9 percent sure."

A number of features made it possible for this planet to be seen -- its size, distance from its parent star, and the fact that brown dwarf stars are too small to shine like a normal star and wash out the dimmer reflection and heat of a planet.

Well, perhaps not quite that dramatic. But a public conversation/debate between James "Wisdom of Crowds" Surowiecki and Malcolm "The Tipping Point"/"Blink" Gladwell is still pretty interesting, at least for those of us interested in social networks, framing and memes, group behavior, and cultural change. Surowiecki and Gladwell are two of the best-known social observers around right now, and they both make trenchant observations apt to trigger cascading aha! moments for readers. Slate is hosting a week-long conversation between the two writers, now on day three. The conversation remains polite, but we're still hoping for a strike to the jugular at any moment.

If you've been at any of the vaguely science and technology related websites -- or even major news sites -- today you've undoubtedly already heard, but since we've been posting about this all along, we should note this if only for completeness' sake: Huygens made it to the surface of Titan.

This is the first time we've tried landing on an outer solar system body, and the system -- a combined NASA/ESA effort -- seems to have worked flawlessly. We'll get more information and images once the folks back in ESOC Spacecraft Operations get done processing the data. I can hardly wait!

Satellites aren't just good for measuring urban growth or atmospheric chemistry or the impact of natural disasters -- they can count elephants, too.

The Wildlife Conservation Society, headquartered at the Bronx Zoo, has been working with NASA to use satellite imaging to count wildlife. Their initial experiments -- spotting and counting their own animals at the Bronx Zoo from a pass by a QuickBird satellite -- proved quite successful, and they are now preparing to use satellite images to "count wildlife in exotic locations, including elephants and giraffes in Tanzania, flamingos in South America, and elk, bison and antelope in Wyoming." Counting from orbit has some advantages over traditional methods. Satellites can image otherwise hard-to-reach locales, can snapshot large expanses in one pass, and are much less stressful to animals than traditional counting methods of capturing and tagging or even flying overhead in low-flying aircraft.

Definition of power: Bill Gates trying -- and failing -- to get on your schedule to talk.

Reuters reports that Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and chairman, has been "lobbying" to meet and talk with Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (best known simply as "Lula"), at next week's World Economic Forum -- so far, to no avail.

Brazil has been at the forefront of the movement to get the developing world to adopt Linux rather than Windows as they build out their information infrastructures. From the developing world perspective, this makes a great deal of sense: Linux is free as in gratis (so it can be distributed to millions of users at little incremental cost) and free as in libre (so users can get inside the code to modify it for both better functionality and education), whereas Windows, even at a discount price, can be very costly, and ties users to the whims of Redmond. Brazil plans to partially-subsidize the purchase of 1 million computers with Linux for its citizens.

...you're hitting our new server!

Of course the folks at RealClimate would take on the BBC "Global Dimming" story, and give it the kind of examination we've come to expect from the professionals. They now have two articles up, both well-worth reading. The first, aptly titled "Global Dimming?," takes on the concept in general, has a number of pointed comments about hack sensationalist journalism, and discusses what it means when scientists are uncertain. The second, Global Dimming II, looks at the history of the idea of global dimming and what might be causing it. A good pair of posts, nicely explaining the ideas.

Technology Review is running a brief interview with Dr. Angela Belcher, MIT material scientist, MacArthur Grant winner and cofounder of Cambrios Technologies. She uses reengineered viruses as tools to create compounds at the molecular scale. The conversation is short, informative and somewhat amusing.

Your company describes its business as “directed-evolution technology.” So the goal is something with potentially very broad application? It’s a platform technology, yes. The aim is to work our way through the whole periodic table and be able to design materials of all kinds in a controlled way. My biggest goal is to have a DNA sequence that can code for the synthesis of any useful material.

Last November we posted about Center for a New American Dream's hybrid slogan contest, with the winning slogan earning its creator a new 2005 Prius. Unsurprisingly, the contest was popular: New American Dream received nearly 35,000 slogans. The top 100 finalists are in, and now's your chance to vote on which one you think would best convince car manufacturers to build more fuel-efficient vehicles. The top vote-getters won't automatically win the car -- wisely, New American Dream has chosen to use popularity as just one of the factors to be considered -- but the top three will win "Community Choice Awards," a one year membership to Better World Travel, including bicycle and auto roadside assistance.

The voting closes on February 15th, and requires that you sign up for the site.

It's clear that the elimination of mangrove forests along Southeast Asian coastlines made the impact of the December 26 tsunami even worse. But we're now seeing signs that it's not just mangrove forests which can reduce the effect of flood surges -- casuarina and eucalyptus trees work well, too:

On Dec. 26, as the killer tsunami struck down thousands of people and homes in Tamil Nadu state, the casuarina and eucalyptus trees which had been planted to appease the weather gods saved the lush green village of Naluvedapathy.

The giant waves inundated dozens of thatched-roof houses in the village as they swept inland [...] But the casuarina trees had considerably weakened the waves and reduced the impact, villagers said.

Tamil Nadu government officials are now assembling a trust fund to plant casuarina and eucalyptus trees along the state's entire 1,000 kilometer coastline.

More of a symbolic replacement, to be sure, but symbols count: the Long Island Power Authority has installed two 50 kilowatt wind turbines on the Shoreham, New York, site of a defunct nuclear power plant. The two turbines should provide 200,000 kWh annually, not a huge amount -- enough for a couple thousand homes, perhaps. Longer term LIPA goals include an offshore wind generation facility producing 140 megawatts, coming online in summer of 2008.

The Wall Street Journal has a short but interesting list of ten trends in architecture (broadly conceived), with a particular focus on buildings going green. Some interesting tidbits from the list: buildings use 39% of energy in the US, more than cars; there are 453 office buildings, amounting to nearly 65 million square feet, now under construction under LEED guidelines; since 2000, 167 buildings have been LEED certified, with more than 1,800 now being built.

(Via Gil Friend)

The New York Times reports that Ford has agreed to use a diesel engine designed by the EPA in new-generation cars and trucks. Diesel is generally a more efficient fuel (around 30% better than gasoline), but it has had problems in the past with particulate and nitrogen oxide pollution. Cleaner diesel engines now power about half of the cars sold in Europe, but are only a small fraction of vehicles in the US. The new engine, designed by the US Environmental Protection Agency, runs clean enough not to require special filters, meaning that it should have a low production cost. I suspect Mike will have more details about this in his Sustainability Sundays post.

Remember our old friend 2004 MN4? You know the one -- it had astronomers reaching for the antacids because, unlike every previous "Earth-crossing" asteroid spotted, the chances of it hitting the Earth increased the more they studied its path. Fortunately, they finally determined that it would miss us in its very close pass in 2029. But it turns out that it will be close enough to be visible from the ground as it shoots by -- so close, in fact, that it will pass within the orbits of some satellites. This will be the closest known approach by an asteroid in history, roughly 22,600 miles from Earth. It should be as bright enough to be seen by the naked eye in Europe, Africa and parts of Asia -- but only in locations with dark skies.

Mark your calendars now.

Doors of Perception 8, in Delhi, India, is looking like a real WorldChanging event. Just take a look at the announced speakers: nearly every one could be the subject of a WorldChanging story (and some already have). The panels include Joi Ito, Natalie Jeremijenko, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales... as well as our own Cameron Sinclair and Alex Steffen. Doors of Perception -- "a conference and website at the forefront of new thinking on design and innovation" -- takes place March 21-26, so if you're not local, buy your plane tickets now.

The ever-interesting Treehugger managed to get a solar-power backpack into the hands of WorldChanging Ally #1 Bruce Sterling, now on an extended stay in Pasadena, California. Bruce's review of the bag -- or, perhaps more accurately, Bruce's articulation of the observations made by his daughter, who actually used the thing -- are, as always, amusing and insightful. Money quote:

Given that I have a solar-powered dynamo now, how about a backup server. too? If I had two or three petabytes of flash memory in a bag, I could backpack data storage for anybody who plugged in -- I'd be the Johnny Appleseed of voltage and memory. I'd carry a community on my back rather than trudging a dusty way to splendid isolation.

Don't forget the WiFi, Bruce. Don't forget the WiFi.

Dear WorldChanging,

Signed,
DNAching for Information

Dear DNAching,

Try Biology News. It covers biotech, stem cell research, bioscience news, even has a discussion forum. It runs a little heavy on the Google Ad placement, but what are you gonna do?

Signed,
WorldChanging

(via SciScoop)

One of the terrific elements of the Project Re:Build effort (supported by the Architecture for Humanity/WorldChanging Tsunami Reconstruction Appeal) is the focus on sustainable reconstruction: This appeal, coupled with pro-bono design services and material donations, will allow for the building of more than just basic shelter, allowing the construction of schools, infrastructure and medical clinics. With a more holistic and sustainable approach of reconstruction, a truly worldchanging idea, the funds will help to build beyond simple dwellings to live but create real communities for life to grow, rebuild and renew.

A similar (if narrower) project has now come to my attention: the Tsunami Solar Light Fund. Renewable Energy Access is spearheading an effort to "provide 1,500 solar power home systems and 25 solar-powered community street lights in the Tamil Nadu region on India's southeastern coast." Working in coordination with the Solar Electric Light Fund, an NGO promoting efforts to bring photovoltaic power to rural villages around the world, the Tsunami Solar Light Fund will help make the tsunami reconstruction efforts an opportunity for energy leapfrogging.

Ecoist makes "one of a kind" handbags of varying sizes out of candy wrappers, food packages and soft drink labels. Keep them out of landfills, the argument goes, by wearing them on your arm. In addition, Ecoist will plant a tree (via Global Releaf ) for every bag purchased.

To be honest, I find them a bit on the ugly side, but Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting likes them, so what do I know?

John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder and cybercurmudgeon from the 1990s, made the following claim at the World Social Forum last month:

"Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger," said Barlow

Anybody up for fact-checking this statement? If true, it's a simple-but-powerful meme...

(Via Gil Friend)

Reports from Verdopolis are starting to come in. First on the dock we have this post by Will Duggan, of the US Partnership for the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. He writes of the session entitled "Adaptation and Innovation: Business Opportunities in a Time of Environmental Challenge," which included participation from officers of Swiss Re, BSH Home Appliance, and Deutsche Bank AG. The title of this post comes from a comment made by Franz Bosshard, President and CEO of BSH, about the need to make sustainability an expected part of how things work -- the end-user shouldn't have to worry about whether or how the product meets sustainability guidelines.

Great report, Will -- thanks for the heads-up!

Our own Emily Gertz is attending Verdopolis, as well, and will be filing reports on what she finds for Grist (as well as doing a write-up for WorldChanging). Her first day's observations are now online, and are well worth checking out. This paragraph caught my eye:

This good mood is what seems to be different about Verdopolis. It's a gathering where we dispense with arguing the moral imperative of fewer cars and more trees, and instead get on with figuring out how to design the bright green future for our growing cities. It's beyond anger, done with denial, and waist-deep into acceptance. And at this panel, we were accepting that human-caused climate instability has arrived, and making it better is both the right thing to do and a huge business opportunity.

Sounds like our kind of event.

We didn't note California's passing of a law awhile back allowing hybrid vehicles to drive in carpool (High Occupancy Vehicle, or HOV) lanes with just a single occupant. While a nice gesture, it was ultimately a pointless one -- because Federal money underwrites HOV lanes, they control the rules, and the US Department of Transportation has so far been unwilling to bend the law to allow solo hybrid drivers in (with the exception of Virginia, in 2000). That may change, if a bill introduced by car alarm magnate/current Republican legislator Darrel Issa passes. The bill would allow states to set their own rules for HOV lanes, which means that as more states pick up the idea (Arizona, Connecticut and Georgia are considering rules similar to California's), a hybrid driver could eventually be able to drive in carpool lanes from sea to shining sea.

Or maybe not -- as always, the devil is in the details. California's rule, for example, requires a sticker, and only 75,000 will be authorized. This is to avoid overcrowding of carpool lanes, which apparently has been a problem in Virginia. And the California law also only applies to vehicles getting greater than 45 miles per gallon -- Insights, Hybrid Civics, and Priuses, sí, Hybrid Accords, Hybrid Escapes, and other upscale hybrids, no -- something that US automakers have complained about. Missouri legislators have written a bill which would open up the HOV lanes to any hybrid which gets 10% better mileage than a standard version vehicle. This may make Ford happy, but would definitely result in crowded carpool lanes, and seems like an awfully low bar to meet.

Web designer Troy Brophy, fascinated by how things scale, has created a nifty page demonstrating just how much space there is in space. The Solar System is a six million pixel-wide page (where each pixel=1000 km), with the Sun at the left and each planet in its appropriate orbit and at an approximately correct size (at least within 1000 km of correct). There are links at the top to allow a jump to each planet, a good thing since simply scrolling left to right makes finding planets rather difficult. If you'd like to see how the planets match up against each other without a lot of scrolling and jumping, there's a link to put them all on a single screen.

The page requires IE6 or Mozilla/Firefox; the super-wide tables apparently don't render properly in Safari or Opera.

The Mars Exploration Rovers ("Spirit" and "Opportunity") have performed well beyond their expected lifespans, and have by all measures been an enormous success. But they roll slowly around the surface of Mars, and have gone just a few kilometers each, largely avoiding any kind of rough terrain. In order to get a better look at the variety of the Martian landscape, we'll need something which can move faster over any kind of ground. Something which can fly, but which can also land and take samples, repeatedly.

Enter the Gashopper:

The gashopper would get its electricity from a large set of solar panels built on top of its wings. It would use this electricity to retrieve carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere, and then store it as a liquid inside the aircraft. When enough gas was stored up to make a flight, it would heat up a hot bed of pellets and then pass the CO2 through it. Now hot, the gas would act as a propellant, and allow the gashopper to lift off vertically from the surface of Mars. Once airborne, it could then fire more gas out a rear thruster and begin flying as an airplane, using its large wings for lift and maneuverability. When it was ready to land, the aircraft could slow its airspeed, and then touch down gently as a vertical lander.

While still very much in the early-testing/proposal stage, the gashopper has a distinct advantage over many other proposed explorer vehicles: it is designed to use resources already present in the Martian environment (sunlight for power and CO₂ for propulsion), so it can keep going as long as the hardware itself is functional. In addition, it won't pollute the Martian atmosphere with chemicals which might confuse any tests for organic material. A sustainable, environmentally-sensitive, wide-ranging exploration system for Mars? I'm all for it.

New Sustainability Sunday contributor Joel Makower wrote a pretty interesting essay last Sunday, too, on his weblog: Are Evangelicals the New Environmentalists? Joel looks at the shifts in the attitudes of the American Evangelical Christian movement regarding the environment. This doesn't mean a wholesale adoption of progressive values, but a careful embrace of the notion of stewardship of the planet:

"The environment is a values issue," the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals, told the Post’s Harden. "There are significant and compelling theological reasons why it should be a banner issue for the Christian right."

It will be interesting to see if the broader realization that the environment is in serious long-term trouble can function as a bridge across the poisonous American political faultline.

Emily's article at Grist on the second day of Verdopolis is now up, and is (of course!) an excellent read. (We linked to her article on day one here.) This time she covers the panel on "The Green City," where the speakers grapple with the difficulty of making built spaces both sustainable and livable. This applies to more than the shape (and insulation levels) of buildings. Transportation must be "livable," too.

"Good transportation design fosters a good attitude in people," Vergara says, and then -- as I'm finding is typical at Verdopolis -- presents an idea that once I've heard it, is so smart it's startling. To sell multibillion-dollar mass-transportation projects, start with the last thing: Design the vehicle. [...]

Cesar Vergara is not giving any ground on the inevitability of the personal car in his vision of the green city."The car of the future is a railroad car," Vergara says, "and there's a bike waiting for you at the other end of the ride."

So you want to use renewable sources for your home power, but can't install solar panels & a wind turbine? About half of US retail power customers have the option of purchasing "green" power from their electrical utility companies (or, to be more precise, have the option of asking the utilities to buy a fraction more power from a renewable source to put into the grid at large -- electrons are electrons, and everyone on the grid draws from the same pool). If you aren't in that lucky half, there are other ways to boost the use of renewable power, from pricing premiums to "tradable renewable certificates." Treehugger has the breakdown and the links.

Tom Friedman's "Geo-Greens" model may not be fully-baked yet, but is clearly the subject of his next book. His Sunday column in the New York Times continues to expound on the concept, and this time he manages to get in a couple of decent proposals. The money quote:

As a geo-green, I believe that combining environmentalism and geopolitics is the most moral and realistic strategy the U.S. could pursue today. Imagine if President Bush used his bully pulpit and political capital to focus the nation on sharply lowering energy consumption and embracing a gasoline tax. [...] Sadly, the Bush team won't even consider this. It prefers cruise missiles to cruise controls. We need a grass-roots movement. Where are college kids these days? I would like to see every campus in America demand that its board of trustees disinvest from every U.S. auto company until they improve their mileage standards. Every college town needs to declare itself a "Hummer-free zone." You want to drive a gas-guzzling Humvee? Go to Iraq, not our campus. And an idea from my wife, Ann: free parking anywhere in America for anyone driving a hybrid car.

(Emphasis mine.) While as a hybrid driver I can certainly get behind that last suggestion, I think the divestment strategy in particular has a great deal of merit. The 1980s college campaigns to cease investments in companies which did business with the Apartheid government in South Africa drew a great deal of attention to the issue, and helped to bring about the end of the regime. We would need a catchy ska tune, though...

Three great ideas that go great together -- nanotechnology, solar power and hydrogen. We've mentioned before the growing use of nanoengineering to develop materials better able to split hydrogen from water using solar energy. Technology Research News brings word of another step in making this a reality.

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University have constructed a material made from titanium dioxide nanotubes that is 97 percent efficient at harvesting the ultraviolet portion of the sun's light and 6.8 percent efficient at extracting hydrogen from water.The material is easy to make, inexpensive, and photochemically stable, according to the researchers.

The downside is that only about five percent of the sun's energy hitting the earth is ultraviolet light; work continues to figure out how to shift the nanotube response to visible light. The original article appeared in Nano Letters; the full text (with illustrations) is available online.

Emily's third dispatch from Verdopolis is now up at Grist -- go read it. (Here are links to posts about Day One and Day Two, if you're keeping score at home.) This time, in "The Three Marketeers," she looks at the "Show Me the Money" session. The upshot? The suits are joining the fight.

'Bout time.

Tomorrow's Kyoto Activation Day, so in commemoration, Bruce Sterling's latest Viridian Note (#00432) is an infodump of the "ins and outs of Kyotology" -- the Gallon Environment Letter, produced by the Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment. Want to know the Kyoto Treaty's history? Its mechanisms for enforcement? A breakdown of greenhouse gas emitters (per capita, the US is number two -- and number one might surprise you)? Kyoto plans in Canada? The EU? What happens next? It's all here, and more, complete with links to even longer documents giving you even more details. Read it all. It's good for you.

Given the difficulties involved with figuring out how to make machines walk, it's no surprise that some roboticists are turning to arthropods as models. After all, insects and spiders and such are able to move pretty readily on some fairly simple hardware (including exceedingly simple brains). A machine would be doing very well to be able to match arthropod articulation. Are they there yet? You be the judge.

Frank Kirchner, a roboticist from the University of Bremen, is collaborating with Silvano Colombano at NASA's Ames Research Center in the development of an eight-legged robot with walking behaviors based on that of the scorpion. The Scorpion (as that is its name, of course) is able to sense changes in terrain and respond accordingly. Nature News has a brief write-up of the technology, along with a video of the Scorpion in action which demonstrates how far biomimetic robot mobility has come, and how far it still needs to go.

Future generations of the Scorpion may be crawling along rocky crevasses on Mars (perhaps carried as the payload of a Gashopper) and through buildings knocked down by earthquakes or other disasters here on Earth.

Grist points us to Bill McKibben's editorial in today's New York Times. McKibben notes that proposed windmill farms often generate local opposition based on the argument that the size of the wind turbines ruins scenic views and lowers property values; such arguments often come from people calling themselves environmentalists. McKibben fairly gently suggests that such folks look at the bigger picture, and learn to love (or at least live with) the clean energy towers. I'll be more blunt: global warming is going to do a lot worse to the environment than just make the coast less scenic, and NIMBY opposition to having their seaside resorts' views "ruined" by only-visible-on-the-clearest-days windmills on the horizon needs to end. Now.

Or, as Dave Roberts at Grist put it: Oil and gas exploration is ravaging the American West. The nuclear industry is resurgent. And oh yeah, the globe is frying.

If environmentalists take global warming seriously, and expect others to take it seriously, maybe they shouldn't become bitchy provincialists the minute you want to build a wind turbine that impedes the scenic view off the back porches of their vacation homes.

Damn straight.

Global travel is good; reducing air pollution (including GHG emissions) is good. Unfortunately, as we've noted in the past, air travel is a significant contributor to atmospheric pollution. The more you fly, the bigger your ecological footprint. Increased use of biofuels might help in the short-term, but solving this problem is going to require some serious effort.

That's what the "Efficient and Environmentally Friendly Aero-Engine" (EEFA) program is about. Coordinated by the European Union, EEFA includes 53 partner groups, including the entire European airplane industry, various national defense and technology agencies and numerous universities. Begun in 2000, the program seeks to (PDF):

Reduce fuel consumption by 12% to 20%

Reduce NOx emissions by 60% 80%

Reduce cost of ownership by 20% to 30%

Improve reliability by 60%

Reduce time to market by 50%

Reduce life cycle cost by 30%

Ambitious, to be sure, but obviously of great value. EEFA plans to start testing new engine designs this year.

James Traub wrote an excellent and brief essay in this last Sunday's New York Times entitled "Freedom, From Want." In it, he asks why it is that the United States, source of the Marshall Plan, is so reluctant (even now, post-9/11) to spend money on economic development assistance. The US ranks last among donor nations in development aid, at 0.15 percent of gross national income (compared to Scandinavian countries, for example, which are close to 0.7 percent of GNI now). It's not a happy article, but it does lay out the issues at hand clearly and succinctly.

A similar piece appears to be found in yesterday's Financial Times, by Martin Wolf. "The Elimination of Poverty" starts out with two hard to dispute propositions: first, the elimination of destitution, disease and deprivation is taking too long; second, additional assistance to the world's poorest countries is easily affordable. I'm told that the column makes a strong statement in support of rich country aid for development, but unfortunately getting to the article requires a FT subscription. Any subscribers willing to summarize Wolf's arguments in the comments?

Announcements about nanotechnology programs and plans in the developing world are coming pretty fast now. The latest is a proposal from the executive director of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, Mohamed Hassan, that nanotech research groups in developing countries form a collaborative network. Hassan goes on to suggest that Africa be the first focus region for such a network.

South Africa leads the field on the continent. According to its national strategy, from 2005 onwards it will dedicate US$5 million to US$10 million each year to nanotechnology research and development.

Hassan agreed, adding that although several African governments pour money into science and technology, the brain drain draws their trained researchers out of the region. As a result, they effectively support research and development elsewhere.

South-South collaborative nanotechnology networks. That pretty much sums up what the leapfrog future will look like.

Okay, maybe not quite yet. But the Guardian reports that a British firm, D1 Oils, has launched a joint venture with a Saudi oil firm, Jazeera for Modern Technology, to make biodiesel for export.

The new fuel is to be produced from plantations of jatropha trees on land that used to be desert. The black seeds from conker-type shells produced by the plants will be picked and fed into special refineries to be built in Saudi Arabia.The resulting fuel will either be used locally or mixed with crude oil and shipped to Europe to feed a growing demand for more environmentally friendly petrol.

(Press release from D1 Oils here.) Jatropha is well-suited for this purpose, as it grows well with little water and in harsh environments. Jatropha-based biodiesel is already used in Africa and India.

Salon editor Andrew Leonard interviews UK science fiction author Iain Banks (subscription or brief ad required). Banks is the author of a number of novels set in the world of The Culture, a galaxy-spanning, AI-enabled, post-consumption society that is, in a nutshell, pretty much the world I'd love to live in. The interview, while short, is rather provocative:

I have sometimes in my darker moments, suspected that we -- humans, human society, our species -- are incapable of anything like the Culture. Because we are just too damn nasty. But on the other hand, I'm not, in principle, against genetic modification. I think we could make beneficial genetic improvements to ourselves, I mean, just supposing there was a bigotry gene, that was responsible for racism, and sexism and anti-Semitism -- all the bad "isms" -- suppose you could get all that out. You could end up with something like the Culture. [...]

It's all about who gets the technology first and how you spread it. Is it government run, or by very large corporations, or can it be done in the old-fashioned science fiction way, by one lone genius and an attractive assistant, working in a laboratory somewhere? Obviously, not to be too glib about it, the very idea of evolving ourselves scares large parts of society. It takes a lot of thinking about.

WorldChanger Taran Rampersad has decided to move on, and to focus his attention on his work at KnowProSE and his ongoing efforts to bridge the digital divide. Taran joined us last April, and has been a spirited and dedicated voice for free/open source software, open access and open collaboration. We have been honored to have him in our midst, and will continue to follow his writings and ideas with great interest.

Thank you for being a part of the WorldChanging community, Taran. Be well.

Our love affair with carbon nanotubes continues unabated; the latest reason is research at UC Davis demonstrating a process for building high power supercapacitors using carbon nanotubes. Supercapacitors deliver a fast, powerful jolt of electricity; hybrid and fuel cell cars require high-power capacitors in order to start the engine, something typically done multiple times throughout a trip. Remember that hybrids are designed to cut the engine any time the vehicle stops, then restart very quickly once the brake is released. That takes power.

What makes the carbon nanotube-based supercapacitors interesting is that they have a power density of 30 kilowatts per kilogram, compared to 4 kilowatts/kilogram for commercially-available capacitors (and 20 kW/kg for experimental versions of traditional designs).

For those who want more details, you can read the paper in the February edition of the journal Nanotechnology.

We don't point to every Bruce Sterling article or speech, it just feels that way. Nonetheless, his new piece (PDF) at Innovation magazine (the mouthpiece of the Industrial Designers Society of America) lays out why science fiction is relevant to design, explores why design is important for thinking about the future, and tries to coin a few new words on top of it all. These last are all variants of "blobject," and one of them -- "mobject" -- feels like a winner:

How does this work in practice? I envision some kind of universal fabricator. A big, bad, cheap fabricator that makes stuff out of utterly worthless raw materials. Straw and mud, perhaps. Or chopped grass, cellulose, recycled plastic and newspaper, even sand. A big, rugged, dirty, emergency thing like an upended cement mixer. But smart. There’s a lot of code in there. Free, unpatented code.

So, how does it work? You’re a mob. You’re panicked; you’re shell-shocked; you’re thirsty. You need buckets. The mobject-maker spits out these general issue buckets. Khaki-colored maybe, the color of mixed dirt. Ugliest buckets in the word, but they work. They carry water. Now you need latrines, so out come a few hundred of them. Sewer pipes. Shower stalls. Faucets. The appurtenances of urban life. Squeezed out in molds, on the spot. Basic, safe water infrastructure so you don’t die of dysentery like every other dispossessed mob in the world. You wouldn’t normally put up with this mobject way of life, but if your town has been smashed in an earthquake, then mobjects are kind of handy. One helicopter and one fabricator and a week later you’ve got a town. It’s not a pretty town, but at least you’re not dead.

While many of us at WorldChanging are ardent supporters of space exploration for good scientific reasons (especially robotic exploration, at least until an elevator is built), sometimes we have to admit to ourselves that part of why the Mars Rovers, Mars Express, Cassini/Huygens and the others are so interesting is that they can come up with some truly spectacular images. One of the most recent from Cassini is just jaw-dropping: the blue sky of Saturn, with the moon Mimas in the foreground. A small sample here wouldn't do it justice -- you really need to see this at full size.

Minutes, that is. Joel Makower has a short post up on his weblog asking the following question:

How would you convey the simple-yet-complex concept of sustainability to today's college students (assume undergrads)?

If helping to shape the minds of young people isn't inducement enough, Joel is offering a one-year subscription to his Green Business Letter to the best and/or most innovative submissions. Get your ideas in by March 15.

Ken Shuttleworth is the architect responsible for the Swiss Re "Gherkin" tower in the heart of London (as well as numerous other odd and interesting buildings). In the current Building Design, a newsweekly for UK architects, Shuttleworth declares war against the all-glass building facade. (Fairly painless free reg required.)

The high-energy, gas-guzzling fully glazed office block is totally dead, a thing from a previous time when we all had a more naive, cavalier attitude towards the environment. It’s the end of an era and we should all rethink what we are doing to the planet. And facade design is on the frontline of a change.

[...] It is time as architects we faced up to our responsibilities; climate change is the biggest thing to affect the planet for generations and with half the world’s CO2 coming from buildings, we are directly in the firing line and in the best position to effect a change. We have to go super-green; we have to be more responsible and convince our clients and the property family as a whole that this is important.

Shuttleworth's a man on a mission -- and his buildings live up to his word.

(Thanks, Laurence Aurbach!)

How to dispose of those old cell phones and other such devices in an environmentally responsible manner is a recurring topic here. Recycling services do exist, but they may be hard to find. That should be less of a problem now. Call2Recycle, a non-profit program started last year by the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation, has a database of locations in the US and Canada accepting old rechargeable batteries and cell phones for recycling. Batteries are recycled for their metals -- nickel and iron to make stainless steel, and cadmium to make more batteries -- while cell phones are either refurbished and resold in the developing world or recycled in an unspecified "environmentally friendly" way.

The whole "people in the developing world would love your old phone" meme is probably on its way out, especially as phone makers move towards low-cost modern phones specifically for low-income countries; we will need to see more groups focusing on actually recycling phone components. But even if you're not about to toss that old phone, the database of rechargeable battery drop-off spots will be useful. Looks like I have one just around the corner...

(Via So What Can I Do?)

A team led by Scripps Research Institute biologists has figured out the structure of a rare but naturally occurring antibody which effectively destroys nearly 100 strains of HIV.

The body makes many antibodies against HIV, but they are almost always unable to neutralize the virus. Nonetheless, the immune systems of some patients with HIV have beaten the odds and have produced effective neutralizing antibodies. The structure of one of these, called 4E10, is described in the latest issue of the journal Immunity.

"This antibody is very broadly active," says Scripps Research Professor Dennis Burton, Ph.D., who led the research with Scripps Research Professor Ian Wilson, D.Phil. "It neutralized nearly 100 different viral strains of HIV from all over the world. [During tests in the laboratory], every one of them was neutralized."

4E10 was isolated from an HIV-positive individual about a decade ago by Burton and Wilson's collaborator Hermann Katinger, a doctor at the Institute for Applied Microbiology of the University of Agriculture in Vienna, Austria, and one of the authors of the paper.

By solving its structure, the researchers have taken a big step towards being able to construct a "mimic" protein to stimulate the human body to make 4E10 antibodies. The research appears in the February 2005 edition of Immunity. A summary is available for free; the full text of the article is only accessible to journal subscribers.

The Committee to Protect Bloggers is asking those of us with weblogs today to call attention to the plight of Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad, imprisoned in Iran for writing in their blogs against the crackdown on journalists and bloggers in late 2004 and early 2005. The Iranian blog community was once a flourishing example of free speech, but soon drew the attention of the religious authorities . Today, Arash Sigarchi was sentenced by the Revolutionary Court to 14 years in jail on charges ranging from espionage to insulting the country's leaders; Mojtaba Saminejad remains in jail on a billion rials bail, re-arrested just days after posting a 500 million rials bond. The BBC has additional details on the Committee and the Free Mojtaba and Arash Day project.

Carbon sequestration -- taking CO₂ from the atmosphere and storing it, well, somewhere -- doesn't generate a great deal of interest among hardcore climate change wonks. That's in part because the various sequestration options each have serious drawbacks, in part because sequestration isn't as easy as it sounds, and in part because sequestration is seen by some as being an 'easy out' for continuing a greenhouse-intensive lifestyle. From this perspective, it's the liposuction of the fight against climate disruption: it might help in the short term, but without changes in behavior, it won't matter much.

As it becomes increasingly clear just how bad the greenhouse gas situation really is, however, we may come to reconsider that position. It's looking increasingly likely that we will need to really crank up the sequestration research on top of shifting hard and fast towards more efficient, greener designs and technologies. To that end, the Washington Post provides a basic overview of current sequestration research. It doesn't touch on every project out there, but it does cover the mainstream ideas: biomass offsets, serpentine neutralization, and liquefying CO₂ for undersea insertion.

Among the problems with using batteries as the energy storage medium for vehicles are two big convenience-killers: recharging is not anywhere close to as fast as pumping gasoline into a tank, and the batteries themselves don't store sufficient power to go reasonable distances. If Altair Nanotechnology is correct, however, those problems may soon be less of an issue. According to a press release picked up on Yahoo! business (among others), Altair has developed a technology for allowing Lithium-Ion batteries to recharge in a matter of minutes, not hours, and to hold "three times the power" for the same price.

Press releases are well and good, but let's see the technology in action. It's probably still years away from commercial application, yadda yadda yadda, but the implications are clear. If what Altair Nanotechnology claims is true, the battery vs. fuel cell "format war" for tomorrow's cars may just be heating up.

Cameron Sinclair, WorldChanging contributor and founder of Architecture for Humanity, has a brief interview in pages of the newest issue of Wired. It focuses primarily on his philosophy -- "Design like you give a damn" -- and how he implements it. His answers demonstrate that Cameron's WorldChanging to the core:

So, what's the answer?
Show people what can be done if you apply smart design that really takes account of ­peoples' needs. We also want to co-opt advances in technology - solar panels, recycled materials - and infuse them into communities that traditionally have not been leading-edge.

The Scotsman reports that the Irish firm Airtricity is set to put up 5,000 two-megawatt wind turbines in the North Sea, producing ten gigawatts of power. When completed (and, as it has not yet been approved, the completion date is not set), it will be the largest wind farm in the world, assuming no competing megafarms get built in the meantime. The 10GW wind farm would help Scotland meet its goal of generating 40% of its power from renewable sources by 2020.

It will be interesting to see if the bragging rights over "biggest wind farm" becomes a point of national pride and competition.

New Scientist reports that the IPCC is considering changes to the calculations of "climate budgets" to include greenhouse gas emissions from hydroelectric dams. It turns out that hydro power can produce significant amounts of both CO₂ and methane, sometimes even more than fossil fuel-using generators.

This is because large amounts of carbon tied up in trees and other plants are released when the reservoir is initially flooded and the plants rot. Then after this first pulse of decay, plant matter settling on the reservoir's bottom decomposes without oxygen, resulting in a build-up of dissolved methane. This is released into the atmosphere when water passes through the dam's turbines.

The IPCC changes would increase greenhouse inventories in countries with lots of hydro power by up to 7%. New Scientist has a map of which countries would be most affected by the proposed changes. Unsurprisingly, they are generally the nations with the largest land area, largest populations, or both.

There is ongoing debate over whether to retain dams or remove them. One of the strongest arguments for retaining hydroelectric dams has been how "clean" the power generation is. If the research into dam greenhouse emissions is correct, that rationale could be seriously undercut.

(Via Warren Ellis)

Reader Joseph Willemssen, in the comments to the recent post on Renewables Across the Country, linked to the American Wind Energy Association database of projects. The map showing the amount of wind power by state immediately draws the eye: California tops the list with 2,114 megawatts; Texas is a distant second at 1,288 (but since the database was last updated in late July, that won't include Sweetwater 2, so that should be 1,379 megawatts); Minnesota comes in third, with 595 megawatts. 15 states have no wind generation at all.

Total installed wind generation in the US: 6,831 megawatts (including Sweetwater 2). An impressive total, to be sure, but we still have a long way to go.

(Thanks, Joseph!)

The Viridian Furniture List has been updated, with all of the new entries going into the "What If Green Design Were Just Good Design" category. What is the Viridian Furniture List, you ask? It contains links to companies designing, making and/or selling places to put your butt without hurting the planet and (usually) without looking like you subsist solely on granola. Some of the entries are definitely for the yupscale crowd, but many point to good looking, sustainably-built, inexpensive products.

Go check it out -- and if you don't see something that should be there, drop the curator, David Bergman, a note...

The idea of using photovoltaics to recharge a mobile phone on the go comes as no surprise these days. But what about other renewable power sources? While wave and tidal power probably won't be of much use, wind is a possibility. Lo and behold, students at the Department of Industrial Design at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi have come up with a small (pocket-sized), inexpensive (Rs 200, or about $4-$5), wind turbine that can be used to recharge phones. With sufficient airflow, it can put out about 4 watts -- not an enormous amount of energy, but sufficient trickle-charge a phone or power an LED lamp.

One of the paradigm-shifting aspects of wind and solar is that, for small uses, power generation can happen just about anywhere. This pairs up nicely with the proliferation of small, network-enabled gadgets. Power should be as accessible as communications. If the cost of relatively-efficient solar and micro-wind turbines can be brought down sufficiently, we may be heading towards a world where any structure or piece of equipment expected to be outside in the sun and wind for extended periods of time have minor power generation features.

(WorldChanging contributor Ethan Zuckerman adds this alternative phone energy source:)

Slightly more expensive, but now commercially available is the Sidewinder cellphone charger, which uses a small hand crank to power cellphones. At $25, the product appears to be designed for travelling executives, not developing world users, but the concept could be adopted by developing world engineers and customized for local needs. Motorola is offering a similar product, Free Charge, designed in collaboration with FreePlay, well known for their work making wind-up radios and flashlights. Unfortunately, Free Charge will set you back at least $70, making it unlikely to have a major impact for developing world users.

"Hubbert's Peak" is the point at which oil production reaches its maximum possible, and known sources of oil then decline. It's generally thought to be something which will happen "soon" -- five or ten years from now. But Sustainability Sundays contributor Joel Makower tells of a letter at Energy Bulletin from an anonymous oil industry insider claiming that the cheap oil peak has already been reached, and we're now on the tumble down. Anonymous makes this unsettling observation: It is not a question of “if” peak oil has occurred – it has! The better question might be “when are the crows coming home to roost?”

Anonymous insiders should always be taken with more than a grain of salt, but the arguments that Anonymous and Makower make are well-worth thinking about. How does the sustainability agenda change if peak oil has already been passed?

BusinessWeek has a brief but suggestive article about the proliferation of nanomaterials companies in regions not generally known as being modern centers of technological innovation: Cleveland, Ohio; Albany, New York; and Norman, Oklahoma. They cite a variety of reasons why many nanomaterials firms have set up shop well away from IT and biotech hotspots on the coasts, including the dominance of government funding over venture funding and the variety of skillsets needed in nano companies ("ranging from experts in new textiles to defense contractors"). What immediately struck me, however, was the parallel to nanotech as a leapfrog engine in the developing world. So-called "rust belt" regions in the US have long suffered a brain drain similar to that plaguing developing countries, and economies based on declining industries are just as open to big changes as economies moving away from an emphasis on resource extraction.

This wouldn't be isolated to the US, of course. Leapfrog/innovation-based emerging industries could end up as economic engines of economically stagnant regions around the industrialized world. When we think about the potential for leapfrog development, we need to keep in mind the model may apply to far more places than we first might think.

Biomimicry and biomorphic software remain favorite topics around these parts, which is why a headline at New Scientist caught our eye: "Compression algorithms harnessed to fight HIV." Biologists at the University of Washington and at the Royal Perth Hospital are taking a look at computer code as a model for vaccine development.

Machine learning algorithms commonly used to compress digital images and recognise patterns in email spam might also be able to help scientists find an effective vaccine for HIV. [...]

HIV mutates rapidly, thus evading the human immune system. This means that vaccines developed to counteract one strain may not be effective against another variant.

But the researchers hope that algorithms capable of finding patterns in digital information could also help identify key genetic features across many different strains of HIV. This could enable them to engineer an HIV vaccine that is effective against several strains at once.

The article notes that the specific algorithms used were developed by Microsoft. If that's the case, the code was almost certainly patented by Microsoft. I'd be interested to find out (if any of you are in a position to know who to ask) what kind of licensing agreement went into giving the researchers access to the algorithms.

I was contacted recently by WorldWater, a company making solar-powered irrigation and water supply technology, to let us know that they have been asked to supply water pumps for irrigation and purification projects in Sri Lanka, as part of the post-tsunami reconstruction effort. WorldWater has active projects in California as well as in East Africa, the Philippines and (pre-tsunami) Sri Lanka. It looks to be pretty straightforward photovoltaic-powered pump technology, but they definitely seem like a company worth knowing about.

SciDev.Net notes the founding of the Federation of Asian Biotech Associations, an organization intended to promote collaboration between industry and academia across a wide swath of Asia and into the Pacific. The organization is notable for two reasons, both relating to membership. The first is that there are no member countries traditionally thought of as being in the "highly developed" world; no Japan, no Australia, not even South Korea. There's a strong South-South element here.

The second... well, let me give you the list of members, and you'll quickly see the second interesting membership element: FABA's founding members are India, Iran, Israel, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Iran, Saudi Arabia... and Israel? Indeed. The road to peace and cooperation in the Middle East may lie through the labs of bioscience.

Coca-Cola Central Japan has installed something called the "eKOsystem," a methane fermentation system which uses the coffee grounds and tea leaves left over from the manufacturing of coffee and tea-based drinks to provide heat and energy for the plant.

Relying on a waste to energy scheme should lower the company's operating costs by reducing waste volumes and associated waste transport/processing costs, enable energy savings by use of generated methane gas in the plant, and reduce the environmental effects of CO2 that would normally get released into the atmosphere as the coffee and tealeaf waste ferments.

The system costs $3.9 million (JPY 420 million), and the installation was part of a joint research project with the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, a government agency.

Michael Northrop, director of the global sustainable development grant-making program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has a to-the-point editorial essay in yesterday's Washington Post. In "Benefits of Cutting Emissions," Northrop lays out the case that, indeed, companies and countries which have gone ahead and worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (by improving efficiency, bringing in new technologies, or through other business process changes) can see a marked improvement in their economic and financial performance. The essay is little more than a checklist of examples -- many of which will be familiar to WorldChanging readers -- but it's good to see them collected in one spot, and in a mainstream publication. It's a good, pithy rebuttal to those who continue to tell tales of economic disaster if we dare try to cut greenhouse emissions.

The location for the 2012 games has yet to be chosen, but two of the top contenders are New York and London. As noted here recently, New York's efforts to get the Olympics have not gone without controversy; as Emily notes, there's no sign that the organizers for NY2012 have paid much attention to the "green Olympics" conversation going on around the world (especially in China, site of the 2008 games). London, however, seems to be embracing the green Olympics idea in a big way.

If the bid goes out to London, the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will feature many renewable energy and energy efficiency measures in the spirit of the country's recent adoption of the Kyoto Protocol.

"This is a fantastic first step to contribute to a 'low carbon Games', and we are delighted to lead the way in helping to achieve this target at such a important international event," said Jeremy Leggett, CEO of solarcentury.

I admit to mixed feelings about this. Of course the venues built for the Olympics should be as energy-efficient and as carbon-neutral as possible, but it would be sad if, in 2012, energy conservation and renewable energy still need to be promoted as something special and different. Making the Olympics in 2012 green shouldn't be seen as being ahead of the curve -- not having a green Olympics in 2012 should be seen as lagging behind.

The "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM) of the Kyoto Treaty encourages developed world deals in and technology transfers to the developing world in order to cut carbon emissions. CDM projects reduce overall greenhouse emissions, the greenhouse footprint of up-and-coming countries, and bring in new technologies and funds. What's not to love?

Ken Novak links to a couple of articles about CDM projects, one from India, the other from the Philippines. These articles underscore the point that the developing world is part of Kyoto, and that the CDM can be an engine for energy leapfrogging. Read on for a few interesting quotes from each piece.

PhysOrg passes along a report that the Chinese legislature just passed a Renewable Energy Law to "ease the energy strain, secure the country's energy security and better protect ecological environment." Beijing will push for 10% renewable energy by 2020; the new law requires that all state power grids purchase electricity from renewable sources. "Renewable" is defined as including hydroelectric, wind, solar, geothermal and "marine" energy (presumably tidal & wave).

My take: this is largely window-dressing. 10% by 2020 is a remarkably unambitious goal, and may be met largely by expanded hydroelectric megaprojects. There's no sign that China is set to take advantage of its position to force real advances. Businesses around the world are hungry to get into the Chinese market. Imagine the result if China passed a requirement that all passenger vehicles sold by (say) 2010 used hybrid-electric technology, or that all new buildings (such as the towers going up across the south China coastal cities) meet LEED-style efficiency rules. China could and should do much more than this one new law.

We noted earlier the use of software compression algorithms as tools for discovering new ways for vaccines to spot and attack HIV. Now comes another example of biologists looking at software as a way of understanding nature. Canadian researchers have applied models for the propagation of computer viruses across the Internet to the spread of the spiny water flea in Canadian lakes, an invasive species. The network model provided new insights into both how the flea moves from lake to lake and how it could be controlled. The full text of the article, from the current issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology, is available online. Fair warning -- the article is about the spiny water flea, not about the model used.

While have great affection for biomimicry, the use of natural models for designed products and systems, this use of designed products and systems as models for understanding nature -- technomimicry? -- is also worth watching.

(Via Biology News)

Speaking of Honda, while poking around looking for details on their hybrid scooter, I ran across this gem: the HSS1170i hybrid-electric snowblower. The HSS1170i...

...combines a gasoline engine for powering the snowblower apparatus and charging the battery, with electric motors for forward propulsion. [...] Replacing the conventional gasoline engine with electric motors allows for computerization of the HSS1170i drive system. This results in smoother forward propulsion and optimum automatic speed control based on workload. [...] The HSS1170i is equipped with a Honda e-SPEC engine, an environmentally friendly vertical powerplant that surpasses US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Phase II regulations-the most stringent in the world.

Moreover, the HSS1170i is the fourth hybrid snowblower in Honda's lineup. They actually make more models of hybrid snowblowers than hybrid cars.

I'm not holding my breath on this one, but stranger things have happened.

In the new movie "Be Cool," a sequel to the quirky 1995 "Get Shorty," John Travolta's character ("Chili Palmer") is stuck against his wishes behind the wheel of a hybrid -- in this case, a Honda Insight -- much like he was stuck in a minivan in the first movie. And, as before, he goes about convincing the gangsters and gangstas he interacts with that he's the cool one with his hybrid, making everyone else switch to a similar vehicle.

This is not an unadulterated good; the humor of the subplot rests on the audience assuming at the outset that hybrids are, in fact, not cool. That's not necessarily the case, Ed Begley Jr. notwithstanding. Regardless, if the end result is more people demanding hybrid cars, it's probably worth it.

(Via Mixed Power)

Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek column "Imagine: 500 Miles Per Gallon," in which he argues that a combination of flex-fuel and plug-in hybrid vehicle technologies could significantly reduce our dependence on petroleum, is getting quite a bit of attention in the sustainasphere (see, for example, here and here). That's fine -- it's always good to see the idea that we do, in fact, already have the technologies at hand to build a better planet get wider play -- but I have to admit some exasperation with the way the story is presented. "500 miles per gallon," it turns out, refers not to the fuel consumption of these green cars, but to their relative consumption of oil.

The current crop of hybrid cars get around 50 miles per gallon. Make it a plug-in and you can get 75 miles. Replace the conventional fuel tank with a flexible-fuel tank that can run on a combination of 15 percent petroleum and 85 percent ethanol or methanol, and you get between 400 and 500 miles per gallon of gasoline.

As long as you mentally add that "of gasoline" every time he tosses out the "500 miles per gallon" figure, it's a decent article. And it is good to get this argument in front of a mainstream audience. I just wish Zakaria had been a bit more careful with his phrasing.

This week's New Scientist has a few more details about the rapid-recharge battery technology developed by Altair Nanotechnology we mentioned recently. Two interesting tidbits from the piece: the improved charge rate comes from increasing the effective surface area of the anode at the nanoscale; and the technology for improving the charge rate also translates into faster discharge rates, making the new type lithium-ion batteries suitable for rapid-discharge uses.

The new design also gives the batteries a greater reuse life, up to 20,000 recharges before becoming useless, as compared to ~400 charging cycles for current Li ion batteries.

Fareed Zakaria's piece in Newsweek suggested that plug-in hybrids combined with flex-fuel engines could greatly reduce our dependence on petroleum. We've talked about plug-in hybrids before, so what's this about flex-fuels?

Broadly put, flex-fuel vehicles are those which can run on a variety of fuels, not just gasoline. While most gasoline engines will run acceptably on mixtures of a small amount of alternative fuel (e.g., ethanol) with gasoline, flex-fuel engines are designed to handle much greater amounts of non-petroleum fuel. "E85," or a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, is a flex-fuel choice with some automaker support. This article at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development provides an overview of non-petroleum fuel options; generally speaking, the ones which include "mixed" or "blended" forms in the description are suitable for flex-fuel use.

An advanced flexible engine technology, HCCI, offers a greater range than most flex-fuel engines. As we noted in August, Fiat will be introducing an HCCI engine design in Brazil able to use four different fuels -- gasoline, diesel, ethanol and natural gas. HCCI engines have significantly lower emissions and much greater efficiency than regular internal combustion engines, but they're also much trickier to design and maintain.

Last week, we posted a reference to China's passage of a Renewable Energy Law, mandating that 10% of China's energy production be from renewable sources by 2020. One question that arose, due to a BBC report, was whether hydroelectric counted as renewable -- without including hydroelectric, the push to 10% renewable would be a bigger challenge and a more impressive goal. With hydro, conversely, my take was that the law was largely window-dressing.

The confusion ends here. The Center for Resource Solutions, a US-based group working with China to expand the use of renewable energy sources, confirms that hydroelectric is, indeed, considered to be part of the renewable mix. Window-dressing it is, then.

Green Car Congress points us to a new program in Japan designed to promote changing driving habits to reduce emissions. This program uses:

...an in-vehicle eco-driving navigation system that instructs the driver on fuel-efficient driving. These systems are being installed in official vehicles, private vehicles and taxis. The system detects sudden accelerations, abrupt slowdowns, harsh braking and idling, and calls the driver's attention to these problems by means of a computer-generated voice and a monitor display. The data can be saved to assess effects.

The eco-driving project started in October and finishes this month; the driving monitors will be loaned out to individuals wishing to learn how to drive more efficiently.

The Global Wind Energy Council released figures showing that wind power added 7,976 megawatts to the global power production in 2004, bringing the total to 47,317 megawatts -- just over 47 gigawatts of wind power, worldwide. Germany ranks first in national wind capacity, at 16.6 GW, Spain second at 8.3 GW, and the US third at 6.7 GW. 72 percent of new wind installations in 2004 were in Europe, 16 percent in Asia, and only 6 percent in North America.

Renewable Energy Access has more details.

This May, polar explorers Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen will begin a four-month journey across the Arctic Ocean -- the first time a summer crossing will have been attempted. They will travel by slac, a combined sled/canoe, and expect to be in the water at least 30% of the time. Or perhaps even more: summer ice depth in the Arctic Ocean is less than half of what it was in the 1960s, and the ice fields have become sufficiently clear that even the long-sought "northwest passage" may soon be open. Dupre and Larsen intend to use the summer crossing as a way to draw attention to environmental disruption and the effects of global warming, and will be collecting snow samples every 50 miles to be analyzed for pollutants.

We've occasionally posted about the coming wave of "upscale" hybrids -- more expensive, more luxurious, less efficient than the Prius or Civic Hybrid -- and it looks like vehicles are finally reaching the showroom.

MSNBC has a review of the Lexus RX 400h, a hybrid SUV using the Toyota "Synergy Drive" (also found in the Prius). The 29 miles per gallon combined mileage isn't going to get a second glance from Prius or HCH owners, but is still 38% higher than the 21 mpg achieved by the non-hybrid RX 330. Remember the counter-intuitive math of fuel consumption: a driver choosing the 400h over the 330 will save around 1.3 gallons of gasoline every 100 miles, roughly the same savings seen by a driver choosing a 48 mpg Civic Hybrid over a 28 mpg non-hybrid Accord. Lexus 400h drivers may be overly-conscious of not wanting to look like they've made any sacrifices, but they're actually doing a better job of reducing emissions and gasoline dependence than they may realize.

Solar photovoltaics are fairly rare in Central America, and none of them are connected to the grid. El Salvador is about to receive the first one -- a 20 kilowatt system on the roof of the German School in a suburb of San Salvador. The system will be built by a German pv company, Phonix SonnenStrom AG. Construction started in late February, and the system is scheduled to come online on April 7. While a single 20 kilowatt solar pv system isn't much compared to the growing supply of wind power, it's a start. The Bright Green future will have a mix of power sources, and in the coming years smallish solar installations will become increasingly common as costs continue to drop and Kyoto/CDM projects proliferate.

It appears that around 10% of people of European ancestry are unable to be infected by HIV. These individuals carry a genetic mutation that blocks the virus from entering cells. It appears that the source of this mutation was the Great Plague of the middle ages, which was not the bacterial bubonic plague, but was instead "a continuing series of epidemics of a lethal, viral, haemorrhagic fever that used the CCR5 as an entry port into the immune system."

It remains to be seen whether this will assist with efforts to create an anti-HIV vaccine.

We posted last December on the DC Text Alert program, which sends emergency alerts via SMS. The Washington Post (via Yahoo! News) has more details on the system, which is now called the Community Emergency Alert Network. Traffic, weather emergencies, road closures, and the like are beamed to the text-capable devices of over 16,000 subscribers. Broadcasts are available in English or Spanish.

One of the better bits of fallout from recent energy troubles in California is the implementation of the California Clean Energy Fund, a $30 million investment fund to seed new companies focusing on clean renewable energy production. Profits from the investments would be fed back into the fund, which would otherwise operate as a non-profit organization. Three leading venture capital groups -- Nth Power, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and VantagePoint Venture Partners -- will manage the investments. More details at the SF Chronicle and Businesswire.

(Via GCC and Ken Novak)

Rohit passed along this gem, and I thought it worthy of broader note: writer and editor Ernest Lilley, new resident of the American capitol city, is producing an anthology of science fiction stories set in a future version of Washington, D.C.. I'm a sucker for a good piece of political science fiction, and this anthology will undoubtedly have some great examples of the genre. Authors who have expressed an interest in contributing include some well-known names, but all writers are welcome to submit their offerings.

Deadline for story submission is early April, 2005 (which is less of a deadline and more of a deadsmear, but I digress.

The Bruce Sterling-hosted after-party is a long-standing South by SouthWest tradition. It used to be held in his otherwise quiet suburban Austin home, but has since outgrown such humble settings. This year, its location was a closely-guarded secret, but the cat's now out of the bag, courtesy Mr. Sterling himself. He posted the details for tonight's shindig on his blog.

Here's the catch: it's a costume party.

The Gimmick:
This party will be taking place in the year 2010.
Come dressed as yourself five years from now.
And prepare to vanish like a magic pumpkin
well before midnight.

Quick quiz: How long does carbon dioxide last in the atmosphere? If you said "a few hundred years," you're partially right -- but not completely. It turns out that the chemistry of atmospheric CO₂ is a bit more complex than is generally thought. The University of Chicago's David Archer has a guest piece over at RealClimate, spelling out why pumping extra CO₂ into the atmosphere makes for a real long-term mess.

When you release a slug of new CO₂ into the atmosphere, dissolution in the ocean gets rid of about three quarters of it, more or less, depending on how much is released. The rest has to await neutralization by reaction with CaCO₃ or igneous rocks on land and in the ocean... If one is forced to simplify reality into a single number for popular discussion, several hundred years is a sensible number to choose, because it tells three-quarters of the story, and the part of the story which applies to our own lifetimes.

However, the long tail is a lot of baby to throw out in the name of bath-time simplicity. Major ice sheets, in particular in Greenland, ocean methane clathrate deposits, and future evolution of glacial/interglacial cycles might be affected by that long tail. A better shorthand for public discussion might be that CO₂ sticks around for hundreds of years, plus 25% that sticks around forever.

Talk about misreading the market... Green Car Congress posts a link to a nice bit of crow eaten by the CEO of DaimlerChrysler, Dieter Zetsche. Admitting that they, along with most other car companies, had completely misjudged the market impact of hybrid cars -- and given Toyota and Honda the "moral high ground" -- Zetsche said that DaimlerChrysler was working with GM to build next-generation hybrid technologies.

Zetsche added that the collaboration between GM and Chrysler aimed at developing full-hybrid architecture will benefit both companies.

"As my wife often says, 'If you know you're going to arrive a bit late to the dinner party, be sure you bring the best wine,' " he said.

GM executives have said the new hybrid system will be available on full-size SUVs and pickup trucks by 2007.

This has "shape of things to come" written all over it.

Brazil is one of a handful of countries outside the west with the technical expertise to manufacture anti-AIDS drugs; in order to qualify for the WTO rules giving developing nations the right to use generic versions of patented drugs in emergencies, they have to be able to manufacture them locally. As part of an ongoing program to spread that expertise, Brazil has agreed to help Mozambique fight HIV/AIDS by first acting as quality assurance for imported anti-retroviral drugs, and then building a pharmaceutical plant in Mozambique to produce anti-retrovirals locally. Brazil will train Mozambican staff to operate the facility.

Last June, we asked where the diesel-electric hybrid cars were. After all, diesel engines tend to get higher gas mileage per gallon than gasoline engines, and biodiesel shows some promise as a way of reducing dependence on petroleum. Adding hybrid tech would have the potential to boost mileage figures even higher than that of the Prius or Insight. It turns out that such technology had been tested, but (aside from narrow uses) never really rolled out in passenger vehicles. Today, however, Wired has a report detailing efforts on the part of automakers GM and DaimlerChrysler (known to be working together to play catch-up with hybrids) to bring out hybrid diesels in the near future, with the potential to boost fuel efficiency by up to 25%.

The downside appears to be price, with manufacturers claiming that the technology would add up to $8,000 to the cost of a vehicle. I'm skeptical of these figures, however. Automakers currently suing the state of California to block the implementation of CO₂ emission reduction rules have a vested interest in showing that making their vehicles more efficient would be too costly.

Is a cargo ship partially pulled along by the wind not sufficiently green for you? How about one complete with photovoltaic-covered sails, power-generating fins, and fuel cells? That's the design now being shown around by Wallenius Wilhelmsen, one of the world's biggest cargo ship manufacturers. Although the "E/S Orcelle" is a concept vehicle (i.e., not intended for production in this form), Wallenius Wilhelmsen intends this as a demonstration that efficient, clean technologies are now available for the shipping industry. The E/S Orcelle, if built as a car carrier (its somewhat ironic default configuration), would be able to carry 50% more than current car carrier ships at similar tonnage -- and would completely eliminate the use of pollution-laden ballast water tanks.

(Found via Gizmodo)

The April 2005 edition of PLoS Biology has an article (released to the web 3/15) describing how Gray Wolves help the Yellowstone regional ecosystem better ride out episodes of climate change. Many predators are also (or even largely) scavengers, but gray wolves are not. It turns out that gray wolf predation patterns actually help scavengers; without gray wolf kills, many scavenger species are unable to make it through shorter winters (when prey species are less likely to die from starvation themselves and can move around more). Wolves act as a "safety net" for scavengers in times of environmental change.

While interesting in its own right, this story points to the larger issue of recognizing changing the components of a system can have unanticipated (and unintended) consequences, especially when the system is under pressure. Education in how systems -- particularly natural systems -- function, and an emphasis on systemic over reductionist thinking, should be a fundamental part of 21st century schooling.

My copy of Ken Boulding's The World As A Total System is a bit ragged these days. What texts -- newer ones, if possible -- would you suggest to people who wish to have a better understanding of systems, particularly ecosystems?

Sustainability Sundays contributer Joel Makower sent us a link to a new report from his company Clean Edge, detailing leading trends in sustainable energy-related businesses. The brief (18 page) report makes for interesting reading; the business side of the bright green future really seems to be picking up steam. Joel summarizes its findings in his blog, and an excerpt is available here. The entire report can be freely downloaded.

Joel's "five trends to watch:"

• the growth of fuels from biomass in the U.S. and Europe
  
• the growth of energy efficiency due to high energy prices
  
• the resurgence of electricity generated by concentrated solar power stations
  
• the emergence of the hydrogen infrastructure
  
• how the growth of green buildings is stimulating markets for new products and technologies

Dave Roberts at Gristmill gives us the heads-up on this delightful editorial from the latest issue of Scientific American. The SciAm website only has the first couple of paragraphs for free, but a helpful LiveJournal user has retyped the whole thing. Go read it.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

(I've been waiting for a chance to use this graphic, btw -- click it for a link to bookmarks with that design. Bigger version in the extended entry.)

Rod Edwards at Sustainability Zone suggests that making mileage information readouts mandatory would be a useful step towards greater driving efficiency. It's a not-so-unreasonable argument: the cost of implementation would be fairly low, so automakers couldn't complain about expense; it would be useful information, giving consumers a way to make better choices; and anecdotal evidence suggests that drivers change their habits when shown how mileage is affected by driving patterns. I'm told that many new cars already include mileage readouts (some with the ability to shut it off, when the news is too painful). Mandatory mileage gauges would by no means result in sufficient improvement in efficiency by itself, but it would be a good -- and easy -- start.

In the Irony Can Be Pretty Ironic department: Reuters reports that Canada has reached an agreement with major carmakers to cut the greenhouse gas emissions from their vehicles by 25% by 2010. As the Sierra Club notes, this is essentially the same requirement as the emissions-reduction law passed in California last year -- the one that the same automakers are suing to stop, claiming that they cannot meet its demands. As the Sierra Club's Dan Becker notes, "The auto companies are now in the awkward position of telling a judge that they cannot make the same cars in California that they will make in Canada."

A number of states have signed on to the California proposal (under a federal law allowing states to choose between EPA air quality rules or tougher California requirements); adding in Canada, and over one-third of the North American auto market will have the stricter greenhouse gas emissions rules. This could result in most carmakers simply using the stricter guidelines across the board, rather than trying to build certain cars for Canada & the coasts.

(Via Salon)

Okay, so it may not be particularly world-changing in and of itself, but it's still pretty cool: the Mars Rover "Sprit" has captured images of Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos transiting the Sun. When our Moon does that, we call it a solar eclipse. As the photo here shows (click it for the QuickTime movie), the ratio of Martian Moon size to Sun size doesn't result in a real eclipse, but it's the same process.

(Extra bonus coolness: You Are Here -- a photo of Earth as seen from Mars.)

Renewable Energy Access reports that Puget Sound Energy is donating 1 million kilowatt-hours of green power "to families who need help paying their energy bills as a way to mark the utilities hallmark of serving a million electric customers in the state." It's a bit more convoluted than that, but the idea's good. PSE will donate $60,000 to the Salvation Army's Warm Home Fund (enough to purchase a million kWh), then buying a million kWh worth of renewable energy certificates from Bonneville Environmental Foundation, which invests in renewable sources such as wind and solar.

Even those whose contact with paleontology was limited to toy dinosaurs as children know that fossilization means the gradual replacement of organic material by minerals, and that over millions of years, all that's left is rock in the shape of bone. If scientists are lucky, conventional paleontological wisdom goes, they might get an imprint of skin or feather left in the mud and then hardened. Nobody would ever imagine that soft tissues would ever survive the fossilization process.

Time to rewrite the biology texts. Dr. Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University has managed to extract blood vessels and fibrous tissues (good pictures here) from the interior of a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex femur found in 2003. The bone had to be broken in two in order to be lifted from its resting place, and researchers noticed that the interior of the fossil wasn't quite as solid as the exterior. Schweitzer used a mild acid to dissolve the mineral components, leaving organic material which was stretchy and pliant, with well-defined blood vessels and cell structures. Schweitzer went on to duplicate the process with three more dinosaur specimens, two more T. rex and a hadrosaur.

The research as it stands demonstrates a close structural resemblance at the microscopic level between the dinosaur tissues and large birds such as ostrich -- hardly a surprise to those of us who have continued to follow paleontology well past the toy dinosaur phase, but a welcome confirmation of current theory. Given the obvious Jurassic Park jokes, paleontologists are being very cautious about any notion that DNA could be extracted from the tissues, but do suggest that proteins could be identified. 65 million year old proteins would be a tremendous boon to our understanding of evolutionary biology.

Treehugger points us to a site at the US Department of Energy showing wind power maps for most American states. There aren't too many surprises in store -- as expected, wind power tends to be greatest along high hill and mountain ridges, and along coastlines. Still, it's interesting to get an early warning as to which locations may turn out to be wind power capitols in the not too distant future (hello, Wyoming!).

We've posted a number of items about ocean power (aka tidal power or wave power). It's the dark horse renewable energy system -- not many people are aware of it, but the more one learns about its features, the more attractive it becomes. Less transient than wind or solar power and less of a visual trigger for NIMBY backlash than wind turbines, ocean/tidal is starting to get more attention. If I was a betting man, I'd wager that, by 2050, ocean/tidal power will represent the largest source of centralized energy production worldwide (solar will probably figure higher overall, with the broad use of solar-embedded building materials, paints and polymers).

Technology Review has a good overview article on ocean power, including links to some companies developing the technologies and some discussion of current projects. Few of the technological or environmental claims in the piece will come as much of a surprise to WorldChanging readers. What might be a bit more startling is the news that the US Department of Energy has discontinued funding for ocean power development. As of the present the UK appears to be pushing to become the world leader in ocean/tidal power.

Oh, and one last cool thing about ocean power. Tides are generated from the pull of the Earth's moon. Ocean power can, in all seriousness, also be called Lunar Power.

Green Car Congress points us to an announcement at the website of ND senator Kent Conrad of plans to build the largest biodiesel refinery in North America. A German company, Science and Technologies Industries International, will be the parent company behind the venture. The plant will produce 100,000 tons of biodiesel annually (a little over 2,000 barrels/day); the source biomass will be canola grown in North Dakota and Canada. Construction begins in August, and will be completed by December 2006.

The Florida Hydrogen Initiative has just awarded $500,000 to the fuel cell company ENER1 to develop a rest stop powered by a 10kW fuel cell. The fuel cell, moreover, will use hydrogen converted from methanol, which in turn will be created from theme park food waste and orange peels from citrus processing. The so-called "HyTech Rest Area" (the namer of which should be never allowed to work in public relations again) will be completed within the next 18 months.

Theme park waste and orange peels... could one imagine a more appropriate source for Florida power generation?

Valence Technologies (a battery producer) and EnergyCS (a maker of computer control systems) are introducing a plug-in hybrid concept car based on the Toyota Prius. The concept plug-in hybrid gets up to 180 miles-per-gallon for commute-type use of 50-60 miles per day. The design uses a custom lithium-ion battery with a longer life and better discharge rates than current standards.

Given the generally uninspiring performance and inconvenience of past electric cars, it's no surprise that makers of hybrids have gone out of their way to emphasize that hybrid-electric vehicles don't have to be plugged in. As it happens, however, the option to plug them in would be a good thing, enabling a variety of useful features -- longer electric-only range, the ability to recharge batteries using lower-cost (and sometimes renewable-sourced) overnight grid power, even the ability to run the household with vehicle batteries for a limited time should the power go out (something I personally could have used this morning).

Today's news about the rapid-recharge Li-ion battery technology from Toshiba is both good and bad for the plug-in hybrid concept. Bad because the rapid-recharge means that there would be little need to plug in overnight to recharge the vehicle batteries, eliminating one of the arguments for the model. Good, conversely, because anything that makes hybrid batteries more powerful and usable is bound to be seen as having broader applications.

(Via Green Car Congress)

Just a follow-up: Tools for the Development of Humanity, The Arlington Institute Conference 2005 we mentioned last week, has been postponed. Insurmountable logistical reasons, they say; we know how that goes. No new date has yet been posted for the conference.

So you want to build yourself a nice green sustainable home. Can you get the money to do it? Turns out that banks are often less than enthusiastic about making loans for non-traditional homes -- and, sadly, sustainable design can be considered such. If you're in the UK, you're in luck: the Ecology Building Society is a lending institution which specifically underwrites mortgages for "properties which given an ecological payback." According to their site, they focus on:

If you're in Seattle next week, be sure to catch "Where in the World are We Going? How Nature, Cities and Culture Can Flourish in the 21st Century," a discussion forum on the urban future in the natural world. The speakers are Terry Tempest Williams, Andrew Light, Stuart Cowen, David Conrad, and our very own Alex Steffen.

Each of our guests is expert at implementing a compelling vision with real world benefits. Each is working on elements of a vision for the future that not only incorporates protection and restoration of the natural environment but also includes tools and concepts of sustainable cities and culture.

The talk is on April 6 at 7:30pm. Location is the Town Hall Seattle. Tickets are $15.

We noted recently that TV chef Jamie Oliver had launched a campaign for a 'school dinner revolution' to improve the quality, taste and nutrition of the food served in schoolrooms around the UK, and that Tony Blair had promised changes as a result. Now the UK government is coughing up the money to make those changes:

The education secretary promised an extra £280m to improve school meals yesterday, in an announcement apparently prompted by the TV chef Jamie Oliver's popular campaign. [...] "His programme [has] brought into focus what everyone in their heart of hearts knows - which is if you feed children decent food, you are more likely to get responsible children who are healthier and fitter," said Tony Blair.

But Oliver said it was a shame that it had taken his TV series to prompt action, although he described the extra cash as a "massive improvement".

Celebrity chefs: the special operations force of the Second Superpower?

The state of Hawaii relies on petroleum imports for 90% of its energy use, according to Renewable Energy Access, but it's about to get its first real wind farm. UPC Wind Partners has been signed to build a 30 megawatt wind farm for the island of Maui. The US Department of Energy wind map for Hawaii shows a section rated "superb" on the south edge of the western part of the island, although the neighboring island of Molokai appears to have the most consistently good space for wind power.

Expect visual NIMBY fights about this project, unfortunately.

It's no surprise: when gas prices go up in the US, sales of fuel-efficient cars also go up. March 2005 now holds the record for sales of hybrid passenger vehicles in the United States: 16,619 cars sold, a significant gain over the previous record month, December 2004, which saw 10,441 sales. Of the March hybrid numbers, 10,236 were Priuses., but all hybrid car manufacturers saw gains and record sales. Green Car Congress has some great graphics illustrating just much of a jump this really was.

With summer approaching, it's unlikely that gas prices will drop substantially, and there's good reason to suspect they'll go up more. Demand for hybrid cars is, in turn, also likely to increase. But Priuses are already hard to come by, with waiting lists in most locations. Although Toyota has already boosted production, Honda and Ford (with the Hybrid Escape) may be in better positions to take advantage of the demand. MixedPower.com reprints an article observing that the Honda Accord Hybrid's high price is a way of controlling demand; it is also could end up being a source of big money for Honda if those turned away from Toyota car lots decide to go with the Prius' main hybrid rivals.

This is why GM & DaimlerChrysler (among others) are kicking themselves about not jumping on the hybrid trend, and focusing on trucks/SUVs now, fuel cells later. Not because they feel a sudden urge for responsibility. Because not having an attractive higher-mileage vehicle out now is putting them at financial risk.

We posted in January about the image captured of a planet orbiting a brown dwarf -- essentially a star without sufficient mass to fully ignite -- and said the astronomers who took the snapshot were "99.1% sure." But doubts still remain, the planet is still not confirmed, and the status of the star (brown dwarf) and the "planet" (huge, many times bigger than Jupiter) left many astronomers less-than-satisfied.

Now we get a second chance at astronomical fun. Space.com reports that a team of European astronomers, working since 1999, have imaged a confirmed planet around an honest-to-goodness star. GQ Lupi is about 400 light years away, and is only about a million years old -- a youngster compared to our six billion year old sun. The planet is quite far from its parent star, at roughly twice Neptune's distance, but has been positively linked to GQ Lupi over the six years of observations. The only remaining doubts are about its mass, which is currently estimated at about twice that of Jupiter, but may range up to double that.

Stewart Brand, whose credits are too numerous to mention, will be speaking this Friday night in San Francisco on our relationship with cities.

Cities are the human organizations with the greatest longevity but also the fastest rate of change. Just now the world is going massively and unstoppably urban (governments everywhere are trying to stop it, with zero success).   In a globalized world, city states are re-emerging as a dominant economic player.  Environmental consequences and opportunities abound. [...]

As the author of HOW BUILDINGS LEARN I kept getting asked to give talks on "How Cities Learn."  With a little research I found that cities do indeed "learn" (adapt) impressively, but what cities mainly do is teach.  They teach civilization.

Stewart's talk is a last-minute addition to the Long Now seminars (a replacement for the planned speaker). While live streaming is unlikely, Long Now has been great about making certain to put up audio recordings of their speakers (in a variety of formats) soon afterwards. "City Planet," Stewart Brand, 7pm (doors open), Friday, April 8, Fort Mason Conference Center, San Francisco.

Welcome to Hippy Shopper, a new Meta-Efficient/Treehugger-style green consumer & lifestyle blog aimed at European readers. Nice selection of items so far -- some undoubtedly familiar to regular readers, some new -- and a blogroll with an admirable mix of sustainability and design sites (as well as us -- thanks!). It's still pretty new, so some shakiness to the tone and format are to be expected, but it's a welcome addition just the same... especially to those of us who are working on making the move overseas in the near future.

But, please, the name!?! I'm so going to have to disguise the link in my RSS reader...

(Via Sustainablog)

A group of Parliament members, the "Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee," has officially endorsed the idea of appointing a minister for Climate Change, according to UK news site ePolitix. The committee expressed frustration with the lack of direction to the government's climate-related efforts, and warned the government not to "water down" its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. UK weather blog Rising Slowly seeks clarification: So, a department that publicly declares its own lack of clout asks the powers that be to grant it a minister to it can, err, have more clout?

A Climate Change Minister may not be in the cards immediately, but the idea will likely live on; I would expect to see Climate Ministers (or Secretaries) in many governments in the not-too-distant future.

I admit it -- I'm a sucker for art that combines science and beauty, and the Star Map Crystal definitely covers both. Designed by Bathsheba Grossman, it's a 3" glass cube laser-etched with a 3D map of all the stars within 5 parsecs (~16 light years) of the sun, with labels for each. A shrunken-down image here wouldn't do it justice, so I encourage you to follow the link to see the object for yourself. We've mentioned art based on biology before, so it's good to see some of the other natural sciences in play, too.

Want more information on the Toshiba superfast recharge battery? Green Car Congress has a good rundown of the details of the technology, as well as how it fits with requirements for advanced-technology vehicles. The Toshiba battery looks to be just as revolutionary as we had suspected, meeting two of the three main criteria for what the US Advanced Battery Consortium (the group tasked to design next-generation electric vehicle batteries) considered as long term goals -- and coming pretty close on the third. GCC notes that one stumbling block may be Toshiba's decision last year to sell off its lithium-ion battery factories to Sanyo -- but this may be good news in disguise if it forces Toshiba to license the design to a variety of producers...

Congratulations to WorldChanging contributors Rohit Gupta and Ethan Zuckerman for the nomination of their other blogs for the Reporters Sans Frontières "Freedom of Expression Blog Award." Rohit's "Chiens sans frontières" and Ethan's "Ramblings on Africa, technology and the media" are both provocative and interesting, and well worth your time. Good luck to each of you!

Digital video technology is providing worldchanging in Africa. We noted awhile back that a digital video-based movie industry was growing in Nigeria -- referred to as "Nollywood" -- relying on cheap digital production tools and easy digital distribution (such as video CDs), and aimed at the global African diaspora. BoingBoing points us to the other end of the digital video chain: digital movie houses. Shout Africa is a South African home-grown digital cinema company, with twenty movie houses in historically disadvantaged sections of the country. Moore's Law-driven reductions in the cost of digital technology will mean that this will spread quickly; Africa may soon be home to a leapfrog movie industry, all digital and with a unique and powerful voice.

For most of the United States, Daylight Savings Time started last weekend -- clocks are set an hour forward, so that the "daylight" part of the day extends to a later hour. For a variety of reasons, this has a small but noticeable effect on energy consumption. Now the House Energy and Commerce Committee is drafting legislation to extend the daylight savings period for two months, so that it starts the beginning of March and ends the last Sunday in November. A recent study by the US Department of Transportation concluded that a two month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil per day.

If this passes, a couple of questions present themselves: would the remaining three months still be referred to as "standard time;" and what's the argument for not simply extending daylight savings to the rest of the year?

It's almost enough to cause a double-take: the CEO and Chairman of Duke Energy announced that the firm will lobby for the introduction of a carbon tax in order to reduce fossil fuel use and address global warming.

"Personally, I feel the time has come to act - to take steps as a nation to reduce the carbon intensity of our economy," Paul Anderson told several hundred Charlotte business and civil leaders at a breakfast meeting. "And it's going to take all of us to do it."

Anderson expressed concern that the lack of action at the federal level will result in 50 different state-level policies. While that's an understandable caution, it ignores the current cooperation between states on environmental policies. We're more likely to see a small handful of different policies, with significant regional alignment (e.g., the Northeast, the West coast, etc.).

Anderson acknowledged that a carbon tax was unlikely to appear under the current administration, but wanted to get the discussion started.

(Via Green Car Congress)

Cool? If it works. Freaky? You betcha. A research group at Northwestern University have come up with a nanofiber and protein-based gel which, when injected into the body, self-assembles into blood vessels to heal tears or blockages, "jumpstarting" recovery.

The new technology also can be used to quickly re-grow blood vessels for trauma victims and diabetic patients, who have a hard time growing blood vessels, Stupp said. The research can be used to help solve other medical problems, including cancer, he said."If you know how to grow blood vessels, you also know how to prevent them from forming," Stupp said. "We can do the inverse and use it to starve a (cancerous) tumor."

Usual caveats apply -- three to five years before available, not yet tested on anything other than rats, etc. etc.

Stewart has an article in the current issue of Technology Review in which he claims to be presenting "Environmental Heresies":

Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.

Dave Roberts at Gristmill has the best take on the article, and I more or less agree with his reaction. But I would add: Stewart seems to be railing against the version of the environmental movement with which he was familiar decades past.

Recognition of the environmental advantages to urbanization isn't a new phenomenon, and the Erlich-style hysteria over population was generally discarded long ago. Even the still-widespread resistance to GMOs and nuclear power usually has more to do with an educated opposition to how these technologies have been deployed (and the lack of oversight and out-and-out deception often involved) than some kind of knee-jerk "science bad" mantra. I'm not saying that the 1970s hippy treehugger caricatures with which Stewart may be most familiar no longer exist, but they certainly no longer represent the bulk of environmentalist thinking.

Technology Review has a short article on a new DNA chip that adds a tiny wireless transmitter, making it possible to conduct and report on tests from within a sample.

Since this kind of chip can transmit data from inside a sealed container, samples tested with it are less likely to be contaminated by researchers or the environment, and samples containing pathogens are less likely to infect workers. Assuming patient samples can be prepared easily for chip analysis, the chip could also make it easier to detect DNA variations in settings less controlled than a research lab. Though the research is still in its initial phases, Hitachi expects that the chips could be used in clinics or small hospitals to help doctors decide which drugs to prescribe for patients.

Some quick searching didn't dig up any more information; anyone have a better link?

As the cost of biological sensors drops, and the ease-of-use increases, expect to see expanded use of on-site/real-time testing of health, consumer products and the environment. This isn't necessarily all for the better: some of this testing will have a "make the invisible visible" quality, but much of it will have the effect of "feeding consumer fears."

The 15th Annual Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy starts tomorrow in Seattle, Washington. The theme: Panopticon.

Over time, and particularly recently, surveillance of ordinary citizens has increased to dramatic levels. Not only are governments watching more aspects of their citizens’ lives, but those in the private sector are increasing surveillance of people as well. Often lost in the race to “increase intelligence” are discussions about different approaches to address problems like the threat of terrorism that are equally or more effective, but do not involve extensive and constant surveillance.

The speaker and session lists are online. The topics look provocative and interesting, and we hope to have a report or two from the conference here at WorldChanging.

We've been watching the growth of OhMyNews from the earliest days of WorldChanging. Reports from the original Korean-only version of the collaborative news site were influential in the 2003 Korean elections, and the English-language "International" version has become an interesting source of global perspectives, features and opinion. Now OhMyNews is opening up its "citizen reporter" system, making it possible for anyone to contribute stories.

After submitting your registration details with OhmyNews for confirmation by our staff, you will find your very own reporter's desk where you can keep track of readers' reactions in real time. This includes the number of people who've read your stories and their comments, and the amount of cybercash you earned.[...] OhmyNews International editors will read through your stories, fact-checking them and editing for style, making them more polished for your readers.

This last bit is what distinguishes OhMyNews from other collaborative news sites like Slashdot or Kuro5hin, which implicitly rely on their readers to do the fact-checking for them. Wikinews also relies on readers for fact-checking, but as a wiki, readers can make fixes directly.

(Via Smart Mobs)

Business Ethics magazine has just published its list of the "100 best corporate citizens" for 2005, the sixth consecutive year they've produced such a listing. Companies from the top 1,000 biggest publicly-held firms are rated on how well they respond to the needs of shareholders, their communities, minorities and women, their employees, the environment, human rights, their customers and ethical governance. It's an interesting list (PDF); some familiar names rate highly, as do some unexpected firms, while some well-regarded companies don't appear at all. This could be because of the weighting of the various categories, or because scoring is based in part on whether the candidate firms respond to a questionnaire from the magazine.

The magazine's ratings add categories as ethical concerns evolve. The "governance" category is new this year, for example, in response to the growing concerns over the behavior of corporate management. I wouldn't be surprised to see energy efficiency, transparency, and "production sustainability" added in years to come.

(Via Gristmill)

Starbucks is #42 on the Business Ethics 100; Nike is #31. Neither firm is without controversy. But today comes a bit of news about each which underscores why these companies made the list.

Starbucks announced today that it is committing to buying 5% of the electricity for US stores from renewable power sources; the move will cut emissions by an amount comparable to removing about 3,200 cars from the road. Now, five percent isn't that much, and in years to come we'll all do much better than that simply by being on the grid. Nonetheless, high profile companies making efforts like this is one of the drivers that will bring that future about faster.

Nike, fresh from unveiling its Considered line of enviroshoes, has just released a detailed corporate responsibility report (after having been silent on the issue since 2002). Among the topics covered in the report is a full list of its suppliers, a move to greater transparency which should be applauded, even by those who remain concerned about past practices. Nike is aware of the need for greater transparency in order to regain public trust: "We felt the risks of any future lawsuit were far outweighed by benefits of transparency," says Hannah Jones, Nike's vice-president of corporate responsibility. "Because if we've learned anything as a company, it's that closing down and not talking about the challenges and opportunities doesn't get you far."

(Nike via Gristmill:TriplePundit)

From the second superpower to smart mobs to cyberdemocracy, information technology is reshaping how politics work in the developed world. Much of the discussion, however, has focused on the American experience -- Howard Dean, political blogs, electronic voting irregularities, and the like. But political technology can be found around the world, and (as should be expected) perspectives and opinions vary on its value and utility.

The European Review of Political Technologies is a new journal published by the Politech Institute covering issues of governance and democracy online. The March 2005 issue is available online, with papers from researchers from NGOs, academia, and the corporate world. The papers (which are all in PDF) can be a bit dry, but for those of us interested in the evolution of democracy in the wired world, it's good to see some new perspectives brought into the mix.

BP Solar is set to start building a large-scale solar-powered drip irrigation system in Sri Lanka. The first phase of the contract will bring the system to 5100 families, reducing overall energy consumption, soil erosion, and the use of dangerous kerosene-fueled pumps. Renewable Energy Access has some details, mostly about financing.

And that's pretty much all I can find about what sounds to be an interesting project. The BP Solar and BP Solar/Australia websites don't have any information on this, and all the news reports I could find appeared to be simply republishing the Renewable Energy Access piece.

Any of you have better leads on this?

A sign of things to come? Nine Inch Nails, the rock band fronted by Trent Reznor, has released the digital loop files [70MB] for its latest single, in a format for the Apple music editing app GarageBand. Reznor is encouraging fans to remix, re-edit, and play with the sound files, making their own versions of the song.

Powerful, inexpensive tools for creating and editing audio and video are increasingly in the hands of everyday people. Sometimes that means opportunities for entirely new creations; often, it means opportunities to play with existing cultural artifacts, making them new all over again. Remixes can be better than the originals. It will be interesting to see how successful Reznor's experiment turns out to be.

(Via Metafilter)

Stewart Brand's recent piece in Technology Review, "Environmental Heresies," is getting a bit of play for a number of reasons. Brand is relatively well-known, and his association with the founding of the Whole Earth Catalog gives him an immediate bit of green/counter-culture cred; furthermore, in the piece, he says that the threat of global warming is greater than the threat coming from nuclear power, and the chattering classes do seem to love the sight of an environmentalist endorsing nuclear power. Technology Review is continuing the debate online, with Joseph Romm (a specialist in energy and efficiency) responding to Brand's points, and Brand replying in turn. It's unclear precisely how long this blog debate will continue, but Romm has already raised some good issues.

As I commented earlier, Brand's "heresies" aren't, really, and seem to reflect an awareness of the environmental movement as it stood a decade or three ago. With a couple of the subjects (population and urbanization), the weight of opinion shifted awhile back towards the positions Brand claims as "heretical," while with the others (biotech and nuclear power), Brand seems to miss that much of the debate focuses on corporate misbehavior rather than on some rejection of science. Can one find greens making the arguments that Brand rejects? Of course. But environmentalists aren't nearly so stuck in the 1970s as Brand seems to believe. Hopefully, Romm will help him see that.

While much of the historical climate record comes from ice cores, it's possible to get useful information from drilling in other kinds of material. Last year, scientists in Antarctica pulled an ice core reaching back 740,000 years -- the most ancient found up to that point. But last month, researchers retrieved lake bed sediment cores from Lake Malawi with samples going back further than any previous cores of any type -- 1.5 million years.

"The lake has restricted circulation and virtually no oxygen at the bottom, so each year seasonal deposition of sediment creates a pattern like tree rings," King said. "With the cores we collected we'll be able to look at very old records of climate data simply by counting and analyzing the layers."

The researchers [...] chose to drill Lake Malawi because its unique location and geology will enable them to reconstruct a high-resolution, tropical climate history stretching back through the time when massive ice sheets periodically covered high-latitude North America and Eurasia.

During the run-up to last year's presidential election in the US, we posted a number of pieces about the security of voting technologies. Today, Bruce Schneier, a widely-admired security specialist, posted a piece to his blog about the security of the current election people are paying attention to -- that of the new pope. I'll let you discover his conclusions for yourselves, but he does an excellent job dissecting the ways in which the conclave system has developed protections against fraud and abuse, and finding the flaws that remain. Are the lessons replicable on a scale greater than the college of cardinals? Perhaps, perhaps not -- but they're certainly worth thinking about.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has now opened HybridCenter.org, a website focusing on hybrid cars, including reviews, explanations of technology, and editorials. Regular readers of Green Car Congress or the various hybrid-focused weblogs out there won't find much that's new at Hybrid Center, but since the UCS has been pretty active in promoting hybrid vehicles over the years, I would expect the content at Hybrid Center to be of generally high quality. The site's generally well-laid out, with little auto and hybrid related facts sprinkled about. My favorite: sales of the Prius now exceed sales of the Hummer H2.

We've been following the progress of the discovery of methane in the Martian atmosphere for awhile now. First spotted by the ESA's Mars Express probe, the existence of atmospheric methane (which would be driven out of the air within 300 years) implies that Mars is much more lively than previously thought. Furthermore, methane is generally produced either through biological or geological phenomena; since we've seen no evidence for recent geological activity on Mars, a number of scientists are starting to seriously consider the possibility that Mars does, indeed, harbor life.

Space.com now reports that Earth-based astronomers at the Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea have confirmed the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere, particularly over the equatorial regions thought most likely to harbor microbial life under the surface. As we accumulate more data about the cycles and amount of methane, we'll better be able to determine whether the methane comes from abiogenic geological sources. Discovery of life on Mars would give us our first look at a new ecosystem, and even a simple and primitive one would add enormously to our understanding of how planetary environments work.

StopGlobalWarming.org has launched a "Virtual March on Washington," a bi-partisan effort to demonstrate a consensus about the need to respond now to the threat of continued global warming. The "virtual march" aspect will be a series of specific examples of the current effects of climate disruption, starting with the Shishmaref native village in Alaska, going step by step towards DC. The entire "march" will take a year, and is scheduled to get to Washington in late April, 2006. Unlike some examples of online activism, StopGlobalWarming.org seems to have picked up the support of some relatively influential people: Robert Kennedy, Jr., Senator John McCain, and former presidential candidate Wesley Clark, among others.

The site's new, and there's not a lot there yet. It has something of a rough social networking aspect, wherein people who join the "march" can link themselves to names of those who have already joined, as a way of demonstrating the spread of the idea. If you'd like to join, you can hit the main page of the site. If you'd like to add your name to mine (and you're certainly under no obligation to do so), you can join via my page.

How much energy does your home consume? You can use tools like the Kill-a-Watt to check specific appliances, but that won't help you figure out if the aluminum windows, uninsulated water heater or aging dishwasher should be your first choice of replacement. Fortunately, the Lawrence Berkeley Labs has a useful tool online: the Home Energy Saver.

The HES is a website with a multiplicity of questions about your home's energy status. You can rely on averages or get extremely granular, as desired. The more detail you can give, the more accurate the results will be.

Each page of the audit gives you a session ID#, with the encouragement to write the number down. I'd second that encouragement -- there are so many questions that a browser crash, forcing you to re-enter all the answers, is more likely to make you give up in frustration. I know of which I speak...

Reader Patrick Di Justo commented on yesterday's "Earth Out of Balance" post with a remarkable observation. I want to make sure that people who don't normally read the comments see it, so I'm putting it here.

The article quoted in the post noted that the additional energy trapped at the surface by greenhouse gases amounted to the equivalent of a 1-watt light bulb per square meter. But Patrick notes:

A one watt lightbulb is a pretty bad image. Who has ever seen a one watt lightbulb?

A birthday candle makes a better image. Three birthday candles together put out about one watt. Imagine three tiny pink birthday candles burning on every square meter of the Earth's surface. Every square meter of farmland, every square meter of ocean, of forest and tundra, in every sidewalk square in every city all over the world, imagine three tiny pink candles burning day and night.

That's global warming.

Want to make your own fab lab but don't quite have MIT's resources? How about using Meccano (known in the US as "Erector Set". Stop giggling.) and a glue gun? reBang weblog shows us that New Zealand's Vik Olliver has done so; a picture is worth a thousand words:

He's reportedly able to get 0.25mm precision with the setup. He won't be making printed circuit boards with it any time soon, but it will be fascinating to find out what he can make with it...

(Via All Art Burns)

Just to make the self-referential circle complete, here is a cameraphone photo of Howard Greenstein at MeshForum reading WorldChanging -- specifically, Alex's post about Howard's photo of me...

The talk went well, and I'll be posting a text version of it tomorrow. I'm told that an audio version will be available online soon, as well.

(Update: Howard just showed me a picture he took of me posting this entry. I'm afraid that if we take this any further, this conference would collapse into a singularity, so we'll stop now.)

The European Space Agency's Envisat environmental satellite is constructing what will work out to be the most detailed image ever of our home planet.

Over the next two years, the Envisat's imaging spectrometer will take a series of 300 meter images of Earth's land surface area; when completed, the image will require 20 terabytes of storage.

The picture shown here is a mosaic from Envisat assembled from 1561 orbits taking place over May, July, October and November, 2004. Click it for a much larger version.

Mike Millikin, publisher of Green Car Congress and Sustainability Sundays anchor, was tapped over at Grist to do some Q&A with readers. Mike's answers to reader questions are useful, informative, and wide-ranging -- just what we'd expect. Among the topics he covers are the environmental effect of hybrid car batteries, car-sharing, and the relative efficiency of air travel.

Check it out.

If you want to see what's going on at an atomic scale, you can't use a regular microscope -- atoms are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. Instead, nanoengineers, physicists, and others interested in mucking about in the realm of the very, very small use atomic force microscopes, or AFMs. AFMs build images by touching the tip of a probe -- just a couple of atoms across -- to the object to be imaged; the motion of the tip as it runs across the surface gets converted by computer to an image. Traditionally, this process is very slow, on the order of about one picture every ten milliseconds.

MIT researchers have now figured out a method of capturing the images in microseconds -- fast enough to create time lapse movies of nanoscale motion. Why is this a big deal? Because this enables researchers to monitor microscopic bits of engineering (like microfluidic pumps), keep tabs on the function of nanotechnological devices, even capture movies of biological activities at the sub-cellular level. Imagine a movie showing the replication of DNA.

Use of the web as a locus for political organization and discussion doesn't have to end once an election occurs. Very often, successful political figures take their victories as signs of full vindication of policies and proposals, even when voter feelings were less certain or more nuanced than the politician recognizes. Now the team that brought UK voters "They Want To Be Elected.com" -- allowing citizens to annotate party platforms -- has come up with I Voted For You Because.com, a chance for UK voters to explain why they voted the way they did, addressed not to other voters, but to the elected officials themselves.

This team is also responsible for They Work For You.com, which tracks the votes and positions of members of Parliament. These sites are wonderful examples of the web's potential in the political world -- it's more than tool for organization, it's more than a place to have shouting matches, it really can be an accessible mechanism for sharing knowledge about the world of politics.

Bill Joy must be tearing out his hair right about now.

Cornell University researchers have developed a methodology for self-replication by machines. That is, they've designed robots that can build copies of themselves. Although these robots can do nothing more than make more robots (as long as the components hold out, at least), self-replication has some serious applications for dangerous environments:

Lipson suggests that the idea of making self-replicating robots out of self-contained modules could be used to build working robots that could self-repair by replacing defective modules. For example, robots sent to explore Mars could carry a supply of spare modules to use for repairing or rebuilding as needed, allowing for more flexible, versatile and robust missions. Self-replication and repair also could be crucial for robots working in environments where a human with a screwdriver couldn't survive.

The scariest thing in the report? The note that one of the Cornell researchers has since moved to work at Microsoft.

(Reppy: "You appear to be making a duplicate of yourself. Would you like help with that?")

NextBillion.net describes itself as bringing together "the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise," with an explicit focus on the ways in which poverty can be eliminated through profit-making activities. Its blog "Development Through Enterprise" launched formally just last week. Many of the posts on the site so far read like brief entries in the WorldChanging "Leapfrog Nations" category, and in fact we've covered a number of the items they discuss -- for example: the India "Mobilis" computer (WC post here); the Vodafone study on the impact of mobile phones in Africa (WC post here); and the connection between nanotechnology and reaching the Millennium Development Goals (WC post here).

The posts on NextBillion won't always line up with the approaches we take here on WorldChanging, but -- at least at this early point in its history -- it definitely looks like a resource to add to one's RSS list...

(Via SmartMobs)

The new issue of Fast Company -- a dot.com-era business magazine still hanging on -- is all about design, and looks to be fairly interesting reading. As of right now, among the few web-accessible pieces are a series of profiles of different designers, showing the breadth of design thinking across a variety of disciplines. Probably the most WorldChanging-relevant entry is the profile of Bruce Mau, whose "Massive Change" project has proven both inspiring and surprisingly controversial.

For Mau, design is a powerful tool that's best used to attack vexing problems. The exhibition leads viewers through spaces defined by challenges where there are new opportunities -- many spurred by technology -- for design to play a problem-solving role. There is, for example, a humble but elegantly designed purifier that makes drinking water accessible to the developing world. More than anything, Mau's goal is to push people to rethink their preconceptions about design and what design can accomplish.

Reva Electric Car company -- the Indian automaker behind the "G-Wiz" electric car -- has been tapped by the Dehli government to build a fleet of solar-charged electric buses in time for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

[Minister for Science and Technology Kapil] Sibal said Delhi government officials would soon visit Reva's facilities to study the prototype developed for a smaller 16-seater air-conditioned bus. [...]"Considering the fact the proposed bus would be environment friendly, with very little expense on recharging the battery, low maintenance, running cost of Rs.1.20 per km, the social benefit of less pollution - this is an altogether workable proposition," said Sibal.

(Via GCC)

The ABC television show "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" ends its season this Sunday night with a green twist: the rebuilt house will include both photovoltaic and wind power systems.

PV Powered of Bend, Oregon, along with Sun Power Corporation (CA), Perfect Power (AZ), Unirac (NM) and The Good Power Company (AZ) were chosen to coordinate, design and install a state-of-the-art, 2kW PV generation system for the deserving family's new home. The system uses a combination of the highest efficiency inverter (PV Powered) and modules (Sun Power) available today.

As an added bonus, Southwest Windpower installed a 1kW wind turbine to augment the home's PV system. With an abundance of sunshine and wind available in Flagstaff, the home will receive 65-75% of its energy needs through clean, green renewable sources, and the Piestewa Family will see a significant decrease in energy costs. The addition of a grid-connected wind power system made this the first hybrid PV/wind system installed in the state.

As interesting as this is -- and it's certainly a good thing to have renewable power sources play such a prominent role in a relatively popular home show -- it doesn't look like it will be the WorldChanging Home Makeover. Renewable energy is good, but there's a lot more to a green home than solar panels and wind turbines. But it's yet another early warning sign of a cultural shift; don't be surprised to see "Sustainable House," "Green My Ride" and "America's Top Ecoactivist" on the Fall schedule in a year or two...

(Via Sustainablog)

The Cuban government has some serious problems, but occasionally it does make some reasonable decisions. They announced this week, for example, that they will eliminate the government use of Microsoft Windows in favor of Linux. Perhaps the biggest surprise in this announcement is that they hadn't done so already. Red-baiting notwithstanding, there are compelling reasons for the adoption of Linux (and other Free/Open Source Software) by developing nations -- lower cost of distribution, the ability to customize the applications for local needs, and the utility of open source as an educational tool, among others -- and some leapfrog countries have embraced it whole-heartedly.

Besides, for those of us hoping for positive developments in a post-Castro Cuba, the spread of a system with the underlying philosophy of free inquiry and experimentation is a pretty good early indicator...

We've linked to wind power maps before -- maps of US wind potential, maps of US actual production, and the "SWERA" project looking at solar and wind potential in the developing world. But we haven't yet seen a map of global wind power potential. But we will soon.

Stanford University's Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson have just published an article for the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres mapping global wind potential. Over 8,000 wind speed measurements around the world were analyzed; of those, almost 13 percent of the stations examined receive sufficient annual average wind strong enough for power generation. North America has the greatest concentration of potential wind power sources, followed by the southern tip of South America and the Australian island of Tasmania. But how much power could be produced?

The authors found that the locations with sustainable Class 3 winds could produce approximately 72 terawatts and that capturing even a fraction of that energy could provide the 1.6-1.8 terawatts that made up the world's electricity usage in the year 2000. A terawatt is 1 trillion watts, a quantity of energy that would otherwise require more than 500 nuclear reactors or thousands of coal-burning plants.

The paper is behind a subscription barrier, but I've submitted a request for a copy for review.

While keeping in mind the admonition that referring to oneself as "post-" anything is inherently constraining, the notion of "postindustrial design" has a definite ring to it. But what exactly does the term mean? HyperWerk FHBB, a department of the University of Applied Sciences in Basel, Switzerland, is sponsoring a competition to find out.

We are looking for your interpretation of Postindustrial Design: "What does a Postindustrial Designer do?"The task is to express your thoughts and ideas on this subject on a front of a postcard. Three works will be awarded. The first prize will be printed on a postcard and distributed throughout Switzerland.

The competition began May 16, and runs through June 12. Judging will be completed by June 19. Time to get out your Sharpies and/or Wacom pads!

China Daily reports that Beijing plans to make offshore wind generation a significant part of its power generation network over the next couple of decades.

Sea winds could be harnessed to generate an estimated 750 gigawatts, although few projects were under way now, [vice-chairman of the Chinese Wind Energy Association] Shi said.

This would be around 70 percent higher than the country's total installed generating capacity at the end of 2004 and maybe three times the potential of onshore sites.

China aimed to have 20 gigawatts of wind-generating capacity installed by 2020, equivalent to around 1.0 percent of annual electricity consumption at that time, Shi said.

(Insert sound of screeching tires here) -- China plans to have a national electricity consumption footprint of 2 terawatts by 2020?!?!? That's roughly equivalent to total global electricity consumption now. Somebody get Amory Lovins to Beijing to help them understand the efficient use end of things, stat!

(Via Sustainablog)

The notion of layering data onto maps doesn't just apply to cityscapes. It can be rather useful for brain surgery, as well. A recent article in the Financial Times profiled Atamai, a company which makes "virtual augmentation for neurosurgery" software, allowing the information coming from probes in brain tissue to display against a 3D representation of brain structures. Two aspects of the story stood out: the first, that the team which came together to form Atamai conceived of the project as a "GPS for the brain," a way to construct a standardized way of mapping brain locations for surgery; the second, that much of the code is open source, and runs on a variety of computer hardware (pretty much anything able to run Python and the VTK graphics suite).

An open source virtual augmentation system for locational positioning during brain surgery? I'm dizzy from the futurism.

(Complete text of article at -- and found via -- BookOfJoe)

Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 -- launched in 1972 and 1973 to explore Jupiter and Saturn -- have traveled to the most distant fringes of the solar system. As their fuel was spent decades ago, their travels are subject only to momentum and gravity. Therefore, their paths should be eminently predictable. Problem: They're hundreds of thousands of miles away from where they should be, and deviating by ~8,000 more miles every year.

The Pioneer Anomaly, as it's called, is one of the biggest physics mysteries around. JPL scientists started working in 1980 to figure out why Pioneer 10 and 11 get more and more off-course every year, proposing, testing and eventually discarding various explanations. It may turn out to be that our understanding of physics is due for a serious re-evaluation. Problem #2: NASA is about to destroy our only means of figuring this out.

The main body of data from the two spacecraft exists only on magnetic tapes that can only be read by an obsolete computer system. Access to the tapes (from 1972-1987) would allow researchers to go over every bit of information recorded by the probes. But NASA has pulled funding from further research into the anomaly, and is set to demolish the only computers able to read the data.

The Planetary Society, a group of space exploration enthusiasts, is trying to pull together sufficient money to save the computers from destruction, pull the data, and begin the analysis. The amount needed is startlingly small -- only about $250,000 -- considering that it's looking more and more like the result could be rewriting the laws of physics.

If nothing is certain but climate disruption and taxes, here come the taxes part. The Royal Society, the highly prestigious UK scientific organization, is calling on the government to tax carbon dioxide emissions from all sectors, as the government has not done enough to curb CO₂ emissions through other policies. They're particularly concerned that the upcoming closure of aging nuclear power plants will actually increase the use of fossil fuels in the UK and subsequent greenhouse emissions.

If the UK adopts such a tax, they wouldn't be the first; as we noted recently, New Zealand will begin taxing carbon in 2007.

(Via Green Car Congress.)

[the continuation of the WorldChanging Interview with Ramez Naam, James Hughes and Joel Garreau. Part One here.]

Opinions on James Howard Kunstler's latest tract, The Long Emergency, vary pretty widely here at WorldChanging. Alex disagrees pretty strongly with Kunstler's dystopic vision; JonL found it (at least its manifestation in an interview in Salon) to be a "breath of fresh air." Personally, I'm in Alex's camp -- I'm tired of Apocaphilia in its various manifestations, and Kunstler in particular seems to claim that we can do nothing to head off disaster. Moreover, any attempts to invent better, more efficient, less damaging tools are pointless, in Kunstler's view, and he calls out Amory Lovins' "hypercar" idea for particular ridicule.

Lovins didn't like that, and responded to Kunstler. Salon managed to get Lovins' response, as well as a second exchange between the two. I'd have to say that Lovins comes across as the clear winner of the debate, although that's undoubtedly my own biases talking, at least in part. Not just my bias for Lovins' perspective, though, my bias for research over accusation and thought over fear. Or, as Lovins puts it, "Facts are more mundane than fantasies, but a better basis for conclusions."

As with all Salon pieces, you either have to subscribe (a nominal sum, and well worth it in my view) or sit through a brief advertisement before getting access to the piece.

Okay, so the article title is a bit pointed, but the argument made by Mark Leonard -- that the model for success in the 21st century will be Europe, not the US -- is an interesting one. The article, in the current issue of The Globalist, is pulled from Leonard's book Perpetual Power: Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century. Although Leonard focuses primarily in the article on diplomatic and political interactions, the notion that the European model will do better in the 21st century parallels some of what we've explored here. In short, getting a jump now on a transition to high-efficiency, sustainable design could better position Europe to handle climate disruptions and "end of oil" scenarios. Add that to Leonard's argument that cooperation, international organizations and a focus on carrots over sticks is a winning strategy, and it makes for a scenario undoubtedly giving folks in DC stomach pains.

Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- or MRSA -- is an antibiotic-resistant form of the common microbe. Staph infections can be dangerous to people already ill or injured, and the proliferation of the antibiotic-resistant form is proving a serious headache to medical professionals. But a newly-discovered deep ocean bacterium, Actinomycete verrucosispora maris, produces a unique antibiotic chemical, abyssomicin C, able to kill MRSA and, potentially, other antibiotic-resistant "superbugs."

The most notable aspect of this discovery is the increased attention being paid to natural systems in our search for more effective medicines. In this particular case, the isolation of ocean microbes has meant that land-based bacteria have had no chance to evolve any kind of resistance to the deep sea antibiotics.

Audio commentaries were just made to be hacked.

The rise of easily-distributed digital audio files and inexpensive portable players has made possible a world of homemade, underground alternative audio commentaries to use as substitutes for or adjuncts to the "official" versions found in museums and on DVDs. The New York Times notes the growing popularity of "remix MoMA," an alternative set of commentaries available at Art Mobs; these renegade tracks are provided by art students and instructors from the NY region, and have a style (and perspective) one is unlikely to find in the commentaries provided by the museum.

The homemade commentary concept isn't limited to museums. MP3 walking tours are becoming increasingly commonplace, giving tourists a peek into a city's culture not always available in the popularized accounts (and, incidentally, helping the visitors blend in with commonplace MP3 player headsets). And alternative DVD commentaries, while not giving the insider's perspective that one gets from hearing the writer or director talk about a movie or TV show, can give a wide range of critical opinions, observations about larger cultural connections, or even sarcastic humor of the MST3K variety.

Last March we pointed to the RepRap project -- an attempt by Dr. Adrian Bowyer of the University of Bath's Centre for Biomimetic and Natural Technology to design and build a Free/Open Source fabber. In the subsequent few months, Dr. Bowyer and his team have made substantial progress, including adopting a "Meccano" structure for the test unit similar to the Glue Gun Fabricator devised by Vik Olliver; a report by Vik Olliver detailing how to make one for yourself (PDF) can be found at the RepRap website, along with all of the current plans and design reports.

(Via reBang)

Last June, I posted about the Deja View device -- a wearable camera and hard drive recorder, allowing users to save digital copies of whatever they see, and an early indicator that the participatory panopticon would soon be here. I said at the time that it may be ugly, ungainly and too limited, but it was a sign of more advanced technologies to come. And I was right.

I was alerted today to the DoubleVision system, a head-mounted surveillance camera hooked to a portable hard disk system. LCD display for on-the-spot reviewing is optional. Looking a bit like a small gun stuck to the side of the head, the DoubleVision improves on the portability and storage of the Deja View, while keeping the same general model. Most interesting about the system, however, is the marketing: the makers, Second Sight Surveillance, is explicitly aiming the DoubleVision at military, police and security users. No mention is made of sousveillance, media or citizen use (a "Lite" version of the system aimed at consumers uses video tape, not a hard drive -- still useful, sure, but definitely a near-dead medium).

The website doesn't mention price, and doesn't appear to do actual distribution of the equipment. Pity; this is just the sort of gear every protest organizer and citizen watch group will want well before the next round of elections...

Finland may have the world's best school system, but it is also a leader in another respect: eco-business. That's the message from this Washington Post article, at least, which profiles a variety of Finnish businesses taking advantage of the increasingly aggressive EU environmental rules.

Proventia Automation [...] produces machines that can cut up television sets and computer monitors, separating leaded from unleaded glass with a laser and recycling all the glass and other valuable, reusable components. Noponen hopes the E.U.'s new standard will produce numerous new customers for this technology.

More broadly, his firm can provide information technology and management advice to help manufacturers figure out how to meet the new rules most efficiently. Manufacturers of electronic equipment can actually make money by recycling their own creations when their useful lives are over, Noponen said.

Finland, Finland, Finland... Finland has it all.

Bruce Sterling, in his Viridian mailings, often draws an explicit comparison between greenhouse gas-emitting industries and tobacco companies, arguing that the same kind of lawsuits that have hammered the cigarette companies are likely to hit oil, auto and other heavy-CO₂ companies, too. But now he's not alone in making that argument. An article from Agence France Presse -- translated and posted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development -- explores the growing recognition that lawsuits around the world over greenhouse gases and heavy weather are nearly inevitable.

"Litigation on climate-related damage is clearly on the horizon," says Richard Lord, a senior London attorney in commercial law. [...] "If generally accepted scientific assessments are accurate, global warming is likely to be the most expensive environmental problem ever," says Andrew Strauss, a professor of international law at Widener University Law School in Delaware and Pennsylvania.

The biggest knot to untangle is likely to be apportioning the blame. How much responsibility goes to the maker of mega-SUVs (for example), and how much to the millions of buyers? But that won't mean that greenhouse-guilty industries will get off the hook easily. One of the probably unanticipated results of demands for more research and more certainty is that it will be hard for greenhouse companies to argue that they didn't understand the results of what they were doing...

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have come up with a new way of sequestering carbon dioxide emissions -- one based on natural processes.

The process involves reacting carbon dioxide in the stream of waste gas from a power plant with water and calcium carbonate (limestone) or other carbonate compounds. Instead of carbon dioxide emissions, the plant generates wastewater rich in soluble bicarbonate ions, which can be released beneath the surface of the ocean. [research scientist with UCSC's Institute of Marine Sciences Gregory] Rau said he expects this would have little impact on the ocean.

"Limestone weathering is one of the ways the Earth naturally mitigates increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide," Rau said. "But nature is slow. We propose to speed up the limestone weathering reaction."

Rau argues that the release of bicarbonate ions in the ocean would actually improve conditions for coral reefs. Clearly this method will require a great deal of study before being implemented -- we really really don't want to make things worse in the ocean -- but nonetheless it's an interesting example of the greater use of natural processes as models for human activity. And in this case, it's a particularly important activity: sequestration is not the solution to global warming, but it's an important adjunct to an aggressive adoption of renewables and a cultural shift to a bright green society.

Back in March, WorldChanging's Alex Steffen and Ally #1 Bruce Sterling gave the closing keynote to South by SouthWest Interactive. Dawn, Emily and Jon ably blogged many of the good ideas Alex & Bruce discussed, and a video excerpt was soon made available. But now, for your listening pleasure, is the audio of the complete SXSW keynote talk, presented by IT Conversations.

The talk's available as streaming Windows media, streaming MP3, or as MP3 download. It runs about 53 minutes, and the download size is 24 megabytes.

How can we redesign properity so that we can deliver prosperity to the whole human population? How we can design solutions to the problems of air polution, traffic, over-population, and food shortages? How do technological leapfrogging and the eviro-coture, treefrogging movement impact these problems? How can we change our long-term consumption patterns? How will bio-mimetics and neobiology help us create a sustainable ecology? [...] These are other questions that Alex and Bruce explore while they talk about how we can choose the future that we want and not the unthinkable future we'll have if we change nothing.

Author Robert Neuwirth, a New York City native, took up residence in slums (or, as he terms them, "squatter cities") across the developing world -- among them, the Rocinha neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Kibera in Nairobi and Sanjay Gandhi Nagar in north Mumbai -- for his new book Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World.He sees in these squatter cities parallels to medieval urban communities, and this parallel is the subject of a talk he is giving this coming Friday, June 10, in San Francisco, for the Long Now organization. The monthly Long Now seminars are always quite interesting, and admission is free (although a $10 donation is appreciated).

I try to attend these talks, and am always happy to chat with WorldChanging readers who run into me there. As always, a recording of the presentation will eventually be made available on the Long Now website.

We mentioned Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum's series on peak oil last week; part 4 and part 5, along with a concluding observation, have now been posted.

Grist's Dave Roberts is exactly right: Drum's policy observations are by far the most disappointing aspect of the series. Not only does Drum act as if all solutions are equally reasonable (and assume that solutions beyond improving car efficiency and drilling more -- such as changing the way we structure our communities -- are politically impossible), he pointedly ignores the bigger context of the "peak oil" scenario: greenhouse gases and climate disruption.

That said, the Washington Monthly articles are worth reading if only for the straightforward and blessedly hyperbole-free analysis of what peak oil is, why it's a concern now, and how soon it could hit.

Social network analysis does more than help us better understand who's sleeping with whom. It can also help investigators get to the bottom of one of the biggest corporate scandals in history: Enron.

Jeff Heer, at UC Berkeley's Computer Science department, has built a viewer for visualizing and clustering the thousands of email connections between Enron executives made public as part of the Enron investigation. Enronic is a java application (requiring the mysql database of Enron email (219 MB)) allowing users to search through the messages, looking for patterns and otherwise non-obvious connections.

(A categorized subset of Enron emails, with a focus on business-related messages, is also available.)

While work remains to be done on making Enronic a fully-developed tool for corporate network analysis, it is already showing promise. An initial test run resulted in the system highlighting Tim Belden as critical, an Enron executive already convicted for conspiracy to manipulate the California energy market. Enronic is now part of the UC Berkeley Enron Email Analysis research program.

(Apologies for the post title, but really, how could I resist?)

(Via Future Feeder)

The World Intellectual Property Organization is hosting an online forum on IP issues from June 1 through June 15 (i.e., the conversation started last week). The focus of the discussion is the World Summit on the Information Society, the series of meetings looking at the global evolution of information and communication technology access (we wrote about the previous meeting, in December of 2003; the next meeting is a few months away, in November of 2005).

Intellectual property issues -- patents, copyright, free vs. closed source, genetic rights and the like -- show up often on WorldChanging, and (like many topics we discuss) solutions are neither easy nor obvious, but are possible to achieve with sufficient reasoned discussion. This is a good opportunity to get in and have your say about the direction global policies should take, and the concerns the world should keep in mind, as information technologies continue to spread.

(Thank you, Agatha Dobbs!)

Want to reduce your greenhouse gas footprint a bit? The Union of Concerned Scientists has a ten step program for you. No admission that you're powerless over your addiction to carbon required -- in fact, the program recognizes that your CO2 output is under your control, and you can choose to reduce it.

The "Ten Personal Solutions" are almost all easy, inexpensive, and extremely common-sense. Drive a high-mileage car, buy clean power when available, use Energy Star appliances, plant a tree -- that sort of thing. Taking all ten of these steps will reduce a household's greenhouse emissions by a little or a lot, depending on how non-green they were beforehand. Hybrid-driving, compact-fluorescent-using, walking-when-possible worldchanging types won't see a huge difference -- but that's okay, being an example that taking these steps won't hurt can be useful, too.

(Via Treehugger.)

Hey -- did you know that Brazil had become the world's biggest advocate of free/open source software for developing countries? If you've read WorldChanging over the last couple of years, there's no way you could have missed it. But if you need to get up to speed on Brazil's adoption of Linux and the free software philosophy, the BBC has a useful article. It hits all the key points, and does so relatively clearly.

Government support? Check. Global Organization for Free Software? Check. Favelas? Check. Lula vs. Bill? Check.

No surprises in store for those who have been following this story, but a nice summation of how things stand now. A good one to pass along to your friends and families...

Sustainlane -- which describes itself as a "community-generated guide for living a better life" -- recently posted a ranking of 25 American cities on sustainability concerns. The leaders should come as no surprise (SF #1, Portland #2, Berkeley #3, Seattle #4, Santa Monica #5), and the list is (by and large) further confirmation of the correlation between sustainable urban centers and "cultural creative" centers. What makes the Sustainlane list particularly valuable, however, is that they are transparent with their methodology, and did more than simply count the number of hybrids or LEED buildings. Interestingly, none of the leading cities scored well in every category, and all but the #1 (San Francisco) had at least one aspect measured as a "sustainability laggard" or worse.

Commenters at Cascadia Scorecard debated whether the good-but-not-great ranking of New York (#7) was too low, and whether the rankings gave too great a weight to plans instead of actions. That's the good thing about transparency of method -- if you disagree with how Sustainlane came to its conclusions, it's easy to draw your own.

Pierre Omidyar has done some very good things with the money he made founding eBay, not the least of which is starting the Omidyar Network. Business Week -- fast becoming the favorite economics magazine around WorldChanging -- interviews Omidyar this week, talking with him about the "power of community" and the need for greater attention to the social good.

We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people. It used to be, your connected group was really your immediate community, your neighborhood, your village, your tribe. The more we connect people, the more people know one another, the better the world will be.

Everywhere, people are getting together and connecting. And using the Internet, they're disrupting whatever activities they're involved in. It's because it's a fundamental shift in power toward the bottom, toward the people as they organize themselves, and away from a small group of people who want to impose a policy top-down. That's really the promise of the technology, and we're seeing it in all these fields.

FreeForAll (FFA) describes itself as "an international collaboration of libraries whose mission is to provide underserved nations with health science journal articles for free." A noble calling, to be sure. Begun earlier this year, FFA gets researchers and doctors in developing nations access to medical journal articles by having participating US libraries serve as intermediaries. Services such as PubMed and Loansome Doc index and distribute various biomedical research papers to libraries; FFA extends the reach of this program substantially.

The FFA website is a single page linking to a handful of other sources for free journal articles and providing guides to ordering through FreeForAll (in English -- PDF -- and in Spanish -- MS Word format). The real action takes place on the FFA mailing list, where participating libraries can coordinate orders, exchange references and discuss the best ways to make sure that valuable medical literature is getting to the people who need it. More information on FreeForAll can be found on page 13 of this April 2005 Medical Library Association newsletter (PDF).

Libraries wishing to participate in FreeForAll should visit this Yahoo! Group.

Dr. Amitabha Ghosh, a NASA planetary geologist on the Mars missions, wants to bring the excitement of exploring space to India. Along with colleagues from NASA -- both US-born and India-born -- Dr. Ghosh has started the Tharsis India Initiative, an attempt to accelerate space science education in India. The site includes a wide variety of links to NASA and JPL resources, as well as activities aimed squarely at young students.

The Tharsis India team will be visiting India from June 10-June 24, talking about their experiences working on Mars missions. Dr. Ghosh is a vocal advocate of building up the Indian space program. India has a fairly well-established domestic satellite industry, but has not yet ventured beyond Earth orbit.

(Via The Scientific Indian)

Not only does Ally #1 have a lengthy article in the latest Sierra Club magazine, but the issue covers a group of innovators undertaking some very WorldChanging projects, including: the guy who developed the infrared-sensitive, quantum-dot based plastic solar cells; an Australian company using biomimetic design to improve industrial efficiency; and a profile of Natalie Jeremijenko (whom Emily interviewed for us last year), for example, updates us on some of her latest environmental technology ideas:

...creations include a particulate-sensing "Clear Skies" mask bicyclists can wear to find out what's in the air they breathe, a virtual tree that can be grown on a computer desktop (its rate of growth is determined by a CO2 meter plugged into the computer's serial port), and a "printer queue virus" that counts the number of pages consumed by a printer and spews out a cross section of a tree stump when it's used up a tree's worth.

CamBlaster! is a game which can only be played on a cameraphone. It provides moving targets that the player can "shoot" while moving the camera around. The site's a little vague on how this is accomplished, but presumably the software looks for changes in what the camera sees and figures out direction and speed of movement. It is even able to keep track of how far the camera has moved, and can put the same targets back where they (apparently) were when the camera moves back to its original position.

Don't think of it as a game; think of it as an early-indicator, and think about how it might combine with other mobile phone technologies. Take the (horribly named) "crunkies" idea I posted about last week, a system for planting location-based messages, "tagging" the space. Adding in the ability to gauge roughly what direction the camera is facing (with the "origin" set by pointing it at a given item) would allow for a more complex set of tags, with different SMS messages coming in depending upon where the cameraphone was pointed. Or add the animations to some kind of barcode reading system for the cameraphone, so that icons for the results could be shown over the item and remain tagged in place even when the cameraphone is moved around.

This gets really interesting when you start adding in heads-up displays...

(Via Picturephoning)

It's becoming increasingly clear that the (very near) future of lighting is solid-state. Light Emitting Diodes are already among the most energy-efficient illumination technologies. Now researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have devised a way to boost the light output from white LEDs by up to 60% without changing power requirements. How do they do it? A specially-shaped lens prevents "backscatter" photons from being reabsorbed by the diode. The main downside is that it makes the LED larger; it's as yet unclear how much of a problem that will really be, however. Commercial application of the idea should be hitting the shelves within a couple of years.

Among the differences between the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius -- both companies' main hybrid vehicles -- is the underlying design philosophy. The Prius has a unique look, one that immediately identifies the car and the driver; the HCH, conversely, looks effectively identical to the gasoline-only Civic (with a few small differences that only a few will note). Honda was explicit about its desire to make the HCH (and its more recent sibling, the Accord hybrid) be thought of as just another Honda.

Toyota recognized, however, that the symbolic and technological arguments for buying a hybrid outweigh the economic arguments, and that most folks who seek them out have little aversion to being identifiable as hybrid drivers. In that spirit, Honda has decided that its 2006 model year Civic Hybrids will have sufficiently distinctive styling that they will be immediately distinguishable from the gas-only Civics. The Honda spokesperson said that it won't be as radical a look as the Prius, but there will still be clear differences. A side benefit will be a small improvement in mileage.

The question this raises, at least for me, is whether the growing availability and ubiquity of hybrids will mean that Honda was right before -- and most hybrids will eventually look like other cars -- or that we're seeing a paradigm shift in auto design, and as more hybrids get on the road, we'll see more "unusual" styles.

If you've followed WorldChanging for any length of time, you'll know that it's increasingly evident that corporations are waking up to the problems posed by climate disruption. There's self-interest involved, of course; a late, haphazard, panicked response to global warming could be as bad for business as no response at all. The Los Angeles Times published a lengthy report earlier this week -- reprinted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development -- detailing the ways in which big American companies are trying to push Washington to be more active on the subject.

There is also far less momentum for global warming regulations in the House than in the Senate, backers acknowledge, making passage of any legislation unlikely.

"We're not there yet in the House, quite frankly. These businesses are way ahead of us," said Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), who supports a federal program to reduce greenhouse gases. The Bush administration stance "happens to be wrong," he added, but he expressed optimism that it could change as dissenting businesses become more vocal.

For many of us, the proposals pushed by the big companies will seem timid and a bit too-easily gamed. The importance here is changing the course of the political conversation. Right now, it's stuck at "should we do something now?" -- with enough momentum, it will become "how much should we do?", which in turn can soon become "how much more do we need to do?"

The development of a button-sized fuel cell by Cal Tech professor Sossina Haile has gotten a bit of attention (e.g., Treehugger, Gizmodo) due to its small size and relative power. The research was reported in last week's Nature (as usual, sub required for full article, but the supplemental figures include a nice illustration of the fuel cell structure). The power density of these fuel cells is quite high. Predictions that they'll eventually replace batteries in laptops and MP3 players are premature, at best. While the life of a fuel cell may be far greater than that of a battery, refilling a fuel cell means either inserting a disposable fuel cartridge or refilling the propane tank -- neither of which has the convenience of a plug.

The greater life and power density of a fuel does seem well-suited for microbots and microbot flyers, however, enabling a longer movement and sensor/signal life than batteries. As microbots are generally too small to recharge themselves with solar, long-life fuel cells have another clear advantage over batteries: easier refueling in the field.

Russel Buckley at the Mobile Technology Weblog has written "A Manifesto for Taking Wikipedia into the Physical World," an exploration of how the Wikipedia concept could be extended to physical spaces. He's essentially arguing for an open urban informatics model, one combining camera phone networks, virtual tags and location-based services. What makes his argument novel is that it makes the wiki concept central to the model -- anyone can annotate, update and edit.

The information would be from a variety of new and existing online sources. Some compiled especially for the Mobile Wikipedia by citizen contributors, some merely linked to sites that are already there. Citizen journalists would create the physical world links and then edit how the information was presented online - probably when they were back at a terminal more suited to the purpose. This might be a PC, or when they were able to dock their phone into a larger screen and keyboard combo.

Like the original Wikipedia, it would have potentially unlimited links and content and would be self-editing.

The argument isn't entirely new, but Buckley puts a nice spin on it, and explores some of the issues raised by trying to implement it.

While batteries and hydrogen fuel cells are variously bandied about as appropriate power sources for cars, and high-speed trains (also electric, or diesel-electric hybrid) an excellent choice for longer-range travel, the question remains of how airplanes will fly without energy-intensive aviation fuel. After all, you can't really run a jet-plane equivalent on batteries. Alternatives like airships and "gravity planes" are interesting, but have substantive drawbacks, mostly regarding speed. And virtual reality (even with "claytronic" avatars) is still nowhere close to being a strong alternative to face-to-face contact.

Blogger and occasional WorldChanging commenter "Engineer-Poet" tackles the question of post-oil aviation in a new post on his blog, The Ergosphere. The post is particularly interesting in the way he peels down the issues and lays out just where the solutions could come from. The short answer is liquid methane, which actually has some advantages over current jet fuels. The entire argument is worth reading, so don't just go by this one-sentence summary.

Wind power projects are becoming so commonplace it's hard to keep up with them all, but reports of two new ones stood out this week as further examples of energy leapfrogging in action.

The World Wildlife Fund details the opening of Southeast Asia's first wind farm, in the Philippines. Rated at 25 megawatts, it's not massive, but is a good first step. Over 70 megawatts of additional wind power should be coming online in the next few years, and the WWF estimates that the total wind potential in the Philippines amounts to 7.4 gigawatts. (via Sustainablog)

And Alternative Energy Blog offers a brief report of a new one gigawatt wind farm underway in China. The details are light (and the original source, People's Daily Online is no help), but if it is built, this would be the biggest wind farm yet in China.

Tentative steps, to be sure, but positive ones.

Solar electric company HelioVolt announced that it will be developing "building-integrated copper indium selenide" photovoltaic panels. Copper indium selenium (CIS) is considered the best-performing and most rugged "thin film" photovoltaic material, but has suffered from being far too difficult to produce. HelioVolt claims to have figured out a way to make the material relatively inexpensively and very quickly. CIS is able to be coated on building material for which silicon cells are unsuitable; if the HelioVolt claims are realized, this could be a big step forwards for greater application of building-integrated PV.

(Via @Monkeysign, which also links to a 1999 article from Siemens describing CIS in more detail.)

For a variety of reasons, some related to climate disruption, some not, the desert areas of the Earth's surface are growing. As many of the planet's poor live in the dry regions, the loss of economic and agricultural productivity is a particularly serious issue for reasons of both environmental sustainability and amelioration of poverty. Nature reports that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment addressed some of these issues, and has now released a more detailed report on their findings: Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Desertification Synthesis (PDF).

Two elements of the report stand out in particular for me. The first is the use of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment scenarios as a tool for examining the future course of desertification; too often, the scenaric aspects of a study end up standing alone, withering from lack of attention and integration into the ongoing findings. The second is the exploration of options for dealing with desertification as a development issue; the MEA recognizes that, no matter how aggressive our mitigation and amelioration efforts, human activity has profoundly changed the planet's environment. We cannot get back to a pre-industrial condition. Even as we adopt practices to limit the damage done, we have to be looking at ways to adapt to the changes that have happened, and will continue to happen.

If building and flying a microbot over the countryside is exciting, imagine how much fun it would be to control one in orbit.

The Mini AERCam (Miniature Autonomous Extravehicular Robotic Camera) is a NASA-designed "nanosatellite" intended to be used by astronauts in orbit as a means of visually inspecting objects (including the underside of the space shuttle) and as an assistant during space walks. Measuring 7.5 inches in diameter and massing 10 pounds, it's not "nano" in the nanotechnology sense; it's much closer in form and function to a micro-sized "unmanned aerial vehicle." As with the micro-UAVs, it extends the functional reach of the users by providing views otherwise unattainable.

The Mini AERCam is currently outfitted only with cameras, although other types of sensors are not out of the question. This version doesn't have any sort of ability to manipulate objects; although the Mini AERCam website doesn't mention it, such a feature seems an obvious extension of the device's capabilities. Like micro-UAVs, the nanosat is capable of both remote operation and independent flight. As the system intelligence increases, greater autonomy is planned, culminating in future AER design being used as robotic assistants for astronauts. Presumably, the software supporting autonomous operation could eventually be applicable to Earthly microbots, as well.

The Fritz Institute is a non-profit organization providing logistical support and software to humanitarian efforts worldwide; I spoke with its managing director, Dr. Anisya Thomas, last November. Its primary goal is to build up an "institutional memory" of best practices for relief and humanitarian logistics. To that end, the Institute has now published Logistics and the Effective Delivery of Humanitarian Relief, based on its experiences assisting with post-tsunami operations in Southeast Asia.

The key finding: there aren't nearly enough people who understand logistics working in humanitarian fields.

Logistics and the Effective Delivery of Humanitarian Relief can be downloaded from the Fritz Institute website (PDF).

I've mentioned before that I worked for a couple of years providing computer support to disabled college students, faculty and staff. While much of what I worked with was otherwise standard gear tweaked slightly to accommodate special needs, one of the coolest pieces of tech I ran across was a note recorder for the blind. The user didn't just talk into it, he typed notes to himself using an eight-key chording keyboard; the notes would then read back to him in a computer-generated voice.

Well, that was the early 1990s. Today, the blind have a new note-taking device: the BrailleNote PK. It does everything the earlier version did (including speech output), but also has an 18-cell Braille display (essentially a series of pins that form Braille characters, read by running fingers along them), USB & Bluetooth for syncing with a PC, WiFi and a web browser, and a media player (along with a bunch of other features) -- and it weighs just under a pound.

It's been my experience that technologies and adaptations intended initially for the disabled very often evolve into technologies for everyone. Sometimes, however, the reverse is also true: technologies meant for the mainstream can, occasionally, be adapted and transformed so as to accommodate those who can otherwise be cut off. And that's pretty cool.

(Via Gizmodo)

Google Maps has now added a bunch of global cities to its roster. Some have more of a zoom than other, and a number of big cities are missing, so don't get your hopes up about seeing your house from space. Still, it's very cool to see cities such as Paris, Istanbul, Cairo, Beijing, Mexico City and Kabul up close and personal...

WorldChanging ally Sustainablog will be celebrating its two year anniversary on July 11. In commemoration, Jeff Strasburg, Sustainablogger, will be holding a "Blogging 'Round the Clock" blogathon to raise funds for the Missouri Botanical Gardens' Earthways Center.

Jeff's soliciting "per post" pledges. And not only will Jeff be blogging for 24 hours, he's asked a variety of other writers from what he terms the "sustainable blogosphere" to pitch in. You'll see some familiar names among the contributors...

If you're not already reading Sustainablog, you should be. Sustainablog is a terrific resource for keeping tabs on what's going on in the world of environmental issues, and I'm happy to see the site celebrate another year. Congrats, Jeff!

Solar power may not yet be up to the task of powering mass transit vehicles, but it can do a fine job of powering mass transit stations. The Stillwell Avenue subway stop in Brooklyn has become New York City's first solar-powered train station, with over 76,000 square feet of thin-film PV generating 250,000 kWh a year.

The picture at Renewable Energy Access demonstrates what a large-scale building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system looks like. Interestingly, they don't completely block light transmission -- about 20-25% of the light gets through, reducing the need for artificial daytime lighting.

Lubricating oil is one of the myriad petroleum-based products that will become more expensive and harder to come by should the dire predictions of the Peak Oil folks come to pass. But chemical engineers at the University of Kentucky and ChevronTexaco have figured out a way to use waste plastics as the base material for engine lubricant. Only 1 million of the 25 million tons of plastic used in the United States every year is recycled; the rest is tossed into the garbage. The process developed by the researchers works with both polyethelene and poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) plastics; the resulting lubricant is the functional equivalent of high-quality lubricant made from natural gas. The article will be published in an upcoming Energy & Fuels journal from the American Chemical Society.

Although battery-electric and fuel cell vehicles won't have the same lubrication requirements of internal combustion engines, hybrids -- even gas-optional hybrids -- do. If this process can be scaled up to commercial use (and early indications are that it can), it could provide a transition lubricant for the Peak Oil future, and reduce the problem of plastics going into landfills.

The favelas in and around Rio de Janiero regularly suffer from mudslides and floods resulting from the combination of heavy weather and deforestation. But if the denizens of the squatter cities have few recourses for lowering the weather risk, they can do something about the trees: plant more. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, favela dwellers have planted over 4 million trees around the edges of Rio, thereby reducing the threat of mudslides and floods. But the trees have had an even greater effect than that:

In addition to saving lives, the municipal project has resulted in the return of dozens of species of birds, monkeys and other animals -- many not seen in decades. Natural springs have been reborn, air temperatures have become cooler, and mahogany, rosewood and other native species of tropical hardwood once more grow in the region.

Nearby trees have also made it possible for residents to supplement their meals with fresh fruit, and to boost the local economy by selling fruit to the rest of the city.

(Via Squattercity)

Phil Heiple wanted a home solar electricity system to act as a power backup and to serve as portable power for vacations. But being a do-it-yourself kind of guy, he decided to assemble his own. This page lists exactly how he did it, at a cost less than $300 total.

It's worth noting that he didn't make a solar panel -- he bought one of those -- but a solar-charged power system. Whatever he needed to plug in actually pulled from the battery storage; the solar panel served to recharge the battery. In addition, the page appears to date from around 1996 -- and while the overall instructions are still quite valid, it would be interesting to see just how much better a system one could assemble for the same rough price with modern technology.

(Via Make)

In the 1980s, there was much talk about "spin-off" technologies from government research, particularly military research -- devices and ideas first developed to benefit the Pentagon, and later used by the far larger civilian market (for example, the Global Positioning System). In the 1990s, the flow of ideas reversed, and political economists started to talk about "spin-on" technologies, a clumsy neologism covering the use by the military of off-the-shelf devices for reasons of cost, size or capabilities(for example, hand-held GPS units). We may be moving back towards the spin-off scenario, however, in the realm of portable power.

PhysOrg has the latest example of this: advanced Lithium-ion batteries with up to 40% more power than standard batteries of equivalent sizes. The batteries are intended for use in power vests to be worn by soldiers, powering the variety of electronic gear carried by modern infantry. As such, the batteries need to operate in a far greater temperature range, be more rugged, and last significantly longer than off-the-shelf batteries.

Those characteristics are also precisely the ones needed for more reliable batteries for electric vehicles, and the batteries look to be able to scale up in order to meet that demand. The improved battery technology also scales way down, for use in implantable medical devices.

One of the problems facing the distributed renewable power is that sometimes zapping the electricity down wires isn't your best choice, either for reasons of efficiency or of convenience. The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich have come up with a novel solution, at least for solar power: store it in a metal ore.

Solar heat is used to crack zinc from zinc oxide; the metal can then be readily moved around. The zinc can then be used in zinc-air batteries or to help crack hydrogen from water vapor. In both cases, the reaction with oxygen creates zinc oxide, which can then be used by the solar heater.

The first trials of the solar power-plant have used thirty-percent of available solar energy and produced forty-five kilos of zinc an hour, exceeding projected goals. During further tests this summer a higher efficiency is expected. Industrial size plants, for which this is a prototype, can reach efficiency levels of fifty- to sixty-percent. The success of this solar chemistry pilot project opens the way for an efficient thermo-chemical process whereby the sun's energy can be stored and transported in the form of a chemical fuel. In this process the zinc is combined with coal, coke or carbon biomass which acts as a reactive agent, yet in this reactor only a fifth of the usual amount of agent is used. The sun's rays are concentrated on this mixture by a system of mirrors and the zinc forms as a gas which is then condensed to a powder.

So the question for you engineering types out there: at what point does this become preferable to storing the power in batteries?

The Chicago Tribune reports on the desire of the tiny nation of Mauritius, off the east coast of Africa, to be the world's first "cyber island," complete with total WiFi coverage and high-speed connections to the global Internet.

Mauritius has been struggling as the low-wage basis of its economy (largely textile manufacturing and sugar production) has become less and less viable. A leap forward is needed, and Deelchand Jeeha, the Minister of Information Technology and Communications, believes he knows what to do:

In Ebene, just south of Port Louis, the capital, the government has built the first of three planned high-tech parks. It also has stepped up training programs to turn out tech-savvy workers and has rewritten its business rules in an effort to create an attractive investment climate. The changes are aimed at luring call centers, remote data backup facilities for companies worried about terrorist attacks and, eventually, software development companies.

The biggest goal is the construction of a wireless internet connection to cover the entire 40-mile-long island. The biggest challenge is the government, however; although officially promoting the service, the Mauritius government owns the telecom monopoly, and is loathe to give up its high profits by opening the telecommunications market to competition. Fortunately, island citizens now say that the government is slowly coming around, and that many have gone from being dismissive of the plan to being cautiously optimistic about its potential.

Newsweek interviews Honda's chief US engineer, Charlie Baker, this week, and he sounds like exactly the kind of auto designer we need to clone. 7 out of the top 10 most fuel-efficient cars are Hondas, and while the company doesn't get the same kind of green cred often ladled out to Toyota, fuel efficiency is a core Honda philosophy -- the quote used as the title for this piece comes from Honda America's head, Koichi Amemiya.

As you develop future vehicles, what are your assumptions about gas prices?

We don't really care. Why would we?

Well, because it could have an effect on consumers' choices.

We don't spend a lot of time agonizing about fuel consumption. The answer is already clear. You are going to have the best fuel economy in class of any vehicle. Period. Have a nice day. You don't need to do any market research. You don't need to do any fancy negotiations because you are never going to get anything approved by the board of directors without proving you have the best fuel economy in class. That's it.

My Honda Civic Hybrid may not have the Car of Tomorrow look of the Prius -- and I really wish I could retrofit it as a Gas-Optional Hybrid -- but this interview made me feel pretty good about my choice.

The latest addition to the PLoS (Public Library of Science) stable is PLoS Computational Biology. PLoS comprises a growing array of academic journals which make all materials available for free over the net -- thereby making them open to poor regions unable to afford traditional library subscriptions. But what is computational biology, you ask? From the inaugural editorial:

Computation, driven in part by the influx of large amounts of data at all biological scales, has become a central feature of research and discovery in the life sciences. This work tends to be published either in methods journals that are not read by experimentalists or in one of the numerous journals reporting novel biology, each of which publishes only small amounts of computational research. Hence, the impact of this research is diluted. PLoS Computational Biology provides a home for important biological research driven by computation—a place where computational biologists can find the best work produced by their colleagues, and where the broader biological community can see the myriad ways computation is advancing our understanding of biological systems.

In short, computational biology is an interdisciplinary approach to using information technology as a fundamental tool for analyzing and describing living systems. Simulation, modeling, and bioengineering/biohacking all fall under this rather broad scope.

Technology Research News has an occasional series entitled "How It Works," describing in relatively straightforward language how important technological or scientific processes are accomplished. The latest is on "self-assembly," with a focus on biological replication. Self-assembly is particularly important for working at the nanoscale, as top-down assembly tools are simply too big and unwieldy to build anything quickly. Such techniques can mimic or even use DNA as a base for replication.

I think the TRN piece doesn't go quite far enough in explaining how the DNA and protein tools are used, but it's a good start for understanding the basic processes involved.

Deep Impact is the NASA project to smack a probe into the surface of a comet in order to get some insights into what it's made of. The impact event will happen on Monday, July 4. The comet -- which will by no means be destroyed -- is Comet Tempel 1. The impact will be watched by a variety of space probes, and will be visible from some parts of the Earth.

Why do this? Two main reasons. The first is that comets have, by and large, been around since the formation of the solar system, and taking a look at the guts of one can give some added clues about how the planets came to be. The second will be familiar to regular readers of WorldChanging: it will help us better understand how to keep comets from hitting the Earth. They don't hit very often, but when they do...

A final digression: if scientists are concerned about Hollywood mangling science in the service of entertainment, they probably shouldn't be using Hollywood names for their projects to get more attention. Just saying.

Dr. Lucas Gonzalez' idea to use Wikipedia as a resource for flu pandemic preparation is a good one, and was inspired by the use of Wikipedia as information hub in the immediate post-tsunami days. But, just as the post-tsunami needs were greater than Wikipedia could support -- spawning the South-East Asia Earthquake And Tsunami site -- so too does the effort to head off a global avian flu emergency need its own home. And now it has one: Flu Wiki.

The goal of the site is to be:

The uprising over factory pollution in the village of Huaxi I posted about in mid-June was not an isolated incident. The month has also seen pollution-related uprisings in the village of Jianxia (over toxic waste from a battery factory) and in the Cangnan County region (over a power plant). An uprising in April in the village of Huankantou was also pollution-linked, although the proximate trigger was the death of two elderly protesters.

If the smog-filled skies, poisoned lakes and spiraling fuel costs don't convince the Chinese government that they need to change direction fast, perhaps these villagers -- and millions more like them -- can.

CNN is experimenting a bit with podcasting, and they've just put out a special program (MP3) on summer science fiction. The guests include Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis, and WorldChanging Ally #1 Bruce Sterling. The interviews are fairly good -- and if you've never heard Harlan Ellison rant, you really should take advantage of the opportunity. And, of course, Bruce is Bruce...

Interviewer: Does anything stand out in your mind as being truly exceptional in science fiction cinema?

Bruce: Yeah, it's the ancillary rights. It's the lightsabers, it's the puppets, it's the plastic dolls. I'm not kidding!

MARS: The International Journal of Mars Science and Exploration (a.k.a. The Mars Journal) combines a couple of my obsessions. It doesn't take many weeks of reading WorldChanging to learn that I'm an Areophile (Greek for "Mars Geek"); in addition, we also post here with some frequency about open-access academic literature. The Mars Journal is a new open-access publication, currently funded by NASA, providing peer-reviewed publication of scholarly papers about the Red Planet. Open-access means that all papers and supporting data can be read freely; contrast this to traditional scholarly publications like Nature and Science, where links to their papers generally have to say "subscribers only."

The Mars Journal is new, and is currently calling for papers. Issue areas it will cover include Mars Science (no surprise), Mars Technology, and Mars Policy, including discussions of "planetary protection." Author information and templates are available.

The Deep Impact space probe has released its "impactor", which is now zooming towards the comet Tempel 1 at a speed of 23,000 miles per hour. It's scheduled to hit at 1:52AM EDT -- that's 10:52PM tonight for those of us on the west coast of the US, or just about 9 hours from the time of this posting.

The impact should be visible with a moderate telescope. But if you don't have a scope, have too much surrounding light to catch an image, or simply live on the wrong side of the planet to see it, NASA is providing a "Near Real-Time" image viewer.

In a move surprising just about nobody who reads WorldChanging, another one of China's big carmakers has announced (PDF) that it will start producing hybrid cars of its own design. Geely Motors, China's biggest privately-owned carmaker, says that commercially-available hybrid cars will be available by the Beijing Olympics in 2008. They claim to expect hybrids eventually to account for half of its annual sales.

Earlier this year, state-supported automaker Chery announced plans to bring hybrids to market by 2006.

(Via Green Car Congress)

Those who follow hybrid-electric automobile technology are well-aware that the Toyota "Synergy Drive" found in the Prius is considered more advanced than the Honda "Integrated Motor Assist" found in the Honda hybrids. Although the mileage figures are close, only the Synergy Drive can operate in motor-only mode, allowing the hybrid to run as an electric for short distances (this feature is what allows the aftermarket car hackers to turn the Prius into a fully gas-optional vehicle).

Expect to see GO-HEV hacks for the Hondas soon, as the carmaker announced today that its new hybrid engine for the 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid will allow for motor-only operation at low speeds. The improvements will also increase overall power while reducing weight and cost, and will allow for a moderate increase in fuel efficiency. The new Civic Hybrids should be out this Fall.

Who wants to lay odds on how fast the California Cars Initiative has a working gas-optional version of the 2006 HCH on the road?

(Via Green Car Congress and Joseph Willemsen)

From the F/OSS online journal NewsForge comes a timely reminder of one of the less-often-discussed values of open software development: the ability to customize to meet the needs of people who speak declining languages. Bruce Byfield looks at the version of OpenOffice.org customized to work in the Scots Gaelic language, an official language of Scotland now spoken by less than 2% of the populace. This fall, the Gaelic OpenOffice.org will be distributed to schools across Scotland.

The project began because Gaelic teachers were frustrated that students had to use English language software. Having Gaelic software, [Project Leader Evan] Brown says, "helps to provide an immersive language environment."

In other words, users of OpenOffice.org Gaelic are likely to learn better because they do not have to use an interface in one language while trying to think and write in another. Also, although Brown does not mention it, the simple fact that Gaelic is being used in a software program might help convince students that it is a living language, in much same way that Gaelic TV shows do. Both are evidence that the language is part of modern life and not just a museum curio.

Software in a language spoken by a small number of people will not be enough, in and of itself, to stop that language's decline. But it can slow the process -- and as information technology becomes a greater part of the global economy, and as the free/open source philosophy continues to spread, it could in the future serve as a platform upon which to start the process of restoring the language and culture.

Wired News just published a brief piece on thorium as a fuel for nuclear reactors. Thorium-fueled reactors would produce about half the waste and 80% less plutonium than uranium-fueled reactors, and thorium is a more abundant element than uranium. The article notes that India is going forward with a thorium reactor this year.

This is the first I've seen about thorium reactors in actual development, so I'm curious if any readers have better resources for information.

David Bornstein's WC3K contribution about Terrapass elicited an interesting response. Eric Carlson, president and co-founder of Carbonfund.org, wrote to remind us that his organization (a) is a non-profit (unlike Terrapass) and (b) charges less per ton of CO2 than other carbon offset services.

(And how do they do it? VOLUME! No, seriously -- they combine multiple offset donations to be able to purchase and retire large blocks of carbon credits from global carbon markets.)

I had mentioned Carbonfund.org in my post last month about the utility of carbon credits and carbon taxes, but they're clearly worth giving another look.

The European Space Agency's ENVISOLAR project is an ongoing effort to measure and map solar light intensity across the globe. Clouds, ozone, atmospheric aerosols and the like can reduce the amount of sunshine hitting the ground; this information is useful for businesses needing sunlight -- tourism, farming, and particularly solar power generation.

ENVISOLAR takes data from a variety of satellite sources, such as the Heliosat-3 project, as well as the handful of ground-level solar intensity measurement stations. The measurements are akin to those done for the UN Environment Program's SWERA project, which looked at solar and wind potential in the developing world. The resulting solar radiation maps can be used by utilities to calculate best locations for and expected output from solar power facilities.

It's unclear from the ESA site how much of the map data will be made available to the public; the ESA is generally pretty good about making material available, but they're often pretty slow about it. It would be great if the data could be made available in real-time, as an XML feed -- imagine what one could do with that and Google Maps...

Chris Rorres, a mathematician studying models for the spread of disease at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, was struck by the way that some buildings in earthquakes topple over rather than collapse, behaving like a capsizing ship. The metaphor was apt, as the tilting and toppling was the result of ground liquefaction, where otherwise solid soil can under certain conditions behave like a liquid. The paper that resulted, Completing Book II of Archimedes' On Floating Bodies (PDF), looked at how different shapes and structures dealt with liquefaction; Rorres' website contains links to visualizations of the results. The latest Discover describes some of Rorres' explorations of buoyancy and the possible new design ideas coming from this observation.

New building requirements for earthquake-prone areas have not yet emerged from this research, but it is an interesting example of how we can come to understand better the needs of the human environment for survival in the a changing natural world -- and the unusual sources from which this understanding can emerge.