Nanotechnology Surfaces Could Have Great Potential

Nanotechnology-enhanced surfaces could bring amazing capabilities. Nanotechnology research has moved well into the area of creating molecular coatings that, for instance, resist letting dirt or water adhere to them. Self-assembling molecular coatings appear to be in commercial development and production by more than one company. What might come next, though? Since nanotechnology is at a molecular-level, and molecules have the ability to attract specific other molecules of different types based on the jigsaw puzzle-like relationship of their external shapes, couldn’t a surface coated with nanomachines be made to grab specific molecules that came close enough and either hang onto them or pass them, bucket brigade style, to their neighbors, possibly in a specific direction?

Future Energy Sources

A new high-technology energy source could be useful for low-power applications. The news of a team of scientists making electricity by collecting mechanical energy from falling rain drops (link) illustrates the creativity available to humanity, and that the possibilities for invention always exceed our expectations. I fully agree with certain political leaders that we need a lot more people inventing in their basements and garages if we are to overcome our energy problems. How can incentives be provided to get people thinking and working that way, though?

Sea-bottom gas hydrates keep resurfacing. Another source of energy has been in the news recently. Gas hydrates frozen on the floor of the oceans, while so far untapped, contain huge amounts of energy, some estimates as high as several hundred times the total natural gas reserves. All we need is the technologies to mine them, and such technologies are under development (link). Of course, this is not a renewable fuel source, and the most probably use involves burning and all the emissions associated with that. Also, anything non-renewable is temporary by definition, but it could still help bridge the gap between when petroleum and coal become too scarce and expensive, and when we can implement some other energy source such as fusion power.  (Side note: some scientists attribute the sudden and mysterious disappearance of ships and planes over the Gulf of Mexico or Bermuda Triangle to releases of flammable gas hydrates from the sea bottom, and their subsequent rise to the surface where they could be ignited by a passing vehicle.)

These aren’t the only rarely-mentioned or new alternatives out there, fortunately. I look forward to learning of more of them and discussing them here. Please comment on any other interesting alternative energy sources you may know of.

As always, I welcome your comments and thanks in advance. – Tim

Civilizations Rise and Fall Due to “Global Warming”-like Problems

If We Must Fall, Can We Manage to Do It Gradually? Every civilization in history has fallen except the current one. That is simple truth, and we have no reason to think that we can carry on indefinitely as we have been. In fact, there are many indications that we are headed into a decline of our own: population exceeding the global capacity in more and more aspects, significant signs of negative impact on the ecology, the accelerating extinction of many species in our highly interdependent environment, overuse of important resources leading to exhaustion. All this brings up the important questions: Are we any smarter than our predecessors, and can we understand what is happening and work together effectively to control the decline and mitigate the suffering involved?

Growth Can’t Continue Forever, So What’s Next?

Perhaps our many wonderful scientific advancements and ever-more sophisticated civilization have blinded us to certain realities. We have enjoyed the benefits of cheap energy for the past few hundred years, first with coal and then with the addition of petroleum, and our population, scientific knowledge, and standards of living have expanded greatly. Eventually, however, the easiest to obtain of our fuel sources will begin to run out, and the cost of production will inevitably rise to the point where we won’t be able to afford to use it as we did before. We have become so accustomed to our situation that we take growth for granted, and it seems the entire business world takes it as a given that success and profitability are possible only through growth. Since growth can’t continue forever, what will replace it? Are we smart enough to avoid a precipitous decline and the pain that suggests, and find a new paradigm that permits more controllable change and is sustainable in the long term?

Will We Ever Know For Sure If Humans Are Causing Climate Change (and Does It Matter)?

I am overwhelmed with the data and analyses of global warming and climate change. A quick search on Google reveals over 74 million articles on global warming. While that is certainly overstated due to multiple “finds”, even if I could find the most authoritative 1000 of them, and spend as little as 5 minutes skimming each one, it would take me 83 hours, and I am lucky to have a few hours in the week for any activity like this. At this rate, in the 6 months or more it would take me to do that, there would be … how many more articles? I hate to guess, but I expect I would never catch up. I have learned what I think I know now from a diverse mix of news, scientific articles, the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, and blogs like Anthony Watts’ “Watts Up With That?“. I am recognizing my limitations, however. Will we ever have a definitive answer as to whether and how much human activity is affecting the climate? And isn’t it more important that we retain the ability to respond to climate change, since nature will inevitably change the climate anyway, sooner or later?

Global Warming and Our Responsibility to the Future – A Call to Action

Global warming and climate change are only pieces of the puzzle. The storm of media coverage and conflicting scientific data around global warming is overwhelming, but it is concealing very real problems we need to face if we are to ensure ourselves and our descendants can continue anything like the kind of lifestyles we have today. Climate change will happen, whether we cause it or not, and when it does, how prepared will we be? Energy supplies are a key factor, not only for our current relative comfort but as an enabler to our ability to deal with issues we will face in the short and long term. Where does this all lead, and what are our responsibilities as individuals? What can we do to ensure a better future?

Where Might We Be in Two or Three Decades?

Two or three decades from now I foresee the freeway next to my house carrying quiet, streamlined buses and trucks as well as small, streamlined cars. Most will run on electricity, many with additional power generators using fuel cells, natural gas, hydrogen, or something newer. Most will be running in an attended autopilot mode, staying in their lanes, avoiding collisions, and optimizing energy use on a continuous basis. I won’t be traveling as much, however, as much more of my life will be carried out in a virtual way over the internet. I will work at home, walk or take public transport almost any time I need to go somewhere, and will take a high speed train a couple of times a year to see my daughter and brother-in-law in the Carolinas. What else might change, and how much?

Global Warming Article Leaves the Population/Energy Crisis as Our First Priority

Evidence mounts that carbon dioxide emissions are not our biggest problem. An article titled “Climate Change – The Real Causes” on the New Zealand Climate Science website by professor Geoffrey G. Duffy (link) strongly makes the point that carbon dioxide is not going to produce the kind of global climate change scenarios being trumpeted by many, including many celebrities and government climatologists. I was scared to death by the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, but I have seen and read many articles and studies throwing it into question or directly debunking it since then. As a result I have come to wonder why so many continue to raise alarms about global warming when the more obvious problems before us are our dependence on massive amounts of fossil fuels and their inevitable exhaustion, and the huge population growth we have achieved as a result of cheap energy. Why global warming persists as a news item I will leave to others, as it is a political issue that must be addressed in the short term, though it is nonetheless worrisome. Has the global warming flap helped us? What should we really be working on?