Entrepreneur Watch

Can biodiesel gain traction?

The Diesel Technology Forum is sponsoring a free webinar to answer questions you may have about biodiesel. 

September 16, 2010 - 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. (EDT)

Register now .

Discussions will include experiences in Minnesota, Massachusetts and Germainy in trying to implement biodiesel policy, and what the experts feel needs to be done.

Me, I think we need a lot of biodiesel fueling stations. Hard to get that to spread.

Maybe Starbucks can start adding them to their stores. Then we'd have more biodiesel than gas stations.

Send a spine to Congress

I got a notice today from the Post Carbon Institute, which opines on alternative energy issues. The organization thinks President Obama's speech on the Gulf oil spill was a tepid bow to Tea Partiers. 

Clearly, our politicians need to get a backbone. If you believe that oil addiction is something we need to wean ourselves from, the PC Institute will send some spines to congress if you send them a sawbuck.

My opinion is that we're probably stuck with Big Oil for years to come, no matter what. Too entrenched, difficult to replace cost effectively, makes too many billions of dollars for powerful corporations. But until oil drillers can demonstrate that they can deal with disaster, they should be held liable for the billions of dollars of environmental cleanup, habitat restoration, and lost jobs from any spills they cause. Political backbone might help.

Here's the Post Carbon Institute plea for bucks for backbones.

What's it Going to Take to Beat BIG OIL? 537 Spines.

The horrific Gulf oil spill disaster has clearly shown that our nation's leaders need us to show them what it means to have a backbone. So let's do just that - let's send one directly to President Obama, Vice President Biden, and each and every member of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

For every donation of $10 we will send President Obama or a member of Congress a spine with your name on it.

In his oval office address last night on the BP oil spill, President Obama took an important, though long overdue, step in acknowledging that the days of cheap and abundant energy are essentially over.

"For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we have talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked‚ not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor."

But the President failed to follow these words with any proposal or plan.

Not since Jimmy Carter has one of our nation's leaders shown the backbone to really take on our addiction to fossil fuels--afraid, perhaps, to suffer the same political fate as Carter--while with each passing day and year we run out of time and resources to avert disaster.

In his recent response to President Obama's speech Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg wrote:

Maybe the Carter Curse is real. Perhaps straight talk about energy is political suicide. But if nobody at least tries - if no one has the courage to make specific proposals that are commensurate with the scale of the challenge that faces us - then the political survival of the current office holder is essentially irrelevant.

Clearly our nation's leaders haven't found the backbone to stand up to Big Oil and break our addiction to fossil fuels, so we're asking you to lend them yours.

Our nation's leaders need 537 backbones. With your help, we'll drop ship a big box of fortitude on Washington D.C.

Along with a toy spine sent in your name, we will also include an optional statement from you, to our leaders, about what you are doing in your life to kick the fossil fuel habit. We'lll be documenting our backbone shipments in pictures and videos that will be uploaded to thePCI Facebook page, so keep an eye out on this campaign's progress.

We need to send 537 spines to Washington D.C. pronto. This means we'lll need help, so please help us spread the word.

For more of my columns on green tech and other issues, please visit my web site.

Google violates Kansas copyrights

Once again, Google has shown its blatant disregard for international copyright standards.

Earlier today, Google CEO Eric "Oh aren't I smart with my Ph.D©" Schmidt announced that the Mountain View, California company was changing its name to Topeka. 

Why? Because the city of Topeka, Kansas had supposedly given up the rights to that name when it announced it was changing its name to Google.

This argument doesn't wash any better than my uncle Ernie after a night drinking with the hoboes in U.N Plaza in San Francisco.©  

Google, sorry, Topeka, knew that the people of Topeka, sorry, Google, were only planning on making the change temporary.

The Topekans, sorry, Googlans, simply wanted to call attention to the fact that children in that city of 122,000 have never had the luxury of Web-surfing faster than 122K baud, 1,000 times slower than that enjoyed by children in more developed parts of the world like Singapore. The good people of Topeka, sorry, Google, Kansas want to convince Google, sorry, Topeka, to install a Singapore-speed© broadband network in its fair city. 

Google, sorry, Topeka, has promised to do that for any U.S. city willing to change its name to Google, sorry, Topeka, wait, I'm confused now. So that city-that-must-not-be-renamed in Kansas obliged, but only for a month.

I know that Google knew this change was temporary because, in another blatant copyright violation in its attempt to destroy mainstream media, Google CEO Eric "Oh, aren't I smart with my Ph.D" Schmidt's announcement actually linked to a CNN article that described Topeka's, sorry, Google's sad attempt to gain Schmidt's attention so that the children of Kansas might catch up to the technology of the "Singapore Age"©. In that article, mayor Bill "No, I don't have a PH.D."© Bunten said it was only for a month.

CNN, of course, is owned by Rupert Murdoch©, who has complained about Google, sorry, oh to hell with it, Google stealing his intellectual property by linking to his news articles. Dr. so-smart Schmidt is just trying to goad Murdoch© into doing something stupid, like blocking his news articles from Google searches. 

When is Google going to learn that EVERY WORD any American ever writes down or steals from a native American tribe is automatically copyrighted and nobody else has ANY rights to it? Just because Topeka is temporarily relinquishing the name, Schmidt cannot violate the city's copyright©. The city has exclusive rights to that name for 123 years past the death of the city's last living resident.

Please, write to your Congressman and ask the Justice Department to crack down on Google before it becomes any more powerful. Before long, it will have a monopoly on every city name in America©.

Let's face it, if this doesn't prove that Google is evil, nothing will. ©

Corn infects beef with e-coli. Do we really need to subsidize it?

    Corn farm subsidies are a relic of the Great Depression. They are an inefficient use of taxpayer money, giving the crop an unnatural advantage over other, more useful, food crops. But political pressure from farm states keep them alive.

    I sympathize with all farmers. It's a tough way to make a living. But why should corn farmers feel they have a government-given right to continue their business? Why do they have more rights than auto workers -- or journalists -- who have seen their industries change and resort to massive layoffs? (As a journalist, I would make a biased but persuasive argument that maintaining a professional press force is more important to the country.)

    Let's add another argument to the list of why corn subsidies are bad. Never mind all the high-fructose corn syrup that has invaded the country, corn's unnatural use in cattle farming is probably causing its own problems. Corn has become the staple diet of cattle used for food. 

    Remember all the e-coli outbreaks that occasionally crop up? Beef is by far the biggest source of these outbreaks. 

    In a recent Charlie Rose interview, Michael Pollan at UC Berkeley and author of books about our food supply, offers a possible explanation for this. Corn.

	The other issue I think though that`s important to touch on is look at 
the system. And there is -- you know, E. Coli 0157H7 is a relatively new 
bug. It was first identified around 1980, `82. 

	And there`s research suggesting that it is one of these bugs that 
evolved on a feed lot, and that it is connected to the way we raise cattle 
at every stage, especially the way we feed them. 

	We give what is for them is a very unnatural diet of lots of corn. 
They are evolved to eat grass. Grass-fed meat at least didn`t used to get 
this kind of bug, and indeed there`s research suggesting that if you change 
their diet to what they`re meant to eat, they shed a lot of this E. Coli 
0157. 

	So it`s if whole system that creates a kind of Petri dish in which 
these new microbes can evolve and then bring this risk into our lives. 

	Industrialized farming and food production is not sustainable. We have to get back to more natural techniques. It will be tough to do without pesticides and other "efficiencies," and political pressure will be enormous. 

    But non-sustainable practices are just that -- unsustainable. They will by necessity end on their own as soil is depleted and land and water is polluted. We would be better off stopping before things get that bad. We should work on ways to make the transition now.

LED Lighting to grow organic spinach?

Can commercial produce be grown indoors with solid state, low-power lighting? That's what a Canadian company called TerraSphere Systems is hoping to accomplish.

TerraSphere has developed lighting carousels for greenhouse commercial growth of fruits and vegetables. Aside from using 40 percent less power than fluorescent lights, the light-emitting-diode devices are waterproof (avoiding short-circuits from misting the plants), produce more exact frequencies to optimize growth, produce less heat, and allow for more dense growth of the plants. The LEDs are just 1/16th of an inch thick, and the company says it can grow 50 to 60 pounds of spinach per square foot annually, compared to just 11.5 pounds for a traditional greenhouse.

TerraShere wants to use green technology to revolutionize the growth of greens, bringing fresh, local produce to everyone.

Right now the devices can be used for germinating plants, but the company is working on systems to work through the entire life cycle.

It is working with the Squamish Nation in Vancouver, which wants to grow organic produce and will get the first "high-tech greenhouse." The Squamish Nation is an investor in TerraSphere. Organic grocer Choices Markets has agreed to sell the produce. The first crop that will be produced is spinach.

Green Tech. Recession. Obama. Federal Bailouts. Federal Budget.

Nov 13/08

I've been doing a monthly blog for justmeans.com, a site concerned with business and social issues.

I currently have a posting there titled: "We cannot afford green tech initiatives." I wish it weren't so.

Barak Obama promised tax cuts. I wish it were possible.

Given the war in Iraq, a $700 billion bailout with everyone from General Motors to a Hispanic business group representing plumbing and home-heating specialists seeking bailouts.

VCs are cutting back on spending, so current ventures may run into trouble.

Our Federal deficit and debt are ballooning.

With all that, who can afford green tech initiatives right now, even if they pay off down the road?

Not us.

Collecting cow farts

OK, you gotta love this one.

The lovely Dvorak Uncensored pointed me to this article in the Telegraph about scientists strapping a big air bag to cows to see how much methane they excrete. Methane is a greenhouse gas, too, you know.

Scientists are examining cow farts and burps in a novel bid to combat global warming.

How does he find this stuff?

According to the article:

The Argentine researchers discovered methane from cows accounts for more than 30 per cent of the country's total greenhouse emissions.

Maybe the global warming problem is worse than we thought...

Solar Powered Curtains?

Slashdot.org pointed me to this article on an attempt to create solar powered curtains, working with a fabric-like thin-film photovoltaic material.

Interesting idea, and nice to see people thinking differently about solutions to energy needs.

The developer talks about using photovoltaics to turn light into electricity, then LEDs to turn electricity into light for the home (after storing it in a battery.) There's something cirularly ironic about that.

I keep wondering how efficient we can get in making those conversions. The best source of light is the sun itself, and we lose a huge percentage of the energy when we convert it with PV technology. But the higher the efficiency of the conversion, the more interesting the possibilities become.

A Wickipedia article talks about a University of Delaware team that achieved 42.8% efficiency a year ago.

RenewableEngergyWorld.com has an article about thin-film cells from DOE reaching 19.9% efficiency.

I had a conversation with Dr. B.J. Stanbery from Heliovolt yesterday, who speculated about a future with plug-in hybrids or electric cars with roofs covered with PV cells.

Still, I'll bet there will be a lot of issues with durability as we think up such ideas. The best commentary on the solar curtains was made by slashdot when it categorized the item: "from the don't-let-the-cat-climb-them dept."

Living green: How to pour milk

The New York Times reports on a new, more environmentally friendly milk bottle being offered by Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and Costco. They're easier to clean, using 60% less water. They can be stacked more efficiently without crates, saving fuel used by delivery trucks. They also keep milk fresher, cost less, and fit into the door shelves of your refrigerator.

But there's a problem. Apparently, people spill milk all over the table like a three-year-old trying to fix dad's breakfast for Father's Day.

The shape and lousy spout make it clumsy. Sam's Club had someone demonstrating to customers how it should be poured -- tipping it rather than lifting it off the table, and pouring slowly.

It's tempting to say, get used to it, as Ashley does at AdventuresInSocialMedia. We should be able to make a few sacrifices for the environment.

Unfortunately, most people don't. Beer and soda cans used to have pull tabs that pulled off the can and ended up in waterways where they choked animals to death. Several firms designed pull tabs that stayed connected, but people couldn't figure some of them out (push the dot on one side first, then the other side, then lift.)

Vendors even started making commercials making fun of beer guzzlers whose brain cells were too deteriorated by alcohol to figure them out, and gave instructions. Finally, someone came up with the current design, and it became universal.

So there's a lesson. Figure out how to make a milk jug with the same properties but is easy to pour, patent it, license it cheaply, and you'll make a fortune. It's too hard to teach people new tricks.