Nature?! – Steve Dougherty's Blog

Ethanol

This is why we need to ban corn-based ethanol. It’s wreaking havoc with food prices everywhere. (Edit: Link dead.) (Farmers switch from food to field corn for ethanol, perhaps?) Why are we bothering with another liquid? I believe the way to go is solar electricity farms in the southwest, and an electricity backbone to get it to the northeast where it tends to be used.

The US at night

Liquid fuel is harder to transport, and requires burning of fuel to transport. What’s so bad about electric cars? We saw from the EV1 that the auto industry certainly has the technology. Electricity is the way to go. It can be completely carbon-neutral in the way it’s generated, it’s easy to transport, and it can power far more than what we use it for today.

EDIT: Time Magazine has an article on this. It’s amazing what the will of giant industries can do. The automobile servicing, repair, and creation industries, along with the oil industry, all don’t want electric cars to happen, because if it did happen, they’d be out of business. Electric cars are too good of a solution for them, because it cuts them out of the loop. What would mechanics do if we all used electric cars? No oil or oil filters to change – their most common service would most likely become rotating tires. The oil industry would be reduced to making plastics.

Electric Cars!

Here’s a very good idea. There’s an article on Forbes. We need to skip the whole painful hydrogen and ethanol and biofuel psudoadvancement and go right to electric cars. Solar peaks in the day, wind peaks in the night. Balance out the load by allowing utilities to borrow power back from the cars, provided the driver has not disabled this ability. (Like they’re leaving soon or something?) Really, why are we even trying to set up another flawed model of distrubution of liquids for powering vechicles? Electricity really is the renewable way to go. Besides, I remember reading somewhere that two thirds of oil in the US is used for millitary use and transporation trucks and the like. Although changes in consumer technology could definitely help, the millitary and transporation and freighting industry will need to get involved too. The article is here.

Ooh, Physics!

A British accent seems to make everything a little more interesting. Here’s an hour long quantum physics documentary by the BBC.

It Are Snow!

So, there’s snow, and lots of it. It took an hour and a half to get home, whereas it usually takes fifteen minutes.

It was:

It was deep and very fluffy.

Anyone outside got coated with it.

I had just cleaned off the headlights.

It also deserves a mention that when I was brushing off the car for preparation to get it in the garage, (we didn’t want ice on it in the morning) I would frequently look back over my work and find it had already been snowed back over. Yes, it was snowing that hard, really.

Portal and Leaves

I’ve been reading Portal. No, not Valve’s Portal. I mean Portal: A Dataspace Retrieval. It’s a really interesting online book, and there’s a hardcover available at Barnes and Noble. It’s about a man who was supposed to come out of stasis orbiting a star he was going to study. However, something goes wrong and he wakes up back at Earth, and everyone is gone… Trees are intact, the oceans are fine, animals prosper… No people.

Leaves. How does it feel, being able to rake them in January as the snow melts immediately upon contact with the thawed ground?

Depressing…

I have two links:

“Synthetic Sea” and a 2007 international privacy report.

Global Warming!

We told you it was real, Mr. Bush! Clicky.

0.2 Celsius rise per decade. That’ll add up.

Oil Oil Everywhere

Here’s the path of that boat that spilled oil near San Fransisco. Clicky.

Edit: Working resin’d iPod.

Oh no!

Ice shrinking ominously

This looks bad. Source.

Hot!

Up until these past few days, I’ve had only reputable scientists’ verdicts and indisputable scientific data and graphs. Now I have my own experience. Global warming is really happening, people. Is it normal to have to run the AC and sweat while mowing the lawn in OCTOBER?!

Al Gore, you were right, we’re sorry. You got elected, just not inaugurated. Get some position of governmental power and turn the US and the world around before it’s too late!

EDIT: Hehe.