Nature’s best available image stabilization… they must have evolved it for flight so that their head stays steady while their wings and body are moving about.

I imagine Nikon and Cannon have some chicken experts working for them…These are probably not unique among birds to have this trait, but are just a whole lot easier to get a hold of (as opposed to seagulls, eagles and such)

The year 2009 will witness a tsunami of appeals to economists to fix, as disgraced Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan put it, the “flaw” in their thinking. Most will get it wrong.

The proposals for bailouts, regulations and government spending sprees all share one tragic flaw: they assume no physical or biological limits to human growth. Most economists cling to an 18th century mechanical universe that conjured an “invisible hand” of God, that would allegedly convert private greed into public utopia…..

Please see more at the Tyee

The other article in the series i’d recommend is on Neuromarketing

Also in the New Ideas for the New Year, 2009 series

• Idea #1: Slow Towns
• Idea #2: Voter-funded Media
• Idea #3: Embrace the Mediocrity Principle
• Idea #4 New Ways to Warm Your Bum
• Idea #5: Beware of Neuromarketing
• Idea #6: Phase out Fishermen
• Idea #7: Create a Ward System for Vancouver
• Idea #8: Twitter the News
• Idea #9: Progressive Populism
• about the New Ideas for the New Year, 2009 series

List of Registrants

As anticipated: lots of wind, run of river, and tidal?? (already?). Again, this just means the companies have shown interest in participating in the call to supply 5,000 GWh. A lot of the projects will not make it through the cut. May the best proponents win.

Yes. It looks like it’s just about to be here. 

Forbes magazine just published an article on Enhanced Geothermal Systems that suggests that the levelized cost of enhanced geothermal is estimated to produce at $150/MWh. [Conventional Geothermal is cheaper than that]

New Geothermal Technology Could Chop Cost to Match Coal-Based Plants

• Power plants fueled by sub-surface heat could deliver electricity for about 15 cents per kWh without releasing GHGs, Forbes reported. The first large-scale trial of the Enhanced Geothermal System was underway in central Australia, where Geodynamics is drilling 16,000 feet into hot granite to release heat to produce steam into 50 MW plants planned on a 400 square-mile tract. Although Geodynamics’ first 50 MW generator could cost $250 million, the company estimated that by the time they have three such generators online, the costs would fall to parity with coal-based power plants. 
• Geodynamics’ first 50-megawatt station will cost $250 million, says Chief Scientific Officer Doone Wyborn. (That’s $5 a watt; Duke Energy‘s new coal-fired plant in Cliffside, N.C. will cost $2.30 per watt.) But now that the company understands where, how and at what depth to drill, Wyborn says costs will soon fall. He vows that by the time the company gets 150 megawatts online, in 2014, its cost per watt will be lower than that of coal.

Conventional Geothermal background: Here’s What’s in the Stars for the US

With approximately 4,000 MW of clean energy (and baseload) energy planned in the United States (see graphic), the tone for the North American seems to be set.

Well. That’s actually fairly easy to answer. The big three are likely to be: Wind, Geothermal, Ocean. 

1. Wind – A lot of wind coming online – there is a lot of interest from the wind energy community mostly available to me via articles gathered by the trusty BCSEA (BC Sustainable Energy Association) list serve community: most who have a good pulse on the industry suggest at least 3 major wind projects and potentially more are expected to expected to bid into the BC Hydro Clean Power Call. Good news for wind.

2. Geothermal – The next big thing in BC. An even though the first BC geothermal plant is hopefully less than 5 years away, there is a groundswell of activity happening worldwide, including BC. The activity is on 2 fronts. There’s lots happening in the world, and increasingly BC that warrants the exploration of conventional geothermal potential (and exploration can be interpreted loosely here). The US has up to 4000 MW in the pipeline anywhere on the spectrum of exploration to construction (see my next post). BC itself has currently known potential of anywhere between 3,000 to 5,000MW -That’s half of BC’s current energy needs!

[I'm strongly considering turning this into a geothermal blog (comments?) I'd just set up a separate personal blog.. hm. ]

Still on Geothermal. The other front: a lot happening in the field with Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS – the next generation geothermal) the recently announced  establishing a US – Australia – Iceland Partnership, the 10 million investment of Google and a up to 90 million investment by the US Department of Energy (DOE).

3. Ocean Energy – Of the three, it’s the least technologically mature, but should be taken into account given BC’s vast ocean energy resource potential. In order to position itself into a position of moderate leadership, BC needs to start investing into the baseline analyses work such as environmental assessments and ideal site location in order to harness the potential of tidal and wave energy. For more info on this one visit OREG, the Ocean Renewable Energy Group.

What about the others? 4. Run of river – can be potentially dangerous to ecosystem health, and there’s plenty of other blogs covering all the issues relating to this, so i’ll suspend my comments. 5. Solar – it’s great. Fantastic, but it’s still incredibly expensive to make economic sense, for large scale solar farms (homeowners and community applications -> go for it!). 6. Bioenergy – lots of debates surrounding this one, including the legitimacy of including this in a “clean” energy source. The argument being that combustion of wood/woodresidue/woodwaste still produces GHG emissions in the present, thus contributing to climate change, while the absorption phase occurred in the past. Still contributes to climate change (even though on some people’s accounting sheets (IPCC inclusive), burning wood looks like a great deal. However, still a  wonderful prospect for some applications like pinebeetle wood and some home-level uses.)

There are many others, and the list is continually updated, but for now, wind, geothermal and ocean are the most likely frontrunners of BC’s renewable energy future.

Please refer to the original if you like...

Learning to Speak Climate

http://www.tietronix.com/anim/MoviePlayer.asp?myMovie=movies/assembly640x360.swf

1. UNBC – Prince George 
2. Alterna Energy – Prince George 
3. Metro Vancouver – Lower Mainland 
4. SunSelect Produce – Aldergrove 
5. Lignol Innovations – Burnaby 
6. Nexterra Energy Corp. – New Westminster 
7. Catalyst Power – Abbotsford 
8. SBC Firemaster – Revelstoke 
9. UBC – Burnaby 
10. MSR Innovations – Langley 
11. T’Sou-Ke First Nation – Sooke 
12. BCIT – Burnaby 
13. Fairfield Propagators – Chilliwack 
14. Terasen Gas – Vancouver 
15. Halfway Ranch – Kamloops 

Why is there not more news on this? I am very familiar with Renewables in BC (for reasons I will not go into).  My worry: BC is about to “enter into a new era of clean energy gneeration all forms of alternative energy”, particularly wind are about to take off in BC – however, there is a significant first mover advantage. The first ones to develop projects will gain the most benefit from sites with the most convenient and largest resource potential. This means that PG&E, a Californian utility will reap those benefits, whereas BC unfortunately won’t. 

My second worry – the BC ratepayer. There is much concern about initiatives like the Carbon tax, enabling the BC cleantech sector, and rising electricity prices – HOWEVER the BC government has agreed to give away the cheapest renewables to the giant electricity consumers in the South. I’ve heard it described as a hungry gorilla sitting and staring at bananas in our backyard. And we got plenty of bananas. So what is the next logical step? To spend $14 million on resource assessments from to explore British Columbia’s wind, ocean and other renewable energy resources – and that is what California’s PG&E did. One of PG&E’s presentations at the 2007 PNWER included the schematics for transmission lines to accompany the renewable harvest. Please do think about that for a second longer, that means that BC rate-payers will not gain benefit from increased grid/system reliability and supply, nor will they be able to get royalty for the energy produced (which would occur in the case of BC exports – profits are distributed back to the province through the government.

I truly do not comprehend the government’s present position on this. BC has incredibly diverse resource options, but it is most definitely in our best interest to start developing these renewable resources in-house. The BC Energy Plan and other legislation mandates BC Hydro, a crown-owned electrical utility company, to purchase power from Independent Power Producers, but not to build new generation.  So while the BC government’s intent was to spur the economy, the company is shackled and prevented from exploring new renewables (for BC’s use and potentially for export). But that’s the thing – we’re exporting the resources without any benefit to the people in Canada.

So in retrospect, Mr.Schwarzenegger’s visit last year makes somewhat more sense. The visit was not inspired by a heartfelt need to do the right thing and share insights about climate change approaches. Resource-constrained California was working on securing its next generations’ fuel, electricity needed for air conditioning, and to fuel its own economy. 

I suppose if we don’t develop the resources, in the end someone else should to reduce the global emissions – but the thing is BC is just getting it’s act together and doing something. I sincerely hope that at some point down that path we will realize that just a little foresight and investment into renewables instead of giving them away will prove wise, and yes, profitable.

First things first: House of Cards 

Yes, yes, it’s the first video shot by lasers [LIDAR], not cameras.  Beautiful and intriguing art – how they made it, is even more interesting – the second video.. but that’s not what this posting is about. The content/lyrics are still more crucial to me. [btw I don't agree with conventional the literal translation of the song that takes the lyrics at face value - it's almost the same as saying Radiohead doesn't use satire, metaphors, and subtext - you always have to hunt for the meaning]. So either way, what this song means to me is more about the path humanity is on, and not necessarily about relationships; well i don’t know what Thom was thinkin when he wrote the song, but given that their site is decorated with climate change, LED lights, a carbon calculator, his choice of a world evaporating for the video, and infrastructure collapsing i suggest there’s more to this song than what’s spelled out. I would in fact suggest he’s criticizing the first 2 lines of the video. It wouldn’t be the first time, it would actually be out of character not to… 

After all these years I still deeply respect the fusion of art with societal commentary. My interpretation of this particular one? The world is falling apart around us [i.e.  'infrastructure is collapsing', and the world vaporizing before our eyes etc]and we’re focusing on some of the most inconsequential materialistic aspects of our existence [i.e.  'infrastructure is collapsing', and the world vaporizing before our eyes etc] 

2nd video: Reckoner 

A finalist in the animation contest for the band’s video of this song – again social commentary in both the video and lyrics. My favorite part of the song – a subtle play with notes and maybe even counterpoint at 1:21 for less than 10 seconds. The reviewers of album “In Rainbows” are either impressed, intrigued, or simply don’t know what to do with it with all the cynicism, but still somehow like the realistic bend to reality.

It’s ironic that when I first discovered Radiohead over 12 years ago, I was just entering a phase of discovering how what was really happening in the world, which threw me in the middle of activism and then..deep cynicism. It was another 7 years before I could reconsider working on anything environmental. Struggled with it when returning to the environmental field, but something in the universe help me transform my perspective; to accept things as they were, all the involved potential futures, and then diving into doing my part – but this time, being detached from the outcome. I realized i could not stop climate change, I couldn’t really stop anything. But i was dedicated to my work…as if i could.

So now here’s the background to the blog. I don’t yet know how I’m going to pull it off.. focusing on the positive but writing and environmental blog, writing on living within the boundaries of the laws of nature. But I’m going to. One of the ways I’ve found to be successful at changing my world-view in the past was to step outside of my boundaries and explicitly focus on the beautiful things around me. And the more I tried, the more beautiful the world became – and through seeing that beauty I was transformed. And the ugliness of the world didn’t go away, it didn’t become any less real, but it no longer hurt as much. So i’m nowhere near the lotus effect, but eventually I will.

For as long as i write this I will write on the environment, and the beauty I see around me: music, photography, people…. [and on the odd occasion, the beautiful lyrical tapestry and cynical undertones of Radiohead]

Enjoy.