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Cannabis hemp: a viable option to oil dependency
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday told millions of families hit by the soaring costs of running a car in the United Kingdom, or running a domestic heating or cooking system in rural regions, that high oil prices were a long-term global issue that could not be tackled by Britain alone, but some disagree.
Chancellor Alistair Darling has once again assured voters he will "take another look" at a proposed 2p fuel price rise which is set to come into being from October 2008, but seriously is 2p enough? Is NOT increasing the price of fuel the bait needed to win back a million (or two) voters? Hardly.
Only a couple of days ago, members of the UK road haulage industry threatened to blockade oil refineries and ports unless the government managed to find a 20p-25p essential user rebate for the transport sector in seven days. An industry which has borne the brunt of the last decade and of Labour rule has decided clearly enough is enough.
Isn't it about time we as a nation looked to break our dependency on the petroleum industry, by investigating the other alternatives? There are a few.
Follow link for full story. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday told millions of families hit by the soaring costs of running a car in the United Kingdom, or... more -
Bio-fuels are bio-foolish
The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It's been overshadowed lately by global warming, but the Amazon rain forest happens also to be an incomparable storehouse of carbon, the very carbon that heats up the planet when it's released into the atmosphere. Brazil now ranks fourth in the world in carbon emissions, and most of its emissions come from deforestation.
This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.
The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil's filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency.
Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.
Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions. So unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources--cars, power plants, factories, even flatulent cows--it needs to reduce deforestation or risk an environmental catastrophe. That means limiting the expansion of agriculture, a daunting task as the world's population keeps expanding. And saving forests is probably an impossibility so long as vast expanses of cropland are used to grow modest amounts of fuel. The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations--and it's only getting started.
The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It's been overshadowed lately b... more -
Invention Nation - Super Hybrid
Meet the hybrid car that gets over 100 miles to the gallon.
You can see it all here:
http://science.discovery.com/video/invention-nation.htm...
We are never limited by ideas and inventions, we are only limited by lack of financial resources to do it. -Stopnoise 2008 [T] Meet the hybrid car that gets over 100 miles to the gallon. You can see it all here: ... more -
Invention Nation - Cool Fuels
http://tinyurl.com/23k45y
I watched this last night and I love it. This guys goes around USA finding inventors and their solutions for our energy crisis. Thumbs up!
You can jump to the videos right here!
http://science.discovery.com/video/invention-nation.htm...
http://tinyurl.com/23k45y ... more -
Goodbuy Gas?
As the debate over alternative fuel continues, some drivers aren't waiting for greener options-- they're creating them.
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Cutting carbondioxide levels - starting at home!
Tips on saving energy at home...
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Water-powered car by Stan Meyer (Part 1)
Here is an amazing amount of information on hydrogen-power. I will be uploading a number of videos as well as a large pdf with all the information I could find on the topic.
We NEED to get this word out to EVERYONE and put the power back in the hands of the people and stop letting the rich decide our fate (or our doom) for us.
They can target one or two people here or there and make it look like an accident, but if we can group together and get large numbers to make these things happen, then we cannot be stopped.
***ALL CONTENT HERE WAS FOUND AT http://waterpoweredcar.com/stan.html Here is an amazing amount of information on hydrogen-power. I will be uploading a number of videos as well as a large pdf with all th... more -
TOO Easy to be Green
Saving the earth is way cheaper and not as hard as you think, lazypants.
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What's need for an energy solution
We are facing a problem with finding abundant, clean sources of energy yet the government does little to solve it. My proposal on what to do to solve this problem. We are facing a problem with finding abundant, clean sources of energy yet the government does little to solve it. My proposal on wha... more
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Humdinger Windbelt
If you remember watching the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in high school physics then you remember the theory of aeroelastic flutter and how a simple breeze can cause a large structure to move violently. MIT student Shawn Frayne realized that this simple physical principal could be used to generate electricity in developing communities where wind farms are cost prohibitive. If you remember watching the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in high school physics then you remember the theory of aeroelastic flutter and how ... more
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Free Energy - A Reality Not a Conspiracy
Free Energy Documentary (Yes the narrator's voice is Doc Neeson, the lead singer of "The Angels)
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$1 trillion green market seen by 2030
Global sales from clean energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal power and biofuels could grow to as much as $1 trillion a year by 2030, U.S. bank Morgan Stanley has estimated Global sales from clean energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal power and biofuels could grow to as much as $1 trillion a year ... more
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Clean Energy Sources
