Tag Archives: environment

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Fixing the future – Karl Schroeder on technological solutions for climate change

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Design concept for a 'vertical farm'Many of the commonly tabled options for dealing with the incipient ecological crisis our planet is facing involve turning our backs on technology. One of the people taking the opposite position – namely that sustainability isn’t a zero-sum game – is Canadian science fiction author and foresight consultant Karl Schroeder, who talks about the potential of technologies like fusion power and vertical farming to avert catastrophe without destroying the potential of the human species in an interview at EcoGeek. [Vertical farm image borrowed from VerticalFarm.com]

And sometimes you just need to look at the bright side of things – for example, the rising cost of gasoline might reduce the incidence of obesity. It all ultimately boils down to personal lifestyle choices, though, at least as much as technology – so maybe we should think seriously about having less children.

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The tipping point for climate change denial?

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While there are still some loud shrill voices denying the reality of climate change, Jamais Cascio thinks we may have finally reached the tipping point where such denialism is irredeemably exposed as obfuscation by those with vested interests – I sincerely hope he’s right.

That said, even advocates for environmental issues should be prepared to question the accepted dogmas; for example, a detailed study seems to indicate that the “eat local” philosophy may be misguided by the best of intentions, and that the long distance transportation of foodstuffs may actually have a smaller footprint than locally grown equivalents when other factors are introduced into the equation. [Brian Dunbar]

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Tethering Tornados To Generate Electricity

Ave200M1-1Retired engineer Louis Michaud makes small tornados in his garage, but he wants to build them miles high. It works like this: route a nuclear power plant’s cooling pipes through an especially constructed building. Use big fans to blow air over the pipes. Use baffles and retaining walls to shape the hot air into a vortex. Put turbines in the path of the resultant tornado and recapture the energy that would otherwise be lost as waste heat. The idea without all the journalistic fluff of the article linked above is described on Michaud’s website, complete with diagrams. [digg]

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Liberating The Sail

33-SmThe art of setting and trimming sails has a long and noble history, but when you think about it, it’s an art that exists because of fundamental flaws in the technology. Sails are fixed to a few basic positions that must be carefully tended to translate the impetus of wind into forward motion. Dan Tracy, “an enthusiastic sailor and fisherman from Mount Desert Island, Maine,” took a page from the kiteboarder’s playbook and attached a really big kite to a trimaran. Flying a kite lets him catch higher, steadier winds, from a wider variety of angles, to power his boat. Check him out on your next visit to Hawaii. [treehugger]