macroscopic - Energy, Community, Sustainability, Peace.

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North American Solar Challenge

And they're off!

The North American Solar Challenge races solar cars from Austin to Calgary. This year's cars are Hot! The North American Solar Challenge is sponsored by the US DOE, Resources Canada, & NREL. The race is from July 17-27 2005.

Click "READ MORE" to see a pictorial of the Stanford Solar Car from it's unveiling May 7th, and more links.

We are BACK ONLINE!!

The Lab is back online! Our old server was hacked and the site was disabled. We have a new server, updated software, and a new look.

Look for new content coming soon. In the meantime, feel free to check out any articles you may have missed. If you have a story you think would be good for the site, please send it in! We could use some new material.

If you have any problems, please let me know john(at)macroscopic.org

How to Run your car on bio-fuels; Veggie oil or Biodiesel

By John Humphrey

Here's some quick tips for running your car on bio-fuels. First, unless you live in Brazil where bio-ethanol is available, the bio-fuel options are Biodiesel or Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO). All you need is a vehicle with a diesel engine.

I won't go into too many technical details, there is a lot of info out there. If you really want to run your car on bio-fuels, a great start is to buy or borrow the book "From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank" by Joshua Tickell.

Common veggie cars are Volkwagens and Mercedes Benz, but any diesel car or truck is fine. Here are some pictures of cars powered by biodiesel, canola oil, and olive oil (biofuels)...

The End of Oil

The End of Oil Is Closer Than You Think
By John Vidal
The Guardian UK

Thursday 21 April 2005

Oil production could peak next year, reports John Vidal. Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye.

The one thing that international bankers don't want to hear is that the second Great Depression may be round the corner. But last week, a group of ultra-conservative Swiss financiers asked a retired English petroleum geologist living in Ireland to tell them about the beginning of the end of the oil age.

They called Colin Campbell, who helped to found the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre because he is an industry man through and through, has no financial agenda and has spent most of a lifetime on the front line of oil exploration on three continents. He was chief geologist for Amoco, a vice-president of Fina, and has worked for BP, Texaco, Shell, ChevronTexaco and Exxon in a dozen different countries.

"Don't worry about oil running out; it won't for very many years," the Oxford PhD told the bankers in a message that he will repeat to businessmen, academics and investment analysts at a conference in Edinburgh next week. "The issue is the long downward slope that opens on the other side of peak production. Oil and gas dominate our lives, and their decline will change the world in radical and unpredictable ways," he says.

Campbell reckons...

Turning Garbage into Fuel

File Under Pretty Cool:

Here's a neat company that is taking landfill bound plastics and converting them into Fuel.

Ozmo Energy, a Hungarian company, has a system of liquefaction, pyrolysis, and the catalytic breakdown of the plastics to produce a high quality fuel.

New Solar Reports

(from the CLEAN EDGE mailing list)

Two New Reports Highlight Enormous Potential for Solar PV in the U.S.

Two reports released today, one by Clean Edge, Inc. and Co-op America's Solar Catalyst Group, and the other by the Energy Foundation and Navigant Consulting Inc., highlight the enormous potential for solar PV in the U.S. if government, industry, and investors cooperate to bring down installed solar photovoltaic (PV) pricing.

Kyoto and Beyond

by Felix Kramer

On February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change goes into effect to begin a global rescue mission. It's a historic first step, but the U.S., the top greenhouse gas producer hasn't signed on. And developing countries, including China and India, are exempt.

Still, every country in the world meeting Kyoto's goals wouldn't save our children from the catastrophes a consensus of scientists predict. Meeting the Climate Challenge, a report from the International Climate Change Task Force, warns we're approaching a point of no return. If we don't act decisively, average global temperatures could over decades rise almost four degrees Fahrenheit above 1750's levels. They're already up over one degree. We'd face agricultural failures, diseases, droughts and floods. Some experts forecast a 10 degree jump, much higher sea levels and possible abrupt, runaway changes to ocean currents...

Continues...

ClimatePrediction.net Update!

Here is an update to an earlier story published on macroscopic. The first set of results are back from climateprediction.net, an experimental project that joins over 90,000 computers all over the world to create more processing power than the world's largets supercomputers, and they don't look good!

"Greenhouse gases could cause global temperatures to rise by more than double the maximum warming so far considered likely by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to results from the world's largest climate prediction experiment, published in the journal Nature this week."

Follow the "Read this story link to see a summary and links.

Jazz Funeral for Democracy

Today was the day that GW was re-sworn in as president of the United States. As thousands of his supporters were preparing for the evening's lavish festivities, there was a much more somber feeling to the city of New Orleans.

Over 1500 people followed a traditional jazz funeral procession from Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park to the Mississippi River, mouring the death of democracy in the US. People from all walks of life, of all ages gathered together to vent their frustrations and to follow a horse-drawn carriage with coffin and two jazz bands.

People along N. Rampart and Canal Street, waiting for the bus and streetcar, shouted words of support, while the procession (most of which was dressed in black) passed.

The procession ended at the river, where the ashes of the Patriot Act were tossed into the Mississippi. Speakers in Jackson Square went on for over an hour, rallying people (a lot of which were unsuspecting tourists in the French Quarter). Noted historian, Howard Zinn, who was scheduled to speak, did not attend due to a family illness- but the crowd was inspired nontheless and continued down Decatur Street into the Marigny, where the day ended with several bands continuing to play in the street.....