New Years Link Dump  

I'm back from holidays and its time to commence the annual deluge of links, articles and snarky commentary again - however it may be a bit slow to start with as I'm still waiting for my switch to naked DSL to be completed.

Tyler at Clean Break has a 2008 Clean Break Lookahead - listing Offshore wind and ocean power, Reaching beyond PV solar, electric vehicles and Selling energy, not equipment (amongst others) as trends to watch.

The BBC has an article on a way to make LEDs brighter and use less power than energy efficient light bulbs currently on the market.

Renewable Energy Access has an article introducing the Solar Tree. Hopefully soon with LED leaves. A test run in Austria in October showed the "trees" were able to provide enough light during the night "even when the sun did not show for as much as four days in a row".

Tom Konrad at Alt Energy Stocks has a series of 3 posts on "Ten Alternative Energy Speculations for 2008" - LEDs and Ultracaps, Batteries, CHP, and Transmission and Geothermal, Wind and Wave, and Thin Film Hype.

Popular Mechanics has a look at the new genration of clean diesel engines, predicing these will pose a major challenge for current generation hybrids. "Here comes the 75-mpg revolution".

HamsterTalk has a look at The Future of Architecture: 2015-2025, predicting "the green building movement will finally emerge into its adult stage and become the dominant paradigm of architecture and development in the West".

Technology Review has a two part special on The Price of Biofuels - Making ethanol from corn is expensive and Do we really have any alternative to biofuels?

The Economist has a look at Mexican oil production - Running just to stand still- and the declining giant Cantarell field.

Earth2Tech has some thoughts on Google’s Vertical Integration of Green Energy, the idea being that Google will eventually generate its own (clean) energy.

iPrimus is promoting a green broadband plan, in which they promise to plant 5 trees if you pay an extra dollar per month. I think they would be a lot better off getting 100% green power for their operations (as per Google's direction) instead of trying the carbon offset route.

China is proposing to levy a 10 percent tax on crude oil production, along with a more generalised resource tax that would even affect geothermal power generation and mineral water production.

India's Tata Motors (an air car licensee) has announced the world's cheapest car, with a price tag of about $2,500. On the subject on the air car, Louis Arnoux from IT-MDI has offered to do an interview to try and clear up what he thinks are some misconceptions about the car in the recent discussion at The Oil Drum - if you have any suggested questions, send them in to me (or via the comments below) before the end of the week.

Dax Desai has a look at Who killed the electric battery?, pondering the history of NiMH battery company Cobasys and owner Chevron Texaco's apparent disinterest in making electric cars possible.

Jamais Cascio at Open the Future has a look at geoengineering techniques and the possibility of these being used in warfare in "terraforming War". Old hat, say all the HAARP / weather wars conspiracy theorists !

The Story of Stuff "is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns".

TSOS leads Free Energy News' list of top stories for 2007.

TreeHugger also has a list of their top posts for 2007. Apparently the monster maglev wind turbine is no more though...

Glenn Greenwald has a look at Michael Bloomberg: Trans-partisan savior !. Apparently voting for Bloomberg would be like voting for a greenish version of Joe Lieberman.

The anti global warming conspiracy theorists at Junk Science have some thought provoking tinfoil on Hatred of people and the subversion of climate science - a collection of sinister quotes by various figures who comment on environmental issues - some (like Maurice Strong's infamous quote about deliberately collapsing industrial society) I've used before, others are new to me. Regardless of whether or not these are true, and whether or not they are being taken out of context or misrepresented (and I don't think all of them are), I think the lesson to take from this is that both extremes (the coal/oil/tobacco/chemical industry funded nuts at Junk Science and the extreme fringes of the green movement who want to dispense with industrial society or impose some sort of ecofascism as a "solution" to our problems) should be shunned - the goal should be to make our industrial systems sustainable (in all senses of the word), not to get rid of industry or to try to maintain the untenable status quo.