If this is for real, it’s a breakthrough. A Penn State research team has developed a way to extract hydrogen using common bacteria that is highly efficient, clean and low cost. They claim it returns 288% more energy than the process consumes.

This would be very big news as hydrogen extraction methods in use today are not energy efficient and typically require the use of petro products, rendering hydrogen’s use in fuel cells inefficient when you look at the big picture, costwise. Because hydrogen is a completely clean fuel, an efficient production process could dramatically change things. I suspect GM will be all over this for their fuel cell car project.

They also claim the process could be used for fertilizer production, another process that currently relies heavily on using petroleum products.

Nice to have something positive to write about!

Image courtesy of the National Science Foundation.

A huge storm in the North Atlantic brought storm surges as high as 20 feet yesterday to Europe and the UK. Barriers on the Thames were closed to protect London. This is the biggest surge since 1953. Fortunately no one was hurt and damage was minimal.

The issue here is that climate change doesn’t simply mean higher ocean levels. Even a slight rise in levels, combined with more violent weather due to warming, will mean more and more of these storms in regions where they have been very rare in the past. Because there was no historical record of major storm surges, these coastal areas are highly developed and support dense populations. The potential for future destruction is much higher because of this.

This is a classic environmental feedback loop. Warming generates storms, higher ocean levels mean higher surges. Interestingly, the same storm caused unstable snowpack conditions in Switzerland, creating dangerous avalanche conditions.

And I’m wondering what price will initiate real change. The recent protests in Burma against the military oppressive government weren’t triggered by human rights abuses, they were the result of the government removing their artificially low gas prices (under 10 cents a gallon). Overnight it became virtually impossible to afford to drive. This triggered an entire country to rise and confront their government on a wide range of issues.

Recent earnings reports from the big oil companies had their results down sharply from the year before (when they recorded the highest profits in history for any kind of company). Ask yourself why? My answer?

They have been intentionally keeping gas prices at the pump from rising as oil prices have risen because they know the social implications of a sharp rise. One economist estimates that a $10 rise in oil should increase retail gas prices by 2.2 cents a gallon. Oil has risen almost $50/gallon without a related rise in gas prices over the past year. However, on the heels of these earnings reports and the extremely unstable political situation in the Middle East (Kurds and Turks fighting, Musharraf showing his true thug nature, Israel and Hamas fighting, sword-rattling between us and Iran…) we’re finally seeing prices rise. High test today was $3.47! Now these are New York state prices that include high taxes but…

So oil is nearing $100/barrel which puts the true cost, adjusted for inflation, higher than at our worst point during the Arab oil crisis of the seventies. I’m old enough to remember gas lines, rationing and an uptake in public transportation. I imagine that these things won’t happen until we hit $5 because we’re slightly more efficient mileage-wise than we were then. But only slightly, thanks to the insane lobbying to keep gas-guzzling behemoths legal by the US auto industry.

We could easily be driving 100 MPG vehicles today. If we were, we wouldn’t be at war in the Middle East, we’d be in a position to tell the Saudis to stop this fundamentalist craziness, we’d be an example in fighting climate change for the rest of the world and we’d be creating a better world for our grandchildren.

So bring on the $5/gallon gas if that’s what it takes to wake us up.

BTW, GM posted a $39 billion dollar loss today. This would never have happened if they had any real strategic long-term planning instead of the afore-mentioned lobbying and reliance on old technology instead of innovation.

It has started. Arizona governor Bill Richardson opened the first salvo by suggesting that the Northeast should ’share’ their water with the Southwest. Apparently we’re ‘awash’ in it and they desperately need it to justify building more golf courses , growing more lawns in desert lands and building more McMansions. Now that the Colorado is running dry and their aquifers are empty, they are looking north and covetously eyeing the Great Lakes.

Only one problem. Richardson is running for President and he can’t win without the Northeast so he quickly backed off from his comments. This kind of thing only reinforces that we need a comprehensive water rights policy that is national and international. Alabama and Florida are fighting over watershed rights that transcend state and national boundaries. California and the Southwestern states are doing the same and Mexico can only look on as less and less water flows downstream to them.

No one is advocating the real changes that must be made:

• Immediately put a moratorium on any new construction that cannot show rights to at least 50 years worth of water supplies not currently claimed by others
• Drought areas must impose permanent mandatory water conservation plans on all sectors including businesses
• Long term water reclamation, storage, transportation and generation strategies must be developed and funded
• Rates for water use must immediately be raised two-fold to put the nation on an emergency notice that is a looming national problem
• Raised taxes on excess water use should be funneled into long term water conservation and reclamation strategies

This is a real time problem. And no one, especially the politicians, is doing anything about it.