“The idea is to capture the sun’s heat. Heat, unlike electric current, is something that industry knows how to store cost-effectively. For example, a coffee thermos and a laptop computer’s battery store about the same amount of energy, said John S. O’Donnell, executive vice president of a company in the solar thermal business, Ausra. The thermos costs about $5 and the laptop battery $150, he said, and “that’s why solar thermal is going to be the dominant form.”

As oil prices skyrocket and technology makes breakthroughs, our ability to generate clean, sustainable energy becomes more and more viable. However the big roadblock to technologies like solar and wind is that they do not run 24/7 like water or nuclear, meaning they are an undependable source unless we can find ways to store the energy during those cloudy, windless days and dark nights. Battery tech has been a major stumbling point because of costs and inefficiency (much of the energy is lost during storage). As the above quote from today’s excellent NYTimes coverage of storage challenges notes, there are entirely new ways to look at storage that, in turn, have made new energy sources viable. One example is the focusing of solar heat by a field of hi-tech mirrors onto a tower full of water and heavy salts. During the day this heat powers steam turbines, during the night the stored heat in the tower keeps those turbines turning.

Read the article- it is easy to be a doomsayer during this rapidly expanding crisis but there are truly great things coming out of this scenario, great in the long term.

Greenwashing is slang for disinformation campaigns created to make a company or organization appear to be green when in fact they are not.

As expected the primary (red) areas are cities including my fair city of Rochester, NY. There is also a video which shows the paths the emissions take, though I’m not certain why this matters- it is a global problem, not a regional one.

The Chinese had to cancel the Olympic torch run in Paris today because of thousands of pro-Tibet protesters. I don’t see how they can continue this thing through to August given the protests that have dogged it so far. China’s leaders are displaying a profound misunderstanding of the depth of feeling about this issue and others like their support of Darfur. When people start talking about a global boycott of Chinese goods (which is now in the wind) they may finally understand that they can no longer control the flow of information regarding their internal policies.

This is only the beginning of their troubles. Their horrendous pollution problems are going to be spotlighted as athletes start to wonder whether it is safe to compete in a place where people routinely wear masks when they go outside. Despite plans to virtually halt traffic weeks before the game and stop all polluting industries temporarily I doubt the skies will clear and the water miraculously become clean.

Again, this is a control issue. China can’t control their environment any better than they control information. The world is watching and China invited us.