The United Nations Environment Programme recently published its first Biofuels Assessment Report ever. Much of this assessment dealt with conventional biomass, and mostly, the report did a fine job saying some bio systems are good, some are not so, and much depends on how you do it. Global...

The United States is the greatest country ever, and there will be no threat to our supremacy for a century and more. The Cold War brought our civilization to the brink. But that was almost two decades ago. There are no more threats. Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea are mere...

Hawaii just celebrated our 50th birthday as a State in the Union. Just about two years after attaining statehood, Barack Obama was born in Honolulu. Today, he is President of the United States, and, thirty-seven years his senior, Daniel Inouye, is Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Arguably, Hawaii, then,...

My best friend, and wife, of almost 47 years, Pearl, just passed away, and it was both the saddest day of my life, and, surprisingly enough, still, joyfully blissful. We had discussed at some length the matter of death, and we both agreed that there should be no mourning period,...

BACKGROUND

I am currently featuring Eternal Life in my daily report, which is Chapter 2 of Simple Solutions for Humanity. Globally, almost 60 million die each year. This total could well drop by a huge fraction if the aging gene is found and checked. Developed countries are already getting...

We all know now that the House of Representatives barely passed a global warming remediation bill last week, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. I should be rejoicing, for compared to the Bush Administration, the Obama White House has been remarkably progressive about renewable energy...

Purpose

I've been wondering why some of my postings draw no comments, and a rather tedious one, "Why is there No National Energy Policy?" attracts more than a hundred. My first year with the Huffington Post focused on energy, the environment and the economy, more or less the subject...

Five billion are killed by a virus. Sound familiar? Think the reaction to swine flu. The 1995 science fiction film starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt called 12 MONKEYS identifies a terror group implicated in this plot. This was a red herring (diverted attention).

Willis failed in his...

My very first posting, on May 29th 2008, was written during the heat of the Obama-Clinton race for the Democratic nomination, and was entitled "Well, Barack, We have a Problem." I suggested that he was the only individual capable of ameliorating the economic cataclysm to come. Well, two for...

President Barack Obama took steps to re-invent General Motors and Chrysler for the better, hopefully. The current focus is on survival. Unaddressed was how to regain American leadership in the automobile industry.

President Obama earlier this month visited the Edison Electric Vehicle Center located in Pomona, California, where he spoke...

America has a fascination for extraterrestrials (ET). ET, the 1982 movie, was the most financially successful film of all time released to that point. Thirty-two years ago -- can you believe it was that long -- Steven Speilberg wrote and directed Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Monsters vs. Aliens,...

In a word: NO! I was amused when I recently read that French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that France will return to full membership of the North Atlantic Trade Organization (NATO). What, they have not been a full member? It turns out that in 1966, President Charles de Gaulle...

About that title, Carnac the Magnificent would pause because he would at least be mildly confused as to his possible response. In time, he utters, "Not the life progression for Americans" and opens the envelope. There is only a trickle of laughter because the audience does not quite understand the...

President Ronald Reagan jacked up the defense budget, and it worked, for the strategy bankrupted the Soviet Union, we won the Cold War, and we now have no major enemy. There is every good reason, thus, to drastically change our spending priorities. The threat of nuclear holocaust has shifted to...

A few months ago, my Huffington Post article on "The Dawn of the Blue Revolution" reported on the potential the ocean provided for humanity. The world has been wrestling with the economic collapse and worried about the dual hammer of Peak Oil and Global Warming. Almost never is the...

Most probably yes, which will significantly affect the cost-effectiveness of most renewable energy projects, but perhaps not, as we shall see. First, what is low? Let me arbitrarily say low is $55/barrel (which is $1.30/gallon). Pardon me for this very tedious posting, but that's the way it has to be...

About a month ago I wrote an article in The Huffington Post, wondering if there was a better option than the plug-in electric vehicle. Evidence indicated that the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) was worthy of exploration. To quote from that posting:

Per unit volume, a...

First, a quick tutorial (details can be found in Chapter 1 of Simple Solutions for Planet Earth accessible through one of the boxes on the right):

1. In reference to producing electricity, there is really dirty coal (remember acid rain and the Clean Air Act?), dirty coal (what is largely...

...deleteriously influence investments in next generation renewable energy systems. The U.S. uses about 20 million barrels/day of oil. In 2008, the average price of this oil was close to $100/barrel, or $730 billion/year.

However, the average price of oil is predicted to be about $43/barrel this year. Thus, if...

Wind and geothermal energy are the only competitive sustainable resources today, although a case can be made that wind power would not be able to produce electricity as profitably as coal or nuclear power facilities were it not for those tax breaks. Fortunately enough, the House Ways and Means Committee...