Yahoo News reports a nationwide trend, Crisis spurs spike in ’suburban survivalists’:
“From teachers to real estate agents, these budding emergency gurus say the dismal economy has made them prepare for financial collapse as if it were an oncoming Category 5 hurricane. They worry about rampant inflation, runs on banks, bare grocery shelves and widespread power […]
AlongsideNight.com
The headline says it all. Congressman Ron Paul, a recent U.S. Presidential candidate and popular leader of the Campaign For Liberty, just endorsed Neil’s agorist novel, Alongside Night. Says Neil, “We just received the following endorsement on Alongside Night via Ron Paul’s aide, Norman Singleton.”
“J. Neil Schulman’s Alongside Night may be even more relevant today […]
Kurzweil AI links to a NY Times story about Scribd giving authors 80% royalties for works uploaded to the web for eventual distribution to Kindle and iPhone apps.
After working at Pulpless.com, I believe moving media bits electronically is greener than transporting physical plastic drink coasters and dead tree editions.
I’ve blogged about Google’s energy use […]
An ARS Technica article titled “Google: 15,000 searches = 1 cheeseburger (hold the fries)” discusses the problems of Google’s analysis of the energy used to produce its internet search results, but otherwise praises the educational value of its Clean Energy information page.
“Early this year, a newspaper story made the rounds when, after extrapolating from some […]
Nothing combines the concepts of water and power like Hoover Dam.
The electricity generating turbines at Hoover (a.k.a. Boulder) Dam spin due to the pressure exerted by the water in man made Lake Mead.
According to Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder, in an article published by GOOD magazine, the water level has fallen 100 feet in Lake Mead […]
YouTube video of SolTrekker RV tour in Portland, Oregon on Earth Day, 2009, according to the video description at the creator’s channel.
The green SolTrekker RV uses photovoltaics, contains no PVC, burns biodiesel but no petroleum or propane, and of particular interest on Thirst Day, collects rainwater and has a super insulated solar water heating system.
I’m still on a road trip, which started with my participation at the Xanadu convention in Las Vegas. I spoke there about “All Things Ecological” and “Indie Filmmaking.”
I took a break from the convention to be interviewed, along with Alongside Night author J. Neil Schulman, by the Motorhome Diaries team, who met with us and […]
The Simpsons MovieAbby Cohn at Berkeley Innovations describes a test by the City of San Francisco to convert brown grease, which normally plugs up sewer pipes, into biodiesel in an item titled From Bacon To Biofuel.
Innovations is the website of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering, hence the plugs for its alumni in the article.
” […]
The Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon published a story about Grease Lightning Delivery, a business that uses biodiesel and recycled vegetable oil as fuel.
“John Knox thinks his 1982 Mazda Truck with a modified engine that runs on biofuel can provide businesses with an economical and environmentally sound means of delivery.”
Small scale recycling of waste vegetable oil […]
Windpower in Iran
This headline was the title for my side of a debate (in the negative) on “Should the U.S. invade Iran” held at the Karl Hess Club on Monday, March 16. (Also, Jerome Tuccille’s humorous book, It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand, featured stories about the founding personalities of the modern libertarian movement.)
The gist […]
Wildman Steve Brill
A Slashdot post reports that Space Energy, Inc. claims to have a rock solid business model for their plan to beam down power via microwaves from solar energy collectors in space. I’ll get to survivalism and foraging in a minute, stay with me.
In a page linked from that article, at Universe Today, “aerospace […]
Kurzweil AI post.
The supreme Chancellor says he loves democracy and will give power back to the Old Republic. Oh wait, this isn’t Star Wars, Sarah Connor, or Battlestar. This is real life.
Ray Kurzweil is the Chancellor of a new interdisciplinary college called Singularity University.
“The Singularity University aims to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of […]
Mother Earth News reports that a DIY homebrew car, “MAX Wins 800-mile Race, without Gas.”
The challenge was to drive from Berkeley to Las Vegas without using petroleum based fuel, and without buying any fuel directly. This is a step in the MAX team’s attempt to win the $10 million automotive X-Prize for a 100 MPG […]
BioPro automation YouTube
From the Freeways To Fuel website, linked from Green Tech Media coverage of the National Biodiesel Conference in San Francisco this month:
. . .we estimate that 10 million acres of non-traditional agronomic lands are available to grow about 1 billion million gallons of biodiesel feedstock on our country’s rights-of-way.
Daryl Hannah made news at […]
Here’s a direct link to the Instructables page for a thousand watt wind turbine project.
“We built a 1000 watt wind turbine to help charge the battery bank that powers our offgrid home. It’s a permanent magnet alternator, generating 3 phase ac, rectified to dc, and fed to a charge controller. The magnets spin with the […]
Do I win a prize for the most bizarre headline? While we’re digressing, what’s up with “Cardinals” as a football team name? I think it’s fine for Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown, but on the gridiron a tweety bird is like a boy named Sue. Now give me some more tofu.
First some good news for energy […]
“Greenpa” over at Little Blog In The Woods has lived off-grid for over 30 years now. He posted news about his homestead, called the Little House, including the following update:
“. . .the Little House has been approached by Nick Rosen; author of How to Live Off-Grid, for us to be one of the families he’ll […]
This Kurzweil AI item links to a New Scientist article, “Balloon power isn’t just a load of hot air.”
“A greenhouse traps solar energy, providing hot air to fill the balloon. As the balloon rises, it pulls a tether, which turns a generator on the ground.”
Balloon power should be cost competitive with wind turbines and other […]
This Sat-urday item (what I’m calling satellite and other green/off-grid tech news) is from Cory Doctorow’s Boing Boing post about LightLane, a concept device that paints bike lanes using portable lasers from the bicycle.
Quoting the Good Magazine blog post “Superb Idea: Bike Lane That Travels With You’:
“While ridership is increasing every year, bicycle safety remains […]
Yesterday, there was a Boing Boing post about Leno’s Garage and a video featuring a magnetic levitating wind turbine, which will be delivered to Ed Begley, Jr.’s house. Jay took great pride in his own larger wind turbine. He bragged: “Mine is bigger than Ed Begley’s.”
Oddly enough, perhaps due to the “carbon footprint” needed for […]
Here’s a searchable directory of bike co-ops from bikecollectives.org. They even had an exhibit in Las Vegas at the bicycle industry’s trade show, Interbike.
One of the listings led me to the following about a Bike Over Borders conflict:
“. . .we learned first hand that the policies of “free trade” are made for corporations, not for […]
A Kurzweil AI post describes the rapid growth of off-grid households.
“Once the preserve of mavericks, hippies and survivalists, there are now approximately 200,000 off-grid households in the US, a figure that has been increasing by a third every year for the past decade.”
The post links to a New Scientist story, How To Unplug From The […]
BBC reports that the SeaGen tidal power generation project has reached its full power goal in a system test on December 18th. A Belfast Telegraph article headline proudly proclaims its local achievement “Northern Ireland tidal turbine breaks world energy record”.
Also, a front page item on Digg links to a CleanTechnica blog post titled “SeaGen Shatters […]
This Slashdot post links to an American Chemical Society article about a report by researchers here in Nevada, published in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, about the impact of turning waste coffee grounds into biodiesel.
“The resulting coffee-based fuel — which actually smells like java — had a major advantage in being more stable […]
There are advocates of hemp for biofuel, just as there are for tobacco.
That’s my excuse for including this anti-drug-war item on a permaculture blog. I’m also sick of seeing COPS style reality shows which glorify the destruction of our freedom. The latest atrocity is a new show called Heimatschutzministerium, or to translate from the […]
I’ve been on the road helping a friend move his stuff from the house he sold in Culver City, CA to his new home in Pahrump, NV. But while I haven’t posted here for a week, I have been taking notes about all things sustainable.
The first item is the most recent. During yesterday’s Ed Schultz […]
This Oregonian article about Ty Adams describes his conversion of a recreational vehicle into a sustainability demonstration.
“It runs on biodiesel, has solar panels for its electricity and hot water, a composting toilet and channels to catch rainwater.”
See Ty’s website at SolTrekker.org or watch his SolTrekker Intro video (also embedded below) and see the Portland TV […]
VaPooRizer.Com
Front page Digg item about a new garbage treatment plant that uses plasma to vaporize trash while generating energy.
But where does the poo go?
Excerpt from the inhabitat story linked from Digg:
“Recently St. Lucie County in Florida announced that it has teamed up with Geoplasma to develop the United States’ first plasma gasification plant.
The plant will […]
After reading an article about a new Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) initiative, I thought back to the off-grid Seasteading project, started by one of PayPal’s founders.
In their new book in progress, Seasteading: A Practical Guide to Homesteading the High Seas, by Patri Friedman, Wayne Gramlich, and Andrew House, under a section called “Technological […]
You can greatly exceed the $1 per watt price of new wind power systems by building your own homebrew wind turbine generator. [Update: I really meant that you can get the same value for a fraction of the price, but you probably understood that anyway. Typical small scale retail systems are more like $4 per […]
J. Kent Hastings
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