A green New Year, or else!
The Archbishop of Canterbury, theoretically my loftiest spiritual guide, has decreed that “God does not waste,” on YouTube, no less. Does St. Peter have to drag his recycling to the curb?
Biting the ‘green bullet’
Here’s our brand new, energy-efficient furnace: at almost $4,000, it wasn’t particularly cheap. The air conditioning option would have cost an additional $4600 (I declined).
You may recall that last year our 53-year-old furnace failed during a cold snap (temperatures in the 30s). Our good, local plumbing and heating guys wouldn’t repair it, it was just [...]
Seed banks
Friend, retired priest Stuart Coxhead came over for leftovers last night (with friend Anne Peterson), and brought a copy of the New Yorker with a fascinating story about the world’s seed banks. American Cary Fowler, descibed as the ‘world’s seed banker’ by writer John Seabrook is also a long term cancer survivor (after being given [...]
Industrial revolution
While perusing web pages, I came across this interesting PDF about the Scorpius space transportation system a component of which can be seen above, right. To the left is a Saturn J-2 engine: it’s successor, the RL-10 produces about the same thrust as the Scorpius for about 100 times the cost. The RL-10, like almost [...]
Getting a quote for solar power at gulker.com
The new furnace will be considerably more efficient than the old one, reducing both our energy bill and carbon footprint which got me thinking about our other big energy use, electricity.
The RealGoods.com estimator came back with a price of $37,000 for a 5.5 KW photovoltaic system for gulker.com, and promising a $1300 to $2400 reduction [...]
Al Gore joins Kleiner Perkins
Al Gore will be a part-time Green tech partner at KPCB, according to the Merc and a bunch of other sources. I wonder how many other VCs have a Nobel laureate on board…
More water woe
BBC: A massive rescue operation is under way in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco after rains caused the worst flooding there in more than 50 years. More than one million people are believed to be affected by the floods, and some 300,000 are thought to be trapped in their homes. Most of the state [...]
The economics of Hybrids
Good article on WSJ.com on the current state of hybrids. On the one hand, they really do use less fuel and reduce your carbon footprint. On the other, payback times are long, given current US fuel prices (but better in Europe where fuel is heavily taxed). I love our Ford Escape Hybrid… it replaces a [...]
‘The Gore Derangement Syndrome’
An amusing - and correct, IMHO - take on the right wing’s attempt to smear Al Gore while simultaneously elevating GW Bush. For all their efforts, Gore seems to be able to rise above the crud…
AlwaysOn: where Green Tech VCs are betting
AlwaysOn pulls up this session from their Davis Going Green greentech conference (I was there) last month where a group of prominent VCs outline their bets. This group said they liked energy efficiency, utility scale projects, plastics, building materials, carbon reduction, and transport.
I interviewed IBM Capital co-founder Drew Clark the week after Going Green, and [...]