sustainability – Looking Forward

I’m on business trip in South Florida and happened be near 10th and Alton in Miami Beach. That may not mean much to you, except you might have seen a 2014 New York Times article titled “Miami Finds Itself Ankle-Deep in Climate Change Debate”, which included this picture of the corner of 10th and Alton.

As the caption indicated:

“Scenes of street flooding, like this one on Alton Road in Miami Beach in November [2013], are becoming increasingly common.”

In this part of the USA, rising sea levels are not a distant prospect. As the Miami Herald explains:

“Every fall when the king tides roll in, the most obvious sign of climate change asserts itself in South Florida: flooding everywhere”.

And so to somehow handle that flooding, there is an ambitious nearly half billion dollar engineering project to install 80 pumps, raise street levels and other related construction. It leads to scenes like this that I saw yesterday on the other side of the street corner in the picture above.

If you happen to go to the Starbucks down the block on 10th towards Biscayne Bay, here’s how you’ll be able to enjoy your latté.

Elsewhere in Miami Beach, there are similar, even more disconcerting, scenes, including the one below of Miami Beach Engineer Bruce Mowry showing the big difference between street and sidewalk.

It’s not that I’m criticizing local officials and engineers for this response, even if it is something of an experiment. On the local level, mitigation is perhaps a reasonable answer to the problem.

But at the national and international level, this situation highlights the ultimate debate about whether to hope for mitigation of the effects of climate change in the future or to do something more globally about to reduce it now.

All of this reminds me of the legendary story of King Canute of England setting his throne on the seashore and ordering the tide to stop so he would not get wet. Of course, the sea paid no attention to his command. People sometimes misinterpret the story as demonstrating the folly of the king’s arrogance. But, in the original tale, he went through this exercise to persuade his people that even a king’s power had limits.

No matter which version of the story you remember, there’s food for thought as we consider how the public and officials at all levels of government are responding to climate change.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/138607689006/how-long-can-you-hold-back-the-sea]

This is the second of my August posts that review some interesting and unusual tech news items about various subjects I’ve blogged about before.

Recently, there have been frequent announcements about developments in new and alternative, yet sustainable, energy.

Among other developments in more efficient batteries than the traditional lithium ion battery, there is the Ryden battery, whose producer says it is both environmentally sustainable (carbon, not rare earths), supports an electric car with 300 mile range and charges 20 times faster than lithium ion batteries. Their May announcement adds:

“Power Japan Plus today launched a new battery technology – the Ryden dual carbon battery. … The Ryden battery makes use of a completely unique chemistry, with both the anode and the cathode made of carbon. … [It is the] first ever high performance battery that meets consumer lifecycle demand, rated for more than 3,000 charge/discharge cycles.”

There’s a video explaining this more at http://youtu.be/mWPgnbRYNRM

And Modern Farmer magazine had a story this month about the use of store-bought spinach as fuel for cars. But before kids tell mom that spinach is too valuable to be used as food, read on:

In a recent study, an international team of chemists and physicists have taken the first “snapshots” of photosynthesis in action—the process plants use to convert light into chemical energy. … In experiments recently documented in Nature, the scientists shield spinach leaves they buy at the market in a cool, protected room where a sun-like laser activates photosynthesis. …

Using lasers, X-rays, and some spinach, the team has created the first-ever images of the water-splitting process that leads to plant energy. … Once scientists get a handle on exactly how photosynthesis happens, they’ll recreate it using other technology to create what’s called an “artificial leaf” which could convert solar rays into cheap, renewable fuel.

Finally, for situations that don’t require mobile power, there’s a new kind of wind turbine unveiled a couple of months ago by some Dutch engineers. Unlike the blades we see in wind farms, this turbine uses a screw-pump design, originally conceived of by the ancient Archimedes – which is also the name of the firm that makes this product.

For under US $6,000, the company says its Liam Urban Wind Turbine is as much as three times more efficient than traditional wind energy, perhaps the most efficient wind turbine yet. And it does all this without the also traditional whining noise. It kind of looks like a big pinwheel.

There’s a good video – recorded from a drone – of one of these in operating at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5t77JwkjUY

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/95912557986/new-energy]

Tag: sustainability

How Long Can You Hold Back The Sea?

New Energy?