QUICK NEWS, March 8: CLIMATE ANSWERS RAISE QUESTIONS; IOWA AT 30% WIND POWER; MAKING SOLAR AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE
CLIMATE ANSWERS RAISE QUESTIONS What's the Answer to Climate Change? It’s not enough to let the market handle it or depend on geo-engineering.
Robinson Meyer, March 8, 2016 (The Atlantic)
“…[T]hinking about climate change requires a two-mindedness…Climate change is vast, hopeless, horrifying, anxiety-inducing, and imagination staggering. On the other, it’s a challenge without parallel in human history: a vast, fascinating, thrilling, inspiring, mind-bending opportunity…Climate change is finally getting solved…[by] the Paris Agreement…[but] it has no mechanism to force anyone to do anything…The cost of clean power is plunging…but there’s no rule preventing clean power and dirty fossil fuels from co-existing…The problem isn’t just climate change—it’s ceaseless growth…[Geo-engineering technologies are more of a threat than a solution]…This is only a tour of some of the solutions…None is both adequate and likely. So maybe it’s better to think in terms of management…As the climate warms, should we find aims other than constant growth…? What kind of society and democratic government will be best positioned to handle resource scarcity and the sequential emergencies associated with the now-inevitable consequences of climate change? How can we bring about that society? …And most important of all: Can the world both manage climate change and avoid its worst cataclysms, like hideous famines, mass migrations, surveillance-powered authoritarians, and World War III?” click here for more
IOWA AT 30% WIND POWER Iowa now #1 in wind energy
March 1, 2016 (CBS Des Moines)
"The data comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Officials said Iowa is now the first and only state in the U.S. to cross the 30 percent mark…[and it has the] potential to jump above 40 percent in the next five years…Iowa has 31.1 percent of wind energy as a percentage of the total energy generated in the state. South Dakota is second with 25.5 percent, Kansas is third with 23.9 percent, Oklahoma with 18.4 percent, North Dakota with 17.7 percent and Minnesota with 17.0 percent…[W]ind farms in Iowa have now attracted $11.8 billion to the state's economy…” click here for more
MAKING SOLAR AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE Turning Windows into Solar Panels
Victor Klimov, March 7, 2016 (Los Alamos National Labpotratory/U.S. Energy Department)
“…While the price of solar photovoltaic cells recently has plummeted and their efficiency has gone up, challenges remain around siting vast arrays of solar-electric panels and finding ways to integrate them into buildings and other applications…[Working with quantum dots, researchers] from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy…achieved a breakthrough in solar-concentrating technology that can turn windows into electric generators and revolutionize the way we think about where and how we generate energy…Solar windows would also be practically unnoticeable while providing peak-demand period emissions-free electricity and grid independence]…Quantum dots fashioned from a light-emitting material…[are] nanocrystals roughly [10 to 50 atoms wide that] obey quantum-mechanics laws…[They] absorb light at one wavelength, efficiently convert it and re-emit it at another wavelength…By adjusting the dots’ size, we can precisely tune those wavelengths to suit our purposes…Turning windows into solar collectors is the kind of disruptive technology that can revolutionize energy generation…If this technology replaced all the glazing on the One World Trade Center building in New York City, the windows could power more than 350 apartments…” click here for more
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