Solazyme Unveils Renewable Biodiesel Derived from Algae via Scalable Process

April 18th, 2008

First car powered by algal biodiesel to demonstrate real-world driving at Sundance

South San Francisco, Calif. – January 22, 2008 – Solazyme, Inc., a synthetic biology company unleashing the power of aquatic microbes to create clean and scalable solutions for biofuel, industrial chemical, and health and wellness markets, today revealed the first ever algae-derived biodiesel fuel (SoladieselTM) to have undergone road testing by successfully powering a factory-standard automobile for long distances under typical driving conditions. The car and fuel are making their public debuts at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where they are also featured in Fields of Fuel, Josh Tickell’s documentary about renewable fuels. Soladiesel biodiesel is clean, renewable, environmentally sustainable and scalable.

More… ➡

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Climate change: a global threat multiplier

April 18th, 2008

– This is a favorite theme of mine and an essential part of what I call the Perfect Storm Hypothesis.   That there are many problems building up around us and that these problems potentiate and empower each other, or as the folks say, they multiply each other.

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A European Union study on the problems of global climate change, leaked to the press four days before its official launch on March 14, 2008, contained the sobering assessment that a failure to take radical action now to address global warming would create the likelihood of severe conflict over resources in the decades ahead. Two days later, on March 16, data from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reveals that the rate of shrinking of glaciers across the world – a key marker of climate change – has accelerated; this more than doubled between 2006 and 2007, and the 2007 figure was five times the average for the 1980-99 period. These two documents, taken together, present governments and citizens in the leading emissions-producing countries in particular with an unavoidable test.

More… ➡

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, Food Shortages, Rising Ocean Levels, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Water Shortages | No Comments »

Fears emerge over Russia’s oil output

April 18th, 2008

Russian oil production has peaked and may never return to current levels, one of the country’s top energy executives has warned, fuelling concerns that the world’s biggest oil producers cannot keep up with rampant Asian demand.

The warning helped on Tuesday to push crude oil prices to a fresh all-time high above $112 a barrel, threatening to stoke inflation in many countries.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Peak Oil, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Science solves global warming

April 18th, 2008

The Greens in New Zealand have shared a new discovery with the rest of us:

Scientists searching for a way to solve global warming have stumbled on the perfect solution for removing CO² from the air and locking it away in a non gaseous state. Crucially – given the scale of the problem – the device is self-replicating, self-powered and has the added benefit of preventing floods and erosion. They call it ‘the tree’.

Posted in And Now for Something Completely Different, Climate Change, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

What lies beneath

April 18th, 2008

– I now publish articles that seem to go against my basic premise which is the Perfect Storm Hypothesis (see the Counter Currents category).

– Just a few days ago I published one about the Bakken Formation and some months ago, I published another about new gas discoveries off Brazil. (And here as well.)

– Here the Economist Magazine takes a second look at the Brazilian claims.

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JUST how much oil is there off the coast of Brazil? Until recently, Brazil’s oil reserves were thought to be relatively modest: about 12 billion barrels at the beginning of 2007, according to BP, or about 1% of the world’s total. But last year, Petrobras, Brazil’s partly state-owned oil firm, announced the world’s biggest oil discovery since 2000: the Tupi field, which it hopes will produce between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels. Now the head of Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (ANP) says another nearby discovery might hold as much as 33 billion barrels, which would make it the third-largest field ever found. That alone would be enough to raise Brazil to eighth position in the global oil rankings—and there is talk of further big discoveries. But the peculiar way in which the information came to light is casting doubt on its significance.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | 1 Comment »

Two unamalgamated worlds

April 18th, 2008

– I wrote a piece the other day entitled Immigration and Assimilation in which I discussed the problems that can arise when immigration rates are too high.

– Here’s a nice follow on which describes what’s going on in Germany now between the native Germans and the imported Turks.

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HE DID not plan it that way. But when Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, arrived in Germany for an official visit in February he found the Turkish community in turmoil. A few days before his arrival nine Turks, five of them children, had died in a fire in the south-western city of Ludwigshafen. A hate crime, many Turks suspected. The month before, Roland Koch, the conservative premier of the state of Hesse, had tried to win re-election by promising to deport foreign criminals (two-thirds of Turks do not have German citizenship). The transparent appeal to xenophobia backfired, costing Mr Koch his majority and perhaps his job.

Mr Erdogan both calmed tempers and inflamed them. In Ludwigshafen he reassured sceptical Turks that German police and firemen could be trusted. But then he seemed to urge them to hold themselves aloof from German society. Assimilation was a “crime against humanity”, he told a crowd of 16,000 in Cologne. Turkish children should be able to study in Turkish-language schools and at a Turkish university. With that, he largely wore out his welcome. Politicians across the spectrum accused him of fomenting Turkish nationalism on German soil. Perhaps, some mused, the European Union should suspend membership talks with Turkey.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Immigration Stress, Social Breakdown | No Comments »

080415 – April 18th – and SNOW!

April 18th, 2008

– This is the second time in recent weeks that we’ve simply closed the gate to our business because the weather has just been too weird to deal with. It is 2 PM on April 18th. I understand there was some snow yesterday in Seattle and that set a new record for the latest day in the year that it has ever snowed.

– This kind of thing can be very damaging to us. It is late enough in the year that many plants and trees have decided it is spring and they sent out their tender new spring shoots. Shoots that will not survive if the temperatures drop into a hard freeze tonight. We’ll just have to wait and see. With 8 acres and literally thousands of plants and trees outside, there’s nothing we can do but see what comes.

Snow on April 18th !!!

Some folks will, of course, say that this proves there is no Global Warming.   But, they are deeply confused.   The issue is really Global Climate change and such change is going to happen in a chaotic manner with a lot of wild swings both ways even as the average temperature rises.   Is this one such swing?   No one can say but I am certainly wondering about it.

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Personal, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Greed in NZ, too

April 17th, 2008

– Nice post today in a New Zealand Blog (Amerinz) written by an American immigrant to that country. He writes about corporate greed and how corporations are only beholding to their shareholders and how, as a business model, that isn’t necessarily the best thing for the people who have to share their societies with these ravenous and amoral entities.

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I’ve written about corporate greed many times. I’ve been critical about corporate ethics, and about the modern business paradigm in which nothing matters to corporations except maximising return to investors.

Today, there was an example of what I’ve been talking about.

New Zealand appliance manufacturer Fisher & Paykel has announced that it’s shutting factories in Dunedin in New Zealand, Brisbane in Australia and one in California, shifting the jobs to Asia. 1070 people will loose their jobs, 430 of them in New Zealand. Last year the company announced that it was eliminating even more jobs in Auckland, shipping them to Asia.

More… ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, New Zealand, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Japanese Pay Less for More Health Care

April 16th, 2008

– Not too long ago, we had Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko“.   In it, we got to see how much better the socialized medicine systems of places like Britain, Canada and France are than what we’ve got here in the U.S.

– Now comes NPR to to regale us with the Japanese system which is run by – corporations. And its health outcomes are far better than ours – at about half the cost we pay. Now that’s a poke in the eye.

– But, don’t look for things to change anytime soon – not while the big corporations have our government largely under their control.

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Japan produces cars, color TVs and computers, but it also produces the world’s healthiest people. It has the longest healthy life expectancy on Earth and spends half as much on health care as the United States.

That long life expectancy is partly due to diet and lifestyle, but the country’s universal health care system plays a key role, too.

Everyone in Japan is required to get a health insurance policy, either at work or through a community-based insurer. The government picks up the tab for those who are too poor.

It’s a model of social insurance that is used in many wealthy countries. But it’s definitely not “socialized medicine.” Eighty percent of Japan’s hospitals are privately owned — more than in the United States — and almost every doctor’s office is a private business.

More… ➡

– research thanks to L.A.

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations | No Comments »

Bakken Formation

April 16th, 2008

– Recently, I heard about a new oil discovery here in North America called the Bakken Formation. There seems to be a lot of excitement about it and, like a few other recent discoveries (➡), it may push the menace of Peak Oil away for a number of years more.

– Most of the information I’m seeing is recent but This Wikipedia article shows that we’ve known about the Bakken Formation for some time now. But, it may be that with the current price of oil so high, extracting it from places like this becomes profitable.

– And indeed, it is just this logic that has made me think for some time that the Peak Oil crises will not come on like a lion – but rather more like a lamb.

– As the oil prices go up, sources that were formerly marginal will become profitable and oil use will continue. People do not want to give up the perks of our oil based economies so we will continue to pay higher and higher prices for oil and continue to extract it from ever more difficult sources until, finally, the pain is just too high to continue.

– Along the way, many of us will continue to talk about the rising CO2 levels and Global Climate Change which are resulting from the continued use of oil – but I fear no one will be listening to those complains either – until it is far too late.

– I googled for “Bakken Formation” and got a huge number of hits.   here are just three of the first ones: 

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The Bakken Oil Formation

Bakken Reserve Estimates

Bakken no energy panacea

– research thanks to Dave C.

Posted in CounterCurrents, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

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