Nanotechnology

Has nanotechnology actually produced anything useful yet?

What is in the pipeline? Anything that is likely to have widespread use in the next 5 to 10 years?

Re climate change, why do so many people assume that the changes will be bad? If the projections showed falling sea levels I'm sure the predictions would be equally as gloom and doom.

And Al Gore, "I can use as much power in my house as a small village because I am rich enough to organise a book entry in a carbon trading scheme."

Yeah sure Al. 

by John Haigh (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 106 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 6:48:58 AM
 

Nanotech is Now

Hi, good news. Seventeen years ago when I sat in a lecture by K. Eric Drexler who said that in fifteen years we'd better be ready for nanotechnology, who knew he'd be so accurate. Nanotechnology is no longer 15 years or 5 years, or even 1 year away. Nanotech products are being built every day. I don't mean laboratory curiosisities, I mean there are companies pumping out single and multiwalled carbon nanotubes at an amazing rate because of their unique electrical, strength, and optical qualities. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are now being added to plastics to make them as strong as steel. They are being used for their unique ability to bend light at a negative index of refraction creating super black. This ability of creating zero reflectivity has revolutionized solar cells. CNTs are now being used in electronics to create circuits that we can print from ink jet printers onto flexible substraits. The list of newly engineered products is gigantic and revolutionary. I haven't even started on the medical applications which, combined with stem cells and genetics, are quite amazing. The medical applications are a few years off due to the slow approval process, but they exist now. One of the most exciting things is the revolutionary new battery technology that CNTs have allowed. I will grant you that CNTs are just one small part of what nanotech is bringing, but just this first branch of nanotech is nothing less than world-changing. I follow the nanotech announcements daily and not one day goes by that I am not amazed. These are not announcements in science journals, they are business press releases about the new products they've just released. Check our nanowerk.com. But have a cup of coffee (they say it protects the brain) and be prepared to be amazed. The big thing with regard to my brief article that nanotech brings to the table is in water treatment. There are new nanotech filters already available that have revolutionized water treatment. I honestly believe that there is no greater challenge facing mankind today than fresh water. It's not that we aren't facing greater challenges, because we have a lot of challenges on our doorstep. But, many of them hinge on our ability to obtain fresh water.

Climate change is not necessarily a "bad thing". It just is. It's not just about rising sea levels and warmer Summer days. If that's all it was we could just all buy air conditioners. For the United States, and I'm assuming you are in the United States, it is bringing drought and severe storms to the Midwest, our food belt. They've already started, and will only get more severe. I mean really severe. In places like California, already water-starved, the snow pack in the Sierras will continue to diminish meaning less water in the Owens river and ultimately less water for people, and more importantly for the Central Valley where they grow all the food. Water for farmers is already very expensive and you can't depend on ground water for irrigation. Rising sea levels won't really be a problem for quite some time, perhaps hundreds of years and hopefully people will have prepared themselves. It's all the other implications of climate change that concern me, primarily access to fresh water. It's this access to water that is likely to redistribute the population on the planet. I don't mean a few people moving into the next county. I mean billions of people (who generally don't get along) all trying to cram themselves into new places with better weather and more water. The problem with climate change is not really what the weather will do to us, but more likely what we'll do to each other trying to adjust. That's what we have to prepare for, not bigger air conditioners. Thanks for being concerned and paying attention to what's going on. The planet needs more intelligent people who care about these issues.  

by Ted Coombs (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 11:00:32 AM
 

I differ

If we the people of planet Earth do not reduce greenhouse gasses the rise in sea level will cause such devistation to human life that society as we know it will disappear.

Your suggestion that we should not try to stop global warming and instead prepare for the worst is like a family sitting in a car stalled on a railway track with a train coming and suggest that we should make sure we have our seatbelt fastened instead of getting off the track.

I have heard suggestions that it will be too devistating to our economy to stop using oil and coal. That is only true for the oil and coal companies. It is absolutely not true for solar, wind, wave, geothermal energy companies.

I think that we can stop global warming if the world's peoples and governments commit to urgent action.

Never before have the peoples of planet Earth faced a problem of this magnitude; so there is no precident for saying whether or now we can meet the challenge. The future could be either like envisioned in the movie Road Warrior (if we continue as we have) or perhaps we could envision a Utopia where all the nations of the world have learned to work together to promote the common welfare of all the people of the world.

Currently our government is procrastinating because they have been influenced by the oil and coal corporations to keep their companies in business.  They are fighting for their survival even though their actions may ultimately destroy civilization.  The plan of George Bush is to use our military might to quickly take control over as much of the world's oil resources as possible so as to be able to forcefully control the uprisings that will occur when the devistation happens.  Continual war against terrorism is the plan.

by Philip Pease (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 128 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 9:32:39 AM
 

I agree with some of what you said

I agree with what you said about our government and how climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing mankind. I'm not saying that we should not try to stem the tide of garbage we feed the planet. I think we should. I hate the fact that there is a toxic garbage island the size of Texas a thousand miles off the coast of San Francisco. But for all our technology and all our science, we still can't make it rain. There is nothing we can do to stop the glaciers from melting, or the ice sheets from calving. The glaciers are melting and the ice sheets are shrinking and the temperatures are rising and there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do. We can't turn back time. It's as though you told someone you love that you wish they would die. They never forgive you and all the flowers and kind words won't fix it. We can not truly believe that with all the world living in harmony and working together and all our great minds that we can make even one day cooler than the next. I wish we could. There are a lot of things I wish, but it's just not in our bag of tricks yet. Thanks for caring though. We need more people who believe in a peaceful world because we're going to need that as life becomes more challenging and systems we've built start to fail. You can be my neighbor any time.

by Ted Coombs (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 10:37:27 AM
 

Your naivete is astounding

Wind, solar, geo thermal, wave, and other power sources are nowhere near up to the task of being a 100% replacement for oil or coal. You cannot force those sources to increase their output during times of peak demand nor is their output steady. It is highly variable depending upon conditions. Switching to those would be an even bigger disaster because of the blackouts/brownouts that would result when they were unable to keep up with demand.

by Watching (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 313 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:08:56 PM
 

An Immodest Proposal

Let's figure out what are the total CO2 emissions the world can cope with.

Divide that by the total number of people in the world and allocate that amount to every citizen of the planet. Then allow poor people to sell up to 75% of their share and rich people to buy up to a maximum of 10 times their share. So we can end up with a capped disparity of 40 to 1. 

Very few policymakers would go for it. Very few environmental activist would go for it. Why not? They are prepared to demand sacrifices of others but not themselves.

What is happening now is similar to allowing rich people to pay higher insurance premiums to get higher blood alcohol limits when they drive.

Another point: there are massive amounts of information on things we can do to change microclimates. If the predicted problems do eventuate, we just have to pull together to apply that knowledge on a macro scale.

by John Haigh (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 106 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:18:20 PM
 

Carbon trading schemes are merely wealth redistribution

A rich country with a highly developed industrial base is forced to pay a poor country with no industry to speak of so that they can go on polluting. Pollution has not been reduced, it has just been made more expensive. The companies doing the polluting don't care because they aren't paying for it. Their customers are because paying for carbon credits is figured into the price of whatever they are producing. Carbon credit schemes also enslave poor countries to rich ones because they dare not develop an industrial base of their own or else they risk losing their carbon credits, worse yet, they may have to start buying them, too.  Do you really believe that charging corporations for pollution is really going to change anything? If you do, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you. 

by Watching (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 313 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:55:47 PM
 

About energy

There is an interesting thing happening of which I'm not sure how many people are aware. While most of the world has plans to shut down their nuclear reactors, the United States is preparing to start building them again. There was a moratorium after Three Mile Island, but now a new facility is being considered in Texas. At first I was a bit appalled, which I still am to some extent. But a recent announcement about a ceramic technology that allows for the efficient conversion of radiation directly to electricity has piqued my interest. The ceramic is coated with nano particles. I was actually more excited about the obvious use of the nanotech-coated ceramic to create electricity from all the nuclear waste that is doing nothing but sitting there. I am not a proponent of making more nuclear waste, but perhaps we've found a use for it. There are also some great clean energy technologies in the offing somewhere. Read PesWiki.com.

With regard to the carbon credits, I agree with the person who said the are merely a redistribution of wealth. That was my point when I wrote that it's not likely that we're going to stop polluting, so why not start planning for the inevitable. As I said before, this is not pessimistic, just practical. Answer this: Where are 11 million Peruvians going to go when the glacier they get water from is gone in a few years. Or, don't we care?

Ted

by Ted Coombs (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 4:15:32 PM
 

i think you mean pebble bed reactors

I saw a PBS documentary about one of these that was built in Germany where even with a complete cooling system failure, the ceramic coating of the fuel pellets protected the reactor from melting down. The threat of meltdown is greatly reduced, however, several other serious issues related to nuclear power plants remain. The lifespan of a nuclear plant is limited. Anywhere from 20-50 years depending on the technology used. After that time the entire plant must be destroyed and disposed of because of the radiation that was absorbed over the life of the plant. What do we do with this material? there is no safe way to dispose of it, all we can do is store it until some future time when the means of disposing of it is created. Another problem is the liquids used to cool the fuel becomes radioactive and is usually stored in pools on site or in drums. There is also no way to dispose of this material. France, the largest producer of electricity from nuclear, dumps their waste in the deep ocean.  Another issue is that if we go to large scale production of nuclear plants, uranium supplies will dwindle until we face the same situation we are facing today. We aren't averting disaster by going nuclear, we are only delaying the inevitable. you also have another problem where mining and processing of uranium comes in. The burning of fossil fuels is required to do this. There is no way to avoid it. If the oil runs out, we won't be able to mine, process and transport the uranium needed to power the reactors. Also, how can we promote nuclear as the only logical way of producing electricity while denying other countries the ability to build nuclear plants and enrich uranium? 

by Watching (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 313 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 10:15:15 PM
 

Global warming, Santa Claus and the Easter bunny.

I marvel at the astounding success of the globalist mind control machine reading these comments. I suppose the melting of the martian ice cap is cuz the little green men drive SUVs ? Could it be possible that a krakatoa or a vesuvius in one eruption would spew more greenhouse gasses in one eruption than man has made in all of the industrial age ?  To hear educated grown up adults debating on paying a tax on the air we or our vehicles exhale is surreal.  The globalist masters speak (via TV and other media) and the politically correct zombies comply, give your jobs to foreigners, yes master, pay us more for gasoline, yes master, pay us more for food, yes master, turn in your guns, yes master, vote for the puppet candidates, yes master, die in our wars-for-profit, yes master. And the horror goes on and on. WAKE UP !

by john riggs (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 426 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 4:37:20 PM
 

You're making my point

This was sort of my point to begin with. Who cares if pollution caused global warming, or if the Easter bunny caused it with methane exuded from well hidden easter eggs that have gone rotten over the years. Lets stop being puppets, as you say, and going on about who caused everything and trying to stuff it all back down a hole, perhaps a rabbit hole. The true answers lie in engineering solutions. What can be done about a government run amock, with the majority of the masses following blindly I can't say. I don't have the answer to that. Most often, in history, this continues until it just all falls apart and then someone or something else swoops in and starts something new. Sometimes its for the better and sometimes not. So, one answer might simply be, doing nothing and everything will take care of itself. Let the broken machine fail, as it were.

Ted 

by Ted Coombs (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 5:48:50 PM
 

getting over it

Ted's point that we should be adjusting to climate change rather than going to excessive and damaging lengths to slow it down is great. Just three points I would like to add:

When it comes to adjusting it doesn't seem to make sense to build desalination plants, which gobble huge amounts of energy, in a time when most of that energy is coming from fossil fueled power stations creating more CO2, and when the cost of that fossil fuel is rising as it becomes scarcer. We should be adjusting to a world without desalination. It may be a little harder in the short term but that is all to the good - postponing the pain will only make the eventual adjustment sharper and more difficult to achieve without chaos.

Secondly there does not appear to be any evidence that the present period is hotter than the fairly recent past, like the medieval warm period when Vikings rowed their boats to Greenland and Canada and set up colonies there. They were later driven out by increasing cold.

Thirdly, the present temperature does not seem to be rising right now as set out here.

In short it is population growth and rising expectations that are the real problem, not climate change.  

by gravity32 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 157 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 7:55:40 PM
 

Thanks, but...

Thanks for agreeing but I am curious how you see the path forward without desalinization? Granted, they are wasteful and power hungry processes. But, we have contaminated most of our remaining ground water. Already 15% of our drinking water comes from treated waste water, so we could certainly increase that. My fear is that we will continue draining our rivers and aquifers. Already the California salmon have no place to go because of water taken from the Sacramento River delta. No fishing this year, most likely as the number of salmon have dropped to critical levels. (not that I fish.) We're not the only ones suffering because of water shortages. The fourth largest lake on the planet is almost gone. Most of the "great" rivers of the world are running at reduced water flows and there is little doubt that the glaciers are going away.

That brings up an interesting point about the temperature. Whether the temperature is actually going up or not, which it appears to be very slowly over time, about .9 degrees F each decade, so not a lot, we are experiencing the effects of warming, such as increased storms and melting ice sheets. This melting is not seasonal. This year is certainly going to be cooler, or even moderate due to a la nina effect. So, the weather will definitely continue to cycle. It's the long term effects, whether you want to call them climate change or "the big melt" both have serious consequences. I'd like to know what Chile and Ecuador and Argentina are going to do if all those Peruvians become displaced. As I mentioned in another post today, doing nothing is always an option, and that should deal with population growth on the planet. Kind of a harsh reality though. Don't you think? Thanks. 

by Ted Coombs (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments) on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 10:28:36 PM
 

sobering thought

Ted, certainly desalination will increase the present water supply, but do you not see that the extra water comes at a cost which will increase as fuel becomes more expensive. All it will do is potpone the day of reckoning. The breathing space it will give will just allow more population growth, then when fuel becomes to scarce and too dear to use for the purpose, there will be more people wanting to know where their food is going to come from. Better to bite the bullet now, and start adapting, as was your main argument.

Re temperature change, did you bother to read the link I posted? You will see there is no certainty that temperature is rising. 

by gravity32 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 157 comments) on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 6:12:43 AM
 

The scam speaks by itself

Earth has been through several warmings before. Druing the middle ages it has been a lot warmer than today for several centuries... but if you look at the solutions implemented by the global elites, you can see that they do not do a thing, just create havoc for the sake of food and energy control.

What does it mean? Whatever is causing the warming right now, we'd better keep an eye on the LYING powers that be instead and promote alternative energies. Nanotech is the way to go to address our problem with the oil cartel which has created another gigantic bubble of speculation. Dont ask you why they even speak of the peak oil... 

carbon credits, bio fuels and the peak oil... same scams for the sake of profits

by sharon kayser (9 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 21 comments) on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 4:46:59 AM
 

I agree Completely

I agree, stop watching the man behind the curtain. It's time to get over the hype and get on with alternate energies. Yes, nanotech has many of the answers we need. It is creating vast improvements in solar efficiency. Ceramics coated with nanoparticles can create energy from all that nuclear waste we're sticking in the ground, doing nothing (we hope). I'd like to point you to a site that I think has an excellent top 100 list of new energy technologies PesWiki.com. Click the Top 100 link. It's well documented and worth following. I follow it regularly, and nanowerk.com for the latest nanotech news. Cleaner, better, cheaper, power is the short term answer to many of our big challenges. We need power to create water, wherever water is needed. We need power, not based on oil and coal, or even nuclear energy, to create a sustainable environment. For all the hate being thrown at China about Tibet (a different topic altogether) they are doing some pretty great things with regard to building eco-friendly buildings and communities in advance of the Olympics.

by Ted Coombs (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments) on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 11:56:34 AM