Our World and Everything in It

Today is blog action day. And I don’t want to talk about the environment per say, post the latest news, or try to convince anyone man’s part in global warming is real. Today I would simply like to thank the thousands of volunteers of many, many organizations that give their time, energy, and passion to helping the environment and every creature in it, including humans that won’t get off the couch to save their own lives. To these volunteers and spokespeople we owe you our lives, many of us  just don’t realize it yet.

Volunteers for the environment are tireless in their efforts. I’ve been to meetings where the person holding that meeting drove an hour at night, leaving family at home, to offer a presentation of information about what is happening and what can be done, only to have 8 people show up.  They have to pack it all up and drive an hour to go home to a household already asleep. Yet they are never daunted in their determination to inform possibly one new person. That’s dedication, discipline, and selflessness.

While we sit in our comfortable living rooms there are countless organizations of people like Greenpeace on board ships in the freezing cold to stop whale hunts, or fisherman using nets that trap dolphins, others like Earthjustice, Environmental Defense, and NRDC holding oil drills at bay in some pristine part of our country, or The Sierra Club lobbying in state’s senates against industry pollution, or Waterkeeper Alliance that has joined Sierra Club’s fight against CAFO’s. Their volunteers took 3000 plus photos of CAFO’s and produced DVD’s to expose that industry’s pollution.  There are the many, many meteorologists that have ventured to the N. Pole, Greenland, and Iceland in small boats to get photographs and gain first hand knowledge of crashing ice falls from glaciers not 50 ft. in front of them in order to inform the masses about what they’ve seen, and the brave and undeterred efforts of the scientists who testified before congress that they are fed up with being censored by the Bush administration relative to reports of global warming. They’re brave, bold, and forthright while much of the population flounders in a sea of apathy.

Take for instance what is called “junk mail.” It’s tossed without a thought. But in those envelopes are the voices of those that I’ve just described that are trying to get the truth out, trying to stop the insanity of pollution, trying to stop further fossil fuel endeavors, or simply trying to save the lives of animals that have no one to speak for them. It’s valuable information that took research, time, effort and skill to produce with the hope one more person will open and read the contents in lieu of being tossed without conscience or concern. Ditto for the many TV networks like The Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Sundance that dedicate themselves to saving the environment by showcasing the marvelous inventors, scientists, and engineers from around the globe that have solutions for our ailing earth already.

To all the wonderful, passionate, faithful people that see the Almighty in their surroundings and fight to save and nurture what we were given as a blessing, I want to say thank you heart and soul. The road you travel is new and like any other time in history, your fellow humans are not quick to follow a new revolution. Go with peace and passion in every step because most assuredly you have one Traveler that will remain by your side always. Nature is Earth’s Metaphor for God and you “get it.” Bless you. Keep the faith, keep up the fight.  
 

If you didn’t get a chance to watch EchoTech, here’s an outline of the show, which was an hour long.  The program started out by asking, “How do we survive in a world that is heating up, and running out of oil? It went on to show some pretty remarkable things for the near future. It’s on again tonight at 9:00 pm, on the Science Channel. I’m not going to say it is a rerun of last night because I don’t know. I just caught on TV that it will be on again tonight.

The show presented a Dr. Angela Belcher first, who figured out a way to isolate the proteins that make a seashell and whether they could work with other types of elements. She picked viruses and looked for those that would bond with electro magnetic materials. She made a virus battery. It explained in detail how the virus made a battery; a lithium rechargeable ion battery made of very, very thin clear material. This inexpensive battery is also extremely lightweight.

Next up was Dr. Nyet Ming Chang who is working on a plug in hybrid that will get 150 mpg. He looked at a class of organic materials called olivines, with which to make a battery. He added metals to this material and created a new generation of lithium ion batteries. His batteries discharge energy fast for speed. It is 10 million times more conductive then the present lithium battery. His battery was used on a racing bike in a quarter mile strip. The bike went 0-60 mph in 1.4 seconds but the battery discharged so quickly it burned up the engine. His own plug in car gets 150 mpg. 

Then there is the company that is producing fuel from the thick-trapped grease of restaurants. It’s the sludge that goes down the drain. The process the company uses is called Centia, which stands for I Crudus Potentia, or green energy or the power of crud. The question then was who rounds up this crud? And there was RWA, a company that collects and transports the greasy crud, while employing the homeless and unemployed. Restaurants generate 4 billion lbs. of leftover grease annually so they have quite a job, and this company has quite a future. Buy stock when it’s offered, because the other company has perfected their Centia process. They have jet fuel that is indistinguishable from the real thing that they sell for $2.23 cents a gallon. The company will be mass-producing this fuel by the end of 2008. It produces much less CO2 and uses all of our waste grease.

This was just the beginning. There was a guy named Jerry that discovered how to make hydrogen on demand. The problem with hydrogen has always been storage. It is volatile stuff. His invention will have us buying a tank of pellets that transform into hydrogen when needed.

Another, Dr. Daniel Nocera, studies photosynthesis and hopes to use solar energy to makes hydrogen fuel. If humans could do what the leaves do, we would have an unlimited supply of energy

In 2 seconds the sun releases enough energy to fuel 1 millions cars for a year.

There was a segment on cellulosic ethanol. Corn ethanol is not good. It means one man’s transportation, for another man’s food staple. Whereas, cellulosic ethanol comes from woody materials, stalks, stems. This inventive group used e-coli bacteria to convert the woody stuff into ethanol. They predict that three quarter of a million new jobs will be needed in the bio fuel industry in the near future.

And yet another ingenious man, Bob Schneeveis, is looking at motion without fuel altogether. He has created several inventions that run on totally clean energy. He is like another Ed Begley. This man creates robots with solar energy. His robot speed-walks as a human.

The final segment was about big, fast and powerful, the reason cars use 1/3 of a percent of their fuel energy to move. They found that the biggest fuel savings come from the racecar industry with its use of carbon fiber for car bodies. It’s too expensive for regular cars, so they reinvented the process that produces carbon fiber. The fiber car is made of 14 parts that snap together. Tires are made out of stiffer material. This car will be out in 3-5 years and will get over 100 mpg. A fuel-efficient car has extra energy. As a plug in, the extra energy will get you a credit on your electric bill, so this new car produces energy. This all looks like good news for our world in the near future.

The Discovery Channel conglomerate has so many channels… I had trouble finding EchoTech after it was advertised on Discovery Channel. Sorry.

I’m going to watch EchoTech. It looks like a very interesting program with not only facts about the environment but about how much pollution we produce and what alternatives are out there to get away from all the pollution.

It looks like this new program will dispel a lot of the spin we’ve been fed about the environment and that we must continue on with the exploration for more of our own oil as a key to change. I’ve noticed lately on monroetalks.com that is the number one thrust right now, to get away from foreign oil. It misses the whole point of going green. Our oil burns no cleaner than anyone elses. We need to get away from ALL oil and all fossil fuels, including the much touted coal industry as a resource for energy. After the mine cave-in in Utah, do we really want to continue in this cave man style of digging and purging out of the earth to sustain our energy? It’s backward. And the only reason it’s backward is because of the power of big energy that keeps us spinning in reverse.

So, if you get the Discovery Channel, tune in. We just might learn something, and it might even save us money.