Author: Cam Proctor

Judge Rejects Bush

- Cam Proctor

In a lawsuit filed last year, the Sierra Club and other conservation group sued the U.S. Forest Service over its plans for managing the 328,000-acre Giant Sequoia National Monument preserve, home to two-thirds of the world’s largest trees. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer sided with the state attorney general to halt further logging in the national monument created by President Clinton in 2000.

The plan would have allowed up to 7.5 million board feet of timber — enough to fill 1,500 logging trucks — to be removed each year from the preserve, the plaintiffs said. The Forest Service was disappointed with Breyer’s ruling and may appeal, said spokesman Matt Mathes. The Forest Service’s wonky science approved the removal of small diameter trees (not the 100+ year old trees) to “save” the older trees from fire. Green (young) trees are usually better at repelling fire since they are young and relatively water logged and most fires start from old underbrush. Removing the underbrush would prevent dangerous fires, but not worth a profitable venture.

Goodbye Driveway!!

- Cam Proctor 1 Comment

Good riddance I say, to the driveway and its cousin, the back alley roadway. A new product from Gridtech preforms the same function as your conventional driveway with the added benefits of drainage and a grassy feel. By incorporating plastic cylinders into the ground, filled with gravel and finished with regular landscaping you have a green structure that can support fire trucks. Other products in their line up include a paving to prevent ATV damage.Green Paving

Real Foundation

- Cam Proctor

I would just like to take a moment to apprecieate the good work the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia does for both the environmental and the built environment. Funding comes from the intrest accured upon real estate deposits.

Estimates for similar models in Ontario have been valued in the billions of dollars annually. The foundation’s mission is to support sustainable real estate and land use practices for the benefit of British Columbians. At quick glance, past projects have been salmon restoration, urban planning, education and restoring natural and heritage features.

A New Way to Produce Coal From Biomass

- Cam Proctor

Good news from Germany!
Markus Antonietti from Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces has devised a chemical process that converts biomass like leaves, pine cones and other plant residue into wet coal (coal + water). Biomass goes into the autoclave, a kind of pressure cooker, water goes in, too, along with a citric acid catalyst. A chemical reaction takes place and coal is produced.

The single major by-product of the reaction is water, which can be filtered off. In contrast to other biomass techniques this reaction does not generate carbon dioxide. It also gives a higher energy product, which even smells acceptable.

We underestimated this when we started. We could calculate how much energy was stored in the sugar – in the leaf material. But the first time – as you see – we had a runaway reaction, which is obviously dangerous, so we need to carry it out under safe conditions.

-Markus Antonietti

See Solar Run

- Cam Proctor

A Drawing of the Sun from the USA EPA siteA solar cell absorbs a small range of light wavelengths based upon the density and width of silicon crystals. Light strikes the crystals and causes electrons to propagate along the network. We call this flow of electrons electricity.

More crystals of different widths in the network mean that more different wavelengths can be absorbed and more power can be generated. Adding different layers of crystals to absorb a wider range of wavelength is one way to increase the power, but the process to spread these crystals over a surface is very expensive and energy intensive.

Prism Solar Technologies is going a different path by splitting the incoming sunlight and concentrating specific wavelengths onto a variety of cells designed to collect those specific wavelengths, yielding 25% greater electricity yields. These concentrators and splitters are orders of magnitude cheaper to produce than solar cells and increase the power of each solar cell. Oh, by the way, the Prism splitter is clear.

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