Thermal Towers in Namibia: Energy and Food

Namibia is examining the feasibility of using solar thermal towers.

Thermal towers work by creating an airflow that spins turbines and the bigger they are the more efficient they become. Namibia appears to be a great place for thermal towers due to the amount of sun it gets. The proposed thermal towers in Namibia will also act as greenhouses for growing food.

A new breed of solar tower may soon be sprouting up in Namibia, providing the nation with a carbon-free source of electricity and food during the day and night. At one and a half kilometers tall and 280 meters wide, these massive solar updraft towers could potentially produce 400MW of energy each – enough to power Windhoek, the nation’s capital. Proposed by intellectual property company Hahn & Hahn, the towers generate energy by forcing heated air through a shaft lined with wind turbines. Additionally, the base of each tower will function as a 37 square km greenhouse where crops can be grown.

New Company Tracks Carbon Footprints for You

OpenTrace is a brand new company that is looking for funding so they can create a website to help you figure out the carbon footprint of certain goods. The math behind the footprints will be open to anyone and the information can be used for anything.

In the video below they demo the website, just skip to about a minute in as the video starts with them setting up their equipment and gossiping about people at the conference.

Goats Have an L.A. Plot

Sheep go to heaven and goats to L.A.?

It seems that way! Los Angeles has a team of goats mowing lawns instead of gas-burning lawnmowers. A natural way to keep the grass looking nice, plus free fertilizer.

He said his crew would work long hours over the next week to 10 days and “won’t collect a pension or charge for working overtime and won’t call in sick.” If any of them lose their appetite, his wife, veterinarian Liz Gonzales, will tend to them, he said.
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Redevelopment agency head Cecilia Estolano said the goats were being rented for $3,000. The cost of hiring workmen to clear the 2 1/2 -acre hillside would have totaled as much as $7,500.

The brush-covered hillside lot, called Angels Knoll, is topped by a grassy park that is maintained by the city.

The Ecology of Work

Environmentalism is something that cannot be compartmentalized, at least that’s how I’ve always seen it. For example, I don’t see how someone working for an oil company can even hint at the idea that they are environmentalist, considering that their living comes from a very destructive industry. I’m glad that Curtis White agrees with me in his essay The Ecology of Work– and he says what I’ve been thinking in a much more logical way.

Here’s a choice section of the essay:

Aldous Huxley provided a very different and a very human account of work in The Perennial Philosophy. He called it “right livelihood” (a concept he borrowed from Buddhism). For Huxley, work should serve other people, provide learning experiences that deepen the worker, and do as little harm as possible. (You will note that there is nothing in this description about a competitive compensation and benefits package.) But what percentage of American jobs conforms to this description? Five percent? Even in the new “creative” information economy where the claim could be made that computer designers and software technicians are constantly learning, is it a learning that deepens? That serves others broadly? And what of the mindless, deadening work of data processors and telemarketers—our modern, miserable Bartlebys and Cratchits—locked in their cubicles from San Jose to Bangalore? Our culture’s assumption that there is virtue in work flatters us into thinking that we’re doing something noble (“supporting our families,” “putting food on the table,” “making sacrifices”) when we are really only allowing ourselves to be treated like automatons. We all have our place, our “job,” and it is an ever less human place. We are diligent, disciplined, and responsible, but because of these virtues we are also thoughtless.

More Bicycles = Safer Streets

Bicycles are perhaps the greatest invention human civilization has ever made. So great that having people use them makes the roads safer because car drivers actually start paying attention to what’s around their car.

“It appears that motorists adjust their behavior in the presence of increasing numbers of people bicycling because they expect or experience more people cycling,” said Julie Hatfield, an injury expert from the university.

With fewer accidents, people perceive cycling as safer, so more people cycle, thus making it even safer, she said.

“Rising cycling rates mean motorists are more likely to be cyclists, and therefore be more conscious of, and sympathetic towards, cyclists,” she said.