Green Fuel: Animal that fails to get tamed!!!

Crop production cycles of bio fuels cumulatively fail to meet emission standards, a classic case of environmental externalities being considered. Do we have a no go on bio fuels then?! The only remedy then is solar, until we discover silicon pollution; or wind, until we discover high cost of maintenance; geo-thermal, until we discover fissure safety depletion ... is there actually a remedy to the energy crisis of our times or are we doomed inevitably??!!!



References:

Biofuels could increase emissions

Biofuel is not as green as it seems

Our Rise is How We Fall ...

If we're one of the living, we got to walk a thousand miles ... but if we keep on exploiting, we shall not survive more than a while ...

Sustainable development is the only way forward, but India seems to be the last to even coming closer to realizing that. All it realizes is commonwealth games and cutting more trees!!! Sadly so, the economy too failed to collapse just as all other failures, be it tiger preservation, rain forest preservation, Delhi Ridge preservation, sunderbans preservation, coral reef and coastal preservation, river eco-system preservation, and the list goes on ... We do however preserve poverty, unemployment, corrupt systems, inflation, diesel car sales, and the like ...

Choice is ours, to rise towards and leap out to our doom!!!


Reference:

CO2 emissions can be stabilized only with collapse of economy

Existentialist Futility!!!

Why bother about water in Moon, is there a water pipeline planned from there; are we now going to run it dry!? Futility of our civilizational efforts is all around us when all we need is a joint effort to eradicate the earth of more important things as hunger, thirst, inequality, pollution, oceanic submersion & the like.




References:

NASA Wants to Mine Moon Water

Porsche launches Panamera in India

Samsung India bets big on touch screen mobiles

Upcoming Bugatti Galibier 16C to carry a price tag of $1.44 million

Ape Man? Researchers Spot Legendary Orang Pendek in Sumatra

Ordinary world ...

Our Independence is valuable to us as is our survival. M.K. Gandhi showed that India needed to survive the British and fight fiercely for the survival of the nation as one. We should not now leave the path of struggle when we are free to do what we can; not to turn away from our duties as a nation, especially those that concern our survival.

When will we as a nation stand up to the real issues concerning us? One look at the innumerable news channels on cable TV is conclusive of the fact that Shah Rukh Khan is more important to us than expensive and unaffordable insurance premiums, health care, drought, vanishing ground water, and what not!!! But the government aims only at hiking tax of individuals and not corporates. Where would we go if we cannot afford to live? We all need alternate sources of fuel/energy, health care, and above all employment rights that are being denied to us by planned government efforts.

I fail to understand why in such a poor country like India the Prime Minister is not nailing the real issues, when a richer country like the USA; their President can put up a fierce fight against corporates for each individual's basic necessities.

We are an ordinary people with ordinary needs. We need to survive before we can aim for luxury. Affordability of necessities should be addressed first ...







References:

Obama invokes late grandmother in health crusade

Obama attacks insurance premiums

NASA says Groundwater vanishing in North India

Draft code may make individuals pay more tax

Drought woes claim lives of 20 farmers in Andhra

Drying out

Shah Rukh may have been victim of random selection parameter

Duel !!!

Kindly read the responses of some of the readers to my following comments I posted to the article below:

I commented:

1. I agree that something needs to be done, but road tax is not a fair PPP (polluter pays principle) enforcement, as the actual pollution does not get cleaned by paying higher road tax, a tax that the government would not do anything about, or will it utilize the same to any useful purpose? We have manufacturers of REVA on the other hand that have no government subsidies or funding to cheapen the REVA or to further conduct R&D for the manufacturers to come up with bigger cleaner cars. India is an economy owned by the oil barons. We need Obama like initiatives to free India from the OPEC clutches and thereby reducing inflation across the board. CNG / PNG will never lead India into an era of energy self reliance. Only utilizing geo-thermal, wave, and ocean-current energy besides solar energy can make that dream possible. But there is little or no allocation whatsoever in any union budget towards any spending towards unconventional clean sources of energy. It is a shame to be facing OPEC and IAEA dependency when India, the vast nation it is has so many alternate sources of energy.


2. The problem is that we as a nation think in terms of aping the west as a show-off of status and consider that our sole aspiration. People want to purchase Tag Heuer watches running on environmentally damaging technologies whereas they could simply opt for the Citizen EcoDrive (solar powered watches). Honda should have sold more hybrid Civics had our priorities been right. The CIVIC HYBRID did not sell even after the price was slashed to Rs.14 lacs. Instead the fuel guzzler VW Jetta sold more, that ran even on diesel engines. It is just ingrained in the psyche that personal profit should surpass global interest. TATAs were the first to start off with diesel cars just when Delhi pollution was reducing with DTC going the CNG way. Today the state is that Delhi has become as polluted due to diesel car pollution as in the pre-DTC-CNG era. Petrol, all said and done, is a far cleaner fuel than diesel. Indians have never chosen cars for their fuel efficiency, but for their lower running cost, thus the move towards diesel. As for cheapness of cars, TATAs can experiment on Indian roads with Indian customers; no need to go to other countries to launch hybrids, BUT they do realize that the Indian customer would fail them. TATAs' move to purchase JLR is also worth noting. JLR produces one of the most polluting cars. They are the Chevys and Chryslers of UK. They could have instead used that money to fund R&D towards meaningful research like Honda has. Enough said ...


I do not think that people understand what I am saying, but my context has always been the climate change and our higher commitment to its prevention. India has never been and seems to never commit to the greater cause. The Indian government does not see beyond its "developmental goals", OR perhaps is so overwhelmed by the Indian oil barons' influence in their decision making!?



References:

A big no to Tata Nano

Himalayan glaciers have shrunk by 38% in 40 years

US unveils spy images of Arctic ice in rare move

and after the curtains fell ...

... no one remembered all that applause or the achievement. The Nano without promise of alternate fuel options is as worthless as is Reva without government subsidies to hasten R&D and production of cheaper versions of the Reva. Nothing but a sales gimmick, we Indians are blind to the needs of the country, leave alone the world. The following reference is the only article I have read, that highlights the gravity of the matter. So enthusiastic is the press that we all have forgotten to press upon the real issues that relate to, and concern the launch of the Nano!!!

Reference:

A big no to Tata Nano

Run to the hills ...

Millions being spent on a 70 year old extinction in a region that has ecologically moved on and learnt to live without the cheetah in its circle of life. Has the Indian government not got any other area to spend the tax payers' money on? Human healthcare, energy crisis, newer sources of energy and global warming and related sea level rise are far more important concerns than 70 year old extinctions being revived!!!




References:

Cheetah may be imported

Centre keen on captive breeding of cheetahs

Cheetahs to return to India's grasslands under multimillion-pound plan

The fault is in ourselves ...

Lack of political will based upon and fueled by corporate selfish interest, holds back R&D and exploration of non-polluting sustainable unconventional sources of energy and prevents them from becoming conventional, in these dire times, demanding cure for this ailing planet. After all ...

"Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

-- Cassius, Julius Cæsar (I, ii, 140-141)

References:

KG gas to save 10% oil bill at peak

RIL surges 4% on gas output from KG basin

First straw ...

The below is just one of the measures to boost employment in the U.S. India could also do the same by proposing tax incentives for companies that indulge in R&D rather than merely support services, thus leading to actual creation of value and wealth. Technologies like fuel-cell, ocean current energy, wind energy, electric cars, infrastructure projects that harness solar energy (by building thermal and solar panels into plate glass on structures), road current differential technology (harnessing electricity from roads run on by vehicles), etc. could be the new age employment generators, besides making the earth a cleaner and safer place to live.



References:

No tax cuts for outsourcing: Obama

Obama disappoints Indian inc.

Sympathy only for the devil!

Resorting to the Homeowners & Bank Protection Act, 2007 the US government now has brought about a total moratorium on foreclosures by lending institutions of home owners who have been diligent in repayment of their home loans. This shows the political will behind straining out the actual bad debts incurred by lenders due to speculative lending and actual defaulters who have been severely hit by the economic downturn.

India on the other hand continues to harbor and promote speculative lending and investment by allowing unrestricted FDI inflow (without an regard to nascent demand creation by way of employment generation), total ignorance towards sustainable energy generation (by concentrating only on social fallout driven nuclear power), allowing F&O in many sensitive commodities such as Essential Commodities (wheat, sugar, etc. as scheduled under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955), F&O and derivatives of currency, especially the $-Rs. and without forcing private banks to bring down interest rates that are still 3-5% higher than the rates of 2006 - early 2007, still allowing corporate tax evasion through tax haven jurisdiction (when what the Indian exchequer needs is liquidity for social spending); just to name a few. Besides fuel prices as of now can further be reduced, except only when the government wants to pull an ace up its sleeve just before the Parliamentary elections.

R&D on fuel cell can not be furthered and there have been no tax incentives for manufacturers such as Honda and Reva to roll out cheap yet effective electric/hybrid vehicles so as to reduce out flow of $ and also to generate employment at home (not to mention the need for cleaner than CNG public transport, namely, electric buses!). Our energy independence would not only serve for economic insulation, but would also ensure real and actual growth in scientific, manufacturing and various other related sectors.

Indian government seems to have sympathy only for the devil!


References:

Obama pumps in $75 billion to save US homeowners

Jan. 30, 2009 HPI Daily Wire

Vivace !!!

I feel upbeat on the revelation that Michigan Engineering University is trying to make wave energy in oceans and rivers plausible. OPEC is and should not be the answer to all our energy needs. Nor should we rely on nuclear energy. The latter is simply like playing with fire.

However, its exactly not wave energy to be precise. It is the ability to harness water movement / natural currents in water bodies like the sea and rivers into kinetic and thereafter electrical energy. It is a process inspired by the technology used by fish to swim. Its aptly called the vortex-induced vibrations for aquatic clean energy (VIVACE).

Such vibrations, which were first observed 500 years ago by Leonardo DaVinci in the form of "Aeolian Tones", can cause serious damage to structures built in water, like docks and oil rigs. It would not be the first time humans are harnessing a powerful and destructive force in nature!!!


References:

Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists

Gomel: Debate still rages over Chernobyl fallout

Govt close to a deal with Belarus on Chernobyl children