Ed Berger dot com

Sky WindPower Corporation

Now here is a company thinking outside the box… actually well above the box. They want to develop a tethered rotor power generator that would tap the winds at 35,000 feet above the ground. They claim that the cost of production over the life of the unit would be 2 cents per kilowatt hour.

Well there was a time you would never have convinced any one that you could drill a mile into the earth, ship a liquid halfway around the world, refine it and sell it by the gallon on every corner for less than the cost of milk.

I’d love to see a prototype of this technology actually fly and generate power.

NETGEAR Skype Phone

Here is a wireless phone coming soon from netgear that will use your wireless network to connect to Skype running on your PC. Skype of course then let’s you call anyone etc. etc.

I think this is the real reason that the telecoms want to give preferential tratment to some internet services. You can bet that internet Voice over IP will be waay down on the list nad get pretty thoroughly throttled.

Telephone companies and record publishers are dinosaurs that are going to hurt some good folks with their death throw. That’s my first two nominations for dinosaur’s anyone else want to nominate a dead industry application?

Stark warning over climate change

The drumbeat of warnings over climate change continues and intesifies. This report raises the spectre of “irreversability” and states that the rate of change is “unsustainable”

The near term of climate change is poor harvests in Europe and Russia along with massive population displacement in North Africa due to the conversion of fertile areas to dessert. Massive population displacement and multiple years of poor crops spells misery for large segments of the world’s population.

In simplistic terms, the target for maximum concentration of greenhouse gases is 450ppm in order to keep global temperature change under 2 degrees Celsius. Prior to the Industrial Revolution the levels were around 275ppm. Currently we are at 380ppm and we are projected to exceed 400ppm within 10 years. The likelihood of stayig under 450 is slim or none. In simplistic terms.

A two degree Celsius rise in global temperature is expected to trigger the melting of the Greenland ice pack and other permanent ice masses leading to more than a twenty foot rise in global sea levels. The poorest nations in the world are especially vulnerable to this threat.

We might also want to consider that the rise in forrest fires, in the US and around the world, is a significant part of this process of desertification. The forrests burn in the hottest and driest years but are not able to restablish themselves in even the wetter years. This greatly accelerates the effect of gradual temperature increases.

Similarly, the fierce hurricane season batters the coasts and claims land for the sea which does not dry out and return to productivity fast enough to protect itself from the next season.

The evidence is all around us.

Russia to open moonbase mine – The Other Side – Breaking News 24/7 – NEWS.com.au

This will get the attention of Americans! I remember the movie the “Right Stuff” when LBJ is quoted as saying in a thick Texas drawl “I, for one, don’t want to go to bed by the light of a Russian Moon.” Shades of Antarctica, the great extra-terrestrial land grab is on! Katy bar the door.

The plan is to mine h3 hydrogen isotope which is relatively abundant on the moon compared to Earth.  This isotope is useful in fusion reactions which combine two hydrogen atoms to produce a helium atom and release of large amounts of energy.

This would be a double wammy a moonbase and fusion.

Of course they still have to pull it off and there are many barriers to accomplishing this!  Even beyond the technological bariers there is the idea that one of the countries with the greatest coal and oil reserves, furthering fusion with massive investments.

Sony Global – Q3 FY2005 Sony Group Earnings Announcement

This news release reveals the discontinuation of the Aibo robot puppy and the Qrio small humanoid robot. Meanwhile, Sony’s product website still says that the Qrio “embodies Sony’s dreams…” Also I have read recently that a psychological study showed that people are less depressed when they interact with either a real pet or even with a robotic one.

Still Sony is loosing market share and this announcement includes information on layoffs for some 10,000 workers. Funny it doesn’t mention the failure of the Sony policies of proprietary formats such as the memory stick and DRM mis-steps including its infamous “root-kit”.

There is now a vacuum in entertainment robots… who will step up?

Autonomous Light Air Vehicles

Well these are fun. They are small powered blimps that exhibit flocking behavior.

They “feed” on network activity from each other, from cell phones, and from purpose built “plants”.

• If they have not had any activity for few minutes they become “hungry” and they will respond to people with small feeder “plants” until they are full again.

• During feeding the electonic plant in the person’s hand vibrates to simulate hand feeding.

• The three ALAVs also flock by emitting signals if they have wandered off from their companions.

Interesting behaviors seem to emerge. All in all a fun and informative project around basic animal behavior. Ya gotta start somewhere.

American Chemical Society News Service

This is news release about an article scheduled for publication. The article reports on the results of several “sustainable agriculture” experiments in various parts of the world. The conclusions reached are that sustainable agricultural techniques increased individual farm output by 80% while decreasing the environmental impact of farming as well as water consumption.

This is a truly encouraging piece of news in a world faced by water and food shortages in the next generations. The increase in individual farm output makes this beneficial set of farming techniques much more likely to be adopted.