In Honor of My Mother and the Power of Love

By Norman Solomon
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 23 January 2008

The last time my mother was in a hospital, an essay by Thich Nhat Hanh moved in front of my eyes. "Our mother is the teacher who first teaches us love, the most important subject in life," he wrote. "Without my mother I could never have known how to love. Thanks to her I can love my neighbors. Thanks to her I can love all living beings. Through her I acquired my first notions of understanding and compassion."

My mother, Miriam A. Solomon, died on January 20, which happened to be the seventh anniversary of the inauguration of a man and a presidential regime that she loathed. Once, several years ago, when I referred to George W. Bush as "an idiot," she made a correction by pointing out he's much worse than that; she used the adjective "evil."

At my parents' apartment, taped on the front door for a long time, a little poster said: "The America I Believe In Doesn't Torture People." The poster was from Amnesty International USA - an organization my mom wrote many protest letters to dictators for - and it summed up her devotion to human decency rather than counterfeit versions of American democracy.

On Monday, the day after my mom died, The Washington Post that arrived on the apartment doorstep carried a lead editorial under the headline "Martin Luther King Jr.: His Words Are More Relevant Than Ever This Election Year." But the editorial did not include the word "war" - even while it grandly commented on "the vision of Dr. King" and, of course, quoted from his "I Have a Dream" speech.

My mother was among the hundreds of thousands of civil rights supporters who gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial and heard King's speech that day in 1963. But unlike the Post's editorial writers, she did not suffer from arrested development in subsequent decades.

She shared in King's expansive view of essential struggles for human rights during the last few years of his life. And in the decades that followed, she took to heart his denunciations of economic injustice and what he called "the madness of militarism."

In contrast to The Washington Post - with its fevered editorial support for the war in Vietnam and, a third of a century later, the war in Iraq - my mother was a humanist who cared about human life far more than geopolitical positioning. In October 1967, then a 46-year-old mother of four children, she joined in the large antiwar march to the Pentagon.

She was passionate about the Bill of Rights. In the early 1970s she did extensive volunteer work for the ACLU in defense of the civil liberties of antiwar demonstrators. And for decades, she worked to get progressive Democrats elected to office. She was never in the limelight, and she never sought it.

Sometimes she'd tell me about her father, Abe Abramowitz, a socialist who did tireless political work in Brooklyn. As a girl, she went with him to branch meetings of The Workmen's Circle, where social justice was on the agenda. Once, she showed me how he showed her how to quickly seal a lot of envelopes by wetting many flaps all at once with a sponge. Along the way, he supported Norman Thomas for president; later on, as circumstances and possibilities shifted, he opted for Franklin Roosevelt.

My mom adored her father, who had a sparkling sense of humor, a love of literature, and - most of all - an overflow of humanistic kindness. He died young, when she was only in her mid-thirties. It must have been a terrible blow to my mother.

My mother did not die young (she was 86), but since then I've felt awful waves of sadness. And sometimes, I think of people who are mourning loved ones of all ages, due to distinctly unnatural causes. The people dying in Iraq as a consequence of the US war effort. The children in so many countries who lose their lives to the ravages of poverty. The health care system in the United States that - in the absence of full medical coverage for everyone as a human right - means avoidable death and suffering on a large scale.

In media-speak and political discourse, the human toll of corporate domination and the warfare state is routinely abstract. But the results - in true human terms - add rage and more grief on top of grief.

Our own mourning should help us understand and strive to prevent the unspeakable pain of others. And whatever love we have for one person, we should try to apply to the world. I won't ever be able to talk with my mother again, but I'm sure that she would agree.

After my mother died, I learned about a poem that she wrote long ago - apparently soon after her father passed away. The poem is titled "Bereavement." Here is how it ends:

More than cherished memories are left behind; they leave us - us to know our duties and our powers and to carry on without much fuss.

In the crushing grief of the moment, we think of how vital and good our loved ones were, and vow to be worthy of them.



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Norman Solomon is a columnist and author. His web site is www.normansolomon.com.




http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012308A.shtml

Charge Your Cellphone Just By Moving

INHABITAT
January 17, 2008
Charge Your Cellphone Just By Moving - With M2E Kinetic Power
by Jill Fehrenbacher


They may seem like such small devices - but cellphones have a surprisingly large environmental footprint, and the whole cellphone charger business is a royal pain in the butt. Every cellphone requires a different type of charger (so excessive amounts of plastic cords and gadgets need to be produced for each type of phone), they suck copious amounts of vampire power when you leave them plugged into the wall, and it is so easy to lose them or forget to charge your phone if you are on the road a lot.

Well, for those of you who hate the pain of cell-phone charging, there is now a promising new technology that could get rid of the messy problem of cellphone chargers once and for all, AND eliminate 30 to 40 percent of the toxic heavy metals that are currently found in cell-phone batteries. New startup M2E (Motion 2 Energy) has developed a technology which converts the kinetic energy from minor movement into an electrical charge to power mobile communication devices: meaning in just a few years, we could all toss out our cellphone chargers and charge up our phones simply by walking around with them during the day!






January 17, 2008
Charge Your Cellphone Just By Moving - With M2E Kinetic Power
by Jill Fehrenbacher


They may seem like such small devices - but cellphones have a surprisingly large environmental footprint, and the whole cellphone charger business is a royal pain in the butt. Every cellphone requires a different type of charger (so excessive amounts of plastic cords and gadgets need to be produced for each type of phone), they suck copious amounts of vampire power when you leave them plugged into the wall, and it is so easy to lose them or forget to charge your phone if you are on the road a lot.

Well, for those of you who hate the pain of cell-phone charging, there is now a promising new technology that could get rid of the messy problem of cellphone chargers once and for all, AND eliminate 30 to 40 percent of the toxic heavy metals that are currently found in cell-phone batteries. New startup M2E (Motion 2 Energy) has developed a technology which converts the kinetic energy from minor movement into an electrical charge to power mobile communication devices: meaning in just a few years, we could all toss out our cellphone chargers and charge up our phones simply by walking around with them during the day!




Kinetic energy generation has been around forever (remember wind-up watches?) and we’ve touched on it here with the handcrank electronics chargers of Freeplay , the Sustainable Dance Club, and the People-Powered Gyms. However what is so new and so promising about M2E is the fact that their microgenerator technology allows even the slightest jostling movement to provide a significant charge. So instead of having to hand-crank your cell phone (which is possible, but doesn’t sound too fun), your phone would simply just need a little minor jostling in your bag or jacket while you walk around to stay fully charged. Sounds a lot easier than having to plug in and recharge every night, right?

It’s not only the environmental impact of this technology that seems so promising, but also simply the convenience of this technology. And if an eco-friendly product actually makes life more convenient for most people, we know it won’t be a hard sell to get people to adopt it. That’s why we can’t wait for this new technology to make its way into mainstream consumer products. Right now M2E’s technology is only being used by the U.S Army to outfit troops on the battlefield. But we think it is only a matter of time before this amazingly useful technology becomes more widely available. Nokia, Motorola and Samsung, please start taking notes now…

Norway Aims to Go Carbon Neutral by 2030

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway, which last year set what it called the world's most ambitious target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, said on Thursday it aimed to go "carbon neutral" in 2030, which is 20 years earlier than its previous target.

The new target was set when the Labour-led coalition government reached agreement with three opposition parties to bring the goal forward from 2050.

The government said last year that Norway would aim to cut net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) to nil by 2050 by reducing emissions at home and investing abroad in environmental projects that will give Norway CO2 reduction credits.

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The plan includes offsetting Norwegian emissions by spending around 3 billion crowns ($553.1 million) per year to combat deforestation in developing countries. Forests act as a sink for CO2, the main greenhouse gas blamed for causing global warming.

Under the Kyoto Protocol curbing greenhouse emissions, countries do not get credit for the effect of their own forests, but they can get credits by planting trees in developing lands.

"The parties now think it is realistic to assume reductions in Norwegian climate gas emissions of 15-17 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents by 2020 when forests are included," the government said in a statement.

Three million metric tons of that reduction would come from Norway's forests absorbing carbon, it said.

The initial target was to cut 13-16 million metric tons of CO2.

Achieving the target will require cutting Norway's total emissions by two-thirds domestically, the statement said.

Environmental groups said the deal was too vague, and Oil and Energy Minister Aaslaug Haga acknowledged: "We don't know how we will achieve the goals yet, and that is challenging."

A "significant sum" of money will be earmarked for investment in renewable energy, mass transport and measures to reduce emissions from the transport sector, while tax on diesel fuel will rise by 0.1 crowns ($0.018) per liter and on gasoline by 0.05 crowns, the government said.

"Both carrot and stick will be used to promote more environmentally friendly behavior and to reduce climate gas emissions," the centre-left coalition said.

Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen of the Socialist Left (SV) party said the policy would lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions both in Norway and abroad.

"The agreement gives Norway a far-sighted climate policy that can stand independently of shifting governments," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said in the statement.

MOON LANDING

Stoltenberg, who heads the Labour Party, has said Norway's policy on cutting CO2 emissions is the world's most ambitious and he has likened the challenge of fighting climate change to a "moon landing" for the 21st century.

Norway, with a population of just 4.7 million, is the world's fifth-biggest exporter of oil and Western Europe's biggest exporter of natural gas.

Endowed with rivers and waterfalls, it gets almost all its own electricity from non-polluting hydroelectric stations. But the Nordic country aims to begin burning natural gas for power generation in the future to satisfy growing demand.

The government wants emissions from such power plants to be captured and buried, a technology still under development.

"The agreement implies technologies that are not known yet," Stoltenberg told a news conference.

The government said it would spend an extra 70 million crowns ($12.91 million) this year on research into renewable energy and carbon capture and storage this year, and funding for such research would rise to at least 600 million in 2010.

(Reporting by John Acher; editing by Anthony Barker)



http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/29456

Harnessing Waste Heat for Electricity

January 16, 2008
Harnessing Waste Heat for Electricity
Berkeley researchers make thermoelectric breakthrough in silicon nanowires.
Berkeley, California [RenewableEnergyAccess.com]
Energy now lost as heat during the production of electricity could be harnessed through the use of silicon nanowires synthesized via a technique developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley. The far-ranging potential applications of this technology include DOE's hydrogen fuel cell-powered "Freedom CAR," and personal power-jackets that could use heat from the human body to recharge cell-phones and other electronic devices.

"For example, if it is cold outside and you are wearing a jacket made of material embedded with thermoelectric modules, you could recharge mobile electronic devices off the heat of your body. In fact, thermoelectric generators have already been used to convert body heat to power wrist watches."

-- Arun Majumdar, Mechanical Engineer and Materials Scientist with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley

"This is the first demonstration of high performance thermoelectric capability in silicon, an abundant semiconductor for which there already exists a multibillion dollar infrastructure for low-cost and high-yield processing and packaging," said Arun Majumdar, a mechanical engineer and materials scientist with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, who was one of the principal investigators behind this research.

"We've shown that it's possible to achieve a large enhancement of thermoelectric energy efficiency at room temperature in rough silicon nanowires that have been processed by wafer-scale electrochemical synthesis," said chemist Peidong Yang, the other principal investigator behind this research, who also holds a joint Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley appointment.

Majumdar, who was recently appointed director of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) and is a member of the Materials Sciences Division, is an expert on energy conversion and nanoscale science and engineering. Yang is a leading nanoscience authority with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and with the UC Berkeley Chemistry Department.

The researchers describe a unique "electroless etching" method by which arrays of silicon nanowires are synthesized in an aqueous solution on the surfaces of wafers that can measure dozens of square inches in area. The technique involves the galvanic displacement of silicon through the reduction of silver ions on a wafer's surface. Unlike other synthesis techniques, which yield smooth-surfaced nanowires, this electroless etching method produces arrays of vertically aligned silicon nanowires that feature exceptionally rough surfaces. The roughness is believed to be critical to the surprisingly high thermoelectric efficiency of the silicon nanowires.

"The rough surfaces are definitely playing a role in reducing the thermal conductivity of the silicon nanowires by a hundredfold, but at this time we don't fully understand the physics," said Majumdar. "While we cannot say exactly why it works, we can say that the technique does work."

Nearly all of the world's electrical power, approximately 10 trillion Watts, is generated by heat engines, giant gas or steam-powered turbines that convert heat to mechanical energy, which is then converted to electricity. Much of this heat, however, is not converted but is instead released into the environment, approximately 15 trillion Watts. If even a small fraction of this lost heat could be converted to electricity, its impact on the energy situation would be enormous.

"Thermoelectric materials, which have the ability to convert heat into electricity, potentially could be used to capture much of the low-grade waste heat now being lost and convert it into electricity," said Majumdar. "This would result in massive savings on fuel and carbon dioxide emissions. The same devices can also be used as refrigerators and air conditioners, and because these devices can be miniaturized, it could make heating and cooling much more localized and efficient."

However the on-going challenge for scientists and engineers has been to make thermoelectric materials that are efficient enough to be practical. The goal is a value of 1.0 or more for a performance measurement called the "thermoelectric figure of merit" or ZT, which combines the electric and thermal conductivities of a material with its capacity to generate electricity from heat. Because these parameters are generally interdependent, attaining this goal has proven extremely difficult.

In recent years, ZT values of one or more have been achieved in thin films and nanostructures made from the semiconductor bismuth telluride and its alloys, but such materials are expensive, difficult to work with, and do not lend themselves to large-scale energy conversions.

"Bulk silicon is a poor thermoelectric material at room temperature, but by substantially reducing the thermal conductivity of our silicon nanowires without significantly reducing electrical conductivity, we have obtained ZT values of 0.60 at room temperatures in wires that were approximately 50 nanometers in diameter," said Yang. "By reducing the diameter of the wires in combination with optimized doping and roughness control, we should be able to obtain ZT values of 1.0 or higher at room temperature."

The ability to dip a wafer into solution and grow on its surface a forest of vertically aligned nanowires that are consistent in size opens the door to the creation of thermoelectric modules which could be used in a wide variety of situations. For example, such modules could convert the heat from automotive exhaust into supplemental power for a Freedom CAR-type vehicle, or provide the electricity a conventional vehicle needs to run its radio, air conditioner, power windows, etc.

When scaled up, thermoelectric modules could eventually be used in co-generating power with gas or steam turbines.

"You can siphon electrical power from just about any situation in which heat is being given off, heat that is currently being wasted," said Majumdar. "For example, if it is cold outside and you are wearing a jacket made of material embedded with thermoelectric modules, you could recharge mobile electronic devices off the heat of your body. In fact, thermoelectric generators have already been used to convert body heat to power wrist watches."

The Berkeley Lab researchers will be studying the physics behind this phenomenon to better understand and possibly manipulate it for even further improvements. They will also concentrate on the design and fabrication of thermoelectric modules based on silicon nanowire arrays. Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department is now seeking industrial partners to further develop and commercialize this technology


http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=51106

Small-Scale Solar Powered Air Conditioning Is Here

For years we have been saying that solar powered air conditioning just makes sense- if you are boiling in Phoenix the sun is probably shining really hard. We have seen big units, evaporative units that won't work in humid climates, a few vaporware units and even home-made absorption chillers

Now it looks like a Spanish company, Rotartica, has put it all together, by combining evacuated tube thermal collectors with a water-heated absorption chiller, and sized it at 4.5Kw (1.28 tons) for residential use, all packaged in a neat little box.



From an operation point of view it is very simple: you put hot water in, you get cold water out, which you can run to a conventional fancoil. The hot water in can come from any source, but evacuated tube collectors, which used to be very expensive, are pretty affordable now. If you want to get more techie:

In an absorption chiller unit the evaporator and condenser are the same as in conventional systems but the function of the compressor is performed by a chemical absorbent (LiBr) and a
heat generator, with only a pump being required to provide the change in pressure. As there is
no compressor, electricity consumption is reduced significantly.



The diagram is a graphic representation of the Single Effect Absorption Cycle, which
functions as follows:

1. The refrigerant, together with the salt or absorbent in the Generator, evaporates due
to the heat provided by a burner or an external circuit leading to a heat exchanger.

2. The absorbent is conveyed to the Absorber as a solution with a low refrigerant content,
while the refrigerant that has evaporated in the Generator travels to the Condenser
where it is condensed and releases heat.

3. Due to the difference in pressure, the refrigerant flows to the Evaporator where, at a
low temperature and as a result of the low pressure, it evaporates and absorbs heat
from the circuit which subsequently goes on to cool the room.

4. Lastly, the evaporated refrigerant is attracted by the absorbent in the Absorber, where
the refrigerant-rich absorbent solution is created once more and is conveyed to the Generator where the whole cycle begins again.



We don't know the price, (probably expensive) but operating costs will be negligible and it runs when the sun is hottest and electricity the most in demand; once those smart meters become common this may be the only way to affordably cool on the hottest days. If you are worried about being cool at night, perhaps you can add an ice bear. . Available in the States from ::Schroder Zimmerly.