Thank Government

Green Thursday TGIT Thank Government It's Thursday

Today we thank the government because they have finally smelled the roses and agree there is global warming. Yes the President was smelling the blooms in the Rose garden today when he acknowledged that the US will need to curb greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 in order to save the world. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080416/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_climate

Yes the leader of the free world, with the legacy of no other commander in chief, wants to curb CO2 emissions in the year he will turn 80. Hello Houston we have a problem and we need to address it now! Dubya smelled the roses but it is now reported that bees and other pollinators cannot smell the sweet aroma of roses because of ozone pollution. It turns out that the aromatic chemicals in roses are now being oxidized by ozone pollution that primarily comes for vehicles. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,350968,00.html

So what do we do about ozone pollution near the ground. Well Volvo and Engelhardt had an idea that is now used on some of Volvo's vehicles. They applied a ozone depleting catalyst on the radiators of their vehicles and as the air passes through the radiator the catalyst converts ozone into oxygen. http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6190627-description.html

My friend Paul in Australia alerted me to a new engine technology that promises to be almost 30% more efficient. Using very smart microelectronic controllers the engine can be rapidly switched from four stroke cycle to two stroke cycle allowing a smaller and lighter engine to have the power of a far larger engine. This out of the cylinder thinking is what is needed. http://puregreencars.com/Green-Cars-News/Technology/Ricardo-Prototype-

Now that we have our good news story we have to return to sad state of affairs caused by the completely misguided policy of bio-fuels. Food prices are up in the USA but at least we have food http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080414/inflation_squeeze.html

Poorer countries in Asia and Africa have food shortages and people are starving thanks to the Department Of Entropy's misguided policy. This week I award the Gangrene Award for the dumbest energy idea to our Secretary of Entropy - Sam Bodman. Regimes around the world could be toppled much like the royalty in France in the late eighteenth century. Yosemite Sam was quoted as saying to the masses "if you have no corn for bread just eat rum cake with your bio ethanol"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080414/wl_time/howhungercouldtoppleregimes

Unfortunately most of this week's Green Thursday is pretty depressing news so I will leave you with the word's of a great president who also had to deal with troubled times. When JFK had to remind folks of the need for commitment to solve pressing problems he did not fumble for words in the Rose Garden, instead he said these remarkable words:
"There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction." - -- John F. Kennedy


Could someone please convey the message to our leaders that the long range risks and costs of an overheated earth without food is pretty important and worth action now.

Thank Gold

Green Thursday TGIT - Thank Gold it is Thursday
Today we will discuss nano gold and its potential to save the world. I wrote parts of this blog a year ago before many of you were subscribers to Thermo Thursday, but the topic remains interesting and pertinant.

Nano materials are being investigated for unique properties and gold is considered to be one of the most promising nano materials. Nano comes from nanometer or one billionth of a meter. Gold is not the same color when it is in nano form and it is not even a metal but rather a semiconductor in nano form http://www3.lehigh.edu/engineering/news/kielyworkingwithgold.asp Old Robin Williams who was Mork from Ork never realized how important his utterance on Nano Nano would become.

A very simple use of nano gold is as an oxidation catalyst to convert carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide. Gas masks for fire fighters will be made with nano gold and the Taiwanese intend to market such gas masks soon.

Taiwan ITRI expects substantial patent income from nano-gold catalyst Claire Sung, Taipei; Esther Lam, DigiTimes.com [Tuesday 17 April 2007]

After successfully applying for patents for its self-develop nano-gold catalyst technologies in Taiwan and the US, the Taiwan government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) anticipates to generate hundreds of millions of US dollars in sales of commercial applications of the technology.

As gold can transform carbon monoxide (CO) to carbon dioxide (CO2) when it is in the form of nano-particles, the ITRI-developed nano-gold catalyst can be used in CO filtering applications such as gas masks. Jassy Wang, deputy general director at ITRI's material and chemical research laboratories, highlighted that the cost of ITRI's nano-gold catalyst is only one fifth of conventional materials.

ITRI has inked a 10-year licensing agreement with Taiwan-based Novax Material & Technology for nano-gold catalyst based device production and it expects patent income from the partnership could reach a minimum of NT$10 million. Novax said it will first use the material in gas mask production and anticipates that the derived business potential is worth about US$100 million.

Nano gold can be conjugated with a monoclonal antibody to deliver the nano gold to a specific target area of the body. Using near infrared light sources that will not do harm to the rest of the body these nano gold particles can be heated and the targeted cells can be thermally ablated. Altering the shape of the nano gold to cylindrical nanorods also improves the efficacy of the treatment. The Mayo Clinic reports that nano gold will be used in cancer treatment http://mayoresearch.mayo.edu/mayo/research/dev_lab/nanogold.cfm

Work at UCSF and the Georgia Institute of technology has focused on shaping the nano gold more effectively for improved cancer imaging and treatment. http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=2039

http://nano.cancer.gov/news_center/nanotech_news_2006-03-27b.asp

Nano gold will also find use in treating Alzheimer’s disease http://www.physorg.com/news10099.html

I am glad to see the AWEA (Americans without electric appliances) has reported that the great state of Iowa leads the nation in the rate of adoption of wind power for electricity generation. I can attest to how windy the metropolis of Ames was, while I was mastering thermodynamics at one of the world’s leading chemical and nuclear engineering departments. Don’t laugh George Washington Carver is a fellow alumnus of the Iowa State University of Science and Technology.

Iowa Leads the Nation with 5.5% Wind Power, Says AWEA

Wind power provides 5.5% of the electricity generated in Iowa, making it the leading state for wind power generation on a percentage basis, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). AWEA's annual ranking of wind power leadership, released last week, continues to show Texas leading the states in terms of both total installed wind power capacity and the amount of new wind power capacity that was installed last year. In fact, the Sweetwater, Texas, wind plant more than doubled in capacity to 585 megawatts, pushing it from fifth to second place in the size rankings, while the state's Buffalo Gap wind facility expanded to 353 megawatts, placing it in fifth place for size. The recently completed 364-megawatt Capricorn Ridge wind facility, also in Texas, landed in fourth place, while last year's 401-megawatt Peetz Table Wind Energy Center in Colorado is the only non-Texas wind plant in the top five. See the AWEA press release and report (PDF 312 KB). Download Adobe Reader.

Given the subprime crisis and high oil prices I thought that we would end today’s blog with a quote of the day rather than the word of the day. My hero Albert Einstein preferred the study of thermo over accounting for the following reason “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts” This should have been the motto of the auditors and the management at Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns as well as the Federal Reserve.

Gullibility

Green Thursday TGIT Thank Gullibility It’s Thursday

Yes it used to mean if someone was green they were gullible. With all the hype of green products and Madison Avenue creating ads about the greenest car company, the greenest energy company, etc. I decided it would be good to put some thermodynamic reason to all these claims and expose the messages of these promoters against the backdrop of the gullibility of the average Joe.

Just yesterday CNN had a news headline of a company in Texas that has a super duper way for growing algae to make algae oil as a bio-fuel substitute. I had blogged on algae and their ability to produce lipids (oil) and how the lowly life-form was indeed better than bio-fuel from corn. The promoter from Texas is now making huge claims regarding the productivity of algae in producing oil. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04/01/algae.oil/index.html The claim that his algae can yield 100,000 gallons of bio oil per acre per year kind of blew my mind. I decided to challenge the claim by doing a simple energy balance comparing how much incident sunlight there is available in an acre of desert during a year. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energy_basics/how-solar-energy-works.html Turns out that in Arizona one can expect about six kilowatt hours per day per square meter of incident solar radiation. This is about 2,000 kilowatt hours per year per square meter. There are about 4,000 square meters in an acre so one has Mother Nature providing 8 million kilowatt hours per year of incident radiation per acre of Arizona desert. The Texan’s claim of 100,000 gallons of diesel type oil per year per acre can now be compared. A gallon of diesel has some 130,000 BTUs or some 38 kilowatt hours. Therefore the 100,000 gallons has about 3,800,000 kilowatt hours of energy. The Texan is not claiming perpetual motion but is claiming half of the incident solar radiation is converted in algae oil. Algae also produces protein, carbohydrate, and fiber besides oil (lipids). Lipids are typically one third the mass of the algae. The other two thirds are protein, carbohydrate and fiber. One a unit mass basis protein and carbohydrate have half the energy of lipids so the other two thirds of the algae mass has about the same energy content as the oil. Therefore the Texan is claiming almost 100% conversion of the incident solar radiation into algae on an energy balance basis. I have to say this is bunk! Most photosynthesis is only 0.1% efficient in converting solar radiation into BTUs. I would doubt that this Texan has improved this 1,000 fold and is approaching full conversion of sunlight into algae. On top of this the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere needed to be converted into plant material by photosynthesis would limit the rate at which biomass can grow. Enough said CNN was gain duped by not knowing thermo.

Given the British failure to lower electricity consumption for a day, the rest of the world attempted an hour of lower electricity consumption. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,343088,00.html This hour was called Earth Hour and some energy savings were affected. The problem is there are 8,760 hours in a year and we can’t save the world by gimmicks of shutting the lights on Sydney’s Opera House for an hour.

Yahoo did have an interesting article to tell the average Joe how to save gasoline while driving on the freeway by slowing down. http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/104752/Slow-Down-a-Lttle-Save-a-Lot-of-Gas Yes Yahoo has finally found the formula that shows the power needed to propel a vehicle through air is proportional to the cube of the velocity. Of course slowing down has an almost exponential effect in saving gas. Why not slow down all the way to zero and walk or take a bicycle. The folks in the holy land are trying to do this by having an inexpensive bicycle leasing program http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/902732.html Paris will have 20,000 rental bicycles available at 1,500 stations by year end. The West is trading cars for bicycles while the Chinese are trading bicycle for cars. Just goes to prove that Newton was correct in stating that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The word of the day is bellwether or a leading indicator of future trends. The bicycle bell will be a bellwether indicator of whether the bell has tolled on peak energy usage.


bellwether \BEL-weth-uhr\, noun:A leader of a movement or activity; also, a leading indicator of future trends.
Raised to believe they were among their generation's best and brightest, my class can be seen as a bellwether for a generation caught without a compass on the cutting edge of uncharted territory.-- Elizabeth Fishel, Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became
Before that election, Maine's proud citizens had fancied their state to be a sort of bellwether, a notion embodied in the saying "As Maine goes, so goes the nation."-- Robert Shogan, The Fate of the Union
Bellwether is a compound of bell and wether, "a male sheep, usually castrated"; from the practice of hanging a bell from the neck of the leader of the flock.

Thanks Graphite

Green Thursday - TGIT Thank Graphite It's Thursday

We are always blaming the sixth element Carbon for all of the world's woes. Today I will thank this basis of life element for it's contributions. We all know diamonds are a girl's best friend and diamond is pure carbon. Gabe, one of the first subscribers to my blog, knows just how expensive that glistening form of carbon is, as he prepares to ask his beloved's hand in marriage While I could opine at length on diamonds is is the other forms of carbon that do have a great possibility for our great green world.

Carbon might give us the world fastest microelectronic devices. A single atomic layer of carbon or Graphene as they call it may provide the world with super fast chips that perform well independent of the temperature they operate at. http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=4L35OEZ4NNYU4QSNDLSCKHA?articleID=206905544

Graphite is also used as a lubricant and as part of a composite material made from carbon fibre that will be used on the very expensive and high performing Tesla electric car as a light weight super strong material. In these forms as graphite carbon actually saves energy by lowering friction as a lubricant or lowering the mass of the vehicle and therefore improving the energy efficiency of the vehicle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite

Some good news from the National Renewable Energy lab. They have developed a photovoltaic cell on flexible substrates that is 19.9% efficient. Here is the press release from the NREL

NREL Thin-Film Solar Cell Achieves Record Efficiency
The prospect for alternatives to crystalline silicon solar cells brightened considerably on Monday, when DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced that it has created a thin-film solar cell with a record efficiency. NREL created the solar cell from thin films of semiconducting materials made from alloys of cadmium, indium, copper, and selenium, or CIGS. The cell achieved a record thin-film conversion efficiency of 19.9%, that is, the cell is able to convert 19.9% of the sunlight hitting it into electricity. Although solar cells have been built with much higher efficiencies using expensive processes a multiple layers of semiconductors, the more common crystalline silicon solar cells have achieved at most efficiencies of 20.3%, which is quite close to the NREL achievement with the thin-film CIGS solar cell. CIGS solar cells involve applying a thin film of semiconductor material to an inexpensive substrate such as glass, plastic, flexible foil, or stainless steel. See the NREL press release.

The news is always filled with doom and gloom and the British based El BBCera (the most anti US news organizations in the western world) has reported that in Britain they had this day called E Day or energy day in order to attempt electricity savings by the public at large. Sadly no electricity at all was saved despite the publicity. They claim the day was colder than normal and this might have caused an increase in electricity usage. Just goes to show 60 million Britons cannot change a light bulb. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7270218.stm

The word of the day is acrid or bitter tasting or smelling. It's root is from the latin word acer for sharp. The feeble attempt in the UK on E Day proves that they are not the sharpest tools in the shed.

acrid \AK-rid\, adjective:1. Sharp and harsh, or bitter to the taste or smell; pungent.
2. Caustic in language or tone; bitter.
There was burning jet fuel everywhere. Acrid, black smoke billowed across the water.-- Simon Worrall, "The Night the Sea Burnt", Independent, July 6, 1997
He rips off another match, lights it, and uses it to light another cigarette. He shakes out the match, takes a puff, letting the acrid, unfiltered taste burn the back of his throat. Kris Rusch, Hitler's Angel
The goal of sequencing the human gene set has been the subject of acrid debate among biologists.
Philip J. Hilts, "Head of Gene Map Threatens to Quit", New York Times, April 9, 1992
Paz's outspoken criticism of Cuba's brand of socialism placed him increasingly at odds with his colleagues. It led to a prolonged, sometimes acrid feud between him and the more left-leaning Fuentes.--
"Octavio Paz Mexico's Literary Giant, Dead at 84", New York Times, April 21, 1998
Acrid comes from Latin acer, "sharp."

Thank Gandhi

Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Gandhi It’s Thursday

This week’s blog is about a co-worker named Sudhir. Sudhir is originally from India and that is why I am thanking Gandhi for this week’s episode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi Sudhir and I were talking at the water fountain about energy and the environment. Unlike me who only blogs about energy, Sudhir has taken action. He has put his money toward being green. He has installed a 4.2 kilowatt PV system on his roof of his home in Redwood City California. The 4.2 kilowatts is the gross capacity expressed in direct current (DC). The capacity expressed in alternating current (AC) is 3.8 kilowatts. The system became operational last August and ever since Sudhir has been a self generator of electricity. PG&E our local utility has installed a smart meter at Sudhir’s home that measure energy consumption or generation in both peak and off-peak periods. Peak period energy is much more valuable than off-peak energy so the utility credits Sudhir much more money when his system is generating power at 2 pm of a weekday when the grid is experiencing peak demand. At midnight on a Sunday, electricity has much less value.

As solar radiation is at it’s peak in the early afternoon Sudhir has actually generated more power during the peak periods than his home has consumed during the same peak period. Over the past six months Sudhir has spun his meter backward by some 480 kilowatt hours during peak electric demand periods. During off-peak periods over the past six months Sudhir has bought 4,275 kilowatt hours from the utility. Sudhir is a well off person with a rather large home for the bay area having some 3,000 square feet of living space in his house. His mother as well as his wife and kids live in this home. He instructed them all to run the dryer and dishwasher in off-peak periods so that his PV system is generating the maximum amount of energy to the grid during peak periods and he is therefore receiving the maximum credit from PG&E. The energy he buys during off-peak periods is much less expensive and so it makes economic sense to shift his power load to off-peak periods.

Sudhir is also a smart investor. He has calculated that his after tax rate of return for the system based on a 25 year life and modest inflation rate of 3% in PG&Es’s electric tariff, he should enjoy a 7.3% internal rate of return. This is better than 11% before tax and given the low risk of his investment he has invested wisely. It is quite likely the PG&E tariff will increase far faster than 3% per year and his rate of return will correspondingly increase with higher inflation rates.

Our friends from across the pond at BP have an interesting web link that helps folks determine the quantity of energy they can generate from photovoltaic systems. BP produces and sells such systems. All one has to do is set the size of the system and provide your ZIP Code and viola the BP calculator gives you the expected net generation of the system. http://www.bp.com/solarsavings.do?categoryId=8052

Yahoo had this article that a diesel BMW 5 series had better gas mileage than a Prius on a 545 mile trip from London to Geneva. Well any good thermodynamics student would have predicted this. First diesel has more energy content per gallon than gasoline. This is because diesel has a higher specific gravity than gasoline and there are more pounds of diesel in a gallon than there are of petrol (the English word in the article for gasoline). Diesel engines are also more efficient than gasoline engines and on the 545 mile highway trip from London to Geneva the Prius would hardly have used it hybrid battery system except to stop a few times for food, fuel and going to the restroom. Diesel has 130,000 BTU/gal (US) versus 115,000 BTU/gal (US) for petrol. This equals 155,880 BTU/gal (UK) for diesel an 137,890 BTU/gal (UK) for petrol. The BMW got 41.9 MPG and the Prius got 41 MPG on the 545 mile trip. Therefore the BMW consumed 13.01 gallons (UK) of diesel or some 2,027,556 BTUs while the Prius consumed 13.29 gallons (UK) of petrol or some 1,832,928 BTUs. The Prius is the winner on the basis of lower real energy consumption for the trip

The word of the day is acerbic or sharp in temper. I have become acerbic ever since I learned that the Wall Street Bonks gave their brokers over $30 billion in bonuses two months ago and now the Feds have to bail them out. acerbic \uh-SUR-bik\, adjective:Sharp, biting, or acid in temper, expression, or tone. But more than that, he is a social critic, and an efficient one, acerbic and devastating.-- Benoit Aubin, "Quebec's King of Comedy", Maclean's, August 27, 2001Since I started out as a writer many years ago, I have built a reputation as an acerbic, mean-spirited observer of the human condition.-- Joe Queenan, My Goodness: A Cynic's Short-Lived Search for SainthoodJoey gained a reputation as a smart aleck adept at delivering acerbic one-liners.-- "Joseph Heller, Author of 'Catch-22,' Dies at 76", New York Times, December 14, 1999Acerbic comes from Latin acerbus, "bitter, sour, severe, harsh."Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for acerbic

Thank Gadolinium

Green Thursday TGIT Thank Gadolinium It's ThursdayBet you folks think I made up the word Gadolinium. I did not! it is one of the elements in the periodic table. It's symbol is Gd and it has atomic number 64. Kind of like client number 9 it is a powerful element but going away. It is a rare earth and its big use was in phosphors for tube TVs. This use will go by the way of the buggy whip. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GadoliniumUnfortunately this week I cannot chat for too long as my wife had a full knee replacement surgery. This is a revision to the first full knee replacement as the kind surgeon named Dr. Woolf botched the first one. He thought he was Gadolinium but he was nowhere close and my poor wife is paying the price for his mistakes.Enough about knees let's talk energy and about our friend the lightest metal in the periodic table. before you non chemical type shout aluminum, the lightest metal is Lithium. The Economist had a very useful and complete article on lithium batteries and there hope for improving vehicle efficiency by hybrid drive systems. http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789409This article is well worth reading and provides additional information on the research being done to make Lithium Ion batteries nor ignite.Oil prices exceeded $110 a barrel this week and premium gasoline is almost $4 a gallon here in Northern California. The subprime crisis will have all the yuppies driving subcompacts and this is good for the country.Sam Bodman our Energy Secretary has to be the dumbest chemical engineering graduate as he is still on the celulosic ethanol band wagon. At least the Romans had fuel while Nero played his fiddle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeroActually the fiddle was only invented 1,000 years later than the fire in Rome so he was not playing his fiddle he was fiddling the books or something like that. The word of the day is rodomontade a synonym for pomposity and pomposity did not come from Pompeii the other Italian city that suffered a disaster. The governor of the great empire state was a master of rodomontade and the mover of mountains until he hit unlucky number nine.
rodomontade \rod-uh-muhn-TADE; roh-duh-; -TAHD\, noun:Vain boasting; empty bluster; pretentious, bragging speech; rant.
These are rejoinders born out of a need to deflate a balloon filled with what others view as pomposity or rodomontade.-- Corey Mesler, "Dispatch #1: Buying the Bookstore (The Early Days)", ForeWord, August 2000
The very absurdity of some of his later claims (inventors of jazz, originators of swing) . . . has made him an easy target in a way far beyond anything generated by that other (and in some ways quite similar) master of rodomontade, Jelly Roll Morton.-- Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords
. . .the me-me-me rodomontade of macho rap.-- Nicholas Barber, "In the very bleak midwinter", Independent, January 7, 1996
But what he said -- that if any official came to his house to requisition his pistol, he'd better shoot straight -- was more rodomontade than a call to arms or hatred.-- William F. Buckley Jr., "What does Clinton have in mind?", National Review, May 29, 1995
Rodomontade comes from Italian rodomontada, from Rodomonte, a great yet boastful warrior king in Italian epics of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. At root the name means "roller-away of mountains," from the Italian dialect rodare, "to roll away" (from Latin rota, "wheel") + Italian monte, "mountain" (from Latin mons).

Generating electricity

Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Generators It’s Thursday


Today we get to discuss the essence of electricity. We have several ways of generating electricity but all except photovoltaic rely on the movement of a coil through a magnetic field. We can thank a very smart Brit named Michael Faraday http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday for the vast majority of the electricity in the world. It was he who came up with the notion of electromagnetism. The movement or propulsion of the coil through the magnetic field needs some engine that extracts work out of a fuel or potential energy source and converts this to electricity. There was news yesterday that the US Park Service purposely caused a man made flood in the Colorado River by releasing a vast quantity of water from Glen Canyon. http://www.abc4.com/content/features/story.aspx?content_id=1f8d2661-7915-4718-ab63-1a129641bdf3 The quantity of water released was at a rate of 41,000 cubic feet per second and will be for a duration of three days. This is equal to 307,254 gallons per second. The potential energy of 1,000 gallons of water at a height of 300 feet is approximately one kilowatt hour. The Glen Canyon Dam is 710 feet high http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/glencanyon/html/glen1860.htm So releasing 307,254 gallons per second for three days with a height of 710 feet equals 188,482,014 kilowatt hours of released potential energy. This amount of energy seems ginormous but in fact it is not. In the same three days the USA consumed 62 million barrels of oil with the chemical potential energy of some 101.7 billion kilowatt hours or some 540 times more energy than the energy released in the man made flood.

Back to old Mike Faraday and his electro motive force EMF. We can generate electricity by raising steam at a high pressure and then allowing the steam to expand through a turbine that spins a coil in a magnetic field. We can do this by burning coal or by having a Nucular heat source, Note I am misspelling nuclear on purpose to allow President Bush to follow this blog. Actually GW is not the only president to mispronounce nuclear the left wingers from Berkeley have compiled a list of famous people who could not pronounce this word correctly http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/nucular.html No doubt we will have to rely on more nucular generators in the future for our electricity.

I kind of like a generator that has been developed to extract electricity out of flowing rivers rather than building dams. This article from the Economist http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=8951908&story_id=10715508 was sent to me by Alan from Australia. In the future we perhaps won’t have Glen Canyon Dams and three day floods and we will still be able to extract energy out hydroelectric sources. A fool in the US Department of Energy may ask that this device will not work in Australia as they are down under and the Coriolis effect is reversed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect
Please tell our hard working civil servant that gravity is still one of the fundamental forces in the southern hemisphere and that is why blokes in the out back do not free fall to the Antartic.

Thanks to Faraday we have wind, hydroelectric, thermal solar, coal, natural gas, wood, oil, tidal and even nucular generators.
The word of the day is rara avis or Latin for a rare bird or a unique person or thing. No doubt Michael Faraday was a rara avis and this mispronunciation of nuclear is not.

rara avis \RAIR-uh-AY-vis\, noun;plural rara avises \RAIR-uh-AY-vuh-suhz\ or rarae aves \RAIR-ee-AY-veez\:A rare or unique person or thing.
He was, after all, that rara avis, a Jewish Catholic priest with a wife and children.-- Jeremy Sams, "Lorenzo the magnificent", Independent, May 16, 2000
"First of all," Arthur said, "Jack is that rara avis among Ivy League radicals, a birthright member of the proletariat."-- Charles McCarry, Lucky Bastard
Rara avis. You'd have to go far and wide to find someone like that, especially in these times.-- Andrew Holleran, In September, the Light Changes
Rara avis is Latin for "rare bird."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for rara avis