Articles by John McGrath

Why we gotta knock solar?

Can we please, once and for all, stop decrying solar energy for being too area-intensive? See, for example, the oft-cited statistic that to power its economy, the U.S. would need "10 billion meters, squared, of land." America isn't exactly short on square meters, and awfully sunny ones at that. But 10 billion square meters sounds a lot bigger than it really is.

10,000 square kilometers (100km x 100km) form a square you could drive around entirely, at legal highway speeds, in four hours. (Less if you speed.) 10,000 square kilometers is also roughly one-fortieth the area that the human species has already occupied for hydroelectric reservoirs -- all to produce, according to the IEA, 15 percent of current global electricity demand. (This certainly overstates the efficiency of large dams, which do not produce 100 percent of the world's hydroelectric power.)

Get that? For vastly less space than we already consume for the pittance we get from hydroelectric dams, we could power the world. Space is not the limiting factor -- and soon enough, cost won't be either. Which will leave mulish stupidity the remaining roadblock.

New Hansen paper

Today the Oil Drum linked to a James Hansen released paper analyzing the impact of peak oil, peak gas, and peak coal on the likely emissions of carbon. Hansen notes that most of our emissions scenarios have thus far failed to account for whether the carbon will even be there to burn.

Plenty of graphy goodness, but what I took away was this: There's just enough oil and gas left in the ground to take us up to, or maybe a bit over, the 450 parts per million of CO2 that climatologists worry about so much. This makes it imperative that we in the developed countries immediately phase out coal, the one supply of fossil carbon that can take us right over the cliff.

Patrick Moore proves to be — gasp — a nuclear shill

We anti-nuclear folks are frequently accused of closed-mindedness. Like, you know, Chernobyl is so 1980s. Get with the here and now, man.

So I was interested to see how nuclear shill extraordinaire Patrick Moore would react to the news that the Canadian oil industry is increasingly interested in geothermal power as an alternative to nuclear in the heat-starved tar sands developments. The heat produced by obviously-feasible technology would be a perfect fit, and if those tree-hugging hippies in the oil sector are interested, surely there's something to suggest it, right?

Nope, not for Moore. It's nuclear or nothing. Talk about closed-minded.

From the guy who wrote the book on the GM EV1, literally

Michael Shnayerson, who literally wrote the book on the ill-fated GM EV1, has an excellent piece in last month's Vanity Fair about the Tesla Roadster.

Quoting is redundant -- the whole article is fun and packed with attention to personal detail. Eventually, someone is going to have to write a biography of Alan Cocconi, who seems to be at the center of all the electric car efforts of the last quarter-century or so.