A More Perfect Union
      
Here is a not so oldie, but a goodie with some updated links.
My Perfect World
There is a story out that Saudi Arabia produced less oil last  month.
If it is true, and if their excuses are exactly that,  excuses,
then Mathews Simmons may have accurately predicted  our future
in his book Twilight in the Desert.
This morning, while in a meeting, we discussed  the need
to offset the use of oil in our transportation sector with  electricity.
We believe the best way to do this is with a plug in hybrid vehicle.
Another way is  with an electric scooter, or electric assisted bike.
Segways  would be pretty cool, if they weren't so dang expensive.
There are a lot  of folks who are touting all kinds of biomass solutions,
but except in  the case of cellulosic ethanol,
there is very little energy actually  gained.
In a perfect  world,
we need to use the sunlight to crack water into hydrogen and  water.
We can do that with a photovoltaic panel and an electrolysis  process.
We can do that with wind power and actually get a fuel
that  we can afford.
But in a perfect world, we do away with the energy  transducer,
and the electrolysis unit.
This process, which I call  heliohydrogen,
can be biological or  photochemical.
Here is an exciting announcement of a nano  photochemical discovery.
The research group, led by Professor Kazunari  Domen at Tokyo University and Professor Yasunobu Inoue at Nagaoka University of  Technology has apparently succeeded in developing a photocatalyst that  efficiently decomposes water to produce hydrogen under visible light.
The  researchers reported their findings in the March 16, 2006, issue of British science  journal Nature.
Photocatalyst releasing  hydrogen from water
Nature
"Direct splitting of water using a  particulate photocatalyst would be a good way to produce clean and recyclable hydrogen on a large scale ,  and in the past 30 years various photocatalysts have been found that function  under visible light .
Here we describe an advance in the catalysis of the  overall splitting of water under visible light: the new catalyst is a solid  solution of gallium and zinc nitrogen oxide (Ga1-xZnx)(N1-xOx), modified with  nanoparticles of a mixed oxide of rhodium and chromium.
The mixture  functions as a promising and efficient  photocatalyst in promoting the evolution of hydrogen gas."
In my perfect World,
there is no coal, no nuclear, and no  oil.
Everthing is powered by the light that surrounds it.
When we must  have a fuel,
we create heliohydrogen either biologically or  photochemically,
without any inbetween step.
In my perfect World,
the World runs on  clean, inexhaustable renewable energy,
much of it stored in a new  generation of ultra capacitors.
Our cars are faster,  lighter, and more reliable.
Our homes are cooler, better illuminated,  more pleasant.
Our towns are reconfigured into a patchwork of village  squares.
And these towns are connected by high speed mag-lev  trains,
or carbon reinforced translucent tubes,
with super-fast  corpuscular contact capsules
slipping through them at trans-sonic  speed.
We tele-work from the park because Wireless IP is  everywhere.
Food is grown locally and within easy transport of its  end use.
Macro and Micro Cooperations compete to serve the  Citizens,
while governments work locally to provide and  protect.
In my perfect  World,
the world of corporate consumption and consumers,
dies into  a world of human cooperation and responsiblity.
In my perfect world, 
the world of the  Disunited Nations,
becomes something else.
An Earthfamily.
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2 Comments:
come on, oz, is it too "dangerous" to ask people to simply drive less?? if GW is as serious as we all say it is, then why is this obvious, cost-free, serenity inducing contribution that each of us can make starting right now not at the top of the list instead of completely absent from the discussion in austin?? this simple goal is a key component of the seattle plan but some kind of fear factor keeps this necessary and obvious action item the "earth love that shall not be named"
bill bunch
just a quick question about the "perfect world" photo you have at the top of this blog entry. I would like to use the photo and wondered if it is copyrighted and if so, who has it?
thanks
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