I have nothing wise or helpful to say on the BP oil blowout in the the Gulf of Mexico.  So, i’m just going to list a bunch of nasty names that the letters BP stand for.

Bigtime Polluters - thanks Dick Cheney for making “Bigtime”, big time.

Bad Planning

Big Putz

Bad Preparation

Bad People

Bad Polluters

Bad Profesionals

Big Profanity

Big Profiteer

Big Pinheads

Butthead Professionals

Bitchy President

i’m sure i’ll come up with more, since clearly you can never have enough ways to insult BP

For anyone who didn’t watch 60 Minutes this last Sunday, I’ll explain why you should watch the video.

The Bloom Box is a fuel cell designed to provide homes electricity from a box the size of a stack of 15 cd/dvds that costs about $3000.  The fuel cell does emit CO2 when fueled by carbon based fuels, but it creates twice as much electricity as traditional natural gas generators. This means that substituting these methane powered fuel cells for coal power plants could cut CO2 emissions by 75%. Deploying small, off grid Bloom devices further reduces transmission loses and grid costs associated with delivering power.  A successful Bloom Box, could have a huge impact on on a world increasingly run on electricity.

Will it work? Well they’ve got systems running at Google, eBay and FedEx in northern California and they’re funded by Kleiner Perkins, et. al. for $400 Million. That makes it seem like it’s coming soon. If this works, my only question is could we capture enough methane, from bio sources to power society without continuing to add CO2 from burning “mined” fuels?

Check out this video:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

I can’t tell you how angry the term “Clean Coal” makes me.  People in the coal and fossil fuel industry trumpet the term “Clean Coal” as their solution to global warming.  The idea is to take the CO2 from the coal burning plant smokestack and sequester (store) it so it doesn’t enter the atmostphere.  The idea is to pump the CO2 into the ground where it will then supposedly stay forever.  The only problem is that 1) it doesn’t exist, 2) it’s an untested theory and 3) the “science” behind it sounds a bit silly, since it assumes the stored CO2 will not leak back into the atmosphere.

The US Energy Lobby has been running ads telling us how great fossil fuels are, here is an ad for “Clean Coal” that helps to get the real message out.

This week i was lucky enough to notice that WTVS, my local PBS station had scheduled a Nova, local programming and a Scientific Amerian Frontiers episode, all focused on solar energy.  There is a website on the PBS site devoted to: Nova: “Saved by the Sun”.  This special walks you thru the solar industry from it’s start in the oil crisis of the 1970’s thru today where it’s being debated as to whether it is a partial or complete solution to our global warming problems.  You see the US’s first and only powerplant using solar thermal heat (located in Kramer Junction, CA) to run electric turbines and the latest in solar technology today.

A number of experts try to rain on my solar parade by claiming that solar is a partial solution, a solution that only works during “sunny days” or a “solution for rich people”.  Most of this rhetoric is a bunch of….. compost. Sure the sun doesn’t shine at night, so we use the solar electricity during the daylight to make hydrogen gas to fuel traditional style generators at night.  Water can be pump up hill into reseviors using solar electricity and run back downhill to create hydroelectric power during dark parts of the day.  My local station went onto to discuss expansion with United Solar Ovonics, part of ECD the home of Detroit’s favorite Sun: Stan Ovshinsky, with it’s CEO.  The plan is to quintuple, production of their flexible solar electric modules to 300 megawatts by 2009.  This is good news for solar power and good news for the world.

The final program of the evening, featured Alan Alda spending time with Stan Ovshinsky and learning about Ovonics panels and it’s Solid Hydrogen storage system.  It seems that while United Solar’s panels are not the most effective cells in high sunlight conditions, they do produce electricity from the sun, even in rain and cloudy weather.  Best of all, they’re smaller, thinner, lighter and more flexible than stand panels and as Ovshinsky demoed, they can produce electricity with a dozen holes drilled through a 2 sq ft panel of the material.  With Germany being the leading solar market in the world, it’s certainly possible that places like metro Detroit, with ECD inc. leading the way, can lead solar adoption in the US.  Solar Cells that work in gray days, what a perfect solution from a company that’s headquartered in the midwest.